by Tanith Lee
Arud pulled a face. But he had also been telling Panduv for hundreds of miles that he expected the worst.
Word had been sent ahead long since, of the Watcher’s advent, but it might never have arrived. Certainly, no one came to welcome him. Arud sent one of the outriders into the temple to announce him, and sat his zeeba under the terrace, in the dust-storm, his panoply of baggage, attendants, and jet-black harlot about him, to get his dues.
• • •
The High Priest received Arud in a bare stone chamber. The old man—he seemed and moved as if he were ninety—wore his ceremonial regalia, a robe sewn with metal discs and black feathers, and a bird’s mask. Arud, who owed the Priest’s position unstinting reverence, bowed and genuflected, leering with scorn. The least acolyte in the capital, to Arud’s mind, was worth more.
No refreshments were offered, neither any ritual at the altar. They hugged Cah close up here, and their victuals tighter.
When the politenesses were done, it became apparent the High One was in some concern lest the visitor be after revenues. Arud must explain such accounts were nothing to do with him. He then coughed, and asked for water to moisten the dust from his throat. (And water was precisely what they brought him, murky at that.)
“It’s this other affair,” said Arud. The bird’s eyes goggled glassily. “Fabrications of wild magic. Healings. Conjurings.”
The High Priest did not move. The bird’s head did not. Outside the lightning cracked like a whip.
“It has come to the capital in the form of gossip and stories. Nevertheless, it was deemed serious, by the Highest One. I’m here to question you about it.”
Another silence.
“I would like,” said Arud, “to have a word from you, Father.”
The bird’s beak went down. It angled at the floor, and the gnarled old hands gripped the arms of the chair.
“We do not speak much of it.”
“Thinking it beneath your notice?”
“To make it so.”
The rejoinder brought Arud up short.
“That won’t do, High One. You must speak out now, to me. And I shall want to question any of those involved. And the woman.” He had kept himself till now from saying that: The woman. The admission that the tales centered on a female. There were sometimes witches, but they kept to the feminine side, practicing on or against their own sex. It was unlawful but not unholy. This woman, however, was reported to have power over the being of men. Arud credited none of it. He, too, would have preferred not to speak of it, to ignore it and let the falsehoods fade on their own. But the Mother Temple had sent him here to do the opposite. So he lectured the old High Priest for a while on the dreadfulness of not speaking and of striving to ignore, ending with: “And is it a fact? Not that she has any abilities, patently she could not. But that all this concerns a female?”
“So it seems.”
“Seems isn’t good enough, Father. No. You must send for this woman immediately. Have her brought. And perhaps, before I see her I might bathe and—”
“Not here,” said the High Priest, with a twinkle of malice. “I mean that the woman isn’t in this town. In these areas, there is often confusion, the names of places—it’s the village of Ly, that is where the woman is.”
Arud quivered with dire foreknowing. He choked on dust and muddy water, cleared his throat and snarled, “How far is it and where?”
The High Priest pointed upward.
“Five or six days up the mountain. You’ve come at a lucky time. In winter, or during the rains, it would take you much longer.”
• • •
The climb took seven days. The air was thinner. Shards and pebbles fell from the passes. The storm came and went. It needed only to rain to wash them away, back down to the heaped stones and the square. But there was no rain. The taller mountains screened the sky, like scored red-bronze in the sunsets.
At the night halts, Arud lay trembling with ire and slight fever, while Panduv bathed his forehead, massaged his feet. Her constitution was more robust than his, and she saw she had started to be indispensable.
• • •
The dwellings of Ly were in their cracked summer wholeness, the refuse mounds fermenting at their doors. On high ground. Can’s house, smaller even than the temple in the town but smelling as greatly, dominated the prospect.
Only the zeebas and Zakorian Panduv attracted attention on the streets. Filthy and unshaven, Arud, his clothing now totally defaced by the journey, escorted by outriders no better off—and also dwindled, two having gone missing at Ly Dis—might have been any itinerant nobody.
The temple servants who came out to accost Arud on the terrace top were inclined to dismiss his claims. He was driven to giving them secret signs of the religion.
When, finally, he had been taken away into the inner rooms, the outriders, grown desperate, gathered the animals and made for a crude drinking-shop they had seen. Panduv was left with the baggage on the terrace. Glancing up, she saw a square window, with two faceless creatures in it, peering at her: Holy-girls. Seeing her look at them in turn, they averted their eyes, and made superstitious signs. Zakr. Perhaps only to outrage and amaze them further, Panduv walked into the body of the reeking temple.
There were short thick pillars to sustain the roof; they loomed grotesquely, for it was very dark. At the port, she had never entered the temple hall, never observed any sacrament before the altar.
That was quickly come on, here. It was a butcher’s block, still steaming from a recent sacrifice, while blood had overflowed the drain below. Above all this, the statue, if it could even be enhanced with such a name.
Cah was black, as Panduv, but nearly shapeless. Bulges of breasts, and a bulge that was the face, for two amber eyes were set into it.
Something strange suggested itself to Panduv. What was it? These eyes—yellow eyes. Eyes for snakes, or Lowlanders.
A draft caught the meager lamps. The quarter light wavered, and the amber Lowlander eyes seemed to blink and steady upon Panduv.
Did the beautiless hump have some life? Was their goddess present in it—would she deign to be? The stone was very old.
Panduv made a gesture of politeness to a foreign deity.
The eyes went on, boring into her.
“What’s your riddle, lady?” murmured Panduv. “Do you want something?”
A man shouted harshly from the shadows.
“Back you! Zakr sow—stand off. You’ll defile the altar.”
“But I forgot,” said Panduv to the stone, “you hate your own sex, don’t you, lady.”
She bowed her head in suitable abnegation and stepped away among the columns.
The shouter did not pursue her. Very tired now, Panduv slipped down a pillar, to sit with her back against it, on the floor. She let her eyelids fall. She began to dream she was in Saardsinmey, inside the theater. The white Amanackire woman stood in front of her.
Panduv said, “You think you’ll need my tomb before I shall?”
“Oh, yes.”
She had unveiled. Her pallor was exquisite after all, her eyes like bright silver. She said, “And did I not say, Panduv, you would not need the tomb?”
“I’m dead. I’ll never dance again, with the fire.”
“Life is the Fire,” said the Amanackire. “We dance with it constantly, and burn off with it the draperies of blindness. It scorches us, till we learn, how to dance, the meaning of the dance.”
“He was your lover,” said Panduv. “Rehger. I’m at his birthplace. But he’s dead.”
“No,” said the girl. “He lives. I gave myself to death. He followed me in the death procession, up into your well-built, obdurate tomb. There he was, Panduv, when the wave broke Saardsinmey. The tomb withstood the water, as I knew it must. But what a terrible thing. I should have saved that city. I could rescue only
the man I loved. A woman’s foible, Panduv.”
Panduv shook herself and opened her eyes wide.
Someone was standing over her. The shouting fellow again? No, it was a young woman, her own age, or a very little older.
Panduv was puzzled by an awareness of seeing someone that she recognized, had known at least by sight for many years. But she did not know this woman. She was an Iscaian, a wife who wore her hair in the ordained way, twelve plaits ending in copper rings. Her garment was darned and patched all over, her feet were bare and smeared with the dust.
But her beauty, that was another thing. Coming after the white girl’s glamour, so sharply recaptured in the dream, it needed to be of a fabulous sort. And so it was. The eyes that were the fulcrum of the beauty looked down on Panduv, as if questioning her state of heart or health.
“Don’t be afraid,” said Panduv. “I’m the body-slave of the Watcher priest. Quite tame.” And with a feral smile denied the sentence instantly.
But the Iscaian wife did not flinch, she only looked another second or so. Then she turned and walked to the bloody altar.
She stayed there some time, her back to the hall, her face turned up now to the shadow-face of the Cah.
Panduv watched intently. It seemed to her, from what she had heard and seen, even Iscaian women were not normally allowed so near the goddess. But no one shouted.
Presently the Iscaian left the altar. She crossed back over the temple hall, looking neither left nor right, and went out of the doorway.
Panduv came to her feet. For some reason she was going to follow the Iscaian. She did not know why.
As she emerged on the terrace, Panduv spotted her again immediately. The Iscaian was on the sunbaked mud of the street, walking slowly along, her hands loose at her sides. That in itself was unusual. Every other woman who went by, even to children of six years, ported something, baskets, jars, or bundles. As for the other persons on the street, they were aware of the girl. They did not stare at her, greet her, avoid or make way for her—but their actions became somehow self-conscious in her vicinity. They were like bad actors playing a scene in which one of their number goes among them supposedly invisible.
Then a man, a burly brute, stepped into the girl’s path. She halted, and all around the bustle of the street stilled. Now they could see her. Now they could stare. It was so’ quiet the chirrup of birds and insects might be heard, and the voice of the big man carried.
“Cut my hand. Won’t close.”
And he thrust before the girl-wife a great wodge of paw and dirty bandage.
“Your leave to see, master?” said the girl. Her voice was soft. It was the Iscaian tone, pleading to be unvaluably of assistance.
Involuntarily, Panduv clenched her fists. Unclenched them. They all went on that way here, and she, too, when she was sensible.
The girl was unwrapping the bandage. Her movements were deft. She had been honored and must now take care to show herself worthy.
Panduv could not make out what she did, with the hand, the wound. It happened in a few seconds. The man gave a snort. Then he threw up his arm, over his head, flexing the hand. With the other he gave the girl-wife a light push. “Ah,” he said. “Can be praised.” The raised-up hand had a blemish on the palm, a bluish ridge like a clean ten-day-old healing.
In the fever Arud had mentioned sorcery repeatedly. He had even once called the sorcerer she.
The girl was walking on, and the crowd pleated round her. Panduv after all stood rooted. Was this deceit? She herself had not been able to see the open cut. The man was merrily elbowing away to the tavern. Perhaps Arud’s outriders would hear his summary over their cups.
A knot of women meanwhile was just below the temple terrace, and they were muttering together, looking off now where the girl had gone.
Panduv ran lightly down to them. She touched one on the shoulder. The whole group cowered away from her, disliking, nearly showing their teeth.
“Who was that?” said Panduv, slurring her words forcibly, to offer them a nice homely sound.
“Who?” said one of the women.
The rest were speechless.
“The healer,” said Panduv.
The woman who had spoken shook her head. She, too, was a wife, all of them were, and the twelve rings on her hair clashed together.
“Yes. I saw her do it. If it wasn’t faked.”
The peripheral women were beginning to slink away. Two ran off suddenly. Panduv reached out and got hold of the one who had spoken. Panduv said, “My master is a Watcher of Cah. He’s in the temple now, with the High One. He wants to know the name of that woman. Dare deny him?”
A second woman spoke now.
“Her name is Thioo.”
“And she lives here, in your village?”
No answer, which meant she did not.
Precisely then Arud came out on the terrace, announcing himself by ranting: “Panv!” (Definitely agitated.) “Here, you bitch!”
Which scattered the women like terrified beetles.
Panduv went back to him.
“He denies it all,” cried Arud in boiling passion, dignity superfluous. “The old imbecile in his stenchful bird-head. There is no witch. Nothing happens here.”
“Oh, master,” said Panduv, “I have just seen it happen.”
“What?” said Arud. His face collapsed.
“I was questioning those women, when you spoilt my luck by bawling and scaring them off. But I’ve seen her at her work, your sorcery-maker.” Arud was speechless. As an Iscaian woman with a man, he hung on her words. And, having divined its form, since one of the Iscaian acrobat-girls had had a lost sister of the same name, Panduv concluded, in the clear accents of Alisaar, “She’s called Tibo. She lives outside the village. But then again, if you go to the wine-shop, I can point out to you her victim, the man she cured.”
Arud exclaimed, then excused himself to the goddess.
Panduv was dismayed to find herself content at this miniscule victory, over a man.
• • •
No women were allowed in the wine-shop. Small boys did the serving. Panduv waited doglike at the door, under the shade of the tattered awning which comprised the roof.
There was no necessity for anyone to point out the cut-cured man, for he was noisy in his relief, and the two outriders had bought him a jug of drink.
Having been convinced Arud was a Watcher priest, the man divulged that the woman Thioo would already have gone home to her husband’s farm. She came in early to sell vegetables: She saw to the women. Panduv heard Arud say, “And to you.”
“I let her, yes. My woman’s useless, can get nothing right. I’ll smack her hard when I get home. I’ve got a good firm palm now to do it.” (Panduv gazed on the dust and wished the whole arm might drop off there.)
“Are you perhaps,” said Arud, “in league with the woman Thioo, to make a mockery of the temple?”
The man was shocked, infuriated, and frightened by this accusation. He was devout. He had made sacrifice to Cah only two days ago, which was why he was here. As for being in league with a woman—what man could be? He might as well plot with his cow. But Cah had given the sloven power that she might be of use to Ly. Cah cared for the men of Ly. They were lusty. She favored them.
“When did all this begin?” Arud interrupted eventually.
None of the men in the wine-shop was positive. Years gone. In the long snow. At the time of the disastrous harvests—hadn’t she stopped the fire, then? The woman had been thought an adulteress once, but that was previously. One of her men, her husband’s brother, had fallen off a pass in the rains. But Cah had proved the woman was dutiful. Maybe five years after that, at Big Thaw— Now certainly that was the month she saved a neighbor’s son, when the mother was killing him, trying to birth him out feet first.
Thioo’s own son had
been sold, did you remember that? The slave-takers came. Alisaarians. So poor, Orhn’s farm then, he had had to give his own boy. And Orhn was never much of a man, as a man should be. And the woman was barren again, after that.
(Panduv, at the door, had locked herself against the upright. Something was amiss in this tale—)
Arud said, “Well, then, let’s date this from when the slave-takers came.”
“Twenty summers, or more.”
“More, more.”
“This woman isn’t young, then?”
No, they said. But nubile, still.
(In those mountain valleys a woman of thirty could look like a city woman of sixty. The woman Thioo—Tibo—had been near to Panduv’s age. She was young. Yet if she had borne the child the slavers took for Alisaar—Panduv realized, not the wonder of Tibo’s youth, but the aspect of the information from which she had been thoughtlessly advancing. She knew then why Tibo had seemed familiar. Tibo was the mother of Rehger.)
Arud was exasperated. His voice was full of high blood and Panduv could hear him banging on a table.
“You will all of you be questioned, at the temple, before the Cah.” A desperate silence fell. “Meanwhile I’ll want directions to the farm of this man Orhn, the woman’s husband.”
When he came out, Arud said to Panduv, “Another curse of a ride. But I’ll sleep before I do it. I vow that, Panduv. I’ll go tomorrow. She and her witchcraft can wait.”
Panduv walked the expected number of paces behind him to the temple.
She would have to walk behind the zeeba to the farm. Arud might not want her company. She must explain how useful she would be, to wash his feet and ease his back at the ride’s end. He might be forced to remain overnight at the farm. He must have a handmaiden, not trust to the domesticity of the witch.
Panduv had a violent need, a yearning, to see Tibo again. It was like love. How strange that now this unknown Iscaian woman should be the only link, the last representation, of Saardsinmey and the days of life.
