by Tanith Lee
“Get out, or I shall kill you,” I said, and he ran.
The women cowered away from me in fright. Hate stabbed from my eyes at a tall black vase, which shattered instantly.
“Go!” I shouted at the women, who thankfully fled.
I lay in the cool dark. I thought, I will leave. By night, I will run away into the desert.
I dreamed of it, the horse flying under me through the moon-drained spaces. But another horse came after me, black, and more powerful than mine. And Vazkor caught my reins, and halted me, and I knew that I was glad that I had not escaped from him. So it was.
* * *
My answer went to the Javhovor, together with a golden seal ring. There was, apparently, great rejoicing in the City. Five days passed, days of supposed purification for my bridegroom. On the sixth, the women brought me my bridal gown—black velvet, so thickly embroidered with a phoenix of gold thread that it stood stiff as armor on my body. It was a strange business. At the appointed time I entered the vast hall of the Temple, girls going before me, strewing the torn-off petals of forced winter roses, white as the snow. I sat on a tall throne, and Oparr, larger and more impressive in his ceremonial regalia, led the chants to my greatness. At last, the formal question—would I take a man as my husband? And the formal reply, yes, it should be the High-Lord I would have.
The elegant, beautiful boy who was to be my spouse came forward, faceless, dressed in black and gold. It seemed quite wrong this sham should involve him. He was at once too innocent and too aware to have been drawn in. Yet he kneeled before me, and spoke in a clear cool voice all the praises and promises which must be spoken. After which I raised him, and stood with him hand in hand, and it seemed curious to find him altogether so much bigger than I for all his slimness; for he seemed so young to me I had half expected to stand hand in hand with a precocious child. More chanting, and then together we left my prison of darkness for, I imagined, another, different prison.
Through the snow-filled, crowded, noisy streets we rode, standing, still hand-clasped, in a large golden chariot, drawn by a team of six black mares. Behind and before us, marching guards, maidens singing and casting colored petals on the snow. It was bitterly cold and took a long while. Occasionally, from our closeness in the chariot, I would feel my companion shiver, a little helpless spasm, that eluded even his poised control. His hand was light on mine, the spare, long-fingered hand of a poet or musician.
We reached the palace, another of the huge, many-tiered black towers of Ezlann. Inside, mosaic floors, golden lamp clusters, a drifting warmth from the hot pipes which lay behind the walls and under the paving.
For an hour more we sat on our thrones, while the aristocratic multitude filed past, laying priceless trinkets at our feet.
It was dusk, and lamps blazed. We were alone together in a circular room with twenty narrow windows that looked out over Ezlann. The Javhovor removed his mask, which he did not seem to like wearing, and spoke to me for the first time that day, except for his appeal at my feet in the Temple, which was not for me at all.
“Well, then, it’s over, goddess. At last. I’ve allotted you ten women, I hope they will be enough; if not, you have only to tell me. They’ll come when you press that carved flower there. They’ll see to whatever refreshment you require, prepare your bedchamber, and attend you at all times. The palace is yours to walk where you want. Naturally, you will wish to preside in the Temple from time to time. I’ll arrange a suitable escort whenever you need it.”
He was very courteous, as ever, but his voice was a little too cool now, perhaps.
“And my wifely duties?” I inquired.
“None,” he said. “You are my goddess before my wife, and I remember it. I am honored.”
“And you,” I said, “are my husband. Am I not even expected to honor your bed?”
“That least of all,” he said.
I felt the slightest twinge of disappointment, and it surprised me.
“You will not, then, command me to lie with you,” I said, “but I imagine I might command you.”
“You can command me only so far, goddess. There are some things even you have no power to command.”
I had expected him to be embarrassed, but he was not, only reluctant to explain he did not want me, that the thought of me made him sick—She whose face turns men to stone, She who kills with one look. And I was Vazkor’s, he had virtually told me he knew as much.
“You underestimate my powers,” I said to him. “However, I understand your reluctance. A peaceful night to you, my husband.”
He bowed to me and went out. I pressed the carved flower, and soon the women came and took me to my new apartments, which were gold and green and white, not the black of Ezlann. In a metal box lay his marriage gift to me, a great collar-necklace of twisted gold and silver, set with jades in the shapes of lions.
It troubled me, he troubled me, but I put him from my mind, and slept.
6
There were many processions in which we rode hand in hand, for it was traditional. There were many entertainments at which we sat, and he would courteously ask me what I would have the dancers or the players or the jugglers or the magicians do. I had been afraid of these entertainments once, expecting the corruption to be strongest here, but I saw only beautiful things—a woman changed into a single jewel, two albino lions on whose backs two albino youths made strange knots of their bodies. There was music too, sinuous and softly thrilling, languid melodies coaxed from the round bellies of stringed instruments, and the bowls of silver horns.
Yet I was more aware of him than of the things I saw. In public we sat close enough, but in the palace we were separate. A word was not exchanged between us except those formal words when we must speak for his people. The vast library of the palace, filled with beautiful books, painted and bound in gold and jewels—I would often find him there, but when I came he would go away. I had thought at first he had never been with a woman, and perhaps feared me because of that, but I learned later, as one always can from the gossips of any establishment, that two or three of the small, beautiful, deerlike palace maidens had shared his pleasure at one time or another.
I had never really been lonely before, there had been no time or person to induce such a feeling of emptiness. In my dreams I would long for Vazkor, and the body and the power of Vazkor, long to hurt him, punish and destroy him, long to use him as a man would use a woman—to humiliate him, and finally become his slave. But awake, I would think of my husband the Javhovor, whose name I did not know. I would think of him beside me in the chariot, the slight abrupt shudders of cold that had run over his body, and yearn to warm him with my own, to stroke his hair and smooth cheeks, and walk with him in the palace, and talk to him, and have him sing to me as he did with his doe-eyed girls.
And I was afraid. Vazkor, like a black shadow of death, reached out to seize and replace his overlord.
Some days after the marriage, when I had ridden to the Temple so they could fall on their noses before me, I sought out Oparr.
“Give this letter to Vazkor,” I said.
But there was never a written answer. Perhaps Vazkor mistrusted me even further now, for I had written: “Do you know the Javhovor understands your Power? Do you realize he guesses your ambition? And he is not a fool.”
Oparr came to me a few days afterward, and, when we were alone, he said softly to me, “The answer is, goddess, that some men, seeing death in front of them, walk toward it instead of running away. One who waits on death is easy to be rid of.”
That dusk I went to him in the library. He rose at once, bowed, and turned to go.
“My lord,” I said. It was the first time I had addressed him as an equal let alone a superior in rank. He stopped, looking at me curiously.
“I am your servant, goddess,” he said. “What can I do for you?”
“You are in danger,” I
said, my lips feeling stiff and cold behind the mask. “You must realize it . . . your spies . . . I do not know if I can help you—I do not think I can—but surely you can help yourself, now, before it is too late.”
“Would you have me execute all my captains?” he said to me immediately. “A little impracticable.”
“Not attack, but defense,” I said.
He came across the room, and looked at me, smiling a little.
“You cannot understand, goddess,” he said. “I have lived with an awareness of death since I was three years of age. These things are not so important for a mortal, goddess.”
Involuntarily, I put up my hand and touched his face. So soft the skin over the fine bones. He flinched away; then, correcting the gesture, he took my hand a moment, then let it go.
“I will send someone to light the lamps,” he said, “so you will be able to read here.”
I might have kept him there, looked in his eyes and paralyzed his will to be away from me, but I could not do it.
Like a silly, love-sick girl, I watched him from windows, stood in doorways of rooms where he sat unaware of me.
I had a magician come to me, in secret, and he conjured up ghost things in a circle on the floor. It was all trickery, but it filled the hours.
I had not spoken to Vazkor for forty-six days.
* * *
There came a morning when I woke with a sense of unreasoning fear. My skin was drenched with sweat, my night garment and sleep mask soaked in it. I lay for a long while, trying to calm myself, and then sat up to rise. The pale room tilted, and it seemed a herd of white horses pulled it like a chariot round and round the Skora of my bed. I lay back, and my whole frame ached and trembled. I saw then that I was sick, and could not understand it. My body, so strong and healing it had survived death, had betrayed me at last to some fever of the cold weather. I was lucid enough to press the carved flower by my bed for the women, but I do not remember much after this. There was a scared physician, I seem to recollect, who did not dare touch me, and prescribed many coverings, and braziers around the bed, but this did no good. I recall glimpses of Oparr, restless and ill-at-ease, watching me, I guessed, to be certain I spoke no slander against Vazkor in my ravings. He was little enough comfort to me, and at last I made him understand I would not have him near me.
Months later, it seemed, I began to drift toward the surface of myself. There was not much left of me. My skin was flaccid and raddled as an old woman’s, and my thoughts would not keep still in my head.
Then, as I lay like a skinny corpse on my pillows, the women fluttered like birds and were gone, and my husband was standing beside me. My brain seemed to clear at his coming. He set his mask down by the bed, and he was very pale. I thought for a moment it might have been concern for me, but this was foolish.
“I am sorry you are sick,” he said gravely and gently.
“I do not know how long I have been ill,” I said, half petulant, for no one would tell me.
“Nine or ten days,” he said. “I came before but you did not know me.”
A sudden little chill went through me, and I asked, “Do they know in the City their goddess is sick?”
“Oh, yes,” he said quietly, “they know.”
Drearily I said, “And now they doubt she is a goddess, because she is mortal enough to be ill.”
“No. You’re wrong, goddess. They have been in a tumult of fear for you. But there was never any doubt. Oparr has led prayers for you day and night. The women have torn their hair and breasts for you, and a black bull has been slaughtered every dawn.”
“What a waste,” I said.
“But now you’re getting well,” he said.
I took his hand, and though I saw him flinch ever so slightly, he did not pull away, and I did not let him go.
I must have slept.
After a time, a smear of golden lamplight on my lids. I half opened my eyes, and he was still there, sitting by me. I was not properly awake, but there was a sense of conviction and urgency on me.
“You are in danger,” I said, “you must go. They will kill you.”
My eyes would not focus, I could not see his expression.
Softly he said to me, “I know.”
“Then go now, go,” I whispered, thrusting at him weakly with both my hands.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I have waited for this moment all my life.”
Helplessly, I felt the sleep miasma pull me down. I struggled to keep hold of him, but I could not do it.
In a dark corridor, I saw him walk calmly ahead of me toward a burning, terrible brightness. I ran after him, calling him back, calling and calling him, but I could not seem to reach him, and he did not turn, only went on, walking so calmly, his hands loose at his sides, toward the devouring light.
* * *
There was a terrible sound in the palace: a wild beast roaring and trampling.
I woke, and sat upright in the golden bed. It was very dark, and the noise beat round and round the room. Abruptly, ice-white lightning seared through the windows.
A storm.
Now I made out the separate sounds of the blustering wind, the lashing snow-rain, the hammering fist of the thunder. There was no one in the room; the lamps had blown out. Still petulant with illness, I pressed at the carved flower. But no one came.
After a time, I made out once more the other noises I had heard in sleep that the storm had muffled but did not explain away. Shouting and screaming, shrill screams of exultation or terror, I could not tell. I pressed at the carved flower again and again, without result. Finally, I pulled myself from the bed, and began to make my way toward the double doors of the chamber. It was a slow laborious business. I did not dare to walk across the open floor, which seemed to shift underfoot, but slid myself along with both hands on the walls. Another lightning flash fell blazing on the dark, and then another immediately after it, but this one gold, not white. The doors had been flung open. In the doorway many black figures, priests and priestesses, and in front of them, Oparr. He raised his hands, and cried aloud in his temple voice:
“Praise and love! The goddess is safe! Uastis is unharmed!”
The cry was echoed and reechoed. Priestesses ran into the room with me and Oparr shut the door on us.
I was bewildered and very weak. All things were uncertain and strange to me, and so it did not seem so much stranger than anything else that they stripped me, and painted me with the cream which made my skin golden, and dressed me for the Temple, and hung on me the jewels of the Temple, and finally placed the cat mask on my head over my lank hair, even over the sleeping mask itself. Dimly I saw that the women were afraid.
When I was ready, one called out, and the doors were opened again. Oparr stepped forward.
“It will do,” he said; and then, to me, “The people have been frightened for you, goddess; you must show them that you live and are well. We will help you.”
They did not carry me, but a priest came on either side of me, and led me firmly by the elbows, so I should not fall. Something about these men told me they were not really priests at all. They walked with a soldier’s stride.
After a time, Oparr stopped them. He came close, and said quietly, “We are nearly there, goddess. There is only one thing you must remember. When the High Commander, who has saved you, kneels before you, you must touch his shoulder and say, ‘Beheth Lectorr.’ Only those words, that’s all you need to remember. When he kneels. Do you understand?”
I nodded. I could remember, but they made little sense to me then, those two words of the Old Tongue.
There was red light ahead. We turned a corner and came into the long hall which opened onto a high terrace above the City. The terrace doors were wide, and scarlet torchlight streamed against the black racing sky. Below, thousands of people were massed, the gardens and the walks were
flooded with them, and they were shouting, calling, screaming out in a frenzy of anger and fear a single name.
“Uastis! Uastis! Uastis!”
The storm had eased. Hail had fallen, and the terrace flags were very slippery. Men stood here, black still shapes, with silver skulls for heads. Near the edge of the terrace a man with a golden wolf’s head stood alone. Oparr halted. The man with the wolf’s head turned to us, then back again to the people. He raised his arms, and a crescendo of ragged cries broke the drumbeat of the chant. Slowly he left the edge and moved toward us.
“Let her go,” he said to the priest-soldiers who held me. He looked at me, and his eyes were fierce behind their glass shields, strong enough to hold me up instead. “Now you must walk out where they can see you,” he said. “They are very afraid for you, and you must reassure them.”
His eyes held me hard; my body braced itself, and the paving did not seem to tilt beneath my feet. Stiffly, I began to walk toward the terrace lip, Vazkor a pace or so behind me, holding me firmly without touching me. Moving me like a mechanical toy.
The crowd below could see me now, and they began to sing and cheer.
I stared down at them without thought, and behind me he said, “Give them your blessing, goddess.”
And without thinking, I raised my hands, and made over them the sign I made in the Temple.
A hush fell on them then, and, in the hush, Vazkor came and kneeled beside me, his head bowed.
I was very tired and wanted to sleep, but I had not forgotten. I bent and touched his shoulder, and said the two words, which meant nothing; to me, at least. At the sound of them, the crowd erupted once more. I am not certain how they heard my voice; it was little more than a whisper. I suppose there was some trickery in the structure of the terrace which allowed the whisper to carry.
Vazkor rose. His eyes willed me to turn and go back inside the hall. I did not understand the command, only obeyed it.
I walked before him, away from the noise, and away from the light and the attendants. No one remained; even Oparr was gone. In the faintly lit corridor he let go his mental control of me, and lifted me up physically instead. The doors of my bedchamber were ajar. He nudged them open with his foot, kicked them shut behind him when we were inside. He put me on the bed, neatly and precisely.