“You won’t want to come to their feast,” he said. “Not fit for a woman. They’re pigs, these ones, but-” He tailed off and grinned. “See the old woman over there? Go with her and she’ll find you a place for the night. I’ll come for you tomorrow, about sunset. We sail back then for the other shore.” I turned and saw the old woman, incredibly wizened, toothless, and bent almost double. Fierce black eyes glared at me from the alligator flesh. Her topknot was gray.
I left Geret without a word, and, as I went toward her, she-also without a word-turned and went on ahead of me. We walked across the stream by a rough-built bridge of wood and stone, among the predatory trees, up a slope, and in at a cave opening in one of the rock walls. Again a brief passage in darkness, then a flat plateau, quite barren, covered by a huddle of mud huts. I saw several women here, and a few children; apparently they lived separately from the men.
I was taken into a vacant hut and left there, except that, from time to time, a woman or a child would come to the entrance and peer in at me.
I stayed in the hut until a murky sunset closed in on the
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day. I had not been sure what to do-1 felt that if I moved out of the hut and began to go back through the rock passage, the women might run at me and stop me. I did not, in fact, intend to go anywhere near the stone-and-mud hall, but to walk out of this dismal oasis, and begin a crossing of the unwelcoming land, as I felt I must. I was full of expectancy, and a slight fear, I did not know quite what the irresistible pull was, but I reasoned it must be the Jade, or some place of the Jade.
And then sunset. I had heard the women about until then; now a close silence fell. I went to the hut door and looked out. Stiffled red light fell in squares across the plateau. Each hut had a rough reed screen pulled over the entrance, and there were no lights. Nothing stirred. I left my hut, and crossed between the others, and no one came out, or even looked from the blind window spaces. I found the rock opening and went in, emerging slowly in the other part of the settlement. Down the slope, among the trees, across the bridge. It seemed silent here, too, very silent, and then, when I was on the other side of the stream, I began to hear the sound-a faint droning, almost like bees, a whisper-growl deep in the core of the stone-and-mud building, its door closed now with a leather curtain, under which seeped a faint orange glow.
I did not know what drew me to the curtain-only curiosity, perhaps-perhaps other things. But I went to it, half expecting to find a guard or lookout posted there, and when I found no one, I pulled the curtain an inch or so aside, and looked in.
It was a long low hall, fire pits at the far end where meat had hung-bones now. Smoke curdled up among the roughhacked rafters, leather flaps covered the windows. The light was murky and uncertain, and the men, who lay around the sides of the hall on skins and pelts stretched over the packed-earth floor, were indistinct, slightly moving shadows. There seemed to be a mist in the hall, more than the smoke. I could not tell wagoner from steader, but here and there, one of the Dark People crouched, boys or very young men, used, it seemed, as in the tribes, to wait on their elders. Their eyes were bright black lines in the shadow-blurred faces; their teeth showed pointed and white as the teeth of animals.
All this I saw very quickly, but then my eyes were drawn to the center of the hall, and I made out the three girls. It was the first time I had seen beauty in these dark ones. I realized now that it came early and died early, killed by the rotten living and the cruel work. They were not more than
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thirteen, but physically fully mature, lithe, sinuous, the full, girl-perfect breasts trembling at each flex and tremor of their limbs. Unlike the rest of their people, they wore ornaments, many-colored beads dripping down their smoky bodies, and little chips of crystal wound in their blue-black hair; otherwise they were naked. This was beautiful, but it was not all I saw. It seemed I was looking into my past, or my future, or at a painted picture, which forever changed itself, and yet retained its basic elements. In the center of them, its scales and protruding black eyes glinting in the firelight, squatted a gigantic lizard. I think I had not seen it sooner because my eyes had passed over and discarded it, unbelieving. It was the size of a large dog, of a wolf even, some sort of mutation of its kind. It had its own jeweled loveliness as the flames made glass-gleams on its armor, but its cold eyes swiveled from one dancing girl to another, and I saw then clearly the manner of their dance, sensual and inviting, and that their gestures were directed at it. Suddenly one girl slid down to her knees, then leaned backward over her own calves and feet until her hair lashed on the floor. Her thighs wide open before the lizard, she began to croon and stroke herself. It got up onto its feet, lurched toward her, and, as it came, its phallus-gigantic yet oddly human-slid from the scaled sheath. I thought the girl would shriek with pain as it pierced her, but she only moaned and sank farther backward over herself. The other girls settled around the lizard, caressing it, as the unnatural act of copulation began.
My head swam. A fire-storm of colored lights misted across my eyes and was gone. I noticed the thick, bittersweet scent in the hall for the first time. A drug. Yes, I could make out now bluish fumes that rose from the fires; but it was more than this-the unwholesome magic lay in their cups and on their food as well. I stepped back, and let the leather flap fall into place. Cool darkness and silence all around. Yet I was excited, sleepy-I had breathed the essence of their black feast. I walked back across the oasis, my limbs like lead, and pale hands reached for me, and there was the old and ancient laughter of the dead who had not died, but lived on in the corruption of all who had come later.
I began to run, along by the narrow stream, to a place where the water widened and became a pool into which a needle-bright, needle-sharp fountain jetted from a single vast rock spire. It was dark now, and the moon was in the sky. I realized I had left the rock enclosure behind, and was out on the flat empty land. Trees still stood sentinel, but ahead
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there seemed nothing but that cheerless, moon-bleached desert. And then-a swift silver glitter along the side of the rock before me. With the glitter, a shifting dark, and the faint hushed sounds of animals and men moving carefully.
I saw their way past before thev did, a twist in a track that led under the needle-spray and by the pool. I leaned back into the shadow of one of the skeletal trees and watched them come, about forty men, each dressed entirely in black, riding black horses with muffled hooves. The moon was in cloud a moment, and when it slipped clear, I was shocked and, the drug on me, I almost cried out. for of their heads and the heads of their horses nothing seemed left but a black mane and a burnished silver skull.
It took me a moment to become rational, then I saw the masks for what they were, and knew at last what had been the model for the skull-guard of the north.
Perhaps it was logical that I should at once assume they had come to the steading-there was nowhere else, surely, they could be heading for in this waste? Yet it was more than that. I knew they had come for the wagoners, to take them-where I did not know, or why. And abruptlv I was angry and afraid. I was their healer, had made myself Uasti. A responsibility for their despised lives clutched suddenly at my being.
The skulled ones had paused a moment at the pool: some of the skull-masked horses were drinking there. I slid back across the shadow, from tree to tree. It took longer than I recalled, grim and real now. At last the hall, no color left under the leather curtain. I ran to it, past it, and into the dark. There was a little spark of light-at the far end, where the roasting fires had been. I stumbled against a man: he moved, but did not seem to notice me. There were sounds and little sobs. The sexual climax of the feast had come with the dark, and no doubt more of the beauty of the Dark People was being crumpled all around me. I picked a wav toward the light, and found a long cloth curtain had shielded the last fire. Beyond the curtain the light was scarlet, and here the giant lizard stared at me from the length of its iron chain. Near the fettering post sat three of the dark men and the one who seemed to be their chief and wore the collar of white stones. They had been quite still, and turned to look at me without expression. I knew their language was different, but I had heard little of it, and was still unsure. I emptied my mind and managed to find words.