The Birthgrave

by Tanith Lee

  No moon that night, and, in the blackness, the word ran that the time of our attack should be now. As they should not have expected us in the snow months, so they should not expect us to hammer their walls in the dark.

  It was well-conducted, that muffled preparation, horses held still, men silent, the machines oiled and smooth on their wheels. The first true sound was the great beaked ram going headfirst at the north gate. After that thunder there was the briefest pause, the half-unconscious waiting for a response from the City. Yet there was no response, no warning bell, no shout, no hail of missiles, pouring of fire. After the pause, the sounds of anger came again, and there was no cessation.

  I sat some way back from the offensive, on the great white horse I had won myself in the Mouth. He was restless and disturbed by the armor he had had put on him. Until this he had gone very lightly trapped, only a saddle pad and rein. Now he carried, like his fellow battle steeds, the large iron breast-guard, the belly-guard, and over his back the stiffened leather drape with its built-in saddle. On his head the crown-piece to protect eyes, cheeks, and skull, with the short sharp unicorn spike protruding from the forehead. Most of the war horses were trained to kick and bite, and stab at their rider’s enemy with this metal horn, but the white had not been so taught, and had no use at all for the encumbrance. He glared at the other steeds, and snorted to tell them what fools they were to brook man’s impertinence.

  The gate burst suddenly with a terrible sound. In the torch smoke-light men swarmed through the opening. Company by company the army cavalry galloped up the causeway, into the shattered maw of Orash. I kneed the white horse, raised my hand to Mazlek and his, and rode fast after them.

  Through that gate, then, as in my dream, though not at the head, and not in silence.

  All around, leaning up skyward from the broad gate-street, the towers and roofs and terraces. I was not uneasy now that the moment had come, it was too noisy, and there was too much light.

  Perhaps an hour passed, and things were louder and brighter then. Orash was full of soldiers, run in from her front and back gates. Many had broken off from the main stem to loot and set on fire the occasional deserted house and mansion—for there seemed no one here at all. There was a rabid cheerfulness about the arson, the big warm fires of burning homes coloring the world like a festival. And then we reached the square, our riding column, Vazkor at its head now. A large open place, and at the crest of many steps the huge pile of a building, its ice-white pillars seeming to dance in the flame reflections. On the steps stood a woman, tall, white robed, her head encased in a devil mask like those we had met before. It was shocking to see her there, suddenly, this one life—unreal in the empty city.

  She screamed at us, and the column halted. From her voice I could tell she was very old, a little mad, but not afraid. Across the curve of the riders I saw Vazkor, dark and tall on the black horse, looking at her under the black iron helm with its drifting plume.

  “You,” she said, “War-Death. This is the Temple of the City. They have fled before you to Belhannor, but I have not fled, and the goddess is behind me. You have breached the etiquette of the old war, jackal of the desert. Go back now, or die.”

  So, they had evacuated—an answer, and sensible. Vazkor’s campaign was a new and dangerous thing, a sweeping and a devouring. But this one remained. She raised her hands, and fire opened in the air before her then went out.

  “Look,” she shrilled at Vazkor. “I have Power. I will destroy you. Go back, or die.”

  Vazkor made a little movement with his own hand, I did not see at first, but then a string spoke and a shaft had pierced the priestess-witch under her left breast. She staggered, and fell over on the steps, but was not quite dead. She pointed at Vazkor and rasped out a mumbled chain of words I could not catch—some curse or other—then laid her head over on her arm and lay still, like an ancient crumpled bird on the staircase.

  The steps were very wide, and Vazkor spurred the horse and rode up them, over her arrow-pierced body, and the column followed, stray groups of the foot running up beside us. The Temple would have many rich things in it, and presumably they did not fear the wrath of this goddess since they had the woken goddess with them.

  Between the pillars it was black. In the dark narrow hall there came a sudden furious screaming, a thrust of bodies, blood. I drew my sword and hacked a devil-masked warrior from my side. They were here then, not many, but a few still fierce to guard the shrine. I lunged and stabbed in the half-light, and the white horse, having never been trained to do it, kicked, and slashed with his lethal brow. Soon it was over, and there were dead men scattered on the floor among fallen dying torches.

  I slipped from the horse and stood for a moment in the confusion’s aftermath. The fight was done, yet, in this moment, the terror had come to me at last. I cannot explain the frightful sense I had I must go on. I bent and picked up the nearest torch, and threaded among the soldiers, the dead, the frightened horses. There was a doorway, and inside the windowless place, a soft light from the stone bowl on its stand. Beyond, almost in shadow, the great marble figure of the goddess of Orash. I raised the torch and saw her white body, with its draped white skirt, the fall of silver hair, and finally, the face. But she was the first I had seen in the south who did not wear a mask. This was not the cat-headed Uastis. This one wore her own god-head. A sound came out of my throat, a little retching grunt. The torch dropped out of my hand, but the flare in the bowl was leaping now, and I could not look away.

  Above the white body of the woman was the white face of the Cursed One—the face of all horror and ugliness and despair, the mark of hate. And I had thought I had not seen before a beast which resembled the devil masks of Orash, the thing on which those masks had been modeled; yet I had seen this thing, could see it at any moment of my life I wished—it was the face Karrakaz had shown me under the Mountain. My own face.

  A step behind me. I could not turn as I kneeled in the shrine. For a while there was no further movement, then a hand came coldly and precisely onto my shoulder.

  “The goddess worshiping the goddess. How apt.”

  “Vazkor,” I said, and even his name, in this place, and at this moment, seemed some sort of amulet.

  He lifted me and put me on my feet, but I could not stand upright. The shame and revulsion seemed to shrink me, to eat me.

  “Control yourself,” he said to me.

  I lifted my head a little, looking at him. An iron figure, armored limbs, mail plates across chest and back, helm, mask, metallic hands.

  “Every City,” I said softly, “here and in the desert, and at Sea’s Edge—each one worships a woman. There are no gods for Vazkor to say he is, only goddesses.” I am not sure why that revelation came to me then. I looked away from him and said, “Orash. Orash, not Ezlann, is my city.”

  I turned and somehow walked from that place. In the hall, where men were still taken up with the business of dying, Mazlek and Slor came hurrying to me.

  “I am hurt,” I said, “not badly.”

  And when I lay in my pavilion outside the city, I whispered to Mazlek, kneeling by me, “Is there a limit to what you will do for me?”

  “No,” he said intensely, “no, goddess.”

  “Then fire Orash,” I said. “Raze it, destroy it. Leave nothing.”

  He was quiet for a moment, then he got up, hissed my name, and left me.

  I fell asleep, but in sleep I heard the trumpet call which means a warning. Outside there was great activity, but I knew no enemy was upon us. I slept deeper then.

  At dawn I woke and went outside the pavilion.

  Orash was a black City now, after all. Gutted, yawning, damned. The camp was still in turmoil—angry and bewildered at riches lost in the blaze. One of the small fires, they reasoned, had spread, and not burned out as we had all supposed. Not many of the looters had perished; there had been too prompt a warning
for that.

  Mazlek did not speak to me of what had been done, nor I to him. Vazkor, if he suspected, showed no suspicion. She was a small prize. Her brutal destruction might be more valuable to him than her abandoned hulk standing at his back for an enemy to possess.

  It was stupid, what I had done. It should have brought no comfort, for I had not burned my own ugliness, only the mark of it. And yet . . .

  6

  From the black shell of Orash, we rode southwest to Belhannor. Here the fugitives of Orash had fled, so the priestess had told us, leaving only a temple guard to ward us off. We passed the frozen-hard ruts of their wagons in the snow, but they had been quick in their escape. The only stragglers we overtook were dead ones, abandoned where they collapsed.

  We rode close to the western hill line, and passed thin craning trees. The snow was long in breaking that year.

  I do not recall much of that tedious march. I seemed always cold and slightly feverish, which led to brief peculiar hallucinations, so that I saw Belhannor ahead of us several times before we actually reached her. I had not bled for forty-two days and would not think about what this must mean.

  We saw her first in the late afternoon, under a sullen amber sky, black silhouette of a pale City, white as Orash. She flickered before my eyes.

  An hour later our camp was set in scrub woods under the hills. I went to my pavilion, and lay there, neither asleep nor awake, while the black night slid over us. In the dawn there were new trumpets, away across the valley floor. Belhannor, it seemed, was ready to fight in the old fashion, challenge for challenge.

  I felt very ill that day, and the illness angered me. I went out and had them bring the white horse, but when he came I could hardly get up on his back. My eyes were swimming, and the whole world of camp, trees, hills, plain, distant army, distant City spun around like a potter’s wheel. No one argued with me that I must not ride out with Vazkor’s troops. Perhaps I looked better than I felt.

  Brass whined from either side, became the single voice which sounded the advance, a pealed yellow blade splitting the morning from crown to gut. A lurch of movement, the ground running black and white like broken paving, lead-colored sky with a single rent of faded orange. Ahead, the force of Belhannor, a large swirling mass, not white but iron. Yet it was not the battle they hoped for. Ammath cannon spoke from our left in gouts of smoke and light. The Belhannese lines broke and tumbled apart like toys.

  The white horse did not like the cannon. He swerved and cursed them, and soon the stink of powder and scorched metal drove him mad, but not to run away. Crazy as I was, determined as I was, perhaps, to submerge our rampant individuality in the morass of war, he plunged abruptly forward, leaving all vestige of conformity behind. Our own soldiery broke ranks and gave way. I do not remember very well how we burst ahead and were flung among the cannon-crippled forward line that was Belhannor.

  I felt no sense of panic as fate-which-was-the-white-horse drove me in among an enemy. I was glad, I was exultant, for here was complete forgetfulness. I raised the sword in both my hands, and I was no longer the faceless woman in her trap of earth. I was the first rider, the archer, the charioteer, the warrior. I was Darak, I was Vazkor, I was Death. Their faces, helmed, masked, empty, sprayed up and away from me like the scattered petal-heads of flowers, and the enormous white beast between my thighs danced on their dying. The sky was red from the cannon blasts. I heard the great balls fly like iron birds above my skull, and knew myself safe. In that whirlwind of hatred and joy I found the beauty of pain, the triumphant cacophony of horror which is music. A great tidal hymn, the last coitus with darkness, of which the final note is a vast, piercing, orgasmic scream of agony.

  The scream hung white and perfect under me and all around, sinking now, paling into scarlet.

  The horse gave a convulsive shudder, scuttled like a ship. I let go of the rein and fell slowly sideways, aware only of the motion of the fall, the horse falling also, even more slowly, until we lay side by side, spent by the act of love, or death.

  * * *

  I woke, and thought I was in my pavilion, on the low mattress with its heap of rugs. Then my eyes cleared a little, and I saw it was a large curtained room, smudged with a small quantity of lamplight. Two indistinct female figures stirred at the foot of the bed. One rose, went out through the doors, and was back in minutes with a tall dark man following. My eyes did not seem to focus properly, and I could not raise my head. The man came and stood over me.

  “My congratulations on your fight, goddess,” Vazkor said. “Your last for some time, I imagine.”

  “Where is this?” I asked. My voice was very faint. I did not think he would hear me, but he had.

  “Belhannor,” he said. “The City yielded after the battle, and we are in occupation. The Javhovor is apparently intelligent and has realized resistance is useless. The ladies tending you at this moment are princesses of Belhannor. They are anxious to do all they can for your comfort. Outside, of course, there is a guard—your own men.”

  He must be very sure of the City if he had left me unconscious and helpless with these women—I was still valuable to him, after all. I could see a little better now, make out their pale and frightened faces. And beyond the door was Mazlek.

  “Thank you,” I said. “How damaged am I?”

  “A little,” he said, “but you heal quickly. Mazlek and his crew cut a way to you after you fell. The white horse was dead.”

  “I will need another, then,” I said, stifling my guilt and pain so he should not see it. “When do we ride?”

  “I shall leave a portion of my troops here, under the command of Attorl, Prince of Kmiss. The rest of us march at dawn tomorrow.”

  I knew then, of course, that the march did not include me. I could tell I would not have mended so quickly.

  “I am to follow you, then?” I said. “As before?”

  “No, goddess. You are to stay here, in our prize of Belhannor. You forget your pregnancy. I do not think we dare risk the child any further.”

  “The child,” I said with weak fury, “this child does not exist.”

  Vazkor turned and moved toward the doors. I thought at first he was simply abandoning his cause as proven, but then I saw he had ushered my attendants out, and someone else had come into the room, a hunched-over, coarse-robed woman with the used-up, swarthy ugliness of the Dark People. She came to the bed with him, and stood looking at me from the blank unmasked face which was mask in itself, and two glittering reptile eyes, carved, black, and empty.

  “This is a village witch,” he said, “not worthy of you, but highly skilled they tell me. I apologize for her. But there. It is very necessary you understand your condition.” He turned to the hag, and spoke a couple of words in the village tongue, directions for an examination.

  I half hoped she would be afraid to touch me, but she had no emotions left, that one. He had chosen deliberately and well. Her hands were dry and cruel on me, and he stood and watched us as she probed and prodded at my bruised and agonized body, and added new hurts to the old. Finally she stood back, nodded, and muttered something. Vazkor waved her away, and she went out. I knew what she had said, and he knew I knew it, but it was a mutual pretense between us that I did not.

  “You are with child, and surprisingly healthy, considering your injuries. You have probably two hundred days yet to carry. In Ezlann your time would come in the month of the Peacock.” He smiled a little. “Belhannor is safe, and you will stay here under the protection of Attorl. Your own guard will naturally remain also.”

  I lay in the sheets, unable to lift my head. I said, “I will not bear this child.”

  “You will,” he said.

  That was the deadlock between us.

  He went out, and the two Belhannese princesses returned, and gazed in abject terror at me.

  Sleep.

  * * *

  He
rode out with his army in the morning, as he had said he would, he, the warlord, going on to his conquests. And I was left behind, with no hope of following.

  I am not certain what injuries I had had, but in another day I was well enough to rise and walk about my suite of white marble and tapestried hangings.

  I was not sure at first what I would do, but gradually I became determined to wrest what I could from the situation—a dry gourd indeed.

  From the windows of my apartments I looked out over the snow-draped vistas of the City, gardens below, an icy greenish river straddled by three vast bridges of stone, towers, and winding streets, and terraces of steps. She seemed to have suffered no damage, here at least in her High Quarter. I learned from Mazlek that her capitulation had been swift and total. The Javhovor had kneeled and kissed Vazkor’s gauntleted fingers in the gate-street. They were not used to the true burning breath of war, these Cities which had fought their toy battles for centuries.

  Toward evening, after the lamplighting, I sent word to Attorl that I wished his presence. He came promptly enough, dressed for some festive occasion in magenta velvet and many jewels. He was a minor princeling, pretty and well-mannered, with a very small mouth. Silvery fair hair coiled on his shoulders. He wore a phoenix mask when he entered, but drew it off for me.

  “I understand, prince, that Belhannor has been left in our charge.”

  A little surprise. He had understood Belhannor had been left in his charge.

  “I see your puzzlement, prince,” I said graciously. “Naturally, you are commander of all our forces here. But equally naturally, your rulings are subject to my authority.”

  He looked dismayed, but did not think to question it. I was, after all, Uastis Reincarnate, and he believed in my religious power, if he did not take kindly to my temporal aspirations. He bowed, acknowledged what I had said, and I let him go. Thereafter, I was plagued by every petty affair which must be seen to—the curbing of very minor disturbances, posting of guards to police the streets, diversion of supplies to our armies. My interference was confined mostly to setting my seal on documents already attended to by Attorl, or rather by his advisers and scribes, for paperwork of any kind distressed him. Nevertheless, it held for me some vestige of recognition.