“Is it finished?” I asked her.
“No,” she said. She gave me no title at any time, and few words.
“What now, then?” I whispered, fighting back my panic at the thought of new horrors done to me.
“Nothing now,” she said. “A loving child. He will not be parted from you.”
So I called Mazlek, and he and Slor helped me mount and ride away. I did not see their faces behind their masks, and I was glad of it.
For several days I was violently ill, vomiting, and in great discomfort, and all that while I willed myself to lose Vazkor’s seed, but it was no use. I suffered, and perhaps the thing inside me suffered, but it would not let go.
News reached us by messenger of two Cities which had fallen in the forest land farther south, to Vazkor and his men.
7
Sixty days had passed for me in Belhannor, and we had entered the month which in Purple Valley is called the Time of Green. The spring is usually stirring by then, but the snow lay thick and hard across the city and the valley floor. Anxiety grew, the fear that always comes when an established pattern falters. The white-robed priests of their Temple offered lambs and pigeons to their goddess, a custom I had not seen in action since Ankuram. I recalled Za and the three days’ darkness, and so was not very surprised when Attorl requested an audience, and entered with the Javhovor a few paces behind him.
“Goddess,” they both intoned, and the eyes in their unmasked faces swiveled nervously from my belly.
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“What do you want?”
“There’s unrest, goddess,” Attorl said, playing with a neck chain. He looked bored with the unrest. “There’s some disturbance about the weather-men running around the streets, a mad woman going about shouting doom….”
“Goddess,” the Javhovor said uneasily, “there have been prayers in the temples and in the great Temple of our goddess, but the snow does not break. Now, in humility, we turn our eyes to you-Vazkor Overlord spoke of your power—dare we hope … ?”
I say I was not surprised, but neither was I pleased. Power, yes, but over elements and seasons? They expected a good deal of me, and if I failed-what? And if I refused what?
As I sat in my chair, disgustingly aware of my condition before their embarrassed eyes, the old festering anger woke in me, snarling, and I recalled abruptly the no-voice which had said, “Magicianess, who ruled the elements, the stars, the seas, and hidden fires of earth.”
I am not certain what kind of knowledge was on me then, but I got to my feet and said, “The palace of Belhannor has a temple, too, I think? Then take me there and leave me there.”
Both Attorl and the Javhovor looked startled, but I was conducted along the passages to a great door, manned by six of the royal guard.
“Let me alone in here,” I said, “and when the door is shut on me, tell them to pray in your City.”
Inside, closed in, a small golden room. So intense was this sudden irrational motivation, I had not even flinched from their goddess, in case she were Orash’ sister; but she was not. She was small and beautiful, her head covered by a golden sunburst and hung with pendants of the jade so special in every southern hierarchy. Before her, the stone bowl, held in claws of gold. The flame was very low as I went toward it.
I did not know why I did what I did. I leaned over the flame, and whispered, “I am strong, even now, I am strong. Your Power and mine will be a great strength.”
There were no words in my brain, I sensed only a tremendous struggle, not in the least physical, but nonetheless exhausting. I fought against the writhing thing, and finally it was still. I stood with my eyes shut, and my hands on the sides of the bowl, and pulled something up from within me, tense and bright and unwilling.
There seemed to be no time spent, yet I had stood here
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forever. It was very quiet. I pulled at the thread, and when it pierced my skull, I found a way out for it above and between my eyes.
It had seemed such an intense yet tiny thing to do, but now there was a terrible blast of sound, a great crashing of thunder over the palace roof, and the snapping violence of lightning searing through my closed lids. I found I could not open my lids, but I was not afraid. Rain came smashing like glass against the high shutters, and in the noise and light I lost my balance and fell, and lay there with my eyes still fast shut, and now I knew what it was I wanted.
At the time, it made sense to me, though afterward it was only a blur of shapes and feelings. I had the mastery of the enormous storm which would melt the snow with its boiling drops, and I turned it a little, like a wild horse, so that half its face was toward the armies of Vazkor. I did not know where they were at that time, bivouacked, perhaps, at the feet of the fifth City of Purple Valley, in the woodland there-though a picture formed of a frozen narrow river, and marching sounds came to me, and grinding wheels. I pushed the storm head and the lightning bit into my lids. Everything was lost in thunder.
I opened my eyes quite suddenly and got to my feet. I was trembling and shaking, but I felt very excited and happy. The flame was flat in its bowl, and the cold sky-blaze came and went on the walls.
I sat on one of the prayer-seats of the Javhovor and his family and tried to be calm, but it was difficult. The storm died slowly, and afterward the rain droned on for several hours. I think I fell asleep, for the golden room was abruptly red and purple from a stormy sunset beyond the windows.
I went to the door, and out, and the guards kneeled down in front of me. I was tired and locked inside myself, and ignored them. A little way on, I found Mazlek, my escort to my suite.
“In the City,” I said, “What?”
“A storm, goddess. And now the sky is clear.”
I dreamed I was with Asren, a strange dream, for though I knew it to be him, his features and his beauty unmistakable, he seemed little more than a child. Strange, too, because we were walking, band in hand, very happily, hi some green garden place. Then there were many white steps, and at the bottom, one of those stone bowls in which they kept alight the symbol of the Unawakened, the symbol which was Karrakaz.
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The child Asren stared down at the bowl, then looked at me questioning, and I smiled and pointed, and nodded. He leaped from the steps in answer to that nod, and fell into the bowl, and the flames covered him.
The storm had swept Belhannor clear of snow and the black slush which followed. The skies were golden, and there was a new warmth in the air. I think I had forgotten half of what I did, or tried to do, in the palace temple. Certainly I did not think of it until I was reminded. Days passed, and buds were breaking on the trees. Beyond the walls, fields saved from the fires of War were melting into greens and citrons. They sang hymns to me in the City, the goddess who had ridden to destroy them, and now blessed.
We were seventeen days into our sudden spring, when the first of the messengers reached us. It was a dramatic entry, a frenzied man, shouting incoherently at the palace gates, whose horse dropped frothing and dead from under him.
I heard the hum of excitement in the corridors beyond my rooms, and sent one of Mazlek’s men to discover what was happening. I had, however, no need to wait on him. The Javhovor came to me, and his face was yellow with alarm.
“Goddess,” he said, “a man has come. The overlord and his armies-a storm among the High Woods-that is the forested hill line that runs east of us-an avalanche, massive accumulations of snow, and broken trees and rocks brought down with it, all loosened by the rain, and the river An in flood. Ah, goddess, many lost-”
I had risen, a cold hardness in me.
“And he?” I asked. “Is there word of my husband?”
“Safe,” he said, glad to reassure me, “quite safe. But the army greatly depleted-and there are other troubles.”
They had been making for Anash, it seemed, the mistress City of the river, and fifth of their goals. Now, cut off in sections by the avalanche, and in distress, the army found itself harried by troups of Anash, which had swiftly seized all advantage.