The Birthgrave (25 page)

I stepped forward and held up my hand, and growling broke out.

“Tell them to let me speak,” I said to Geret, and he shouted at them, and when the noise went on, his men—distributed strategically around the cavern, I saw—prodded and pushed them into silence.

“You think me guilty,” I shouted at them then, “but I am innocent of this beast's act. You see I have no fear of the dead one, nor of the god. Yesterday the women tore my flesh. Many, I expect, remember what they did.” At once shrill cries of malicious agreement. “Look, then,” I said, and pulled open the fastenings of the robe and dropped it, and stood there naked and healed. The susurration of surprise went up. I had been badly marked but there was not a scratch on me.

Then a girl had forced her way to the front, ducked between Geret's guards and was yelling, “You did it with your witchcraft, evil one! Don't think to confuse us, standing there naked and shameless in your wickedness.”

It was Uasti's girl, and at once the crowd began to bay behind her voice. Geret shouted again, without my prompting this time, the guards hustled, and quiet came once more.

“No,” I said, “the god has taken your marks from me to show you my innocence. But I will give you further proof.” The stir of anticipation. “Get them to bring an unlit torch,” I said to Geret, “and a stand for it.”

A man went and got one from a stack nearby, while another hurried away for the stand. The tension in the cave mounted, and the delay while things were fetched increased it. My nakedness confused them also; they themselves would have been ashamed to be stripped before so many, and were even a little embarrassed to look at me.

When the torch was set up on the spike of the stand, I dipped a taper in the altar brazier and set it alight. My hands were trembling as I turned my back on them, and confronted Sibbos as if to pray. Could I do this thing? Well, too late now if I could not. I stared at the bright blue jewel on his breast until my eyes unfocused, and slowly, slowly, an avenue in my brain came open, and I walked down it. Now I seemed two people as I turned back to them. First myself, heavy as a sleeper, conscious of my body only as one is conscious in a half-dream, without any control over it at all; and the second—an entity, cold as an ice-crystal in the top of my skull, who controlled my body perfectly, as the first “I” could not.

I turned myself to face them, and, as I did so, I placed one of my hands on the hand of Uasti.

“I am guiltless of your murder, dead one,” I called out, yet not I but the other “I,” a voice that I did not feel vibrate in my throat. “If this is as I have said, let the fire not burn me.”

I heard them hold their breath, the single held breath of the crowd, all one.

Then I leaned myself forward across the torch, and the flame lapped my shoulders, breasts, and belly. I did not feel the flame at all; even had it burned me, I should have felt nothing, but the yellow luminance slid like water on my skin, and left no mark. Cries and shouts went up from the crowd. I stood myself straight, and drew the torch off its spike in my numb hands, and stroked it up and down me. It glowed on my flesh, but without smoke. The noise had fallen off again. It was totally silent as I made the torch go back into its position on the spike, turned to the god and the blue jewel, and let go the trance that was on me. It was a strange coming-together of the two parts of me—swift and shocking in the return as the going-out had been slow and dreamlike. Sound, sight, smell, touch seemed overbearingly acute, almost agonizing, but I had no time to be discomfited. My body was whole and I had proved myself, and now came the next move.

“A trick!”

Uasti's girl had run forward, nearer to the back of the cave where the god stood. Furiously she screamed, spitting white flecks in her terrified anger.

“Can't you see it's a trick! Don't let the murderess escape her punishment!”

The vague murmurs rumbled again, but I called, “No trick at all,” and I stooped down to the green cloak, and ripped a piece out of it, stood, and dropped it on the torch. At once the material caught and flared up, turning black in a moment. The crowd pressed closer now, but their intensity was a different thing. I began to hear the words.

“She's innocent. The spirit of Uasti protects her.”

“Wait,” I shouted, and they stopped like horses who feel the reins suddenly pulled hard in their mouths. “All is not done. The god is angry at the death of the healer. Someone here is a murderer. If not I, then who?” It was the moment of attack and not defense, and I took a fierce joy in it, I who had been the quarry until now. “You!” I pointed at a plump woman near the front. “Was it you?” and she shrank away, pale with shock. “Or you?” and I turned on a skinny, narrow-skulled man in the center, whose mouth dropped open, showing the dismal stares of a few, coyly distributed gray teeth. “Tell your men to bring those two here,” I hissed at Geret, and in a moment the stupefied man and whimpering woman were dragged struggling to the god.

I went to the woman first, and, as I possessed her terrified eyes, I said, “Have no fear. If you are innocent, Sibbos will protect you. Touch Uasti's hand and she will protect you too.”

The woman—calmed, sure of her innocence, and under my will now—touched the dead paw, and then meekly let me lead her to the torch.

“If she is guiltless,” I cried out, “the fire will be cool and pleasant to her as water.”

I guided her arm, so that her hand went into the flame up to the wrist, and she gasped at it, like a child who has just seen a sea, or a sunset, or a mountain for the first time—knowing, yet delighted and amazed. The voice rose up hysterically. I drew out her plump unmarked hand, and dabbed a few drops from the copper water cup across her brow. She woke dazed and smiling. The man was next, but it was the same. The crowd was in ferment now, bubbling and chattering. I stared down at them, and motioned with one hand.

“Not I, not these,” I called out. “Who, then?”

I saw that the girl who had been Uasti's was at the very front, where she had pushed her way, yet she was moving now trying to get back. Panic was beginning to distort her face. Abruptly, she saw me turned to her, and she stopped quite still. I began to walk toward her, and another of the quietnesses dropped around us. I went very slowly, yet in a straight line, not looking to either side, only at her. The closer I got, the more she shrank away, but she could not seem to move. In any case, the crowd would not have let her.

When I was a foot or so away, I said, “You, too, must prove your innocence before Uasti and the god,” and many willing hands pushed her forward into mine.

It was cruelly easy, she had no strength left. I did not have to do anything to her, her own guilt and the natural fire would be enough. Yet I was not prepared for what happened—a phenomenon close to the one I had conjured, yet in reverse.

I pulled her to Uasti's corpse and said, “Touch her hand, and, if you are innocent, she will protect you, and the fire will not burn,” and then she began to struggle and weep.

“I am afraid, I am afraid.”

“Why?”

“She is dead—a dead thing! I can't bear to touch the dead!”

At once the great mob voice rose in the hall.

“The trial! The trial! The trial!”

I wrenched the wailing girl's right hand and forced it down onto Uasti's. And then the thing happened. The girl gave a terrible shriek, animal, mindless, which cut the chant like a sword. She flung backward on her heels and fell down before the wooden chair, and her right palm was turned upward so all could see the blackened flesh, seared to the bone.

Now the noise came loud and total, the triumph and fury and hate. Before any could stop them—and who indeed tried?—the women had the body of the girl, and had borne it away to savage it like wolves, as they would have savaged me. Yet the girl was dead, had died the moment she touched Uasti's hand.

Sick at last, I picked up the green robe and drew it on. What power the girl had possessed after all, inside herself, and had never found the key to it, only the razor edge of it which destroyed her.

5

There was to be no thaw that winter. Uasti's good sense, if not the auguries, had been true.

The line of wagons, guarded by the red moving hedge of the torches, toiled upward over narrow Ring Pass, to the accompaniment of the howling blizzard winds of the east, and their whirling white frenzy of new snow. At least we were free of the wolves now, for they do not like the east winds, though they have their voice.

I rode in Uasti's wagon, among her things, which I knew very well at last, and considered mine. The boy drove the shaggy horses for me, as for her, and a different girl, quiet as a mouse, brought me the food I asked for, and came with me to carry my healer's stuff when I went among the sick. There was not much they needed. They were, on the whole, a healthy crew. One broken limb I set, and took away the pain; a few fevers that were over and done in a day or so; a birth, easy and uncomplicated, with a mother who knew very well what she was at. That time, it was the healer who learned, but the knowledge might well prove useful later. And they called me Uasti.

The strangest thing of all was what happened with the black, tuft-eared cat. For two days after Uasti's death, I could not find her, and where she went I do not know, for we were traveling by then. But on the third day, early in the morning, I woke and found her seated on my belly, washing herself, and going up and down with my breathing. I fed her and did not expect anything from her, but she would follow me about the wagon and the camp, when we made one, and sit on my knees purring. She, too, it seemed, had let me replace Uasti. I loved her beauty, and was glad of her, and the bond did not impose a conscious tie on me.

Geret was my other concern. He went in fear of me, a fear so deep now, he would never lose it. This suited me, but I did not want him to seem so suspiciously afraid of me before the wagoners, only to respect my position as healer, as they would think fitting.

At our next camp—under an overhang, a poorly protected spot, but caves were rare now—I went to his wagon. He was drinking after the evening meal with a few of the other merchants, but when he saw me, he hurried them out, and sat waiting nervously.

“Geret,” I said, sitting opposite to him in my healer's black, the new robe the women had made me. “You have done very well. Sibbos extends his favor to you and I, though we have had our differences before, am well pleased. I have heard them say that in a day or so—perhaps the day after tomorrow—we will reach the tunnel through the Ring. I have heard too that this is, in its way, as dangerous a journey as through the snow. It is time the wagons had a true leader, not a group of men arguing, who all claim the title from time to time. It seems to me that you are the strongest and best organized, therefore it should be you.”

I could see he was pleased. To have complete and acknowledged control of the wagons, to be factual instead of titular head, would carry many advantages. It would also end the bickering, and the mishaps and trouble that bickering always causes.

“Yes,” he said, “yes, Uasti. But how can I do it? One day they call for me, the next for Oroll or another. I have my men, but so have Oroll and the rest.”

“I will do it for you,” I said. “I have the ear of Sibbos, and it is the god's mind that I speak.”

He looked crafty suddenly, knowing, amused, and not at all in awe.

“But,” I said, “remember, if you are the temporal power, I am the spiritual. The fire of the god be upon you if you disobey me once you lead.”

His face drained yellowish.

“Yes, healer,” he said quickly, “I'll remember, I swear it.”

* * *

In a way, this should have been more difficult than it was. However, there were certain things in favor of Geret. He was not a particularly strong character for all his pomposity, yet he had cunning. Oroll, who should have carried more weight of authority, was too indecisive when it came to the point of action. Geret, on the other hand, would act, even if wrongly. The wagoners were split into six sections, the people and servants of Geret's caravan, and the people and servants of the other five. Originally each group owed allegiance to its own merchant-lord, but, as there were substantially more men and women in Geret's portion than in any other of the single units, their voice tended to be loudest. In addition to this, Geret's henchmen wore his own blue and brown uniform. All the merchants had a guard, but Geret's, dressed up for the occasion, tended to act in a more soldierly fashion, given this psychological impetus. The last factor in Geret's favor was his cargo—wheat and corn and the ready-made flour. It was his work to provide bread for the journey, and, while they could have lived on their stores of salt meat, dry cheese, and fruits, the warm fresh bread was a comfort to them. This seemed perhaps the best explanation as to why the whole caravan had styled itself “Geret's people” from time to time. But, like the god, they had only turned to him when they were hungry.

In the matter of the god, I had already altered their habits. His power was important to me for it was the cloak of mine. Therefore I offered a prayer to him, morning and evening, and they had fallen into the way of praying with me. When I helped the sick, I invoked his name. When we made camp, the robed statue was set up in shelter, and I would give him thanks for our safety. No one was commanded to these worshipings, but most came. So belief had become an ever-present thing, more important than before. Now it was very useful to me, for it was through Sibbos that I made Geret leader.

When I went to pray before him, the morning after I had visited Geret's wagon, I stood rather longer than usual, then turned and looked back at the crowd. It was one of the endless iron-gray days, bitterly cold, and they were huddled close.

“I must read the auguries,” I said to them, “for there is danger.”