She motioned with one hand, and the curtain flew upward and the statue of the goddess was at her back, before them.
She let them gaze awhile at the goddess. From the trough below the serpents had gone away. They would be safe in their narrow vasty labyrinth, as no other thing at Ankabek.
Outside, with the crashing of the doors, there had come a muffled roar which still went on. Nothing else was distinguishable. It sounded elemental and subhuman.
Quietly, she signaled again, and a priest came to her, the great cup in his hands. She took it and one by one, dozen by dozen, the faces and the eyes came back to her.
She told them about the cup.
The drug was Thaddrian, once more universal. It brought an immobility, and outer hardening, turning men to stone as inwardly, without pain, they died. Those Vis warriors, standing guard forever in the tombs of kings, had perhaps partaken of that brew. Now it had been distilled and mixed. The death it brought was swift, though still painless. A death sweet as sleep, from one small sip at the great cup’s brim.
“If any will not,” she said to them, “say now. There is time for you to hide yourselves in the corridors below. The Zakorians have not yet reached them. It may be possible for a very few to find some cranny that is missed, and so escape. I do not promise it. I offer the choice.”
They murmured. They fell still. None of them moved toward the doors.
“Then,” she said, “if you consent, come closer, to the goddess. When you drink, give also to your animals. Fear nothing. We shall go all together, a flight of souls like a flight of arrows all from one bow.”
The Lowland priest drank first from the cup, as he had offered to do, to demonstrate their oneness, and that the drink was nothing to be afraid of in itself. Having drunk, he smiled at them, and gave the cup into another’s grasp. For a moment they watched him, his countenance—that of a young and handsome man—serene, contemplative, without distress; his eyes full of light.
The cup passed. Hands reached for it. They drank, the Lowlanders, the Vis, priest and priestess and villager. The children sipped. The little pet animals were given the cup, the cattle. None refused, as if all had comprehended. Their lips mingled at the brim with the sense of other lips, a kiss, which was also death’s kiss. The mixture had no taste. Not even like the taste of water.
The last to take the cup, a priestess, came back with it and held it toward Eraz.
A young girl, black-haired, she wept. There was only sufficient in the cup for one.
“Drink it,” said Eraz, “then touch my lips with yours. Yes, it is so strong. I don’t lie to you.”
So the girl drained the last morsel of the drug, and touched Eraz’s lips with hers.
Outside, the roar had ended. Now there began to be a volcanic grumbling from the depths below. They had found the under-corridors. They would soon be at the inner doors.
Within, the stillness was intent, yet soft as powder. Aware of each mind, Eraz was aware as each mind put out its light. In the hall of her brain, the little candles flickered, sighed, faded. Beside her the young Lowland priest was long dead. She could not move her head to look at him.
Sweet as sleep. They had trusted her, they had trusted what lay within themselves. Her sadness was over. Her heart was full of joy.
All the little lights were gone.
And Eraz sank into the moment and the century of oblivion beyond which there waited life.
When Vodon’s men brought down the final door, their bloodlust, so long aroused, so long denied, was a single thing, unanimous. Each man was nearly insane.
They spilled in over the door, yelling, yowling, and others sprang in behind them. All were checked.
Whatever they had expected, whatever the villages and towns of shrieking women and terrified men had lessoned them to look for, it was not here.
The floor torches burned. Across the mosaic, in their glare, the great statue of the yellow men’s she-demon, upraised on her tail, lifted the serpent stems of her arms. Beneath her, they stood, the people of Ankabek. Most seemed to look into the faces of the men who had broken down the door. Their own faces were calm, almost smiling, the eyes wide, luminous and unblinking.
And there were beasts, too, standing there like the rest, or held in the arms of children. The beasts, the children—all alike—
Another door crashed inward.
Another gout of men rushed roaring into the chamber.
And were checked.
A minute passed.
The Free Zakorians began to shout. Spears were hurled, deliberately short, to dive at the Ankabekians’ feet. Not one started, or stirred. Only the folds of clothing stirred at the wind of a spear’s passage, or some woman’s hair.
“What is it?”
“By Zarduk, I don’t know—” Vodon half moved forward. “A trance perhaps—”
Suddenly one of the younger Zakorians ran across the temple. He ran straight through the motionless crowd to the place where a tall woman stood, in robes golden as the goddess’ tail. Shouting, the Zakorian plunged his knife to the hilt in the woman’s right breast. Or would have done. The blade, turning on her breast as if on marble, skidded and snapped from its haft. The Zakorian cried out, a different cry. He backed away from the woman, the almost smiling statues with their glowing eyes, the brindle cow, the silken rat on the girl’s shoulder, the flesh that was not flesh. Then, screaming, he rushed from the temple.
“Witchcraft!”
Vodon choked down a sensation like blood.
“Maybe, but against themselves. Take the jewels. Take the great statue and sink it in the sea. Fire the place. The trees outside. Leave nothing whole that’ll catch alight.” Turning, he spat. As the passionless human statues watched him with their shining eyes, he cut down his officers, next their seconds, then pushed the long knife into his own throat. Presently, his men ran over him.
The night flamed redder than the Star could make it. The flame-colored leaves flared to black ashes.
When they dragged the tumbled Anackira to the edge of the rock, they congratulated their gods. They cast her down to Rorn, naked of riches, and blind, for they had gouged out her topaz eyes.
They drank above the bleeding, smoking groves, the wines of the temple.
A wind came with the dawn. It ravaged the blackened trees, blowing off charcoal dust.
Certain of the Free Zakorians did not like this wind. They groaned that it had been full of figures, swirling—a flight of ghosts, like arrows all from one bow.
Dead Vodon’s ship foundered as they sailed north.
Only one of the goddess’ yellow eyes ever reached Free Zakoris.
At midday in Elyr, the Vardian trader had called a halt. A mile away rocks stood on the dusty sky, and on the rocks two of the ubiquitous star-gazing towers. Here, from a great boulder, a waterfall speared down into a pool.
The Vardian’s two servants and the drover sat apart to eat. The herd of fierce Lannic sheep fretted and picked at the dry grass, and nearby, the two herd kalinxes sat bolt-upright, black as basalt. Such guards were trained from infancy, lambs put in with the kittens to be suckled by a female cat. There were no such beasts in Vardath. The Red Star did not burn there, either. Nor anywhere above the Sister Continent.
The Lowland Amanackire were unaffected by the sexual stimulus of the Star. The race of the second continent claimed to be.
The Vardian trader had long since come to think they were unaffected only while they avoided its influence.
He sat outside the makeshift tent he had had put up for himself, looking at the mix-blood girl. She was taking wine to the servants and the drover as he had instructed her. She did not move like a winegirl. She was thirteen if she was a day. Small supple waist, curve of the hips, the little round breasts. And the lovely white skin that never took the sun.