“You are too tall,” she said, “and too white, but you are handsome for all that. Maybe I will lie with you, but not yet.”
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“Lady,” I said, “you should not play games alone with a man, and no one within call to help you.”
“Oh, I am not alone. I can draw spirits to help me at a need. I am a witch, I am Uasti.”
That name checked me for sure, though I had been pleasantly considering other things, for generally, when a woman talks in this way, “maybe” means “certainly” and “not yet” means “why are you so slow?”
“Uasti?” I stupidly repeated. Although she spoke it differently, less soft and fewer letters, it was the name of the Ezlann cat-goddess, my bitch mother’s name.
“Thus I am known,” the black girl said. “I am witch and healer, and women who learn cure-craft from the priests of my people are called Uasti. It has always been the custom. My cat, too, is the mark of my calling.”
“Uasti is a city name,” I said, stupid still, “and the cat the symbol of a dead goddess there.”
“Perhaps. In our tongue are many old words, borrowed from the Ancient Golden Books of the priests, or so they say. Uasti is one, meaning healing and wisdom, and its symbol is the cat, for who does not know that the cat is wise? Are you not, beloved?” she added to the fierce red creature about her neck, which responded with an alarming howl that might indicate a variety of attributes, wisdom being the least of them.
“However,” my witch added, “I have a secret name that you may use. That is: Hwenit.”
Then it came to me, and for the first, that she spoke a language I had never heard in my life-yet I recognized and could speak it with her.
At that I stopped dead in my tracks.
I had uncannily mastered city speech, laying the ability, with childish complaisance, at my father’s door. This, however, I could find no excuse for. I marveled at it and it shivered my neck. Each fresh revelation of Power-the killing light, my healing skin, this gift of tongues-had staggered me, but not sufficiently. This made me half crazy, afraid of what was in me. It appeared I had been growing since infancy into some fabulous denizen of a myth.
“Hwenit,” I shouted, “you are a witch and can bring demons. Bring one, or I shall have you here and now.”
Her pale gaze turned to knives and she showed her teeth.
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“Don’t think I cannot,” she cried, “but the cat will gouge out your eyes before I need to work magic.”
“Show me this sorcery,” I said, lunging at her. “I am a sorcerer, too. Subdue me.”
She eluded me, and the red cat raked my forarm with its daggered paw. Somehow, I knew I could make the scratches heal faster than any wound, small or deep, had healed on me before. I held out my arm to Hwenit-Uasti, where she could observe the blood. I did not watch the scratches close, only her face.
Presently she said in a small, thin voice, “I have seen a priest do this, once, when he had been in the place of the Book. I cannot do this thing. If you are a healer, you will not hurt me.”
“Don’t be positive, morsel of witch.”
“I wish I had not summoned you now,” she said, fidgety as an autum wasp. “You are too big and too clever. I should have left well alone.”
“So you should. Why do it? And do you suppose such a powerful magician as I have turned out to be has no free will, but must appear at a snap of your black-jade fingers?”
“Well,” she said slyly, recovering herself somewhat. “You are here.”
Then she turned and ran away, looking back once to see if I followed, and hesitating when she saw I had not.
“Come,” she cried. “Make the Summer Dance with me. Come, Mordrak; catch me and I will let you La my door,” and she ran along the edge of the headland through the brown dusk, the cat around her neck howling like a furious ghost.
Her village lay half a mile off, in a thatch of flinty meadow on the bony cliff-top, which crumbled down to a beach of mingled pebble and ocean-folded sand. Other cliffs of the range jerked from the coast to left and right of it. Tall grasses rattled in the wind, and the sea groaned as the tide pulled it from the shore, then dragged it back, an ever-unwilling slave.
The village was small, about twenty or twenty-five huts of mud-brick. Jet-black goats maundered or skipped through fenced enclosures beyond. Red fires were burning up in the salty evening air, Clearly, Hwenit-Uasti’s krarl was no longer
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nomadic, as the tribes usually were-red, yellow, or blackand I wondered what choice invisible pickings had encouraged them to put down roots in such a spot. Maybe they relished fried fish?
She had let me come up to her when home was in sight, but I had not actually been chasing her, only letting her lead me, guessing she was going to her krarl-hearth. My brief flare of sexual appetite had long since abated. I had been starving for food quite a while, neither had I slept soft, or had shelter for many days. I had forgotten the four hunters and the massacre I had scattered over the hills inland. Even my sorcerous powers seemed abruptly banal and unimportant. As for the girl, I could believe almost anything just then, and possibly she had summoned me by witching. After all, as she said, I was there.
I had heard tales of the black folk. The red tribes reckoned them simple; they were not. They must at some date have come from hotter lands, to judge by their skin, but that was long ago. If they knew of it, they gave the knowledge no utterance. As for their healers and their worship of gold books of old lore, there had been tribal stories of this, too, all nonsense, as anything chattered by the ill-informed must be.
Some of the women were outside their huts, cooking the evening meal. Slender and dark as night, they did not fall to gawking as Hwenit conducted me into the village. A group of men at the village’s lower end had been erecting two more hut-houses, and had broken off, as the light went, to discuss the work. To these Hwenit called, in an imperious voice, “Where is my father?”
The men looked up, nodded politely to me as if they had seen me many times, and the nearest answered, “He has gone walking, with Qwef.”
At that Hwenit-Uasti shook her hair, as if the name or the fact irritated her.
“Follow,” she directed me in her empress tone, and stalked on, nearly bowling over a small black handsome child, who courteously, and prudently no doubt, gave her right of way.
Hwenit-Uasti’s hut was the last one, set a little apart from the others, having a fine doorway of dressed stone painted pink and yellow, and a lighted lamp of red clay and a string of tiny black rodent skulls depending together from the lintel. A strange tree grew beside the hut, a surprising dwarf
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fir, which the lamplight showed to be a powdery blue in color. It was of the sort the antique kings, perhaps, nurtured hi their gardens; I had never seen its like before.
“Because I am Uasti, I have a well-made house, and a blue tree to mark it out,” said Hwenit. The faces of the men and women in the village had been enigmatic and not unfriendly, yet I had sensed a faint air of affectionate indulgence directed toward their healer. Were the doorway and the tree toys for a talented and precocious child? “The women will bring me food,” said she, “and some for you, since they see I have a guest. Enter, but touch none of the herbs or instruments of my trade.”
Ducking under the hut door, I yawned. I pondered whether she feared it would be clumsiness, my igorance, or my magic powers would cause some damage.
Inside it was dim and warm from an iron brazier already fired. The bent boughs and stem of the blue fir impressed inward through the mud wall; a witch’s clutter was everywhere. Thick rugs lay over the floor. I sat there, and soon stretched out, lazy as a dog in the sun. A drowsy inclination came over me again to draw her down at my side, but I never stirred. I could hear the rumble of the sea turning in its chains, and smell the smoke of the sultry flames and the smoky scent of a woman’s body, and I needed no other charm to wile me asleep. She would be safe enough with me that night. Possibly too safe for her liking.