Lilith’s Castle. Gill Alderman
or the Goddess of the Grasses the Ima men sang of, in their spring song.
‘Stand up, shepherd. We are not used to waiting for our dinner.’
He got up immediately and began to shout for his fellows who came running, burning brands held high, while the women of the village who were dressed like those of her own in heavy skirts and silver and copper jewellery, gestured towards the lighted doorways from which spilled welcoming smells of meat and new-baked bread. The men helped her down and led the Horse away – in the direction of the sheep-pen. Hearing him sigh ‘O, for a jug of wine, a loaf of bread and Thou, dear Gry,’ she thought he mocked her and, standing uncertainly in the middle of the excited crowd of women, tried to sleek down her unruly scrub of hair.
Mouse-Catcher did not try to follow the Horse or herself, but lay down where he was, and curled into a ball, nose between paws, thick tail over all. Gry tied his leash to the leg of a slaughtering-bench, and was ashamed to restrain him.
She woke early and did not know where she was nor, for an instant, who. The mat beneath her was pliant and warm – wool, she remembered and, reaching about in the darkness, found the objects the shepherds had given her, presents of a rare and costly kind. Gry, I am, Gry alone, she thought. I have no place here, nor anywhere. She listened: the shepherdesses in whose hut she had been entertained were all asleep, breathing softly as lambswool clouds in a summer sky, and there was another sound of breathing, deeper, familiar, kind. The Red Horse was close by.
Gry rose from the warm bed and, pausing only to gather her gifts into her skirt, crept from the house. The sky above the distant Altaish was the colour of butter and she could see the Horse waiting by the porch. He had evidently grown tired of his confinement in the sheep-pen and leapt out. She ran to him and kissed him on the nose. The wolf, Mouse-Catcher, rose like a shadow from the place where he had lain down and licked her hand. Some brave person had thrown him meat in the night, she guessed, for a much-licked and gnawed bone was lying beside him. She untied the leash and freed him, putting the torn, blue cloth it to its proper use as the scarf about her neck.
‘Is it time to go?’ she asked the Red Horse.
‘It certainly is! The Altaish are no closer – indeed, they seem to be further away.’
‘Is that where we are going?’
‘Not immediately. Mount, Gry, and let us be gone or the shepherds will interrupt our journey with their fuss and ceremony.’
‘They were kind to me. They gave me lots of presents.’
‘They were hospitable, but you are neither the Wolf Lady nor Goddess of the Grasses. They would beggar themselves feasting you.’
‘I am Nandje’s daughter.’ Gry spoke uncertainly as, burdened by the gifts it seemed she had no right to, she clambered on to the Horse’s back.
‘I am well aware of that!’ He tossed his head and broke into a swift trot before she was settled. The present she had liked best, the multicoloured string of beads, dropped from her bundled skirt and fell behind. She looked back for an instant, full of regret for the pretty necklace; but the Horse would not stop, she knew that. His head and his limbs were full of purpose and soon he broke into a canter.
The wolf ran before them as they travelled in the dawnlight beside the sea. The watery plain was green now and raw and tossed its uncountable heads impatiently. A shoal of ripples escaped the waves and ran on to the beach. Gry, soothed by the rocking motion, gazed out to sea, surprised to see neither mist nor rusty tower. Instead, a strange object moved over the water, almost at the horizon, a floating house or a waggon maybe, pale in colour and glistening like a polished catamountain’s claw. It flew along parallel to the shore and Gry, seeing how inexorably it sped, grew alarmed and called out to the Horse, ‘Faster!’
The Horse laughed softly and plunged to a halt.
‘Watch, and learn!’ he said.
The thing in the sea had huge black awnings above it which flew out from a pole and had many ropes attached. The waves, flying faster than the strongest wind, were broken into white and scattered fragments by its tapering, buoyant body and a multitude of sea birds followed it, mewing and shrieking in their own mournful language.
The Horse, facing out to sea, considered, while Gry trembled on his back and the wolf raised the mane on his neck and all along his back and held his ears stiffly out, listening.
‘You are right to be terrified; and I am wary and ready to flee, my Gry,’ the Horse said. ‘It is a ship, although there are no ships upon the seas of Malthassa. That is the one and only: Hespyne, the Ship of the Dead, which never sails close to the land unless someone is dying, and never lowers her anchor unless there are fresh corpses lying in their graves. Hespyne comes for the souls of the dead and carries them far away, to the Palace of Shadows.’
‘Then I will soon see my father!’
‘She has not come for us. Maybe a shepherd has died this morning, or the hermit of Worldsend who dwells on the island there, beyond the marshes. But we must flee or the Wanderer, Jan Pelerin, who captains the ship, may hear us and draw us to him in a net of spells.’ At once, the Red Horse bounded into a gallop, Mouse-Catcher speeding beside him, and there was nothing for Gry to do but bend low and hide her fear in his whipping mane while she clung to his pounding shoulders.
Her skin smelled of the sea. She put out her tongue and touched it to her arm: salt! Yet the raw-meat-and-blood smell had evaporated and her odd and daggletail skin garments were as fresh as good, cured furs.
‘Are you cold?’ asked the Red Horse.
‘Not cold, but very thirsty. My skin is as salty as meat in winter.’
‘Be patient for a little longer. Soon, we will come to Pimbilmere, where you shall drink, and bathe if you will. Listen, while I carry you deep inland. This is why your skin is salt: it is the same phenomenon you know in the Plains, the Salt Wind; but all the air by Russet Cross is salt and the sea itself is salt – a good place for a leathery old shaman to preserve his mortal remains!’
‘Or hers,’ said Gry. ‘There was a she-shaman on Russet Cross, tall and stately. Her skin was covered all over with blue tattoos.’
‘That is the Lady Byely.’
The Red Horse’s Story: The History of the Lady Byely
Byely was the daughter of a long-ago king of the Ima, when your people lived in cities which rose up like the hills of the Plains and are buried now beneath them. She was a Music-Maker and a Beauty, crossed in love, before she became a shaman. Her tears were salt and they have preserved her as much as the wind and the sea.
Byely played a lute made of the shell of an ocean-turtle. She strummed its seven strings with a hind-toe of the beast and sang to it, small plaintive melodies which told of forsaken lovers and maids who drowned themselves or hurled their lovesick bodies from tower-tops when the moon was on the wane. The courtiers, especially the ladies, said she was melancholy herself, but they listened in silence to the songs and, afterwards, applauded.
‘My songs are sorrowful because they have water in them,’ Byely told them. ‘Salt water, of the sea. My turtle,’ she patted the polished shell, ‘swam in it, breathed it, swallowed it, heard it. The Ocean is in him and of him. Listen!’ And she played a rippling chord.
When Byely grew to marriageable age, she was taken out of the city to meet Scutho, the Shaman of the Plains. First, she was put up on her horse – a mare like your Juma, round and not very tall; red-roan too, her dapples scattered on her coat like bird-cherries in the grass. Her name was Martlet. Now, although Byely (being a princess) was used to being treated with ceremony, she had always mounted Martlet without help and, soon as horse and reins were properly gathered, galloped off with the young women who were her companions, the daughters of great herdsmen and traders. They were like a bunch of fillies themselves, playing in the strong, spring sunlight while they raced each other and the cloud shadows in the Plains.
Byely was told to rein Martlet in and go sedately after her father