by Tanith Lee
The silver-robed princesses who attended me were, I discovered, daughters of the Javhovor himself. They became my official maidens, and each bore that cumbersome and incongruous fan of honor. They spoke only in answer to my commands, which pleased me well enough, and their fright never ebbed. Their father, a pale plump anxious man, came and paid homage to me of his own accord, and sent me sumptuous gifts of jewelry, silks, perfumes, and magnificently bound books, which rivaled even those I had of Asren’s.
* * *
It was a dreadful time. Like the numbed white snow that would not break for spring, so my life seemed hardened and numbed by a covering I could not break.
It seemed I had nothing left, only these trivial pieces of power, my own Power, which came with hate, and grew in me day by day like a cancer. And that other cancer he had left in me, which grew also. I did not suffer the troubles most human women experience, there was no sickness or pain, only a sense of heaviness, out of all proportion to what I carried. From the eightieth day of pregnancy, the mark of my subjugation began to swell out from me. I realized I was not very big, nor did I grow very big, yet it seemed to me then that I was huge and bloated. To make it worse, the slimness of the rest of my body persisted; even my breasts grew only a little. More than ever, in the loose velvet gowns I had now to wear, the thing in my womb seemed an imposition, something nailed onto my own self, thrusting out, taking possession; a haunting.
Three times I tried to be rid of it—once by my own will, but the pain was terrible, and I could not force myself to go on; once simply by drinking too much of their wine, which did nothing. The third time I rode out of Belhannor to one of the tiny steadings still left standing at her foot (Vazkor had razed most of them before Belhannor bowed, and her walls were stained with their smoke). Only Mazlek and Slor rode with me for the sake of secrecy, but I spoke the tongue of the Dark People well enough to find their healer-woman, and ask her to assist me. She showed none of the alarm or surprise which would have met me in the City. She motioned me into her hut, and there I lay through the afternoon and night in a stinking blur of firelight, sickness, and fear. I had not realized there were so many varieties of pain—pain sharp and bright as silver, pain which burns like molten gold, and the dull booming bronze pain which comes after.
Finally she leaned over me in the predawn grayness.
“Is it finished?” I asked her.
“No,” she said. She gave me no title at any time, and few words.
“What now, then?” I whispered, fighting back my panic at the thought of new horrors done to me.
“Nothing now,” she said. “A loving child. He will not be parted from you.”
So I called Mazlek, and he and Slor helped me mount and ride away. I did not see their faces behind their masks, and I was glad of it.
For several days I was violently ill, vomiting, and in great discomfort, and all that while I willed myself to lose Vazkor’s seed, but it was no use. I suffered, and perhaps the thing inside me suffered, but it would not let go.
News reached us by messenger of two Cities which had fallen in the forest land farther south, to Vazkor and his men.
7
Sixty days had passed for me in Belhannor, and we had entered the month which in Purple Valley is called the Time of Green. The spring is usually stirring by then, but the snow lay thick and hard across the city and the valley floor. Anxiety grew, the fear that always comes when an established pattern falters. The white-robed priests of their Temple offered lambs and pigeons to their goddess, a custom I had not seen in action since Ankurum. I recalled Za and the three days’ darkness, and so was not very surprised when Attorl requested an audience, and entered with the Javhovor a few paces behind him.
“Goddess,” they both intoned, and the eyes in their unmasked faces swiveled nervously from my belly.
“What do you want?”
“There’s unrest, goddess,” Attorl said, playing with a neckchain. He looked bored with the unrest. “There’s some disturbance about the weather—men running around the streets, a mad woman going about shouting doom. . . .”
“Goddess,” the Javhovor said uneasily, “there have been prayers in the temples and in the great Temple of our goddess, but the snow does not break. Now in humility, we turn our eyes to you—Vazkor Overlord spoke of your power—dare we hope . . . ?”
I say I was not surprised, but neither was I pleased. Power, yes, but over elements and seasons? They expected a good deal of me, and if I failed—what? And if I refused—what?
As I sat in my chair, disgustingly aware of my condition before their embarrassed eyes, the old festering anger woke in me, snarling, and I recalled abruptly the no-voice which had said, “Magicianess, who ruled the elements, the stars, the seas, and hidden fires of earth.”
I am not certain what kind of knowledge was on me then, but I got to my feet and said, “The palace of Belhannor has a temple, too, I think? Then take me there and leave me there.”
Both Attorl and the Javhovor looked startled, but I was conducted along the passages to a great door, manned by six of the royal guard.
“Let me alone in here,” I said, “and when the door is shut on me, tell them to pray in your City.”
Inside, closed in, a small golden room. So intense was this sudden irrational motivation, I had not even flinched from their goddess, in case she were Orash’ sister; but she was not. She was small and beautiful, her head covered by a golden sunburst and hung with pendants of the jade so special in every southern hierarchy. Before her, the stone bowl, held in claws of gold. The flame was very low as I went toward it.
I did not know why I did what I did. I leaned over the flame, and whispered, “I am strong, even now, I am strong. Your Power and mine will be a great strength.”
There were no words in my brain, I sensed only a tremendous struggle, not in the least physical, but nonetheless exhausting. I fought against the writhing thing, and finally it was still. I stood with my eyes shut, and my hands on the sides of the bowl, and pulled something up from within me, tense and bright and unwilling.
There seemed to be no time spent, yet I had stood here forever. It was very quiet. I pulled at the thread, and when it pierced my skull, I found a way out for it above and between my eyes.
It had seemed such an intense yet tiny thing to do, but now there was a terrible blast of sound, a great crashing of thunder over the palace roof, and the snapping violence of lightning searing through my closed lids. I found I could not open my lids, but I was not afraid. Rain came smashing like glass against the high shutters, and in the noise and light I lost my balance and fell, and lay there with my eyes still fast shut, and now I knew what it was I wanted.
At the time, it made sense to me, though afterward it was only a blur of shapes and feelings. I had the mastery of the enormous storm which would melt the snow with its boiling drops, and I turned it a little, like a wild horse, so that half its face was toward the armies of Vazkor. I did not know where they were at that time, bivouacked, perhaps, at the feet of the fifth City of Purple Valley, in the woodland there—though a picture formed of a frozen narrow river, and marching sounds came to me, and grinding wheels. I pushed the storm head and the lightning bit into my lids. Everything was lost in thunder.
I opened my eyes quite suddenly and got to my feet. I was trembling and shaking, but I felt very excited and happy. The flame was flat in its bowl, and the cold sky-blaze came and went on the walls.
I sat on one of the prayer-seats of the Javhovor and his family and tried to be calm, but it was difficult. The storm died slowly, and afterward the rain droned on for several hours. I think I fell asleep, for the golden room was abruptly red and purple from a stormy sunset beyond the windows.
I went to the door, and out, and the guards kneeled down in front of me. I was tired and locked inside myself, and ignored them. A little way on, I found Mazlek, my escort to my suite.
“In the City,” I said, “what?”
“A storm, goddess. And now the sky is clear.”
* * *
I dreamed I was with Asren, a strange dream, for though I knew it to be him, his features and his beauty unmistakable, he seemed little more than a child. Strange, too, because we were walking, hand in hand, very happily, in some green garden place. Then there were many white steps, and at the bottom, one of those stone bowls in which they kept alight the symbol of the Unawakened, the symbol which was Karrakaz. The child Asren stared down at the bowl, then looked at me questioning, and I smiled and pointed, and nodded. He leaped from the steps in answer to that nod, and fell into the bowl, and the flames covered him.
The storm had swept Belhannor clear of snow and the black slush which followed. The skies were golden, and there was a new warmth in the air. I think I had forgotten half of what I did, or tried to do, in the palace temple. Certainly I did not think of it until I was reminded. Days passed, and buds were breaking on the trees. Beyond the walls, fields saved from the fires of war were melting into greens and citrons. They sang hymns to me in the City, the goddess who had ridden to destroy them, and now blessed.
We were seventeen days into our sudden spring, when the first of the messengers reached us. It was a dramatic entry, a frenzied man, shouting incoherently at the palace gates, whose horse dropped frothing and dead from under him.
I heard the hum of excitement in the corridors beyond my rooms, and sent one of Mazlek’s men to discover what was happening. I had, however, no need to wait on him. The Javhovor came to me, and his face was yellow with alarm.
“Goddess,” he said, “a man has come. The overlord and his armies—a storm among the High Woods—that is the forested hill line that runs east of us—an avalanche, massive accumulations of snow, and broken trees and rocks brought down with it, all loosened by the rain, and the river An in flood. Ah, goddess, many lost—”
I had risen, a cold hardness in me.
“And he?” I asked. “Is there word of my husband?”
“Safe,” he said, glad to reassure me, “quite safe. But the army greatly depleted—and there are other troubles.”
They had been making for Anash it seemed, the mistress City of the river, and fifth of their goals. Now, cut off in sections by the avalanche, and in distress, the army found itself harried by troops of Anash, which had swiftly seized all advantage.
In the next few days other messengers came, and the story grew. A battle fought now, and Vazkor’s men routed. Vazkor and a handful of his captains holed up in the hills, striving to pull together what was left to them from a morass of casualties, sick men, and deserters. The winter campaign was taking its toll at last. There was a disease at work, and rations were scarce since the disaster of the avalanche.
I had thought I might see now the gleam of defiance in Belhannese eyes, but in my stupidity I had forgotten all the divided angers of the three Cities which still stood, and worse—the fury of Anash and Eptor, which had escaped Vazkor’s greed. Those two had joined to fight him off, and, his power smashed, might well turn their vengeance on their sister Cities, which had let him pass so easily, and where remnants of his force still lingered.
A rider came—the last messenger we were to receive. He brought word that Vazkor and his armies were no more—all slain, or dead of the sickness, or broken up into packs to run like jackals for the safety of the mountains. An abrupt end to war-might. The man enumerated those dead he could, among them Attorl’s uncle, whereupon, apparently, Attorl collapsed weeping. No doubt when they brought me news of Vazkor’s end, they looked for similar results. But I felt nothing, not even triumph, for I knew he was not dead.
For a while, then, we heard no more. A sullen depression and unease settled on Belhannor; a waiting.
I was well past the one hundred and twentieth day (which, by the witch’s reckoning, was the middle of my pregnancy), heavy and sleepy often, while my head ached constantly. I was asleep when the first weary troop of refugees trailed into the City from her two sisters farther south. Vazkor had taken them easily, now they fled from the forces of Anash and Eptor, which, having crushed White Desert’s march, were striking north to finish the work.
Belhannor opened her gates to them, foolishly, out of pity. She had taken in the flight from Orash already. Now the numbers swelled—wagons of women, men, and children, domestic animals and household pets. The city grew crowded, slovenly; tents put up in the streets and gardens and horse fields, and the warrens of the lower quarters blocked and stifled.
Attorl, I heard, was struggling to organize defense, but he was ill with nerves and panic, and made a poor job of it. Belhannor’s major war-machines had been appropriated by Vazkor and taken south. Now a few rusty cannon were wheeled out to protrude from the walls like mistaken drainage pipes. The soldiers in Belhannor did well enough, though it was a small garrison force, not more than four hundred men—adequate to subdue civilians but hopeless under the circumstances. Attorl’s wavering attempts to recruit ordinary men, particularly from the refugee population, met with sickly failure.
Vazkor had allowed only for perpetual success, never once for the stumble that would come inevitably, with time.
I experienced no guilt because of the storm—I felt that I had simply introduced a certain catastrophe a little earlier.
* * *
Anash and Eptor rode fast, smashing their way toward us, extravagant and impetuous with anger. We saw their tokens on the horizon now, from our high towers—smoke pall, black and filthy—some burning village; nearer, the haze of camp fires by night. It was interesting that quite suddenly some of those who had fled into Belhannor packed up their gear and fled out of her again. They were the wise ones. Others felt a false security in the sense of walls around them. I imagine I must have had similar thoughts, though not consciously. I felt too heavy and dreary to attempt flight. Sour amusement had settled on me, I, once the besieger of Orash and Belhannor, now besieged by these Cities I had not even seen.
* * *
They reached us on a crisp bitter-green evening, spring rain spangling intermittently, an evening for nostalgia and old love songs.
Attorl had begged use of my guard for the walls, and I had put it to Mazlek. He nodded, seeing, probably, no other course. Now I sat in my bedchamber in one of the carved chairs. A jeweled book was spread open before me on the sloping ivory desk, a useful thing I could bring conveniently close across the obscenity which was now my stomach. It was a book of fabulous animals and beasts—salamanders, unicorns—and the pages blazed with beautiful color from masterly illustrations. I was not really reading it, only admiring, when suddenly I found a single word written in the margin. I had thought this book to be one of the gifts of Belhannor’s Javhovor, had not realized I held one of Asren’s books, one I had never before looked into. I did not know his writing—I had seen his personal seal, no more—yet I knew it at once. Without embellishment, clear, straight, wise yet open, inured to yet conscious of pain—all this I saw in the solitary word he had written. I reached out to touch the word with my fingertip, and in that instant the great thunder came, splitting the world. The room trembled and steadied. I pushed the desk away, went to the nearest window and saw the reddish glare on the river thrown back from burning houses in the lower quarter. They had fired across the wall, and the ball had struck. I had not realized the power of those iron birds of death.
Other crashes came after that, now close, now far off, always terrible. Gradually the sky reddened into smoky darkness.
The bombardment ceased at nightfall, though I did not notice then. I was still at the window, clinging there in helpless fascination, when the silence came. But not silence. A crackling from burning places, the occasional soft thud of a collapsing house, and cries, and warning trumpets brought with the ashes on the wind.
I did not leave my rooms. The palace was full of fri
ghtened women. There were three men of my guard by my door, and, when others relieved them later, there might be news of a sort.
At midnight the cannon roused again. It was clever, not allowing us to sleep. Mazlek came soon after, dirty from the wall, his arm bound around with bloody temporary bandaging.
“Little action to tell,” he said. “There are many of them, and more to come from the look of it. I think there are men from the other Cities with them, recruited after the surrender.”
“Have they tried to take Belhannor?” I asked.
“No. They’re playing with her, goddess. A spokesman rode out, and called up there should be no quarter for the men of White Desert, but—” Mazlek paused, smiling slightly. “For Belhannor, if she opens her gates, sisterly love restored between the Cities of the valley.”
It was a sharp little dagger, that. It pricked even my lethargy.
“What did Attorl do?” I asked.
“Fired on the man,” Mazlek said, expressionless, “fired on him, and missed. The Belhannese cannon are useless, except to the enemy. The first blew up and killed thirteen men on the wall, and the ball never left her. Goddess,” he said, “it is only a question of time before they think to save their own skins.”
He spoke it softly, not so sharp now, but then, the blade was already in.
“I must leave,” I said, but it was a blank statement. I did not know where I should go.
“If you will put the matter in my hands?”
I nodded.
“Then collect what is necessary to you, goddess, and be ready to come with me, night or day. I will guard you with my life. You know it.”
Despite the intermittent noise of war, I slept that night, deeply and without dreams.
It was a quiet morning, very still. The river shone like green pearl. I could not see from my apartments any of the ruins, only the faint smoke, drifting like a girl’s hair on water, across the pale sky. I bathed and dressed and they brought my drink. I remember sitting in a chair, staring around me at priceless things, combs and ornaments, and knowing none of them as mine. I would have little to carry, except— I went to the desk and touched the open book I had forgotten since the first cannon sounded.