by Tanith Lee
“My daughter,” he said.
I had known Draco, as I have said, almost all my life. He was for me what no other had ever been; I had followed his star gladly and without question, into scrapes, and battles, through very fire and steel. Very rarely would he impose on me some task I hated, loathed. When he did so it was done without design or malice, as a man sneezes. The bad times were generally to do with women. I had fought back to back with him, but I did not care to be his pander. Even so, I would not refuse. He had stood in the window that noon, looking at the black forest, and said in a dry low voice, carelessly apologetic, irrefutable, “He has a girl in that wagon, Get her for me.”
“Well, she may be his—” I started off.
He cut me short: “Whatever she is. He sells things. He is accustomed to selling.”
“And if he won’t?” I said. Then he looked at me, with his high-colored, translucent eyes. “Make him,” he said, and next laughed, as if it were nothing at all, this choice mission. I had come out thinking glumly, she has witched him, put the Eye on him. But I had known him lust like this before. Nothing would do then but he must have. Women had never been that way for me. They were available, when one needed them. I like to this hour to see them here and there, our women, straight-limbed, graceful, clean. In the perilous seasons I would have died defending his sisters, as I would have died to defend him. That was that. It was a fact, the burning of our grain had come about through an old grievance, an idiot who kept score of something Draco had done half a year ago, about a native girl got on a raid.
I put down the golden cup, because the drink was going to my head. They had two ways, Easterners, with daughters. One was best left unspoken. The other kept them locked and bolted virgin. Mercurius bless the dice. Then, before I could say anything, the Miller put my mind at rest.
“My daughter,” he said, “is very accomplished. She is also very beautiful, but I speak now of the beauty of learning and art.”
“Indeed. Indeed.”
The sun was slipping over behind the walls. The far mountains were steeped in dyes. This glamor shone behind the Corn-King’s head, gold in the sky for him, too. And he said, “Among other matters, she has studied the lore of Khemia—Old Aegyptus, you will understand.”
“Ah, yes?”
“Now I will confide in you,” he said. His tongue flickered on his lips. Was it forked? The damnable drink had fuddled me after all, that, and a shameful relief. “The practice of the Al-Khemia contains every science and sorcery. She can read the stars, she can heal the hurts of man. But best of all, my dear Captain, my daughter has learned the third great secret of the Tri-Magae.”
“Oh, yes, indeed?”
“She can,” he said, “change all manner of materials into gold.”
2
“Sometimes, Skorous,” Draco said, “you are a fool.”
“Sometimes I am not alone in that.”
Draco shrugged. He had never feared honest speaking. He never asked more of a title than his own name. But those two items were, in themselves, significant. He was what he was, a law above the law. The heart-legend of the City was down, and he a prince in a forest that ran all ways for ever.
“What do you think then she will do to me? Turn me into metal, too?”
We spoke in Greek, which tended to be the palace mode for private chat. It was fading out of use in the town.
“I don’t believe in that kind of sorcery,” I said.
“Well, he has offered to have her show us. Come along.”
“It will be a trick.”
“All the nicer. Perhaps he will find someone for you, too.”
“I shall attend you,” I said, “because I trust none of them. And fifteen of my men around the wagon.”
“I must remember not to groan,” he said, “or they’ll be splitting the leather and tumbling in on us with swords.”
“Draco,” I said, “I’m asking myself why he boasted that she had the skill?”
“All that gold: They didn’t steal it or cheat for it. A witch made it for them.”
“I have heard of the Al-Khemian arts.”
“Oh yes,” he said. “The devotees make gold, they predict the future, they raise the dead. She might be useful. Perhaps I should marry her. Wait till you see her,” he said. “I suppose it was all pre-arranged. He will want paying again.”
When we reached the camp, it was midnight. Our torches and theirs opened the dark, and the flame outside the Mars Temple burned faint. There were stars in the sky, no moon.
We had gone to them at their request, since the magery was intrinsic, required utensils, and was not to be moved to the fort without much effort. We arrived like a bridal procession. The show was not after all to be in the wagon, but the tent. The other Easterners had buried themselves from view. I gave the men their orders and stood them conspicuously about. Then a slave lifted the tent’s purple drapery a chink and squinted up at us. Draco beckoned me after him, no one demurred. We both went into the pavilion.
To do that was to enter the East head-on. Expensive gums were burning with a dark hot perfume that put me in mind of the wine I had had earlier. The incense-burners were gold, tripods on leopards’ feet, with swags of golden ivy. The floor was carpeted soft, like the pelt of some beast, and beast-skins were hung about—things I had not seen before, some of them, maned and spotted, striped and scaled, and some with heads and jewelry eyes and the teeth and claws gilded. Despite all the clutter of things, of polished mirrors and casks and chests, cushions and dead animals, and scent, there was a feeling of great space within that tent. The ceiling of it stretched taut and high, and three golden wheels depended, with oil-lights in little golden boats. The wheels turned idly now this way, now that, in a wind that came from nowhere and went to nowhere, a demon wind out of a desert. Across the space, wide as night, was an opaque dividing curtain, and on the curtain, a long parchment. It was figured with another mass of images, as if nothing in the place should be spare. A tree went up, with two birds at the roots, a white bird with a raven-black head, a soot-black bird with the head of an ape. A snake twined the tree too, round and round, and ended looking out of the lower branches where yellow fruit hung. The snake had the face of a maiden, and flowing hair. Above sat three figures, judges of the dead from Aegyptus, I would have thought, if I had thought about them, with a balance, and wands. The sun and the moon stood over the tree.
I put my hand to the hilt of my sword, and waited. Draco had seated himself on the cushions. A golden jug was to hand, and a cup. He reached forward, poured the liquor, and made to take it, before—reluctantly—I snatched the vessel. “Let me, first. Are you mad?”
He reclined, not interested as I tasted for him, then let him have the cup again.
Then the curtain parted down the middle and the parchment with it, directly through the serpent-tree. I had expected the Miller, but instead what entered was a black dog with a collar of gold. It had a wolf’s shape, but more slender, and with a pointed muzzle and high carven pointed ears. Its eyes were also black. It stood calmly, like a steward, regarding us, then stepped aside and lay down, its head still raised to watch. And next the woman Draco wanted came in.
To me, she looked nothing in particular. She was pleasantly made, slim, but rounded, her bare arms and feet the color of amber. Over her head, to her breast, covering her hair and face like a dusky smoke, was a veil, but it was transparent enough you saw through it to black locks and black aloe eyes, and a full tawny mouth. There was only a touch of gold on her, a rolled torque of soft metal at her throat, and one ring on her right hand. I was puzzled as to what had made her glimmer at the edge of my sight before, but perhaps she had dressed differently then, to make herself plain.
She bowed Eastern-wise to Draco, then to me. Then, in the purest Greek I ever heard, she addressed us.
“Lords, while I am at work, I must ask that you will please be still, or
else you will disturb the currents of the act and so impair it. Be seated,” she said to me, as if I had only stood till then from courtesy. Her eyes were very black, black as the eyes of the jackal-dog, blacker than the night. Then she blinked, and her eyes flashed. The lids were painted with gold. And I found I had sat down.
What followed I instantly took for an hallucination, induced by the incense, and by other means less perceptible. That is not to say I did not think she was a witch. There was something of power to her I never met before. It pounded from her, like heat, or an aroma. It did not make her beautiful for me, but it held me quiet, though I swear never once did I lose my grip either on my senses or my sword.
First, and quite swiftly, I had the impression the whole tent blew upward, and we were in the open in fact, under a sky of a million stars that blazed and crackled like diamonds. Even so, the golden wheels stayed put, up in the sky now, and they spun, faster and faster, until each was a solid golden O of fire, three spinning suns in the heaven of midnight.
(I remember I thought flatly: We have been spelled. So what now? But in its own way, my stoicism was also suspect. My thoughts in any case flagged after that.)
There was a smell of lions, or of a land that had them. Do not ask me how I know, I never smelled or saw them, or such a spot. And there before us all stood a slanting wall of brick, at once much larger than I saw it, and smaller than it was. It seemed even so to lean into the sky. The woman raised her arms. She was apparent now as if rinsed all over by gilt, and one of the great stars seemed to sear on her forehead.
Forms began to come and go, on the lion-wind. If I knew then what they were, I forgot it later. Perhaps they were animals, like the skins in the tent, though some had wings.
She spoke to them. She did not use Greek anymore. It was the language of Khem, presumably, or we were intended to believe so. A liquid tongue, an Eastern tongue, no doubt.
Then there were other visions. The ribbed stems of flowers, broader than ten men around, wide petals pressed to the ether. A rainbow of mist that arched over, and touched the earth with its feet and its brow. And other mirages, many of which resembled effigies I had seen of the gods, but they walked.
The night began to close upon us slowly, narrowing and coming down. The stars still raged overhead and the gold wheels whirled, but some sense of enclosure had returned. As for the sloped angle of brick, it had huddled down into a sort of oven, and into this the woman was placing, with extreme care—of all things—long scepters of corn, all brown and dry and withered, blighted to straw by some harvest like a curse.
I heard her whisper then. I could not hear what.
Behind her, dim as shadows, I saw other women, who sat weaving, or who toiled at the grind-stone, and one who shook a rattle upon which rings of gold sang out. Then the vision of these women was eclipsed. Something stood there, between the night and the Eastern witch. Tall as the roof, or tall as the sky, bird-headed maybe, with two of the stars for eyes. When I looked at this, this ultimate apparition, my blood froze and I could have howled out loud. It was not common fear, but terror, such as the worst reality has never brought me, though sometimes subtle nightmares do.
Then there was a lightning, down the night. When it passed, we were enclosed in the tent, the huge night of the tent, and the brick oven burned before us, with a thin harsh fume coming from the aperture in its top.
“Sweet is truth,” said the witch, in a wild and passionate voice, all music, like the notes of the gold rings on the rattle. “O Lord of the Word. The Word is, and the Word makes all things to be.”
Then the oven cracked into two pieces, it simply fell away from itself, and there on a bank of red charcoal, which died to clinker even as I gazed at it, lay a sheaf of golden corn. Golden corn, smiths’ work. It was pure and sound and rang like a bell when presently I went to it and struck it and flung it away.
The tent had positively resettled all around us. It was there. I felt queasy and stupid, but I was in my body and had my bearings again, the sword-hilt firm to my palm, though it was oddly hot to the touch, and my forehead burned, sweatless, as if I too had been seethed in a fire. I had picked up the goldwork without asking her anything. She did not prevent me, nor when I slung it off.
When I looked up from that, she was kneeling by the curtain, where the black dog had been and was no more. Her eyes were downcast under her veil. I noted the torque was gone from her neck and the ring from her finger. Had she somehow managed her trick that way, melting gold on to the stalks of mummified corn—No, lunacy. Why nag at it? It was all a deception.
But Draco lay looking at her now, burned up by another fever. It was her personal gold he wanted.
“Out, Skorous,” he said to me. “Out, now.” Slurred and sure.
So I said to her, through my blunted lips and woolen tongue, “Listen carefully, girl. The witchery ends now. You know what he wants, and how to see to that, I suppose. Scratch him with your littlest nail, and you die.”
Then, without getting to her feet, she looked up at me, only the second time. She spoke in Greek, as at the start. In the morning, when I was better able to think, I reckoned I had imagined what she said. It had seemed to be: “He is safe, for I desire him. It is my choice. If it were not my choice and my desire, where might you hide yourselves, and live?”
• • •
We kept watch round the tent, in the Easterners’ camp, in the market-place, until the ashes of the dawn. There was not a sound from anywhere, save the regular quiet passaging of sentries on the walls, and the cool black forest wind that turned gray near sunrise.
At sunup, the usual activity of any town began. The camp stirred and let its boys out quickly to the well to avoid the town’s women. Some of the caravaners even chose to stroll across to the public lavatories, though they had avoided the bathhouse.
An embarrassment came over me, that we should be standing there, in the foreigners’ hive, to guard our prince through his night of lust. I looked sharply, to see how the men were taking it, but they had held together well. Presently Draco emerged. He appeared flushed and tumbled, very nearly shy, like some girl just out of a love-bed.
We went back to the fort in fair order, where he took me aside, thanked me, and sent me away again.
Bathed and shaved, and my fast broken, I began to feel more sanguine. It was over and done with. I would go down to the temple of Father Jupiter and give him something—why, I was not exactly sure. Then get my boar for Mars. The fresh-baked bread I had just eaten was tasty, and maybe worth all the worry.
Later, I heard the Miller had taken himself to our library and been let in. I gave orders he was to be searched on leaving. Draco’s grandfather had started the collection of manuscripts, there were even scrolls said to have been rescued from Alexandrea. One could not be too wary.
In the evening, Draco called me up to his writing-room.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “the Easterners will be leaving us.”
“That’s good news,” I said.
“I thought it would please you. Zafra, however, is to re-main. I’m taking her into my household.”
“Zafra,” I said.
“Well, they call her that. For the yellow-gold. Perhaps not her name. That might have been Nefra—Beautiful . . .”
“Well,” I said, “if you want.”
“Well,” he said, “I never knew you before to be jealous of one of my women.”
I said nothing, though the blood knocked about in my head. I had noted before, he had a woman’s tongue himself when he was put out. He was a spoiled brat as a child, I have to admit, but a mother’s early death, and the life of a forest fortress, pared most of it from him.
“The Corn-King is not her father,” he said now. “She told me. But he’s stood by her as that for some years. I shall send him something, in recompense.”
He waited for my comment that I was amazed nothing ha
d been asked for. He waited to see how I would jump. I wondered if he had paced about here, planning how he would put it to me. Not that he was required to. Now he said: “We gain, Skorous, a healer and diviner. Not just my pleasure at night.”
“Your pleasure at night is your own affair. There are plenty of girls about, I would have thought, to keep you content. As for anything else she can or cannot do, all three temples, particularly the Women’s Temple, will be up in arms. The Salius yesterday was only a sample. Do you think they are going to let some yellow-skinned harlot divine for you? Do you think that men who get hurt in a fight will want her near them?”
“You would not, plainly.”
“No, I would not. As for the witchcraft, we were drugged and made monkeys of. An evening’s fun is one thing.”
“Yes, Skorous,” he said. “Thanks for your opinion. Don’t sulk too long. I shall miss your company.”
An hour later, he sent, so I was informed, two of the scrolls from the library to the Corn-King in his wagon. They were two of the best, Greek, one transcribed by the hand, it was said, of a very great king. They went in a silver box, with jewel inlay. Gold would have been tactless, under the circumstances.
• • •
Next day she was in the palace. She had rooms on the women’s side. It had been the apartment of Draco’s elder sister, before her marriage. He treated this one as nothing less than a relative from the first. When he was at leisure, on those occasions when the wives and women of his officers dined with them, there was she with him. When he hunted, she went with him, too, not to have any sport, but as a companion, in a litter between two horses that made each hunt into a farce from its onset. She was in his bed each night, for he did not go to her, her place was solely hers: The couch his father had shared only with his mother. And when he wanted advice, it was she who gave it to him. He called on his soldiers and his priests afterward. Though he always did so call, nobody lost face. He was wise and canny, she must have told him how to be at long last. And the charm he had always had. He even consulted me, and made much of me before everyone, because, very sensibly he realized, unless he meant to replace me, it would be foolish to let the men see I no longer counted a feather’s weight with him. Besides, I might get notions of rebellion. I had my own following, my own men who would die for me if they thought me wronged. Probably that angered me more than the rest, that he might have the idea I would forego my duty and loyalty, forget my honor, and try to pull him down. I could no more do that than put out one of my own eyes.
