The Birthgrave (42 page)

For a while, then, we heard no more. A sullen depression and unease settled on Belhannor; a waiting.

I was well past the one hundred and twentieth day (which, by the witch's reckoning, was the middle of my pregnancy), heavy and sleepy often, while my head ached constantly. I was asleep when the first weary troop of refugees trailed into the City from her two sisters farther south. Vazkor had taken them easily, now they fled from the forces of Anash and Eptor, which, having crushed White Desert's march, were striking north to finish the work.

Belhannor opened her gates to them, foolishly, out of pity. She had taken in the flight from Orash already. Now the numbers swelled—wagons of women, men, and children, domestic animals and household pets. The city grew crowded, slovenly; tents put up in the streets and gardens and horse fields, and the warrens of the lower quarters blocked and stifled.

Attorl, I heard, was struggling to organize defense, but he was ill with nerves and panic, and made a poor job of it. Belhannor's major war-machines had been appropriated by Vazkor and taken south. Now a few rusty cannon were wheeled out to protrude from the walls like mistaken drainage pipes. The soldiers in Belhannor did well enough, though it was a small garrison force, not more than four hundred men—adequate to subdue civilians but hopeless under the circumstances. Attorl's wavering attempts to recruit ordinary men, particularly from the refugee population, met with sickly failure.

Vazkor had allowed only for perpetual success, never once for the stumble that would come inevitably, with time.

I experienced no guilt because of the storm—I felt that I had simply introduced a certain catastrophe a little earlier.

* * *

Anash and Eptor rode fast, smashing their way toward us, extravagant and impetuous with anger. We saw their tokens on the horizon now, from our high towers—smoke pall, black and filthy—some burning village; nearer, the haze of camp fires by night. It was interesting that quite suddenly some of those who had fled into Belhannor packed up their gear and fled out of her again. They were the wise ones. Others felt a false security in the sense of walls around them. I imagine I must have had similar thoughts, though not consciously. I felt too heavy and dreary to attempt flight. Sour amusement had settled on me, I, once the besieger of Orash and Belhannor, now besieged by these Cities I had not even seen.

* * *

They reached us on a crisp bitter-green evening, spring rain spangling intermittently, an evening for nostalgia and old love songs.

Attorl had begged use of my guard for the walls, and I had put it to Mazlek. He nodded, seeing, probably, no other course. Now I sat in my bedchamber in one of the carved chairs. A jeweled book was spread open before me on the sloping ivory desk, a useful thing I could bring conveniently close across the obscenity which was now my stomach. It was a book of fabulous animals and beasts—salamanders, unicorns—and the pages blazed with beautiful color from masterly illustrations. I was not really reading it, only admiring, when suddenly I found a single word written in the margin. I had thought this book to be one of the gifts of Belhannor's Javhovor, had not realized I held one of Asren's books, one I had never before looked into. I did not know his writing—I had seen his personal seal, no more—yet I knew it at once. Without embellishment, clear, straight, wise yet open, inured to yet conscious of pain—all this I saw in the solitary word he had written. I reached out to touch the word with my fingertip, and in that instant the great thunder came, splitting the world. The room trembled and steadied. I pushed the desk away, went to the nearest window and saw the reddish glare on the river thrown back from burning houses in the lower quarter. They had fired across the wall, and the ball had struck. I had not realized the power of those iron birds of death.

Other crashes came after that, now close, now far off, always terrible. Gradually the sky reddened into smoky darkness.

The bombardment ceased at nightfall, though I did not notice then. I was still at the window, clinging there in helpless fascination, when the silence came. But not silence. A crackling from burning places, the occasional soft thud of a collapsing house, and cries, and warning trumpets brought with the ashes on the wind.

I did not leave my rooms. The palace was full of frightened women. There were three men of my guard by my door, and, when others relieved them later, there might be news of a sort.

At midnight the cannon roused again. It was clever, not allowing us to sleep. Mazlek came soon after, dirty from the wall, his arm bound around with bloody temporary bandaging.

“Little action to tell,” he said. “There are many of them, and more to come from the look of it. I think there are men from the other Cities with them, recruited after the surrender.”

“Have they tried to take Belhannor?” I asked.

“No. They're playing with her, goddess. A spokesman rode out, and called up there should be no quarter for the men of White Desert, but—” Mazlek paused, smiling slightly. “For Belhannor, if she opens her gates, sisterly love restored between the Cities of the valley.”

It was a sharp little dagger, that. It pricked even my lethargy.

“What did Attorl do?” I asked.

“Fired on the man,” Mazlek said, expressionless, “fired on him, and missed. The Belhannese cannon are useless, except to the enemy. The first blew up and killed thirteen men on the wall, and the ball never left her. Goddess,” he said, “it is only a question of time before they think to save their own skins.”

He spoke it softly, not so sharp now, but then, the blade was already in.

“I must leave,” I said, but it was a blank statement. I did not know where I should go.

“If you will put the matter in my hands?”

I nodded.

“Then collect what is necessary to you, goddess, and be ready to come with me, night or day. I will guard you with my life. You know it.”

Despite the intermittent noise of war, I slept that night, deeply and without dreams.

It was a quiet morning, very still. The river shone like green pearl. I could not see from my apartments any of the ruins, only the faint smoke, drifting like a girl's hair on water, across the pale sky. I bathed and dressed and they brought my drink. I remember sitting in a chair, staring around me at priceless things, combs and ornaments, and knowing none of them as mine. I would have little to carry, except— I went to the desk and touched the open book I had forgotten since the first cannon sounded.

A knock then, and, when I called for them to come in, a man entered in the livery of the Javhovor, and told me he begged my presence. It seemed strange, before they had always come to me, and yet it was a very polite summons. I followed the man, and was brought eventually to the great audience hall, its function virtually obsolete, but its splendor undimmed. Among the scarlet and green and white hangings, the pale-faced man, who was High-Lord, came to me, unmasked and bowed very low.

“Goddess, forgive my request that you come here, but I felt it was safer, perhaps.” A little pause, during which I noticed several courtiers and ministers around the walls. Behind me, the white fans of the princesses dipped nervously. “We have been forced,” the Javhovor began, and halted. “We thought it best,” he said. “A cruel decision. We have delivered ourselves to the mercy of our sister Cities, Anash and Eptor. There was no other path for us, goddess. I could not see my own die around me.”

I was angry with myself for falling into this trap, angry at the Javhovor for ensnaring me, angry with Mazlek that he had not sensed, and come in time after all.

“What have you done?” I asked—a blind speech enough, but he answered.

“The men of Belhannor will rise against the men of White Desert on the wall. It has been arranged.” He hung his head, gray and sick at the betrayal for which I did not even blame him.

“And I?” I said. “Where do I fit in this tapestry?”

“No insult will be offered you, goddess—I swear it.”

“I am delighted you are so confident. I do not share your optimism.”

There came a sudden, distant noise outside—shouts, cries, a roar of surprise and pain. No cannon uttered; there was no need. The men of Belhannor would be opening wide the gates now, welcoming their brothers inside, hopeful and a little nervous.

I sat my heaviness in a chair to wait, and noticed that the princesses slunk little by little away from me, to their father's side. Soon there was a sound of booted feet, horses, many voices under the windows, before long, marchers rhythmic in the corridor outside, the doors and curtains thrust aside, and twenty men emptying into the hall. Mixed uniforms of purple and bright yellow, armor pieces, the visors of helms tipped back to show the arrogant masks of lions and bears—Anash, the mistress of the offensive. A man, a silver-masked soldier yet very proud, spiteful in triumph, swaggered into the hall—their commander, thinking himself their Javhovor.

A half nod to the High-Lord of Belhannor, a vicious little chuckle.

“Well. An intelligent move, brother.”

They might have been Vazkor's words, but the voice was very light and high, oddly matched with the bulk of the man.

And then the insolent turning, the gaze taking in the length and breadth of the hall, coming to rest at last on me.

“And who is this, brother? Your lady, perhaps?”

He would know of me, know of the cat-faced goddess of Ezlann. She who had carried the enemy of Anash to his power.

“I am Uastis,” I said to the commander. “My husband is Vazkor, who would have plowed you and yours, deep in the river soil had he but time to spare.”

I said it to anger him, catch him off balance in this atmosphere of placatory groveling. His hand whipped to sword hilt, and I felt a laziness come on me, knowing what I could do, to him at least, and to his twenty, if I could summon hate enough. But after that, death would come, or the only form of death I could know. And abruptly I was afraid. How my enemies could play with me, endless games of agony.

There came a startling little cry, just beyond the door, a little thrusting and cursing because a man had fallen and pushed others as he fell. The Anash commander turned, and in that moment the doorway changed color and shape and was full of black-liveried men, some green-roped at the middle, all with the badge of a cat on the right side of the breast. Swift swords and men dropping before them. The floor was littered purple and yellow.

Two men ran to me—Slor and Mazlek.

“Goddess—quickly!”

I ran with them, not pausing to watch the amazement on those figures left alive behind us.

* * *

There were many corridors in the palace at Belhannor, and those we ran through were very empty. I had the impression that we were going downward, but had no time or breath to ask—that other in me made it hard for me to keep up. Then we turned out into a broad dark hall, and found a pack of the purple and yellow soldiers, plundering chests. Apparently anything that ran and did not wear their colors was fair game for them. At once swords were out, and they came rushing at us up the hall, yelling. Mazlek pulled me across their path, through a side door which was slammed behind us.

Fewer men with me now. Many had stayed on the far side of the door to hold off the pursuit. A sloping passageway ran down, followed by flights of dark stairways where wall torches struggled to remain alight. I stumbled many times.

In the damp darkness, we heard the great clang of the door bursting open above, and knew the hunt was on again.

“Not far,” Mazlek whispered. “A door soon they won't be able to open.”

The steps narrowed and became a corridor without lights. Behind, the sounds were wild and raucous and savage. Slor came to a halt, and the rest of the men froze where they stood.

“We'll hold them here,” he said, “a narrow place. By the time they can get past us, you will have got the goddess safe away.”

Mazlek hesitated a second, then he nodded. He reached out and clasped Slor's shoulder hard in his hand, then he turned and pulled me on into the dark.

I was quite breathless by now, and hardly understood what was happening. It seemed only some awful part of my ordeal when my fingers met stone, and I found the corridor ended in a blank wall. I leaned on the cold pitted surface, gasping, and Mazlek thrust something into my hands.

“A cloak,” he said, “and a plain silk mask—iron gray, the color of the lower orders in Belhannor. Please put them on.”

I turned away and obeyed him, though I could not see how this would help us. When I looked back, I saw that he had donned a tunic of this stuff over his mail, and a plain mask also. I dropped the cat mask where he had dropped his own, and his badge and sash with it, but the open skull-cat eyes glared up at me, my own self left behind. A rasping sound made me jump back from the wall. A narrow oblong opening had appeared, framing blackness.

Mazlek held up one hand on which a ring curled I had not seen him wear before.

“I bought this key many days ago,” he said. “I thought it might prove useful.”

He guided me into the black mouth, followed me, then shut the way behind us.

“They may never see the door,” he said. “If they do, it will be useless to them without the ring.”

He grasped my arm firmly and we started forward. I could make out nothing at first, but then a greenish luminance began to ripple about us, and I smelled the river.

The light grew. I saw mud and mosses clinging on the walls. Bright green weeds strangled about our feet.

We came out of a small cave, like a rat's bolt-hole, into the dull, white, faintly smoking day. The passage had opened on a low bank of the river, but not the river I had known from my windows. This was an oily trickle, clogged with weed growths and garbage. Rough steps led up from the mud to the narrow streets, peeling houses, and war ruins of the lower quarter.

8

The purple and yellow soldiery of Anash had filtered through into these streets, but by careful maneuvering we avoided a face-to-face collision with them. Despite their leader's promises of brotherhood, they were breaking down the doors of perfume shops, clothiers and jewelers, and taking what they thought valuable. In an alley we passed a dog they had used for archery practice. Their noise was always with us—now distant, now dangerously close. Twice other men passed our hastily sought hiding places, in charcoal colors, marching. Eptor, it seemed, were a more orderly crew.