The White Serpent

by Tanith Lee

  She had no longing for Zakoris, Free or conquered, she had only wanted the Alisaarian fame that to be called the Hanassian would have meant. The world was gone which had been hers nearly all her knowing life—but it had never been hers, she had been its. She belonged nowhere.

  Near dawn she slept. She woke and found tears cold on her face. She could not recall the dream which had summoned them. But she considered, belonging nowhere, everywhere had some possibility for her.

  She rose, and kicked the spilled dishes aside. She waited for the holy-girls.

  Three of them duly arrived, opening the door with caution, looking at her nervously through the kohl on their eyelids.

  “Tell the mistress,” said Panduv, “I’ll make a bargain. I’ll eat these messes if she will let me exercise in the yard. Otherwise, I will die.”

  They gazed at her as if she had spoken in an unknown tongue. Panduv strode forward and thrust all three away from the door. Frightened of her, the caged leopard now loose, they did not resist, only lumbered quickly off, leaving her at large.

  The yard was nothing much, a stone space contained by the precinct on two sides, and elsewhere with two high walls covered by yellowish plaster. A few inartistic doodlings in dull pink and gray did the office of patterning, and here and there a pot stood with a flowering shrub. Nevertheless, sunlight lay on the court, and the flowers, freshly watered, gave out a clear and hopeful smell.

  Panduv did not linger. She did not know how much time she might have. She began at once to bend and unbend, to stretch and coil and brace herself. Flying into a series of slow cartwheels, she remembered a beating at Hanassor, at childhood’s end.

  At length, she paused for breath, shaking her shorn hair from her face. And saw all the many rows of doorways about the court fat-full of holy-girls gaping at her, in astonishment. While, on a stair at the precinct’s west end, the mistress stood, chewing on a confection, her hard eyes intent.

  Panduv grinned, and gave to her the reckless flamboyant salute of the stadium.

  “Did they tell you my conditions?”

  The mistress said nothing, but after a long stare, she returned up to her apartment, and drew the curtain over with a jangle of its brass-bracelet rings.

  None came to usher Panduv back into prison, nor to chastise her.

  As for the food, she must make do, eating a modicum, but clearing her plates into the lidded jar, then bearing it to the repository for waste matter. If she ate, or seemed to eat, she might earn alternative foodstuff, especially when they saw she did not after all “plumpen.” Panduv lowered herself like a black snake, lifted her feet high, and stalked over the yard on her hands.

  • • •

  By day, when not on duty on the couches over at the temple side of the precinct, the girls would loll about the inner courtyard. Most of them rose late, particularly after a day of service, and the heat of noon generally sent them to a second sleep indoors. Sometimes they employed themselves with sewing, the stringing of beads, or in elaborately arranging their hair. Bowls of candies were continually brought them by the five or six girl children already dedicated; when of age, they, too, were destined for Cah.

  In the evening when the temperature lessened, just before the last meal, crickets whirred in the shrubs and the bushes over the wall. The shadows of birds crossed the yard, and the holy-girls often became animated. They lent each other jewelry, put flowers into their coiffures, chattered. They even compared their patrons disparagingly. Cah valued the male ability to give pleasure and so, since this talent was usually absent, her harlots were at liberty to complain. Zastis was the best and worst. The men were in such a hurry, but lust inherent in all and ultimately able to fulfill itself, if perhaps only at the tenth customer.

  Panduv, accustomed to the female talk of the stadium-girls’ hall, and that in limited quantity, was offended by these costive dialogues.

  Nevertheless, she went on with her exercise about the yard, aware that the harlots watched her, openly or under their lids, sullen yet fascinated. In a universe where men were imposed, like the weather, a woman who exhibited the masculine qualities of physical freedom and strength, arrogance and swagger, was an object of awe.

  There was one girl whom it suited to be big. Though among the heaviest in the precinct, her large body was firm and she moved with complete gracefulness, looking light as down. Her skin had a luster on it, her huge eyes, on the rare occasions you might meet them, were intelligent. But for two side-plaits ending each in a brass bell, denoting Cah’s service, she wore her hair in a beautiful rippling cloud. She was called Selleb.

  Selleb was not idle, like the others. In a room beneath the mistress’ apartment was a loom with posts, and here she worked away with her feet and her smooth arms, weaving cloth for the temple’s winter garments.

  Nor, seeing the black leopard enter the loom-chamber, did Selleb stop weaving.

  Panduv stood close to Selleb and touched the shining cloud.

  “What tresses. The slaver who cut off my hair would have been wild for these.”

  “When I was brought here,” said Selleb placidly, still tending the loom, “my father shore me, too.”

  “Were you sorry to come to this place?”

  “No,” said Selleb, “I was starved, at my father’s farm. I was born a fleshy child, so they thought they could feed me on crusts and air. My belly was always cramped from hunger.”

  “Well, you’ve mended that,” said Panduv, and slipped her lean hand down Selleb’s succulent shoulder.

  Selleb continued to weave.

  “But this food,” said Panduv, “isn’t what I need. You see. I’m as skinny as ever.”

  Selleb smiled, but said nothing.

  Panduv raised her brows.

  “Meat,” said Panduv, “and fruit.”

  “Every ten days,” said Selleb, “there’s a dish of meat for us. Fresh fruit may be bought, but the best way is to ask a patron who is regular with you.”

  “Being too thin to please,” said Panduv cryptically, “I have as yet no patrons. You, however, delicious one, must have many who prefer your mattress.”

  Selleb smiled again.

  Panduv ran her arm about Selleb’s waist, or at least as far as her arm would reach. Leaning to Selleb’s ear, Panduv whispered, “But I must have more meat, too. Is there a chance—something from the altars. I’ll have it raw if I must.”

  “There is a chance, Panoov,” said Selleb; she rearranged the Zakorian’s name better than the others who had learned it. “Is there to be a return for helping you?”

  “I hesitate.”

  Selleb laughed softly.

  Panduv said, “In Alisaar, I learnt several arts of love. I might teach them to you, if you were agreeable. You could then bring them to your service of Cah, to increase your enjoyment and that of your patrons, and so invite the goddess’ approval.”

  • • •

  The mistress entered the cell of the High Priest and kneeled on the floor, puffing. He sat imperious in his chair until she had got the breath to say: “Leave to speak, High One.”

  “Do so.”

  “High One, you may recall an unworthy woman I, in my inferior fashion, chose for the mattresses of Cah.”

  “The black Zakr.”

  “As you say, High One. There’s some difficulty.” The High One waited. The mistress labored, finding her kneeling posture also difficult. “She seems to eat, but never gains weight. Probably she is throwing out her food, or voiding it. In the normal way I’d discipline the girl and force her to swallow her meals before me. But she has been a dancer in Alisaar. It seems she knows tricks for the carnal act and has imparted them to the girls, or to one at least, so that the patrons receive benefit. It’s talked of. What shall I do, High One?”

  The High Priest pressed his fingers to his shaven chin and looked long and blackly at the whe
ezing brothel-keeper of Cah.

  He spoke.

  “Nowhere, woman, in the creed of the goddess, is it suggested that either partner should gain pleasure but in the usual way. The sophistries of Alisaars are their own. Certainly, you chose poorly among the slaves. This Pallnv isn’t docile, and forgets the proper place of the female. She can’t do any good with the girls. I believe we must be rid of her. At the new moon, we’ll sell her for menial work in the port.”

  The mistress bowed, rose, was breathless.

  “One further matter,” said the High Priest. “A Watcher is coming from the capital. There’s nothing here that may not be seen and reported on to the Mother Temple. But he will arrive before Zastis is done. Make sure your charges are groomed and at their best, he may want use of some of them.”

  • • •

  Among the girls of Cah, once the news of the Watcher had been given them, there began some excitement. Such a priest was of importance, but often young—since the traveling required of him might be taxing. He went about from place to place, inspecting the fanes of the goddess, seeing the rituals were correctly kept, and the other temple business, such as slaughtering and usury, properly in hand. Revenues were sent from all the towns and larger villages of Iscah to the Mother Temple in Iscah’s capital, but it was a haphazard affair. The land was not known for its riches, one did not expect too much blood from a stone.

  “There has been no Watcher here for three generations,” the girls told each other, their sleepy sulky voices brighter and more wakeful. They ate heartily, washed and rubbed and oiled their bodies and their hair continuously, lying out in the sunlight like sleek fat cats with glistening fur.

  “So he’s powerful, this priest?” said Panduv to Selleb, as they lay side by side at midnight.

  “You’re wondering what can be made of that,” murmured Selleb.

  “And you are too clever,” said Panduv. “Why aren’t you a porridge-brain like the others?”

  “I have heard, he must go on a journey up into the mountains. A town or village there has come to the attention of the Mother Temple. I’ve heard, he likes women very much.”

  “Then he’ll likely have women with him, don’t you think?”

  “No. He tired of them and left them or sold them for funds.”

  “Yes,” said Panduv, “I, too, have used lovers casually.”

  • • •

  Arud, Cah’s Watcher, entered a minor port of Iscah to which his duty had taken him, in the last phase of Zastis, and the heat of late afternoon. He had been three days on winding trails, in the dust, without a woman or a bath. He was saddle-stiff, since the munificence of the capital ran to zeebas, sore from the stings of insects, red-eyed and ill-tempered. His mood was not eased, moreover, by knowing that the road from this wretched haven would be longer, drier, dustier and more difficult, and end at an anthill even less prepossessing.

  The port—shoddy—did not attract Arud’s attention. His mount clumped through, the four outriders and baggage trundling after, while the people in the streets made way and offered pious obeisance. The temple, its pillars unpainted and crows sitting in the trees around, was much as he had expected. He had seen five such already on his trek.

  The High Priest came out to greet Arud, then there followed a ceremony in the temple, before the High Altar. (Arud would gladly have dispensed with it, but one could not insult Cah.) Thereafter a room was provided in which to steam, and a tepid sluice, and a couch in an odd triangular chamber. To this you were driven. To find relief in such small things.

  Exhausted, longing to sleep, Arud lay on the bed and could not close his eyes. He was thinking resentfully of the jealousy of others in the Mother Temple which had sent him on this mission. Ostensibly it was to show him off, and win him a promotion, maybe. But frankly such Watcher jaunts were the traditional way of being rid of an unpopular and ambitious brat. The five temples already visited, and this, were routine matters enough. But the expedition to come, up into the mountain valleys, to a town not even paying revenue more than once in ten years, would prove irksome and arduous. There had been rumors of curious goings-on there, trickling out with roving traders, bandits. Doubtless these tales were no more than nonsense, but the Watcher had been asked to investigate. They had dispatched him miles down to the coast firstly, to irritate him properly before the worst part of the journey should begin. It had already been half a month’s excursion. The uphill work would take longer.

  With an oath, Arud turned on his stomach. (He was a comely young man, with an unshaven shock of springing hair.) Cah confound his envious detractors! And it was still Zastis— He quietened his fretfulness. There were girls here, big soft pillows of feminine compliance. He would be offered comforts. He could throw his weight about, for if he spoke poorly of them to the capital, Cah rescue them.

  Forget the damnable journey and the bump of mud town on its mountain climb ahead.

  He thought, as sleep began to come, of his father’s pride which had put the second eldest son into the temple. He thought of Cah, in whom he believed, but in an aloof, mathematical way. Arud was of a new persuasion. Not a heretic certainly, but a seeker after truth. Cah was an ultimate symbol, her rituals the correct reverence that an ultimate anything should command. Before the black stones of the Cahs Arud bowed down, but he did not reckon Cah was especially in them. Cah was everywhere, and everything, the principle of life. . . . As for mountain miracles—no. There were things explicable and there were lies. Arud slept. The bed became a woman.

  After the evening meal, which was served early, the holy-girls trooped out of the yard and up an inner stair that led into the temple section of the precinct. Timing perfect, the brothel had been closed to ordinary patrons since the previous sunset. Each girl was cleansed and fresh, burnished and perfumed, with brass, copper and enamel glinting and clicking upon her.

  Panduv, having no appropriate ornaments, and only the colorless gauze shift the mistress had awarded her, begged no bauble and made no show. Nevertheless, her fall of jetty hair had swiftly grown in confinement, and swung beneath her shoulders now. She had roped her waist with some twisted red cord found discarded by Selleb’s loom. Panduv was so unlike the other women, holding herself so straight, so black, so supple and so slender, she made a show regardless. Indeed, she moved one or two of the sisterhood to spite, to pinch her slim flesh and remark that she had better stand under a lamp, or she would never be seen at all.

  They entered the corridor in which these whores stood or sat by day, to be chosen. Each girl took up a familiar position, leaning this way, or that, her hand on her swelling hip, or toying with her plaits and curls. Lamps of oil with two or three wicks shone with a dark fluttering glow.

  Then footsteps approached, and great shadows rushed along the tunnel of women and lights, making all totter and fragment, as if shattered, falsely.

  The mistress came first, slapping down her flat feet. She carried a rod of office, tipped by a phallic copper bud. She looked expressionless on her holy-girls. Behind her walked the Watcher, the High Priest at his side, the Watcher inspecting the line of whores. They, since he was a man, lowered their eyes from his face. Panduv did not lower her eyes. The High Priest met the bold gaze with affront and some startlement, for he had not expected her inclusion in the line of choice—she had never been offered previously, being unacceptable. The Watcher, however, had hesitated.

  Arud also was taken aback to find a black Zakorian before him, there among the soft pigeons, her eyes staring openly into his.

  Panduv meanwhile had surprised herself. She had put herself into the line without the order of the mistress. Her plan was mostly formless and had nothing to do with sex. But it was still Zastis, and her preference being for men, Selleb had not sated her. This Watcher priest was young, and handsome, and though his body did not have the honed edge of Daigoth’s courts, he was only soft in the way her actor-lover had been, or t
he princes she had favored. She felt, in fact, a brilliance of desire. Holding his eyes, she partly veiled her own with the long black lashes, not subservience, the play of a fan, to let him see her awareness of him, as a man.

  Next moment he was moving on along the line of cinnamon flesh. He continued to the corridor’s end, paused, and, in conversation now with the High Priest, went away. The mistress, informed of his selection, come back down the corridor, tapping the rod upon her hand.

  She stopped before Panduv and said, coldly, “Go to the three-sided chamber. Serve Cah, and please him.”

  And reaching past her, tapped the rod on the shoulder of Selleb.

  • • •

  A gentle scratching at the door in the hour before sunrise, did not rouse Panduv. She was already wide awake. The pettiness of her own anger at a backland priestling’s refusal had kept her primed all night.

  Yet, as Selleb slipped into the room, Panduv made pretense of awakening. This, too, was petty.

  “Well, did you please?” she said.

  “Greatly.”

  “Did he please you?”

  “Ah,” said Selleb, “the touch of men means very little to me. Before Cah, I make believe.” She added, “He’s to be here another night.”

  “Has he the sense to call you back, or will he want one of those lumps?”

  “He was very taken with my skills. I told him who it was I learned them from.”

  “What?” said Panduv.

  “His appetite was still strong. The more I spoke of you, Panoov, and what you’d taught me, the stronger it became. He said you weren’t like a woman, and if it were left to him, you should be punished for looking at him the way you did.”

  Panduv chuckled. Her tension left her. Another began.

  “And he would like to see to it personally?” She stretched, and caught a handful of Selleb’s hair. “In Saardsinmey I wouldn’t have glanced twice at him. He would have had to woo me. He would have needed to be rich, clever, a wit, a poet. How low Zarduk casts the proud, into very pits.”