The Birthgrave (41 page)

I lay in the sheets, unable to lift my head. I said, “I will not bear this child.”

“You will,” he said.

That was the deadlock between us.

He went out, and the two Belhannese princesses returned, and gazed in abject terror at me.

Sleep.

* * *

He rode out with his army in the morning, as he had said he would, he, the warlord, going on to his conquests. And I was left behind, with no hope of following.

I am not certain what injuries I had had, but in another day I was well enough to rise and walk about my suite of white marble and tapestried hangings.

I was not sure at first what I would do, but gradually I became determined to wrest what I could from the situation—a dry gourd indeed.

From the windows of my apartments I looked out over the snow-draped vistas of the City, gardens below, an icy greenish river straddled by three vast bridges of stone, towers, and winding streets, and terraces of steps. She seemed to have suffered no damage, here at least in her High Quarter. I learned from Mazlek that her capitulation had been swift and total. The Javhovor had kneeled and kissed Vazkor's gauntleted fingers in the gate-street. They were not used to the true burning breath of war, these Cities which had fought their toy battles for centuries.

Toward evening, after the lamplighting, I sent word to Attorl that I wished his presence. He came promptly enough, dressed for some festive occasion in magenta velvet and many jewels. He was a minor princeling, pretty and well-mannered, with a very small mouth. Silvery fair hair coiled on his shoulders. He wore a phoenix mask when he entered, but drew it off for me.

“I understand, prince, that Belhannor has been left in our charge.”

A little surprise. He had understood Belhannor had been left in
his
charge.

“I see your puzzlement, prince,” I said graciously. “Naturally, you are commander of all our forces here. But equally naturally, your rulings are subject to my authority.”

He looked dismayed, but did not think to question it. I was, after all, Uastis Reincarnate, and he believed in my religious power, if he did not take kindly to my temporal aspirations. He bowed, acknowledged what I had said, and I let him go. Thereafter, I was plagued by every petty affair which must be seen to—the curbing of very minor disturbances, posting of guards to police the streets, diversion of supplies to our armies. My interference was confined mostly to setting my seal on documents already attended to by Attorl, or rather by his advisers and scribes, for paperwork of any kind distressed him. Nevertheless, it held for me some vestige of recognition.

The silver-robed princesses who attended me were, I discovered, daughters of the Javhovor himself. They became my official maidens, and each bore that cumbersome and incongruous fan of honor. They spoke only in answer to my commands, which pleased me well enough, and their fright never ebbed. Their father, a pale plump anxious man, came and paid homage to me of his own accord, and sent me sumptuous gifts of jewelry, silks, perfumes, and magnificently bound books, which rivaled even those I had of Asren's.

* * *

It was a dreadful time. Like the numbed white snow that would not break for spring, so my life seemed hardened and numbed by a covering I could not break.

It seemed I had nothing left, only these trivial pieces of power, my own Power, which came with hate, and grew in me day by day like a cancer. And that other cancer he had left in me, which grew also. I did not suffer the troubles most human women experience, there was no sickness or pain, only a sense of heaviness, out of all proportion to what I carried. From the eightieth day of pregnancy, the mark of my subjugation began to swell out from me. I realized I was not very big, nor did I grow very big, yet it seemed to me then that I was huge and bloated. To make it worse, the slimness of the rest of my body persisted; even my breasts grew only a little. More than ever, in the loose velvet gowns I had now to wear, the thing in my womb seemed an imposition, something nailed onto my own self, thrusting out, taking possession; a haunting.

Three times I tried to be rid of it—once by my own will, but the pain was terrible, and I could not force myself to go on; once simply by drinking too much of their wine, which did nothing. The third time I rode out of Belhannor to one of the tiny steadings still left standing at her foot (Vazkor had razed most of them before Belhannor bowed, and her walls were stained with their smoke). Only Mazlek and Slor rode with me for the sake of secrecy, but I spoke the tongue of the Dark People well enough to find their healer-woman, and ask her to assist me. She showed none of the alarm or surprise which would have met me in the City. She motioned me into her hut, and there I lay through the afternoon and night in a stinking blur of firelight, sickness, and fear. I had not realized there were so many varieties of pain—pain sharp and bright as silver, pain which burns like molten gold, and the dull booming bronze pain which comes after.

Finally she leaned over me in the predawn grayness.

“Is it finished?” I asked her.

“No,” she said. She gave me no title at any time, and few words.

“What now, then?” I whispered, fighting back my panic at the thought of new horrors done to me.

“Nothing now,” she said. “A loving child. He will not be parted from you.”

So I called Mazlek, and he and Slor helped me mount and ride away. I did not see their faces behind their masks, and I was glad of it.

For several days I was violently ill, vomiting, and in great discomfort, and all that while I willed myself to lose Vazkor's seed, but it was no use. I suffered, and perhaps the thing inside me suffered, but it would not let go.

News reached us by messenger of two Cities which had fallen in the forest land farther south, to Vazkor and his men.

7

Sixty days had passed for me in Belhannor, and we had entered the month which in Purple Valley is called the Time of Green. The spring is usually stirring by then, but the snow lay thick and hard across the city and the valley floor. Anxiety grew, the fear that always comes when an established pattern falters. The white-robed priests of their Temple offered lambs and pigeons to their goddess, a custom I had not seen in action since Ankurum. I recalled Za and the three days' darkness, and so was not very surprised when Attorl requested an audience, and entered with the Javhovor a few paces behind him.

“Goddess,” they both intoned, and the eyes in their unmasked faces swiveled nervously from my belly.

“What do you want?”

“There's unrest, goddess,” Attorl said, playing with a neckchain. He looked bored with the unrest. “There's some disturbance about the weather—men running around the streets, a mad woman going about shouting doom. . . .”

“Goddess,” the Javhovor said uneasily, “there have been prayers in the temples and in the great Temple of our goddess, but the snow does not break. Now in humility, we turn our eyes to you—Vazkor Overlord spoke of your power—dare we hope . . . ?”

I say I was not surprised, but neither was I pleased. Power, yes, but over elements and seasons? They expected a good deal of me, and if I failed—what? And if I refused—what?

As I sat in my chair, disgustingly aware of my condition before their embarrassed eyes, the old festering anger woke in me, snarling, and I recalled abruptly the no-voice which had said, “Magicianess, who ruled the elements, the stars, the seas, and hidden fires of earth.”

I am not certain what kind of knowledge was on me then, but I got to my feet and said, “The palace of Belhannor has a temple, too, I think? Then take me there and leave me there.”

Both Attorl and the Javhovor looked startled, but I was conducted along the passages to a great door, manned by six of the royal guard.

“Let me alone in here,” I said, “and when the door is shut on me, tell them to pray in your City.”

Inside, closed in, a small golden room. So intense was this sudden irrational motivation, I had not even flinched from their goddess, in case she were Orash' sister; but she was not. She was small and beautiful, her head covered by a golden sunburst and hung with pendants of the jade so special in every southern hierarchy. Before her, the stone bowl, held in claws of gold. The flame was very low as I went toward it.

I did not know why I did what I did. I leaned over the flame, and whispered, “I am strong, even now, I am strong. Your Power and mine will be a great strength.”

There were no words in my brain, I sensed only a tremendous struggle, not in the least physical, but nonetheless exhausting. I fought against the writhing thing, and finally it was still. I stood with my eyes shut, and my hands on the sides of the bowl, and pulled something up from within me, tense and bright and unwilling.

There seemed to be no time spent, yet I had stood here forever. It was very quiet. I pulled at the thread, and when it pierced my skull, I found a way out for it above and between my eyes.

It had seemed such an intense yet tiny thing to do, but now there was a terrible blast of sound, a great crashing of thunder over the palace roof, and the snapping violence of lightning searing through my closed lids. I found I could not open my lids, but I was not afraid. Rain came smashing like glass against the high shutters, and in the noise and light I lost my balance and fell, and lay there with my eyes still fast shut, and now I knew what it was I wanted.

At the time, it made sense to me, though afterward it was only a blur of shapes and feelings. I had the mastery of the enormous storm which would melt the snow with its boiling drops, and I turned it a little, like a wild horse, so that half its face was toward the armies of Vazkor. I did not know where they were at that time, bivouacked, perhaps, at the feet of the fifth City of Purple Valley, in the woodland there—though a picture formed of a frozen narrow river, and marching sounds came to me, and grinding wheels. I pushed the storm head and the lightning bit into my lids. Everything was lost in thunder.

I opened my eyes quite suddenly and got to my feet. I was trembling and shaking, but I felt very excited and happy. The flame was flat in its bowl, and the cold sky-blaze came and went on the walls.

I sat on one of the prayer-seats of the Javhovor and his family and tried to be calm, but it was difficult. The storm died slowly, and afterward the rain droned on for several hours. I think I fell asleep, for the golden room was abruptly red and purple from a stormy sunset beyond the windows.

I went to the door, and out, and the guards kneeled down in front of me. I was tired and locked inside myself, and ignored them. A little way on, I found Mazlek, my escort to my suite.

“In the City,” I said, “what?”

“A storm, goddess. And now the sky is clear.”

* * *

I dreamed I was with Asren, a strange dream, for though I knew it to be him, his features and his beauty unmistakable, he seemed little more than a child. Strange, too, because we were walking, hand in hand, very happily, in some green garden place. Then there were many white steps, and at the bottom, one of those stone bowls in which they kept alight the symbol of the Unawakened, the symbol which was Karrakaz. The child Asren stared down at the bowl, then looked at me questioning, and I smiled and pointed, and nodded. He leaped from the steps in answer to that nod, and fell into the bowl, and the flames covered him.

The storm had swept Belhannor clear of snow and the black slush which followed. The skies were golden, and there was a new warmth in the air. I think I had forgotten half of what I did, or tried to do, in the palace temple. Certainly I did not think of it until I was reminded. Days passed, and buds were breaking on the trees. Beyond the walls, fields saved from the fires of war were melting into greens and citrons. They sang hymns to me in the City, the goddess who had ridden to destroy them, and now blessed.

We were seventeen days into our sudden spring, when the first of the messengers reached us. It was a dramatic entry, a frenzied man, shouting incoherently at the palace gates, whose horse dropped frothing and dead from under him.

I heard the hum of excitement in the corridors beyond my rooms, and sent one of Mazlek's men to discover what was happening. I had, however, no need to wait on him. The Javhovor came to me, and his face was yellow with alarm.

“Goddess,” he said, “a man has come. The overlord and his armies—a storm among the High Woods—that is the forested hill line that runs east of us—an avalanche, massive accumulations of snow, and broken trees and rocks brought down with it, all loosened by the rain, and the river An in flood. Ah, goddess, many lost—”

I had risen, a cold hardness in me.

“And he?” I asked. “Is there word of my husband?”

“Safe,” he said, glad to reassure me, “quite safe. But the army greatly depleted—and there are other troubles.”

They had been making for Anash it seemed, the mistress City of the river, and fifth of their goals. Now, cut off in sections by the avalanche, and in distress, the army found itself harried by troops of Anash, which had swiftly seized all advantage.

In the next few days other messengers came, and the story grew. A battle fought now, and Vazkor's men routed. Vazkor and a handful of his captains holed up in the hills, striving to pull together what was left to them from a morass of casualties, sick men, and deserters. The winter campaign was taking its toll at last. There was a disease at work, and rations were scarce since the disaster of the avalanche.

I had thought I might see now the gleam of defiance in Belhannese eyes, but in my stupidity I had forgotten all the divided angers of the three Cities which still stood, and worse—the fury of Anash and Eptor, which had escaped Vazkor's greed. Those two had joined to fight him off, and, his power smashed, might well turn their vengeance on their sister Cities, which had let him pass so easily, and where remnants of his force still lingered.

A rider came—the last messenger we were to receive. He brought word that Vazkor and his armies were no more—all slain, or dead of the sickness, or broken up into packs to run like jackals for the safety of the mountains. An abrupt end to war-might. The man enumerated those dead he could, among them Attorl's uncle, whereupon, apparently, Attorl collapsed weeping. No doubt when they brought me news of Vazkor's end, they looked for similar results. But I felt nothing, not even triumph, for I knew he was not dead.