She continued to eye me for a space, those eyes, half buried in her cheek and nose, on mine. Then she sighed, and the stiff erectness of her shoulders sagged a little. I was able to understand the iron will which had brought her to me, the determination which had led her to do what she believed right.
I hastened to make sure that what I needed most, my privacy, would be allowed me.
“I am not as Ausu,” I told her. I leaned forward and dared to take her puffy hands gently into mine. “As Utta I talk with spirits and so must have a tent to offer them room when they would visit me.”
“That is so,” she agreed. “Yet a wife comes to her master. And Utta abode part of the night with Ifeng when there was need.”
“As is the custom,” I agreed in return, my mind busy with my own answer for that. “Yet do I live apart. And, sister, is there not something which I can do for you? Your body ails, perhaps the spirits can find a cure—”
The oily rolls of fat making her face twisted. “It is the evil from the north. You have not been long enough with us, sister, to know. This is a sending upon me for foolishness I wrought. Ah—” She broke my hold and put her hands once more to her breasts as she cried out in sudden pain. And her handmaid hurried to bring forth a capped cup made of horn, unstoppering it quickly and giving her to drink. Some of the colorless liquid dribbled from her lips to leave sticky trails across her wealth of chins. “A sending,” she repeated in a whisper. “There is no answer save to bear it to my grave pit.”
I had heard of such curses—illness of spirit attacking those who wittingly or unwittingly intruded upon some one of the pools of old evil, reflecting in the body the ill of soul. It would require very great power to defeat such. But this was the first time among the Vupsall I had come across any sign of some brush with the ancient ills of Escore.
There was a sudden clashing from without, a loud, metallic clatter which startled me. From the women arose in answer a crooning song. Ifeng? Had my bridegroom come to claim me? But not yet! I had not had time to prepare. What might I do? And I lost most of my sureness in that moment.
“Ifeng comes.” Ayllia pushed closer, though I noticed she did not go too near her superior in the household. “He seeks his bride.”
“Let him enter.” There was dignity in Ausu in spite of her grotesque body.
The other women drew back against the wall, with them Ausu’s maidservant. When Ayllia did not follow them Ausu turned on her once more that glare which had force enough to move her.
Then the head wife raised her voice in a call. The flap was raised and Ifeng bowed his head beneath it, coming to Ausu’s right. Her puffy hand groped out and he held his hard brown one where she might take it, though neither of them looked to the other, but rather to me.
I did not read in his face what I had seen earlier in his nephew’s—that which promised me shame. Rather he was impassive, as one who went through a task set upon him by custom and which was part of the dignity and responsibility of chieftainship. But over his shoulder I saw Ayllia’s face clearly and there was no mistaking her expression: jealous rage which burned with a fierce flame.
Ifeng knelt beside the vast bulk of his first wife and now she held her left hand to me and I set mine within it, so that she brought my palm against his as earlier Utta had done. Her wheezing breath formed words I did not understand, perhaps in some archaic speech. Then her hands dropped away leaving us joined in our own grasp. Ifeng leaned farther forward and with his other hand pulled aside the metallic veil which I had draped as closely about my shoulders as I could striving to gain from it some small measure of protection against the cold. Then his fingers came down on my breasts, stripping away the paint there as one would strip away clothing. At that moment the women about the sides of the hut gave a cry which had a queer ring—not unlike that Utta had given at her death, so might they have marked some victory.
How far Ifeng proposed to go now was my growing concern. I had had no chance to take the precautions I had planned. But it seemed that the ceremony was now at an end. And, perhaps because she knew I did not know their customs well, Ausu courteously gave me the clue I needed as to the next step, and one which would carry out my own desires. “The plate and cup now to be shared, sister. And to this tent blessing. . . .”
The maid and women swooped forward and hoisted her to her feet. I arose also to do her honor, bowing her out of the tent. Ayllia had already vanished, probably so angered by my new tie with her lord that she had no wish to witness more.
Ifeng was seated on one of the cushions when I returned and I went straightaway to Utta’s chest of herbs. From it I took some dried leaves which could turn one of their ordinary brews into a fine feast-drink. These I added to the goblets which were brought on a tray to the door of the tent and shoved under the flap as if no one would now disturb us.
When he saw what I did Ifeng’s eyes lighted, for Utta’s stores were relished. And he waited with greedy eagerness while I dropped a few more leaves into his goblet, stirred them well with a rod.
It is not always necessary to say a spell aloud; the will being directed toward the needed result is what matters most. And my will was firm that night, the firmer for my need. I added nothing Ifeng could see except an herb he knew well, but what I added by thought was the first step in my plan of salvation.
At least Utta had not tied me in this as she had with the mat runes. Ifeng drank; he ate from the plate we shared. Then he nodded and slept. And from Utta’s chest I took a long thorn of bright red. About that I wrapped two hairs pulled living from my head, and I spat upon it, saying certain words against which Ifeng’s ears were now safely closed.
When it was prepared I thrust it deep into the hide cushion which supported his head, then I began weaving a dream. It was not easy to imagine that which one has never experienced, and I dared not let myself doubt that I was succeeding. But as Ifeng turned and muttered in his sleep he dreamed as well as I could set in his mind that in truth he had taken a wife and set his hand and body upon her.
Had it been so with Utta? I wondered when I was done and sat exhausted, watching him sleep in the thin glow of the netted insects. Was this how she had been wife to chiefs and yet still a Wise Woman? It would be tested when he awoke, the sureness of dream weaving.
* * *
* * *
VI
The night was long and I had much time for thinking, also to foresee some of the perils which might now lie in wait. Utta had taught, or retaught me much, that I knew. But she had left, either by design or because we were not originally of the same order of Wise Women, blanks in my knowledge which could make me as a wounded warrior striving to defend a stretch of wall where he could only use one arm, and that the left, when the right was natural to him.
She had not given me back my foreseeing. And of all the talents the Vupsall might call upon me to display, that was perhaps the most important. I wondered more and more concerning that lack of preparation on Utta’s part. Had she feared I might use the mind touch which was a part of it to bring aid from the Valley? Yet she had made me seeress of her people, bereft of the gift which would mean the most to them.
Ifeng slept on. I crept across the tent, reversed the rune mat, to read again the lines set there which bound me to those people. At the same time I searched my memory for all which pertained to such spells, their making and breaking.
There are many ways for a Wise Woman of Power to bind one (especially one who has lesser talent than herself, or who may be ignorant of such matters altogether). Such as to present something of value to the victim. If he accepts, then he is yours until you see fit to release him. But for the lesser dabbler in power that has one side danger—if he chances to refuse the gift the spell recoils upon the sender. There is a kind of overlooking with the proper spells, a weaving of dreams to drive someone from his body and make two entities slave to the witch, the soulless body and, in another world, the bodiless soul.