Patrica A McKillip - Lady of the Skulls
Page 2
"I was one of those faceless women who brought you wine in a tavern. Those you shout at, and jest about, and maybe give a coin to and maybe not, depending how we smile."
He was silent, so silent she thought he had gone, but when she turned, he was still there; only his smile had gone. "Then I've seen you," he said softly, "many times, in many places. But never in a place like this."
"The man from Stoney Head expected someone else, too."
"He expected a dream."
"He saw what he expected: Lady of the Skulls." She pulled wild mint into a shady spot under some worn tapestry. "And so he found her. That's all I am now. You were better off when all I served was wine."
"You didn't build this tower."
"How do you know? Maybe I got tired of the laughter and the coins and I made a place for myself where I could offer coins and give nothing."
"Who built this tower?"
She was silent, crumbling a mint leaf between her fingers. "I did," she said at last. "The Amaranth who never dies."
"Did you?" He was oddly pale; his eyes glittered in the light as if at the shadow of danger. "You grow roses out of thin air in this blistered plain; you try to beat back death for us with our own bones. You curse our stupidity and our fate, not us. Who built this tower for you?" She turned her face away, mute. He said softly, "The other Amaranth, the one that dies, is also called Love-lies-bleeding."
"It was the last man," she said abruptly, her voice husky, shaken with sudden pain, "who offered me a coin for love. I was so tired of being touched and then forgotten, of hearing my name spoken and then not, as if I were only real when I was looked at, and just something to forget after that, like you never remember the flowers you toss away. So I said to him: no, and no, and no. And then I saw his eyes. They were like amber with thorns of dark in them: sorcerer's eyes. He said, 'Tell me your name.' And I said, 'Amaranth,' and he laughed and laughed and I could only stand there, with the wine I had brought him overturned on my tray, spilling down my skirt. He said, 'Then you shall make a tower of your name, for the tower is already built in your heart.'"
"Love-lies-bleeding," he whispered.
"He recognized that Amaranth."
"Of course he did. It was what died in his own heart."
She turned then, wordless, to look at him. He was smiling again, though his face was still blanched under the hard, pounding light, and the sweat shone in his hair. She said, "How do you know him?"
"Because I have seen this tower before and I have seen in it the woman we all expected, the only woman some men ever know… And every time we come expecting her, the woman who lures us with what's most precious to us and kills us with it, we build the tower around her again and again and again…"
She gazed at him. A tear slid down her cheek, and then another. "I thought it was my tower," she whispered. "The Amaranth that never dies but only lives for ever to watch men die."
"It's all of us," he sighed. In the distance, thunder rumbled. "We all build towers, then dare each other to enter…" He picked up the little rose in its skull pot and stood abruptly; she followed him to the stairs.
"Where are you going with my rose?"
"Out."
She followed him down, protesting. "But it's mine!"
"You said we could choose anything."
"It's just a worthless thing I grew, it's nothing of the tower's treasure. If you must take after all, choose something worth your life!"
He glanced back at her, as they rounded the tower stairs to the bottom. His face was bone-white, but he could still smile. "I will give you back your rose," he said, "if you will let me take the Amaranth."
"But I am the only Amaranth."
He strode past his startled companions, whose hands were heaped with this, no this, and maybe this. As if the dragon's magical eye had opened in his own eye, he led her himself into the dragon's mouth.