“You brainless clod, can’t you keep order half a day without me on your back!”
Ellak was used to obeying, but also used to Darak’s justice within the bandit creed. He shook himself, and his hand almost involuntarily slid toward his knife. At once Darak was on him, and the first blow knocked Ellak back against the wall. The second blow would have knocked him clear through it had not Maggur got Darak’s shoulders. Darak’s anger settled in the instant. He shook Maggur off, turned away from both of them, and poured himself wine, his knuckles pale on the stem of the cup.
“Get out,” he said.
They went.
He drained the cup, then slung it clattering across the court. His whole body twitched with tension. Looking at his face, always lean and hard, I saw abruptly how much thinner, how much harder it had become. Yes, he was gypsy and showman, but he would run to the horse, leap and ride. No time to doubt or hesitate. His training had been well enough for his skill and body, but what for his waiting, thinking mind?
“Darak,” I said.
He turned and looked at me, his eyes black and bright, with nothing behind them but the burning tension.
I went in, and he followed me. In the apartments Raspar had granted us, I drew off his clothes and mine, soothed his taut body with my lips and tongue and fingers, roused him,
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and drew him into me, and when the fire had drained from him, he lay quiet and still against me.
“Bellan would be hard on you,” he murmured.
“Bellan would know,” I said.
Soon he slept, and I held him gently in sleep, but now my mind would not be still.
Death, death. Black death, scarlet death. Death red as the vine of Ankurum. Lying so quiet, I longed to scream aloud. In a half-dream I saw those phantoms of my lost race crowding in to seize me, and Darak’s hands, holding me from the lip of the precipice, slipped suddenly from mine and I was gone. Yet it was he that fell. I saw him broken far below. Darak, you are man, human man, wicked but not evil; if I lose you in that place of fire tomorrow I shall slip back into the dark. Let me remember, when you fall, I must take the reins and wind them around my neck so that the running horses snap it. No healing for that wounding, surely.
6
The rest of that day before the Day was hazy; lamplight, a little more wine than usual, the expansive jokes and laughter, the early sleep we were sent to.
It was perhaps an hour before dawn that I woke. I was weeping, and did not quite know why, but it was Darak who had woken me. He was tossing, struggling, crying out in his sleep, and when I touched him his skin was burning hot and running sweat.
“Darak,” I said.
I held him and tried to bring him back gently, but it was no use; I shook him and he would not wake, so I slapped him across the face, once, twice, three times until his eyes came open and he stared at me. At first he did not even see the room or me, only the thing in his mind still; then his eyes cleared.
“Ah, god,” he said. He sat up, then rose, flung open the window shutters, and stared out at the paling darkness. A fresh green smell blew upward from the farm, but the pores of his skin stiffened at the predawn chill.
“What, Darak?” I asked. “What?” .
“The chariot and team,” he said. “It and I and they: one thing. Hill country, riding fast, good riding. And then the villages and the lake, that old damned place of childhood. I saw
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the cloud on the mountain, scarlet. There was a woman up behind me-not you-a woman. ‘The pillars of fire,’ she said. And Makkatt split open. Red, red blood. Fire. Fire everywhere, the villages burning, the chariot burning, riding in the fire, and this woman behind me, cold as ice-”
He broke off. It was so still, only the slight rustle of the vine in a breeze, as it clung on the villa walls.
He was afraid, and he had kept it from himself. Now he knew. To know fear might well be death to this man on this Day. The old superstition and belief still rotten in him-oh, no, that woman was not I, yet also it was, for it was the SheOne who rode behind him, with her white mask-face and scarlet robe, in the dreamland of terror.
Again the vine stirred and with it a memory, a thought.
I went to him and put my arm about him.
“Only a dream,” I said. “Dreams mean nothing. I should know that. Today they will be offering in the temples of the gods of Ankurum, those seven that ride with us. To gods of light, gods of battle, gods of archers, gods of horses. But we are riding for Ankurum, not Sigko, wearing the color of the vine. The goddess knows it.” He did not look at me. I said, “I am going to the temple of the vine-goddess to offer, and beg her protection for the honor of her red.”
“Go if you want,” he said. But he was leaning toward my thought. Superstition, which had harmed him, might heal its own wound.
“Come with me,” I said.
There had been no bad weather for the Games. This was a last warm smiling time that came before the rains. But this day was best of all. The dawn was straining green and rose over the rocky hills and the farmlands, a hundred shades of pink on the mountain sides. Birds sang furiously, ripe apples had fallen on the road over orchard walls. The ground was drenched in dew. We wore plain dark clothes; my hair was free and hanging down my back. We did not yet have the splendor of the arena on us.
The temple was very quiet, shadows around it. We went between the lacquered pillars into the gloom beyond.
And there was such a sense of peace there, not like the village temple this, with its close and spicy smell. There was only oldness here, and quietness, and calm. A long dark aisle, three square stone columns on each side, holding the roof up, and at the end a little marble stand, veined red, where the image stood, in front, an altar draped with a green and scar-
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let cloth. Strange, should the altar not be bare so the blood of sacrifice could be easily cleaned away? And there should be a drain in the floor to catch it. The narrow door behind the altar opened, and a priest came out. I did not think he saw us, for he carried an iron bowl to the altar, set it there, filled it with oil and lit the flame.
Without turning he said, “Be welcome. May I help you?”
“Yes,” I said, half-whispering in the silence, “we have come to offer to the goddess.”
He turned and beckoned us forward. He had an old man’s face, but composed, kind, and oddly knowing. He it was, I thought, who had steeped this place in its feelings of peace.
“The goddess,” he said, smiling, “does not ask offerings.”
I was amazed. I had seen the temples of Ankurum, with their oxen, sheep, goats, and doves held captive in the sacred pens, ready to be brought for sacrifice, and fill the temple treasury even while they appeased the god.
“What then-?” I began.
“Look in her face and ask her what you want,” the priest said, “as you would ask a kind mother. If she can, she will grant what you ask.”
Darak said coldly, “Your goddess is too gentle for us. We want her help in the Sirkunix because we wear her red.”
The priest’s smile did not change; his eyes darkened a little, that was all.
“If you pray for the death of another, she will not listen, it is true,” he said, “but if you pray for your safety, that would be a different matter.”
I nodded. The priest turned and gazed up at the image. Darak’s eyes followed his, and mine also. She was like a little doll, white-robed, black-haired, the red vine around her brow. A little doll, and yet…
O gentle one, I whispered in my mind, / am cursed and should not speak to you, but be good to me for my heart is open. If one of us must die, let it be me and not this mannot so much for his sake, as for mine. If you exist, then you know me and my trouble. Take pity on us both and save him; make him brave, as he is, give him the victory he wants, and if death, let it be quick and clean. For both.