by Tanith Lee
The horse stood under me, not shivering or seeming at a loss, only very quiet. I thought at first the frenzy might start up again, but after a while I ventured to get down. I went to the great head and stared at the one smoldering eye I could see. The horse leaned and butted my shoulder. I reached up and smoothed the pale neck, slightly mottled this close with a half-invisible lovely network of bluish freckles that made it seem cast from marble.
“Mine,” I said.
I had made a point, but he caused some trouble, that white devil, for he would be quiet with me—and a groom or two, once he had been properly introduced—but with all others he was still man-eater and demon. Perhaps that is the best way, to restrict a horse only to one hand. At least I had not destroyed him, or his mad horse soul.
* * *
So we rode to Vazkor in the morning, a short journey of a day, and I went at the head of them on the white horse. It had not been difficult. I had told Kazarl I would lead the armies of White Desert to their overlord, and he had bowed and capitulated at once. Of the men who followed after me, I did not think many were aggrieved. I was a goddess, after all, and a warrior-goddess at that. Altogether, it was really a very small thing—lord for a day, in fact. But it meant a good deal by its implications. I was no longer fearful to meet Vazkor.
When the sun lay on the edge of the rock hills, we wound down the old track—made in the long past by travelers, perhaps—and arrived at the vast level plateau with its scattering of tents and horse pens. It was an enormous open place, and beyond, the rocks yawned in many narrow defiles, which looked as though they must pass straight through to the valley in summer but were closed now with the snow. At one point a break in the rock showed empty space below, obscured at present by white evening mist.
The armies of the south snaked downward after me and spread themselves across the plateau.
Torchlight leaped red behind me in the soldiers’ hands.
From the black pavilion a man came, wearing a wolf mask with scarlet eyes.
“Overlord,” I called. I saluted him. “I have brought your fighting force to you, as you commanded.”
He stood still a moment, then walked toward me. He stood by the horse, looking up.
“You are very welcome,” he said formally.
He extended a hand to help me down, and I used it because of the many eyes on us.
I lifted one arm, and Kazarl followed the direction, dismounted, and discharged the rest of the great column to its separate captains. Figures on horses wheeled away. It was very noisy as the many tents began to go up, and the men quartered themselves.
Vazkor nodded to me. “My pavilion.”
“No need,” I said. “My own is already going up—over there, do you see?”
A groom had come for my horse, and he was stamping and tossing his head. I turned to quiet him, and found Mazlek and ten others of my guard behind me, very stiff and still, turned to face Vazkor. It was a beautiful gesture, uniquely theatrical and yet, so effective.
Vazkor nodded again, and walked away. I went to the white horse and smoothed him into quietness.
* * *
I could not be still that night. I was elated at what I had achieved, too much so, probably. I sat in my pavilion, in the red glow of many braziers and lamps, twitching like an animal in sleep at my waking dreams of purpose and independence.
And then Kazarl Javhovor came to the flap, entered, bowed, and looked at me palely.
“I trust the goddess is well,” he said.
“Should she not be?”
“I have come to beg your pardon,” he said.
“Why?”
“You must understand,” he said nervously, “I was not aware of the goddess’ condition, at Lion’s Mouth.”
“My condition,” I said, and my thoughts congealed to flint.
“Indeed, yes—I did not know. The Lord Vazkor has informed us all, and he is angry. I hope and pray your health has not been endangered—”
He broke off and took a step backward. For a moment I could not understand why, and then I realized I had risen, and I felt the fury and the frustration singing around me, electric and terrifying, an aura he could sense, perhaps even see. I looked away from him, and a piece of crystal on one of the side tables cracked open. I clenched my fists and tried to push the fury back into myself.
“Vazkor,” I hissed, “is mistaken. You may tell your army so. Now, get out.”
He turned at once and stumbled outside.
I stood in the center of the pavilion, my anger turned inward like a blazing, raging sea, stopped in a jar. I passed my hands over my belly, and I spoke to anything which might be in my womb.
“No, not of him. Out, out of me. Not of him.”
A sharp pain speared upward through my groin into my guts. It frightened and sobered me, and soon I grew very calm and cold. A thought stirred.
“No,” I said to it, and I smiled, a small tight smile, a joke between my brain and my body, with the intruder shut out. “I will not believe in you. I am very strong. If I do not give you credence, you cannot be.”
And I slammed an iron door shut on the thought, and turned my back.
5
For three days gangs of men worked ahead through the rock pass, clearing the snow as best they could. On the fourth day the great armies of the south packed up their gear and followed. I had already had a glimpse of what we were going to through the gap which overlooked the valley. A long basin of whiteness, far away a frozen lake, areas of evergreen trees, top-heavy with foliage, standing up like black birds on one leg. On the farthest horizon the unmistakable shape of a city, sloped walls, the defensive elevation of a platform, natural or otherwise, ringed apparently by woods.
The night of the third day, Vazkor and his captains sat in the black pavilion, and discussed the hill-crossing, and the march toward those walls. Orash she was called, this first fish of the catch. I, too, sat through this assembly. No one denied me my place. Vazkor did not speak to me at all, and neither did I speak to them, only listened. There seemed little plan, all in all, only the aggression of persistence, determination, and greed.
Though it was easier than they had anticipated, the riding was not good through the rocks. Snow falls came crashing down from the high places, dislodged by the reverberations of thousands of marching feet, hooves, rolling wagon wheels. It was a crossing of three days, and ten men died on the first. At night, camp fires made blood splotches on the ice walls above. On the third day the head of the army emerged on the rock shelves below, and the rest floundered after. Part of an old roadway guided us down the last steep miles to the valley floor. There are many roads in the valley. They seemed to come from nowhere and vanish again into the ground after a mile or so, like the trails of huge primeval slugs.
There was a strange feel to that part of the valley. A silence. The desert had been silent too, but not in the same way. There had been a dry wind there, occasional birds. It was easy to imagine a little life might exist, in hiding now from the snow. But the valley seemed to have no wind—the hills seemed to seal it off like a bowl, and the low white sky was the lid. In the valley even the trees were unreal, the straight hard trunks, the persistent foliage which was not green but black. Men chopped them down for wood stores, and the grinding scream of each as it fell pierced my ears and struck through to my belly. And ahead the wood-garlanded City of Orash. Orash which seemed asleep, or vacated too. As we rode across the floor toward it, a curious conviction began to grow on me that it was quite empty, or else that everyone in it was dead. It was Uasti, I recalled, among the wagons, who told me the legend of the Lost—how the disease came, and they died where they stood or lay, finally with none left to bury them. A dream began to come at night. On the white horse I rode with the great army, not far back, with Mazlek’s men, as I did by day, but at the very head, alone. The gates yawned open, and, beyond, the
white streets lay straight as a rule, stretching to a distant burning point. In the dreams there was never any sound, not even the rumble of the host behind me. The ride went on and on, and a terror grew with it, a terror apparently without reason, yet cold and clinging and unshakable. There was no climax to the dream, no sudden horror revealed, only the ride, the emptiness, and the fear.
We made camp by the oval frozen lake on the fifth day of the valley march. Iced reeds stood up, sharp as knives, by the rim. A mauve sunset came and went, and the shape which was the City vanished into the dark. It was then something occurred to me I had not consciously noted before: there were no lights in Orash. For miles back we should have been able to spot the haze of them, however faint, over the sloping walls by night. Now, a day’s march away, I could make out the pattern of her towers and ramparts, but the window sockets were blank and black.
I had been walking around the iron walls of the camp with Mazlek. Now I turned to him and told him.
“Yes,” he said, “I thought so too. It is very strange.”
My skin began to prickle nervously. I stared across the valley plain at the thick patches of trees that girded the City, and then spilled toward us, thinning as they came. At intervals along our metal stockade sentries of Ezlann, So-Ess, Ammath, stood stiffly, facing outward, spears grasped in their hands.
“The camp is well-guarded, goddess,” Mazlek said.
I nodded.
It seemed a small thing, the darkness of Orash. Perhaps they hibernated like animals through the winter. White Desert knew little enough of their manners.
* * *
Asleep, the dream did not come. Instead, there were the cries of wolves screeching through the night, a pack of them, circling and circling the camp. I turned from side to side, restless, yet not properly awake. I had not heard wolves before in the valley, could not understand the noise of them, closer and closer. A horrible conviction took hold of me that they were over the stockade. I struggled with myself and woke abruptly. There were no wolf cries, only the silence pressing down like a cold hand.
And then. There was a tremendous crash, a cacophony of horses screaming, and the impossible thunder of their hooves. Beyond the cloth of my pavilion walls a fierce orange light opened itself, seeming to flare and flap great wings. I might have reasoned it was some accident—oil spilled on a fire, a drunken man in among the horses—but an electric silver cord ran up my spine into my brain, and I knew. I slept mostly clothed for the march, so now it was simply a matter of snatching up the iron sword, the long-knife, thrusting the daggers into my belt.
“Dnarl!” I called, for he had been outside my tent tonight. But no one answered. I opened the flap and went out, and was instantly knocked sideways by ten mules running mad. The pavilion went next. The scene was starkly lit by the blazing hulk of three wagons on fire and several tents a few lanes away. Through the fire there plunged the bellowing wild horses, terrified and furious, and the yelling figures of men. Above the noise of snapping wood, shouts, and panic, I heard various captains roaring for order. Lying on my back, struggling in company with the mules to get free of my pavilion, I could have laughed at it. Away to my right there was a colossal booming thud of sound. Gold fire this time, a folding plume of smoke, and streamers of sparks as oil exploded among the wood stores. Almost free, I saw a dark shape running toward me, and thought at first it must be Dnarl.
“This line around my ankle,” I indicated helpfully, but it was not Dnarl, it was a man in white clothes smeared over with dirt, his face masked like a nightmare in hell. He fell toward me, his hand alive with a curving blade, and I rolled sideways, ripping free of the tent, scrambled to my knees, and caught him in the chest as he tried to rise and finish me. I got up and stumbled over another dead man. This time it was Dnarl.
Two more thuds as oil wagons exploded. The sky was alight with blazing splinters and sparks. A tent caught near to me, and went up like burning pastry. I ran down between the pavilions, no longer bewildered or amused. I was angry with an old and well-remembered anger. Two of the white, demon-masked men of Orash spun to me from their work—my sword and long-knife swung out as one, and caught them both before they could make a sound. Hands grabbed my hair, but I jerked backward with my heel at him and the hands let go. A blade lashed out and sliced across my back, so cleanly I scarcely felt it for a second. I turned and found five or six of them waiting for me, backed by the incendiary darkness. In the light their white was a murky magenta now, the iron masks dripped the flames like blood. They wore the faces of no beast I had ever seen or heard of, maned and horned, with long cruel teeth jutting from them.
I leaped forward, and the blades rang on theirs. Metal skidded, a man cursed. White pain darted across my ribs, and then I was thrust forward, down, smashed against the white-red-black earth by the man on my back. There was no true battle frenzy on me. For a moment I panicked, slithering and jerking to avoid the certain knife thrust.
And then I heard him say, in the City tongue, with a little laugh: “A woman.”
The pressure eased and I was pushed onto my back, to lie looking up at the hideous mask.
“No time,” one of the others said. “Kill her, and come on.”
But he was anxious, this man of Orash, to enjoy his discovery. Still holding both my hands flat on the ground, he leaned over me, and a little thin shell broke in my mind, and a lazy trickle of hate dripped into the bowls of my eyes. Before, it had been agony, but now it was fiercely sweet. A pale light flickered between us. He gave a squeal and rolled from me. I got up quickly and turned, and saw them staring at him. One lifted a knife to throw it. The sweet pain pierced my eyes and he arced over and fell on his side. I ran among the others and killed them with my sword, not noticing what they did.
There was a great deal of noise after that, the red light and stink of burning things. It seemed the scarlet volcano had burst once more, this time across the southern landscape of snow, and silence. Gradually the light grew dull, almost tame.
Through the groaning shadows, I made out the cry: “Goddess! Goddess!”
I leaned on the crimson sword and waited, not really knowing yet who would come.
It was Mazlek, masked but known, and various other soldiers—my guard, men of Ezlann and So-Ess. They stood still when they found me.
“Are you hurt?” Mazlek asked.
“Not much.”
I suppose I was covered in blood. I heard later many had seen me killing the Orashians among the tents.
“Things are better now,” Mazlek said, “most of the fires out, all the attackers dead.”
They had come at midnight, apparently, to the eastern section, killed the sentries at the wall, slunk in and set some horses loose, and managed to fire a wagon or two before the camp woke in confusion. Surprise is a great ally, but there had been too few of them. They had not done as much damage as it had seemed. The most revealing point was that Orash, too, had now presumably discarded the “etiquette” of war, to fight with raw hands and anger.
In my pavilion, after I had cleaned the mess from me, I asked them where Vazkor had been and what he had done in the fighting. I did not know why I asked. I knew, whether I wished him safe or otherwise, he could not come to any harm. He had sent no word to me, but then, I had not expected that he would.
* * *
So the vast army of White Desert marched against Orash, City of Purple Valley, and I thought there might be a good deal of fighting after that skirmish by the lake. But there was not much fighting at all. Whatever spirit had possessed them to come at us with swords seemed to have died with those other deaths among the smoldering tents.
We reached her at noon, and returned fire for fire. Ten villages massed among the trees, guardians of the City fields. These, together with all crops, orchards, stores of timber, oil, and cloth were ignited and totally destroyed, except, of course, for necessities taken by the army for itself
. The villagers, I think, were mostly killed, though I saw some about the camp in after days, acting as unpaid servants or whores.
After the smoke cleared, leaving a reeking black deposit on everything, the army arranged itself around the platform slope and on the causeways which led to Orash from south and north. Despite the soot, she was a white City, in design a sister to any of the desert. No sound or signal came from her. Dusk fell, and not a light was lit.
“Conserving fuel, most probably,” Mazlek said. “She guessed it might be a long wait.”
This was logical, and yet the darkness of her was unnerving. Around the walls the camp fires blazed, the lamps moved; above, the moon made an icy appearance, and between the two the white City stood lifeless, and blind.
* * *
Morning, after a night uneasy with many marching sentries. No chances taken this time.
From first light, every hour, the war trumpets of Vazkor’s force pealed their challenge, reminding me a little of the clock at Za. From Orash came no answer. Curious, it is in our natures to be so afraid, so suspicious of something silent. There seemed to be a trap in Orash that stopped the great rams from rolling at her gates, the laddered towers from leaning at her walls.
Evening came creeping to the eastern line of hills.
“How are things being decided?” I asked Mazlek.
“Vazkor has three men from the Orash villages with him.”
“He is asking them about the City?” I was a little amazed. “Do they know anything?”
“It seems he thinks so, but they will not tell. You can hear the screams from time to time.”
I felt nothing for the Shlevakin of the villages, nor did Mazlek, yet we both expressed an unspoken, mutual disgust at Vazkor’s pointless cruelty—because both of us hated Vazkor, for different reasons.
“I have thought about Orash,” Mazlek said. “I think she is empty.”
“Yes,” I said, “I think so.”