The Birthgrave (45 page)

“Did she see you, Mazlek?”

“No. I hid myself, but little need. I think her sight is weak, and her mind is worse. There is a moving panel, and steps beyond.”

“Does it open only to her?”

“No, goddess. When she had come back, and was gone again, I tried the place—a harlot of a wall, open to anyone.” For a moment he paused, the light flickering softly on his mask. Then he said, “She carried food of a kind, slops in a bowl. When she came back, she did not bring it with her.”

“Mazlek,” I said. My heartbeat was a fiery pain under my breast.

“If you would prefer to remain here, goddess, I will go there alone.”

“No,” I said.

He nodded, and turned away down the stairway, and I followed him.

I did not believe it, even then—could not let myself believe it. Yet I knew, with desperate certainty. Each step downward made me more impatient for the next, but, at the same moment, I was terrified.

It was a long way. Abruptly we reached the black vaulted place where they kept their wine and oil, and almost mesmerized by the endless winding stairs, I stumbled. Mazlek steadied me and I clutched his arm.

“Mazlek,” I said hoarsely, “do you believe the prisoner here is who I believe it to be—or am I mad?”

“Asren, Phoenix, Javhovor of Ezlann,” he said, as hoarsely as I.

I let out my breath in a stifled sigh.

“Yes, Mazlek. Yes.”

His hand settled on half invisible notchings in the wall. I thought it would not open, and almost screamed, but there came a soft grinding sound, and an area of dark stone slid sideways. Beyond, the light tripped itself on the worn treads of thirty steps, which I counted irresistibly as we descended, insanely struggling to keep my hysteria in check. Mazlek, too, was unsteady. The light flicked and slipped on the walls, and I heard his breathing, harsh and uneven.

There was a smell of death—the smell of a tomb.

We reached a stone floor; on either side walls pressed close—a narrow passage. At the end of the passage, a wooden door, simply bolted on the outside.

We stopped, staring at the door. Impossible that in that moment of finding we stood there petrified. Then I ran toward the door, breaking my nails as I scrabbled at bolts, and Mazlek was there too in a second, reaching for others.

The door jerked, and we pulled it open.

The shuddering lamplight jumped on a tiny oblong room, windowless, and carpeted by reeking sacking. A figure sat facing us, cross-legged, covered in the rags and dirt of its imprisonment. Young, male, silent. Fair hair, streaked and matted, lay on the shoulders in tangled coils. Slowly the face was raised, catching a little of the light. Black-blue eyes looked into mine. Under the filth, a delicacy, chiseled too fine perhaps, beauty, yet not feminine in the least. . . .

“My lord,” I whispered, “Asren—”

I took a step forward, but Mazlek's hand fell brutal and burning on my shoulder.

“No, goddess.” His voice was tight, bruising as his fingers.

“Why . . . ? Why, Mazlek? Let me go.”

But I knew already. Neither he nor I could hold me back from a brink I had already fallen into.

The boy in the oblong room gave a little gurgling groan, and pulled himself away from the light of the lamp into one corner, where he curled himself into the protection of the fetal position.

I stood very still in the doorway, Mazlek behind, no longer any goal ahead of us, for we had found what we sought—Asren, Phoenix, Javhovor: but behind the eyes—nothing; behind the face—nothing. A brainless, helpless, whimpering thing, trapped in a body we remembered.

* * *

“Where is he?” I asked Vazkor.

“Who?”

“The Javhovor, my husband. He was with me before Oparr came.”

“The Javhovor is gone, goddess; he need trouble you no more.”

I remembered many things as I stood in the doorway. I remembered that never once had Vazkor spoken of him as if he were dead. I remembered Vazkor's story that I had been sick because Asren had tried to poison me—a story I did not believe even then. I remembered the underground room with its draperies and littered floor, and, at the center, gold and precious stuff—the fantastic tomb-case—the
empty
tomb-case. I remembered the Council at Za where the dead man who had been Eshkorek's High-Lord screeched at me, “Vazkor's witch-whore!” And the words took on a new meaning, for he must have known what had been sent to rot in his tower fortress—his propitiatory gift to the usurper. I remembered the lost word in the jeweled book of beasts. I remembered—

“Goddess,” Mazlek said.

“Yes,” I said, “yes. I know.”

I stared into the cell again. The creature which had been Asren had uncurled itself, and lay with its back to us on the sacks. My whole body was one throbbing wound of pity, and of disgust—I could not help it, I could not help it.

“Mazlek,” I whispered, “what now? We cannot leave him here—”

“No, goddess. But he—is like a child. And afraid. If I take him by force he'll scream, wake the Warden's guards and Vazkor's jackals.”

“Like a child,” I said.

I dreamed I was with Asren, a strange dream, for, though I knew it to be him, he seemed little more than a child. . . .

He had turned now, was facing me. The vacant black-blue eyes followed the swinging movement of the yellow silks hanging over my hair. I took Mazlek's knife and cut one of the strings. I shuddered as I entered the stinking room, but thrust my revulsion down. It was so unimportant. If I had loved, then I must love still . . . I held out the yellow silk, the amber marigold shimmering at its end. He gazed at it, and did not flinch from me when I kneeled down beside him. One hand reached up, patted at the shiny toy. There was a little spark of interest in the wide-open eyes. I put it into his hand.

“Come, Asren,” I said softly. I stroked the matted filthy hair from his face, and took his free hand. He let me draw him to his feet. At the door Mazlek took his other arm.

“Come, my lord,” he said.

I could not see him weeping because of the mask, but the tears were falling under it across his breast in dark streaks.

We left the dungeon, went through the cellars, and up the endless stairs to my chamber. Asren did not make a sound; fascinated by the piece of amber, he did not seem to notice anything else.

3

I went to Vazkor in the morning.

There was a man at his door, as Mazlek had said, but it was easy for me to get by him. It was early, but Vazkor was up, fully dressed though unmasked, seated at a table by the open window, reading from papers stretched before him. I had thought he might still be weak or ill, but he seemed neither. Perhaps my own distress gave his looks, for me, a visual edge, making him invulnerable, cruel and strong.

He rose, and stood looking at me, and at my borrowed clothes.

“Good morning, goddess. I must ask Eshkorek for a golden mask for you.”

“Vazkor,” I said, “I have found Asren.”

His face altered, a slight shifting of the dark planes. Impassively he said, “Really? It must have been unpleasant for you.”

“There is more to it than my displeasure. I have found him, and now I have him in my room. He is under my protection. What you have done to him is unspeakable—unforgiveable—I shall not let you do anything further.”

He regarded me a moment or so longer, then he turned away, and shuffled the papers together on the table.

“If you wish to act as his nursemaid, that is your own affair, goddess. You will have to feed and clothe him, bathe him, help him to achieve his human functions, and cleanse him afterward. Hardly a task I would have designated to your care. However, if it will ease your mind. I would only ask you not to overtax your own strength. You will have a child of your own shortly.”

“A child?” I said softly, feeling I would choke. “A
child! Your
seed, Vazkor. A thing which will carry, no doubt, the likeness of its sire. Why did you not kill him? Why did you kill only the brain?”

“He may still be of use to me. In his present state I can control him when and how I wish.”

“No,” I said.

“For the present, no,” he amended. “I am glad you have rescued him, goddess. You have perhaps anticipated events in a very fortunate manner.”

“You will not hurt him anymore,” I said.

“You forget, goddess, you also have destroyed men without reason. Your Mazlek will recall, I think, the wagoners you killed, simply to prove they were yours. Perhaps that will be your answer to me—to kill Asren when I come for him.”

I left him, and returning to my room, I thought of how I had kneeled by him in the cave, and wept because of him, and I felt I should go mad.

Yet, I had Asren safe for a while. For a while the black shadow would not trouble us.

* * *

He did not seem properly aware of his new surroundings. I could not tell if he were any happier or not. It was not I, after all, but the limping girl who attended to his bodily needs; she had seen to it before, and it did not appear to upset her. I hated myself then because I could not do these things for him, gave myself no peace, and yet, they were so alien to my own needs. . . . Perhaps I could have learned in time. But when he was clean, she would bring him in to me and I would dress him and feed him, like a small child. I do not recall there was any pleasure in this for me, any oblique maternal gratification. I remember I often cried as I did it, quietly, so as not to confuse him with my tears. He was easily confused, or scared, as a little child would have been. Rain beyond the window, some noise lower in the tower, the door of my room opened suddenly—any of these could shock him into hiding behind the nearest piece of furniture.

My days were absorbed in trying to occupy him—a piece of jewelry to play with, the shadows of my hands on the wall made into some animal shape, or a bird with finger wings. I found a way to the battlemented roof, and I would walk him there, Mazlek behind me, up and down, and around by the bleak parapet. Mazlek caught a mouse in the storeroom and brought it for him. We fed it scraps of cheese and bread, and it grew tame very quickly, and showed no desire to leave. Asren liked to watch the mouse, and stroke it when I held it for him. At these times that faint, far-off gleam of interest would come into his face, and I would grasp at the hopeless hope that I could repair his mind, and teach him to be as he was. But there was nothing left for me to heal. Nothing. He slept on a mattress by my bed; he could have had the bed, I the mattress, but the curtains frightened him and he would not sleep there. In the night I would lie awake listening to him breathe in sleep, calmly, sweetly. I could look at his face, sleep-smoothed, and see him as he had been, as I had never seen him then.

Besides all my time, I gave him all the love that remained unsoured within me. He had rejected me before, but now I was only a symbol to him, a security, and so he accepted the hand holding his, my caress on his face, and seemed comforted by them. Yet to me, it was a spoiled thing, almost necrophiliac, this embrace given to a body which would have thrust me off had it remembered, too dead now to know who embraced it.

Mazlek guarded us silently, closed in his own hell. He never spoke to Asren, but if he had to call him it was always by the meaningless title of “lord.”

* * *

It seemed a long while then, but I do not think it was so very long. Suddenly I came out of the half-dream in which I had been living. It occurred to me that days had passed, and that I did not know Vazkor's position, that I must learn of it, because it would affect Asren—this much Vazkor had implied. Of course, he had some use for him, though obscure to me now. Why else would Vazkor, who wasted nothing, no one, have kept him alive here?

That afternoon, when we went to walk along the parapet, I saw an Ezlann man standing in one of the jutting alcoves of the wall, and drew Asren back out of sight. A sentry, the first Vazkor had set. And he did not face south toward the valley, but north and west toward Eshkorek Arnor and the Cities of the desert.

I took Asren below. I did not want them to see him as he was.

A rose-red evening washed against the mountains, swimming with stars.

Mazlek told me Vazkor had called his men together in the hall, and instructed the Warden he should be present. The messenger, it seemed, had returned in the small hours from Eshkorek. For all I felt I did not sleep. I must have slept then, and had not heard the bridge grate out across its sinister moat, the hoofbeats, and weary steps in the courtyard. I left Mazlek to guard the door, and Asren inside it, and went alone downstairs to the hall.

A murky firelight and candle haze lay unevenly over the oval room. At the long table eight of Vazkor's men sat unmasked and openly drinking. The Warden with his guard stood near the hearth, and seemed uneasy. When I entered he glanced up at me nervously. Vazkor was not yet here.

“I expect we shall have some news now,” the Warden said.

“I expect we shall.”

I sat near the table in a tall chair, and waited.

When he entered, I could tell easily, without looking up. There was a contraction of movement all around me. The Warden, fidgeting and bowing, Vazkor's men coming to their feet, unembarrassed by their wine jars—presumably they knew how little he cared for certain City niceties.

He came to my chair and stopped, holding out a polite arm.

“Goddess.”

I rose and let him lead me to the table. He set me on his right, and pointed the Warden to the opposite end. The golden wolf's face turned, slowly, the hidden eyes examining each of them briefly—not me, but then, he knew me and there was no need.

“I sent a man to Eshkorek Arnor—perhaps you recall? Ah, yes, Warden. I see you do. It seems there is some trouble from the south—Purple Valley in arms. The desert Cities have wisely vowed to strengthen their alliance. Unwisely, they have elected a new overlord.”