The Birthgrave (32 page)

It did not take long. I suppose they came through the snow, but the way was cleared for them. I am not certain what I expected, but I think I was looking for a Raspar of Ankurum, even another Geret perhaps.

The Javhovor entered, attended by three men only, and one of these was Vazkor. The Javhovor was tall, straightly and slimly built. The golden phoenix mask he drew off at once, presumably out of respect for me. His face was delicately shaped, chiseled too fine perhaps, extraordinarily beautiful, and yet not feminine in the least, and he was very young, not more than sixteen years of age.

Despite his youth he was poised, quiet and elegant in his movements. He bowed to me deeply, but did not fall down as the others had. His skin was pale and clear, the eyes an intense black-blue. In the lamplight of the room his long hair shone golden as the mask he had removed from it.

“I am your servant, goddess,” he said gravely, and I sensed a spark of polite defiance in him for the one who had come so abruptly from nowhere.

“What does the lord desire of Uastis?” I inquired. It was the usual manner of asking those who came to me.

“To pay my respects. To see the goddess for myself. To question her, if she permits. I am very curious; I hope the goddess will not be angry.”

“Curiosity,” I said, “does not generally move the anger of the gods.”

He smiled, courteous and unruffled. Half turning, he spoke to his three companions. “You may leave us.”

“My lord,” the tall man with the wolf's mask said, “it is unfitting you should have no guard.”

“Vazkor, Vazkor, I am not afraid. The goddess is my guard against all harm.”

They left him, Vazkor also, and then Oparr, sliding his smooth unctuous passage out of the room. We were alone, the Javhovor of Ezlann and I.

There was a single bench against one wall. Now he carried it forward and sat on it. His slenderness had misled me, I had not thought him particularly strong, yet the bench was marble, and a big cumbersome thing. He sat easily, looking into my mask face, because of the bench, a little lower than I.

“May I ask what I want?”

“You may ask,” I said.

“And the answers are at the goddess' discretion? I understand well. Where did you come from, goddess?”

It was hard to make an assessment. Vazkor had sent me no warning. I had not expected to meet such courteous probing.

“From the Old Race,” I said.

“But the Old Race is gone, goddess. They say you slept, then woke.”

“Yes,” I said, “beneath a far mountain.”

“And now you have come to Ezlann. Why?”

“Ezlann is my City. She has worshiped me since before my waking.”

“How did the goddess come to Ezlann?”

“I came here,” I said. “That is enough.”

“And how did the goddess enter the Temple, learn of the hidden door and the secret machinery?”

“I entered,” I said, “and I learned. That is enough.”

“There is a legend already,” he said, “that Uastis in the form of the golden phoenix flew through the stone wall of her Temple, and burned herself in the watchfire at the altar, and rose again. They say she has lived among many peoples and been their god, that she has died and returned to life, that the look of her face is so terrible it will turn to stone any man that sees it, that her body is filled with a serpent, and her brain is hewn from jade.”

“Some things are hidden,” I said.

“Once,” he said softly, not looking at me, “an assassin was sent to kill my High Commander, Vazkor. He has enemies, goddess, and these things happen. Usually men die. I have heard what happened—Vazkor's guard ran in and found the man had stabbed him several times in the chest and throat, yet it was the murderer who was dead. Vazkor had snapped his neck in the very act of killing. They assumed Vazkor would perish from his wounds, but he did not. You have seen as much. And this I know”—he looked at me and smiled—“because I, too, must have spies, goddess.”

I was not sure what I should do. I said nothing. After a moment the Javhovor rose.

“Power,” he said. “I know you could blast me where I stand, as you did the priest. But you are not an angry goddess. There is another part to the legend. Have you heard it?”

My only strength was in silence, so I waited.

“The legend states that the goddess will take as husband the High-Lord of her City. A parable of unity between religion and the state. Already the people of Ezlann are calling for it.”

Yes, he was very dangerous, perhaps more dangerous than Vazkor, for his weapon was honesty. I wondered what Vazkor would want from me in this situation, and wondered also what I would want.

“You,” I said, “are mortal.”

“Of course,” he said, “very mortal. The assassin who puts a knife in
my
heart need fear nothing further from me.”

“I do not know what to say to you,” I said. “I must have time to seek an answer within myself.”

He bowed, and smiled again, without warmth.

“There are prayers daily in your Temple for our union. Such a passion for tidiness.”

He put on the phoenix mask, and turned toward the doors. As he drew near, they were whisked open by his servants outside, who must have been listening all the time, surely, to be able to judge his exit so perfectly.

Soon Oparr returned.

“Did you hear what was said?” I asked him.

“I? But, goddess, I was not present.”

“Naturally,” I said, “there is some spy-hole that looks into this room.”

He was silent, and the gloved hands twitched uneasily in the folds of his robe.

“Listen, Oparr,” I said. “You are Vazkor's man, but I am loyal to him also—you have seen as much. We must work together, we three, or your master's schemes will come to nothing. The interview I have just had might have gone better if you had warned me beforehand what the Javhovor would say. Now, get word to Vazkor, and ask him what I must answer, and what I must do.”

Oparr stood quiet a moment, then he bowed low, murmured “Goddess,” and went out.

Part of me had hoped that Vazkor would come himself, but he did not come. It would, after all, have been a foolish thing to do. Instead, Oparr slunk in to me at midnight, as the women were preparing my bed for sleep.

“Well?” I asked him.

“Yes, goddess,” he said.

“Yes? What do you mean?”

“To all that has been asked, the answer must be ‘yes.'”

I had guessed as much, but it infuriated me. As ever, I was bought and sold. Using all the force of my hate, I struck Oparr across the head and neck. He staggered and fell down. For a while he lay on the floor, groaning at the pain and the injustice.

“Get out, or I shall kill you,” I said, and he ran.

The women cowered away from me in fright. Hate stabbed from my eyes at a tall black vase, which shattered instantly.

“Go!” I shouted at the women, who thankfully fled.

I lay in the cool dark. I thought,
I will leave. By night, I will run away into the desert.

I dreamed of it, the horse flying under me through the moon-drained spaces. But another horse came after me, black, and more powerful than mine. And Vazkor caught my reins, and halted me, and I knew that I was glad that I had not escaped from him. So it was.

* * *

My answer went to the Javhovor, together with a golden seal ring. There was, apparently, great rejoicing in the City. Five days passed, days of supposed purification for my bridegroom. On the sixth, the women brought me my bridal gown—black velvet, so thickly embroidered with a phoenix of gold thread that it stood stiff as armor on my body. It was a strange business. At the appointed time I entered the vast hall of the Temple, girls going before me, strewing the torn-off petals of forced winter roses, white as the snow. I sat on a tall throne, and Oparr, larger and more impressive in his ceremonial regalia, led the chants to my greatness. At last, the formal question—would I take a man as my husband? And the formal reply, yes, it should be the High-Lord I would have.

The elegant, beautiful boy who was to be my spouse came forward, faceless, dressed in black and gold. It seemed quite wrong this sham should involve him. He was at once too innocent and too aware to have been drawn in. Yet he kneeled before me, and spoke in a clear cool voice all the praises and promises which must be spoken. After which I raised him, and stood with him hand in hand, and it seemed curious to find him altogether so much bigger than I for all his slimness; for he seemed so young to me I had half expected to stand hand in hand with a precocious child. More chanting, and then together we left my prison of darkness for, I imagined, another, different prison.

Through the snow-filled, crowded, noisy streets we rode, standing, still hand-clasped, in a large golden chariot, drawn by a team of six black mares. Behind and before us, marching guards, maidens singing and casting colored petals on the snow. It was bitterly cold and took a long while. Occasionally, from our closeness in the chariot, I would feel my companion shiver, a little helpless spasm, that eluded even his poised control. His hand was light on mine, the spare, long-fingered hand of a poet or musician.

We reached the palace, another of the huge, many-tiered black towers of Ezlann. Inside, mosaic floors, golden lamp clusters, a drifting warmth from the hot pipes which lay behind the walls and under the paving.

For an hour more we sat on our thrones, while the aristocratic multitude filed past, laying priceless trinkets at our feet.

It was dusk, and lamps blazed. We were alone together in a circular room with twenty narrow windows that looked out over Ezlann. The Javhovor removed his mask, which he did not seem to like wearing, and spoke to me for the first time that day, except for his appeal at my feet in the Temple, which was not for me at all.

“Well, then, it's over, goddess. At last. I've allotted you ten women, I hope they will be enough; if not, you have only to tell me. They'll come when you press that carved flower there. They'll see to whatever refreshment you require, prepare your bedchamber, and attend you at all times. The palace is yours to walk where you want. Naturally, you will wish to preside in the Temple from time to time. I'll arrange a suitable escort whenever you need it.”

He was very courteous, as ever, but his voice was a little too cool now, perhaps.

“And my wifely duties?” I inquired.

“None,” he said. “You are my goddess before my wife, and I remember it. I am honored.”

“And you,” I said, “are my husband. Am I not even expected to honor your bed?”

“That least of all,” he said.

I felt the slightest twinge of disappointment, and it surprised me.

“You will not, then, command me to lie with you,” I said, “but I imagine I might command you.”

“You can command me only so far, goddess. There are some things even you have no power to command.”

I had expected him to be embarrassed, but he was not, only reluctant to explain he did not want me, that the thought of me made him sick—She whose face turns men to stone, She who kills with one look. And I was Vazkor's, he had virtually told me he knew as much.

“You underestimate my powers,” I said to him. “However, I understand your reluctance. A peaceful night to you, my husband.”

He bowed to me and went out. I pressed the carved flower, and soon the women came and took me to my new apartments, which were gold and green and white, not the black of Ezlann. In a metal box lay his marriage gift to me, a great collar-necklace of twisted gold and silver, set with jades in the shapes of lions.

It troubled me, he troubled me, but I put him from my mind, and slept.

6

There were many processions in which we rode hand in hand, for it was traditional. There were many entertainments at which we sat, and he would courteously ask me what I would have the dancers or the players or the jugglers or the magicians do. I had been afraid of these entertainments once, expecting the corruption to be strongest here, but I saw only beautiful things—a woman changed into a single jewel, two albino lions on whose backs two albino youths made strange knots of their bodies. There was music too, sinuous and softly thrilling, languid melodies coaxed from the round bellies of stringed instruments, and the bowls of silver horns.

Yet I was more aware of him than of the things I saw. In public we sat close enough, but in the palace we were separate. A word was not exchanged between us except those formal words when we must speak for his people. The vast library of the palace, filled with beautiful books, painted and bound in gold and jewels—I would often find him there, but when I came he would go away. I had thought at first he had never been with a woman, and perhaps feared me because of that, but I learned later, as one always can from the gossips of any establishment, that two or three of the small, beautiful, deerlike palace maidens had shared his pleasure at one time or another.

I had never really been lonely before, there had been no time or person to induce such a feeling of emptiness. In my dreams I would long for Vazkor, and the body and the power of Vazkor, long to hurt him, punish and destroy him, long to use him as a man would use a woman—to humiliate him, and finally become his slave. But awake, I would think of my husband the Javhovor, whose name I did not know. I would think of him beside me in the chariot, the slight abrupt shudders of cold that had run over his body, and yearn to warm him with my own, to stroke his hair and smooth cheeks, and walk with him in the palace, and talk to him, and have him sing to me as he did with his doe-eyed girls.

And I was afraid. Vazkor, like a black shadow of death, reached out to seize and replace his overlord.

Some days after the marriage, when I had ridden to the Temple so they could fall on their noses before me, I sought out Oparr.

“Give this letter to Vazkor,” I said.

But there was never a written answer. Perhaps Vazkor mistrusted me even further now, for I had written: “Do you know the Javhovor understands your Power? Do you realize he guesses your ambition? And he is not a fool.”