“You and she,” I said. “Either you lie together in a bed, or she birthed you.”
That threw her, as I intended. She frowned, with that stasis coagulating in her eyes again. Then she said, rather low, as if she, too, must take herself in hand to speak, “We are losing time here.” She moved away from me, and on ahead, to where a narrow path opened in the cliff.
It was as I had guessed. My beautiful sister, who had not Wished that I discover it.
On the rocky way I noticed for the first time that her feet were bare as they met the frozen cliff, except for twin anklets of gold, which shone down on the snow.
As we climbed, the sharpness of the breakers softened below, to a sound like the distant running of horses. It was so quiet then that I heard my breathing, and hers, and the muted chink of those gold anklets, which sometimes struck together.
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Inland, the cliffs poured over into a valley bowl of black and white woods, with the mountain rising from them at the island’s center.
The path, which led us upward and over the rampart of the cliff wall, slid downward to this interior valley country, which seemed hidden, as if by intent, from the beach, the sea, and the mainland. The only flowers there now were snow flowers and the ferns of ice patterned over winter pools, yet from the shapes and skins of trees beneath their flaking bark, I made out hawthorns, wild cherry, rhododendron, and countless others which with the thaw would fire into white and violet, blue, carmine, and purple. It would be a maze then, this secret plain, starred and powdered with lights and shades, and the winding canals curdled with shattered blossom. I wondered what birds would come there, and what fish dart in the streams, and if they would be good to eat-and then recalled I had no need of the death of their pink flesh. In any event, I should be long gone from White Mountain when the spring entered its gate.
But Ressaven. What would she be doing here in spring? Flowers in her hair no doubt, as a girl would have, and her arms and shoulders bare and spangled with the green and lavender cannonade of sunlight shot through blossom. Probably she would open her thighs for some white-haired boy-man among the grasses. Or maybe she would be far from this haven, out in the unfree, imperfect, dull and fettered world, with me.
Half a mile from the cliff, something pale shone in fragments through the weave of the trees. The path looped in and out, and there against a glint of frozen water like an oval coin was an extraordinary tall house, three terraced stories, spear ranked with pillars, with windows of multicolored glass: a miniature mansion of the Lost Race straight from Kainium, but not a wreck.
“What’s this?” I said. “Do you bring humans here after all to labor for you?”
“No,” she said. “There are several such small palaces on
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the island, and a marble town on the mountain slopes. They were in ruins, but the Lectorra rebuilt and repaired them.”
“I don’t visualize you, lady, neither your fellow gods, toiling about the masonry with mallets, scaffolding, and pulleys.”
There were pebbles lying between the villa wall and the brink of the pool. Suddenly six or seven of these flew up like startled pigeons, skimmed across the congealed surface, and plummeted down with a crack of breaking glass upon the ice. She said, “The Power of the rnind and the energy of Power that can fling pebbles can also raise a marble block, shape a column, and lift it upright on its base. True, men from the mainland advised us-at least, spoke with Karrakaz some years since, to advise her. But we employed no hirelings and forced no slaves. What help we asked we paid for, sometimes in gold, to which we are able to gain access in the city, sometimes in humble barter, wild honey, fruits, and the milkcheese of our goats.”
“Now I am to picture you at the milking?”
“Yes. I have milked a goat,” she said. “And I have learned how to charm the bees so they do not sting me when I must steal some of their harvest from them.”
“A homely milkmaid witch.” I did not believe her story, or not all of it. The white villa-mansion would have required vast strength to set it to rights by mind alone, a mental strength I had not observed among the Lectorra. Those pillars-I might have raised them, if my brain had been turned to mason’s games. But those here could not, save for Karrakaz herself perhaps, and this one, the daughter.
I said, “I have had much traveling and little rest. Is your palace equipped for us to break the journey in for an hour?”
“Yes,” she said. She smiled, and I wondered if she knew what I Was really at, suggesting we pause here, and if it meant she complied.
The bare blossom-trees grew about the porch. The double doors were oak wood, and gave at a twist of the iron ring. The house was as it must have been centuries before, or near enough, an irony of Karrakaz’s or Lectorra whim.
The anteroom was flanked by red pillars. The pillars in the hall beyond were green and slender, carved to resemble the stems of great flowers, the flower-heads opening scarlet against the flat roof, which was the clear blue of a summer sky, and painted so cunningly with clouds I part expected them to move. Screens of fashioned ivory stood before the
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red marble walls, with one huge window set in the chamber’s farther end. Its leaded mosaic panes-red, blue, green, and purple-would admit a fantastic daylight. A staircase went up to one side; the balustrade was ivory enhanced with gold, the shallow steps, white marble. In an urn of green jade at the room’s center grew an orange tree in a full double bloom, of flowers and tan fruit, some freak fancy of the Lectorra, doubtless, to outwit the season. Its scent filled the hall, which was unnaturally temperate. I thought of the system of hot pipes in Eshkorek, and realized a similar construction must be in use in the villa, though with no slaves to tend it, if her protestations were to be credited. (I was coming to credit them. I felt a casually expansive yet controlled and sensitive use of Power here, something I envied, being still uneasy with my own. In fact, to reveal these riches, Ressaven had set fire to the ranks of candles on their silver and golden stands by single intent glances of her eyes. It disquieted me still, to see these arts exercised thus unselfconsciously by another.)
There was a couch in the form of an ebony lioness and ivory chairs in the form of her crouching cubs, all snowed over with furs and rugs, as was the heated floor.
“You must go trapping often,” I said.
“Never,” she said. “We take only the pelts of beasts that die in the course of nature, or the woven fleece of living animals.” She looked at me, a strange look, and said, “But you have been hunting often, and would not understand such measures. Now, shall I bring you food and wine?”
The dwelling, which must be hers, seemed well supplied for visitors, its hypercaust going, candles ready, larder stocked. For whom did they keep food? Could it be, despite Mazlek’s boast at the inn, that some of the Lectorra still needed to cram their bellies?
“No wine or food for me, lady,” I said. “I live on air, as they say, as any magician should.”
“So I was told,” she said.
The candles blazed bright. I put my pack down, with the mask hidden in it, on a lion-cub chair. She stared at me, and abruptly her face sharpened into desolate hunger, as if she had glimpsed some distant sanctuary she could never reach. I thought, She is nineteen, yet maybe she has never been with a man, never come on one she desired, and they dared not force her. Though I could not, even then, be sure of her, if it was to lie with me she wanted, or some deeper unknown
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thing, some ancient wish or fear in her heart. For she looked afraid, too.
I went near to her, and put my hands on the fastening of ber dark mantle. She did not stay me, only went on staring into my face. For myself, I kept my eyes on the lacing, and spoke trivia for safety.
“This splendid palace would have been only a humble rustic outhouse to them, I suppose, your Lost Kainium folk. I saw an underground road of theirs once, clothed with gems and metal and high as the sky, which they had named Worm’s Way. And this, possibly, they would call the Dove Cote or the Hut. Fitting mansion for a witch who milks goats and gathers fruit in her white hands.” At that I took up her fcand. I anticipated the tactile electricity to sear between us again, as it had the first time, but now we were primed to it There was only a dazzle of nerves in my skin that touched on hers, which ran straight through me like silver wire.