by Tanith Lee
Slowly, I drew the silver mask from my face, looking at her eyes. They did not flinch at all. I put the mask in her large strong hands, and drew on instead the strange familiarity of the shireen.
* * *
The dawn came, and I went to Ettook’s painted tent, walking at first but soon creeping, with head bowed and shoulders slumped, as I saw the other women did who were of no importance in the krarl. Tathra would not creep, but then she was the wife of Ettook and, like his horse, had acquired some value from his interest.
I had thought, despite the early hour, Ettook would not be there with her, for I had come to imagine she wished to have me there on her own, to learn those City ways she had hoped I knew. But he was still there, on his back among the rugs, naked and snoring. And he did not snore as other men—rhythmically—but in fits and starts after irregular intervals—great snarling, snorting explosions, that had a sound of wild pigs at war.
Tathra sat beside him, but when I entered she pushed the rugs away and rose. She wore no garment and no mask; as a slave, apparently, my eyes on her face counted for nothing. Despite her pregnancy, she was, as I had already been aware, incredibly lovely. There was a lushness to her, a ripeness, yet with no sense of excess, as sometimes there is in women who carry this kind of beauty. And she had delicacy, too, narrow slender hands and feet, catlike chin and eyes and nose, and a mouth that might have been painted it was such a perfect shape, and colored like a pale red flower.
She nodded at Ettook, and put two fingers on this witch’s mouth, in the warning I must be quiet. In sign language she pointed out perfumes and other cosmetics in a carved chest. Silently I washed her and applied her scents, and finally brushed her hair as she kneeled before a mirror of polished bronze. I did not feel in any way demeaned by this. She was too beautiful. I became aware of something in me which gave a kind of reverence to beauty—that special beauty I had seen in Asren, in the palace girl he had loved, and which now I found so unexpectedly among the tents of barbarians. I, after all, bore the curse of ugliness; even my body, which Darak had found lovely enough, was disfigured now.
I plaited strands of her hair and fastened on their ends little bells of silver. From a jar she took a blue cream and smeared it on her eyelids, and from another jar a red cream which she rubbed over her lips. I did not like her to do this. It offended me in some curious way, for it was neither necessary nor an improvement.
She got back among the rugs with him then, and a pang of anger clenched in my belly—not for myself, but for her, so special in her looks, to court the favor of the disgusting, snorting creature on its back at her side.
With gestures she sent me off for his food, and I made my way among the goats to the morning fire. There were no men about that I could see, and the women at the pit called out shrilly at me. When I went nearer one picked up a piece of wood and threw it at me. It glanced off my shin, and they laughed raucously.
I rummaged in my mind for words.
“Tathra,” I said, “I am sent by Ettook’s wife—for the food for the chief.”
* * *
They muttered and drew together, and presently one of them, rather tall and full-breasted, with a vivid red-blonde tide of hair, came up to me and slapped me across the head. There was more laughter.
“You want food,” she said, “you ask me.”
“I ask you, then.”
“I ask—I ask—listen to the City one, the Eshkir.” She mimicked me, and was applauded. “I am Seel’s daughter,” she said. “You have angered Seel. Those who anger the seer do not feed among the tents.”
“Not for me—but for the chief, Ettook.”
She hit me again, casually, and before I had reckoned what I did, I had given her blow for blow, and she was on her back among bits of charcoal from the fire.
The women shrieked and screamed at me, and Seel’s daughter got up slowly, and then would have come running at me, but another voice cut across the clamor and they were still. Kotta stood at her tent door, her blind eyes which seemed to see fixing on each of us in turn, unerringly.
“What trouble are you causing, daughter of the seer? She wants only to serve the chief. She is Tathra’s now, so you should mind your manners with her.”
Seel’s daughter lifted the veil of her shireen a little and spat on the ground, then stamped on the spittle with obvious symbolism.
“Tathra,” she snapped, “out-tribe, spear-bride whore.” She stood away from the fire, and pointed to a row of cooking pots sitting on the flames. “Take, then, white-hair.” I went by her, and she hissed at me: “You will remember later which one you struck.”
Reluctantly a woman filled platters for me, one with a kind of thin porridge smelling strongly of goat’s milk, one full of ripe black-red berries, a third with dark brown bread. There was also a jug of frothy beer which she ran off to fetch. The items were placed on a tray of stiffened woven matting and left on the ground for me to pick up. As I crouched to get it, a foot struck me in the side and I rolled over.
I did not know which of them had done it, but Kotta called out from her tent door, “No more of that. She has a child in her. Ettook won’t thank you if you lose him a warrior with your bitch ways.”
I did not know how she realized what they had done. There had been little sound. I picked up the tray and hurried away from them, back to the painted tent.
Going in, I found Ettook was awake, sitting up and glaring at me.
“What were you at, slut?” he roared. “Did you have to do the berrying and brewing yourself before you could bring it?”
“The women—” I said.
He roared me into silence, and snatched the tray so that everything fluid on it slopped over the sides of its container. He began to thrust food into his mouth, while Tathra filled his silver-bound cup with beer. Abruptly he snatched at her nearest breast in much the same way as he had snatched the tray. He laughed. Tathra nodded at me.
“Go now. I will have you brought when I need you.”
I turned and went out, and stood in the harsh sunlight, struggling with disgust.
The women were still at the fire, except for Seel’s daughter—gone to feed her father probably. Kotta also had gone in. I did not know what I was expected to do now.
I crept across the camp, and found a narrow stream running through the pines, a little beyond the tents. I wondered if I should follow this stream which would perhaps find a river course between the slopes of the dark mountains beyond the trees, a course which would guide me, not toward Eshkorek, but ultimately south, toward the unknown sea. Nothing, after all, bound me here.
I took half a step, and an unseen wall seemed to block my path. I do not know what it was, prescience, perhaps, perhaps only a desire for whatever security I could find, however precarious. I shook my head, as if to the stream and the road it might offer, and turned back into the krarl.
* * *
I found out soon enough what my duties were.
I had sat down in the dust near Kotta’s tent, puzzling a little over the blocked path at the stream, when the women called out their men and children to eat around the fire-pit. Not for them that first meal abed, which was Ettook’s right, and Seel’s too, presumably. I was roused to action by one of the krarl warriors, who dragged me to my feet, and cuffed me on the ear for sitting idle, and soon a thin woman, more anxious than unfriendly, recruited me to serve the men and boys their food, with all the other women. This took a while, and not once did the females of the camp eat, sit, or even stand still in the male presence. It was tradition with them, but they were more enslaved than the Dark People. Even I was less of a slave, for rebellion had stirred in me at last, and though I could do nothing about my lot, I did not accept it. The krarl women, even their little girls, did so wholeheartedly and without question; even Seel’s daughter, who ministered with the rest. When the men were done, they got to their feet, wiping t
heir mouths, not glancing at their servitors, and went about their men’s business: preparations for a hunt (for these ate meat, when they could get it), sharpening of knives, grooming of horses, and general important talk and discussion, not to be let slip into our ears. The boys slouched after in imitation. Their male glory began early, it seemed.
The women ate now, the scraps and bits of what was left, and, while the little girls played noisily at a distance, they, in their turn, talked women’s chatter. It was all that was allowed them, that inane mode of conversation which consisted of: their possessions, their expected possessions, their children and babies (possibly this could be classed under the previous heading), planning of food, planning of chores, their man’s prowess, either in bed or at hunting or at war, and jealousy for any woman either not present or out of earshot.
It was Tathra they maligned most, as she qualified on both points. Listening at the fringe of their circle about the fire, I gathered Ettook had won her from an enemy tribe in a fight a year ago. She was not yet accepted—the Out-Tribe Bitch they called her. They did not like it that Ettook’s favor had gone to her instead of to one of them; neither did they like her pregnancy, which could establish her further with him, particularly if she bore a son.
The women’s meal, however, was not long. Soon they were up, and I with them, to scrape out bowls and cups, and rinse them in the very stream I had come to before. In the course of this work, I went by that earlier boundary without thinking, and when I realized this, I did not at first understand, though I suppose the moment when I could have gone was finished, like all those moments when I might have escaped events in the past, and was prevented by some circumstance or emotion.
After this cleansing came a washing of garments and rugs, a rinsing and pounding at smelly items over the rocks. My back was aching when we were done. It was midday, and I half expected some rest, but they pegged out the clothes to dry on little cages of wood constructed for the purpose, and then ran back to the main camp to begin chores of darning, weaving, and sundry other wearisome tasks. The girl children had shown some interest in me, mainly in poking me and calling me names—in imitation of their mothers, as the boys’ indifference had been imitation of the warriors. Now they were sent off to play, and flew off into the pines, relishing this brief time of freedom.
Seel’s daughter had been at the washing and pegging, and I had expected every minute that she would hit me or worse, but she did nothing. Then, as we were walking to the tents, she came up beside me and half-whispered: “I have told my father, the seer, of how you struck me. He is angrier than before. There was a great store of gold in the tower, and your impudence made the warriors forget. Now it is too late to return, for we are already on Snake’s Road, and must go East. He will put a withering on you, Eshkir slut. Your bones and sinews will warp, and you will go crippled all your days.”
Despite myself, I turned sick when she said this. I had no respect for Seel’s powers, yet ill-wishing can do damage if hate is strong enough. But the worst thing one can do is to help the attacker by believing it.
“Seel-the-Goat’s spells will do no harm to me,” I said. “I have magic of my own—magic I have not loosed on him before because I was compassionate. Let him beware, not I.”
“You,” she snarled, “you cannot even speak our tongue.”
“There are other tongues than the mouth uses. Your father, if he is anything of what you say—which I doubt—will know it.”
She was silent, chewing reluctantly on what I had said. After a moment she gave me a push and hurried off.
I had to stop still then, and say to myself in my brain, He is nothing and cannot harm you. Death cannot harm you, and the old man is less than Death.
But then the words came suddenly into my mind as I had seen them scratched on the wall of that tunnel through the Ring:
Death, the old dark man, is coming to carry you off . . .
The curse of humanity against my own Lost Race.
Instinctively my hands went to my breast for the jade I had torn from Shullatt’s neck, and did not find it. As I stood there, a girl’s voice spoke.
“The Spear-Bride wants you.”
It was the best name they could find for Tathra among the tents.
I think I was glad to go to her, to leave my forlorn self outside. Ettook was no longer there. He had gone to join the hunt. She had me dress her and brush out her hair once again. She said little to me, and I guessed she was uncertain as to how she should approach me. What did she think I knew? Perhaps more than that quest for knowledge to keep her safe in Ettook’s liking, she needed another presence—if not friendly, then at least not actively hostile. We had a kind of kinship, she and I, not only in pregnancy, but because both of us were the captives and the unaccepted of the krarl.
3
Snake’s Road they called their way eastward, to the marshes and the fertile forest-land beyond; who made the track they did not seem to know. It was a passage down from higher mountain valleys to the rock plains and across, and it twisted and turned to find room for itself among crags and subsidences like the one-eyed serpent some of them worshiped, the symbol of which was hung from Seel’s stinking neck. Ettook’s people, along with many other tribal communities, sheltered in the higher places during the winter, began to make eastward in the late spring and early summer, and came to feed off the bountiful pastures of the eastlands when the year was at its full. Along the way there would be fights and battles, and skirmishes, too, at the final camping ground. Territory, however impermanent, was hard won.
Two days after I had come among them, the tents were dismantled, pack horses laden, and we set off. There were vast stores of food dried by the women in those moments when they were not tending their men. Meat from the hunt-kill hung from horseback to dry in the sun, dripped blood, and attracted colonies of flies. The warriors rode some way ahead, disdaining the slow pace of the women, who walked or shared a few mules between them. Children ran about, occasionally remembering to drive the goats as they were supposed to do. The goats, meanwhile, milled around the track, maa-ing discontentedly, and watchdogs barked, and ran to lick up blood and gorged flies spilled from the strung carcasses.
Tathra rode a black mule, partly because of her status, partly because of her pregnancy. The mule was hers, and therefore no other had a right to it, and they grumbled at that. Kotta also rode, a privilege of her blindness, yet she seemed to see as well as any of us from the way she looked at things—deer bucks fighting on a distant level of the plain, birds wheeling overhead. When you talked to her, she would look intently in your face. It occurred to me that perhaps she retained a little of her sight, however dim, and traded on it, though this did not seem to be her character. And besides, she had witnessed me unmasked and had shown no reaction, and once I saw her bend near the fire with her eyes still raised to the woman she listened to, and there was no narrowing of the pupils. She was indeed sightless. I reasoned then that perhaps her other senses had sharpened to compensate the loss, and this was what had made her appear so aware of all things.
A camp was made at the end of each day’s journeying, a little aside from the track. Seel would bless our setting out on it each morning, one hand on the serpent amulet.
Around us, the wild jumbled land ran away from the mountains. There were water pools in plenty, and glades of dark thin trees, but otherwise the summer heat pressed on us and drank us dry. I lived on goat’s milk, and did not like it much. I brushed Tathra’s hair in the first cool of dusk, before Ettook came in to her from the big evening meal around the fire, drunk, greasy, and belching.
I slept my nights in the open, which did not matter greatly in such mild weather, and yet it was a symbol of my little worth. None of the warriors troubled me; it was a rule with them not to lie with a woman once she showed her womb filled, though I had not noticed Ettook daunted by this ruling where Tathra was concerned.
My
breasts grew larger and uncomfortable with milk, and I began to have pains in my back, and at the base of my spine.
“What is the matter?” Kotta said to me. Perhaps I had made an audible protest at the pain, but I did not think so. I told her my trouble, and she asked Ettook for a mule. It must have been the old argument—one more male for the tribe—for the mule was mine, and I rode after Tathra from then on.
Seel did not come near me, and if he had cast his spell, I knew nothing of it.
* * *
It was a monotonous traveling, but dullness can be preferable to certain other things.
On the ninth day out on the road, near sunset, there was some agitation among the warriors up ahead. We were passing through a narrow gully, where the track took up the path of a dried-out stream bed. Rocks went up on either hand, trees leaning over us from roots clawed into the rock side, and swaying darkly on the tops like plumes on a metal helm. Above, among those trees, the warriors had seen some movement, it appeared, not animal in origin.
Once this news trickled back to the van of women and goats, weak panic broke out among both. An enemy tribe, planning to attack us from the gully roof? Yet there was no attack then. We reached higher ground, and night came.
They made camp in the shelter of other rocks, and piled rocks around the three open sides as an improvised stockade, and lit brushwood fires on the inside of this. In the red light, warriors stood sentry, and there was a look on their faces of taut pleasure. It was good to fight. A sign of virility in the tribes of the valleys to have taken many women, fathered many sons, but best of all, to have slain many men. The women huddled near the main fire, chattering nervously as if purposely overacting fear in order to make their men’s bravery the more obvious. I sat at my post, a little way from Ettook’s tent, sewing without interest or accuracy at a bit of cloth. The cloth, in other hands, might have become a carrying bag of sorts, but it was, for me, only an excuse for labor. They did not like women in the krarl to be idle; this way I seemed employed, yet truly was not. Grouped at the wall fires, Ettook and his elder warriors were drinking and laughing.