The White Serpent

1 The Snow

In a cone of purple dusk, on the white snow, the young woman stood calling in her husband’s dogs. All around, the mountains stared at each other across the valley, colored like the sky and darkening with it, the huge snows caught on them in broad luminous tangles. It was the heart of winter, yet as sometimes happened here in the west, there had been a partial thaw. Panes of ice slipped from the mountain sides and crashed away. A single flower had raised its head against the well—and Tibo plucked it and put it in a crock beside the hearth-fire. Transparent as a ghost it poised there, for Orbin to sneer at. The dog-pack, too, was loosed from its shed and let go up the valley. The dogs might catch a hare or unwary rock-rat out to forage in brief sunshine. By afternoon, however, snow-cloud came down again on the mountain tops and Orbin snarled a command. So Tibo left her pots and went to summon the dogs, with a high-pitched warbling woman’s call used the Iscaian uplands over.

Soon, they came trotting out of the mauveness one by one, two by two. She counted each as it passed her, and spoke kindly to it. All had returned empty-mouthed, though maybe they had found something for themselves. When the eighth dog had run by her and into the shed, Tibo scanned the dusk, and presently called out again. Orbin owned nine dogs and one had not come back, the dark bitch. Blackness.

Sometimes tirr prowled through the mountain valleys, if winter had caught them. A dog did not stand much of a chance against tirr venom. Nor against a fresh snowfall. Blackness was valuable, a clever huntress, whose womb made healthy pups. Tibo was concerned for her, and besides would get the blame if any animal were missing. Orbin badly wanted an excuse to give her a thorough beating.

There was perhaps a quarter hour of the twilight left, and new snow had not yet begun to come down. Tibo shut the dogs in. Then she took a lantern from its hook above the dog-shed door, kindled it, and began to walk out carefully across the pasture, calling as she went.

The ground was treacherous, not yet frozen hard again. Tibo knew from years of experience how unevenly the land lay under its disguise of snow. She knew also that a woman’s life was cheap, that Orbin hated her and that Orhn—well. There was no point in considering Orhn’s opinion on the matter.

She had been wed to him at the age of ten. Her family, a sprawling herd of many rough sons and many slavish daughters, had been no happiness to her, and she was early on acquainted with poverty. Orhn’s farm was spoken of with jealousy, his father had had some standing in the village of Ly; even his sons being given the names of Kings. This father was gone by the time of the marriage but the mother still lived, senile, vaguely demented, and chair-bound, for whose every need Tibo must care. Otherwise there were only the brothers to tend. Orbin’s two wives were both of them dead and a decline in fortune had, it seemed, prevented him from getting others. Orhn meanwhile, as Tibo discovered, was simple. He treated her gently enough, and in their nuptual bed, the garlands of flowers and vine still on their hair, had pawed and drooled upon her, expending his seed in the first minute, without union, or even an embrace. This had been the format of their coition ever after, though in later years the spark of lust had died in him, except now and then at Zastis. All of which meant, additionally, that Tibo had been some nine years a childless wife, apparently barren, which lowered her value further.

Altogether, she was worth very little, and had better find the dog who, undoubtedly, was worth much more.

A low wall of stones bounded the pasture, where in summer Orhn’s blue pigs and whippy-necked fowl rooted and pecked. An open place in the wall, where the dogs had come through, gave on a tumble of rocks, and a few citrus trees, whose leaves the cold had burnt away.

Winter did not always bring snow to the mountains of Iscah, they said, but for as long as she could remember Tibo had seen it. That was the curse of the serpent goddess, they told you.

“Blackness!”

Tibo called by name now. The light was going suddenly fast, as if the fisted cloud squeezed the sky dry of it.

Then, with an almost terrible relief, Tibo heard the bitch-dog begin to whine and croon to her, from somewhere in the jumble of rocks.

“What is it, lass? What have you found?”

Something plainly Blackness would not leave. Or, Cah prevent it, was she lamed?

Holding the lantern high, Tibo moved forward once more. She did not like this place, even in the late summer days, when she came to pick the fruit. In certain parts the farm was hidden from view by the rocks, all of which were faceless now under the snow. She began to think of banaliks, the vampire-demons indigenous, in myth, to mountains.

The dog barked abruptly, very close, to her left. Tibo turned to the sound, and screamed in horror. Something had her by the leg. Hard and cold it gripped her calf just above the cuff of her boot.

“Be quiet,” a man’s voice said. It was a man’s hand that held her.

Her terror subsided to mere fright, and she swung the lantern over, and saw him. He sat between two of the rocks, grasping the dog’s muzzle in one hand, to keep her from barking till allowed, while he controlled her powerful body with his thighs. His other hand remained on Tibo. He was clearly very strong, and looked capable of maintaining both holds until they all three, man, dog, girl, froze to stone or starved to bone. Tibo considered crashing the lamp down on his skull. Something must happen then—he would lose his grip on the dog, who might go for his throat, or only of Tibo, who could perhaps get to the farm across the slippery snow before he caught her again.

“Don’t,” he said, as if he read her mind, as the Serpent People did. “For sure, both of us would be damaged. I don’t want to hurt you.” No man had ever said such a thing to Tibo. In her experience all men hurt most women, to a greater or lesser degree. Her first memories were of her father’s blows. It was the natural order of things.

“I see you are puzzled,” the man said. His voice was strange to her, with an alien accent not of Iscah, let alone Ly Village, “I don’t mean you any harm. I’ve already met my share of trouble. Friends of yours, maybe. Bandits—then I wandered. The thaw saved my life. ... So those prayers to Anack weren’t wasted after all. But it’s about to snow again. Then I’m finished. All I want is some generous roof—a night or two. And if you’ve anything to ride—these western snows, poor things, nearly passable. But I suppose a saddle-thoroughbred is too much to dream of. If I could get to Ly Dis, I can reach the capital from there—or somewhere. I’d pay. They didn’t find my coins—or couldn’t use them. Do you even know money was invented, out here?”

Tibo heard his speech through. For one thing, she would never have interrupted while any man spoke, however formlessly. Even an enemy from whom she must defend herself. But she did not properly understand. The yellow lantern burned on his face, while the world gloomed over. He was young, and handsome, but not in any manner she had ever seen before. The brazen Vis skin came paler in Iscah; his flesh was dark, like that of the men of Dorthar or Alisaar, though not like a black Zakorian’s. His hair fell to his shoulders, thick leaden silk—the men of Iscah wore their hair lopped high up the skull, or went shaven in the hot months.

He seemed to be studying her also, with his wide-spaced black eyes.

All at once he let her go, and let go of the dog, too.

Blackness turned at once like a snake against him, snapping, and Tibo reached by him to snatch her away. “See,” he said, “you do like me, despite everything.” Then he shut his eyes and sighed. His head lolled gracefully. Tibo saw he had fainted, and in another moment why, for even in the cold he was bleeding busily and had soaked the dog with his blood, her sable coat hiding it.

“Cah,” said Tibo, making a little ritualistic gesture to the goddess of her country. The dog crouched growling at her side, and the first snowflake, descending, fell sizzling in the lantern.

Orbin raised his head, sly-eyed, as the door was opened out of the white night.

“Hoh, Tibo,” he said softly. “Where is your flower gone, eh? I’ll tell you. You were loafing so long out there, we needed another log on the fire. So I put your flower on it instead. Didn’t make much of a blaze.” He watched, as Tibo glanced at the empty crock, and pointlessly, into the hearth. But Tibo always ultimately disappointed Orbin. She never sniveled, or groveled, as the other women had. Even when he clouted her, she only got up again. And he had to clout her often, for Orhn was too stupid to see to it. Orbin had even had to arrange their marriage, although it was not unusual for the closest male relative of the groom to attend to such things. Due to Orbin’s clever management, however, no one had been able to notice just how slow the elder brother was. The farm, and all its stock, belonged to Orhn, who had the name of Alisaarian kings. By law, Orbin belonged to Orhn. That was a fine joke, that. In a practical sense everything actually was Orbin’s, in all but name, kingly or otherwise. As for the slut, Orbin could have had her, too. But he never ordinarily saw much in women. During the Red Moon, when the urge was on him, he knew better than to tamper with his brother’s legal wife. She might get herself pregnant, and then there could be questions, because the village somewhat suspected Orhn’s ability, even while they spoke of Tibo as a barren parasite. Orbin was reverent of Cah and made the goddess regular offerings. He did not want to tell falsehoods before her statue, afraid of what she might then do to him. So he left Tibo alone, and paid to go with the temple’s holy-girls, fat lumps good only for such sticking.

On the other hand there was no law, religious or otherwise, against a man thrashing his brother’s wife.

“All the dogs?” he asked her now.

“Yes, brother-master.” She paused, her eyes lowered respectfully. What else was she waiting to say? Had she hed about the dogs? “Brother-master,” she said, “give leave that I speak?”

“What rubbish have you got to say? All right. Babble on. You women, never quiet.”

“There’s a man. Blackness showed me.”

Orbin was alerted.

“What man?”

“A stranger. Robbers set on him. He’s bleeding, and may die.”

“Then let him,” said Orbin.

He watched her covertly, to see what she would do now, but she only went to the fire, and began to put bits of wood on it. The deed woke up Orhn, who had been slumbering on a bench one side of the hearth. The other side the old woman slept on in her chair, dribbling and twitching her blanket. Orhn smiled at Tibo. He reached out and touched one of her slim black braids. She wore her hair parted into twelve of these, each braid hanging to her waist and ending in a copper ring. But the rings were unpolished, she took no pride in them, although they were the mark of her married status. Her hair, though, glistened. She constantly washed and combed and rebraided it. In the same useless way she picked flowers and herbs, and gossiped to the dogs. These practices annoyed Orbin, but they were no real grounds for a complaint. She did not ever neglect her work.

“This man,” said Orbin now, as Tibo dragged the iron cauldron from the fire, and returned with it to her pot-scouring. “Where is he?”

“In the yard, Orbin-master.”

“The shed—bleeding and dying in Orhn’s shed?” (Stirred by his name, Orhn made a sound of mild outrage, copying Orbin. This mimicry, taught him long ago, had often let him pass as normal in Ly.)

Tibo scoured her pots, humble, apologetic. She had some cause to be, having, with Blackness’ aid, hauled the semiconscious stranger to shelter. Though treacherous, the glassy ground had taken scarcely any imprint, the falling snow had also helped, obliterating every trace of her connivance. All the time, the man had marveled, dizzily amused, swooning and clinging to her, that her frailty could support him. Of course, she was strong. Fourteen years of fetching and carrying, lugging and straining, had made her so. When she left him in the straw with the surprised dogs all around to warm him, she had been sorry to get him go, his body, its frame and texture and scent, an assemblage she had never before experienced. She had torn his shirt to bind the knife-cut in his arm, not daring to use anything of her own, as yet. And she had worshiped at his flesh, as the old song said Cah did with her lovers. There was no denying it. Never having known such a feeling in her life, Tibo recognized infallibly her desire and hunger.

He should not die. She would not allow it. She knew the properties of herbs. And she had learned in childhood, for self-preservation, how to deceive.

So she went on with the pots, all stupid and careless, until Orbin, having questioned her sharply about the man’s story, his garments, his foreignness, pushed her out again shedward, between the curtains of the snow.

By the time the next thaw came, twenty-five days later, the stranger was whole and on his feet, and assisting Orbin about the farm.

Orhn had been very gracious. That was, Orbin had permitted the stranger certain rights and Orhn, standing by smiling, had made appropriate sounds at proper intervals. Having interrogated the stranger, Orbin had asked for his money. If Orhn was to provide the man a roof and nursing, and a share of the food until he recovered, that was only just. Orbin suspected the stranger did not give all his cash, and was correct in this. He instructed Tibo to search the stranger when next she tended him during his fever, and she brought back a handful of small coins. In return, the man lay in the dog-shed, with a brazier for warmth for which Tibo firstly, and he himself when fit, must obtain the kindling. He was also given a piece of bread or slab of black porridge to eat, and a bowl of the evening soup or stew, generally with no meat in it. Tibo’s herbal medicines she had prepared in secret.

“He’s tough, some mercenary off the roads,” said Orbin with lazy contempt, unease and faint envy mixed in his tone. “He’ll mend. If we keep him here until Big Thaw he can help with the spring ploughing. Orhn can save on hired men, in that case.” (The farm was not rich enough to keep workers over during winter.)

The entire project entailed, of course, trapping the man for as long as possible, and making him pay in any way that was feasible for the privilege. He was an easterner, a Lan, he had said, with a name the Iscaian-Lydian drawl had instantly turned to “Yems.” He said, too, he was a soldier, which might be the truth, for he had a fighter’s body, trained and tall, and sword calluses on both hands, though he had arrived with only a knife. Even this Orbin confiscated. “You won’t be needing that, on Orhn’s farm.”

Meanwhile, there was no real means for the man to escape their hospitality. Ly village was nearly a day’s journey away over the snow, and that was only if you knew the route. Ly Dis, which Yems had stubbornly mentioned more than once in his fever, was seven days distant, unreachable till spring. As for saddle-thoroughbreds, the big animals that, unlike the Dortharian chariot teams, could carry a full-grown man on their backs, they were as mythical here in Ly as were the fabled horses from the southern lands.

It was a wonder, in fact, how the fellow had got here himself. He had told Orbin a tale of going to join the Vardish troops over the border, of being diverted west on some other mysterious errand, next falling in with the mountain bandits—who let him go to bleed or freeze to death, having taken his mount, a hardy zeeba, and all baggage and accoutrements.

“Some yarn,” said Orbin. “Who cares? We’ll work him.”

And soon he was up and about and busy, making the repairs Orbin wanted to the ramshackle hovel-buildings of the farm, cleaning out the few thin cattle in their byre, getting and chopping wood—which he even professed himself willing to do, to prevent his arm from stiffening. He made, certainly, no demur about any of it. Probably he had expected no other treatment.

“I’ll have to watch you,” said lounging Orbin to Tibo, as she bodily lifted the old woman, twittering and feebly fighting, from her chair, “all this help, you’ll have nothing to do. Cah knows, I don’t want an idle sloven in Orhn’s household. Like that old bitch,” he added. His senile mother, that Tibo was now spreading gently on her tidied pallet, where she fell again asleep, had not really earned her rest by the laws of the land. She had borne five sons, but only two survived. Her husband was dead, and in the ancient days, she would have been cast out and exposed long ago. But there, she was his mother, rot her. Only look, though, she had wet the chair again. He shouted angrily at Tibo to take the chair outside in the yard and scrub it well with snow.

When Tibo had finished shaking the mattresses and cleaning the chair, she went to see after the three cows in the byre. The afternoon sky was shrilly blue, the pale blue of the cold time, but water dripped from the icicles along the roofs. This thaw might last all of two days.

There were only the cows and dogs to feed in winter, as the fowls and pigs were sold or slaughtered at the summer’s end. She did not like the slaughtering, which was brutal and haphazard, but she dealt with the carcasses, hung winter-long in the hut-larder beside the cow-byre, as she dealt with any food. Now going into the dark enclosure, she sorted among the hanged birds, and tore off a meaty plucked wing. This she thrust in the pocket of her apron.

When she entered the byre, the Lan was raking the muck from the mud floor, piling it against one wall. Dried, it would be used for the hearth fire, and to fuel the stranger’s brazier in the shed, though Orbin did not know this.

Tibo went straight up to the Lan, and drew out the bird wing, which she handed to him. He took it without a word and stored it under his tunic, wedged inside against the belt.

She had been bringing him illicit food since the onset, also, on occasion, black beer. She had taught him how to get milk from the cow that still had it, jetting the fluid directly down his throat from the yellow teat. She was not amazed he had not known the trick. He was from another world.

She began now to heft the fodder into the trough, and Yems went on raking and piling up the dung. In the beginning, when he had tried to help her move the heavy feed, she had pushed him softly off, liking to touch him. He had had a light fever all one day and night, when he first lay in the dog-shed. He had cried like a child for water, which she had swiftly given him, and she had held his head on her breast, caressing his hair. She had touched most of his body when he slept, later. Though she could not have found words for it, her sexuality and her maternal instinct, both ripe and both equally denied, sought a focus in this male icon.

But now he was recovered, a man, independently apart from her.

She bent to her task, because he had come close.

“Tibo,” he said, quietly. He voiced her name a new way, just as she could not pronounce his name in the way he wished. But she liked his altered pronunciation.

“Yes, master?”

“Don’t call me that. I’m not some Iscaian clod who’ll beat you.”

“Yn—” she tried, “Ye—”

“Yennef,” he said patiently.

“Yemhz.”

He sighed, but it amused him. He always seemed to do this. She liked the manner in which he noticed and laughed at her.

“Tibo, my dear girl, tomorrow’s dawn, I’m off. Do you understand?”

“Ah,” she said. She shut her eyes. Suddenly a great well of emptiness opened within her. She had known he would be going, of course. Not so soon.

“Tibo? Those louts can’t blame you for that, can they?”

Yes, she thought. But she said, “No.”

“Anack,” he said. He swore. “I’d take you with me, out of this muddy little hell—but it would be impossible in the snow. Besides, maybe you don’t want to leave, I don’t know you, do I, only your kindness. And you’re clever, aren’t you? Telling me how to get to Ly, and about the big dogs the priests use for sleds. And taking my part with that grunting offal when I was sick. Stealing from me with your soft hands—saving me enough cash to live like a king all year in Ly Dis. Clever, wise, sweet Tibo.”

She turned her head and stole a look at him, then.

He was a man. Handsome as she had never known a man could be, fined and rare, like the light of a young sun, the carven towers of the mountains—but a man still. Beyond her. Different. Her thoughts or words or wants, to him, like rain falling on air.

So she lowered her eyes again, and put more food in the trough for the cows. Pointing out to him, as she did so, where she had laid his knife in the hay.

There was a winter star which at midnight, on a clear night, shone in through a tiny hole under the roof.

It woke Tibo, pointing down at her with its thin finger of crystal.

In that moment she knew, or recognized her knowledge.

Without hesitation or doubt, she slipped between the covers of the great grass-stuffed mattress where she lay, dark by dark, year by year, with her idiot husband. Orhn did not stir. He would not. Nor Orbin either. As she hurried to make the evening stew, plummy that night with dumplings and livers, she had left out by the hearth two pitchers of beer. She had been taking stock of her jars, and perhaps to leave out the beer in her search was a mistake, for when Orbin saw it he wanted it, and her protest that she had just now meant to set it back had earned her a smack across the head. He uncorked the pitcher and began to drink. Orhn had shared in the drinking, because it was his beer. Both enjoyed the bout. They would sleep deep and late.

Perhaps she had been scheming even then, leaving out the beer.

There was a dull red glow remaining on the hearth. The old woman slept on her pallet, sometimes dreaming and gibbering. Tibo had left the water cauldron over the fire, and the water was still hot. Taking her precious crock of soap from the cubby, Tibo washed herself from head to foot. The temple sold this soap, which Orbin loudly despised, though he preferred it when shaving to bird grease, and so never threw it away. The temple whores washed themselves no doubt with such an unguent. At the passage of the soap, the radiant water, her own hands upon her body, Tibo trembled. The dying red of the fire glowed like smooth mirror on her skin.

When she had dried herself, she drew the marriage rings from her hair and shook it out, waved and springing from its braids, black as night seas she had never looked on.

Presently Tibo lifted her cloak from the nail, and covered herself only with that against the winter night. She closed the door behind her soundlessly, and walked barefoot over the thin gray ice.

A quarter moon stood in the sky, and the stars, to light her path.

Yennef, who had strayed in to Iscah on the wildest quest, Yennef, in whose veins the blood of a king, but a fallen discredited king for all that, wound its way, Yennef had roasted and eaten the piece of fowl, and supped also on the rich stew, and soon stretched out for sleep, since he must be awake very early tomorrow.

He woke silently and totally, tutored to it, long before the dawn began.

The brazier smoldered on with its prohibited kindling. It lit the shed only smudgily, and the mounded backs of the slumbering dogs. But an upright figure slid through the dark, toward him. The slobbering fool, or the ham-brained Orbin, intent on further robbery?

Yennef lay motionless, and waited. He could kill empty-handed, if he had to.

Then the darkness was shuffled off in a single movement, like a breath of wind through a tree. For several seconds he did not know her as Tibo. There was only a naked woman, slender as some Elyrian vase, her body painted by the ruby highlights of low fire, black flames of hair about her, uncanny and beautiful, like the visitation of a Zastis dream, here in the ice-heart of winter—

“Tibo—?”

“Hush,” she whispered. Then she kneeled down by him, and he caught from her the savage mingled fragrances, incense-soap, skin and hair, night and desire.

It was so dreamlike even then, there was no need to speculate on what was prudent in this backland midden, what was sensible or kind. And before even he reached out to her, her narrow hands, scarred all over from the misuses of her life, yet tender as the fur of kittens, crept about his neck, and her warm lips sought his own.

He had not had a girl since Xarabiss. He was eager, and she seemed as famished as he was. All the while he stroked her, molded her, she twined him, muttering love-words he could not comprehend. When he met the barrier of her virginity, he was not entirely startled. Iscaian law, the backlands—with a generous impulse to counter his impatience, he took his time to open her, fill her; he owed her boundless thanks, and even his life. To return her a taste of pleasure, obviously what she had trusted him to give, was slight enough. And she responded to his tuition, singing her ecstasy under her breath, gasping, outflung, melting, laving him with brighter darker fires—“I thought you were your goddess, Cah, there in the shadow,” he said to her, a little later. It was a courtesy, an accolade. Perhaps, for a moment, in some way, it had been true. But she made a tiny averting gesture. Blasphemy, to be taken for Cah. And yet, it seemed to Tibo then, lying against him, burned by his heat, her seals broken, her flesh for the first time vital and alive, it seemed to her that maybe Cah had sent him to her, that Cah, in order to enjoy his beauty, had possessed her. Why else the disregard of law and sin, why else the pulsing avalanche of joy?

The sunrise started with a rent of rosy orange, that slowly bled across the straw through ail the shed’s cracks and crevices.

Accustomed by now to Yennef, as well as to Tibo, the canine pack had paid them small heed, but with the dawn the dogs became restless, aware the thaw held, and anxious for the valley.

I’ll come back for you,” he said again. He had said this previously after their third joining, when she had cried out in his arms, trying simultaneously to smother her own delight with her fist—for fear it be heard in the hovel-house. “I can’t leave you here, I’ll come back. Tibo.” But she knew he would not and said nothing in response. She said nothing now. She knows all men, even if not cretins, are bloody hars, he thought, and was glad she knew and that she did not even for a minute believe him. For he would not come here again, of course. A wayside flower, as they said. Not even that. She was braiding her hair, ready for the copper rings. She did not tell him to go or say she loved him, or weep or smile. She simply was as she had been all along. Thank both their gods. It was as if nothing had happened at all.

Despite that, he kissed her at the door, and gave her an Alisaarian drak of gold-bronze—high currency in the towns of Iscah. “I’m not trying to pay you,” he said. “Take care. May your goddess stay awake for you.”

She lowered her eyes, in the familiar way. As he went, the dogs also crowded out and rushed off over the pasture. Blackness, who, when he lay sick he had deliriously watched licking his own blood from her coat with a gourmet’s quantifying attention, now nuzzled his hand as she plunged by.

He looked back only once. The girl was not to be seen.

She had known what she wanted, and asked for and received it. Rather in the way of the white Lowland races, she appeared to look for nothing beyond the measure of each day.

Tibo, the rings on her hair, dressed, aproned and booted, was at the hearth preparing the old woman’s gruel, when Orbin entered the room.

His head and belly troubled him after the previous evening’s drinking, and he did not notice the easterner had absconded until it was almost noon. Then, too, when the absence was sure, he could not get up much enthusiasm to beat his brother’s witless dolt of a wife. He contented himself with hitting her across the head until she fell to the floor—which, at such times, she always did rapidly. Then she would lie for a while, until he cursed her, at which she dragged herself up and went on, unspeaking. with her duties.

Orhn always cried when Orbin repeatedly struck Tibo, and the old woman wailed and rocked herself.

As soon as Orbin had gone off—to search the dog-shed in case any Lannic valuable might have been left behind—Tibo comforted the mother and her son.

Though her head still rang, she knew by now how to angle herself to miss most of the violence, and always fell over before much harm had come to her. Orbin had not thought her guilty of any plot, merely negligent: she was a scapegoat for every ill. When the cabbages blighted, he struck her, too.

She did not think particularly of Yennef as she moved about the room and yard. Only in the evening, when the light began to die and the snow-cold breathed down again upon the farm, did she imagine him, in Ly by now, bargaining for temple dogs and sled.

All day, every so often, still hot from the fire of her womb, the wine of his orgasms ran out between her thighs. It was the only thing he had left her of himself; the rich man’s coin did not count. When all his semen had passed from her body, there would be nothing at all.

2 The Will of Cah

The temple of Cah, standing on high ground, dominated Ly, which was not difficult. The Big Thaw, snow’s end, and the tepid rains which teemed after it, turned the village every year to sludge. Dwellings, shored by earth, came undone and collapsed. The throughfares were brown swirling swamps in which feet and wheels stuck. Everywhere lay drowned rats and the stones of rebuilding. On its central hill, however, the temple squatted above a dressed stone terrace, a pillared box which, even in the rainy cool, smelled of thick perfume and blood.

Cah had created the world. Those who said otherwise were naturally in error. Theology was not worth discussing, it simply was. Being female, though, she had made a great many mistakes, and eventually called on the male gods, her lovers, to rule in her stead. She it was who taught women their proper function, which was to grow new men in their bellies. It was well known that Cah also relished the act of conception, and therefore was fond of the male species in general. Worshiped Iscah over, and next door in the land of Corhl, as Corrah, Cah upheld masculine dominion. She had never instituted a matriarchy, as was once the state of affairs with the snake goddess of the pale races.

Every Big Thaw Orbin would set out for Ly to make his sacrifice to Cah in the temple. Sometimes Orhn was taken, and less frequently, Tibo—the old woman then being left to the charge solely of the fierce dogs. Orbin did not use a cart. They walked to Ly, over the muddy mountain tracks, starting before sunup—it took only three or four hours to get there when the snow was gone—returning just ahead of the dark. On these excursions nothing had ever beset them. Bandits seldom came so far north, it was a poor region. By the time of the rains, the more sinister animals had retreated to low country.

This Thaw Orbin nevertheless went to get the easterner’s knife from inside his mattress. Probably he fancied himself parading through Ly with a steel blade in his belt. The knife had vanished, however, and Orbin spent some while hunting for it, concluding at last the easterner had somehow stolen it back.

Tibo seemed reluctant to make the journey to Ly, so Orbin told her she would be going. The hopeful Orhn, he decided conversely, must stay behind to guard the house. Orhn was crestfallen, and watched them sadly as they set off into the wet dark morning.

Tibo walked the correct eight to ten paces behind Orbin, carrying their provisions tied on her back.

Orbin strode ahead. The sun rose. The passes through these mountains were ramshackle and unsafe, slick with water now, and here the surest danger lay in wait. Glissades of melted ice roared down the distances between huge disembodied fanglike crags. Pebbles dashed underfoot and fell over the slopes, sixty feet or more, to smash on levels beneath. After an hour the travelers began to descend through the stoops of broken valleys. Soon the rain began again. Neither took much notice. This was the way life was.

The robes of the priests of Cah were colorful, the most colorful things to be seen at Ly, umber reds and bold ochers, with discs of polished brass, lozenges of bone and beads of milky resin sewn on. The High Priest’s robe was also trimmed with feathers, and during the mysteries of the temple he wore a mask like a bird’s head. But women were not admitted to the mysteries, saving the temple prostitutes who took part.

Orbin purchased a pig from the temple pen, and went inside to see its throat cut on the altar. Sometimes, after the cold months’ long incarceration, Orbin would want to go with one of the holy-girls. Tibo had seen from his demeanor as they passed under the girls’ window, where two or three of them always sat on display, that this was the situation now. She stood meekly among the short pillars, while the sacrifice was attended to. It seemed not much more to her than the butchering that went on later in the year. Indeed, the butchers who visited the farms were temple-trained.

When the pig was dead and its blood spilled copiously, Orbin said his prayers, after which he and the priests went away into the shadows beyond the altar. It was now allowable for Tibo to approach the goddess.

The smell of blood was raw. In this place, it did not repel Tibo, for it was the untranslatable symbol of life, as of death.

The girl came to within three feet of the altar, so her boots were in the blood that had overlapped the drain. The carcass itself had been taken off to be portioned. Above the blood-pool Cah was, looking down into Tibo’s eyes and heart.

Women could not make sacrifices or offerings. They had no property, and to put anything aside would be considered a theft from their menfolk. All a woman could do to please Cah was to bear children. That was a woman’s offering.

The goddess was a smooth stone, that had had, hundreds of years before, a face hewn from it, and breasts. Balms were constantly poured upon her, and blood splashed her and smoke stained her. These things had made her black. Just as belief had made her powerful. Her eyes were somber amber glass. As the incoherent light of the oil lamps caught her, shifting always with the fluctuation of the burning wicks, these eyes seemed full of sight.

Tibo did not say a word. She stood and let Cah gaze into her, and behold. Her thanks were her only offering. The offering itself—her thanks.

For aid, for protection, Tibo did not think to ask. The goddess was Life, and life would protect Tibo, in the same way that it had found her out.

When the passion was complete between herself and Cah, Tibo left the temple and went on to the terrace. She sat down stilly under the low roof, on the other side from the whores’ window, and waited for Orbin to come out.

He did so at length, sullen, as the sexual act always made him. He told her he meant to meet some farmers at the drinking-shop. He would be back in time for their daylight departure, he said. “As for you,” he added, “go about and see if you can barter those egg-cakes. Sit there and they’ll take you for a temple girl. You’re getting fat as one, you slug.”

He came back from the drinking-shop hours after, and it was darkening as they trudged home, and the rain rang like swords on the rocks. Climbing up to the farm valley, now Tibo had to go first, guiding him with the lantern from her pack. Orbin stumbled, and cursed her.

When they got to the house, Orhn was asleep, and the old woman had wet her chair.

Orbin, sobered on the return trip, became angry. He struck Tibo and ranted about her utter uselessness. He called her a fat moping bitch.

These two occasions, on this day, were the first that he appeared to have seen she had begun to thicken at the waist.

It seemed to her she would carry low, which her mother had said was the sign of a boy.

The year began to turn toward the sun.

Warm days came. Golden light parasoled the valley.

Men, earnest to be hired, had started to arrive and to be taken on, and made an untidy camp for themselves at the end of the pasture.

A flock of fowl pecked in the yard, unaware that others had done so before them.

The morning of the ploughing, Tibo was up two hours before the sun, to bake bread for the laborers. At dawn Orbin came into the room, and standing Orhn against one wall, drilled him in the kind of noises he must make, how to stand and how to walk over the fields before the men. Initially eager, Orhn grew frightened.

Tibo set porridge and bread on the table, and Orhn slunk to eat. As she bent to feed the old woman, Orbin came hard against Tibo, and slapped her hip.

“What’s this?”

Tibo looked at him, then lowered her eyes.

“I said, what is it? Answer me?”

“Orbin-master?”

“That great wodge of flesh. That belly.”

Tibo resumed calmly the task of spooning gruel into his mother’s withered old mouth. She said, “I’m childed.”

Orbin choked a moment on his wrath. Then he exclaimed: “Belly-full pregnant are you? How? Let me guess. Let me guess.”

Tibo wiped the old woman’s lips.

Orbin caught Tibo by the hair. He wrenched her about.

“Who did it then, you sinning rotted mare?”

Tibo lifted her eyes. Black Vis-Iscaian eyes, that had gazed into the gaze of Cah.

“Brother-master,” she said, “my husband.”

“Orhn!” Orbin screamed, ablaze with rage. And Orhn, picking up the inflection, made a raging sound of agreement. “No, Not Orhn, for the tits of Cah. Some visitor, eh? Some eastern thing. Not Orhn, eh?”

Tibo met the eyes of Orbin, on and on. He was unused to it, a woman who looked at him. Even holy-girls did not.

“Who else?” said Tibo.

“I’ve said who else.”

“That can,” said Tibo, “only be you.”

He stared. He thought. She saw him do this and was silent to allow it. Then he blustered a moment or so. She did not, of course, interrupt. When he stopped, she said:

“It it isn’t Orhn, we’ll be questioned. I, and you, master. You’ll swear you never touched me. I shall say you did. Your brother’s wife. I’ll be stoned. You’ll be castrated, and may be stoned. The easterner would never say he’d been here, for fear you had friends at Ly. There’s no other proof. No other man, then, here with me, but you. And Orhn. I prayed to Cah, and Cah heard me. Orhn has always lain with me as a man should. But I was barren. Now Cah has filled my womb. It’s a wonderful thing.”

Orbin’s mouth fell open.

Tibo lowered her eyes. She had never, in all her adult life, spoken so many words at a stretch, and she was rather breathless. Turning, she started again to feed the old woman.

Orhn tore bread at the table in an outraged manner, copying Orbin.

Until Orbin sat down at the board, staring blankly into space.

So the ripe leaves swelled on the citrus trees and the shoots came up behind the plough. Birds flew over the valley, free birds with only weather and fate to be wary of. A pair of black eagles, miles high, day after day swung from a sky that changed from blue to indigo.

Like the heat and the land, Tibo, blooming and swelling, the bud of her belly taut with its fruit.

Orhn seemed to have some memory of his mother’s pregnancies. He was interested and encouraging. He sometimes touched the hill of flesh, delicately, and made extra room for Tibo in their bed. When the child began to move, she let him feel it, placing his palm there. Orhn laughed. Perhaps he believed, if capable of such logic, that a miracle had indeed occurred, and that the sowing was his.

Orbin did not often speak to Tibo, never of her. Only when the hired men were about and she passed among them, to take them food or on some other errand, Orbin behaved normally. The men congratulated Orhn, and Orbin guffawed and nodded and Orhn copied him.

In the house, if he wanted something, Orbin pointed, or thrust objects under Tibo’s nose. When he must address her, he did so from a great way off, shouting. He did not even strike her any more. Partly, too, that was out of caution. If he had been less religious he would have liked to kick her in the stomach, abort the bitch. But he dared not. Though the law was abused, and though the child, even if a boy, was a half-breed, still any pregnant woman had the mark of Cah on her.

On her side, Tibo continued to serve the household as she had always done. She stinted not at all. If she was tired or in discomfort she never showed it, it did not slow or stay her.

The heat flamed, boiled over. Zastis scalded the night and Orbin was often away. Then Zastis was gone and Orbin back. The year began to yellow.

Harvesting and slaughtering came due, the yard full of cereals, of tubers and cabbage, and then awash with blood.

The slaughterer-priests looked at Tibo. And at Orhn.

“We’ve made enough offerings,” said Orbin. Tibo heard him say it as she drew water from the well. “He’s always had his full pleasure, but I reckoned she was wombless. Blessed be Cah, it’s good luck.” And he gave the priests larger portions than usual of the carcasses, for Cah’s temple, to show the family gratitude.

It was a ten-month term for a Vis women, ten wide Vis months. Planted just past one midwinter, the child would be born at the cold season’s next commencement.

Tibo thought of that in the fading days of the heat, as she plucked the orange citruses among the rocks.

She might perish, bearing the child. No one would come to her. There were no other capable women at the farm who might assist. She would be alone in labor with two idiots and an enemy.

But these musings seemed irrelevant. She would bear, and live. And Orbin would be afraid to harm her, for a new mother, also, was Cah’s.

It was awkward for her, so big now, to gather all the fruit, but she managed it, eventually. In the late sunset she lifted the last baskets, and saw suddenly, between the trees and hard summer rocks, a curious pale runnel in the ground.

She had had such a glimpse before here, once or twice. The earth was constantly torn open by cold weather, closed again by undergrowth in the heat. Sometimes areas in the soil gave way. Then you saw, deep down, this peculiar underlayer. Some thing lay there, beneath the topsoil, rocks and tree roots. Smooth, like steel, dark white, like ancient porcelain.

Tibo had no wish to learn its nature. She feared it, obscurely.

Soon the storms would come, and then the snow probably, and hide the unordinary from sight.

Taking her baskets of fruit, Tibo turned toward the pasture and the hovel-house, and pushed the memory from her mind by visualizing the changing of the days, copper to bronze, bronze to iron.

It began early.

There had been a flurry of hail, frisking over the valley, the sun a broken egg of light pierced by mountain tops. And as she cracked the skin of ice in the well, a shriek of pain ran through the core of her.

She completed her duties swiftly then, even running, where the ice and pain permitted.

She did not speak to Orbin, but set out the supper, then went away to the dog-shed, where she had already made a birthing bed for herself, catlike, with all the items laid by she would need. It was appropriate that she strive and bear here, where she had taken the child in, and by the glow and warmth of the same brazier.

The dogs, for the most part, ignored her. Blackness and Rag, the two bitches, sensing kinship, came occasionally and stared in her face and licked her wrists.

The pains ran together. She heaved and moaned, gripping in her hands, and pulling against, the rope with which she had circled her lifted waist. As the rope tightened and relaxed with the spasms, its strangling burn momentarily distracted from the tearing pain within: An old Iscaian woman’s trick. Cah’s teaching.

Once she thought Orbin had come to the shed door and listened.

In her anguish Tibo called aloud the traditional words:

“Cah! Cah, aid me!”

She was safe from Orbin. She was Cah’s.

After some hours, her pain burst in and from her. With a scream of terror and agony and release, Tibo watched the head of her baby pushed into the world. When the body came out, Tibo saw she had birthed a perfect living creature. She hastened to cut and knot the cord, to clean the child’s mouth and skin. It cried and breathed, blind as a puppy. Blackness came and investigated the baby, thrusting her long nose against the child, and Tibo pushed her away, mildly. Exhausted, she brought her child to her breast. Her invention, he lived, as she did, and was a male as she was not.

3 Found and Lost

Katemval Am Alisaar, saddle-sore, snow-sick, shouted his men off the track, in order to make way for a descending funeral.

Traveling as he did, needing travel and yet never hardened to it, Katemval had witnessed a variety of events. He knew, in this instance, how the Iscaians were, and was not amazed to see only women out in the cold; that meant only a woman had died.

It had been audible, the dull resonance of the bronze gongs, from two miles away, in the high clear air.

Then they came down the track, dark on young snow, first fall, and powdery—the snows of the western mountains were nothing, even at their worst, to a winter of the Middle Lands, Dorthar, Xarabiss, let alone Lanelyr in the east.

Some of the men, superstitious, made religious signs.

One, an Iscaian, turned his head and looked aside. It was unfortunate to regard upland feminine rites.

Four women carried the coffin, which was of rough untidy wood and nailed shut. Such biers seldom needed more than four porters for the wretched uplands did not generate plumpness in either sex. Strong though, often, both genders; his reason for being here, the Alisaarian, on his large black thoroughbred—an animal maybe these villagers had never seen. Although they did not glance at it as they went by, walking before and after their dead, banging the gongs with the flats of their narrow gloveless hands.

There was one—the chief mourner, to judge by her position exactly behind the coffin. Katemval’s eyes followed her a way along the curve of the slope. Something special there, something that might have been worth going after, twenty years earlier. Too late now. She had been bent and coiled to her existence, as was all humanity, like a vine to a stock. You took them as children if you wanted them formed to a purpose.

The track wound down and away into the white afternoon, and the procession with it, the crags of the Iscah-Zakoris borders a dim shadowy backdrop. The drone of the gongs lingered after the women had vanished.

“Come on,” Katemval said, to his five men. “Or do you want to freeze in the saddle?”

It was a joke, of a sort. Save for her northern and eastern hem, Alisaar never knew snow. These effete western-upland colds were horrible to an Alisaarian, or to the man of the Iscaian lowlands, reared under the snow-line.

Katemval rode on, up the track, the thoroughbred treading solidly. He trusted his information was correct. Youth, health, and penury. Or it would be a wasted journey.

By tonight he must be back in Ly, tomorrow they would have to make for Ly Elis (where he had left the other children), then get down to the capital and the ports before the upland weather shut on them. For such a dot of a country, Iscah was tortuous going.

They reached the valley not long after. The farm, if so it could be named, huddled in the dip. Smudged air crawled from the chimney and dogs barked.

As Katemval rode up, a couple of men emerged, with three big hounds to heel.

“Good day,” said Katemval, politely.

“Ah,” said the nearer man, shorter and more muscular than the other who stood behind him.

Katemval let them each have a fair long look, at his furs and owar thigh-boots, his men on zeebas, his own riding animal worth more than the whole farm, probably. The fellow at the back seemed silly in the head.

“I’ll come straight to it,” said Katemval, to the other man with sly pouchy eyes, “I heard there was a child here, one too many, that you’d be happy to be shot of.”

They gawped. It was not actually what he had heard at all, only that there was a child. Children were not always a benefit, and from something in the way this one had been gossiped of, it had seemed to fit that category.

“Seven silver Alisaarian draks,” said Katemval. “Providing the brat’s suitable, of course.”

Their women poured babies as their dogs sloughed pups. Too many mouths to feed. And it was easy enough to get more. Then again, sometimes there was an outcry. They yelled about the seed of their loins and set the hounds on you.

Not now, he thought. No.

“Sell you the boy?” said the sly-eyed man. “For what?”

“What do you think? I take for the slave-yards of Alisaar. Not rubbish. Girls for pleasure or show, boys to fight. They live well and sometimes get rich. I don’t He. But it’s up to you. How old’s this son?”

“Eh? He’s—four years.”

That was fine, it tallied with the information.

“The mother,” said Katemval, “where is she?” It was always best to see the sire and dam, too. You learned a lot from that, the sort of clay that had made the child. This man, the father, looked sound enough. The woman was likely healthy—both mother and babe had survived. But then the man said, still hesitating, “She—she’s dead.”

The funeral—that had been coming from this direction. Hers?

“Then you’ll be glad to get the boy off your hands. Bring him out and let me see.”

Abruptly the second man at the back started to make low whimperings. The other rounded on him, and said something rapidly in the gutteral gobbling dialect of the region. Alisaarian, accented in its own fashion, was crystal beside this, which had the smear of Zakoris all over it. Only in the Iscaian lowlands could they halfway speaks the Alisaarian thought.

But for stamina and looks—the city slums were bred out. Here, on these random dungheaps, among the stillbirths and boobies, sudden wild orchids were started.

The first man was now conducting the simpleton roughly inside the hovel, calling over his shoulder: “Wait, ril bring him.”

So Katemval, the slave-taker, waited.

The old woman had died at some moment during the day, while life went on about her. Her quietus was utterly silent. It was this which had alerted them. She had made noises almost constantly, if senselessly, in her final years. Yet, when Tibo lifted the bony antique body, its sphincters relaxing, the corpse had defiantly wet the chair for the very last time.

A woman’s burying was woman’s business. Men were not obliged to attend, and male children actively forbidden.

Tibo had not wanted to leave her son, but there was no choice.

Tibo met female neighbors she had not seen for half a year or more, trudging to the nearest farm, a day’s traveling, with all her chores either side the trek. In turn, these women informed others. Life was cheap, but death an occasion. After six days, the women arrived at the house. They brought sorrow-gifts for Orhn and Orbin, cakes and beer, and a cask of botched wood for the cadaver—each plank or bit of branch was hammered to another by a different woman. There must be enough women at a funeral to have knocked in each part separately.

There was a burial field just outside Ly Village, and to this the remains of all deceased males of the area were taken, where at all possible.

For the females there was another method.

It moved, the procession, sounding its funeral gongs, through the snow, watching all along the uneven dangerous slopes for an appropriate omen. It might be almost anything, vast or minute.

Tibo, moving in unison, watching, sounding the small gong with her hand, thought of her son. Over and over she thought of him. She had not wanted to leave him. But there was no choice.

For almost four years, he had been scarcely from her sight. He slept in the marriage bed, Orhn had not minded. Indeed, Orhn had liked him from the beginning, playing with him, careful of him. And Orbin for Cah’s sake could do nothing, though he set the boy labors almost as soon as he could walk. Orbin had crowed over him, “You’ll be a fine lout, won’t you? You’ll fetch and carry. You’ll earn your keep.” The child was nimble and quick. He did not resist, nor make any mistakes. Orbin only smote him lightly, and not often. Why damage such a potential treasure? The easterner father had not repayed the farm. His bastard should.

During the second year of the child’s life, Zastis came early. In russet moonlight, Orbin pinned Tibo against the wall of the hut-larder. Pulling up her skirt, he rammed himself into her, working and twisting, shaking the flimsy building with his efforts. When he was done, he said to Tibo, “Whenever I want you now I can have you. If you tell tales, so can I. If you get fat in the belly with my boy, well then it’s Orhn’s business again, isn’t it?” Tibo straightened her clothes, saying nothing. The next time, it was the same. But Orbin, having made his point, having satisfied himself, and finding even in this way he could not get a response from his brother’s wife, raped her infrequently and only then in the months of the Star. Tibo did not conceive. He found, too, in the third year, his member became sore and inflamed after he had been with her. He was afraid the easterner had given her some dormant disease, and when the irritation subsided, left her alone. He had forgotten, or did not associate his condition, with her knowledge of—

Tibo had sinned with a lover. But a sin with Orbin was neither lawful nor the wish of Cah. Orbin did not offer delight, and his seed was impotent. But the child—She had called him, not by a king’s title, or a hero’s, but an old name of the uplands, which dialectically she rendered as Raier.

At five, he would become one with the men’s side, in the temple. They would mark him in blood. Other things would happen, of which Tibo did not know. She shunned the thought of this fifth year, and welcomed it. But at the end of his third year she had come on him, free of Orbin for the moment, forming from the rain-wet mud of the pasture slender figurines, Tibo paused, staring, for she had never seen a child do such a thing. The figures were lopsided and bizarre, yet recognizably human or animal, there a pig, and there a woman with breasts and long hair. Humbly, for he was her son, a man, and—she now saw—clever, Tibo collected and brought him tinted stones, to employ as eyes or ornaments. He received them from her patiently, and put them by. He did not need them.

Later Orbin came, struck Raier, stamped on the figures and kicked them over.

The child, like his mother in demeanor as well as looks, walked simply away, and began to clean the yard, unasked. Oh, the child-He did resemble her, it was true. But his father more so. Even by the end of his first six months, the length of his legs gave promise of above average height. His hair came and grew silken-thick and black. His eyes, kohled with dark lashes, would rise up like flowers opening.

And he made figures from mud. He sang in a thin bird’s voice as he toiled for Orbin, melodies from some place beyond the sky—for he had never heard any song but those his mother had sung him at the breast. Once she saw him, riding on amenable Blackness, through the valley. Something in Tibo’s perspective shifted. She beheld a tall man with leaden-blue light on his hair, riding a black beast, a spear in his hand that had been a thistle-stem, and the wind rushed in the mountains like the voice of a colossal crowd.

—She should not have had to leave him.

There were riders on the track, who, apparently understanding custom, removed themselves from the funeral’s path. The mounts they rode were zeebas—once or twice Tibo had seen such things at Ly, if never anything like the other beast, coal black, its strange slim head brightly bridled.

But neither Tibo nor the other women looked aside to dwell on the riders and their mounts. For the omen had occurred. The riders were the omen. It might have been a hare, a ray of sun or gust of snow, a tumbled boulder—something in the way, animate or not.

Having found it, they need only proceed to the next steep place, where the rock plunged to some habitationless cold ravine. Familiar with the terrain, each woman was aware they would come to such a prescribed spot in less than an hour, by climbing up a fraction, half a mile off the track. So Cah had been generous, sending the men to make the omen, allowing the rite to conclude so swiftly.

It was still, windless, bitter when they came to it, the ridge above the depth.

The gongs were dumb. The women bore the wooden box to the edge of the slope, and, laying it down, every hand was put to it, every hand that had nailed it up, all but the hand of the kinswoman, Tibo.

Pushed to the brink, then over it, the coffin dropped out into the air, and fell into the frozen channel below. Down and down it went, touching against nothing, until, far beneath, it struck a ledge and shattered away into the exploding snow.

The women stood up, and looked at Tibo. Now she must mourn her loss.

Tibo flung back her head, and howled, to the blanched, flat sky. The women observed her, braced to wait, for it should be a prolonged lament; the dead was Tibo’s husband’s mother.

And after this, the long route home.

No choice, none.

What, in her absence, would Orbin do?

It was an orchid, then, this time. More, it was a lion-cub.

Somehow, as it had been more often ten years ago, Katemval’s instinct had drawn him to his goal at the exact and proper moment. A find.

Yes, he would dismount for this one.

The Ahsaarian swung out of his saddle and walked, stiff from the riding, toward the child. Standing apart from his oaf father, the boy looked only at the men, the zeebas, the thoroughbred. As he had been shoved from the hovel, he had set his fingers briefly, friendly, on the flank of the dark bitch-dog, taller than he was. He showed no fear, and no curiosity either. Yet the black and liquid eyes were intelligent and pure.

“Well, my dear,” said Katemval, lowering himself to gaze into them. He put his hands gently on the boy and felt him over. He was whole and straight. Even the feet, when Katemval investigated them through the sloppy little boots. There was a thread-thin pale ring of scar on his left wrist, but, whatever had caused it, clean-healed, and the sinew and muscle unaffected. “Do you have all your teeth?” The boy nodded, and permitted Katemval to peer into his mouth. The teeth were healthy and very white. “Tell me,” said Katemval, “the farthest thing you can see.” The boy eyed him, then the eyes turned away, across the valley. “The mountains,” he said. Katemval followed the dialect assiduously. “Something smaller,” said Katemval. The boy said, “A bird, on the tree.” Katemval glanced over his shoulder. His own sight was keen. He saw the bird, far along the valley on a dead seedling cibba ribbed with snow. “Good,” said Katemval. “What’s your name?” “Raier,” said the boy. Katemval lifted his brows, and rose. “He’s acceptable,” said Katemval.

He gestured to one of the riders to bring him the money bags.

“Just a minute,” said the oaf-father, “I didn’t—can’t be sure—”

“Seven silver draks, I said,” said Katemval.

The oaf licked his lips. “Nine.”

“No.”

The boy, low to the earth, watched them bickering over his head, his destiny weightless as a leaf between them.

“Eight,” said the oaf. “Give me eight.”

“I will give you seven, as I previously explained. Here.” Katemval, undoing the strings, shook seven triangular coins into his palm. New-minted, their edges hard, they glittered in the white light, beautiful and absolute. The man’s arm had come out, the hand automatically grasping. Katemval said, “I’ve registered my dealings with your priesthood at Ly. You comprehend me? This is a legal transaction. Now the child’s mine.”

The man suddenly grinned. “He owes me,” he said. “If I worked the guts out of him, he’d never bring in this amount.”

Katemval lost interest in the man. He looked down at the boy again. “You’re coming with me. We’re going on a journey. I’m taking you across the sea, to a proud land with cities of stone. An adventure. You don’t need anything. Is there anything you want to bring with you?” Not an unkind man, Katemval, sentimental maybe.

But the child only gazed up at him. Did he realize what was going on?

Katemval lifted him suddenly and carried him over to the thoroughbred, setting him on the saddle, swinging up again behind him. The child did not seem unnerved, not frightened of the animal or the zeebas, as he had seemed unafraid of the farm dogs.

The oaf was adding up his silver, again and again. He did not or would not oversee their departure. But the dark bitch-hound began to bark, and all at once the boy writhed about and stared back at her, and suddenly, as Katemval put spur to his mount and it broke into a rapid trot, the boy stretched out his arm toward the dog, yearning and desperate, and without a word or a sound, he wept.

“Ssh, little lion. The gods love you. You’re going to a better life than starvation in a sty. Trust Katemval. He knows. Glory days, the power of what you are. Don’t waste it. Live it. You will.”

But something made Katemval hope, for all that, they would not encounter the eerie funeral party on its way back up the slope. He did not know the women had taken a higher track to the ravine, and had as well as hour’s keening to accomplish yet.

The twilight was sinking down as Tibo, having parted from the last of the other mourners, came home alone. There had been no chat between the women, it was not seemly, and anyway might delay them. Each of the differing homeward paths was long, and there were dearth and drudgery and hungry fractious men at all their ends.

A wind came with the dark, pummeling against the crags all around, drumming in Tibo’s ears. So she did not hear the dog howling until she was very close.

Tibo checked. This was a sound of lament, like the howl she herself constantly had had to give above the ravine, until her throat was incapable of giving more. Yet the dog had not mourned for the old woman.

Tibo ran. Across the jagged rocks, through the soft snow, the shadows, and came to the stone-cold yard, and faltered again. The howling shook the dog-shed, the outcry of Blackness.

Tibo opened the door of the hovel-house.

The room was drenched warm with firelight, Orhn asleep one side of the hearth, the other, Orbin, in the chair that had been his mother’s. Warm, but not secure. Things altered. And there, and there, and there—where Raier would be after the coming of night, a vacant space.

“Hoh, Tibo,” said Orbin, softly. “While you were out yammering with those women, I got to worrying about this farm. There’s no money in it, I thought. But then a man came riding by. Oh, you’d have liked him. A foreigner. You’d have wanted to invite him in. But he wasn’t looking for a whore. He was looking for something else to buy. With Alisaarian silver. Look. Shall I tell you, Tibo, what he wanted in exchange?”

The cold months were very hard that year. A period of deadly freezing nothingness. Beasts had died even in their byres. Men had died merely from falling a few yards outside their doors. When the breaking rains began, the snow fell on, mingling in the water, as if they should never be rid of it. But many sought the way into Ly, to sacrifice to Cah for a better year, a chance to abide. Orbin, seeing Orhn had lost two of his cows to the winter, set out on the course as usual, a silver coin in his pocket, leaving the idiot and the slut behind.

The route was doubly unpleasant now, sludge and ice combining, and the snowy downpour pelting over all. Here, with careering descents at regular intervals on either hand, Orbin went slowly, but undeterred. There was the solace of religion, the quick flicker of lust, and some prolonged drinking before him. He might even, rich as he temporarily was, remain the night on a wine-shop pallet. He might even make a special offering to Cah, to appease her, in case appeasement was necessary. He did not think so, really. He had been within his entitlement to sell off an illegal child, as Orhn would have been able to sell his own offspring, or Orbin’s, come to that. The slut stayed quiet enough about it. Not a word all winter. Not that one had been anticipated. She knew she had no redress and no say, and that anyway it was her fault. If she had been any use about the place, or any use to Orbin—she did not even know how to enjoy a man—he might have acted differently. Serve her right. Still, he was glad she had spread her legs for the easterner. He liked the silver, and liked telling her what he had done about the brat. Although he had been slightly uncomfortable before and after, wondering how she would take the news. As if she could object, or mattered.

On the viscous track behind him, Orbin detected a noise, and turned to see what it was. Something quivered grayly in the milky rain—and he thought of demons, banaliks—When he did see, his heart steadying, he was not well-pleased. “You stupid sow—what’re you doing here?” Tibo did not answer, she only came nearer, her hands extended before her, so he assumed she meant to show him something, and looked at them. But that was not actually her purpose.

He was still berating her and looking to see what she held out to him, when Tibo pushed him with all her force. Orbin was not a small man, but the blow caught him unprepared by the habits of a lifetime, and besides, there was ice underfoot. For a second or so he slithered and scrabbled, yelling, flailing with his arms. Then, as elsewhere and four months earlier his mother’s corpse had done, he pitched sidelong off the track and down a rocky little precipice below. Unlike his mother, Orbin screamed as he fell. But not for a great while.

The only problem with a child so handsome was to keep him out of the clutches of brothels. Katemval was well-practiced at eluding them, both the wealthy importunate and the kidnapping scavenger. Nevertheless, it cost him a few pains extra this time, not least in the rat-runs of Ly Dis, and all the other towns, through and including the Iscaian capital, to the port. Altogether, his hunch to delve the uplands, paying off one way in that one child, proved a stumbling block another. Delays and vile weather led to further delays and further, viler weather, culminating at the capital in the words of Katemval’s agent: “They say they never had such a sea for tempests. There’s not a captain on this coast will put out till the spring.”

“Oh, won’t they. We’ll see what a bribe will do,” announced Katemval staunchly, and off they went, to the most southerly port. Where it was discovered that bribes would do nothing. Viewing the enormous raging waters for himself, Katemval was not, at length, disposed to argue.

So there they wintered, he, his men, and two wagon-loads of bought children. Half an inn was required, as well as the services of women to tend the flock. At least, it was warmer.

There was an Alisaarian tower in dock, a ship on which Katemval’s agent negotiated first passage out. She would be making for Jow with a cargo of copper and common slaves. Katemval found this traffic disgusting; he himself traded in finer stuff, and for a nicer market.

The children fared very adequately, if the fretful slave-taker did not, kicking heels in Iscah. Blossoming on sufficient decent food, sleep, and care, many had already forgotten or dismissed their origins.

Not the Lydian, though, Katemval surmised. He was after all one of the youngest, and might miss his mother, too. Though death had got her before the Alisaarians took him, maybe the child equated that loss with the other.

The slave-taker was strict with himself, not to make a pet of this single boy. It would be all too easy, and then another parting, distressing for both, perhaps. But on the first sunny morning, when the bloody ocean conceded it might lie down again, Katemval, finding the boy in an upper window of the children’s room, pointed out the tower ship to him, lying at anchor, lovely as a toy after her winter cosset.

“That is how we’ll go to Alisaar. On that one, there.”

“Yes,” said the child.

“Tell me, Rehger,” said Katemval—for he knew what the boy’s name was intended to be, and pronounced it accordingly in spick and span Alisaarian—“What are you going to be, in Alisaar?”

“A man of glory,” said Rehger, the words Katemval had taught him to say, and hopefully to credit.

“Always hold to that, my dear,” said Katemval. “You are going to be a lion and a lord and a man of fame. Your life will be like a sunburst and your death a thing of drama and beauty. What are you making now?” he added, for he saw the boy’s fist curled about something. Whether this inclination for artistry—which sought expression in packed snow, mud, and bits of wood with a kitchen knife he should never have been given—would grow up with him or be at all serviceable, Katemval did not know. But he was intrigued nevertheless. Not hanging back, not hurrying, the boy opened his hand.

It was the left hand, with that wire of silvery scar around the wrist. More surprising still, perhaps, what lay in the palm of it: A triangular blazing coin. Almost all gold, only enough bronze there to harden the metal.

“Where did you get it, Rehger? Did you steal it?”

“No. My mother gave it me. My father gave it my mother.”

Katemval doubted this. Yet, intuitively, he doubted also that any theft had been committed by the boy himself.

“Where do you hide it, then?”

“Here.” The boy revealed a tiny leather fragment around his neck, the sort of thing in which valueless talismans were retained. All gods, it was worth ten times over what had been paid for the child.

“Put it back then, Rehger, and don’t let anyone else see. Someone might want it.”

“Do you?” said the boy, fist closed again on the coin, looking at him with utter directness.

Katemval laughed, a little hurt, the kindhearted taker of slaves.

“Of course not, boy. That’s yours, now. Remember your mother by it.”

“Yes,” said Rehger.

He had never spoken of his mother, and obviously would say no more of her now.

But that was as well, under the circumstances.

In five days they might be on the sea. Another month, and the real life he had been born for, there in that sty, would begin for Rehger Am Ly Dis.

When the rains paused, three priests of Cah came to call on Orhn and Tibo.

The priests seldom walked. In the snow they would have journeyed by dogsled; now the temple’s servants carried them in three litters, up the fearful track, over the valley, into the farmyard.

Tibo came to the door, kneeled down in the mud and bowed her head.

One by one the three priests were lowered to the ground and emerged, to stand there burning in their red and yellow, brass and beads.

“Get up, woman. Where are your men?”

Tibo got up. Head still bowed, she replied, “My husband Orhn is inside. Shall I fetch him?”

“Where is your husband’s brother?” said the priest who had spoken before.

“I don’t know, priest-master. Leave to speak?”

“I grant you.”

“Days ago, Orbin-master went to Ly, to offer to Cah. He didn’t return here. He took money, and maybe is delayed. He spoke of bartering or buying. Orhn lost cows this cold.”

“Did no one go to look for Orbin?”

“My husband—he never told me to go. Without his leave, I mustn’t. I did go a little way to look, but Orbin wasn’t there.”

“Enough,” said the priest. “I will tell you where Orbin is.”

He told her. Tibo listened, head bowed. When he ended, she lifted her bowed head and gave a huge appalling cry, but that was tradition. The priests waited until she stopped ululating, by which juncture Orhn, aroused from sleep and scared, had come to the door also, plucking at her sleeve.

A man of another valley, going over to Ly, had chanced to see Orbin prone at the bottom of a steep rocky ravine. There was no means to get to him, and anyway, the carrion crows of the uplands had already done so, and were feasting—their bustling presence it was which had caused the traveler to look down. The body, what with the depth of the ravine, and the crows, was barely recognizable. But the man, reporting the event in Ly, had thought he knew it by its boots. Then other farmers came to make sacrifice or to drink in the village, and only the regular Orbin did not. So the priests went to visit Orhn’s wife. It was true, without her husband’s direction, she could not leave the farm’s environs to search. Conversely, Orhn might not have been able to muster such an order. Orhn, though opinion differed on the extent, was not quite as he should be. And this in its turn clouded the death of his brother. That a child had been born here all Ly knew. That the child had been sold to slave-takers at the start of the snow, that was general knowledge, too. The Alisaarians had had their camp at Ly, and come back there with the child, though no one had seen much of it, wrapped in fur, up on the leader’s big black riding-beast. Had Orhn been capable of the wit to sell his son for cash? Or had Orbin sold the boy? And did that mean in turn that Orbin, not Orhn, had unlawfully sired it? And did it mean that Tibo had run mad and attacked Orbin?

Men did slip and die on the passes, but rarely. They grew up slogging back and forth along such tracks. Women, however, now and then lost their minds, a fault of the inferior stuff from which the goddess had created them.

“You must come with us,” the priest said to Tibo now, “you must come and be questioned before Cah, in the temple. But first, bring us beer to drink, and some sweet cakes.”

It was a sin, and she understood it was a sin. As with the man who had fathered her son, Tibo was aware of the lawless thing she did. Her thoughts were transparently ordinary on the day she killed Orbin. She had meant to see to it all winter, as soon as an opportunity arrived. An execution. The moment he had told her what he had done, that instant, she had known she would have his life. But rationally, she stipulated that it must be a murder the wordly blame for which she might escape. There was Orhn to tend. There was the mere fact of living.

But too much had gone on, and they suspected her, as she had always foreseen was possible. That had made no change in her resolution when she considered it beforehand, and she did not alter her vision of the killing, now. She had needed to kill Orbin.

Yet curiously somehow Tibo had not despaired of Cah. Even though she had transgressed Cah’s supremest edicts—or had she? It was Orbin who had flouted Cah, ungenerative Orbin, who had given away the born gift of a boy to aliens.

As she walked after the litters, two of the temple servants behind her, Tibo did not tremble or loiter. She did not peer after the spot where Orbin had gone down, nor hang back as they approached it. And when, at long last they came in sight of Ly, Tibo quickened her step.

“Speak freely. Remember you are heard, and seen. Cah hears. Cah sees.”

“You birthed a child.”

“After many years’ barrenness.”

The temple was very dark, almost lampless. Perhaps for holiness’ sake at this testing, or perhaps because of the lean season and a lack of oil. Out of the dark, velvet-black, the part-seen shape of the goddess, concave face, bulging mammalia. Catching light, the eyes, like lights themselves.

The priests spoke to Tibo in dismembered voices, as she stood by the alter.

They believed she was guilty. They believed that, when this ritual was done, they must throw open the doors and give her to the people of Ly, to be stoned to death.

Even the High Priest had entered the body of the temple, to witness the proceedings, and his head had altered to the mask and beak of a huge predatory bird. A woman became important when she broke the law.

But Cah also was there. Cah’s shadow and her eyes, listening, watching.

Cah—

“Woman-Tibo, tell us now, who fathered your child?”

Tibo drew in the solid air of the temple, blood, unguents, smoke—the smell of Cah. Words came: She spoke them.

“The father of my child was the man given to me by Cah.”

Tibo waited, an electric tingle on her skin, inside her bones. Was it a lie? By law, Cah had given Tibo Orhn. By magic and desire, Cah had given Tibo Yems, the stranger. It was what Tibo had always believed. Was a sin still a sin when the goddess offered it? If she was wrong, now Cah would strike Tibo down.

But Cah did not strike Tibo.

There was only the loud silence of the dark and the oil sputter and the breathing of the priests.

“You say you took and bore the child lawfully?”

“I bore him according to Cah’s will,” Tibo said. Now she knew it was so. She said the phrase with triumph and conviction.

“Woman-Tibo,” said a priest, (they questioned her or commented, she thought, in turn), “Orbin fell from the mountain and died. What do you know about that?”

“I didn’t see it,” she said. This was true. She had drawn away and turned her back on him, as he slid and floundered and toppled into space. It was not squeamishness or even superstitious fear that made her do so, but an unwillingness he should behold her face, as if that might somehow help him. But had Cah prompted her, also, then? So that she might declare now I didn’t see?

“You say you’re guiltless of Orbin’s death?”

Tibo said, “Masters, I’m only a woman. Orhn had to sell our son, we had no money. Orbin went to get new stock, to sacrifice to Cah so she’d be lenient to us. Now Orbin is dead. All this sorrow.”

“But are you guilty, woman?”

“Isn’t a woman always some way guilty, if trouble comes on her men?”

The words—from Cah. Cah instructed, Cah taught her. There was no need for any confusion. The laws were wrong. Or Cah had made a new law for Tibo, and Tibo performed her will.

The priests murmured and hissed to one another in the dark, and their adornments clicked and rustled. Then the High Priest spoke through the curved beak of the bird.

“Woman, you’re obtuse. But you will have to satisfy custom. If you’re innocent, put your right hand on the foot of Cah. Otherwise, confess now.”

Tibo hesitated. She did not know it, but she had been in a sort of trance more than three months long. It had come on her at the moment Orbin, seated there in the firelight, revealed that he had sold Raier. In this trance, Tibo had gone about her household duties as ever, worked and slaved, eaten her meager share, slept her curtailed sleep. In the trance she had not wept or complained, had not torn out her hair or rent her cheeks with her nails, had not fallen down screaming. No. She had only waited, with the promise of Orbin’s slaughter in front of her. And when it was accomplished, still the trance supported her, and did so yet.

However, the clarity of the trance enabled her, additionally, at the High Priest’s pronouncement, to recollect a scene of her infancy. She had been taken to Ly and when there, her mother and sisters had mixed themselves amid a crowd under the temple hill. It was a day in the hot months, the sky and the earth blistering. From the temple came a sudden muffled shrieking, and next the doors opened and a woman was dragged out and down the hill by some of the temple’s servants. She was an adulteress, Tibo discovered later—for her sisters whispered of the circumstance for years, even dating things by the day of the stoning. As the rocks began to fly, Tibo’s mother and sisters slinging their portion determinedly, (though Tibo was too young to join in), Tibo had noticed, without comprehension, that the woman’s right hand had been hurt. Even before the stones flailed against her, she kneeled and wailed in agony, though when the onslaught began she had tried to shield herself. Tibo recalled one missile hitting the forehead of the adulteress. Then she fell back and was quiet. The stoning nevertheless did not end until the priests up on the temple terrace, sure the death sentence was complete, gave a signal.

But Tibo was not an adulteress. She had done the will of Cah.

Rather then dismay, the memory energized her. Almost in gladness she turned, her eyes on the amber embers of the goddess’ gaze, and set her hand firmly on the base of the image.

Never before, never in all her life normally, would she have been allowed to touch. How cold the goddess felt, like sheerest snow, yet her eyes were fire. Suddenly an outburst of sweetness rushed through Tibo. Only in the arms of her lover had she felt any comparable emotion. She could not keep back a cry of love and joy.

Then the grip of the priests came, prizing her brutally away. They turned her again, and pulled her right arm out from her body, to look at it. In her whirling ecstasy, for a moment, Tibo was not properly aware. But the peak could not sustain her forever, or she could not suffer it. She sank back into herself, and found she stood alone, the men as before in a circle around her, muttering nervously.

The nasal impeded voice of the High Priest cut through this hoarse soft hubbub.

“A wonder. The goddess.”

Some knowledge came to Tibo. She looked down at her hand, still held out before her palm upward. It stung her faintly, as if indeed she had put it on to frozen snow. Even as she saw its unmarked surface and considered the sensitivity, already fading, Tibo felt another thing—a blast of great heat emanating from the statue of Cah behind her.

The image grew hot during a testing. A malefactor, touching Cah, was burned, and so the crime was proved. It was not spontaneous psychic combustion. An oven, set under the altar and the statue, was fired at such times, until the hollow stone of the goddess scorched. When the suspect was thought to be blameless the oven was kept low, and the stone only warmed. When reckoned culpable, they stoked the oven high. Some, usually women, nevertheless tried to keep their hands against the surface.

Today the furnace under Cah was leaping. But Tibo, flesh plastered to the stone, was forced away unburned.

If they were terrified, or only perplexed, still they trusted the power of Cah. The world was simple. Such things could only be accepted.

When Tibo emerged on to the terrace before the temple, she saw people were waiting under the hill. The priest who had come out with her called to the crowd in a high voice: “Cah has judged this one innocent.”

Tibo moved down the hill slowly. The hill was muddy and the street more so. Face upon face stared at her, and one of the men snatched up her right hand, and gaped at it, and showed it to others, and let it fall with an oath.

All that remained now was to make the four hours’ journey back to the farm.

As she went up out of Ly, rain began to fall again, hard as stones, across Tibo’s neck and shoulders.

The fire had perished on their hearth, Orhn, shivering even in his sleep, having forgotten to put on the branches and logs his wife had left ready. Fifty years before, it would have been a tragedy, but in recent times, even to the uplands of Iscah, had come flint and tinder. Tibo brought the fire to being again. The universal symbol of death, a fire gone out, did disturb her. But she was very tired. Tired as never in her life.

She sat at the hearth as the flames bloomed to vitality, and comforted the head of Blackness. She had brought both the bitch-dogs into the house with her. Neither was fecund, after the winter; the warmth of the hovel might bring it on. Orhn would not mind. In his childish way he liked the dogs.

When he woke, her husband, Tibo rose and began to prepare food. Her mind was quite empty, darkened and contained, its vistas closed, like the valley when a deep mist clung on the mountains. If anything had happened, it was over.

“Eat, master,” she said to Orhn, setting down the platter.

She would care for him. He was now the only child she had.