“What is the matter?” Kotta said to me. Perhaps I had made an audible protest at the pain, but I did not think so. I told her my trouble, and she asked Ettook for a mule. It must have been the old argument-one more male for the tribe-for the mule was mine, and I rode after Tathra from then on.
Seel did not come near me, and if he had cast his spell, I knew nothing of it.
It was a monotonous traveling, but dullness can be preferable to certain other things.
On the ninth day out on the road, near sunset, there was some agitation among the warriors up ahead. We were passing through a narrow gully, where the track took up the path of a dried-out stream bed. Rocks went up on either hand, trees leaning over us from roots clawed into the rock side, and swaying darkly on the tops like plumes on a metal helm. Above, among those trees, the warriors had seen some movement, it appeared, not animal in origin.
Once this news trickled back to the van of women and goats, weak panic broke out among both. An enemy tribe, planning to attack us from the gully roof? Yet there was no attack then. We reached higher ground, and night came.
They made camp in the shelter of other rocks, and piled rocks around the three open sides as an improvised stockade, and lit brushwood fires on the inside of this. In the red light, warriors stood sentry, and there was a look on their faces of taut pleasure. It was good to fight. A sign of virility in the tribes of the valleys to have taken many women, fathered many sons, but best of all, to have slain many men. The
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women huddled near the main fire, chattering nervously as if purposely overacting fear in order to make their men’s bravery the more obvious. I sat at my post, a little way from Ettook’s tent, sewing without interest or accuracy at a bit of cloth. The cloth, in other hands, might have become a carrying bag of sorts, but it was, for me, only an excuse for labor. They did not like women in the krarl to be idle; this way I seemed employed, yet truly was not. Grouped at the wall fires, Ettook and his elder warriors were drinking and laughing.
Abruptly, hoof sounds opened the night. Silence fell in the camp. At once a man’s figure, a horse shape, flying mane and hair showed, caught in the flame glare. Shouted words I could not grasp, an arm upraised, and something flung over the stockade of stones to bite deep in the soil. The rider turned again, mount rearing, and was gone, swift as he had come. Ettook ran to the thrown thing, pulled it up, and shook it-a pointed stave about four feet in length, tied with strips of scarlet wool, and ringed three times with white clay.
“War spear!” Ettook cried with a fierce joy in his voice.
Shouts went up. The warriors leaped and lifted their arms. The women came closer together-except for one, the tall daughter of the seer. She rose and went among the tents for her father, and was soon back with him.
Seel raised a bony hand, and clutched the one-eyed serpent with the other.
“War dance,” he called out, and the warriors cheered.
As if it were a signal, all the women got to their feet and ran into their various tents, all but Seel’s daughter and myself. They did not see me in the dark tent shadow. Seel’s daughter carried over her arm a black robe, which now she put on her father. Over it were embroideries of many colors, barbaric depictions of sun and moon, tree and mountain, sea and fire. He shook out the wide sleeves, folded his arms, and began to intone some ritual chant which had no meaning for me. The warriors drew back in a half-circle, and into the space between the seer and Ettook and his men slunk the girl, hair like one of the flame tongues all around her. She spat on the ground left and right, and made a sprinkling action around the half-circle with her fingers. Seel’s chant came to an end, and his daughter ran at once to Ettook, and Ettook clasped her to him. That she was the symbolic intermediary between man and the power of magic was clear, that she would now give herself to the chief was also clear. Perhaps sexual arousement was integral in their war frenzy. The
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warriors’ feet began to stamp as Ettook’s large and uncouth hands traveled the snake-writhing body of Seel’s daughter.
“No, not for you,” a voice said, Kotta’s voice, at my shoulder.
I got up. I had no real wish to see their blood-lusts rise in the fire-lurid dark. We went among the shadows to the tent, and slipped inside.
“Had they found you, girl,” she said to me, “it would be a beating or worse, perhaps. Even Seel’s daughter must hide her eyes in her father’s tent when they’ve done with her.”
“When will they fight?” I asked.
“Tomorrow. Daybreak. It is man’s work.”
I laughed. “I too have fought and killed, Kotta. It is the work of fools, not men.”
And then I sat very still, for a great truth had come to me out of my own mouth, as if another spoke it. I had indeed killed, not only with sword blade but with thought, also. I, in my hubris, slew and wounded, and because of it my Power had left me. It was quite obvious to me in that moment.
I bowed my head and whispered, “What have I done?”
Kotta said nothing. She took up my sewing and began to unpick it.
After a while I said, “I am blind also, Kotta of the tribe.” I did not care what I told her, whether she believed or not. A slow procession of words came from my mouth, in which Darak and Vazkor, Asren and Asutoo, Mazlek and Maggur, the Sirkunix and the War March were inextricably mixed. She could not have understood, but she recognized the need in me to speak. When I was still, she, too, was still. We sat quiet for an hour or more in the dark tent, while outside their feet thudded among the red flicker, and they invoked their gods and the savagery within themselves.
After that time, I lay back on the rugs to sleep, and it was then she spoke to me, as if our conversation had had no break.
“Now I will tell you something. Kotta was born blind to the krarl-in the last years of Ettook’s father, it was. A blind one is no use, as a cripple boy is no use, for he cannot ride to war. In a way, a blind woman is worse, for she may bear blind children, so I might not go to a man-had any wanted Kotta, which none did. But I was let live, for I learned my chores quickly, and could do most things as well, or better, than the womenfolk with whole eyes. And I learned to tend the sick, and help the women bear, so I am useful among the
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tents. Now tell me, one of Eshkir, why do_you say Kotta is blind?”
I lay in the dark, and I answered as if she had prompted me: “Kotta is not blind.”
“Yes,” she said. “But Kotta does not look out through two sockets in her head, which men call seeing. Kotta looks inward, and there everything is. I did not know that I was blind until I was in my tenth year. When they told me, I did not understand, for I could see, and I thought they saw too, in the same fashion, looking in, not out.” She had unpicked my work on the cloth, and began again. “What color is this cloth?” she asked me.
“Blue.”
“Now what is blue? I have never seen blue. But I have seen colors you also have never seen, nor any who look outward. I turn to the sky and I see birds, but they are not as you see them, and I see men, but not as men see men.”
“In your tent,” I said softly, “when I took off, the mask what did you see of me, Kotta?”
“Something I have not seen before. Put your hand into cool water when the day is hot. That is what I saw.”
“Kotta,” I said sharply, “I am ugly beyond ugliness; did you not see that?”
“To yourself, and to others perhaps,” she said, “but to Kotta, beauty. Beauty I have not seen before. Beauty which is a fire and yet does not burn.”
“Your inner eye has misled you,” I said to her.
There was silence from beyond the tents. I got up from the rugs, and went to sleep in the open, curled among the rocks, cushioning my sore breasts with my arms. It seemed their man-magic had spread into her mind and mine, despite an averted gaze. Her words tormented me and I ran from her.