Authors: Christopher Stasheff
“Always
return goodwill, Lucoyo.” Ohaern waved back at the people on shore with a broad
if somewhat insincere smile. As they drifted farther, a village came into
sight, with a sloping ramp of earth going down into the water. The farmers
waved, then beckoned to them.
Ohaern’s
smile gelled, and he asked Grakhinox, “You have roamed the countryside while
you waited for us, have you not?”
“Aye,”
said Grakhinox.
“Do
you know anything of these people?”
Grakhinox
shrugged. “If they are like the folk who live hard by Cashalo, they trade with
the city. Those folk fled when the Vanyar came near—those who could. Many were
caught.”
Ohaern
did not ask what had been done to them; he was fairly sure he knew.
“These
have not been caught, and have not fled,” Grakhinox finished.
“That
is because we travel east, and the Vanyar came down from the north. Do you
think we can trust these people?”
Women
came running down to the landing, waving and calling. Most were young and wore
only skirts. Lucoyo’s breath hissed in as he watched.
“They
seem friendly enough,” said Grakhinox, “and I have heard nothing against the
farm villages that give Cashalo its food.”
The
young women were beckoning now, gyrating their hips as they moved in a dance.
Drums and reeds had begun to sound.
“Oh,
they are friendly indeed!” Lucoyo said. “Surely we will be safe here,
smith—safe, and more! Let us stop for the night!”
“Safe?
You only wish to be at peril! Of your virtue, that is.” But Ohaern nodded and
turned the canoe’s nose toward the shore. “They look soft enough, at least.”
“They
do indeed!” Lucoyo breathed.
“If
they seek to trouble us, we should have no difficulty winning free.”
“Who
would want to?” Lucoyo replied. “Surely being free of such as these would not
be winning!”
“Does
he always speak in riddles?” Grakhinox demanded.
“Only
when he wishes to be understood,” Ohaern explained.
As
their prow plowed into the mud, a dozen willing hands laid hold of it and pulled
it high up on the bank. At least half of those hands were female, and Lucoyo
gave a glad cry as he leaped out of the canoe. The women responded with
trilling mirth and closed about him, caressing his shoulders and chest and
pressing his hands to their own. Lucoyo gave an even gladder cry, and the women
laughed gaily, echoing his delight.
Grakhinox
gave them a jaundiced eye. “I will disappear awhile, I think, O Smith. Call me
at need.”
Ohaern
turned to protest, but the dwerg was gone already—he might have been speaking
from the sand beneath the boat! Ohaern had no chance to look, though, for
another half-dozen women surrounded him as he stepped from the canoe, and there
were hands, nothing but hands all about him, touching, stroking, caressing. He
was alarmed to feel a ravening hunger awaking within him, and he caught their
wrists with more brusqueness than he should have—but at the looks of
astonishment, he forced a smile. “You honor me, good women, but I am a man who
has wedded.” He chose the words for strict truth. The young women frowned and
shook their heads, puzzled, and Ohaern tried again in the halting phrases he
had learned in Cashalo. This time the women understood, and lifted their heads,
mouths forming O’s, and they stepped back—but only a little, only enough for an
elder woman to step forward. “Your wife will never know, stranger,” she said in
the tongue of Cashalo—accented, but recognizable.
Her
skirt covered her down to the ankles and up to the shoulders—rank, Ohaern
wondered, or modesty? Or perhaps aesthetics . . . “It is nonetheless not the
way of our tribe, Grandmother.” Ohaern hoped the term was an honorific here, as
it was among his own people.
“I
am a grandmother, yes, but I am also the priestess Labina,” the old woman said.
“I
am Ohaern, a simple hunter.” He wondered at the jaundiced look Lucoyo gave him.
“I intend no disrespect, priestess, but I must live as I have been taught.”
“Well,
we would never press a man who thought it wrong.” Labina gestured to the girls,
who lamented, but turned away quickly to Lucoyo. Most were as tall as he, and
some taller; their circle parted for a moment, to show the half-elf locked
mouth to mouth with a pretty lass, and desire clawed up inside Ohaern again.
Labina
saw. “You need not stick so tightly to the ways of your people, young man. You
are our guest, and should try our ways.”
“But
it is not a thing I can undo,” Ohaern said, as if each word were being forced
out of him. He understood, in some way he could not have explained, that for
him, accepting the favors of women he did not know would make him less than
himself—and he needed all his strength of soul just now, especially when he was
among strangers.
An
old man came up—older than the farmers, at least, but still straight and
limber, though his beard and hair were white. “You stare at our simple village
as if it were something rare and new, young man. Have you never seen a farmers’
hamlet before?”
“No,
I have not,” Ohaern admitted, “nor has my friend. I am a hunter, and my wife
gathered the fruits of the earth while I sought game. My friend is a nomad,
whose people followed the great wild herds of oxen. We worship the gods of the
hunt, though we worship Lomallin the human-lover above all.”
“I
have not heard of Lomallin.” Labina frowned. “Did you worship no goddesses?”
“Oh,
yes, as many as our gods. Rahani was foremost among them.”
The
woman shook her head. “I do not know of her.”
Somehow,
that troubled Ohaern—but he assured himself that he would find they did worship
the goddess, though under another name. “She is Lomallin’s friend, war ally,
and councilor.”
“But
not his mate?” Now it was the old man who frowned.
“Not
his, no. Lomallin has no mate.”
Labina
stared, visibly shaken. “A god without a mate! How immoral, how wrong! How
wasteful!”
“Lomallin
is a wizard,” Ohaern explained, “one forced to be also a warrior.”
“Ah.”
The woman’s face cleared. “He shall mate when he has won his reputation, then.
Enough talk of gods, young man. You look hungry.” She took his arm. Both elders
smiled and nodded. “Come.” They led Ohaern away.
“What
goddess do you worship?” Ohaern asked as they led him toward the center of the
village. Somehow, from the last interchange, he was sure their highest deity
was a goddess.
“Alique,
the Great Mother,” said the woman, “Alique, and all her children.”
Ohaern
frowned. “I do not know of Alique. Tell me about her.”
“We
worship her in two aspects,” said the woman. “The one is young, the other
mature.”
“Ah!”
Ohaern nodded, recognizing two familiar goddesses rolled into one. “The maiden,
and the mother.”
The
old man gave a single laugh that never quite opened his mouth, and Labina said,
“We do not worship her as a maiden, but as a young woman who receives many
lovers.”
Ohaern
tried not to look shocked. “And bears many children?”
“Yes,
though we do not worship that in her as the love goddess, but as the mother.
She feeds her children with the bounty of her breasts, then with the fruits of
plenty that she draws from the land.”
“And
heals them, and gives consolation?’
The
old man frowned as if at a new thought, and the old woman said, “She must do
that, too, I suppose. Surely she is the giver of all good things, with all her
little children about her.”
“If
we worship her with full ardor,” said the old man, “she gives us a good
harvest.”
Ohaern
glanced past the village to the fields of green shoots that stretched out as
far as he could see. He remembered his own northern forests and the game that
was there year-round, with the host of berries and fruits and roots in the
summers. “If you do not have a good harvest,” he said slowly, “you die.”
“Even
so.” The old man nodded. “The harvest is vital to us, young man, absolutely
vital!”
Now
Ohaern glanced at the village and realized how many more people it held than
his own tribal camp at the edge of the great wood. “Surely, though, even with
so many people, you cannot eat all the food you grow!”
“No,
we do not.” Labina looked up with a smile. “That is the source of our wealth,
though, in all things other than food.” She swept a hand toward the village. “See
the fine ornaments our women wear, the soft fabrics of their skirts and the
fine woods that adorn our doorposts! When you dine with us tonight, you will
taste wines from far-off lands, and fruits and spices that never grow in this
country!”
“Surely
your fields do not bear such delicacies!”
“No,
but we give our surplus grain to the traders of Cashalo, and they give us
jewels and spices and rare foods in return.”
Ohaern
was amazed with himself, that he had never before wondered where Cashalo obtained
its food. Surely he should have realized that so many people could not all be
fed by fish from the river, or even from the two seas! And the sea could not
grow grain. But that opened another possibility, one that might be very
unpleasant, for he realized that where Cashalo’s luxuries went, Cashalo’s
beliefs must follow. “I must warn you,” he said slowly, “that the cult of the
scarlet god Ulahane is growing rapidly within Cashalo.”
“Is
it indeed?” Labina looked keenly interested. “But why is that a warning?”
“Because,”
Ohaern explained, “if all of Cashalo should turn to Ulahane and his ways, they
may try to take by force what they now gain by trade.”
Labina
threw back her head and laughed merrily. “Oh, I think not! You are a worrier,
young man—I knew it the moment I saw you!”
“Cashalo
is Cashalo,” said the old man, grinning, “and it has many gods. No, lad, I
thank you for your warning, but I doubt that the Scarlet One could expel all
other gods from so great a city.”
Ohaern
wished he could share their certainty.
He
looked about, suddenly realizing that Lucoyo had disappeared completely, and
alarm shot through him. “Where is my friend?”
“He
has gone with the young women,” Labina told him. “They will treat him well, I
assure you. You shall see him at dinner.”
“Treat
him well!” Ohaern turned to her, puzzled. “Why, what do they do?”
“They
seek to imitate Alique,” said the old man with a knowing smile, “in her younger
aspect.”
“They
shall welcome you, too,” Labina told him. “We have many huts that are small
temples to the young goddess. Come, I shall show you.” She took hold of his
arm.
But
Ohaern pulled back, alarmed as he felt desire flare. “I must see my friend.”
“He
is a man grown, surely.” The old man frowned. “He can care for himself.”
“I
am never wholly certain of that. Where is he?”
Labina
gave him a sour look, but a burst of shrill laughter came from a large hut near
them. She pointed with her cane. “In there—but do not enter, for you might put
him off his stride. Let me see how earnestly he gallops.” She went inside, then
came back in a moment. “No, he has run the first course, and bathes. Go in and
talk to him, young man.”
Ohaern
brushed past her and through the curtain, alarm cooling to dread. Inside, the
hut was dim after the blaze of the sunset, but lamps already flared around a
huge pit in the floor, lined with tile and filled with water—scented water, and
in it wallowed Lucoyo, naked and leaning back against the bosom of a pretty
young woman who held a drink for him to sip, while another rubbed his chest and
shoulders with oil, and two more, naked in the pool with him, raised his leg
and rubbed the oil into it—oil that foamed as they rinsed the leg and rubbed
it, slowly and gently.
Ohaern
felt desire boil up within him, and stood mute, holding fast against its tide.
Lucoyo
raised his head from the goblet with a sigh of pure pleasure—and saw Ohaern,
standing rigid and wide-eyed.
“Hunter!
Welcome! You have found your quarry!” he cried. “I am amazed it took you so
long! Girls, did you not bid my friend be welcome?”
“No,
for the priest and priestess were talking to him.” The woman who spoke was
older than the others, old enough to be a mother of a dozen, but still supple,
slender, and fully curved. She came toward Ohaern wearing only a strip of silk about
her hips, tied in one loose knot from which a tassel hung down to her knees. “Be
welcome among us, handsome stranger!” She reached up to caress the huge muscles
of his chest, breathing, “Very welcome.”
“Aye,
strong outlander!” another breathed in his ear. “Come with us!” husked another.
“We must wash off the dust of your journey.”
The
alarm was almost panic, but Ohaern fought to be civil even now. “I thank you,
gentle beauties,” he stammered, “but I had only need to be sure my friend was
well! I must speak further with your priestess!” He turned and blundered out,
moans of disappointment and mocking, delighted laughter ringing in his ears. He
could scarcely see for the red haze that darkened the evening, but he stumbled
away from the hut, down toward the shore, and plunged into the heaving water,
letting it cool his skin, cool his ardor—but still the desire wracked him. He
sank down into the ripples, letting its saltiness wash over him, cleanse him.
He would not be untrue to Ryl! He would not!
When
the longing had ebbed enough, he climbed out and let the wind cool him further
as the last rays of the sun dried him. Then he walked through the village in
the dusk, chatting with everyone he saw, doing all he could to appear relaxed
and easygoing, though he felt anything but. The young women who passed gave him
looks of reproach, but did indeed pass by as he talked with the men about
weather and crops and what farming entailed—but when the men had all moved on,
one young woman came up to him with an inviting smile. “Why do you have so
great an interest in farming? You are a hunter!”