The Birthgrave (52 page)

* * *

I had not been sure that they would even notice the theft—which was stupid of me; to a traveling people not of great wealth, all things of life must be accounted for.

In the morning there were startled cries, though not many. They were philosophic in their loss. No one came searching.

That day, too, they gathered themselves and moved on, away from the tower, going on foot, carrying their gear. A heavy mist had come down, and for some reason I went after them in its cover. Perhaps it was the need for food, though that, for the present, was gone. Still, I did not know how long I must travel before I reached clean water and edible berries. Or perhaps, at that time, I had become so used to living among people, I needed their presence near me. I had not liked my time alone in the rock valleys. And yet, I think it was as it had always been—something drew me, something ordered the disorder of my life.

While the mists held, following was easy. Once out of the water, the soft ground masked most sounds, and I could find their tracks if I lost them. I think it gave me a peculiar pleasure, too, to hunt them in this way, like an animal. Especially because they sensed me, and grew uneasy. Goats, women, and children now went in the middle, the thirty or so men moved around them, long sharp spears in their hands. I could not properly understand their tongue, which once more was new to me, but, from a word here and there, I gathered they thought it was indeed a beast which followed them, one of the carnivores of the rocks, strayed because of hunger, for the marsh held nothing fiercer than hand-span lizards.

I was a fool to keep behind them once I knew what they thought, but I think I had
become
half-animal in the wild—half-cat perhaps, after that encounter by the leaning stones. After three days of our partnership, the mist lifted, and I dropped back into the greenish reeds which were very tall here. They made their camp long before sunset, on a solid stretch of ground some way down from where I lay. There was a different feel to the land—better and cleaner. A river ran along the skyline. The reeds moved with a crisp, not a sluggish, sound.

There were many fires in which they stuck their sharp wood spears to harden them. They were so businesslike, there was so little paraphernalia, I did not realize for some while they were organizing a hunt.

Cold terror then. Yet more animal still than anything. I did not think to go into their camp openly—had never thought of it. Now I turned and maneuvered a way through the reeds.

I suppose I left smeared tracks—marks—the bruised and broken reeds. They were hunters after all. The sun was dipping low when I heard the first sound of them behind me.

In among the tall reeds I lost myself and my senses failed me; I seemed to hear them coming from every direction at once. I panicked and ran in circles. When the first dark shape parted the green curtain, I crouched low against the ground, and growled in my throat, because I could not remember any words, and I was all anger, fear, fury. I had not realized how the wild places had deprived me of the last vestige of myself, and I did not realize it then. Other shapes broke through the reeds and stood still, as the first had done.

There was a long silence, and in the silence the cat-fear-lust drained out of me. I stood up and looked at the nearest hunter. His face was very still, carved almost, yet he was surprised; his eyes gave it away at once. He said something to me. I did not understand. I shook my head. He made gestures with his hands and after a time I realized what he was asking: You followed us? I nodded. He smiled, and made a sweep toward the way they had come, then pointing to me, his eyebrows lifted. Incredible. He had said: Do you wish to come with us? They were being kind to me and tolerant, and I could not grasp it. Yet I grasped the hard fact. I shook my head in denial.
No,
I did not want to go with them. A rash thing to do, they might have killed me. But they did not. He nodded, turned, walked away through the reeds, and the other men followed him.

I still did not believe what had occurred until some moments after they were out of sight.

Then it came to me what I had been offered, and by whom. I ran after them, and caught them among the reeds, and they turned and looked at me inquiringly. I felt like a silly child when I nodded to them. The leader smiled again and walked on with his men, looking back only once to see if I were following.

1

T
HE DAY AFTER
I had come among them, the black tribe gained the river I had seen on the skyline, and crossed the brown water, either swimming or aided by those who could swim. There were tangles of rushes on the other side, and beyond that a drier, curving plain, dotted with many hanging trees, a species of vivid willow, shivering their lime-green hair over the stretches of water which still possessed the landscape.

They set their tents, tethered and milked their goats with sure narrow hands. I had learned little of them, except that they were calm, unquestioning, and generous, which had been quickly obvious. They had looked at me, not stared, when I had followed their chief into the krarl. They had offered me food, which I had refused, being no longer hungry. I could understand nothing of their tongue, but by signs and facial gesticulations, they let me know that I was welcome to travel with them and share their shelter. They asked for nothing in return. They indicated one of the black tents where I was to sleep, in company with two young unmarried women. I thought these two might resent this, but they gave no sign of it. One took me and showed me a secluded pool where I could wash, and gave me a black garment to replace my rags. Coming back from this excursion, having forgotten how to manage a long hem among reeds and brambles, the cloth caught on some thorn or other, and I stumbled. The girl caught my arm and helped me get free, smiling gravely when I thanked her. I had thought the difference in our skins might make me an object of loathing to them, yet I sensed no allergy in her touch. She had made me understand her name was Huanhad.

Dusk smothered the reeds, and she cooked a little meal on a fire by our tent. The two girls sat to eat, and again offered the food to me. I shook my head. Huanhad pointed to my shireen, and made a play of averting her eyes. It seemed she thought I could not eat in it. The women of the black krarl went unmasked, though apparently were acquainted with the female taboos of other tribes; Huanhad had not attempted to remove the mask, though she helped me remove my ruined shift. Again I shook my head, and they returned to their eating.

They came early to sleep, but first placed within the door flap three of the grayish cakes and a pitcher of water, exactly like the arrangement I found when I came among them to steal food. That night I was puzzled, but later, as I learned something of their tongue, I discovered that the cakes and water were an offering to their gods, put out freshly by each tent every night, so that any wandering deity might eat and drink if he chanced on the krarl in the darkness. No wonder there had been an outcry when they found an offering gone.

In the morning, before we set out for the river, their chief came to the tent. He managed to tell me about the crossing, and that the tribe was making east, yet not as I had thought to the fertile lands, but toward the sea. His name, he explained, was Qwenex, and he politely expressed the wish that they might name me also. As I was so ignorant of their tongue, a personal name might be essential, perhaps might even save my life if called to me in time of danger, when nothing else would make sense. I indicated that I had no name. He showed no particular surprise. He touched my forehead gently, and said the single word, “Morda.” It was, I found afterward, their name for ivory.

* * *

We spent two days traveling in the willow-green land beyond the river. Little waterways trickled by us, making, as we were, for the sea. In the dusk of the second day, coming from among the trees, I saw a small herd of horses at the stream on the slope below. They were wild, there could be no doubt of that, nor of their beauty; neither were they the mad man-devourers of the Eshkorek valleys. Their long heads dipped and lifted, arched necks turned, and the black oval gems of eyes stared at us. I thought they would leap the stream and run from us in the way of all wild horses, but they made no move to go. We went by them quietly, and they gave way to us. I saw Huanhad reach up her hand, and a black silk head reached downward in turn to brush her shoulder. Their leader nodded to Qwenex as he passed. They seemed neither afraid nor disdainful. Perhaps they sensed that these men at least would not leap high on their backs, choke them and break them, and burn out their strong lungs in the service of human commerce or war. I do not think I imagined that from me they averted their heads, politely and with dignity ignoring my existence.

In three days more the plain had paled and sharpened, giving way to limestone and crops of thorny trees. There was a strange tang in the air, a sea promise I did not yet recognize. What they sought by the salt shores I did not know. They were a quiet people. They neither ignored nor made a companion of me. Perhaps because of this gentleness and this protected solitude, or perhaps merely because it was the time for it, my sorrowing began. I can call it nothing else. I did not weep or tear at myself within. A weight was chained to me. It was not even regret, which is fruitless, nor despair, which has necessarily no reason. It was not terrible or unbearable in any way, although it was pain. It lasted three days and two nights. Not until it was past did the other petty miseries steal in. Then I wept.

On the sixth night I ate with Huanhad by the fire, and a woman came and sat with us, holding her child in her arms. I stared at the child across the fire flicker; it was as old as my child would have been, my child which I had abandoned in Ettook's krarl, to learn his disgusting ways and thoughts and deeds. Never before had there been any sense of loss. Before, always, it had been Vazkor's, a piece of him, his will imposed on me. I had been glad, glad to be rid of it. And now I saw it differently, for the first time. It had been also a part of me. And more than that, it had been an individual life, a new, a created thing, that I, by the unique laws of nature, had earned a right to participate in. And I had thrust my right away from me, thrown off the wage, confusing it with the hated labor.

I got up from the fire, and walked slowly away among the spiky thorn trees. I clung to them, and cried bitterly in bewildered distress. Yet all the while a cold voice murmured in my brain,
It will pass, fool. It will pass. Not for you, at this time.

I fell asleep among the trees, tasting salt on my lips from my tears and from the sea wind, and when I woke, I think I understood that it was my luxury to weep, not my right or even my need. I thought of the warrior he would become, and how he would protect Tathra as his mother from the jeering tribe. I had done well to leave my child with her. And it was easy to give what I did not want.

Yet as I walked through that day toward the unknown sea, all the ghosts and sins of my life came to me and hammered on me. I rode in the Sirkunix, watched Darak die, swung my sword in Vazkor's battles, shrank from the scarlet water of his death. White horses screamed under me, men fell in my defense with the faces of Maggur, Kel, Mazlek, Slor.

Huanhad came in the sunset and put her hand gently on my arm. I knew enough now to understand almost all of what she said to me.

“What is your trouble, Morda? You walk by yourself—mutter; is this a fever that you have?”

“Yes,” I said, “that is all it is.”

I went into the tent, and lay staring into the shadows until sleep picked me up, and I flew with burning fire-feathered wings across the black cliffs of my doubt.

Below, a great stretch of water crinkled moonlight. I soared above it, and away to the south, saw a shoreline scattered with broken, bone-white cities. I wheeled toward them, the wing-thrust in my ears like a wind-drum, beating with my heart. Over the black bright rollers of the sea, where the froth burst silver on the faces of the dunes and the bastions of crested rocks like the shattered bodies of dragons, eagles, giants.

But out of the white carcass of the cities a shape rose, a man's shape—Darak? Vazkor? He beat up toward me on black wings, and he grinned as he held wide his arms—not to embrace me but to keep me out. Nearer and nearer—I could see him well now, the plaits of his black hair, the scars on his sunburned skin, the tribal ornaments, the knife in his belt.

“Your son,” he shouted at me across the air which divided us. “Ettook's warrior! Do you like what you made of me? I have killed forty men, and I have four wives and thirteen sons, and three days from now I will die with an out-tribe spear between my ribs. I might have been a prince in Eshkorek Arnor or in Ezlann. I might have been a king with a great army at my back, beautiful women to please me, and Power to make all men do as I wished. Do you like what you have made?”

And he drew from his belt a knife, and with one strong beat of the black wings, twisted and threw it. It soared toward me through the darkness.

“This has no ability to kill me,” I said.

But then I saw the knife for what it truly was, or what it had become. The knife from the altar beneath the Mountain—the one blade which could end my life, which Karrakaz had shown me—the Knife of Easy Dying. Its cold tip entered my breast, so sharp I did not feel it. I screamed as it burrowed to the hilt in my flesh.

And found Huanhad's face and the dawn, instead of death.

2

That day we reached the sea.

Since the marshes, the weather had been strange, drab and dull for summer, yet often very hot. Now, in the afternoon, the skies had a still intense grayness; there was a pre-storm glare on the outlines of the trees. The ground had sloped downward for some while. Rough meadowland stretched away into shadowy valleys. Then ahead, against the gray light, appeared the jutting silhouettes of a cliff range, and beyond that, a faint mauveness like a chalk line on the sky.

Huanhad stopped, pointed, and cried out, “The sea! The sea!”

One or two others joined in her cry, using other words I had not learned yet. It was the first time I had seen them in anything resembling excitement. The children skipped and laughed, and the goats bleated crazily. Qwenex lifted his arm and called us on, and the normal rhythmic walking speed increased to a brisk trot. I hurried with them, but why, I did not fully understand. The smudgy line of color meant nothing to me, and after my dream, there was reluctance besides.

After a few minutes, a guttural roar broke open the cloud sheet. Brazen lightning shot across the open land, and rain fell in large heavy drops, warm on our hands and necks, widely spaced at first, gradually joining together, until we moved through a chain mail of tepid water that beat like a drum on our heads. Lightning made rose-pink interludes in the sudden darkness. I could not see where we were going, and had an abrupt conviction that we would all run over some cliff edge, like a herd of pigs driven mad.

But they knew the way too well for that. Huanhad firmly grasped my shoulders and brought me to a halt, and I found they had spread out in a line along the cliff top, about a yard from the drop. So I looked down and saw the sea, stretching out and out from the sheer rock strand, two hundred feet below us. On either side the ghosts of other headlands thrust forward to the water, pale in the streaming rain. Ahead, the boiling caldron, seething, limitless, seeming to curve with the round shape of the world, banded with every color of the changing sky, joined to its last perceptible horizon with a thin green lacquer of spume and a hallucination of violet. True beauty is always oddly surprising.

I understood then that I had known the sea before, as my dream should have warned me. I turned my head slowly southward, looking for that scatter of broken bones on this eastern tip of the land. Rain and cliffs were in the way of my eyes. I sensed nothing southward, only empty land, stone beaches, and the carving chisels of the waves. Yet my Power was gone. How could I know?

Huanhad touched my shoulder softly.

“The sea,” she whispered. “You will be better here, Morda.”

After a time, Qwenex called to them, and they turned away, one by one, as if reluctant to let go of the sight of the sea. Through the rain we trudged, parallel to the brink, though a little farther inland. I stumbled over the white limestone outcroppings. We went in a curve and upward, and suddenly there was a white shape ahead, squat, disheveled, and we had reached a broken tower, open to the rain, and breached in a hundred places. Perhaps it had been a watch or beacon in earlier days. It had something of that tower in the marsh where I had first found their krarl.

Swift as its coming, the rain began to ease. In the last drizzling, they formed a circle around the tower's base, a few feet from it, and stood quite still, as if waiting. A silence fell in place of the rain. Muddied pink lights quivered over the sky. There was something secret, close, mystic even, in the way they stood around the tower. I drew out of their circle, shivered, and waited also.

Qwenex raised his arm, all one black narrow shape against the pale tumbled ruin. He saluted the tower. And then he moved to one of the broken openings, stooped, and went inside.

A gull screamed furiously, out at sea. There was no other sound.

Qwenex came out of the tower, and in his hands he carried a wooden cask covered with the white powder of the stones that had been laid on top of it. With his knife he prized up the lid. The lid fell off. Inside, a dull glimmer, something—metallic?

He lifted the something out, and it was a great book, covered all over with plated gold. At first, all that stirred in me was the memory of Ezlann, Za, Belhannor, and the books of Asren Javhovor, set with many jewels, glittering and priceless in the candlelight. Qwenex carried the book forward and went around the circle to each of them in turn, and each man, woman, child, touched the book, very lightly, as if it were too hot or cold for them. I remembered then what Uasti, the healer of the wagons, had told me—of the wandering tribe and the golden book that contained legends of the Lost Race. My heart sprang against my ribs. I reached across the circle, and laid my hand full on the surface of the golden book. Qwenex looked at me. He let me touch the holy thing, but he would not let me do more. This much I could see. What had Uasti said? No woman was allowed to look inside it. Yet I felt the inscription, blurred by age and handling, seek my palm like a moving snake. I lifted my hand, and saw the words as I had seen them written in the green dust on the wagon floor.