It was very still then. The hot raw day hung close. I did not look at his face, only at the face of the girl with the jade. She grinned, raised her eyebrows, one after the other, then spat on the ground before the steps. But her eyes were tieht.
I went down the steps very slowly, and I was trembling. I stood a few feet from her, and pointed to the green thing without speaking.
She laughed, and spat again. Then looked at Darak.
“What is it you want, witch? You can’t eat a green hard stone.”
“Give it to me,” I said to the bandit girl.
She made her fear into anger.
“Keep off. It isn’t yours. It’s mine. He gave it to me.”
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“Not yours. He stole it. Mine, now. Give it to me.”
In spite of herself, the girl shrank away, back against his body.
“In our camp,” Darak said softly, “if one of us wants something from another, we fight for it. For food, or gold, or a knife, or a woman. Or a man. Shullatt here fought for me. And I took her. You want the green stone, you can fight her too. Shullatfs not afraid.”
Shullatt’s eyes altered. Her courage was back. She was on her own ground again. Another moment and she would have me under her, her cat claws in my eyes, hammering my breasts with her hard elbows. I would rather fight a man than a woman. Another moment-I could not wait. My hand went out. The jade leaped into my fingers. I tugged and the chain broke.
Like cool water in my palm, the jade lay sleeping but alive.
Her moment was over, but still she moved. With my other hand I caught her hard and stinging across the whole face. Blood jetted from one nostril as she reeled backward. Darak might have steadied her. but did not bother. She went down by his feet and screamed curses at me without getting up.
Abruptly Darak smiled grimly, set the toe of his boot against the girl’s side, and quite gently kicked her.
“Be quiet,” he said. “You’ve lost the stone. She fought you for it, in her own way.”
Someone began crying and shouting. Heads turned. I could not see who it was, but I heard the voice of the woman.
“She saved my children! The doctor from Sirrain told me they’d die-but they’re alive! She made them live!”
Darak’s face set hard and contemptuous. He too spat, and turned down the street to a side alley, pushing the crowd out of the way. His bandits shouldered after him, and the girls ran to keep up. The murmuring was growing all around. I went up the steps and into the temple before they could move about me and close me in.
I pulled the-broken screen against the door opening, and lay on the pallet, on my side, my knees drawn up, my hands under my chin, and against my lips the green smooth thing that was made mine, and seemed like a beginning.
Night came and blackened the world, and red stars ripped their places in the sky. I would go tonight, out, across the
24
wide lands. Nothing mattered but the green promise. Even Darak seemed nothing at that dark twilight. But then the need of food came, unexpectedly, and with it nausea at the thought of eating, and the shrinking from the inevitable pain that would come after, and torture and slow me, and keep me from going away. How long had it lasted before? An hour, or two perhaps? Not so bad. I could bear it because I must. But it was ten days now I had not eaten.
I went out onto the steps.
A few lights flickered in open windows, in ruins, in rebuilt rooms, many in the wooden shelter Darak had had put up for the homeless. Food smells from there, thick and musky. I went that way.
Inside the narrow door fires were burning in stone rings or in iron braziers, and yellow lamps swung overhead. A big carcass was turning on a rough spit, crackling and stinking. The villagers were crowded close as if they liked this nearness to one another. Darak was not there.
As I went in, the accustomed first silence slipped over them. They slid into the grooves of it with stealthy ease. I walked up the center aisle, between the fires and cook-pots. Every bit of food that I passed made me sick, but I found a caldron bubbling in a corner, and the smell of this did not repulse me so much.
“What is this?” I asked the girl bending over it, poised now. her mouth ajar at the sight of me.
“Broth,” she stammered, “vegetables-”
“Will you give me some?”
She jumped around, beckoned, and a child came running up with a ladle and wooden bowl. Watched by the countless fixed eyes of the people in the shelter, and the swaying gold eyes of the lamps and candles, the girl began to fill the bowl with the ladle, once, twice-
“Enough,” I said. I took it, and thanked her, and at that moment a big hand knocked the bowl from my grasp, and the girl shrieked.
“Did Darak not tell you to give no food to the witch, slut?” a voice growled, guttural and menacing.
The girl took a step back. But the bandit’s interest was no longer centered on her.
“So, the immortal goddess, who sleeps for centuries under the mountain, still needs to fill her belly, eh? Darak told us you’d come here, and he said, when you came, to take you to him.”
I looked at the bandit through the eye-holes of the mask.
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A blank unimpressionable face. He knew their legend even, but had not been reared on it, as Darak had. I had no chance with this one.
I said: “If Darak Gold-Fisher has need of the help of the goddess, he has only to ask. I will come with you.”
The bandit grunted and swung out, leaving me to follow.
“Forgive us,” the girl whispered.
I touched her forehead with my finger, gently, as if in blessing, feeling nothing, while her face flooded with color and gratitude. Then I followed my captor.
He took me along the dark close alleys, telling me which path to follow now, and walking behind me. Here most of the buildings were flat. We passed a marketplace with broken sheep pens, and a burned tree like a huge stick of charcoal at the center. I began to hear music then, savage, bright music, instinctively tuneful and rhythmic, but with no pattern beyond an underlying beat of drums. There was a slope where a large house had stood, facing out over the lake, toward the mountain. Only one court remained, and here, in the hot early darkness, Darak’s people were eating around their own fires, playing this hill music, chipping crudities into the stone walls.
The bandit pushed me through a low arch. Paving lay under my bare feet, still warm. Bones and apple cores were scattered about, with a dog or two nosing around them hopefully. A girl with ink hair was dancing, stamping her feet and turning in endless circles, the golden bracelets on her arms like the fire-rings of some blazing planet.
At the far end, seated on a striped rug, like the hill-king he was, Darak looked up. A few men sat around him, and there was a girl-suitably placed far down the low table. I recognized her, the other who had come from the hill with him, in black and yellow silk.
The bandit began to prod and push me with fervor now. We arrived at the table-an intriguing item, over-carved from some light wood, certainly stolen, obviously kept as a symbol of Darak’s wealth, power, and good taste.
Darak smiled courteously.
“The goddess finally feels hungry,” he remarked. “Sit here, then, and eat.”
“I cannot eat in the sight of others,” I said.
“Of course, your holy mask. Then take it off.”
“No one must see my face. Do you not recall that, Darak?”
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My voice, so cold and clear was the last of my strength. I was weakening now, frightened and angry and bewildered. The stench of food and drink came all around me, and there seemed no escape.
“We’re not afraid, goddess.” He stopped looking at me to peel a fruit. For all his lounging here, he was not a man who liked to be still. I wished him dead, but not hard enough. “Come, goddess. We can tell what you’re got to hide. You’re albino-white hair, white face. Eyes too-although the mask holes throw a good shadow over them there’s no color. So. No more pretense. Sit and eat.”
He gave a little nod of his head; I almost did not see. But the big brute behind me giggled like a child, and the fingertips brushed my hair, coming for the hooks of the mask.