by Tanith Lee
All this I saw very quickly, but then my eyes were drawn to the center of the hall, and I made out the three girls. It was the first time I had seen beauty in these dark ones. I realized now that it came early and died early, killed by the rotten living and the cruel work. They were not more than thirteen, but physically fully mature, lithe, sinuous, the full, girl-perfect breasts trembling at each flex and tremor of their limbs. Unlike the rest of their people, they wore ornaments, many-colored beads dripping down their smoky bodies, and little chips of crystal wound in their blue-black hair; otherwise they were naked. This was beautiful, but it was not all I saw. It seemed I was looking into my past, or my future, or at a painted picture, which forever changed itself, and yet retained its basic elements. In the center of them, its scales and protruding black eyes glinting in the firelight, squatted a gigantic lizard. I think I had not seen it sooner because my eyes had passed over and discarded it, unbelieving. It was the size of a large dog, of a wolf even, some sort of mutation of its kind. It had its own jeweled loveliness as the flames made glass-gleams on its armor, but its cold eyes swiveled from one dancing girl to another, and I saw then clearly the manner of their dance, sensual and inviting, and that their gestures were directed at it. Suddenly one girl slid down to her knees, then leaned backward over her own calves and feet until her hair lashed on the floor. Her thighs wide open before the lizard, she began to croon and stroke herself. It got up onto its feet, lurched toward her, and, as it came, its phallus—gigantic yet oddly human—slid from the scaled sheath. I thought the girl would shriek with pain as it pierced her, but she only moaned and sank farther backward over herself. The other girls settled around the lizard, caressing it, as the unnatural act of copulation began.
My head swam. A fire-storm of colored lights misted across my eyes and was gone. I noticed the thick, bittersweet scent in the hall for the first time. A drug. Yes, I could make out now bluish fumes that rose from the fires; but it was more than this—the unwholesome magic lay in their cups and on their food as well. I stepped back, and let the leather flap fall into place. Cool darkness and silence all around. Yet I was excited, sleepy—I had breathed the essence of their black feast. I walked back across the oasis, my limbs like lead, and pale hands reached for me, and there was the old and ancient laughter of the dead who had not died, but lived on in the corruption of all who had come later.
I began to run, along by the narrow stream, to a place where the water widened and became a pool into which a needle-bright, needle-sharp fountain jetted from a single vast rock spire. It was dark now, and the moon was in the sky. I realized I had left the rock enclosure behind, and was out on the flat empty land. Trees still stood sentinel, yet ahead there seemed nothing but that cheerless, moon-bleached desert. And then—a swift silver glitter along the side of the rock before me. With the glitter, a shifting dark, and the faint hushed sounds of animals and men moving carefully.
I saw their way past before they did, a twisting track that led under the needle-spray and by the pool. I leaned back into the shadow of one of the skeletal trees and watched them come, about forty men, each dressed entirely in black, riding black horses with muffled hooves. The moon was in cloud a moment, and when it slipped clear, I was shocked and, the drug on me, I almost cried out, for of their heads and the heads of their horses nothing seemed left but a black mane and a burnished silver skull.
It took me a moment to become rational, then I saw the masks for what they were, and knew at last what had been the model for the skull-guard of the north.
Perhaps it was logical that I should at once assume they had come to the steading—there was nowhere else, surely, they could be heading for in this waste? Yet it was more than that. I knew they had come for the wagoners, to take them—where I did not know, or why. And abruptly I was angry and afraid. I was their healer, had made myself Uasti. A responsibility for their despised lives clutched suddenly at my being.
The skulled ones had paused a moment at the pool: some of the skull-masked horses were drinking there. I slid back across the shadow, from tree to tree. It took longer than I recalled, grim and real now. At last the hall, no color left under the leather curtain. I ran to it, past it, and into the dark. There was a little spark of light—-at the far end where the roasting fires had been. I stumbled against a man: he moved, but did not seem to notice me. There were sounds and little sobs. The sexual climax of the feast had come with the dark, and no doubt more of the beauty of the Dark People was being crumpled all around me. I picked a way toward the light, and found a long cloth curtain had shielded the last fire. Beyond the curtain the light was scarlet, and here the giant lizard stared at me from the length of its iron chain. Near the fettering post sat three of the dark men and the one who seemed to be their chief and wore the collar of white stones. They had been quite still, and turned to look at me without expression. I knew their language was different, but I had heard little of it, and was still unsure. I emptied my mind and managed to find words.
“Men are coming, men with skull-masks. Against you.”
For a moment I thought they would not speak, then the chief said, “Not against us, woman. Against your kind. It was arranged.”
There was no further need of words, after all. I swung and pulled a long thin tree branch from the fire, blazing only at one end. I thrust it at them, and they jumped up and backward, a little emotion in their faces now. The lizard’s eyes swiveled nervously, blinking. I turned and ran back into the hall, ripping down the curtain as I passed.
“Wake!” I screamed at them. “Wake—an enemy is coming!”
It was the most ancient of cries; the flamelight crackled and lit up patches of the hall with red, yet nothing stirred. Men lay slumped, sleeping it seemed. Yet the branch glared on their open eyes. They smiled drowsily at my shouted words.
No use here. I ran to the leather door curtain, went out, and let it fall behind me. I stood still in the moon-obscured blackness, staring out at blackness, holding up the burning tree’s-finger. Soon they came, not so quiet now. Thud of horse hooves, harness sound. My brand, not the moon, bit silver out of their dark shape. Now they were only fifteen feet away from me.
I did not know why, but I called out to them in the Old Tongue of the Lost, the single word:
“Trorr!”
And they halted as I commanded, and stayed still. Then a man at their head—their captain, I thought—detached himself and rode a little nearer to me. On his right arm a thick bracelet of twisted black and gold metals in the shape of knotted snakes. Through the skull-holes of his mask I could see no eyes, for they were covered by black glass.
“Who are you?” he demanded in a deep, cold voice. It was not the Old Tongue he used but something as close to it as I had heard in the living world.
“I am Uasti,” I said, speaking in the strange mid-language he had uttered, “and you come to carry away the people in my care.”
When I spoke the name I had taken, a little rustle of movement went over them, but quieted quickly.
“Stand aside,” the skull captain said. He dismounted and came toward me with a slow menacing stride, hands resting loosely on the ten bright-hilted knives at his hips.
I stayed quite still until he was very close, then I dropped to my knees before the door, in an attitude of supplication, still holding the blazing branch in my right hand.
“Lord,” I began, “I beseech you . . .” and caught at his belt.
He swore at me, cuffed me aside, and strode forward to the curtain. Yet, as I fell, the knife I had put my hand on dragged from its sheath.
I stood up. He was reaching for the leather.
“No farther,” I said.
He took no notice, and I threw the knife into his back, neatly, so that the blade pierced straight through the heart. He uttered a brief, surprised curse, and dropped on his face, his head going under the curtain hem so that only his trunk and limbs remained out
side.
Confused yells, followed by sudden activity. Spears flew toward me. I dropped down, and they clattered harmlessly on the stone blocks of the hall, one only finding a mark in the hardened mud. But they were off their horses now, men with drawn, ice-pale swords, running at me, howling their anger.
Incongruously, it occurred to me that this was more than mere aggression—it was emotion. Their captain must have been popular among them.
I was confused. It seemed I was with Darak. I flung the blazing branch in the faces of the two men who reached me first, and, as they reeled and spat with pain, grabbed both the swords from their hands. One blade cut my palm almost to the bone as I took it, and the blood made it slippery and difficult to wield.
Still, I gave them some trouble.
The worst thing was my woman’s dress—I had almost forgotten it, and so it hampered me with surprise as well as cloth. In the end, tangled in it, covered in their blood and mine, the skull-men closed on me, and I took my death wound.
I scarcely felt the pain, only a great numbness. The light and blackness ran together. The moon floated like a bulbous, pallid growth on the face of the sky, then darkened, and went out.
Part III: The Dark City
1
SO I DID not see them take the wagoners. For some days I did not see anything at all, except things in a fever dream, best forgotten.
I suppose it was two or three days I lay dead, if it can be called death when all the time the death wound is healing itself. I woke finally in great pain and very weak, in a place of oppressive darkness. I thought for a while I had returned beneath the Mountain, and must start again. Then the raw stench of bruised earth penetrated to me, and I understood. I was in the ground where the Dark People had buried me. Not so strange—like many primitive groups, they feared the hauntings of the unpropitiated dead. There were even a few dried-up fruits and a clay bowl of milk set down beside me, and they had left me my clothes and the shireen, and put a black cloth over my face. Luckily the soil was so dry and scattery it had not put much weight on me and left me air to breathe, and it was a shallow grave, for they had little time for me despite their spiritual fears. Nevertheless it took me a long time to tear and scrabble my way free, and, in my sickness, I knew all manner of terrors—that I would truly die, that I would never reach the surface, that perhaps I was dead after all, and this some sort of morbid fantasy. But in the end the ground gave way above and around me, falling onto me, into my mouth and eyes, and I crawled upward into the cleanness of a gray day. I fell on the earth weeping, and could not move again until the sun was a low purple on the horizon.
Then I sat and looked around me. I was some way from the steading; I could just make out the rock walls, the trees, and a drift of cook smoke going up beyond. Near, there was something more interesting—a patch of yellowish grassland, where three or four scraggy, bony horses were nibbling frustratedly.
In the lavender twilight I dragged myself toward this place, and reached the fence and gate just as a young boy was coming to bring the animals into the steading. He took one white-faced look at me, then turned and flew away, shrieking in fear. Small wonder—I had been a corpse, and behind me now gaped the uprooted grave; I was gray with dust and dirt, my hands covered in blood from my torn nails, my hair matted, stuck with clay, white and terrifying as the quills of some strange beast: a ghost, an undead. The horses, too, shied away from me, but I got one by its straggling rough mane. The effort it took me to swing onto its back drained the last of my strength. I leaned forward across its neck, kicked its sides lightly, and it started forward at a frightened gallop.
I did not think they would follow.
* * *
There was a road—paved stone, the blocks irregular now, pushed up in places, sunken in others.
The first part of the ride had passed in a sick dream. Now it was moonlight-dark, the black and white world of the desert night.
I was a long way from the steading, and wondered why the horse had taken itself in this direction. It occurred to me later that probably the steaders would ride this way from time to time, and the horse, responding to the familiar kick, had started off to it accordingly. There seemed no point in altering its course.
I straightened, and looked around and ahead of me.
Desolation.
A flat landscape, occasional stark rock stacks, short and squat and crumbling. And the ancient road, so like the Lforn Kl Javhovor I had traveled with Darak. Ahead, the desert and the road repeated themselves across the land, tireless and monotonous. The moon burned white holes through my eyes.
* * *
I thought then I did not know why I let the horse take me along that ancient Road, but I think, perhaps, I did. Toward dawn, I began to feel the pull. A fish, dragged shoreward in the cruel net, cannot have felt more helpless. Yet I had no fish’s terror. I was glad to be drawn, to be pulled; excited, elated, joyous. A new strength ran into me, hardened and warmed me. I sat very straight, and slapped the horse with the flat of my hand. It had been trotting for some time, now it ran forward again, very fast and sure on the rotten paving.
Overhead, the sky was melting into grayness, the stars dissolving like salt cast on water. In the east, almost at my back, golden cracks were splintering the cloud.
I did not see it for a long while, the light behind me, the sky indigo ahead. But then the sun broke free and struck on it, and I saw very well what I was hurrying to. About two miles away, the ground began to rise upward, and the paved road became a wide causeway, some fifty feet above the surrounding barrenness. A mile beyond that, two great pillars stood up on either side, made of dark stone, and the paving seemed reinforced and level. Beyond those, about five miles from me, the monotonous land had erupted into a great cliff, flat-topped and black as blindness. On the cliffs summit stood the City.
It too was black, but the gleaming black of basalt and marble. The rearing spires and many-terraced roofs caught the sun like mirrors.
I held the horse still, and stared at it, breathing quickly. How old was the City? Old enough. It had stood in their time; they, the Old Ones, had been the builders of it, through the medium of their human slaves. There was no repulsion in me, no fear. Only the need to be there among the glittering darknesses.
The horse leaped under my hands and feet, and rushed forward toward the causeway.
* * *
I had no thought I would see them on the road, but I had forgotten that many chained men move more slowly than a single rider, however hard they are flogged.
It had been a fast ride—the paving even underfoot. Between the dark pillars, very tall, crowned with the carvings of flames and phoenixes picked out in gold. The light was full and harshly bright now. Abruptly I saw the crawling shape ahead, a mile away, the black riders and the stumbling men, linked together by dull metal. The captive wagoners and the band that had come for them, the men with swords who had stabbed me in the heart, which to them meant death.
I kicked the horse, and it ran forward again. Its pace tended to slacken whenever I ignored it. The air sang, and the shapes of the desert rushed by. The unpleasant procession in front drew nearer and nearer.
Three black soldiers, riding at the back, heard me first. They turned swiftly, and the sun ignited whitely on their silver skull-masks. One let out a startled cry. They floundered their horses around in confusion, drawing their swords. But it was an impotent gesture. Had they not killed me once before? The halting rhythm of the march broke up entirely. The captives’ gray faces turning, men grunting in despair, surprise, pain. The useless flick of the whips even now. Then twenty of the black soldiers riding back to confront me, one of them seeming to be their new captain, the thick armlet of twisted black and golden metals on his right arm now.
I reined the horse in, and sat looking at them. They were faceless, yet so was I. Thirty men in all, and I was not afraid. I felt only contempt. Th
ey and I knew how little was the damage they could do me.
The silence lasted a long while. Then one of them broke out breathlessly: “She was dead—Mazlek killed her. I saw the blade go in through her left breast—she fell.”
“Yes,” another added urgently. “Mazlek, then my own blade. I put it in her belly. She was lying in her own blood. She didn’t move. Still lying there at dawn when we took them out of the hall. She was dead.”
“Be silent!” the new captain roared. His voice was iron, but he was afraid like all the rest. “You were mistaken.”
“They were not mistaken,” I said to him quite softly. “Your men killed me, and the steaders buried me. But now I am here, and I am whole, and I am alive. These people you have in chains are mine. Where are you taking them?”
“To the citadel,” their captain said, “to serve as soldiers in the war, under the Javhovor of Ezlann, the great city ahead of you. This is no business of yours.”
At their use of the ancient tongue, the ancient title, I was filled with fury. I knew they were not of the Old Race, though they strove so hard to emulate them.
“Who is this man that dares to carry the name of High-Lord? Are you his?”
An incredible sensation of Power came with the anger. I felt them shrivel before it.
“We are soldiers of the High Commander of the Javhovor,” the captain said hoarsely. “You see our strength. Turn back and we will not harm you.”
“Harm?” I said. “Will you kill me again?”
There was a new silence. The dry desert wind hissed by.
“Let go these men you have taken,” I said, “or I will kill them, one by one, before you. They are mine. Either Death or I will have them, not you or your lord.”