Godbond (29 page)

And Mahela came skimming over the waves, her black wingtips nearly touching the water, until she stood in fair, womanly form by Kor's side on the shore, and I saw him reach out briefly, with one hand, to touch her.

For a moment Tassida and I could find no strength. Then with panic's whip lashing us we ran headlong, half falling, down slope and steep rock to Kor, where he faced the goddess.

Odd, Mahela's aspect. A bleak quietness in her, as if she had been defeated. Her shimmering green gown was gone. She wore a dead man's cloak picked up from the ground, merely a rag to cover her nakedness, and her bare feet showed beneath it, as if she were a captive. Yet something about the proud lift of her everpale face, also, as of victory. She looked only at Kor, and her gaze was rapt. She spoke only to him. “It is settled, then,” she was saying to him as we came near. Her tone was calm, level yet tender, as if she spoke with a pledgemate.

“Not entirely, mighty lady. We must talk.” In him, also, that same calmness and an ardent strength. No desperation in him any longer. Striving, yes, but not struggling against unthinkable odds. Something had indeed been settled.

“What can there be to talk about?” asked the goddess.

“There is much to be spoken of. You have a tale to tell us, Mahela. Say on. Speak to Tassida.”

I tried to keep my jaw from slackening in an uncouth way. He commanded her?

The glance with which she answered him was that of an equal, challenging. She would not always obey him, that one! But this time she chose to do so. She turned her head. “Greetings, my little daughter,” she said. “Greetings, Darran.” She spoke to us with easy courtesy, as if we were tribemates meeting after a short absence, though I sensed that she had not wanted to take her gaze from Korridun.

I mindspoke,
Kor! What is going on?

Later, Dan
.

Are you all right?
He, standing near me straight as a lance, looking as well in body as I had ever seen him. Godbond had done that for him. But for some reason I felt afraid.

As well as you are. Or nearly. Hush, Dan, listen to her
.

And by my other side stood Tassida. “Why do you call me daughter?” she asked the goddess, her head lifted arrogantly, and I saw what I had many times seen but not wanted to know. Her face, which some inner struggle had made as pale as Mahela's but for the the faint brown sheen put on it by weather: face as like to Mahela's as Ytan's was to mine.

“My fiery little one,” answered Mahela with an odd, stark tenderness, “I birthed you, just as I did Sakeema some small time before.”

Tass stood as if another word could topple her. I took her hand to give her strength.

“Do you not yet know me, you three?” Mahela complained. “I am she who mothers all.” Her smile, hard, as always, yet there was little edge in her. Her wrath seemed gone, blown out like stormwind, quelled like the sea. “Before dryland was, I was old, and I grow only younger. I shaped the mountains, I wove the grasses and gave milk to the sky. I—”

“All-Mother?” I blurted, too astonished to be silent.

“Why should that so surprise you, Darran? You, my bold cock and murderer? Of course the one who makes life must rule death. What is life without death? Yes, I am she whose name men have forgotten, but to curse by it.”

More like the All-Mother's halfwitted sister, I thought. All awkward, askew, awry. Yet.…

Yet who was I to call her evil? I, with the lightning storm in me that I scarcely understood? Dan the murderer, son of a murderer, brother of another?

There was small need of strength in Tass. She had long known dark things of herself, and I felt her wry acceptance as she thought to me,
It is better, perhaps, than being the get of a whore
. Her words when she spoke were bitterly amused.

“Did you fly down to the plains then, O mighty gluttonbird, and lay the egg that hatched me?”

“I birthed you in human form, daughter! As I had to, though I fought it as long as I could. There is great power in my creation, for what is beauty without power? The pomegranate, it does nothing but mutely speak of Sakeema, and by its mere being it is very puissant. The sundered fruit I could resist many years longer than the whole one, but when those two scoundrels stole them away to dryland, my thoughts followed perforce.” Mahela shrugged, a whimsical action in that haughty goddess. The soiled cloak swayed around her naked shoulders.

“Who is my father?” Tassida asked.

“You have none. I needed the aid of no man to make you. You are nearly my double, little wolf. Nearly my self as I might have been.”

I saw Kor intently watching the goddess. “Speak to Dan,” he ordered when Tassida asked nothing more.

Mahela's eyes turned on me, eyes deep as the sea. “You are Darran. I know what you are, and I dare say I know what your question will be.”

Kor, what was happening to Kor? But I sensed he did not yet want me to know. And there was something else, the one thing I cared about even more.

“All-Mother, why were you trying to destroy the world you have made?”

“I wanted at first only to take it away to my undersea realm.”

“Is it not fairer,” I asked with courtesy, more courtesy than I had ever showed to her, “much fairer, here under the sun?”

“Perhaps. You think so. You mortals, so willful.”

Mahela was struggling to speak. Perhaps never before had she tried to explain to anyone why she had done what she had done.

“Too striving, too clever,” she said. “Even while the world was yet young, you mortals grew to be too many, too mighty, crowding out the wild creatures, you with your castles and cities and your many weapons, sharp tools for cutting the forests, sharp plows for tilling the earth, ships for sailing the seas and killing the great whales. Shamans even drew plans for ships to sail the skies and drive away the birds. Nothing was ever enough. It is you who are the gluttons, not I.”

I stood keenly listening. Mahela spoke of the time remembered only by Tassida, the time when Chal and Vallart had lived, generations before Sakeema.

“So you started to take away the kings,” Tass said softly.

“Yes, and managed a sort of balance, for a while. But humans.…”

The life-giver shook her head in despair, and I began to see what it had done to her, the long struggle with this creature of all her creation most clever, most willful, most like her.

“Time and again I brought them low,” she told us. “Human kind, they are so wrongheaded, so greedy, it breaks my heart. They must always be making war. The time came when they themselves helped me lower their great stone cities to the ground. Booklore and the ways of making metal weapons were forgotten, only you six small tribes remained, and I had taken away the tree of the god. But I knew well enough that in time the tribes would grow, and learn, and threaten again. I made myself servants—”

“To help you take it all,” I said. I no longer hated her, but I saw she was a desperate, twisted thing.

She looked straight at me. “Darran, hear me: I never wished to destroy. I took into safekeeping what would have been destroyed if left here under sky for people to find a way to.”

How was I to believe her, my longtime enemy, Mahela? Yet how not? I had never heard her speak so earnestly.

“It would have been better to take the humans, but even with the fell servants I could never gather them all, for they are willful. And always their numbers returned.” Weariness in her voice when she spoke of that long combat. “I made up my mind that I would settle it for all time: safeguard my world, or destroy it, or accept my defeat. And I have been defeated.” In some wise she had, and in some wise, she had not, inwit told me. I stood watching her uncertainly.

“You three would have lived, for you are Sakeema. But when Korridun broke the bond and confronted me …” Her proud head bent so that her black hair flowed down. Her shoulders sagged beneath her bedraggled cloak. “I could not strike. I could not kill him.” She lifted her eyes and looked at him, a look of such naked need that I winced. “Or you, little daughter.” Her glance turned to Tassida, still full of longing. “Or even, Darran, my bold cock, you.”

A long, awkward silence.

“There is the matter of my cock to be spoken of,” Kor said at last.

Kor!
Dismay jolted me.
Did it not heal, like the rest of you?

“I am healed, yes,” he answered me aloud. “Whole, no. I am maimed. No better than a castrate.” He turned to face Mahela, meeting her stricken eyes with a long, searching look. “Will you stand by your bargain, mighty lady?”

I let that go by me with only a faint pang of unease, thinking only of—Kor, so unmanned, it could not be, I could not let it be! “But you must be made whole!” I stammered. “We must try again. Tass—”

One look at Tassida's ashen face and I saw that it was no use. What godbond had not done, no power of hers could do for Kor.

He mindspoke me,
Dan, let be! Perhaps it is a blessing. Mahela can never again attempt to take self from me by that means
.

Like someone drowning in deep water, helpless, I felt the strong downward tug of doom. My breath came short, my eyes saw black.

“I will abide by my bargain,” I heard Mahela say. She sounded as shaken as I. “Korridun, I need you too badly to do otherwise.”

No sound, then, but the lapping of salt water along the shore. A terrible question echoing in that silence.

Kor!
I begged.

“I am going with her, Dan,” he answered me aloud. His voice, very quiet, very gentle. “I am going with her, back to the place she calls Tincherel.”

It might as well have been the end of the world.

For a moment I could not move or speak. It was as if a mountain had fallen on me. Then, with a roar like falling mountains, a murdering madman's roar of rage and sorrow, I snatched out my sword and rushed at the goddess to kill her. Rage and grief of Dannoc, wrath of Darran and all the strength of godbond were mine. I knew Mahela to be a twisted, unnatural thing, no better than a devourer—why should she have Korridun? Godhead and fate and doom be damned. My face, my skin, my whole body blazed and crackled with lightning fury as I leaped at her.

Whether brave, indifferent, or frozen with fear, Mahela did not move. She stood straight and still in her huddle of dark cloak, awaiting me. But in a single leap Kor was there, between me and her, taking the warrior's crouch, ready to dart in any direction I might choose to get past him, though he had not touched a weapon. And I knew he would not raise blade against me.

Dan, no!
His face as frightened, pale and staring, as it had been that first night I had stormed into his life with drawn sword.
As you love me
—

I scarcely heard him. I was berserk, and like a bull bison I charged him, knocking him flat when he would not yield to me. Mahela, right in front of me. Sword flashing in air, high-poised above my head. I would strike hard and true—

But it was Tassida I saw before me, Tass embracing the goddess, shielding Mahela's body with her own. “Dan, no!” she shouted aloud, horror on her lovely face. “You fool, it is my mother!”

And Kor was up again and had a grip on my arms from behind, pulling me back with all his strength.

I broke free of him—no one, not even Kor, could hold me back when I was raving. I tore Tass away from Mahela and flung her to one side. Very still, both fair and dark, the goddess stood before me. I lifted sword to smite.

Darran!

It was Kor, mindspeaking me by my true name. I turned toward him, for I could not do otherwise—and all my wrath pooled into sorrow at the sight of his face. I stood shaking, weak as a starving man, staring at him. In very truth, I was Darran and I could not save him, not even with the sword. He would not let me.

“I am to go with Mahela,” Kor told me, quietly, gently, “and she is to let the dryland be while memory of this time shall last and beyond. Forever. It is a fair treaty.”

“No!” It seemed to me most unfair, for his sake. “Kor, why?” I dropped Alar to the sand, I was pleading with him, or with whatever powers had control of his fate. “All you have ever done is give goodness. Why must it always be you who suffers torment? The—one who keeps vigil, the—victim.…” Memory of all he had done, thought of what he meant to do, harrowed me. I started to weep.

I hid my face, I could not see him, but I felt his touch—he put his hands on my shoulders. “Listen to me, Darran! We are the three stonebearers, you know that. Tass is the healer. You are—seeker, dreamer, but more, you will find out what you are. And I am, always I have been, the—the sacrifice. Of course it is I who must go. It is fitting.”

“Fitting,” I muttered, turning my face away.

This, then, was the ordeal. This was the dark agony of being Darran, to love such a brother and not to be able to save him. Kor himself was the price to be paid for the world's well-being.

“Dan, look at me!”

Dan, you are making it harder for him! Cease those tears!
It was Tass, coming up beside me. I felt rather than saw her scowl.

You do not understand!
I flared at her.
You do not know that—that chill and deathly place—

I understand well enough that you are hurting him!

Truth in her, blunt and hard, like river stones. And hurting Kor was the one thing I had wanted never to do again. I centered myself, let tears go for a small while. I raised my head, looked into his well-beloved face.

He only looked back at me, silent, his chest heaving as if he had fought a battle. In his sea-dark eyes, a plea. Something I had to do for him before he—before he was gone.… By my side stood Tass. Somewhere behind, Mahela, very still. Around me, the empty world, vast sky, vast sea, shore silent but for the washings of salt water, mountains where no deer ran. I let it all go, let passion go and looked only at Kor, thought only of Kor, what I had to do for him—though I knew he would not ask it of me, he would never ask it of me again.