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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.”
Oparr came to me a few days afterward, and, when we were alone, he said softly to me, “The answer is, goddess, that some men, seeing death in front of them, walk toward it instead of running away. One who waits on death is easy to be rid of.”
That dusk I went to him in the library. He rose at once, bowed, and turned to go.
“My lord,” I said. It was the first time I had addressed him as an equal let alone a superior in rank. He stopped, looking at me curiously.
“I am your servant, goddess,” he said. “What can I do for your1
“You are in danger,” I said, my lips feeling stiff and cold behind the mask. “You must realize it … your spies … I do not know if I can help you-I do not think I can-but surely you can help yourself, now, before it is too late.”
“Would you have me execute all my captains?” he said to me immediately. “A little impracticable,”
“Not attack, but defense,” I said.
He came across the room, and looked at me, smiling a little.
“You cannot understand, goddess,” he said. “I have lived with an awareness of death since I was three years of age. These things are not so important for a mortal, goddess.”
Involuntarily, I put up my hand and touched his face. So soft the skin over the fine bones. He flinched away; then, correcting the gesture, he took my hand a moment, then let it go.
“I will send someone to light the lamps,” he said, “so you will be able to read here.”
I might have kept him there, looked in his eyes and paralyzed his will to be away from me, but I could not do it.
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Like a silly, love-sick girl, I watched him from windows, stood in doorways of rooms where he sat unaware of me.
I had a magician come to me, in secret, and he conjured up ghost things in a circle on the floor. It was all trickery, but it filled the hours.
I had not spoken to Vazkor for forty-six days.
There came a morning when I woke with a sense of unreasoning fear. My skin was drenched with sweat, my night garment and sleep mask soaked in it. I lay for a long while, trying to calm myself, and then sat up to rise. The pale room tilted, and it seemed a herd of white horses pulled it like a chariot round and round the Skora of my bed. I lay back, and my whole frame ached and trembled. I saw then that I was sick, and could not understand it. My body, so strong and healing it had survived death, had betrayed me at last to some fever of the cold weather. I was lucid enough to press the carved flower by my bed for the women, but I do not remember much after this. There was a scared physician, I seem to recollect, who did not dare touch me, and prescribed many coverings, and braziers around the bed, but this did no good. I recall glimpses of Oparr, restless and ill-at-ease, watching me, I guessed, to be certain I spoke no slander against Vazkor in my ravings. He was little enough comfort to me, and at last I made him understand I would not have him near me.
Months later, it seemed, I began to drift toward the surface of myself. There was not much left of me. My skin was flaccid and raddled as an old woman’s, and my thoughts would not keep still in my head.
Then, as I lay like a skinny corpse on my pillows, the women fluttered like birds and were gone, and my husband was standing beside me. My brain seemed to clear at his coming. He set his mask down by the bed, and he was very pale. I thought for a moment it might have been concern for me, but this was foolish.
“I am sorry you are sick,” he said gravely and gently.
“I do not know how long I have been ill,” I said, half petulant, for no one would tell me.
“Nine or ten days,” he said. “I came before but you did not know me.”
A sudden little chill went through me, and I asked, “Do they know in the City their goddess is sick?”
“Oh, yes,” he said quietly, “they know.”
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Drearily I said, “And now they doubt she is a goddess, because she is mortal enough to be ill.”
“No, You’re wrong, goddess. They have been in a tumult of fear for you. But there was never any doubt. Oparr has led prayers for you day and night. The women have torn their hair and breasts for you, and a black bull has been slaughtered every dawn.”
“What a waste,” I said.
“But now you’re getting well,” he said.
I took his hand, and though I saw him flinch ever so slightly, he did not pull away, and I did not let him go.
I must have slept.
After a time, a smear of golden lamplight on my lids. I half opened my eyes, and he was still there, sitting by me. I was not properly awake, but there was a sense of conviction and urgency on me.”
“You are in danger,” I said, “you must go. They will kill you.”
My eyes would not focus, I could not see his expression.
Softly he said to me, “I know.”
“Then go now, go,” I whispered, thrusting at him weakly with both my hands.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I have waited for this moment all my life.”
Helplessly, I felt the sleep miasma pull me down. I struggled to keep hold of him, but I could not do it.
In a dark corridor, I saw him walk calmly ahead of me toward a burning, terrible brightness. I ran after him, calling him back, calling and calling him, but I could not seem to reach him, and he did not turn, only went on, walking so calmly, his hands loose at his sides, toward the devouring light.
There was a terrible sound in the palace: a wild beast roaring and trampling.
I woke, and sat upright in the golden bed. It was very dark, and the noise beat round and round the room. Abruptly, ice-white lightning seared through the windows.
A storm.
Now I made out the separate sounds of the blustering wind, the lashing snow-rain, the hammering fist of the thunder. There was no one in the room; the lamps had blown out. Still petulant with illness, I pressed at the carved flower. But no one came.
After a time, I made out once more the other noises I had
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heard in sleep that the storm had muffled but did not explain away. Shouting and screaming, shrill screams of exultation or terror, I could not tell. I pressed at the carved flower again and again, without result. Finally, I pulled myself from the bed, and began to make my way toward the double doors of the chamber. It was a slow laborious business. I did not dare to walk across the open floor, which seemed to shift underfoot, but slid myself along with both hands on the walls. Another lightning flash fell blazing on the dark, and then another immediately after it, but this one gold, not white. The doors had been flung open. In the doorway many black figures, priests and priestesses, and in front of them, Oparr. He raised his hands, and cried aloud in his temple voice:
“Praise and love! The goddess is safe! Uastis is unharmed!”
The cry was echoed and reechoed. Priestesses ran into the room with me, and Oparr shut the door on us.
I was bewildered and very weak. All things were uncertain and strange to me, and so it did not seem so much stranger than anything else that they stripped me, and painted me with the cream which made my skin golden, and dressed me for the Temple, and hung on me the jewels of the Temple, and finally placed the cat mask on my head over my lank hair, even over the sleeping mask itself. Dimly I saw that the women were afraid.