“I am a magicianess,” I said; but I had used the City tonaue.
Seel came very close, and I smelled the stink of his body, the stench of skin forever wrapped up in a covering, and never exposed to sun or air or water. He seemed angry, his dry hands knotting and unknotting, his sharp yellowish fangs bared in a grin of hatred for me. His eyes glittered and darted. Suddenly he spat into my masked face. He shrieked some words I could not understand, and broke into a hopping dance. He leaped away from me, and, still screaming, he ran to each warrior in turn, poking at them with bony fingers. The warriors seemed afraid and backed away. I could not
321
properly follow, but it appeared I Was not what he had wanted brought; there had been some other thing-and they had missed it.
Again I felt I might begin to laugh, despite the pain I was in. And yet I must deal with them now, these tribal savages, or else I was lost. I made myself think of how. they had dragged me those last yards over the ragged ground, of how the seer had spat in my face. Aneer came, hot and bright, and filled me like a jar. I got to my feet.
“Old man,” I called out to Seel, deliberately discourteous, and I had the right words now, for he flung around frothing, and glared at me like a filthy old dog, which can still bite. “I told you.” I said, “I am a magicianess.”
I looked at him, and the anger rose behind my eyes, a great throbbing tide. But no light came, no pain of opening, only the pain of a huge thing that could find no way out. I struggled with myself as I stood there, striving to release my Power on Seel, to kill him, and prove myself before these dangerous tormentors. But I could no longer control or utilize my Power. My anger sagged and lay still. I recalled how I had burned from the brain of Vazkor the nest of ability, how I had sealed the avenues of his thought forever. In doing that, it seemed. I had drained myself, destroyed myself. Oh, I should have known it sooner; I had been unable to understand their speech as we rode, was still unable to master it fully, and that was a gift I had always had until now, since I woke under the Mountain.
Appalled and terrified. I confronted Seel, totally at a loss. The warriors began to laugh. Ettook began to laugh. Seel, however, did not laugh at all. He came to me and clouted me several ringing blows across my head, until at last the sound became the warning gongs of Belhannor, clamoring because Anash and Eptor were at the gates.
2
The tent where they had put me was very dark, and smelled of women and women’s things. yet I thought at first it was empty except for myself. There were goatskins and rugs on the floor, and I lay among these, stiff and sore and sick. I began cautiously to explore my body, for I was in a cold panic now lest, along with everything else, my self-healing had vanished too. It seemed it had not, for the rents and
322
gashes on my body were sealing themselves, the black bruises fading.
Abruptly I saw the woman’s shape ahead of me. She had been standing very still until this moment, now she moved and came forward. The little drift of light through the tent wall caught her, and showed me a covered face from which large dark eyes stared coldly. Perhaps thirty years old, which in the tribes would be the forty of Ankurum. yet beautiful; this I could tell without even seeing her face. She had a beautiful body also, under the black garment, or would have had, for now it was swollen with far-advanced pregnancy, and the large firm breasts were drooping with their milk. She was dressed basically as the ordinary women of the krarl-those who had run away from the warriors-in a sleeveless black shift and a black shireen. Yet her bare arms were ringed from wrist to shoulder with bracelets of copper, silver, and painted enamel, and around her throat was a collar of nothing less than gold, set with dull blue gems. Earrings holding the same stones rattled from her ears. Her hair was black as the mane of a black horse, and hung around her head and neck and down her back like a curtain. Clearly she was not of this krarl, and not of the Dark People either, for her skin was creamy, almost white, except for its slight acceptance of the sun.
“I am Tathra,” she said to me, “Ettook’s wife. Ettook’s only wife,” she added, asserting her rights to my respect and fear.
I said nothing, and after a moment she said, “You have been stupid. It is not good to anger Seel. I spoke to Ettook for your life. He listened.”
“Why?” I said.
“You carry,” she said without expression. “A City birth, but it can be weaned to our ways-one more spear for Ettook’s might. Or else, one more to bear sons for him. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” I said. She had spoken slowly, so I should be able to follow. “And for me?”
“You I will have,” she said.
“Your slave.”
“My slave. A woman of the Cities must know many things, many ways for a wife to please her man.”
Did I catch a flicker of unease in her words? Was she unsure then of the continuance of her husband’s fidelity? I could not find the words to test her.
‘Tomorrow dawn,” she told me. “You can come to me
323
then. This day you will lie here, in the tent of Kotta, where the women come when they are sick.”
She turned her magnificent, laden body, and went out. Things were settled. I was to be. after all, the high-born slave I had feared to be as I lay by the tower. Yet it was the best I could hope for. I had no longer any power or status. Who was I to argue with this destiny? At least I had been spared the tortures of Seel. I would be a drudge now. among the tents, and I would kneel before the warriors, and run from them when they shouted at me. I would be a woman, as women were reckoned in this place, a half-souled, witless animal, created to bear and pleasure men: an afterthought of the god.
It was very hot. I dozed from the heat, uncomfortably and without refreshment. Later a woman came, big-framed as a man, with muscular arms, and her hair bound around with a blue scarf. Earrings clanking, she felt my body, and grunted to herself.
“Sound,” she said to me, “for all the rough treatment of the braves. And this”-she prodded lightly at my belly” many days yet; a hundred, a hundred and twenty.” “No,” I said, “less.” She laughed.
“Ah, no, you read your signs wrongly, girl. Kotta knows these things, and you are too small.” She poured me milk and I drank it slowly.
“Is it-” I felt for the words. “Is it yet summer?” “Yes, summer for many days and nights now. Soon we shall be moving east again.”
“The tower-when did the tower fall?” “Man’s business.” Kotta said. “I do not know, or care.” She went away from me, and busied herself at some chests I could hardly see in the gloom.
It was summer, then. How long had I lain beneath the tower? Many days, it seemed, many, many days. A little pain from the milk twisted in my stomach.
Kotta returned to me with a basin of water and a black garment over her arm. She put it by me, and with a few deft movements stripped the ruins of the velvet off my body. She sponged the dirt from me, and applied a little salve to my cuts, but they were healing fast, though it seemed to me not as fast as I had healed before. Then she slipped the black cloth garment over my head and arms, and did up the lacings at the neck. Her hands came for the lynx mask, and instinctively I shied away.
324
I had not noticed her eyes till then, but now I caught the glint of them, very blue and still, and fixed on my face.
“Ettook must have the mask,” Kotta said. “It is his right. Later he will have a right to your body, when you are delivered of the child.”
“I must not show my face,” I whispered.
She gave a fox’s bark of laughter.
“Oh, so you learn the tribal ways so soon. That is good. Well, no fear that Kotta will see your face. Kotta is blind.”
She said it in such a way as if she said it of another, using her name also as if she spoke of someone else. It did not seem to distress her, at least, only as she would commiserate another woman’s loss. And, for a blind person, she was very deft.