‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘as you will know better than I, even Gods desire to ride abroad and see something of the country they own. I have such a desire; perhaps the God you say is in me is making his wishes felt.’
She seemed well pleased. ‘This is good,’ she said. ‘When the people see you they will be glad, knowing the God is with them. I will ride with you; we must speak to my priest.’
In the months that had passed he had rarely seen Cha’Ensil; now the priest was summoned in haste. He came in state, resplendent in his robes of patterned silk. With him he brought his women; but at that the Reborn demurred. ‘I
will prepare the God,’ she said, ‘I and no other; for his is no common beauty.’
His hands, which had been calloused, had softened from idleness. She pared and polished his nails, tinting his palms and feet with a dark red stain. His hair she bound with delicate silver leaves, and clothes were brought for him; a cloak of dazzling silk, a tunic with the Corn Lord’s broidered Sign, boots of soft leather that cased him to the knee. Lastly she gave him a strong white mare, tribute from a chieftain of the Horse People. He sat the creature gingerly enough when the time came, being more used to plough-oxen; but she was docile, and his ineptness went unremarked.
So the party set out; Cha’Ensil with his priests and soldiers, his Horn and Cymbal men; the Beautiful One on his splendid mount; the Reborn and her favoured women in tinkling litters, borne on the backs of sturdy bearers and swaying with the God’s gilded plumes. They crossed the Great Heath to the villages of the Plain, curved north and west nearly to the lands of the Marsh Folk, who pay no taxes and do strange things to please their Gods. Everywhere the Horsemen bent the knee, placing hands to their beards in awe; for the Corn Lord was a mighty spirit, his fame reached very far. For Altrin, each day brought further earnest of his strength; and Mata watched with pride to see the young Prince she had made dash happy as a puppy, circling to her call.
Chieftain after chieftain hastened with gifts; and the tribute from the grim towns of the Horsemen was richest of all. The treasure waggons towered toward the end, while behind them trotted a bleating flock of goats. The eyes of the Beautiful One grew narrow at that, his mind busy; till he summoned Cha’Ensil, more curtly perhaps than one should summon a Chief Priest, to demand an accounting of the God’s dues.
Cha’Ensil frowned, holding up the notched sticks on which he carved his marks; but the Prince pushed them scornfully aside. ‘Everywhere I see villages that are rich,’ he said. ‘Both our own folk’s towns and those of the Horsemen. Yet we are poor, owning barely five hundred goats and scarce that number of sheep. The Corn Lord brings this prosperity; let his tallies be increased.
Cha’Ensil set his lips into a line. ‘That is for the Reborn to decide, my Lord,’ he said gently. ‘For she is your Mistress, as she is mine.’
But Altrin merely laughed, flinging the bone of a game bird into the fire round which they were camped. ‘Her will is mine,’ he said, ‘and so mine is hers. Increase the tallies; I will have a thousand goats by autumn.’
Cha’Ensil’s face had paled a little; yet he still spoke mildly. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘even Princes may overreach themselves, my Lord. Also, favours freely given may freely be repented.’
The boy spat contemptuously. ‘Priest, I will tell you a riddle,’ he said. ‘I have a certain thing about me that is long and hard. With it I defend the favours that are mine; and yet I carry no sword. What do you think it could be?’
The other turned away, shuddering and making a very strange mouth; and for the time nothing more was said.
Later, Altrin had a novel idea. First he loved the Reborn with more than usual fervour, making her pant with pleasure; then he lay with his head against her breasts, feeling beneath him the swell of her belly that was so unlike the belly of a girl. ‘My Lady,’ he said, ‘it has come to me that you have been more than generous in your gifts. Yet one thing I lack, and desire it most of all’
She laughed, playing with his hair. ‘The God is greedy,’ she said. ‘But that is the way with Gods; and I for one am very glad of it. What do you wish?’
He drew his dangling hair across her breasts, and felt her tense. ‘Cha’Ensil, who is a priest, has many soldiers,’ he said. ‘They defend him, running to do his errands, and are at his beck and call. Yet I, in whom the God himself lives, have none. Surely my state should equal his, particularly if I am to ride abroad.’
She was still awhile, and he thought perhaps she was frowning. Finally she shook her head. ‘A God needs no soldiers,’ she said. ‘His strength is his own, none dares to raise a hand. Soldiers are well enough for lesser folk; besides, Cha’Ensil is my oldest servant. I would not see him wronged.’
He sensed that he was on dangerous ground, and let the matter rest; but later he withheld himself, on pain of a certain promise. That she gave him finally, when she was tired and her body could no longer resist. He slept curled in her arms, and well content.
The party returned to the high house on the chalk. Once its walls would have been ritually breached; but that was in the old times, long since gone. In every room of the complex fires roared high, fighting the winter chill. The days closed in, howling and bitter; and the snow came, first a powdering then a steadier fall. Deep drifts gathered on the eaves of the God House, blanketing the demons that clung there. But rugs were hung round the walls of the inner chamber, a second fire lit before the wattle screens; and the Reborn and her Lord dined well enough night after night, on wild pig and wine. Sometimes too the priests of the household, or their women, arranged entertainments; at devising these last the Prince showed himself more than usually adroit, and in his Mistress’s heart there stirred perhaps the first faint pang of doubt.
With the spring, Altrin rode out again. He took with him a dozen men of his new bodyguard, later recruiting as many Horsemen into his train. The party rode east, to where fishing villages clustered round a great bight of the sea, and the Black Rock begins which none may cross, Divine or otherwise. Everywhere folk quailed before the young God with his cold, lovely eyes; and what those eyes happened on, he took. Grain he sent back and goats; and once a girl-child for his Mistress, to be trained in the rites of the God. Two weeks passed, three, before he turned back to the west. The Horsemen he dismissed, paying them with grain, hides and gold from his own supply; later that day he strode back into the hut on the Sacred Mound.
She was waiting for him, in a new gauzy dress of white and green. What expression her face held could not be told; but she was pacing forward and back along the beaten earth floor, her arms folded, her chin sunk on her chest. He hurried to her, taking her hands; but she snatched herself away. ‘What is this?’ he said, half-laughing. ‘Are you not pleased to see me?’
She stamped her slim foot. ‘Where have you been?’ she said. ‘What are you thinking of? I cried for you for a week. Then I was angry, then I cried again. Now - I don’t care if you’ve come back or not.’
A bowl and a cup stood on an inlaid table, part of his winter spoil. He poured wine for himself, drank and wiped his mouth. ‘I sent you a pretty child to play with,’ he said. ‘Wasn’t that enough?
‘And I sent her back,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want her. What use are girls to me now? It was you I wanted.
Oh ...’
He flung the wine away, angrily. ‘You tell me I am a God,’ he said. ‘I wear a God’s clothes, live in a God’s house. Yet I must answer like a ploughboy for everything I do.’
‘Not a ploughboy,’ she said, ‘a sheep herder. A peasant you were, a peasant you remain.
Ohh .
..’ He had turned on his heel; and she was clinging to him with desperate strength. ‘I wanted you,’ she said. ‘I wanted you, I was so lonely. I wanted to die again. I didn’t mean what I said, please don’t go away. Do what you choose; but please don’t go away...’
He stood frowning down, sensing his power. As ever, her nearness roused him; yet obscurely there was the need to hurt. His fingers curled on the edge of the brilliant mask; for an instant it seemed he would tear the thing aside, then he relaxed. ‘Go to our chamber,’ he said coldly. ‘Make yourself ready; perhaps, if my greeting is more fitting, I shall come to you.’
Cha’Ensil, stepping to the doorway of the hut, heard the words and the sobs that answered them. He stood still a moment, face impassive; then turned, walking swiftly back the way he had come.
Some days afterwards the hilltop began to bustle with activity. A new Hall was rising, below the God House and some forty paces distant; for the Reborn had decreed the older structure too chilly to serve another winter. Also extra accommodation was needed for the many hopefuls flocking to join the priesthood. The fame of the God was spreading; all were anxious to share his good fortune. The Prince himself took a keen interest in the newcomers, selecting (or so it seemed) the comeliest virgins and the least prepossessing men; but Cha’Ensil held himself aloof from the entire affair. Later the Beautiful One rode north, and again. An extra granary was built, a new range of stables; and still the tribute waggons trundled down to the great gap in the chalk. The Horsemen bore hard upon the land; and where they rode, there also went the ensigns of the God. Smoke rose from a score of burning villages; and at last it was time, high time, to cry enough.
Cha’Ensil, seeking an audience with the Prince, found him in the New Hall, where he was accustomed to take his ease. He lay on a divan draped with yellow silk, a wine jug at his elbow and a cup. He greeted Cha’Ensil casually enough, waving him to a seat with a hand that flashed with gold. ‘Well, priest,’ he said, ‘say what you have to quickly, and be gone. My Mistress waits; and tonight the strength of the God is more than usually in me. I shall take her several times.’
The priest swallowed but sat as he was bidden, gathering his robes about him. ‘My Prince,’ he began reasonably enough, ‘I, who raised you to your estate, have every right to counsel you. We live, as you know full well, by the good will of the Horsemen. They fear the God; but they are children, and greed may outrun fear. This show of magnificence you seem so set on will end in ruin; for you, and for us all.’
The Prince drained the cup at a gulp, and poured another. ‘This show, which is no more than my due, makes you uneasy,’ he said. ‘You lie jealous in your bed; and for more reasons than the ones you state. Now hear me. My strength may or may not come from the God; personally I think it does, but that is beside the point. Behind me stands One whose will is not lightly crossed; while I satisfy her, and satisfy her I think I do, your power is ended. Now leave me. Whine to your women, if you must; I am easily tired by foolishness.’
Cha’Ensil rose, his face white with rage. ‘Shepherd boy,’ he said, ‘I saved you for my Lady. For her sake have I borne with you; now I tell you this. I will not see her and her House destroyed. Take warning ...’
He stopped, abruptly; for Altrin had also risen to his feet, swaying a little from the wine. A cloak, richly embroidered, hung from his shoulders; save for a little cloth, he was otherwise naked. ‘And I tell you this, sower of winter wheat,’ he said. ‘That when the strength goes from me I may fall. But that is hardly likely yet.’ He squeezed, insultingly, the great thrusting at his groin, then snatched at his hip. ‘Priest,’ he jeered, ‘will you see the power of the God?’
But the other, mouth working, had blundered from the chamber. Behind him as he hurried away rose the mocking laughter of the Beautiful One.
The horse drummed across the Heath, raising behind it a thin plume of whitish dust. Its rider, cloaked and masked, carried a great Staff of Power. He crouched low in the saddle driving his heels at the beast’s sides to urge it to even greater speed. While the fury gripped him Cha’Ensil made good time; later he slowed the weary animal to a walk. Midday found him clear of the Great Heath; at dusk he presented himself at the gates of a city of the Horsemen, a square, spike-walled fortress set above rolling woodland on a spur of chalk. There he instituted certain inquiries; while his status, and the gold he bore, secured him lodging for the night together with other services dearer to his heart. For the Chief Priest had by no means wasted his opportunities since taking service with the God of the great chalk pass. The morning brought answers to his questions. More gold changed hands; and Cha’Ensil rode north again, on a mount sounder in wind than the one on which he had arrived. Half-way through the day he bespoke a waggon train; the drivers waved him on, pointing with their whips. At nightfall, out in the vastness of the Great Plain, he reached his destination; the capital of the Horsemen’s southern kingdom, a place resplendent with watchtowers and granaries, barracks and royal courts.
Here the power of the Corn Lord was less directly felt. Cha’Ensil fumed at the gates an hour or more before his purse, if not his master, secured admission. He made his way through rutted earth streets to the house of a Midsea merchant, a trader who for his unique services was tolerated even by the Horsemen. Once more, gold secured admission; and a slave with a torch conducted him to the chamber of his choice. A heavy door was unbolted, chains clinked back; and the priest stepped forward, wrinkling his nose at the odour that assailed him. To either side in the gloom stretched filthy straw pallets. All were occupied; some by women, some by young boys. The slave grunted, gesturing with the torch; and the other called, sharply.
Nothing.
Cha’Ensil spoke again; and a voice answered sullenly from the farther shadows. It said, ‘What do you want with me?
He took the torch, stepped forward and stared. Dull eyes, black-shadowed, watched up from a pallid face. The girl’s hair sprawled lank on the straw; over her was thrown a ragged blanket. Cha’Ensil raised his brows, speaking gently; for answer she spat, turning her face from the glare.
The priest stooped, mouth puckered with distaste. Beneath the blanket she was naked; he searched her body swiftly for the signs of a certain disease. There were none; and he sat back on his heels with a sigh. ‘Rise, and find yourself a cloth,’ he said. ‘I am your friend, and knew your father well. I have come to take you away from this place, back to your home.’