The Birthgrave

by Tanith Lee

  “Things have gone well,” he said. “You can sleep now.”

  A little cold pain.

  “Where is he?” I asked Vazkor.

  “Who?”

  “The Javhovor, my husband. He was with me before Oparr came.”

  “The Javhovor has gone, goddess; he need trouble you no more.”

  Weights of lead were piling themselves upon my body, but I must speak a little longer.

  “Vazkor, where is he? Is he dead?”

  “He’s finished, goddess, and as well for you he is. You have been sick, and now I will tell you why you have been sick. Your husband, afraid of your Power, has been poisoning you. A human woman would be dead by now, but you, goddess, being what you are, will recover and live.”

  “No,” I said. “No, Vazkor, no.”

  But he was gone. The doors were shut.

  Far away the crowds still faintly roared, merciless in their joy. The snow was falling again.

  7

  Five more days it took me to be strong again, and in those days Vazkor achieved the last bastions of temporal power in Ezlann. Yet it had been quite easy for him, once the goddess had uttered the ancient words over him: “Beheth Lectorr”— “Here is the Chosen One.”

  I remember how Vazkor had spoken of the garnering of the steaders as being for the Javhovor’s latest campaign. But he had not been one for war; it was Vazkor’s levy. He had been planning, even then, as if he sensed my coming.

  Each day, despite my weakness and reluctance, I had to go out to the terrace, and let the people see me. I learned the story of the lost days from the physician who attended me now, though I learned it in secret. My husband, the Javhovor, had attempted to kill me by poison. On the night of the storm, Vazkor, suspecting the worst, had roused the crowd and come with his men to the palace. The Javhovor was called out. He denied the allegation very quietly, it seemed, and half smiling, and then, in the very act of the lie, some unseen Power had struck him down before the whole crowd. After this, I had been brought forth, and had selected the new Lord of the City—aptly my rescuer and champion.

  I had no doubt it was Vazkor who killed him—killed, as I had killed, with the white knife of hate that leaps from the brain. I did not ask what became of his body, it seemed only Vazkor would know, and there was no point. As to the poison, it was a fallacy. How fortunate my illness had been for the High Commander—but he was Javhovor now, and the chosen one of the goddess.

  * * *

  But as I grew well, I grew hard in my bitterness. I saw Vazkor truly as he was, my enemy, and I knew my danger. Wherever I went I was attended by his people, both women and men. Outside my doors stood his guards—to protect and honor me, it was said. One day I was called out and taken to a small room, where Vazkor and Oparr and various priests waited. Here Oparr intoned over us words I recalled from that other ceremony in the Temple. And when this was finished, hand in hand, Vazkor and I presented ourselves at the high terrace, and the people roared. It was formality, yet I was afraid now what this lie would mean; but it proved even less of a marriage than the last. Vazkor was occupied in sending and receiving messages across the snow wastes to Ezlann’s five sister Cities, and had no time for me.

  For many days after this I saw no one except the women, but eventually Oparr came. Since I had struck him, he had come to me, cringing a little with fear. To the fear—after the night of my first husband’s murder, when he had a brief power over me in taking me to Vazkor—was added a curious gloating little triumph. Now he both whined and exulted, one emotion or the other, in turn, getting the upper hand as he sensed my anger or weakness. He would be dangerous to me in distress, yet I dared not harm him, for I still feared Vazkor’s strength.

  Now he bowed low, and informed me that I must go next day to the Temple and be worshiped there. The people pined without their goddess.

  I answered “Yes,” and sent him out, and thought in terrible frustration of the great power which was mine in the City, and yet how helpless it had made me. In my sleep I dreamed myself a giantess, crushing Ezlann in my hands, throwing her towers into the desert, where they broke, and ran like blood.

  In a yellow dawn I rode there in the goddess’ chariot, behind me thirty black guards, ahead thirty other guards, on either side two black archers with silver skull faces. Everywhere, the phoenix badge of the Javhovor, but under it the wolf’s head. I do not remember the worship in the Temple, only the murmur and sea-sound of the chanting, and smells of heavy incense. Going back, the snow was thick in the streets. In the huge forecourt my driver reined the white mares. Men waited courteously for me to retire. Slowly, with the goddess’ erect, stiff gait, I left the chariot, began to walk across the snow. Danger, all around me, and no help for it. Through the black doorway, along corridors with glassy floors. . . .

  Abruptly I was aware that someone was behind me, matching his speed to mine.

  I turned. Three men had followed me, soft-foot as cats. Under the silver masks, I sensed a waiting. Had Vazkor sent them to remove me already? Yet it was the phoenix they wore, not the skull, and it was oddly reassuring, though it meant nothing now.

  “What do you want?” I asked.

  “We are the goddess’ new guard,” one said. He was taller than the rest.

  “Vazkor’s men,” I said with a bitter emphasis.

  The tall one said, “Now we are Vazkor’s. Before, we were the guard of Asren, Phoenix, Javhovor of Ezlann.”

  I had never known before the name of my first husband. I started at it; spoken at this time by this man, it seemed as if I glimpsed him suddenly, alive and immediate.

  I turned away and continued the walk to my apartments, yet my blood tingled. I was aware of a great difference, a sort of sea-change in the air. They moved behind me and I felt no menace in their presence. At the double doors, I halted again.

  “You may enter,” I said.

  I went through, and they followed me. The third guard pushed the doors closed, shutting us in.

  There was a moment’s silence as I stood facing them across the beautiful room, and then they were kneeling, unmasked. I went to them, and raised the face of the tallest guard in my hand. Recognition. This man had knelt to me before, on the causeway outside Ezlann—not the captain, for Vazkor had disposed of him, but one of the arrogant, silver-blond soldiers.

  “I am Mazlek,” he said.

  The name was familiar: She was dead—Mazlek killed her—I saw the blade go in through her left breast—

  “Goddess,” Mazlek whispered. His eyes were wide on me, open, and coolly reverent.

  “How did you escape from Vazkor?” I asked him.

  “Easy. He did not know me, and I was Asren’s man.”

  “A spy,” I said.

  “Perhaps. I was Asren’s man. When death came for us because we had seen you, I slipped away. I’d expected it of Vazkor.”

  “And so Asren Javhovor knew from you how I came to Ezlann.”

  “Yes, goddess.”

  I smiled a little at a mystery solved—for Asren, my husband, had never believed my god-head, only in my Power. Yet this soldier believed.

  “And now you are my guard,” I said. I turned to the other two, a little smaller, both blond and very handsome—they might have been brothers. “Your names?”

  “Slor,” one said.

  “Dnarl,” the other said.

  Even their voices were similar.

  I motioned them to rise, and I saw now that Mazlek, their captain, was very tall indeed, and very strong, he who had killed me once in the moon-darkness.

  “How long are you to watch me?”

  “It will be easy at first, goddess, to prolong our stay. Later, perhaps, it will be necessary for you to declare us your honorary guard. In all, goddess, I have eighty men under me. Not a great many, but enough to save your holy person from immediate insult or assau
lt.”

  Again I smiled, involuntarily. I took his hand, and shook my head at him when he began at once to kneel.

  I would be safe now. More, much more than physically safe.

  It had been uneasy, that first time, in the green woods of Darak’s second camp, something that must be given a different name. This was an open thing, without dishonor.

  I lay down early to sleep, before the day’s candle had quite smoked itself out over the snow wastes. And beyond the doors my guard waited to protect me, Mazlek, Slor, and Dnarl, who had once been Maggur, the black giant, Giltt gold-earrings, and little Kel the archer.

  8

  Oparr came in the morning.

  I received him, and sensing my mood, he cringed a little over his words.

  “Vazkor Javhovor requests the goddess’ presence.”

  “Why?”

  “I am only the goddess’ priest. I do not know all things.”

  “You are the worm in the woodpile, Oparr,” I said sweetly. “You worm in and out of things, and you learn a great deal.”

  He hesitated, fidgeting, his black-gloved hands busy with his skirts. Then he said, “It is to do with the council at Za, goddess, I believe.”

  Za, the central City of White Desert, was a vaguely known name to me. Of the council I had heard nothing, yet I wanted no further truck with the venomous priest. I rose, and he led me to Vazkor, and behind me walked eight men; Slor and his cohort.

  He waited for me in the library, among Asren’s books and the beauty Asren had engendered there. Oparr, Slor, the rest, were shut outside.

  Vazkor was masked, and very still in his chair.

  “Sit, goddess,” he said.

  It was a small thing, but he made it sound like a command. I sat.

  “So, we are to go to Za,” I said. “Why is that?”

  There was a moment’s silence. He had not expected me to know anything about it. The last time he had seen me, at our formal marriage ceremony, I had been listless, malleable. Finally he rose. He went among Asren’s things as if he understood them, and had some right there. Stupidly, it angered me, but quickly he was back, and unrolling a parchment map before us on the polished table. The map was light brown in color, painted in black, and beautifully drawn with little superfluous drawings of ships and chariots and horses, farmers busy in fields, marching soldiery. To the north there was one single gash of sapphire, below the mountains, which was Aluthmis, the Water.

  He set the onyx weights at each corner, and pointed things out to me. I scarcely heard him. I could only think of Asren’s hands unrolling, caressing the map. But abruptly I was aware of the Cities, set forth like a formation of stars, around which had been drawn the shape of some nebulous animal, such as might be described on an astrologer’s chart. Ezlann marked the head, and four others the body, and, stretched out behind, the last City tipped the tail.

  “Here is Ezlann,” Vazkor said. “To the southwest of her, Ammath, to the west, Kmiss. To the southeast of Ezlann, So-Ess, and between and below So-Ess and Kmiss, Za. Beyond Za, the mountain City Eshkorek Arnor. You will see now that etiquette demands any meeting of the six Cities of the Alliance should be held at Za. Her position is symbolically central, between the other five.”

  I recalled the messengers who had ridden back and forth in the long days since Asren’s death, and I understood a little.

  “You are drawing the five High-Lords together to master them at Za, and take the reins of power.”

  “I plan so,” he said.

  “And I, why must I go with you?”

  He removed the weights, and the map curled in on itself swiftly, like a disturbed fetus.

  “It is necessary the goddess should be there.”

  “And why, Vazkor, is it necessary?”

  He said nothing. Still masked, he turned to replace the map in its jar.

  “Because, Vazkor,” I said softly, “without the goddess you are nothing.” We both knew this well, but it gave me great pleasure to say it.

  After a moment he said levelly, “You have made a complete recovery from your illness, I see. I am glad, I should not have liked to risk your health on the journey to Za.”

  “When do we leave Ezlann?” I asked him.

  “Two days,” he said. “You can bring five women, no more; they are bad travelers. Naturally I’ll send you a detachment of my men, as personal escort—the Cities will expect to see you honored.”

  “No need,” I said. “I have my own guard. Eighty men and their captain, my commander. That should be enough for my honor, should it not?”

  He turned to me swiftly, and I knew behind the mask he was staring.

  “Who is this man?”

  “You will no doubt discover by your own methods,” I said. “I should not like to discourage your labors. Only remember, he is under my protection.”

  His stiffness eased. Very politely he said, “You have been a little unwise, perhaps.”

  “Indeed? Perhaps I am not alone in that.”

  “You must not persist,” he said, “in your mistrust of me. We are one, you and I, however hard you try to put it from your mind. If you are goddess, then Vazkor is god. They have no legend here for me, that is why I must use you as my shield. For a time.”

  “It is foolish of you,” I said, “to use as your shield the spear,” for abruptly I remembered Asutoo’s words in the cave, when I had made him tell me how he had betrayed Darak. “Too narrow for defense,” I said to Vazkor, “and much too sharp.”

  He did not answer me, and I left the room and went to my apartments. At the doors I called in Slor.

  “Get word to Mazlek that I have announced my Guard of Honor to Vazkor Javhovor.”

  Unmasked, I saw his face tauten, then relax. He smiled grimly.

  “Well and good,” he said.

  “Will you wear my badge?” I asked him.

  “Goddess,” he said. I did not understand the familiar emotion on his face; I had seen it so often in others, yet still it made no sense.

  “The head of the cat,” I said. “Can you find smiths to cast it? We have only two days.”

  He bowed.

  “Easily, goddess.”

  When he had gone, I sat a long while in the winter-lit room, and passed from my triumph to deep depression. I had the sensation—so often on me now—that having left any place, I should not return there. Even so, I did not understand why it should distress me to quit this city, until the thought came that it was Asren I must leave. I cannot explain this aching super-awareness of his presence, even after I knew him dead. He seemed all around me, particularly in the library, which was so entirely his. I longed to take and hold things that had been his, yet I had nothing of his, except that necklace he had sent me on our marriage night, which possessed nothing of him because he felt nothing for it, had given nothing to it, knowing it was for me. The day wore on, and with my knowledge of impending departure, the sense of no return, I began to pace the room, ridiculously desperate, and unable to be still.

  Finally I went to the doors and opened them. Outside, four men, phoenix-masked. I knew they were all strangers to me, yet I could tell even from so small a thing as the line of their bodies as they looked at me that they were mine.

  My mouth felt stiff and dry, but I said to them, “The dead lord, Asren Javhovor—where is he buried?”

  “Goddess,” one of them said, “it was done swiftly, and with shame. Vazkor’s work. We do not know.”

  “But give us time,” another one said. “We can discover.”

  “There is no time,” I said.

  “Perhaps,” a man said. He hesitated. “Possibly one of the women—Asren Javhovor’s women—might know. There must have been some rights allowed. He was not the steader Shlevakin, after all,” he added with intense bitterness.

  “Find out for me,” I said. I touched h
is shoulder lightly, and felt that peculiar quickening under my fingers that was not sexual but spiritual desire. He bowed and was gone.

  * * *

  The windows blackened. Women entered and lit the lamps, their dresses coiling and rustling on the floors.

  Then Dnarl came and two others, and they brought a girl with them, and left her in the room with me.

  I had expected to feel jealousy—jealousy of any kind, sexual, mental, anything, I was not sure. Yet I felt nothing of this.

  She was very young, fourteen or fifteen, very fragile and lovely; like him, she had reached perfection before her years, and by token of the very swiftness of this achievement, there seemed to be something ephemeral about her. Long icy-gold hair spilled on her shoulders under a dark veil. I would not have asked her to unmask, but I suppose Dnarl had told her she should. The gold thing, some flower shape, dangled from her hand. Her arms and naked breasts were pearly, and quite perfect. She wore no rings or jewelry, though she seemed made for adornment. And, though she was plainly terrified, it would have been useless to tell her not to be.

  “I have asked for you to come to me,” I said, “because I want to know where my husband is buried.”

  “Yes, goddess,” she said, not looking at me.

  “Do you know this?”

  “Yes, goddess.”

  “How?”

  She made a little nervous gesture with her hands.

  “Vazkor Javhovor sent a man to tell me. It was a burial of shame, he said, because of what had been done, but only fitting some should remember and go to the place.”

  “Why were you told?” I asked her.

  “Because—” she stammered. “I was his—but I am of no importance. Don’t be angry with me!” And she began to cry out of pure fright. She, it seemed, had also expected my jealousy.

  “There is no need for this,” I said gently. “There is no anger in me for you. Will you take me to the place?”