The Birthgrave

by Tanith Lee

  I scrambled across the rocks, searching out their way down. When I found it, it was a treacherous limestone slide, broken by natural terraces. I dared it, clinging to handholds of gorse and long grass, and pebbles rattled away from me to the beach far below. Bruised and torn, I landed on the last stretch where the stone gave way to sand. I crept around the bastion of the cliff, picked a path beside its green-stained underside. They did not seem to hear me, and again I wondered if they were dead. When I was nearer, however, I saw them breathe, though their eyes were closed, their faces trancelike. I touched the shoulder of a woman, and she did not stir. I jumped across her body, and was inside the circle.

  Sand splayed up from my feet. I looked at them, and they did not wake. I had again that feeling of a wild animal, an unthinking thing. I had profaned some secret holiness of theirs, but in my own need I did not care.

  I ran and kneeled by the Book. My eyes dazzled with black darts of excitement. I flung open the cover.

  I cried out. I turned the pages, one after the other, in a frenzy. I could not believe what I saw, would not believe it. For the pages of the Book were blank.

  Oh, yes, there had been writing, this much I could see, but the inks had faded. Now there were only faint smudges and marks here and there on the yellowness. And I could tell nothing from them.

  I rocked my body, still kneeling by the Book, staring out at the black retreating sea.

  I had realized quickly that this tribe was not the tribe Uasti had spoken of, the hill tribe of healers who had trained her. I had reasoned then that this book was not the one she had told me of but another, perhaps a copy, or even a different thing. Yet it bore the same name, was revered; it must be some relic of the Lost—some clue for me. I had hoped. And there was nothing here after all.

  I got to my feet, leaving the Book open, the night breeze faintly riffling the empty pages. I jumped clear of the circle, and began to walk southward, up the beach. If not the Book, then the broken ruins of the cities. They at least must be here, for where else had the tribe discovered their relic?

  I was tired, walking with my eyes half closed and my feet dragging. At the edge of the sea I left my footprints, the lace fans cold on my skin, smelling the ancient fish smell of the water. Sand gave way to pebble, and then again to altered, muddier sand. I threw my garland to the sea, and watched the waves carry it off, then bring it back to me.

  It came to me, as I walked, how bitter the irony of the Book had been which had said: Herein the Truth. For it had a truth of its own in its bleached barrenness. What was truth except something which faded, lost its shape, grew unreadable and indistinguishable, at last a blank page for men to write on what they wished.

  * * *

  All pebbles and chunks of the white stone now underfoot. The night was sliding down behind the land on ruffled wings, and the bitter cold of the sea-dawn fastened on me. Most of the night I had walked under the towering giant’s pottery of cliffs, while the tide drew in and out, breathing. Once I had climbed to a higher place, out of the water’s reach, and slept there until the new silence of the waves slipping away again woke me, and I went on. I was hemmed in between the long flat water and the high irregular stoneworks.

  A marigold sun rose from the sea, seeming to drip back its color into the silver breakers. Seabirds wheeled and cried.

  I rounded yet another cliff face, and found it was the last. Before me lay a wide and open sandy bay, scooped back to the terraces of low hills. Beyond the bay, far off, half painted on the morning mist, a tongue of land that poked out many miles into the water. At first I did not see the white shapes scattered across the hills of the bay and the tongue of land. But the sun pointed with a chilly orange finger, and I realized I had found my dream’s cities with the dawn.

  I walked into the cold water of the bay, following the curve of it, yet not going any closer. A kind of extra sense, all that was left to me of my Power, told me that this place was very old, older than Ezlann, the Dark City, older even than Kee-ool, and not only ancient, but unlived-in, unvisited. Some atmospheric barrier surrounded it that kept men away. The far-off ancestors of the black tribe had come once—and they had found the Book. Perhaps others had come—briefly, yet never staying long enough to leave any imprint on the cold stones. And whoever had come and gone, the cities had forgotten them. I thought of those cities of Sea’s Edge in the far south, that last alliance Vazkor had planned to conquer. Had they also fallen into decay? Would his armies, if they had come there, have met with another such ancient indifference?

  A sound broke harsh behind me, making me spin, wide-eyed, to see what demon-guardian the ruins had woken against me.

  Three tall black men stood waiting in the surf, the wind lifting their long hair, spears in their right hands, knives at their narrow hips. Their leader, the tallest, spoke again:

  “To men and women of our krarl comes the need, sometimes, to seek this place. All who feel such need come here. Was there such a need in you?”

  “Yes,” I said, “and a need to be alone here, too.”

  “Not good to be alone here,” the warrior said gently. “There are strange things in the cities by day, and stranger things, with the night.”

  The cold wind nicked my skin. I shivered.

  “I am Fethlin,” he said.

  “I am Wexl,” “I, Peyuan,” the second and third men said.

  Again the magic number of three had repeated itself—my guard, once more, stood waiting to serve me, having followed me through the night—and I had not even sensed their presence. But this time I did not want this security. No more men should die for me like fools.

  “Go back,” I said. “Go back to Qwenex and your people. I profaned your trance-circle on the beach. I opened the golden Book—I broke the hearth-bond and the guest-promise of your krarl. Spit on me, and go back.”

  Fethlin looked at me, and he said, “That was your need.”

  “You know nothing of my need,” I shouted at him. “Go back—go away—I will have no more butchered lives strung around my neck!”

  I stopped shouting, and the wind filled the silence, as it had filled all the silences in this bay for thousands of years.

  “If you enter the city, we will follow you,” Fethlin said. “That is how it must be. Your need is our need. Only our own gods understand why.”

  There seemed something completely final in that they had recognized, as Maggur and his would not, as Mazlek and his only partly would, that they were bound to me by some motiveless and insane unnatural law.

  “Very well, then,” I said. “None of us has a choice. I am sorry, for you will die.”

  I turned my back, and began to walk inland toward the curved scoop of the bay, ignoring that they came after me.

  3

  Farther south, a causeway led from the sea, rising clear of the beach. Perhaps there had been a harbor there, and a watch beacon; nothing remained. Beyond the sand a grassy slope, tangled with tough dark green trees, and, climbing up between these, I found the first ruin of a road, once forty, fifty feet across, set with those great slabs I remembered from the Lforn Kl Javhovor; there was not much left of it now. Paving had been heaved aside by growing things. Lichens and weeds wove together like a tapestry, a pall to cover something dead.

  Then there was a green open stretch where the road lost itself entirely and reappeared twenty feet away, dividing a broken wall, flanked on either side by the bases of pillars. They had been very tall once, now they seemed like the melted-down stubs of candles. When I reached them, I put out my hands to touch the blurred carving. Nothing stirred inside me or around me. Yet this had been a phoenix gate, long ago.

  When I went through it, and stood inside the city, I had to glance back quickly. Behind the figures of the warriors I saw the sea’s pale glitter still moving in the bay. I turned, and went on over the green and white patchwork paving, between the open foundation
s which were all that remained. A few cracked marble obelisks leaned toward the hills, as if undecided whether to fall now or to wait a few centuries longer. The strange howling winds which live in deserted places blew through the wreckage of palace walls.

  * * *

  The sun rose higher, and the sky was a brittle uncertain blue. It was noon, and I had passed through many gates, across many ruined roads. They had become one and the same to me. We were higher into the terraced hills, the sea behind us, remotely turquoise. Here, between buildings, a tree had thrust itself. I sat down beneath it, staring out across the empty plaza.

  Fethlin, Wexl and Peyuan crouched a few feet from me, shared a small meal of goat cheese and dried dates. I refused the food they offered, but took a sip or two from the water-skin Fethlin carried.

  The ruins made me ill at ease, I needed to move on, despite my tiredness, yet I did not know where to go, nor what I must look for. Though the wind still blew hard, it was warmer. I shut my eyes, leaning against the tree. I was dozing, slipping into sleep, when suddenly the green spear opened my brain. I started awake, and in that moment, felt the Pull, strong as I had felt it on the plain before Ezlann. I got to my feet and stood still, trying it, as a dog sniffs out a faintly remembered scent.

  There was a little side street, flanked by a few solitary standing walls, leading southward out of the plaza. I walked toward it, and into it, and down it, and heard the sounds of Fethlin and the other two, rising and coming after me. In a while, the Pull became so strong I began to run. One of my black shadows ran beside me, three others behind me. The street vanished in among trees. And beyond their dark moist shade, the land fell abruptly away and downward. I stopped, finding I was looking out across a small valley, hidden by the terraced hills from the beach, and the cliffs.

  A flight of steps had been cut in the hill, now as green as the hill, leading down. The valley was also green, and almost empty. A few white stones lay on their sides like sheep, strayed into an enchanted place and petrified.

  At the far end of the valley rested a cloud of fir trees, and out of this cloud appeared the hand of a giant, with one long finger pointing up, toward the sky.

  Behind me, Wexl uttered an unknown hushed word, perhaps the name of a god.

  But the hand was stone, like everything else, though not quite like, for the color was warmer—a harder building stuff, which had lasted longer. There was a ring at the middle joint of the finger-tower, which seemed to be a great balcony circling it. There were still bits of gold in the ring; they caught the sun and glittered yellow-white.

  I began to go down the overgrown stairway, and at once I was cold. I thought the three warriors might not come with me, but they did.

  Near the valley floor shrubs had grown over the steps, and they hacked a way for me with their knives. The grass in the valley was like velvet under my feet, but nearer the building it grew coarser and longer, and there were purple flowers with thorny stems. I looked back several times beyond the warriors. The valley was very still.

  I turned my foot on a peculiarly smooth stone, and again, a few feet later, on another. I think I looked down because they had not really the feel of stones at all, and saw a skull lying in the grass, polished and brown from age, I was careful where I put my feet after that, but I saw others, and bones besides.

  In the icy shadows of the firs lay the skeletons of three large dogs, or even wolves, perhaps.

  Something about the bones terrified me. Yet the cold tingling of my spine and neck, the desire to look over my shoulder, had become so much a part of me that I was almost able to ignore them.

  Tree shadows sprayed across the base of the hand, on the intricate stonework and carving which represented a bracelet. Facing me, set like a jewel in the bracelet, was an oval dark door which seemed to be made of onyx. There was no marking on the door, no indication of a way in. Across the threshold something lay staring at us with black sockets.

  “The Guardian,” Fethlin said softly.

  The skeleton was fully clothed in an ancient decayed armor, a cloak from which all color had faded, a helm with a long crumbled plume. A sword rested on its bone thigh, vivid with rust. It was strange, for the flowers and grass which had overgrown all the rest had not touched him.

  The dread I felt then, I realized, did not come from me, but from the place, and from some long ago atmosphere laid on it by a curse or a Power.

  “No farther,” I said to Fethlin. “I must go in alone, if there is a way in.”

  They did not argue with me, and I forced myself forward to the oval door. I stooped over the dead sentry, and touched his armored chest with my fingers.

  “Peace, old one,” I said. I was not sure why I said it, but the words seemed to come into my mouth. “I mean no harm, and I have a right to walk here. Know me, and let me by.”

  There was no lessening of the cold or terror, but I went past, going around him and not stepping over, and when I put my hand on the oval door, there came the snap of a lock, and it opened inward in front of me.

  I do not know what I expected, I suppose, the worst or the best that could come to me. Certainly nothing so ordinary as the round white room. I went into it and the door flew shut behind me. I felt no particular panic, for somehow I had known it would. With the shutting of the door, the room grew darker, yet not totally dark. Light came, not from windows but from the well above where a stairway led upward into the tower.

  On the walls there were faint shapes, the ghosts of pictures. I could make nothing of them. I needed my lost sight—that sight which could make out the engraved words on the High-Lord’s way, so blurred and faded no other could tell what they were. I left the walls and went toward the stairway of white marble. On the first step a second skeleton-warrior sat grinning at me.

  “To you, also, peace,” I whispered. Eyes seemed to move far back in the sockets, the hideous mouth laughed. I went around him and up the stairs.

  On the first level there was nothing, only replicas of the faded walls, and the light was stronger. At the second level the wind blew in coldly on my face. Five oval open doorways pierced the walls of the room. I crossed the marble floor, and emerged from one of them on the ring-balcony of the finger tower. The balustrade was very high, its carved head a foot above my own. Only tall men or women could have looked out over the ring, across the green valley. To me, only the sky showed itself, hard and icy blue, and the tips of the hills beneath it. I moved around the balcony slowly. The floor was laid with colored stones, red and brown and green and gold, the same as in the ruined theater at Kee-ool, yet the pattern was more intricate, almost mathematical. I moved round and round the balcony, my eyes on the colored paving. Round and round. It came to me, dreamily, that I might walk here forever, round and round, until I died. Yet the paving held such a variety of vistas, it did not seem I crossed the same space, but over water and treetops, and the red sands of some other world. . . .

  A gull, flying inland, saved me. It shrieked high above the tower, as if to warn me, perhaps in its own fear of the valley. I came to my senses, ran in at an oval door, and stood in the pale room, panting. Fool! Surely I had known there would be magic in this place, and traps to catch every brain and will. Had I forgotten already the brown bones in the grass?

  The stairs still led up, this time away from the daylight. I went to them and began to climb. Black marble here, and darkness. And narrowness. My dreams came back swiftly to me now, those dreams I had lost in Ezlann. The white marble leading to the black, and then—

  I screamed in irresistible, brief fright. In the dark I had come face to face, breast to breast, with a third sentry. Unlike the other two, he stood upright, balanced in some inexplicable way across the oval door-mouth at which the stairs ended. There seemed no way past.

  “Peace, old one; know me and let me by,” I said.

  We stood facing each other, and he towered over me, glaring down from t
he pits of the skull. And then anger came to me, fierce and sudden.

  “Let me by,” I hissed at the thing, as if it were some soldier and I the cat-goddess of White Desert, and when the skeleton stayed in its place, I struck out at it with my hand. It tottered, and tumbled by me down the stairs, rattling. At the bottom, the hard marble cracked the helmed skull free of the spine, and it rolled away, out of my sight. To the clammy persistent terror, a new terror was added then. I knew the superstitious worth of all guardians—those men set to guard till death and beyond it the hallowed places of vanished peoples. Still, it was done now, and for a purpose. I went through the doorway into the last room of the tower.

  There was a source of light in the darkness. It flickered and flared up, and many different colors played over the three painted walls. I had no time to spare for the light, for the paintings took my whole attention—they were clear and unfaded, and very, very old, and my whole body trembled when I looked at them.

  On one wall there was the painting of a black mountain. Over it a purple cloud rested, and under it a woman lay asleep. Her body was very white and her hair was also white; she had no face. Instead, there was a piece of jade set into the stone. On the second wall, this jade-faced woman was shown again, dressed in a green robe that left bare breasts and arms. She carried in one hand a golden whip, in the other a silver rod. Behind her, three warriors, dressed as the skeletons had been, in golden armor and green cloth, green plumes trailing from their helms. They bore no resemblance that I could see to Maggur, Giltt, or Kel; Mazlek, Slor, or Dnarl; Fethlin, Wexl, or Peyuan. On the third wall the woman stood for the last time, behind her the symbol of a sinking bloody sun, and in her two hands a knife I remembered well—the Knife of Easy Dying, its sharp point directed at her breast.

  I would not look at it. I turned to the fourth wall, over which a long curtain was hanging. I reached for it, and tore it down, and beyond it there was a wide golden couch, and on it a white-skinned woman in a green robe, her hair plaited with gold and pieces of jade, with a veil of gauze across her face. I did not know if she were statue or embalmed thing, but I knew now well enough what place I had entered. It was a tomb. And the tomb was mine.