Tanith Lee - Birthgrave 01, page 35
“Now,” Mazlek said.
Even expecting his change of character, it was a surprise to me. He jerked on the horse’s reins abruptly, so that it protested and pranced, and he began to sway in the saddle, yelling some formless song without words or melody. He had untied the half-empty wine bottle, and now waved it aloft. I was so enthralled with his performance I almost forgot my own, but finally remembered, put my arms around him, and began to sing at the top of my voice one of the musical offerings of Darak’s camp, which might raise a few eyebrows, even here.
In this way we got to the gate-mouth, an entrance for drovers probably, judging from width and ugliness, and the amount of ancient animal droppings cemented to the road.
There were about ten men, more than I had hoped for, but unmasked, and with their store of bottles and wineskins about them, they were obviously not in their prime. I thought there might be some business with passwords which we did not know, but they had apparently forgotten all that.
“Halt!” The nearest one, who seemed to be in charge, came wavering toward us. “Halt, you drink-sodden son of a mare. Halt, halt, halt. What’s that up behind you?”
He did not speak in the elegant manner of the Cities, though in a corruption of the same tongue—a kind of army slang, almost a language on its own.
“A woman,” Mazlek said, and offered him the glass bottle.
The soldier drank, belched, and looked at me.
“Belhannese,” he said.
“That’s right,” Mazlek said, “and very willing to make me forget it.”
“Not much showing,” the soldier said, “but I’d say she’d got one in the pot.”
“That’s all right by me. She won’t be saying it’s mine, then, if we come here again, will she?”
The soldier put up a hand and began to explore me, and I felt Mazlek’s body stiffen. I gave him a little slap.
“Did I say you owned me, soldier?” I asked Mazlek. “Just because you gave me a ride? This is a nice man, I can tell.” I patted my besieger’s cheek, and the fool grinned. “We were going outside for a bit. Why not come with us?”
“Outside?” he queried, dubious. “Why not here and now?”
“I like to pick and choose,” I said, “and besides, do you want that riffraff pushing in before you?”
He glanced at the other men, grinned again, and walked to the front of the horse. As he led us out of the gate there were a few shouts, but he told them to be quiet, and they were, so that was no problem.
A little path ran down from the gate. The platform had degenerated into a slope here, loosely mantled with spring-pared trees.
“Here’ll do,” our escort said.
“Never mind him,” I said as I got down from the horse, nodding at Mazlek. I let the soldier pull me into some bushes, where he proceeded to get on with what interested him most. Mazlek was perhaps too quick, too angry, but the trained fighter in him saved us; he was also too professional to make a mess of things, for all his fury. He rose suddenly over us, palmed the man’s mouth, and thrust the knife into him. The Anashian died without a sound, and Mazlek dragged him off me, and flung him aside.
I could not see Mazlek’s expression behind the mask, but every line of his body expressed his horror.
“Goddess—I thought I had been too quick for him to—”
“Unimportant,” I said.
He shook his head and turned away.
We remounted the horse, and rode quickly from the walls of Belhannor, through village fields, into the safe darkness.
We were lucky. An hour or so later, riding in the scrub woodland trailing from the foot of the hill, we found another horse, twin to the first, easily caught with a gift of sweet grass. Mounted separately, we rode down at a trot, and made the dawn without a halt.
Belhannor was only a shape on the horizon now, an ivory figure from the game of Castles, with a smoke plume like a thundercloud still poised above her head. We made our stop in a copse of twisted thorn trees, and lit a small fire. Mazlek stripped off the things of Anash, and put on once more the soft iron-colored tunic and mask of a lower citizen. Now we were only Belhannese refugees, one pair out of hundreds probably, making for ruined Orash perhaps, until it was safe to go home.
Mazlek drew from the saddle pack a small box, and I could see from his unease what it must contain.
“Mazlek,” I said softly, “I can go for many days without food. You supply yourself as you want.”
He nodded, but slunk off among the trees to eat. He had not flinched at the bald statement, but, even so, the taboos of a lifetime could not be blown away so swiftly, if ever.
Later, we rode on, keeping a steady but unhurried speed. The land around me seemed quite unfamiliar—I had seen it last under snow, and through a fever haze. Nevertheless, it was a strange journey, this going backward over ground I had crossed before—the first time ever I had returned to any place which it took longer than a day to reach. Beneath the horses’ hooves the soil was now warmly brown, dappled with many greens. Dusk fell more slowly, and birds rang like bells at the dawn light. A fox’s lair among the bracken, and a vixen mottled white on her russet, still half in her winter coat.
Five or six days passed, and Mazlek told me we were not making toward Orash, as I had thought, but would turn eastward now toward the hill line. Beyond the hills—mountains, part of the great chain of primeval children folded upward from the southern earth in the first struggles of the landscape. Northward, they would become one with the Ring, broken only by the blue water, Aluthmis. Northeast they would lose their peaks in the rock plains that fell away from Eshkorek Arnor, City of White Desert.
“The best road for us to take,” Mazlek said. “If any followed us, seeking you, they’d guess we would go by the open path—back the way the armies came.”
“Road?” I said. “Are there roads across the mountains?” It seemed there were, though ancient and elusive, impassable in winter, tracks of an old mountain people who had vanished like the Lost, centuries before. Mazlek seemed confident enough, but a sense of foreboding settled on me. It was not the road I feared, but the destination—Eshkorek Arnor. I did not know why. I reasoned with myself that it was the Javhovor of Eshkorek who haunted me—that anxious tortoise who had thrust his neck from his shell too far by half. The brave, terrified man who had screeched at me across the Council table in Za, then died in the square with a piece of tile in his brain—Vazkor’s example of power. Yet no need to fear, there was a new lord now—Vazkor’s man.
The eleventh day of our journey, we rode into the hills, and left that valley of failure behind. There was a village or two, where Mazlek would walk off with the black-eyed chief, and return with small bundles of food. I ate a little every seventh or eighth day, and my pampered stomach rebelled each time with hideous pains. The worst trouble was a constant tiredness. Several times I fell asleep as I rode, and miraculously kept my seat until some jolt would wake me up again. Each night, a six-hour halt. We kept no stated watch, though Mazlek slept little, I think. As watcher I was quite useless, and could not keep my eyes open. It angered me, but I was helpless; the thing in me made me so.
But there seemed to be no pursuit. Probably the runaway bitch-witch-whore-goddess had no great interest for them. They had not bothered even to pursue Vazkor, it seemed, simply accepted the word that he was dead. Fools. Where he was, what he did, were problematical, but I knew at least he could not die, my brother, with his healing skin.
Beyond the hills, the mountains rose, clustered, uncut amethyst, dully luminous against the soft spring skies.
I became aware that I was searching, asleep and awake, my brain burrowing into itself to remember something. Curious, the sensation of quest, without a known goal.
9
And they were kind to us, after all, the mountains. The horses, with their sure, shaggy, little feet, managed well, and enjoyed the tufts of ice-green mountain grass which cracked the stone. Fresh streams and waterfalls sprinkled themselves into shallow pools. Heather, every shade of purple, furred the old sleeping bones.
There were, at first, winding tracks, safe enough, but crudely hewn. But then we found the road—a pass, wide and paved, not as the slaves of the Lost had paved the roads of the Plains, but in small, palm-sized blocks. Mostly the mountain sides walled us on this way, but here and there a ghastly drop would open to left or right, jagged frozen cascades of rock, plunging into barren valleys. Less beauty now. The farther we rode, the more desolate the road became. Soon the greens and heathers were all gone. We had paid for our safe passage with ugliness.
Toward evening, perhaps five days into the mountains, we passed a ramshackle little hut about twenty feet from the road. A half-barren field stretched sloping toward us, and three or four despairing trees leaned on each other for support near the door. There were two old men in the field, both skin and bone got up in rags, with long light hair flapping in the breeze. Not of the Dark People, these two, but outcast city dwellers presumably. One crouched on his haunches staring at us, unmasked, the other stood up stiff and straight, his back turned. After a moment I saw that there was a flock of gray mountain pigeons in the field, pecking at the impoverished crops. Every so often a group of these would fly onto the standing man’s head and shoulders, and stamp up and down, or settle to preen.
Our small supplies were low. I could see, from the tail of my eye, Mazlek drawing rein and dismounting.
Suddenly the squatting man called out: “Don’t let her near me! Don’t you let her!”
“Forgive him, goddess,” Mazlek said, sounding irritated. “Only a mad old man—a woman-hater no doubt. He means nothing.” He went up through the field, and the birds scattered with what looked an almost melodramatic act of fright, except for the group on the scarecrow, however, which remained unruffled.
Mazlek spoke to the man. He shook his head frenziedly, and waved sticklike arms.
“No—nothing left—those others took it—thieves!”
“Others?” Mazlek’s voice came sharp and clear now.
“Ten men and horses—black riders—skull masks—except for him, the dark one—the wolf—”
Mazlek turned and looked back at me. My hands were tight on the reins, and my heart thudded in intermittent, painful, nervous beats. Mazlek left the man and came back to the road.
“Vazkor,” he said unnecessarily. “Still alive?”
“Oh, yes. I never thought him dead.”
“Making for Eshkorek—as we are,” Mazlek said. He mounted swiftly. “We should hurry, goddess; perhaps we can catch them, now that we’re on the same road.”
“No,” I said.
The old man shouted hoarsely at us, without words.
“Wise to ride with him,” Mazlek said. “Twelve men can protect you better than one.”
He was anxious for my safety. It was useless to protest. We urged the horses forward, and left the old man standing in the field, beside the pigeon-heavy scarecrow he had put up to keep the birds away.
Darkness thickened around us. Stars burned blue-white between the distant crag-crests.
“We do not know how long ago they passed,” I said. “We may be days behind.”
“I don’t think so,” Mazlek said. “That one would have had a short memory, yet he remembered them very well.”
“I must rest soon,” I said.
He nodded through the gloom.
“I will find a safe place, then ride ahead to them. He’ll wait, or return with me.”
“Will he? I wonder, Mazlek, if he will.”
But he would, of course. I carried what was his.
Not long after, the road began to drop downward. Across rock thrusts came a new light, faintly red.
“A fire,” Mazlek muttered.
We saw the dip a minute later, a trickle of path and scrub bushes clinging around it, and, at the bottom, a hollow full of firelight. It seemed blatant, careless even. I saw horses moving beyond the flames, shapes sitting against the rock. Abruptly two men leaped from the scrub, one for each of our bridles. A third stood a little behind, a couple of knives very ready. Not so careless, after all, for he had posted sentries. Mazlek’s ambusher prodded at him. “Who are you?”
Mazlek said calmly, “I am Mazlek, Commander of the Goddess Uastis’ Guard. I have conducted her to her husband.”
The skull faces turned to me. There was nothing about me recognizable, no golden cat mask or rich robe. Even the pregnancy had shown itself since they saw me last.
“Well,” I said, “go and ask your Lord. He will remember me, I think.”
A little hesitation, then they pulled our horses aside, and led them down the path into their camp, the knife man coming last.
It was warm in the hollow, and smoky. One of our guides strode off around the fire into a cave beyond it. I began to feel stifled, the smoke catching in my throat and eyes. I wanted to run away, and cursed Mazlek unfairly for bringing me here. Damn Vazkor, I did not want his venomous weight on my freedom again.
The man ducked out of the cave, and another man followed him, tall, spare, dark; under the silver strings of the wolf’s head, his own black hair hanging in long, raw silks. He came around the fire, and stood looking at me. “Welcome, goddess,” he said.
When he spoke, the race of my fear stumbled. I looked back at him bewildered. Not Vazkor’s voice, a stranger’s voice, dry and old, and empty.
Mazlek was at my stirrup, offering his arm to help me down. I dismounted.
“Make the goddess comfortable,” the unknown voice finished. He nodded and turned back into the cave, and was gone.
“So, even he understands defeat,” Mazlek said softly. “It is finished for him, and he knows it.” There was a bitter pleasure in his tone I might have shared if he had said it on the road.
I took my hand from Mazlek’s arm, walked around the blaze, and followed Vazkor into the black mouth of the cave. Far back there was a leather curtain hung up for privacy, and beyond it the slight glow of a wick in oil. I let the flap fall to, and stood staring at the bed, made of one folded blanket, on which he lay. He was very still. The mask gone now, his face showed sick pale under the gray-olive skin, and the shadows of his face seemed bruised deeper. Except for his open eyes, which turned slowly to look at me, he might have been dead. His mouth stretched a little.
“Our positions are finally reversed, you see,” he said.
“You are ill,” I said softly, not quite believing it.
“Yes. I am ill. But I will be better soon. I’m sorry to disappoint you, goddess.” His eyes shifted a little to my belly. “Well,” he said, but even that could not anger me. The walls of hate I had built against him had crumbled instantly, of course. His vulnerability stirred me almost into an agony of compassion I could not help. I went to him and kneeled down.
“What can I do for you? Shall I fetch you anything … ?”
I reached out and touched his face with my fingertips, and, as if it were a signal to my body, I began at once to weep, the silent scalding tears of our separate loneliness. He too had lost what was dear to him, however perverse his desires and hopes had been. Lost. He could not even express any pain he felt. He lay like ice under my touch, Darak turned to jade at the bottom of the tomb-shaft because I could not weep for him.
“Let’s put an end to this,” he said after a moment, quite gently. “This is no use for either of us.”
I got to my feet, and he shut his eyes, closing that last door into himself with the finality of stone.
There was another cave place they had found for me, and here I lay, Mazlek across the mouth of it, but his body defenseless in worn-out sleep. It was I who watched that night.
———«»——————«»——————«»———
Dawn, ice-chill in the mountains, stippled rock flanks with incandescent red.
There was a beaker of the wine-drink for me that morning. Mazlek, like a child, stretching, rubbing at his eyes, glancing guiltily in at me because he had not stood guard all night.
Vazkor came from the cave as they were saddling and loading the horses. He saw to his own mount, slowly and carefully. The mask hid his face. After a while he mounted, and sat with an unusual stiffness, as if it took much effort to keep himself there. They waited for his signal, and followed after him up the road.
It came to me: I have done this. The storm I turned from Belhannor was the beginning of it. I have smashed the soul of Vazkor. Yet I could not quite believe it. Where, after all, was my triumph in the act?
Mazlek and I were some way behind. After a while Vazkor motioned another man into the lead, and waited on the road until we reached him. He turned to Mazlek, and Mazlek dropped back until out of earshot. Vazkor’s black gelding dwarfed the horse I rode.
“I have seen that man before,” Vazkor said after a while. His voice was slightly husky from the fever, yet different from when I had heard it last; how, I was not sure. “Your commander. One of Asren’s men who rode with me for a time, I think. In Ezlann.”
I said nothing, could think of nothing to say, since the words I needed to speak he had locked inside me forever.
“You think,” he said, after another little silence, “things are finished with me.”
Hooves bit sharp on the road.
“Well, goddess, the castle fell at the river An, but I can build it again, on its own ruins, out of its own bricks. This is not defeat, goddess, it is delay. We are headed for a mountain fortress that will keep us very safe until the time is right for me. Tower-Eshkorek—my gift from the last Javhovor of Eshkorek Arnor. I hope you will find it comfortable. Our child will probably be born there now.”
Part V
Tower-Eshkorek
1
Where the mountains reach toward the City, leveling, they take on the tinge of lions. The great tower-fortress, like Eshkorek herself, was built of this same fulvous rock. Not beautiful, but ugly, it threw its indomitable phallic shadow black across the sunset mesas and the sloping crags. Not beautiful, but very strong, very secure. Yet not to keep things out, but to keep things in. A prison. At once I had the sensation that if I entered I could never again get free, but I thrust it off.
