She stood within the walls of Great Saloe. Water filled the streets, rose over the steps of Tar’atha’s Temple. In the distance, the villages that had once looked to Saloe for wisdom could no longer be seen: only the waters of the Reed Lake, growing vaster with each death of Ut-sin-atha. The Younger Son shone down into the Sacred Courtyard, turning the sacred pillar to a dull bronze.
And she was not alone.
A figure stepped out from behind the orichalcum pillar. It was a man unlike any Sais had ever seen.
He wore the dancing-kilt of the Young Kings, but his beard was the long red beard of a man. In his hand he carried the Axe of Sacrifice, which only the Lady of Saloe might wield. And upon his brow . . .
It was as if one of the Young Kings had grown to manhood and wore the horns of the sacred bulls upon his own brow.
She did not know what to do. This was a vision, Goddess-sent, but this was not the Goddess.
The Sleeping Goddess was the Mother of All, and in token of that, they depicted Her with Her sons, Ut-sin-atha and Ut-ash-atha—the Tar’athanis, the Sacred Twins who watched by day and night. And since Sais’s world was but a mirror of Her dominion, the Lady of Saloe had Twin Kings as well: five pairs, like the fingers of a hand.
But never did the Young Kings live into the fullness of bearded manhood. Should one be taken by the Mother from the bull-court, his brother must accompany him to Her sky-hall at once: it was the Law of the City. And the bulls were fast, and agile, and clever. Only the young could dance with them, and live.
“You do not know Me, Sais,” the Horned One said. “I have danced for your pleasure and My Mother’s many a time, and still you do not know Me. But you will. You will need Me, and what only I can teach you. Call upon My Name, when you are ready.”
With a startled gasp, Sais awoke, staring into the darkness. The images burned strong in her mind and her heart.
But they made no sense. A man? A god-man? A man who was a god?
It could not be. There was only the Mother, alone and One. The Mother and Her suckling babes.
But sleep did not come again that night.
Another day, their progress southward slower still. When they stopped at midmorning to eat—slaughtering the young and the weak of the herds to feed themselves—it took a long time to find fuel to cook the meat, and the people lingered over the food. Worse, they made the water palatable by mixing it with the jars of beer and honey-wine they had brought, and so they slept after they had eaten and did not move on again that day.
But Sais was too frightened to sleep.
When the sheep and the goats and the cattle are gone, what shall we eat? When the grain and the fruit are gone, what shall we eat? Why do not the Great Mother and the Lady of Saloe tell us what we must do?
She knew she should tell the Lady of Saloe of her vision, but she was afraid. She sat among the slumbering Court and watched the herdsmen as they moved among the surviving beasts, trying to find them palatable grazing. Here and there a tuft of hardy new growth arose in the blighted earth, but most of the grass was yellow and dead with the salt that had risen through the soil. Among them she saw the shepherd Neshat, standing among his beasts.
Sais could look back the way they had come and still see—faintly, in the distance—the gilded towers of Saloe. And along the way, the swath of broken grass that marked their path. It glittered with those things her people had carelessly dropped or discarded—a sandal, a painted fan, a shawl, a child’s ball.
The day is warm, she thought. But winter will come again. Our looms are behind us in Saloe. How shall we clothe ourselves when the cold winds blow?
“You will need Me, and what only I can teach you. Call upon My Name, when you are ready.”
They had been on the road a handful of days when the first of the Young Kings died.
Sais had not Dreamed again since that first night, but she seemed to feel the presence of the Horned One with her always, waiting for the moment when she would do something she could as yet barely imagine. She was the youngest and most-untutored of Great Saloe’s Priestess-brides. What could she do?
The way before them led through a marsh. They had looked for a way around it and found none. They must cross it or turn back. By driving the animals ahead, Neshat said, they could find the driest ground and the easiest way. And so it was: where cattle went, men could follow.
But one of the Young Kings turned aside, just for a moment, to pluck a clump of yellow flowers as a gift to the Lady of Saloe. There was so little beauty in the world now, but here in the marsh, flowers grew everywhere.
He put his hand upon a fallen tree to steady himself, and as he did, the trunk rolled aside, and an adder darted out from beneath it, sinking its fangs into his foot.
He died in seconds, gasping out his life, as his brother watched in horror.
The Lady of Saloe waited until they had all crossed safely to the far side of the marsh. Then she called for the Axe.
The Axe of Sacrifice and Tar’atha’s golden image were all that they had managed to keep of the sacred things that had been Saloe’s. The Axe was older than Great Saloe itself, it was said: its head was polished gray stone, smooth as a woman’s skin, and its edge was sharper than any metal.
The dead king’s twin came before her. He had known his fate from the moment his brother died. He knelt before her, consenting, and leaned back, offering his throat to the blade. In the shadow of Sleeping Tar’atha, the Lady of Saloe struck, sending him to the sky-hall to join his brother.
Their replacements should have been anointed at once and sent to dance with the sacred bulls in the bull-court. But the bull-court was gone and the sacred bulls were dead.
Things are changing, thought Sais uneasily.
She did not mean their lives—those had changed on the day the Salt had come. She meant the way in which they were held upon the Mother’s knees, and that was something Sais had not thought could change even if the Salt covered all the land below the Mother’s sky-hall.
That day, when they stopped, she resolved to tell the Lady of Saloe of her vision and beg for her comfort.
But that comfort did not come.
“These are virginal fancies,” the Lady of Saloe told her implacably, when Sais had stumbled through her tale and brought it to its close. “What you speak of is not possible. An axe for men? It cannot be. Who have you told of this?”
“No one,” Sais said, stunned and surprised. To whom should she speak of such horrors, save the Lady of Saloe?
“Speak to no one—or never speak again. And Dream no more.”
But though she could promise not to speak, Sais could not promise not to Dream.
That night He came to her again. Once more she stood in Drowning Saloe, in the Birth-Room of the Young Kings. Their bodies were painted with the red ochre and the yellow, their faces painted as white as Ut-sin-atha’s. Their bodies were bound with strips of fine cloth for their journey to the sky-halls, but she could still see the marks of the adder’s bite upon the one and the mark of the Blade of Sacrifice upon the other, for his head had been carefully set upon his shoulders again with a collar of white clay set with the teeth of bulls.
And He was there.
He is no man, Sais thought rebelliously, for the Lady of Saloe’s scorn still lay heavily upon her. He is the Son of the Mother.
“Do you know Me yet?” He asked.
“You are the Mother’s Son,” Sais said. She knelt before Him in reverence, though when she did, she knelt in icy water that came to her slender waist.
“My Mother is the Lady of All Beasts, and all that is wild and tame does Her reverence. Yet she has kept for Herself that which is tame, and given to Me that which is wild. You go now into My realms. Call upon My Name when you would accept My gifts.”
Once more Sais awoke in the night, her heart fluttering in terror.
Her gown was sodden to the waist, as if she had been wading in a pool. She wrung it out and sniffed at her fingers.
Salt.
But I do not know Your Name, Horned One! How shall I call upon You?
The darkness gave no answer.
They had been a full cycle of Ut-sin-atha upon the road. He had gone down into the Halls of Death and been reborn victorious. In honor of his rebirth, two bulls had been sacrificed in the name of Tar’atha, and the people had feasted, though there had been no incense, no oil, and only brackish water to drink, mixed with the blood of the slain bulls.
Since the death of the Young Kings, Sais was in disgrace, and so she heard things that others did not.
The Court—the surviving Young Kings, the Lady of Saloe, the Priestess-brides, the shadow-women, the great nobles and all their slaves and households—all grumbled constantly about the privations of the journey, but they trusted in their hearts to the wisdom of the Lady of Saloe, she who was the Hand of Tar’atha, and went on as if Great Saloe would rise again.
The others—the herdsmen, the farmers, the craftsmen— those who did not eat from the first cut of every sacrifice, but must make do with what the Court left . . . they doubted. They wondered if Tar’atha was displeased with them, if She had sent the Salt to scour them from the face of the world.
Neshat was first among them. He had even dared to speak out against the sacrifice, saying that if it was done there would be no bulls to put to the cows in the spring, for they had been the last.
For that, the Lady of Saloe had had him beaten until the blood flowed, until he groveled for her favor and wept for her anger.
He had been foolish to speak, Sais thought. It did not matter. There would be no cows come spring to stand to a bull. They would have eaten them all long since, just as they had eaten the goats and the sheep. The horses remained—for Tar’atha would not allow the killing of horses, or of dogs, even in sacrifice—but the horses were thin and sickly, and the dogs grew daily more anxious for meat.
And where Neshat had spoken and been rebuked, others would eventually follow. When there were no more cattle. When there was nothing left to eat.
Sais was in disgrace, so she had not been permitted to attend the feast of the bulls. She stood in the darkness and watched as the Court ate its fill, and then watched as the remains were dragged on flayed skins to the fires of the herdsmen and farmers.
She thought long upon the words of the Mother’s Son. And as she waited in the darkness, she made her plan.
That which she bore, she carried wrapped in her shawl like a child, lest any see it. She walked boldly to the fires of the herdsfolk, though her mouth tasted bitter with terror.
“I come seeking the herdsman Neshat,” she said, stepping into the firelight. “I come to claim my bride-right, by the Law of Saloe.”
A Priestess-bride might claim any man she chose to be her lover. It was the Law.
“You have come to the wrong fires, little Goddess,” one of the men said, not unkindly. “Turn, and choose again.”
Almost, her courage deserted her then. But fear and her visions drove Sais onward. “I come to claim my bride-right. I come for Neshat,” she repeated, hugging her bundle tightly to her chest.
The men and women around the fire spoke among themselves, too low for Sais to hear. At last one of the women pointed. “He is there, little Goddess. He is yours.”
Sais did not bow or thank her—that would have been wrong—but her heart leaped with gratitude. She turned and hurried off in that direction.
She found Neshat lying facedown beside a fire upon a fleece. One of the other herdsmen was pouring water over his wounded back from a jug. Sais knelt beside Neshat, cradling her bundle carefully.
The herdsman looked at her in surprise—and then in more than surprise when he saw who she was.
“I have come for Neshat,” Sais said, summoning up the last of her courage. “I bring that which it is not proper for you to see. Leave us now.”
The herdsman leaped to his feet and bolted into the darkness, his eyes wide with awe and fear. Now Sais was alone with Neshat.
He slept—or seemed to. Carefully she unwrapped her bundle. The most important thing she set aside, out of harm’s way. The immediately necessary items she took into her hand to use at once.
Even a virgin Priestess-bride knew the secrets of the Temple, and so she knew that the base of Tar’atha’s statue was hollow. She knew that it was filled with those things that the Lady of Saloe treasured—not gold and jewels, but things more valuable.
Medicines.
Sais had plundered that store ruthlessly.
A wooden box held an ointment of lamb-fat, honey, and distilled poppy-juice: she had compounded it herself many a time. It was sovereign for all hurts, dulling their pain. Now she laved it gently over the weals the shadow-women’s whips had left upon Neshat’s back. He began to stir to wakefulness at her touch.
Into the sacred agate cup—which she had also stolen— she mixed poppy-juice, honey, and wine, adding a little water from the jug the other herdsman had left to thin it, and stirring it with her finger to mix it well. As she stirred it, she whispered the spells she had been taught, praying for the Mother’s aid in healing—and for Her blessing upon what else Sais would do this night.
Neshat was awake now, watching her with glittering dark eyes.
“Drink this,” Sais commanded. “It will ease your pain.”
He sat up stiffly and reached for the cup, drinking its contents quickly. Then he reached for the water jug and drained its contents as well. When it was empty, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stared at her unspeaking for a long moment.
“Why do you come here, little Goddess?” he asked at last.
“I would claim you,” Sais said. “It is my right,” she added, when he said nothing.
“Are the Young Kings all dead, that you must come to me?” Neshat said. “Or have they cast you out of the Temple?”
“There . . . is . . . no . . . Temple,” Sais said. Suddenly she felt sick with despair. He spoke the words of the Young Kings, of the nobles, of the Lady of Saloe. Somehow she had thought he would understand what she herself did not.
“No,” Neshat agreed. “There is not. But woe to him who says there is not.” For a moment he smiled, then suddenly he looked past her, at the other thing she had brought with her, and his face grew very still.
“It is death for you to touch that which you have brought here,” he said, gazing at the Axe of Sacrifice.
“We are all dying,” Sais said simply. “Come. Be the bull to my cow. It is my right—and it is you I would have, above all the kings and princes of Saloe.”
I will raise you up—My Son, My Lover, My Consort—
The Voice echoed through Sais’s mind. She felt as if she were borne upon the wings of the storm and did not know if she spoke the words aloud.
I will give birth to You, I will take You to My golden bed, I will slay You in the harvest year—
Neshat rocked between her thighs. Sais’s nails dug into his shoulders, reopening weals. His blood was on her hands.
The blood of sacrifice—
She felt the Horned One—near, so near—the Great Mother’s Son, but sons grow to manhood. To father children, and to care for them. To teach them what they needed to know to survive in the world, no matter how harsh the world was.
His hand reached out to her, to lift her up. And in that moment she knew His Name—hers to call upon, to seal a new covenant.
If she dared.
“Nis! Your Name is Nis, Son of Tar’atha! Nis, help us!” Sais cried.
Afterward, when Neshat lay upon her, spent, Sais took his hand and clasped it about the haft of the Axe.
He did not die.
She Dreamed, and in her Dream, Nis came to her again. This time he did not come to her in Drowned Saloe, but in a great forest filled with beasts of every kind, and Neshat was beside her.
“Now I shall teach you what you need to know,” Nis said to them. “You know My Name and may call upon Me. The first meat of the kill is mine, as the blood is My Mothe
r’s, but the rest is yours, to nourish your bodies and your hounds. I shall lead you to a land of sweet grass and tall trees, and there you will flourish, but you must never forget Me.”
“We will always honor You,” Neshat said. “This I vow, upon Your Horns.”
Before the dawn, all among the herdsmen and farmers heard the story of Nis, Son of the Mother, from Neshat and Sais both. They hid the Axe carefully, for it had passed from the Mother to the Son.
It was too late now to return it to the Sleeping Goddess. Too many would see. The Lady of Saloe’s wrath would be as bitter as the Salt.
And it was no longer hers to own.
The loss of the Axe of Sacrifice did not go unnoticed. At the beginning of Ut-sin-atha’s feast, it lay before the golden statue of Tar’atha. When Ut-ash-atha took his brother’s place in the sky, it was gone.
No one could say how it had happened. It was impossible that anyone should lay hands upon the Axe of Sacrifice and live. The shadow-women set up a great wailing, and the Priestess-brides added their lamentations, and the wives of the nobles and all their households howled like dogs.
In so much confusion, it was possible for Sais to replace the cup and the box and the medicines she had taken from the base of Sleeping Tar’atha’s golden statue without being seen.
At last the Lady of Saloe gave her pronouncement: she had Dreamed, and in her Dream, Tar’atha had come to her and taken the Axe of Sacrifice, saying She would leave it for them as a sign in the place they were to build Her new city.
She lies! Sais thought in shock. She lies about a Dream of Tar’atha! She puts words into the mouth of the Great Mother!
She had not thought it could be so. But it was.
The Court was quieted, but the Lady’s eyes rested keenly upon Sais’s face.
“Do you say I do not Dream true?” the Lady of Saloe said softly, for Sais’s ears alone.
“You forbid me to speak of Dreams,” Sais said quietly, casting her gaze down upon the earth. But Nis would have me speak, and what I speak of is no Dream.
To hunt was a small thing for herdsmen who had tracked lost sheep and goats through the high grass. To kill with the sling and the stick was a simple thing for farmers who had driven cows from the field and shepherds who had driven wolves from the fold.
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