“Goddess,” he said, “I would strongly advise you to continue this journey as you were-in your carriage.”
“Vazkor,” I said, “I would strongly advise you not to advise me.”
“You must understand,” he said harshly, “that being a goddess entails certain obligations of dignity. Ride in this manner, in that inelegant clothing, and you will destroy your own image.”
“I have ridden many times. I shall not fall off. If you object to my clothing, find someone who can make me riding clothes to which you do not object, providing, of course, you do not expect them to include a skirt.”
He was masked and did not remove the mask. He stood stone-still and said, “This is very stupid of you. Beyond a certain point your stupidity will outweigh any use you might be to me.”
His voice was emotionless and very quiet. In spite of myself, a little coldness ran through me, and I knew myself still afraid of him. Yet what could he do to me that would not mend or heal? Perhaps it was more a desire in me to fear him than an actual fear which I felt. I shook it all from me.
“Brother,” I said, rising against him that kinship he used against me, “we must not quarrel over such trivia. I will do as I please, and you will do as you please, and while it serves both of us to help the other, we will do so. You cannot ride into Za without Uastis.”
There was a brief silence. Then he said, “Tonight I will send you a tailor. We will leave it at that.”
It was a defeat for him, yet it frightened me a little.
I went out, remounted, and rode out that day at the head of my guard, Mazlek behind me, leaving the carriage to my women and their fool’s chatter.
From the horse, the white dead world was not so different. Once a flock of birds flew over, calling, going away to the east.
The tailor came by night, and a scared woman, to fit me. I wore fine black wool now, a black slit tunic of velvet, slashed gold. The boots had gold buckles; the cloak was lined with a white bear fur, almost indistinguishable from my hair.
Late on the twelfth day, we passed through a village of the Dark People, huddled around a frozen fall among some rocks. Men were out chipping the ice for water, but, as I recalled, the
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women, animals, and children were hidden away elsewhere. Vazkor’s soldiers went through the village, and appropriated jars of oil and a store of wood, and also, more surreptitiously, leather skins of beer. Dusk came on, and our camp was built about a hundred yards from the settlement. In the dark, men stole away and raided the steaders for food. Later, I heard screaming, left my pavilion, and saw a great bonfire burning a few lanes away. In the glare of it, one of the village girls was being enthusiastically raped. I did not know how they got hold of her, or why she in particular was so afraid, for I remembered the girls who had danced with the lizard by the Water.
Looking aside at Vazkor’s pavilion, I saw him standing there among his guards, watching a moment, curious as I had been at the noise. He was masked but there was something strange about him. Only for an instant. Bored, he withdrew almost at once. I am not sure why I turned and walked immediately towards the bonfire-anger at him, perhaps, or because it was a woman they were hurting. Certainly I felt nothing for her as a living creature.
“Stop this,” I said when I was near enough.
Men turned and stared, guiltily. One, on top of her still, either had not heard, or was too far gone to care. Her screams had stopped. I leaned over the bucking rapist, got his shoulder, and hauled him off her. As he came up, helpless in my grip, the semen was already spurting from him. I struck him across his unmasked face several times. He came out of the paroxysm staggering, glassy-eyed, bemused and furious. There was nothing special to his face, only ignorance and bestiality and anger. I do not think he knew who I was. Perhaos no one had told him the goddess rode as a man now. He drew his long-knife and aimed at me, panting and ridiculous, the apparatus of his sex flopping lethargically in front of him. Men yelled at him to come to his senses, and hissed my name as a warning. A drunken string of curses came from his mouth. He lunged at me, but he was a fool. I stepped aside and caught his leg with mine. He fell heavily. I did not even think to kill him with the Power; there seemed no need. He lay on the ground grunting, and presently was still. I realized finally he had taken his own blade in the guts. The soldiers were cowering. I looked at the girl, but she was dead. I told them to bury her, and returned to my pavilion. It was only an incident of the journey.
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On the fourteenth day we reached Za. Her name is a corruption of an ancient word which means dove. It is her symbol, and I had heard her spoken of as the Dove a few times among the soldiers. Like Ezlann, she was named for her color-the pearl-gray stone from which the rocklands hereabouts are formed and from which she was quarried. She too stood high, not on a cliff but on a man-made stone platform, raised twenty feet from the surrounding area. A beautiful city, full of toys, and birds which had found a refuge here from the desert, and nested on her roofs and steeples and towers.
We entered the gates at evening, and rode for an hour or more through wide roads lined by shouting crowds, and even above this noise the birds of Za, circling and circling overhead, which was their ritual before sleep, made an incredible storm of twittering. The palace of the Javhovor of Za stood in a great circular square, a terraced tower with innumerable turrets, and ornamental work that looked like the decorations added to a cake. Facing the palace, a solitary finger tower, with a mechanized clock to strike out the hours of the day and night. At each striking-an appalling clangor from a brazen gong-ten fantastic figures of gilded iron and enamel in the shapes of maidens, monsters, and warriors progressed around the crown of the tower. It was a masterpiece of unique torture, clanging through my time at Za like a pretty and irritating child which grows worse and worse until tired out, its peak achieved at midnight-the twenty-fourth hour of the day, when the twenty-four pealing hammer blows of triumphant precision roused every soul from sleep or thought like the trumpet of Doom.
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The High-Lord of Za who welcomed us was a small, plump man. Though the phoenix is the symbol of every Javhovor, it is designed and cast so differently in every city that you can easily tell one mask from another. The art-form of Za was languid, with soft curving lines. The Zarish lord’s hair was long, yellow, and curled. Jewels dripped from his ears, and on his hands were openwork meshes of gold and pearls. Beautiful dove-masked women in the sheeny gray clothes of Za fluttered in the background. Music played. Formal words of greeting were spoken between lord and
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lord. There was a little embarrassment because the Javhovor of Za had not known the goddess was already present. He bowed hurriedly, striving not to look askance at my riding clothes, and a silence fell on the room.
Later, in my separate apartments, I heard the toy clock crashing the nineteenth hour.
They were all in the City, the lords of Ammath, Kmiss, So-Ess, and of the mountain place Eshkorek Arnor. The different colors of their soldiery and pavilions stretched down from the palace, through the broad open field at its back: red for Ammath, magenta Kmiss, So-Ess blue pastel, and the dull yellow of Eshkorek. Presumably these were the colors of their city stone, and it seemed incredible to me. I wondered what temperaments would come from a blood-colored place such as Ammath, or the purple wound of Kmiss.
I understood very well that I was to be a goddess again once inside Za. I donned the pleated jade-green silk, and countless ornaments of jet, emerald, and gold. The two women, in black velvet and jewels, came solemnly behind me with two colossal fans made from the stripped feathers of many white birds. The fan is a symbol to them of GreatnessHonored, but seemed absurd when snow lay thick on the ground. Behind the women came Mazlek and his ten undercaptains, also clacking with ornaments and medals.