Lilith’s Castle. Gill Alderman
of the village stopped whatever they were doing, sewing or cooking, and their children began to wail as Leal’s cry went leaping and echoing over them and across the grassland terrifying small creatures and large until it reached the horses which kept watch at the margins of the Herd. These sentinels pricked up their ears and stood ready to signal flight. The mares heard Leal and, turning to their foals, nuzzled a warning; Summer and the Red Colt heard Leal and the Colt danced in alarm as his complaint came at last to the two black-tipped ears of the Red Horse. The great horse turned his head to hear it better; nodded, almost like a man, that long, sagacious head; and cantered forward to join his sentinels.
Then Leal, on the hearth of the Meeting House, called for compassion and justice for Gry and on his friends for aid and support. Seventeen men joined him there; the rest swore to follow Battak, all but Garron and Kiang who were left like abandoned princes between two armies. Each faction began to shout for its leader and Gry, lost in the noise, opened her bruised, sore mouth at last and spoke.
‘Nandje came to me,’ she said. ‘My father told me I might look on his body because his soul was on its way to the Palace of Shadows. He did not chide me for my friendship with the Horse.’
Her voice was so low and full of fear that none but her brothers understood her, and they could not believe their ears. Nor did Gry dare repeat the words which had floated into her head as she and the Horse made ready to leave the mound: ‘You are the Rider.’
Heron rounded on her, out of the throng. The rest, in their growing quarrel, had forgotten her, the source of it. The historian, by contrast, had become civil. Though he dominated her, leaning his bulky body too close to her and touching her indelicately with his eyes and thoughts, his voice was gentle and persuasive.
‘Not one of them is fit to choose the new Imandi,’ he said. ‘I must put you in a place of safety and then, by our fathers! we shall discover what your fate is to be.’ He took her arm and led her from the House and across the empty ground in the centre of the village where the communal hearth, which was used on feast days and for cooking the horsemeat at slaughtering-season, was deserted and cold, another testament to her alienation. She thought of escape, of flight; but her soul was terrified and had curled itself up like an unborn babe and retreated so far into her body that she could not tell where it was; she was nesh, her limbs addled as if she had a fever; and this weakness, she thought, was the shaman’s doing.
Heron, not unkindly, pushed her into the low mound where the dried meat was stored; and came in after her.
‘You won’t be frightened in the storehouse,’ he said. ‘The children play here and lovers, too, at midsummer.’
Gry felt obscurely grateful. He wasn’t so bad, the old memory-keeper. A man would have been tied outside in the cold and watched from the warm shelter of a house doorway. She knew this and began to think herself lucky, resting at last on the ground. It was dark in the storehouse. She heard Heron rummaging and the sound of a hide being dragged.
‘Here is a skin,’ he said. ‘Put it beneath you, there! Soon, I will bring you water and meat, and tomorrow I will speak for you in the House. I have heard many quarrels and listened to many judgements. It seems to me that your punishment will not be as terrible as that of Huçul.’ Again, she heard the sound of horse-leather being moved: it was Heron unbuckling his belt. Where was he, beside her, before? The sun-disks on the belt jingled. ‘Oshac’s solution is best, for then you will not die or have to leave the Plains, nor exchange them for the fiery wilderness of Hell.’
Gry, in the blackness of her prison, felt his hand on her wrist.
‘I have the captive’s choice,’ she said.
‘Then choose wisely! If I am to speak for you, it would help your case to show how willing you are and how meek. Let an experienced man, weighty but wise in his knowledge, be convinced of your remorse.’
His voice came from the darkness directly in front of her; indeed, she could feel, and smell, his breath, which was coming in short gusts like that of an animal which has been running hard.
‘It is no choice at all.’
The man fell on her in a rush, all at once, pressing her down on the horse-hide. He was heavy and his calloused hands tore at her skirt and rasped her thighs. She did not dare resist, nor want to; everything the future held was dull and mean. Slavery meant being used. He was merely the first. She felt his thing nudge her. She thought it was huge and swollen like a stallion’s; it would hurt. It pushed against her as if it would devour her from the inside out or, at last finding the way, suck out her soul through this, the narrow passage which was meant for her lover and her babies. She tried to think of healing, of wind and water, of small, blue flowers in the grass, of birds in flight; but all she knew was the man, his heaviness, his rank smell. The ground heaved under her: she had heard that was what happened when man entered woman’s gates and Heron, with a horrid, passionate gurgle, crashed across her and was still. Astonished, she lifted one hand to touch his face. Was this all? A short struggle and nothing more, no kind words or sweet sensations. Was this the great and wonderful union that the lays told of, the songs celebrated? Like a dead baby in its grave-cloth, Heron’s head was wrapped in the horse’s hide and one of the long tubes of leather which had once covered its legs was taut about his neck. He did not speak, nor ever speak again.
Gry shivered violently. The quarrel in the Meeting House was still going on. She heard the men shouting insults and challenges, their voices fuelled by kumiz. She lay completely still, under the dead man. Time crawled. Something was sticking to her left hand and she moved it, touched it cautiously with the other. It was the cloth of her skirt and Heron’s blood on it – not her own, the blood of her torn maiden’s veil, nor his – stuff. Those – she felt – were lower down, some on her, some on his cast-aside clothing. This – it felt like blood from a wound. She did not, could not understand, and lay motionless again.
After a time, she convulsed and struggled free, throwing Heron off. The body fell to one side, so much dead meat in the hide wrapping, and she spat on it. She was stiff: cramps in her legs and arms. Eventually she got up, on to her knees, and crawled into the doorway.
The night smelled clean, fresh as flowers; cold as spring water. Out in the open it was spaces, stars, wings, freedom. What was in the dark storehouse behind her she wished to forget, seeing, sensing only this, the changed, new world.
Gry wiped her hands, herself, on a tuft of grass and stood cautiously up. There was no one about, the house-mounds dark, the shouting replaced by drunken laughter all muffled like puvushi chanting underground. The sound was not of this wide, starlit world. She was glad to see the stars and Bail’s keen Sword there pointing towards the inhospitable mountains of the Altaish, a pitiless place of ice and snow. Beyond them, as she knew well, the world ended. Far brighter than any other star shone that marvellous light which the Ima called the Guardian of the Herd. It had appeared not long after the stranger Paladin, the wanderer called Parados, had left the Ima and, to Gry, was like a sign from him that all would and should be well. And perhaps it was truly a sign tonight, for it burned ardently and seemed to wait for her, halfway between the rocky ridges of the Altaish and the ragged skyline of the distant Forest. Or perhaps it was a sign that she must seek and find her father, wherever his grey shadow had fled.
A footfall disturbed the grass; she heard it clearly, and another, two, three and four. Not a man. A horse. The Red Horse paced calmly into the village, came close to her and laid his head on her shoulder. His warm lips caressed her neck; then, drawing slightly back, he pricked his ears as she might raise her eyebrows, to ask a question, and raised his foreleg so that she could mount. She heard the voice in her mind:
‘Come on! It’s time to go.’
His hooves marked the frosty grass, once, twice. Then he was into his stride and they were away, crossing the village grounds, bounding up the first hills. She expected him to carry her into the Herd, but it was nowhere in sight and they were heading into the barren wastelands beyond the pasture-grass. The Swan spread her starry wings above them and Gry bent forward and spread her arms to hold the Horse’s shoulders, for it was bitter cold up there on his back. Someone said, ‘No hair, no coat!’ or perhaps