The Birthgrave (33 page)

Oparr came to me a few days afterward, and, when we were alone, he said softly to me, “The answer is, goddess, that some men, seeing death in front of them, walk toward it instead of running away. One who waits on death is easy to be rid of.”

That dusk I went to him in the library. He rose at once, bowed, and turned to go.

“My lord,” I said. It was the first time I had addressed him as an equal let alone a superior in rank. He stopped, looking at me curiously.

“I am your servant, goddess,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

“You are in danger,” I said, my lips feeling stiff and cold behind the mask. “You must realize it . . . your spies . . . I do not know if I can help you—I do not think I can—but surely you can help yourself, now, before it is too late.”

“Would you have me execute all my captains?” he said to me immediately. “A little impracticable.”

“Not attack, but defense,” I said.

He came across the room, and looked at me, smiling a little.

“You cannot understand, goddess,” he said. “I have lived with an awareness of death since I was three years of age. These things are not so important for a mortal, goddess.”

Involuntarily, I put up my hand and touched his face. So soft the skin over the fine bones. He flinched away; then, correcting the gesture, he took my hand a moment, then let it go.

“I will send someone to light the lamps,” he said, “so you will be able to read here.”

I might have kept him there, looked in his eyes and paralyzed his will to be away from me, but I could not do it.

Like a silly, love-sick girl, I watched him from windows, stood in doorways of rooms where he sat unaware of me.

I had a magician come to me, in secret, and he conjured up ghost things in a circle on the floor. It was all trickery, but it filled the hours.

I had not spoken to Vazkor for forty-six days.

* * *

There came a morning when I woke with a sense of unreasoning fear. My skin was drenched with sweat, my night garment and sleep mask soaked in it. I lay for a long while, trying to calm myself, and then sat up to rise. The pale room tilted, and it seemed a herd of white horses pulled it like a chariot round and round the Skora of my bed. I lay back, and my whole frame ached and trembled. I saw then that I was sick, and could not understand it. My body, so strong and healing it had survived death, had betrayed me at last to some fever of the cold weather. I was lucid enough to press the carved flower by my bed for the women, but I do not remember much after this. There was a scared physician, I seem to recollect, who did not dare touch me, and prescribed many coverings, and braziers around the bed, but this did no good. I recall glimpses of Oparr, restless and ill-at-ease, watching me, I guessed, to be certain I spoke no slander against Vazkor in my ravings. He was little enough comfort to me, and at last I made him understand I would not have him near me.

Months later, it seemed, I began to drift toward the surface of myself. There was not much left of me. My skin was flaccid and raddled as an old woman's, and my thoughts would not keep still in my head.

Then, as I lay like a skinny corpse on my pillows, the women fluttered like birds and were gone, and my husband was standing beside me. My brain seemed to clear at his coming. He set his mask down by the bed, and he was very pale. I thought for a moment it might have been concern for me, but this was foolish.

“I am sorry you are sick,” he said gravely and gently.

“I do not know how long I have been ill,” I said, half petulant, for no one would tell me.

“Nine or ten days,” he said. “I came before but you did not know me.”

A sudden little chill went through me, and I asked, “Do they know in the City their goddess is sick?”

“Oh, yes,” he said quietly, “they know.”

Drearily I said, “And now they doubt she is a goddess, because she is mortal enough to be ill.”

“No. You're wrong, goddess. They have been in a tumult of fear for you. But there was never any doubt. Oparr has led prayers for you day and night. The women have torn their hair and breasts for you, and a black bull has been slaughtered every dawn.”

“What a waste,” I said.

“But now you're getting well,” he said.

I took his hand, and though I saw him flinch ever so slightly, he did not pull away, and I did not let him go.

I must have slept.

After a time, a smear of golden lamplight on my lids. I half opened my eyes, and he was still there, sitting by me. I was not properly awake, but there was a sense of conviction and urgency on me.

“You are in danger,” I said, “you must go. They will kill you.”

My eyes would not focus, I could not see his expression.

Softly he said to me, “I know.”

“Then go now, go,” I whispered, thrusting at him weakly with both my hands.

“It doesn't matter,” he said. “I have waited for this moment all my life.”

Helplessly, I felt the sleep miasma pull me down. I struggled to keep hold of him, but I could not do it.

In a dark corridor, I saw him walk calmly ahead of me toward a burning, terrible brightness. I ran after him, calling him back, calling and calling him, but I could not seem to reach him, and he did not turn, only went on, walking so calmly, his hands loose at his sides, toward the devouring light.

* * *

There was a terrible sound in the palace: a wild beast roaring and trampling.

I woke, and sat upright in the golden bed. It was very dark, and the noise beat round and round the room. Abruptly, ice-white lightning seared through the windows.

A storm.

Now I made out the separate sounds of the blustering wind, the lashing snow-rain, the hammering fist of the thunder. There was no one in the room; the lamps had blown out. Still petulant with illness, I pressed at the carved flower. But no one came.

After a time, I made out once more the other noises I had heard in sleep that the storm had muffled but did not explain away. Shouting and screaming, shrill screams of exultation or terror, I could not tell. I pressed at the carved flower again and again, without result. Finally, I pulled myself from the bed, and began to make my way toward the double doors of the chamber. It was a slow laborious business. I did not dare to walk across the open floor, which seemed to shift underfoot, but slid myself along with both hands on the walls. Another lightning flash fell blazing on the dark, and then another immediately after it, but this one gold, not white. The doors had been flung open. In the doorway many black figures, priests and priestesses, and in front of them, Oparr. He raised his hands, and cried aloud in his temple voice:

“Praise and love! The goddess is safe! Uastis is unharmed!”

The cry was echoed and reechoed. Priestesses ran into the room with me and Oparr shut the door on us.

I was bewildered and very weak. All things were uncertain and strange to me, and so it did not seem so much stranger than anything else that they stripped me, and painted me with the cream which made my skin golden, and dressed me for the Temple, and hung on me the jewels of the Temple, and finally placed the cat mask on my head over my lank hair, even over the sleeping mask itself. Dimly I saw that the women were afraid.

When I was ready, one called out, and the doors were opened again. Oparr stepped forward.

“It will do,” he said; and then, to me, “The people have been frightened for you, goddess; you must show them that you live and are well. We will help you.”

They did not carry me, but a priest came on either side of me, and led me firmly by the elbows, so I should not fall. Something about these men told me they were not really priests at all. They walked with a soldier's stride.

After a time, Oparr stopped them. He came close, and said quietly, “We are nearly there, goddess. There is only one thing you must remember. When the High Commander, who has saved you, kneels before you, you must touch his shoulder and say, ‘Beheth Lectorr.' Only those words, that's all you need to remember. When he kneels. Do you understand?”

I nodded. I could remember, but they made little sense to me then, those two words of the Old Tongue.

There was red light ahead. We turned a corner and came into the long hall which opened onto a high terrace above the City. The terrace doors were wide, and scarlet torchlight streamed against the black racing sky. Below, thousands of people were massed, the gardens and the walks were flooded with them, and they were shouting, calling, screaming out in a frenzy of anger and fear a single name.

“Uastis! Uastis! Uastis!”

The storm had eased. Hail had fallen, and the terrace flags were very slippery. Men stood here, black still shapes, with silver skulls for heads. Near the edge of the terrace a man with a golden wolf's head stood alone. Oparr halted. The man with the wolf's head turned to us, then back again to the people. He raised his arms, and a crescendo of ragged cries broke the drumbeat of the chant. Slowly he left the edge and moved toward us.

“Let her go,” he said to the priest-soldiers who held me. He looked at me, and his eyes were fierce behind their glass shields, strong enough to hold me up instead. “Now you must walk out where they can see you,” he said. “They are very afraid for you, and you must reassure them.”

His eyes held me hard; my body braced itself, and the paving did not seem to tilt beneath my feet. Stiffly, I began to walk toward the terrace lip, Vazkor a pace or so behind me, holding me firmly without touching me. Moving me like a mechanical toy.

The crowd below could see me now, and they began to sing and cheer.

I stared down at them without thought, and behind me he said, “Give them your blessing, goddess.”

And without thinking, I raised my hands, and made over them the sign I made in the Temple.

A hush fell on them then, and, in the hush, Vazkor came and kneeled beside me, his head bowed.

I was very tired and wanted to sleep, but I had not forgotten. I bent and touched his shoulder, and said the two words, which meant nothing; to me, at least. At the sound of them, the crowd erupted once more. I am not certain how they heard my voice; it was little more than a whisper. I suppose there was some trickery in the structure of the terrace which allowed the whisper to carry.

Vazkor rose. His eyes willed me to turn and go back inside the hall. I did not understand the command, only obeyed it.

I walked before him, away from the noise, and away from the light and the attendants. No one remained; even Oparr was gone. In the faintly lit corridor he let go his mental control of me, and lifted me up physically instead. The doors of my bedchamber were ajar. He nudged them open with his foot, kicked them shut behind him when we were inside. He put me on the bed, neatly and precisely.

“Things have gone well,” he said. “You can sleep now.”

A little cold pain.

“Where is he?” I asked Vazkor.

“Who?”

“The Javhovor, my husband. He was with me before Oparr came.”

“The Javhovor has gone, goddess; he need trouble you no more.”

Weights of lead were piling themselves upon my body, but I must speak a little longer.

“Vazkor, where is he? Is he dead?”

“He's finished, goddess, and as well for you he is. You have been sick, and now I will tell you why you have been sick. Your husband, afraid of your Power, has been poisoning you. A human woman would be dead by now, but you, goddess, being what you are, will recover and live.”

“No,” I said. “No, Vazkor, no.”

But he was gone. The doors were shut.

Far away the crowds still faintly roared, merciless in their joy. The snow was falling again.

7

Five more days it took me to be strong again, and in those days Vazkor achieved the last bastions of temporal power in Ezlann. Yet it had been quite easy for him, once the goddess had uttered the ancient words over him: “Beheth Lectorr”— “Here is the Chosen One.”

I remember how Vazkor had spoken of the garnering of the steaders as being for the Javhovor's latest campaign. But he had not been one for war; it was Vazkor's levy. He had been planning, even then, as if he sensed my coming.

Each day, despite my weakness and reluctance, I had to go out to the terrace, and let the people see me. I learned the story of the lost days from the physician who attended me now, though I learned it in secret. My husband, the Javhovor, had attempted to kill me by poison. On the night of the storm, Vazkor, suspecting the worst, had roused the crowd and come with his men to the palace. The Javhovor was called out. He denied the allegation very quietly, it seemed, and half smiling, and then, in the very act of the lie, some unseen Power had struck him down before the whole crowd. After this, I had been brought forth, and had selected the new Lord of the City—aptly my rescuer and champion.

I had no doubt it was Vazkor who killed him—killed, as I had killed, with the white knife of hate that leaps from the brain. I did not ask what became of his body, it seemed only Vazkor would know, and there was no point. As to the poison, it was a fallacy. How fortunate my illness had been for the High Commander—but he was Javhovor now, and the chosen one of the goddess.

* * *

But as I grew well, I grew hard in my bitterness. I saw Vazkor truly as he was, my enemy, and I knew my danger. Wherever I went I was attended by his people, both women and men. Outside my doors stood his guards—to protect and honor me, it was said. One day I was called out and taken to a small room, where Vazkor and Oparr and various priests waited. Here Oparr intoned over us words I recalled from that other ceremony in the Temple. And when this was finished, hand in hand, Vazkor and I presented ourselves at the high terrace, and the people roared. It was formality, yet I was afraid now what this lie would mean; but it proved even less of a marriage than the last. Vazkor was occupied in sending and receiving messages across the snow wastes to Ezlann's five sister Cities, and had no time for me.