Luck. It had eaten possibly after all, and had had no need of my meat. I began to shiver uncontrollably, scrambling
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from my bath, scrubbing my body with handfuls of dry grass until the action and the warm sun dried me.
Pulling on my shift, my hand struck the stone pile. One small pebble rattled loose and fell down into the stream where the current pulled it away. I watched that pebble go, and at once I saw an arrow in its place, and I remembered-the streams above the ravine, the river in the woods where Kel’s arrow had floated, snapped in half because it had touched an evil place. An altar of sacrifice-old as the ravine itself. I’ve heard them say some black god or other still
broods here… And I had lain here, rejoiced here, and the
wild cat had not touched me.
Freedom was so brief, despite my joy. There was no freedom. I carried my darkness on my back everywhere I went.
I ran from the stream, through the woods in the morning. Birds beat up from my path. When I could ran no longer, I walked, swiftly, and without much thought. A steep way and many trees. I had no sense of direction. I snatched a few berries from a bush, and wept like a spoiled child when the stomach pains came to plague me.
The day passed, and night came when I was high on a rocky road, climbing from the woods to the darkening sky. I slept in a cave place, curled up small for there was little room, and I dreamed of a white marble chamber where I lay on a silk bed, a child by my side in a golden cradle. A pink baby, blue-eyed, with a trace of yellow hair.
“This is the child of Asren Javhovor,” I said, then the doors opened, but the dark man with the black-masked face strode by me with a sword uplifted, phallic and menacing. The blade swung and crashed across the crib. I saw how black hair curled closely on the back of the strong neck, for the murderer was Darak.
I did not know where I was making for, though I guessed I must long since have left that way Ettook’s people named Snake’s Road; no trace~of a track remained. It was a dangerous land, peopled with wild beasts and the wild tribes of Ettook’s kind. Yet I saw no men, neither did they see me, presumably-or I would have been dragged away by them for their fun. Animals I glimpsed were of the timid variety: long-horned slender deer, winding sinuous gray snakes, birds, and russet squirrels. Once at twilight four wolves ran through a rock cut far below, and spurred me to climb into a deeper cave for sleep. Across the vistas of the hills and woods by night, the weird barks and screeches of things echoed hol-
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lowly. I felt I had no part in this lived-in country, an intruder without rights or the ability to survive. I ate red berries which made me vomit, and realized I had been poisoned. The hem of my shift I had torn off at the knee, and the rest was tattered and frayed. I drank from glassy streams or at the brown mirrors of round pools where frogs clustered, croaking in the dusk. My milk began to dry in me.
Ten days I traveled, without comfort or much intelligence, and with no destination in mind. On the eleventh day the land began to alter. It leveled and flattened, rocks faded back into the soil. From a dark crisp world, angular with stones and pines, it became a gray-green world, fluid and sloping.
The twelfth day. No longer the sharp, bittersweet scents of the highland, but smoke-mists clinging in the nostrils, stinging; mists so fine you could scarcely see them, only the effect they had upon distant things. The sky was a hot metallic shield over many pools, reed beds, muddy places, steaming. The bird calls were different. Clouds of insects buzzed. At night I lay where the ground was driest, without thought of any bonus of safety, and whitish phosphorus moved between one stretch of water and the next. I had reached the marshes.
On the fifteenth day, my fourth in the marshes, I was weak and angry. The water was not any good to drink-I had tried it, and I knew. Apart from a few berries, some of which were poisonous. I had not eaten since I left Ettook’s krarl. My breasts, still slightly tender and swollen with the unused milk, led me to wonder if I could feed myself from my own body-but they were not well-placed for such an endeavor, and I had no vessel other than my hands. I struggled a while, milking myself, trying to be cow, cowherd, and bucket at once, and, in frustration, saw the nourishment spurt thinly onto the ground. I cursed my breasts, a curse to which, luckily, they did not succumb.
I became dizzy from the mosquitoes’ drone, and lay through the noon heat in the rush shade.
On the seventeenth day I came to a vast place of water, shallow, the ruined green of an old glass goblet. Trees grew out of it, smooth-full of liquid, ancient bends of brown marble leaning over or away from their own marbled reflections, spilling lank leaves among the reed drifts, all one colorless color that could be given no name. I began to cross this water, the mud sucking at my soles, the greenness, however, only reaching to my knees. Gray heat drizzled on my eyes,
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and I thought at first I imagined the shape ahead of me. Then I reasoned it was a tall, particularly thick-boled tree, then a stand of trees. Finally I realized it was the ruin of a tower made of old white stone, and around the ruin was a wedge of land solid as an island in the low water. I stopped very still, and listened. Over the insect hum and slight viscous swash of water, I heard-sounds, sounds familiar and unloved and unlooked-for. Man.
Like an animal, I crouched back against the nearest tree, afraid of the hunters. And, like an animal, a single connective thought stirred in me. Man. Food. Where he settled, settled his cook pots, and his tents, even here, in the marshland.
Very quietly now, I slid toward the island. At the bank, I crawled among the rushes, and forward through thick springy undergrowth. I lay about forty feet behind the tower ruin, almost flat to the ground, and peered out. And saw them.
A krarl, this I could see, and yet…
They were not Ettook’s breed, that was certain. Their hair was long, unbraided, shining like black fire, their skins very dark, almost as black as that hair. Moving about their fires, among their black hide tents, in black clothes, I could tell they had an instinctive elegance of movement, a physical beauty, a narrow, hard, sculptured look, that made them seem unreal. White tower, black tribe, glint of metal and ornaments and fire. Yes, another nomad people, traveling east across the marshes, as Ettook’s krarl had planned to do. Yet-they were not on Snake’s Road.
I lay in my hiding place all day, watching them, waiting for the dark. On the whole they were very silent. Tall, slight, grave children played games with white squares, crosslegged in tent mouths. Toward sunset women cooked food at separate fires, and sat with their men to eat. I was very hungry. I began to notice only what they did with the food. Red sun-stains dripped across the water. I bit my tongue, stomach burning, and drifted into a half-sleep of longing.
Water, trees, and island one reflective glimmering turquoise in the dark. They seemed to have set no sentry.
I eased forward until I reached the base of the tower. No sound at all. I eased forward until I reached the banked-up smolder of the first fire. I had noticed a collection of about twenty goats, earlier, penned on the other side of the tower, and I was tensed as I moved for them to begin bleating (they
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are better than watchdogs usually), but I had not apparently disturbed their goat-sleep. I searched by the fire and found nothing. Unlike Ettook’s men, they were not careless as they ate, unfortunately. No help for it then, but to go farther into the camp.
I prowled among the hide tents, my eyes very wide. Between the dull red crusts of embers I searched carefully, and found a scatter of tasteless crumbs. Horses-surely they had horses with them? And perhaps the stores might be there-yet they did not seem to have horses or wagons or carts. I paused by a tent shape, lifted the flap so slowly it and my fingers seemed to creak like a rusty door. Inside-blackness, black curled figures and the smooth sounds of their sleep. And-! My hand snaked out before I could stop it. Three grayish cakes lying by the flap on a dish, and a little pitcher of water. They might have been put there for me to take. It was all I could do to stop myself from eating then and there in that unsafe place. I dragged myself away, out of the camp, back to my shelter. There I drank deeply, and crammed my mouth with food, which tasted pleasantly of honey for all its color. It was the first time I had ever been truly hungry, with a desire for actual food. When I was finished, I dug out a scoop in the soft earth and buried the empty pitcher. Slowly I slid myself into the water, and trod carefully back into the shelter of the bending trees, some way from the island. One of these, with a cradle of low-slung branches, offered me a bed. I crawled into it, and, despite the raging pain in my belly, fell suddenly asleep.