Raetian Tales 1: A Wind from the South (36 page)

Ahead through the bright trees Mariarta saw a rise, ringed by more birches, but seemingly branchless. As they got closer she found these “trees” were now pillars indeed, plain and unadorned, the stone lit with the same cool inward light as the trees. These pillars supported nothing, but there was another ring of pillars within them, halfway up the rise, and then a third, at the flattened top of the hill. Those pillars upheld a plain round domed roof. Within them, under the roof, was a low building, round as well, of the same stone; and set in it a square two-leaved door, shut, gleaming silver. The crescent moon burning in the sky, still unmoving, seemed to rest on the curve of the dome, and the stars burned unchanged.

Mariarta glanced at Grugni. In this relentlessly silver light he had long since paled to white himself. Together they climbed the hill.

The hilltop was paved in a plain white marble. Across that paving, under the cupola supported by the inmost ring of pillars, lay the silvery door. It was carved with plain shining roundels like the moon at full, hanging from tall slim trees, like fruit; and crescents like flowers hanging from a tracery of vines that embraced and supported the trees and roundels—all these designs repeating. Mariarta reached out and touched the rightward door. The metal was faintly warm. Gently and silently the door swung inward from her push.

She and Grugni went in. The same pale light as lived in the trees and the pillars dwelt also in the plain walls of stone, and to a lesser extent in the smooth marble paving. Furniture, low couches with curved arms, graceful tables, footstools, were scattered about: all were made of the white stone, polished. Soft cushions lay around. The skins of beasts covered the floor—mountain lynx, bear, here and there the soft pelts of chamois or the longer-haired mountain goat. Cups wrought of the wrinkled horn of the ibex, bound in silver, stood on a table, with silver flagons near them. More skins draped the furniture. Near the back wall of the great round room, by a stone statue of a white hind, was a high stone chair on a dais, backless, the arms curved gracefully upward. It was empty. A soft dark skin was cast over it.

Behind the chair, the statue blinked, and took a step forward—  Mariarta swallowed, and found her throat dry again. The hind glowed as the walls did, with that soft interior fire; but it was alive. Mariarta let a breath out, then glanced at Grugni, who also gazed at the hind.

“Yes,” said the wind’s soft voice behind her, “the resemblance
is
remarkable....”

Mariarta turned: not surprised—it was the voice she had expected to hear—but filled with a fear oddly edged with delight. Standing in the doorway was a young woman, tall and slender. She was dressed as the young woman in the picture had been; a long flowing robe, kilted above her knees, bound in below the breasts to keep it from catching on things. This robe, though, was dark as the night outside, with a hint of glowing silver at the hems, and a faint radiance caught in its darkness, the dark of the old moon in the new one’s arms. The woman’s bound-up hair was dark too, but shot with silver. In one hand, as she paused there in the doorway, she held a bow: but the bow was the moon, burning just as silver, with a curve as merciless now that it was unstrung. Its light filled the round room, and shone in the woman’s eyes.

Mariarta gazed at her, and began to tremble. She had heard much of how people were supposed to fear God, and love Him, from the priest in town. She had not understood how you managed both at once. Either you loved someone, the way she loved her father, or feared them, the way she had feared, say, Reiskeipf: but never both. Now, though, looking at the young woman’s eyes, she began to understand. Much is said about old eyes in young faces, but Mariarta had never thought what the reality of such a contrast might be if carried to its logical conclusion. The face was that of a handsome young woman of perhaps twenty: not strikingly beautiful, not as Duonna Vrene had been. This face was too severe. But it was fair in its own way. And the eyes... Years lived in them. How many years, Mariarta could not begin to guess. What did
not
live in them was weariness, in any degree. Fierce energy, amusement, a calculating wisdom that reminded Mariarta of looks she had seen in Theo’s eyes—but nothing of the tiredness that goes with mortal wisdom, ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Here was an ancient strength founded in some power against which age was helpless. Mariarta was afraid of this woman—and loved her nonetheless.

The woman moved, and Mariarta breathed out, relieved. Something about the woman was so suggestive of swift-rushing motion that seeing her be still even for only a breath or two made Mariarta nervous—the stillness being of the kind usually seen while someone was taking aim. The woman walked toward the stag, paused by him. Fascinated, watching her, he did not move. “I had forgotten the likeness,” she said. Those eyes flashed a look at Mariarta, humorous and conspiratory. “Though perhaps you thought I meant us.”

Mariarta swallowed again. It had never occurred to her for a moment to liken herself to such athletic beauty, such power. But there was something of a resemblance, even if Mariarta was only a smudgy copy of the original. Hair and stance and general build were all much the same.

“I hardly know what to say to you,” Mariarta said, husky-voiced, feeling foolish, but resolved not to stand there mute, like a stump.

“There’s an honest mortal,” the woman said, heading for one of the couches, “and a rarity for that cause, if not others.” She sat and began to unlace the boot-sandals she was wearing; the hind drifted up behind her, silent as the moon, and nuzzled her neck. Absently the woman stroked her. “Stop it, Chairé. Come then, sister-daughter,” she added, looking at Mariarta, “will you stand there all night?  They rest on their feet,” and she glanced at Grugni and the hind, which had paced close to one another and were touching noses, “but no need for you to.”

Mariarta sat cautiously on a nearby couch, unable to take her eyes off the woman. “Wine?” said the other.

“I would rather not,” Mariarta said. She had heard enough bad stories about eating food while inside an enchanted mountain. Then, uncomfortable,  she said, “I don’t even know what to call you—”

“Ah, well then,” the young woman said, tossing the second sandal away and leaning back on her couch, “if you’ll ask to be on name-basis with someone whose wine you won’t even drink—” Mockery glittered in her eyes, but no evil intent: and suddenly Mariarta  felt boorish. She reached out and took one of the ibex-horn cups as the young woman was pouring for herself.

“You’re sure now?” the young woman said, pausing as she held the wineflask.

Mariarta held out the cup; the other poured out white wine. Mariarta sniffed the cup. There was a smell of pine about it.

“Not what you’re used to, perhaps,” the young woman said, and drank deep. Mariarta drank too. It was odd-tasting, but no worse than some of her father’s less successful vintages.

“What to call me— ” The young woman tucked her legs under her on the couch, reaching back to tug at the bindings of her hair and letting it fall in a rush of darkness shot with silver light. “There was a time before names, of course. They just made the moon’s shape, or drew the lightning, or the hunter’s bow. But later, when words started—Tiamat, that was one name. And Sekhet. Then closer times...Selene. Artemis. Diana. The words got confused there—the Romans borrowed a more ancient name from the older people, the ones who came here and left their writing: the scratches and spirals, you’ve seen them in the mountains. Diun, that people called me: Diun Glinargiun.”

“Silverbow,” Mariarta said.

The goddess glanced at the footstool, where the bow leaned casually, burning, sickle-sharp. Its string, undone, lay like a a coil of white-hot wire near one of the footstool’s legs. “That’s right, the words stayed in your language, didn’t they?  Not much change up here. One of the reasons I came to stay.” She smiled. “But that was one of the last names, before the Cry. Now...no one speaks such names, lest something get them.” Diun smiled a naughty child’s smile. “My stepchildren, the creatures of wind and storm. Men fear them, and what aims and strikes—the bow,  the shafts that don’t miss, the wind that bears the shafts. The sky’s fire, the sky’s wind—those have been mine since the beginning.”

“The
föhn
,” Mariarta said.

“Especially that, for it runs up from where I was latest strong. But all winds are mine. Where would you be without them, and me?  Except for the
föhn
, how would you grow the vine, or corn?  What wind melts the snow soon enough for you to put the cows out to pasture and keep yourselves alive until the spring crops come in?  All those things are in my gift.”

“Yes,” Mariarta said, “but the same wind makes people mad, and rips roofs off, and blows any spark into a wildfire—”

Diun shrugged and smiled. “If you’ll be careless with sparks,” she said, “you’ll pay the price. Even gods have been burned by fire in the past, stolen or not.” She smiled slightly. “But what god ever did you any good who was
all
good?  We all have our ambivalences.”

Mariarta said nothing. “Anyway,” the goddess said, “clearly you’re not one to be overawed by mere talk, and that’s as well....” She smiled, and the smile was odd. “Power, though...that you understand. Have come to understand well, I think...otherwise I doubt you would be here.”

Mariarta shook her head. “You go too fast. What...” She trailed off, not sure what she was asking. “What
are
you?”

“By my names,” Diun said, cool, “a goddess, surely.”

Mariarta’s mouth was dry. “Yes,” she said, “but
why
?”

A long silence. Then Diun leaned back again, and smiled. “You mean, when there is supposed to be a god already. Just
one
.”

Mariarta nodded, said nothing. She was becoming afraid, wondering whether it would have been wiser to keep her questions to herself.

“Not really,” Diun said. “Never mind: you would know eventually. It all depends on what you call a ‘god’.” She sipped her wine again. “The first way you know them is that they start making things. Other beings like themselves first, as a rule. So this One power did. Twelve we were. And the One said to us,  ‘Go, make a world to live in and act upon’. So we did—”

She laughed softly at Mariarta’s expression. “No, you won’t have heard this version of the story. It’s not much told: the One sees to that. We built—all this—” Diun’s eyes rested on the open door, the moonlit landscape outside it. “Everything. All our making. And the creatures in it: our making too, under direction. Each had his or her part to play. I came into it early. The skyfire that struck the sea and stirred it to life—that was mine.” Diun smiled, looking out the door at the distant stir of water under the moon.

“
You
made the world?” Mariarta said. “And human beings?  But it says—”

“Don’t say the words,” Diun said, her voice going soft. Mariarta shut her mouth. “I know them too well. We made as we were told to: and we loved what we did. Then we ruled what we had made, as the One had said we should. What the One did
not
say—” and her voice grew soft— “was that our rule soon would end, and be given to another. That we could have borne...if we had been warned of it. But there was no warning. Just one day, a child born: and we knew it was the One’s get. There was no hiding such an event—heaven and earth shook with it. That child would live and die, we were told, and live again: and with its new life, our ‘wardship’ of the world would end, and the Child’s rule would begin. Just like that.”

“It was to save us,” Mariarta whispered, even though it made her nervous to say it.

“So you were told,” Diun said. “We were told that as well.” She reached out a hand to stroke the curve of the moonbow. Where touched, its light grew too bright to bear looking at, a bitter, raging fire. “Never a word to
us
of what you might have needed saving from. But our rule was to end.” She shook her head, turned away from Mariarta. “Well, some of us did not take it well. There was an argument.” She smiled. “But the One cannot be argued with. Some of us were cast out. The rest...fled back into the world, and tried to make the most of their last few years. Then the Child had
his
argument, with death, and won it. Everything changed: heaven and earth together cried out with the birth-pang. Poor Pan—” The goddess shook her head. “He was closest to the world itself, the matter of it, the births and dyings. This birth was too much for him: it killed him. The earth itself cried the news to the creatures in it. And the rest of us fled in earnest, and hid away.”

Mariarta sat there wondering how much to believe of what she was hearing. She still remembered Luzi’s warnings. But at the same time, this goddess was nothing like the raddled demoness that Duonna Vrene had become. Lies there might be in Diun’s words—but how much truth...?

“Time went by, as we had built it to,” Diun said, pouring herself more wine. “It seemed such a charming clockwork, while we were not bound by it. But now we were trapped in the world we had made, and had to watch it change around us. The creatures who had worshipped us forgot us: or they made us over as part of the Child’s new theogony, turned us into ‘saints’, mere holy magic-workers dressed in haloes, subjugate creatures of the Child’s.” She looked ironic. “Some of us couldn’t bear it, and fled into places like this, outside time—where by our art we preserved some memory of the things we made and loved. Some of us hadn’t enough power even for that: they wander the world, diminished, or hide, maddened. But without our worshippers, we are not what we were. After the One withdrew our mandate, theirs was all the power we had left to draw on. Now even that is gone. What tiny bit of power comes to us from the apostate or the studious who still speak our names, must be husbanded like the last measure of grain in a famine.”