Maia (110 page)

"Oh, men! Men!" cried Milvushina. "Always fighting! 'I'm braver than you are'; like a lot of little boys! If only Elvair was safe back and the whole thing forgotten! I
told
him what would happen-I
told
him! I know that country and
he'd
never been there before in his life. Chalcon's like a spider's web: they'll be lucky to get out at all, that's what I think now."

"D'you think Bekla's goin' to fall, then?" asked Occula coolly.

"Bekla?" Zuno and Maia spoke together in astonishment.

"To Santil, you mean? Oh, never, surely?" said Milvushina. "I mean, harvest's coming on, for one thing. Once Elvair's out of Chalcon, Santil's men'll want to get back to their homes."

"Well, I wouldn' be too sure of that, if I were you," answered the black girl. "I expect you know there's trouble in Urtah and in Belishba, too. I heard that it's quite a serious slave revolt in Belishba, and Sendekar's had to bring men south from the Valderra to deal with it. You can bet your deldas-in fact you can bet Maia's-Karnat woan' have missed that."

"But
Beklal Fall?"
Milvushina knitted her brows. "I haven't heard Kembri or any of the Leopards speaking about that as a serious possibility."

"Well, personally I doan' give a fart if it does fall," said Occula. "But I've got to be thinkin' about my own plans. Sooner or later, you see, Fornis is goin' to come back, and if Bekla falls she's quite capable of sellin' herself to the other side. In fact that's almost certainly what she
will
do. She could twist anyone, that woman: yes, even Santil, I believe. 'Oh, it wasn' really me, it was all those horrible Leopards!
Now
I can help you!' That'll be her line. She's as cunnin' as forty foxes. In fact she may very well be plottin' the fall of the city at this very moment."

Occula, clenching her fists, jumped up and began walking up and down the little hall. "Why the bastin' blue brothels d'you think she went to Paltesh? To be safe from Kembri, of course, and raise support among her own people, that's why! Kembri'd kill her if he could. Even Du-rakkon would kill her. But they're not goin' to rob
me,

either of them.
Fm
the one that's goin' to kill her, an' doan' you make any mistake about that!"

She stopped, gazing out at the pendent, misty fire of the comet where it hung above the Gelt mountains. Maia, looking up at her, was reminded of a silent, dark stream sliding between its banks. The stream flowed where it must: no telling the depth; no stopping it and never a sound. Ah! but
this
water would bear her up-friendly water, however dark and deep.

"Occula," she asked, "why don't you kill her in one of those horrible sprees of hers? You could do it easy and pass it off as an accident: say she brought it on herself."

Zuno shook his head. "No, no, banzi," said Occula. "What-a slave-girl bring about the death of the Sacred Queen? And one already more than suspected of helpin' to murder Sencho, at that? I'd hang upside-down quicker than a goat can get stiff. Besides, when I do it, she's goin' to know who I am and why it's bein' done. It'll be no bastin' accident, believe me. But the right moment'U be everythin'. That's why I've got to know as much as possible about what's happenin' and what's goin' to happen."

"I'll tell you something else," put in Milvushina. "Kem-bri's afraid of her: he's as good as told me so. He told me that when they first seized Bekla nearly eight years ago, he and Sencho were just out to make use of her-you know, her magnetism and popularity with the people. He said he never realized then that before she'd finished she'd turn out to be more than they could handle."

"Either she'll maintain herself in power," said Zuno, "or else, if she can't, she'll pull the city down round her own ears and everyone else's."

"Well, never
mindV
cried Occula impatiently, as though Zuno had uttered something completely trivial. "That's enough about that green-eyed cow. You listen to me, banzi. First of all, what have you done with Chia?"

Maia told her.

Occula nodded. "I hoped you might. That's why I asked Zuno to send her. H'm! Northern Urtah; that might prove quite useful, I doan' know."

"How d'you mean?" asked Maia.

"Well, by all accounts they're a very funny lot up there, where she comes from," answered Occula enigmatically. "And of course she'll tell them what she owes Fomis, woan' she? And that might-Well, never mind. There's

somethin' else I want to hear about. What's all this about you gettin' up on the Scales and talkin' about the star, as if you were Lespa or somethin'?"

"The star? Well, it just come into my head to see 'f I couldn't go down there and cheer a few of 'em up. I never meant to go on the Scales at all-'twas the armourers an' the rest as done that."

"You and that Ogma, you're not safe, the two of you left alone together," said Occula.
"She
might have thought to stop you goin' out, even if you couldn' see it for yourself. That girl's a fool an' so are you, banzi. Far as I can make out, you did the very thing everyone's.been warnin' you not to do. It never crossed your mind, I suppose, that Kembri'd think you were puttin' yourself forward for Sacred Queen?"

"No, it never," retorted Maia hotly, "and n'more I was, an' so I told Kembri to his face when he" come round yesterday."

"The thing you must never forget, banzi, about Kembri, is that he's every bit as much a conspirator and a murderer as Sencho and Fornis. He was in on this Leopard business from the very beginnin', like them. He's completely ruthless. He's decided that Milva's the girl the Leopards need for Sacred Queen. That's why he didn' stop Elvair goin' round and takin' her the very day after Sencho was done in, even though he knew it'd make Fornis his enemy from that moment. Do you realize that if good old Sendekar hadn't made it impossible, by tellin' the whole army about you swimmin' the river before Kembri could stop him, Kembri'd almost certainly have had "you killed by now, just to get you out of the way as a rival to Milva?"

"Ah, he told me as much yesterday," said Maia.

"Cran, I'd almost rather be back at Piggy's," said Occula, "wouldn' you? Three nice bed-girls from the High Counselor's, and here we are up to the neck in what's goin' to be the biggest shine for a thousand years, you mark my words. And there's no gett'n' out of it that I can see. Doesn' it frighten you?"

"Yes, it frightens me sick," answered Maia. Yet still she said nothing of Randronoth's forty thousand meld.

"What really makes me sure these damn' Leopards are bound to go down in the end," said Occula, "is the filthy, blasphemous use they've made of this whole Sacred Queen business. Come right down to it and they've spat in the

gods' faces, that's what. They're not my gods, but never mind 'bout that. The whole point of the Sacred Queen always used to be that she was the gods' choice and not men's. She was supposed to be the gods' makeweight for man's imperfection. Men in power made the rulers-the generals and councilors and so on-but the Sacred Queen was honestly acclaimed by the people, and no hanky-panky. That's to say, the gods put it into the people's hearts whom to acclaim, and that was their own choice; not the rulers'. But Fornis, Sencho, Kembri-they changed all that, and Durakkon was the fool who went along with it. The gods'll have their blood for that in the long run, you see if they doan'."

"You're the lucky one, aren't you?" said Milvushina to Zuno.
"You'll
be all right."

"I may and I may not, saiyett; it all depends. I have no wish to stand or fall with the Sacred Queen, yet what else can I do? In practice I'm not free to leave her, and in any case I have no particular prospects elsewhere."

"No,
you're
the lucky one, Milva, that's the truth of it," said Occula. "At least you've got Kembri and Elvair to protect you, and even if the city
were
to fall, they'd probably get you out alive.
You've
got no enemies, unless you call Santil an enemy. No, banzi, you're the one I'm worried about: there can' be any goin' back for you, you see. And yet you can' go on as you are. Kembri may not be prepared to go the length of killin' you, but Fornis will be when she comes back-as I'm sure she means to. And even if you were to cut and run, where could you go? Suba-Katria- Terekenalt-they'd tear you to pieces, after what you've done! And I can' see you in sanctuary on Quiso for the rest of your life. No; there's only two things you can possibly do, and I reckon I know which one'd be best."

Maia would have liked Occula to take her in her arms and whisper in her ear, as in the old days in bed at Sen-cho's.The talk of killing had frightened her badly. Yet she did her best to make a joke of it.

"Well, come on, then! Reckon Terebinthia won't be eavesdropping just now."

Occula, sitting down beside her, took her hand in her own. "You could put your trust in the gods, banzi, and believe that they
mean
you to be Sacred Queen. That's one thing you could do; for there's hardly a doubt that if you're still alive and in Bekla at the end of this year, the

people will acclaim you, Kembri or no Kembri. But it's my belief that if you stay here just as you are now, either Kembri or Fornis will get rid of you somehow."

She paused. "And the other?" asked Maia.

"The other," said Occula deliberately, "is to marry the richest and most powerful man you can find; preferably one with an estate in the provinces, where you can go and live in safety. You're not cut for a life of high intrigue, banzi. You're too nice. A girl like you needs a protector- someone to belong to. And the long and short of it is, you can either choose the gods' protection, or a man's. I know damn' well which I'd choose-and if I doan' love you no one does."

A silence fell. It was as though all four of them, sitting in the elegant, luxurious hall high above the teeming city, felt themselves isolated as though besieged; or surrounded by a flood lapping the base of their precarious tower with invisible waters of malevolence and peril. Suddenly Maia had the horrible fancy that the sunken rectangle of the central floor, enclosed within its honey-colored walls and broad step of banded slate, was like a well down which her dead body could be pitched and vanish untraced. Setting down her goblet, she jumped up and almost ran across to the north-facing window.

The comet was low, its drooping tail partly obscured behind the jagged, barely-discernible line of the mountain peaks. The comet, she knew, had been sent by Lespa- Lespa who had saved her again and again. Yet why had she sent it? What did it mean? It was like the danger she was in, she thought. It made no sound, uttered no threat. It simply abode; whenever you looked up, there it was, undeviant and unchanged.

"Oh, Lespa," she prayed silently, "help me! I'm more afraid than ever I've been!"

For now, with Occula's words, her very real and immediate danger had at last become plain to her; the danger which, though in all conscience told clearly enough, had not been brought fully home by Sessendris, by Nennaunir, by Milvushina or even entirely by Kembri. It now seemed to her that she-she who had knelt beside the dying Sphel-thon, who had swum the Valderra by night-had in fact never, in all her life, possessed any real power to distinguish between semblance and reality.

The sudden recognition of a lack in oneself of normal

perception, of the ability to see in its true colors what has been plain as day to everyone else; the realization that in some important respect one has hitherto been like a child, not clearly differentiating actuality from fantasy, security from peril, truth from fallacy, can take place at any time in life, even to outwardly-seeming experienced people, and when it does is always mortifying. When it involves the apprehension of danger, the shock often comes with a kind of freezing effect, dream-like, momentarily cutting off awareness of companions and surroundings.

Still no one spoke. Maia stood still, supporting herself with one hand on the embrasure. Her hope of finding Zen-Kurel, of fulfilling their mutual promise to marry and live in Katria; it was as though a glaring, hard light had suddenly been turned upon this secret room in her heart, revealing-what? Flimsy walls, frail beams, a brittle door that any ruffian could kick in. True, it was also revealed as no less beautiful than she had always known it to be- but utterly insecure. In this room, whatever its beauty, there lay no safety. Her love for Zen-Kurel would not save her, and she had been deceiving herself in thinking that it would. Yet if safety was what she must have, if safety was what she valued above all else, then no doubt about it, she must quit this beautiful, forlorn, memory-filled room for some stronger one. Her love for Zenka-her.love of one night, which she nevertheless knew in her own heart to be entire and sincere-how much, in cold, sober fact, was that love worth to her? That, though Occula did not know it, had been the implication of her words to the hearer. Was she, Maia, ready to risk death-no fancy, no game, but the real, bowel-clutching prospect of being murdered-not in return for the certainty of finding and marrying her Zenka in the end, but in return for the mere chance that she might?

I must wait for Sednil, she thought. At the very least I must wait for Sednil and whatever news he brings. And that's a matter of time. But how much time will I have?

And now, suddenly, she knew the meaning of the great star: not the city's meaning-for the star, like a dream or an old tale, no doubt had many different meanings implanted in it by Lespa, for comprehension by various people-but her own meaning, the individual meaning Lespa had intended
her
to perceive. It was plain: there couldn't be a doubt of it! She herself was the star! This new-come

presence, this gentle brilliance in the sky, with its streaming, golden hair, was the equivalent of herself in Bekla. It followed clearly that as long as
it
lasted,
she
would remain immune, the protected of the goddess. But when it departed she, too, if she had not by then found what she was seeking, would be fated to depart, either to death or to that dreary, marital refuge-death in life, as it appeared to her young heart-of which Occula had spoken. So much time, then, she had: so much time and opportunity the goddess was vouchsafing her.