Godbond (12 page)

On toward evening she pointed out a hollow blackness under a billow of shining black rock. A cave. When she stopped Calimir beside it, I blundered down without waiting for my boots and collapsed under that stone roof, in cool shadow.

It was a cave like no other I had ever seen, I found when I had rested awhile and sat up to look. It went on and on, like a mole burrow or the hollow under a curling ocean wave, and somewhere in its depths ran a trickle of water, for I could hear it. And like the stone lodge on the mountainside above the pool of vision, it was full of bones. Animals had once lived here, animals now all too bitterly gone.

Tassida had stripped Calimir of his gear, poured water in a hollow of rock for him and turned him loose to eat the tough cinderslope plants. Our bags lay stacked within the cave, along the curving wall. When the sun had set, in that brief twilight span between day's blazing heat and night's chill, I crawled out and sat at the entry of the blackstone burrow-cave, and Tass came and sat beside me. We ate oat cakes and dried berries. Tassida ate a few ends of dried meat—for the Fanged Horse Folk yet had dried meat, it seemed. How they must have hoarded. She offered me some, but I refused it. We made no fire.

Twilight darkened into night. Small clouds swam half-seen in a liquid, starlit sky. There should have been the barking of great-eared foxes beneath that sky, and the stirrings of pika and mice. There should have been owl's call or the long note of a desert wolf. Instead, there was silence. Nor had there been any bird twitter in the twilight, any flash of swallows' wings.

“Mahela's hand is heavy,” I said softly, for the place, the silence, oppressed me with thoughts of her.

And as if I had summoned her, she appeared.

She was a greenish gleam, at first, far off to the westward. I thought at first of the shades of the dead, dancing in air. But Tassida gasped and leaped to her feet, hand on the pommel of her sword.

“Devourers!”

Rippling like the face of the ocean, yet flying more swiftly than hawks, they drew nearer, Mahela's twelve less one less the four Tassida had killed. I had forgotten, or willed myself to forget, how at night they glowed with the same fishy-shining, eerie gleam as seawater. And I had not known they could be ridden—indeed, I had once been overweening enough to think that I could capture one by sitting on it. Now, to my dismay, I knew better. Flying in a wedge, like cormorants or brants, the devourers swooped nearer, and on the one in the lead sat the goddess, naked and proud in her nakedness, her flesh shimmering whitely. Nor did I find myself any the less afraid of her because she was unclothed. Her hard white face, the haughty lift of her head, prevented that, and the sight of her pale breasts chilled me, for they moved no more than two rocks might have. I struggled up to stand beside Tass, drawing my sword, though I swayed on my feet.

“Is that—she?” Tass whispered to me, her own blade at the ready.

“Mahela. Yes.”

The sound of Mahela's laughter floated through the sky to us, uncanny laughter, for even in that clear night it sounded as if it writhed to us like a sea snake through water. Even though she and her foul retinue flew quite close, within a stone's throw away, her voice sounded chill, distant.

“Dannoc!” she hailed me gaily. “My renegade storyteller, well met! Or is it my rascal Ytan?”

The venomous joy in that cold voice! Like a snake-dazzled bird, I could not take my eyes from her. And one of the devourers, swooping past me, struck me a glancing blow with its heavy eel-like tail, sending me sprawling. Tassida's sword Marantha flashed, and the tail lay beside me, thrashing horribly as greenish blood gouted the cinders. I edged away, though I could not yet rise, and Mahela laughed again, circling her greensheen steed so that she could watch us.

“There, Dannoc, you long for something living, and now you have it! You want the creatures back? Here are some more!” Snakes issued from her mouth as she spoke, writhing like the severed tail, falling to the ground and twisting and coiling in their agony as they hit the hard, black stones. I could see the convulsing of their pale underbellies in the night, and though I staggered to my feet I found I could not stand without leaning on my sword, half bent over, as if it were an old man's stick. Alar was angry. Her pommel jewel shone a fierce yellow, and Marantha's blazed as angrily, a clear red-purple hue like that of the healing flower of Sakeema after which she took her name. Wry, to see that hue in so deadly a weapon. The sword, as uncanny as the one who lifted her.

“Hag!” Tassida breathed between bared teeth, though I had thought Mahela was too comely, too ageless, to be called hag. “Filthy corpse-eating shitbag! Come closer, and I will cut you open!”

“Put away your sword, little daughter!” Mahela sang in reply, her voice far too glad for anyone's comfort who knew her. “My fell servants will not take you tonight.”

“Indeed so, for you know I would slash them to pieces.” Tassida laughed, a grim laugh nearly like Mahela's. “Where are the others of your twelve, old goddess?”

“Do not overween, upstart.” Mahela's voice had gone dark. “You will be mine soon enough. You and all the others.”

The dark tone of her threat did not chill me nearly as much as her laughter, for Mahela did not often need to threaten—she merely took what she wanted, with boredom or joy. I straightened, finding some of my strength. Eyes on the goddess, Tassida muttered at me aside, “Darinoc, be of some use! Where is your bow?”

Atop our bags of provision, it was, within the shadow of the cave. Tassida had brought it to me from the place where I had dropped it along the Traders' Trail. I tottered toward the cave, crawled into it, hoping Mahela would think I was fleeing. She must have, for I heard her laugh again.

“Old coward,” Tassida taunted. “You call me upstart? Is there anything in your belly but snakes? Come closer, show me this much-vaunted power of yours.”

“There will be time enough for that, little daughter.” Mahela's laughter had faded, she sounded merely bored, she turned her head away as if to give her foul steed the signal to leave. Within the shadow of the cave, I had strung my bow and was frantically seeking an arrow. Mahela was not a creature of Sakeema, that I should hesitate to kill her, but more like a demon, she herself the demon of death. All powers, let Tass keep her just a moment more—

“Why do you call me daughter?”

In Tass's voice, not so much challenge as a desperate plea. Mahela's head came around in a wordless answer, and in her still, hard face no laughter showed any longer. The devourer she rode grew as still as her face, seeming almost to hover on air, and I took aim. This one time I would not risk the mercy bolt to the neck. This one time, thinking of the world's dying throes, I aimed for the heart.

“Sakeema guide it,” I whispered, and I loosed the arrow.

It sped through stillness and the night and buried itself to the feathers in her breast.

Oddly, neither Tass nor I shouted in triumph. We stared, and the only cry was Mahela's, and she cried horribly in pain, making me feel as much the monster as she. A bird-like scream as she toppled from her mount—she was a bird. Changing as she fell, her wings beating the air, she was a cormorant the size of a hart, feathers as black and greenly shining as her hair had been, and with her strong, bone-colored beak she tugged the arrow from her breast and let it drop. Her white-ringed eyes glared at us. Then, heavily, with her wedge of devourers following her, she flew away westward. I blinked, watching the flight of that great cormorant in the night, feeling a vague stirring as of something not remembered, something I had once seen.

Tass stood with Marantha dangling from her lowered hand, swordlight fading. I sheathed Alar and went to her, staggering as I walked.

“It was a good shot, Dan,” she whispered, staring off the way Mahela had gone. “Yon beldam should have been dead.”

“Yet she is no demon,” I said shakily. “She was hurt. The blood, dark on her breast, and she cried out—”

“She should have been dead,” Tass insisted.

“She is the goddess,” I said, hearing in my own words an echo of other words: She is far stronger. She always wins.

“She must be,” said Tass. “I am trembling.”

I put my arms around her, for all the good it would do. I was no steadier than she, and she was quivering like an aspen leaf.

“Tass,” I queried gently, “who is your mother?”

She shook her head and buried her face against my shoulder, not answering. That did not surprise me, for she had scarcely ever answered any of my questions about herself. What touched me was that she refused me with so little fire. Her fist, lying clenched against my chest, a hard knot—I smoothed it with my right hand until it eased, felt fingers touch fingers as her hand turned to meet mine—

An unaccountable tide of strength surged through me, and a feeling I could not name.

I knew that strength. It was handbond, yet not the same as handbond with Kor. Not touch of comrade, friend, bond brother, but—something other. Strength not of four heroes, but better, strength of—I could not name it, or the passion, the exaltation I felt. Not even the name of love encompassed it. Though love pulsed in me, warm and strong in me.

Tass had stopped shaking. For a moment, I think, we had both stopped breathing. “Sakeema,” she murmured in awe, “what is it?”

“Don't be frightened,” I whispered to her, keeping the handbond, and I kissed her on her temple. Her face turned upward, and her seeking mouth found mine.

Hands softly slipped apart, quested elsewhere—we no longer needed handbond. Together we were very strong. Somewhere in the darkness lay a devourer's severed tail, dead or dying serpents. We paid them no heed, we laid aside our swords and paid no heed to dying, we defied the world's dying. We placed pelts within the shelter of the cave, soft brown furs, all that we had left of the creatures of Sakeema, and we lay on them and made, maybe, a new life, attempted it in the old, old way and yet all was new, all was Tass, Tass, and I would never again lie with any other. My mouth pressed against the side of her face and I whispered her name, felt her hands and her loins answer me, and I was strong, deft, I was mountainpeak and she was sky, and—how she welcomed me.…

Her tough young body lay all night close to mine, and I could scarcely sleep for love of her.

Chapter Nine

We stayed two more days at the blackstone cave, though it could no longer be said that I needed to regain strength. But Tass seemed to like the place, for all that the thunder cones stood bleak and black-smoking beneath a stark sky, and after the first night I looked around me with new eyes, for she had turned it into a place for me to love. In the springtime, she told me, tiny sunset-purple flowers, the most frail and winsome of flowers, no more than a finger tall, sprang out of the cinders in great numbers so that they lay like a red-purple mist all over the slopes, then were gone again within a few days.

Then she fell silent, as if to wonder, would she ever see them again … would they ever be, again?

On the third day, early, before heat and nearly before light, we filled all our waterskins and set out to travel to the Herders, riding Calimir by turns.

Picking our way between the thunder cones Methven and Catalin Du, wearing our boots to tatters on the sharp stones, wrapping our feet with my buckskin leggings and wearing them to rags as well, all in the fierce heat of midsummer—it seemed a long, hard journey and yet far too short, for I was alone with Tass, her comrade during the day's toil, her lover in the cool and pleasant nights. Food and water were nearly gone at the last, and we sustained each other with touch and glance when we stumbled, when our tongues and lips swelled and the sun blistered us. And in six days we came through the blackstone lands to the red-earth plains where the Herders roamed with their goats and donkeys and their brown sheep. Then we both rode Calimir, and came swiftly to the place where they had dug their dwellings.

I did not understand, at first, when I saw the smokes issuing from the ground in the evening shadows of Methven, the Spirit Flame. I thought that they were perhaps his tiny children, nestling there at his feet, that someday black rock would spread over that place as well, or a new cone rise. For I had seen the brushwood huts of the wandering Herders often enough, the traders and those who followed the flocks, but never this place where they came to die, where they had dug their red clay and made their pit homes. The smokes came up from their cooking fires, of course, and but for a few children keeping watch over the small herds close at hand there was no one in sight above ground.

“Smarter than us,” Tass said wearily. “They keep out of the heat when they can.”

She was riding in front of me. I looked at her, sweat streaking her lean face and the lovelocks curling and clinging with damp, and I felt the sweat of her back against my chest, and smelled the scent of her skin, and in that moment I knew more of loving than I had known since the day I was born. Finally, love lay under my sun-scorched hand, and the world was ending.… Before I could give her more than the glance, one of the far-off children spied us and lifted a shout. Small spotted dogs began to bark, and folk swarmed out of the pits, blinking and squinting as they peered at us. We must have been but looming shadows in sunset light to them at first. Then Tassida lifted a hand in greeting, and the glad cry went up.

“Tassida! The wanderer has returned!”

“It's the wayfarer, the wandering wolf!”

“Welcome, Tassida! What news?”

“It is Tassida! And who is that with her?”

Silence fell, and there were whisperings. Then old gray-bearded Ayol stepped forward with the ceremonial blanket of many colors circling his shoulders, to give us king's greeting, and I got down off Calimir to face him levelly. His look was stern, for he and I had quarreled the last time we had met.