people will acclaim you, Kembri or no Kembri. But it's my belief that if you stay here just as you are now, either Kembri or Fornis will get rid of you somehow."
She paused. "And the other?" asked Maia.
"The other," said Occula deliberately, "is to marry the richest and most powerful man you can find; preferably one with an estate in the provinces, where you can go and live in safety. You're not cut for a life of high intrigue, banzi. You're too nice. A girl like you needs a protector- someone to belong to. And the long and short of it is, you can either choose the gods' protection, or a man's. I know damn' well which I'd choose-and if I doan' love you no one does."
A silence fell. It was as though all four of them, sitting in the elegant, luxurious hall high above the teeming city, felt themselves isolated as though besieged; or surrounded by a flood lapping the base of their precarious tower with invisible waters of malevolence and peril. Suddenly Maia had the horrible fancy that the sunken rectangle of the central floor, enclosed within its honey-colored walls and broad step of banded slate, was like a well down which her dead body could be pitched and vanish untraced. Setting down her goblet, she jumped up and almost ran across to the north-facing window.
The comet was low, its drooping tail partly obscured behind the jagged, barely-discernible line of the mountain peaks. The comet, she knew, had been sent by Lespa- Lespa who had saved her again and again. Yet why had she sent it? What did it mean? It was like the danger she was in, she thought. It made no sound, uttered no threat. It simply abode; whenever you looked up, there it was, undeviant and unchanged.
"Oh, Lespa," she prayed silently, "help me! I'm more afraid than ever I've been!"
For now, with Occula's words, her very real and immediate danger had at last become plain to her; the danger which, though in all conscience told clearly enough, had not been brought fully home by Sessendris, by Nennaunir, by Milvushina or even entirely by Kembri. It now seemed to her that she-she who had knelt beside the dying Sphel-thon, who had swum the Valderra by night-had in fact never, in all her life, possessed any real power to distinguish between semblance and reality.
The sudden recognition of a lack in oneself of normal
perception, of the ability to see in its true colors what has been plain as day to everyone else; the realization that in some important respect one has hitherto been like a child, not clearly differentiating actuality from fantasy, security from peril, truth from fallacy, can take place at any time in life, even to outwardly-seeming experienced people, and when it does is always mortifying. When it involves the apprehension of danger, the shock often comes with a kind of freezing effect, dream-like, momentarily cutting off awareness of companions and surroundings.
Still no one spoke. Maia stood still, supporting herself with one hand on the embrasure. Her hope of finding Zen-Kurel, of fulfilling their mutual promise to marry and live in Katria; it was as though a glaring, hard light had suddenly been turned upon this secret room in her heart, revealing-what? Flimsy walls, frail beams, a brittle door that any ruffian could kick in. True, it was also revealed as no less beautiful than she had always known it to be- but utterly insecure. In this room, whatever its beauty, there lay no safety. Her love for Zen-Kurel would not save her, and she had been deceiving herself in thinking that it would. Yet if safety was what she must have, if safety was what she valued above all else, then no doubt about it, she must quit this beautiful, forlorn, memory-filled room for some stronger one. Her love for Zenka-her.love of one night, which she nevertheless knew in her own heart to be entire and sincere-how much, in cold, sober fact, was that love worth to her? That, though Occula did not know it, had been the implication of her words to the hearer. Was she, Maia, ready to risk death-no fancy, no game, but the real, bowel-clutching prospect of being murdered-not in return for the certainty of finding and marrying her Zenka in the end, but in return for the mere chance that she might?
I must wait for Sednil, she thought. At the very least I must wait for Sednil and whatever news he brings. And that's a matter of time. But how much time will I have?
And now, suddenly, she knew the meaning of the great star: not the city's meaning-for the star, like a dream or an old tale, no doubt had many different meanings implanted in it by Lespa, for comprehension by various people-but her own meaning, the individual meaning Lespa had intended her to perceive. It was plain: there couldn't be a doubt of it! She herself was the star! This new-come
presence, this gentle brilliance in the sky, with its streaming, golden hair, was the equivalent of herself in Bekla. It followed clearly that as long as it lasted, she would remain immune, the protected of the goddess. But when it departed she, too, if she had not by then found what she was seeking, would be fated to depart, either to death or to that dreary, marital refuge-death in life, as it appeared to her young heart-of which Occula had spoken. So much time, then, she had: so much time and opportunity the goddess was vouchsafing her.
She had the message. She longed, now for some relief from her tension and anxiety; for some respite, however brief and illusory, from the strain of dwelling on love and danger. It's strange, she thought: all your life you hear the tales of the great deeds, the dangers and sufferings of the heroes and the gods and goddesses, but you never understand what they must really have felt until it's brought home to you through your own experience and your own heart.
She turned, came back from the window, put her arms round Occula and kissed her as they had been used to kiss in their first days of slavery, the days of her innocence and her wretchedness.
"I've taken in all you say," she said, smiling. "Don't worry, dearest, I'll survive. We all shall-all four of us; I know it."
"Then you know a damn' sight more than I do, banzi."
"Never mind for now. Occula, tell us one of your stories-like you used to. Like you did at Lalloc's that night- remember?"
"I remember: that was about Lespa, wasn't it?"
"Yes, tell us another about Lespa! The one about Shak-karn and how Lespa became a goddess: the story of the senguela."
Occula looked round at the others. Milvushina smiled and nodded. Zuno refilled the goblets. Occula took another long pull, settled herself in the cushions and began.
73: THE APOTHEOSIS OF LESPA
"After young Baltis the smith had first made love to Lespa in the temple of Shakkarn-that day before the autumn
festival, you remember, when she was supposed to be mending the altar cloth-they became lovers as dear to each other as good deeds are to the gods. They thought of nothin' else. Each of them used to lie awake at night, wishin' to be in another bed. For things were still no easier for them, you see, just because they'd succeeded for once in gettin' what they both wanted. Lespa's father still reckoned the family was a good cut above young Baltis, a mere smith's apprentice with nothin' beyond his pay and perks. And worse than that, realizin' he had such a pretty daughter-for Lespa was the talk of the place for miles around, so that people on journeys used to make a point of stoppin' by on some excuse or other, jus' to see her goin' to the well in the evenin' along o' the other girls- he'd begun gettin' grand ideas of marryin' her to some wealthy lord or maybe even a baron. I dare say there might have been three or four of that sort who passed that way not so very seldom, what with boats and so on goin' by on the Zhairgen or the Valderra. For as you know, I've always held out for it that sweet Lespa came from lower Suba. But I dare say you two want to have it that she came from somewhere in Chalcon or Tonilda, doan' you?"
"Suba!" said Maia instantly. " 'Course it was Suba!"