The Birthgrave (37 page)

“Well, then,” I said, “we ride in two days.”

“No, goddess.
We
do not. You will remain at Za.”

I saw then that it had finally come, the moment of my elimination—not to death, but to womanhood and uselessness—and I had not been ready for it. It is true I did not want to ride with him across the bitter white wastes to make war on a name. But I wanted less the role into which he was so gently thrusting me.

“I too,” I said, “ride southward.”

“Though a goddess,” he said, “you are a woman. I have heard of your brawl with my soldiers over the village slut, but that is not enough to carry you through a battle.”

“I know nothing of you,” I said, “and you, Vazkor, know nothing of me. The world beyond the Ring would not interest you, so I will not tell you what I did there.”

“You lay with a man named Darak,” he said, “who resembled me.”

Of course it was quite logical he could have deduced as much from our first meeting, but it was shocking and painful to have him talk of it in this way, as if he knew all of it. Suddenly I began to tremble, and could not speak to him. I turned from him and walked toward the doors of my bedchamber, then stopped because he had followed me.

“I believe you did as I told you to in the matter of So-Ess' wife,” he said behind me. “I gather she is both happy and hopeful. I have set you very high, and it is time you carried my seed to remind them you are mated with me.”

I stood in the doorway, petrified. It was not the act I feared, it was the act's intention and purpose, and this man, so totally passionless in all he did, who was prepared to lie with me as passionlessly. I could not imagine such a thing between us. And yet I could. Suddenly my sense came back to me. There was nothing to be gained by denials. This moment was his, and it would be foolish to struggle against it.

“You are my husband and lord,” I said courteously, “you may lie with me whenever you choose, since I have found you acceptable and pleasing to me.”

We went into the large dove-carved room, and he shut the doors behind us. There was no one else there, the women had long since gone away. A few candles flickered, almost burned out, casting a dim thin light. One of Asren's jeweled books lay by the bed.

I removed my garments without speed or hesitation, and let them lie where they fell. I began to think of Geret whom I had helped elect leader of the wagon people, Geret who feared me and raped me—though it was little enough to me what he did. Turning to Vazkor, I saw him standing quite still, clothed and silent. I lifted my hands, and pulled the mask from my face. His eyes narrowed, that was all. There was no longer any power in my ugliness to protect me against him. I let my hands fall. I went, and lay down on the silken bed. After a moment, he came and stood over me.

“You see, Vazkor,” I said, “I am quite submissive.”

Two candles fluttered and went out together, then another, and another. Darkness was settling. He did not bother to remove his clothes, only what was necessary. Geret. Yet Vazkor could not sicken me or make me laugh at him. I could not best him afterward with cold water, and the threat of a fat white god. I had forgotten he must touch me, I had forgotten he would be clever in what he did, I had forgotten his weight on me would feel like Darak in the dark, the hands would be Darak's hands, even without their scars. Even the moving shaft between my thighs. . . . Despite his silence, there was a kind of opening in me I could not help, and yet I hung above it, watching my own responses as if it were a dream. I do not know if he found pleasure in it. He did not seem to. For him it was another achievement, something else settled. He was so perfectly controlled, so perfectly indifferent, I did not even know his moment of helplessness until it was past.

His long hair brushed my face as he pulled away and left me, not Darak's hair at all. The candles were dead. In the dark he said, “Thank you, goddess. I hope I shall return before the birth.”

It was ridiculous, his certainty, yet it chilled me. I said nothing, and soon he went away. I lay cold on the bed until at last the moon shone in on my nakedness and I found my sleeping mask and put it on. The clock began to strike the second hour of morning, and then the third, fourth, and fifth hours. My sleep had not been good in Za the Dove.

3

For two days the armies of Ammath, So-Ess, and Kmiss rumbled and clattered into Za. There was a great deal of noise and confusion, but I heard little of it, nor of the dreadful clock. I had sent for a physician, and, sorting out from among his herbs and drugs things my time with Uasti had taught me to recognize, I made myself a sleeping draft. It seemed absurd I had not thought of it before. For two nights and the day between I slept without waking. I opened my eyes in an oddly silent dawn, and they were gone, Vazkor and his war-force and the wagons of their train.

I rose, bathed and dressed, and called Mazlek to me.

“Is there more of the fighting force to pass through Za?”

“Yes, goddess,” he said, “there are several blocks of troops still to come, and a great deal of foot. They'll be marching through the City for many days.”

I told him we were going to join Vazkor, and he seemed surprised but pleased at this prospect of action. Yet it was a strange business. I waited patiently until the fourth day after Vazkor's departure. In the afternoon five hundred riders and two hundred on foot arrived from Ammath, under the command of a huge blond man, fully armed for the march, as his men were not. They quartered themselves under the walls in the palace field, or found billets in the city, and it was a noisy night. At dark, lit by the torches of my escort, I crossed the short grass among the tent lanes, and arrived at the vast scarlet pavilion. Under a black cloak I wore the full regalia of the goddess. The sentries knew me at once, and within minutes I had entered and was facing the nervous, startled commander. He had been drinking not long since, and was at great pains to conceal the fact. He gave me a tall chair and paced about the table, not knowing what to do with me.

“Commander,” I said at last, when his jerky courtesies had petered out, “I have been expecting your answer all day.”

“My—my
answer
!” he exclaimed, stopping still.

“To fit my men for the march.”

His unmasked eyes were round and stupefied.

“I can see, commander,” I said, “the messengers did not reach you. I am to ride with my husband the overlord on this campaign. The honor of arming me has been left to Ammath.”

His face red with shock, he began to apologize and assure me of immediate concurrence with the wishes of the overlord.

It entailed a delay of two days for Ammath, but nevertheless Mazlek and his eighty were superbly fitted from among the march-wagons, both for themselves and their horses. The commander nervously inquired what I would choose for myself, but the armor was no use to me at all. They do not, as a rule, make it for women, and so it cannot be fitted secondhand; in addition to which, every piece was far too large and bulky, and would probably have fallen off the instant my horse achieved a gallop. I chose only knives, therefore, and a long bright sword without a device. When he began to protest that I must be fitted separately—further delay of many days, and, in addition, iron breastpieces which would chafe me raw—I told him I needed only to attack, not to defend. He cleared his throat and nodded, assuming me, I suppose, clothed in my god-head and invulnerable. Yet every hurt I would suffer from, even if I could not die. It simply did not seem important. I do not think I had even visualized battle as such, I was thinking only of how Vazkor had determined to shut me away in Za, and that I would not be shut.

During this time, a cohort of So-Ess rode in and out of Za, and soldiery from Za itself went clattering under the vaulted archway, southward. The last night, as I sat late in my apartments, preparing a formal letter to my host, the yellow-crested Javhovor, one of my women ran in to me and informed me he had come in person.

He entered and bowed deeply, and fidgeted with his mask. I asked him what he wanted.

“Goddess, pardon me, but I understood you were to remain here, in Za.”

“How did you understand such a thing?”

“Lord Vazkor . . .” He hesitated. “The overlord entrusted your well-being to my care. He—explained matters. Your delicate condition . . .”

I looked at him stonily, and he flushed.

“Delicate?” I asked him. “Why?”

“The—
pregnancy,”
he got out in a throaty whisper.

It was at once laughable and macabre.

“The Lord Vazkor is, I am afraid, quite mistaken,” I said. “Therefore you have no need to dissuade me from going, and indeed, I should strongly advise you not to do so. You will dismiss your guards from my doors at once. Any further attempts to restrain my person will be dealt with by my own guard. You will remember who I am and the Powers I possess. Did you wish me to demonstrate?”

He whitened and drew back, trying to find adequate words.

“I understand your dilemma,” I said kindly. “You are torn between your desire to obey Vazkor, and your desire not to anger me. However, it is really quite easy. I am here, and Vazkor is not. Now go, and do not trouble me with any of this again.”

He bowed, and withdrew shakily, and I never saw the guard I had guessed he brought with him, poor confused fool.

* * *

We rode out at daybreak into hard bright sunlight.

The road sloped down from the platform of the city, out into the white empty desert, yet it seemed very beautiful that day, sparkling like diamond under the clear pale sky. Far away to the east, I could make out now the faintest ghosts of those mountains which led to and enclosed Eshkorek Arnor. There a man had sat, waiting on the Council at Za for the death of a tortoise, and Vazkor's word, “Now
you
are Javhovor.”

We made good time, for the wagons were few and did not slow us overmuch. At night the metal walls went up, the fires flared. Mazlek would come to me and teach me a little of war, but not too much; tired from the riding, I found sleep easy and pleasant. I was treated with great respect and courtesy. Ammath's commander clearly thought he was pleasing everyone. No doubt he was actually looking forward to the time when he might deliver me safe, honored and duly armed to my delighted husband.

I gathered Vazkor had set the meeting place for all his forces at a spot they called Lion's Mouth. Near this place, where great rock hills thrust up to make a stockade around Purple Valley, was a narrow pass leading downward. In winter such passes were blocked by snow, and there was some speculation and discontent as to how Vazkor planned to make a way through, or how long the wait would be until the spring thaw did the work for him. In any case there was grumbling. A winter campaign across the War March was a rare and uncomfortable thing.

As we rode nearer to the hills, we passed into a strange new landscape—frozen water courses, thin sprinkling of woodland, the trees stripped, the branches broken by snow. There were a few villages here, and the usual soldierly thefts took place, but there was no rape this time, perhaps only because they kept their women better hidden. Here also we began to catch up with and pass the long grinding processions of great wheeled cannon, siege-towers and other machines of war, dragged along by chains of mules or dead-eyed dark men. They left great black rut-trails over the white ground. Overseers prowled along the straining lines, long whips flicking up and down like the writhing tongues of serpents. On the tenth day two mules dropped dead at once as we passed, their hearts burst by the great metal ram they were hauling. The men with the whips cursed and shouted angrily, but it caused a great deal of laughter among the Ammath soldiers. I turned my head away from the twin shapes lying like a pattern on the snow. I do not know why it distressed me so much to see an animal die when human death did not move me. Perhaps because they were more beautiful, and there is no corruption in them, while in the best of men there can always be found some guilt or wickedness which seems to have earned him death.

* * *

The rocky hills grew and hardened into purple darkness ahead of us. The broken woodland clustered and withdrew. Birds embroidered the sky from time to time, and dawn brought a scattering of white wolves with it, nosing about the camp walls, and howling their flesh-lust.

“There are animals in the hills, then?” I asked Mazlek.

“A few, goddess.”

“More now,” I said, nodding around me at the soldiers and horses. He grinned.

Having sighted the hills, it took us two days to reach them, three to scale the first slopes, for they go up and down, and there is no road or short way around. On the morning of the fourth day of climbing the Ammath commander rode back to me politely.

“Up there, goddess”—he pointed—“the Lion's Head. Top it, and we'll reach the Mouth—probably before sunset.”

I looked where he indicated, and saw a great formless chunk of black and snowed-white rock. It did not to me look even remotely like a lion, though I suppose in days long past it must have, presumably.

“There are the jowls,” he was proudly telling me, “and the eye, and that stratification forms the mane.”

“Ah, yes,” I said.

Topping the head, a horse fell and broke a foreleg and they killed it. The shadows lengthened, the sky was low-slung and empty of sunset color. A sense of coldness and melancholy seeped into me. I had begun to fear my meeting with Vazkor after all.

There was a twisting track now, looming rock walls on either side, then an opening, and below a great snow-bound dip, terraced and falling away at its far end to a piled-up chaos of giant boulders. Beyond them there seemed to be a drop, where the heads of other rocks stood out faintly in the thickening color of dusk. In the dip itself a vast camp stretched out, milling like a hive. Already the red points of torches. Smoke from fires drifted up. There must be thousands grouped here, apart from the wagons, machinery, and picketed animals. Away to the east of the dip natural arches opened into further levels where other parts of the armies and their lights were moving back and forth.