The Birthgrave (30 page)

The City of Ezlann was old, as were all the Cities beyond the Water—which they called Aluthmis, after the Aluthmin, a blue stone mined thousands of years before their birth. And the mining of the stone, the building of the Cities had been in the time of the Great Ones. Now humans, who would not admit their humanity, lived there like the rats who invade forsaken houses. Yet not quite like that. How they came into possession of these places I did not know, nor were there records to tell me—only their legend. The legend said they carried the seed of the Great Ones, a mixed stock, part-god, part-human. They had rebuilt the cities exactly as they had been in the earlier time. They had learned the mechanisms of the Cities (although without properly understanding them, I guessed). And now they spoke a corruption of the Old Tongue, acted out the court etiquette of the dead, dabbled dangerously in the mental exercises and magic arts the Lost had mastered, and went to ridiculous lengths to hide from each other their humanness.

The Old Ones had often gone masked, so all now went masked: yet a hierarchy persisted, human in origin, for in a city of the Lost all were equal in their magnificence. Here the lower orders wore plain masks of silk or satin, the higher officials and soldiery wore masks of beaten bronze. Higher than these came the silver masks, and lastly the golden masks of the elite—the commanders and lords and princesses. In the masks were eye-pieces, usually covered by colored glass, openings at the nostrils, but no further opening for the mouth. They knew that the Great Ones had had few bodily wants, and now to eat was a hidden, furtive thing, never carried out or referred to in public. The need of food had joined the shameful ranks of urination and defecation, for the Lost had required none of these processes to sustain life. The sexual organs, however, were shown openly in certain modes of dress, and the sexual arts the Lost had perfected were striven for with aggression. Not many possessed Power; being human, it cost them most of a lifetime's labor even to scratch the surface of understanding. Their magicians were old and dry, and, for the most part, fools. Vazkor, who possessed Power as his right, had concealed it, knowing the danger of their jealousy. He would not tell me how he had come among them, but knowing the strange yet inevitable paths I had taken to reach superiority in a human community, I was not surprised at what he had done, only curious.

Outside the Cities of the south crouched the steadings and villages of the Dark People. I learned of their position now, and this much, at least, was as it had been before. They were the slaves of the community, the human workers, allowed to live out their rotten, hopeless lives by the courtesy of the City soldiery. They farmed the unwilling land, and sent a tithe of seven-eighths of their yield to the City stores; they were recruited without warning as soldiers and builders. By the laws of their “superiors” they were not permitted any color or ornamentation of dress, except for their chiefs, who might wear a collar of stones to denote rank. Neither were they allowed any religious or secular ceremony, except for a death. This last was probably granted because of the terrified outcry that might have arisen had it been denied; even the soldiers were less horrible than angry ghosts perhaps. It seemed strange, even then, that a people should agree to such enslavement—perpetual, and without any reward or relief. Yet the City legend stated that the Dark Ones were the children of the most ancient slave-race, those who had suffered beneath the yoke of the Lost. They had been born to suffer, the Cities said, and perhaps had been made to believe it.

Knowledge of the Cities led me to their war. I had known little before, and yet the whisper had always been about me on the far side of the mountains. Darak's “caravan” had gone to Ankurum because the Cities indirectly bought their war-gear there, and in the other towns along the Ring—I saw now why. Not only would few of the unhuman humans consent to demean themselves by work as smiths, but this dead land had very little left to give. If it was farmed out, it was mined out also. The Old Race had been merciless in their demands on it, and now it was spent.

I read a great deal about the war, but I did not fully comprehend. There were, it seemed, three alliances, each between a group of Cities, Ezlann and five others here in what was termed the White Desert, six farther south in the Purple Valley, and a collection of ten—remote, mysterious—at Sea's Edge. Each group was theoretically in arms against the other two, Ezlann and hers against Purple Valley and Sea's Edge, Sea's Edge and Purple Valley against each other, and so on. Superficially the war was to gain possession of extra territory, and yet . . . It seemed a game, a game similar to the one Vazkor had taught me, a complex and sophisticated vicious test of wills, set on a red and black checkered board with pieces of ivory and transparent quartz. Its name was Castles, and it could be played only with a kind of cool hatred. Battles in the war were scarce, neatly fought on the no-man's-land between alliance and alliance, that area they called the War March. They seemed to be conducted with more attention to martial etiquette than a desire to win. Besides, there had been no battles for five years or more. I did not understand, but yet, it seemed, I did. Had the Old Race fought, or made a pretense of fighting, among themselves, to spice their boredom on that peak of total supremacy they had achieved? No memory moved in me at the thought. In fact, all my memories that had woken with me under the mountain seemed to be fading day by day. I could scarcely remember now the fiery rooms, the statues, the lake of swans and endless marble stairways, only remember that I had remembered. . . .

Everything I learned in great detail, for like all people unsure of themselves, the citizens were very exact in writing down every nuance and petty rule of their culture.

I knew the contempt Vazkor felt for them. A special look possessed his face when he spoke of them to me, a controlled yet acid disgust, a detestation no less corrosive because he gave it no true expression.

And then, the final legend—a belief that sustained them, yet must have been a constant terror too—that certain of the Lost lay sleeping, yet alive, and would one day wake. This they called “Reincarnation,” although it was not really so, as it was their own bodies to which they returned. Nevertheless, their waking would be fresh, their bodies strange to them, a reincarnation of sorts. It was for these gods that the dark flame was kept burning in the stone bowls, the flame of Evil, which to the Cities was only a Watchfire. Each City had its own special deity. Here in Ezlann her name was Uastis.

When at last I finished reading the highly ornamented books, I sat silent at the great window of the tower palace. I could not see out through the rainbow crystal, the lamp flickered on its colors; outside, the moonlight made a white prison of the panes.

For three days I had done little but read and absorb the sentiments of this place. Even my recreation—the extraordinary gardens, the game of Castles—had been part of my education. Now, abruptly and for the first time, I was aware that these incredible things were real, and true. Even the expected goddess had come.

Vazkor stood across the long room, dark and motionless at the hollow oval of the fireplace, where small pale flames still twitched their tails.

“So now you understand a little,” he said to me.

“A little. But what is it
you
want, Vazkor?”

He shrugged.

“You can't confine a thinking brain, goddess. How do I know? I know only what I want at the present, and you will help me to it. When I have what I want now, I shall want other things of which I have no awareness at this moment.”

“And at this moment, it is the place of Javhovor in Ezlann?”

“Ezlann, and then her sisters in the south.”

“And the Javhovor's war will then be yours. Where does the war fit into your plans?”

“When I have Ezlann and her five allies, I shall take Purple Valley and Sea's Edge in battle. You have seen, no doubt, how little our militarism means in terms of conquest. When I am finally and fully in the lists, there will be many changes made.”

“And I,” I said, “I am the symbol of your right to rule.”

A muscle flinched slightly in his jaw. This direct reference to my own Power made him uneasy.

“It is to your advantage,” he said.

“Yes.”

I rose and crossed to the fireplace. But I did not stand near to him. I was afraid of nearness, and the sense of intimacy and longing in me because he was Darak, undead.

“Surely,” I said, “I will be an inconvenience to you when you have all that you want—at
this
moment. I recollect your soldiers who died because they must not speak that they had seen Uastis.”

“I know you cannot be killed,” he said, his narrow eyes very cold and empty.

“A living death can be as effective. Some underground room, an airless place where I would be always as near to death as was possible.”

He smiled.

“You forget, goddess. We are brother and sister, you and I. When this is finished, we will have another duty to our ancestors, besides the duty of Rule. How else does Power return and spread except through new life? We will make children together, and our Race will be reborn.”

I stared at him. He seemed emotionless, yet very certain. If a man had spoken in this way to me at that moment, in that time of my own hubris, I might have killed him, but I did not dare to set my own fledgling Power against the mature capabilities of Vazkor.

“I am I,” I said to him, “so enorr so. A woman, perhaps, but not a vessel of your pride.”

He smiled again, not very much. He was indifferent to my individuality. It had no place in his scheme of things. I was abruptly afraid, the familiar terror of being caught in another's will, having no person but the person they countenanced, existing because of them, dead at their death, as I had felt I should be at Darak's ending, without fully realizing it.

I turned away and went from the room, and he did not try to stop me.

* * *

It was easy for me to find the black, chill hall of the statue. It was a model in miniature of the great Temple of the City of Ezlann. I had learned that all high officials and lords possessed their own private replica.

Having entered, I was not sure why I had come. I walked into the darkness, and soon could see quite well the pillars, the ornate ironwork, the veiled giant woman of gold.

Before her, on the altar, the flame stirred in its stone bowl.

Going forward, I waited for fear to come, but fear did not come at all. Had the years of nonrealization emptied the power of Karrakaz from the flame? Even as I thought it, a little movement came in the back of my brain, a little whisper.

“I am here.”

Yet still, there was no terror. I went close to the stone bowl and looked down into it, at the white light. Yes, I could sense Karrakaz, and yet a Karrakaz quite changed. I did not feel a terrible power come from the bowl, only a tremor of presence. I, now, it seemed, was the more powerful. This being could not ever match me.

“Karrakaz,” I said aloud.

The flame flattened and twisted on itself.

Suddenly I was happy, and unafraid. I was invincible. If this thing could not awe me, what was he, Vazkor, brother-who-feared-me? Involuntarily my hands went to the cat mask, but I checked. I had not yet broken the curse; the face of ugliness was still on me, and until I found the Jade—And abruptly I knew that my new power was as strong as the Jade, that I had no need of the Jade, that I could defeat everything that troubled me, bit by bit, and by my own will alone. I
knew.
Elation. For the first time, the sense of being.

* * *

Strange, that when we feel we understand all things, we understand nothing. Strange, that when we feel we understand nothing, we have begun, at last, to understand.

4

He came to me in the morning, after my one and only meal of the day, which did not consist of food but of a drink, very like wine in its taste. It contained all the nourishment my body required, and was the first wholly digestible substance I had consumed. No longer the torturing pains in my stomach which had followed every morsel of food until now.

Vazkor looked at me through the wolf's red glass glare, and said, “Tomorrow. The Festival of the Golden Eye. The whole City will fill the Temple of Uastis. That is the day their goddess will wake. I hope you understand.”

“You will make it your business to see that I do,” I said.

He came toward the ebony table, picked up the slender silver beaker, and turned it by its polished stem.

“I have not yet seen your face,” he said.

“No,” I said, “nor is there any need you should.”

“There is a need,” he said.

He drew off the wolf's head, put it on the table, and stood looking at me, waiting.

I recalled Darak, who twice had dragged the mask from me and left me burned and naked. Yet I had no terror now. Yes, let him see what Karrakaz had done to me, and be afraid of it. I lifted the mask from me, and held it loosely in one hand. I looked at him, level, and it did not distress but pleased me when his eyes widened, his face whitened. I smiled at him.

“Now you have seen,” I said. “Remember it.”

He turned away and I laughed gently, and covered myself again, laughing.

* * *

I had been in Ezlann seventeen days, and had seen only the gardens and the tower palace, nothing more. No window gave access. Each was a view in itself, a jewel, an art-form; what need, then, for it to show anything beyond its own beauty? Yet now I was to see the City, walk in it, and finally possess it.

The Festival of the Golden Eye fell at the same time each year, in the long month they called White Mistress, because soon the snow would come to cover the wilderness of the desert with a new and cleaner death. The festival would last three days, days of entertainment, music, pleasure and, never to be forgotten, worship of the Lost, and of their representative Uastis.