1
Where the mountains reach toward the City, leveling, they take on the tinge of lions. The great tower-fortress, like Eshkorek herself, was built of this same fulvous rock. Not beautiful, but ugly, it threw its indomitable phallic shadow black across the sunset mesas and the sloping crags. Not beautiful, but very strong, very secure. Yet not to keep things out, but to keep things in. A prison. At once I had the sensation that if I entered I could never again get free, but I thrust it off.
Nearer, I saw how the place was ringed by a huge oval crater, filled to a third of its height by stagnant water, black and impenetrable, a sightless eye. Over this moat there seemed to be no way, except by swimming. Weed lay on the surface in glinting nets, clotted at the base of the tower.
One of Vazkor’s men shouted. The rocks took his voice and split it into many voices, and hurled them at us from every side. A pause then, but as the silence crept back, another sound came in answer, and the silence ran like a hunted man. Grinding, grating, a narrow door was being forced in the tower, and from that mouth a long stone tongue began to thrust toward us. Over the moat the thing angled itself, to vanish with a rasping screech in some slot beneath the crater’s lip: a bridge. It was ten feet wide, at least, but to a man they rode single file, exactly at its center, and led by instinct only I did the same. Riding over the water, my stomach seemed turned to ice. Against my will, I glanced down into the depths, saw nothing, yet looked away swiftly.
Beyond the narrow doorway, a roofed-over courtyard, stables on either side, a dark, primitive, cheerless place. Three men in gray liveries slashed with yellow stood like statues. Another man, fat under his long tunic of furs, bowed deeply.
“Warden,” Vazkor said.
“My lord, your messenger reached me only a day ago. We are not as ready as we might be.” Behind the silver eagle mask little eyes glinted. But no eagle this, but the mythological demon-toad, well-fed and venomous. Oparr, yet not Oparr, for this stream ran deeper and blacker.
For some reason I had not expected anyone to be here, yet, I supposed now, as a fortress it would be garrisoned to some extent. So I came to look for many men and servants, and, as we climbed the stone flights, toiled through the large oval hall, past storerooms and armories, for the efficiency and crowding of a barracks, and I did not find it. Few people lived here after all, a scattering of the gray-clad soldiers—the Warden’s men—an old woman and a young, both apparently witless from the brief glances I had of them. It seemed a peculiar arrangement, but I was too tired to question it; we had been on the road together long days—I had lost count of how many. Vazkor, for all the last traces of the fever which still hung on him, appeared less exhausted than I—but then there was presumably some purpose for him here; for me, nothing.
I followed the thin, slightly limping servant girl to a small room near the head of the tower, and when she had gone, I sank down on the curtained bed and buried myself in sleep.
I woke again in darkness, tinglingly alert, listening. There was nothing to be heard, only the silent strength of the tower humming to itself. I went to the narrow slit of window, pulled aside the shutter, looked out over bleached crags, black sky, white-eyed stars. I was very tense and did not know why.
Standing there, I suddenly realized what it was my mind had been searching out since Mazlek had brought me to the mountains—that half-unconscious quest, without a known goal. I had been trying to remember the word which Asren had written in the book, the beautiful book I had meant to bring with me from Belhannor, and had left behind because there had been no time to plan. And now I realized that oddly I had examined the letters, the character in the formation of that word so closely that I had not seen what the word was in itself. Whatever importance it had had for him, or for myself, was lost. A trivial thing, perhaps, but it troubled me. The last, the only, item I had had of him had slipped from my possession and my memory forever.
A movement caught my eye, unexpected in this place, where sky and mountains seemed locked in ancient immobility.
I looked across the rock shapes, then lifted my eyes, and incredibly found the answer in the black drift overhead. Between the fixed scatter of stars, three other stars, larger and very bright, sailing in the form of an arrowhead, southward. Ankurum, and the street, so late or early, and the moving silver light I had watched with Darak, the light Asutoo had watched also, and taken as a god-chariot, an omen to betray.
The three glittering things slid over the tower, out of my sight.
I was afraid, more than that primitive fear because I could not understand the lights in the sky. I turned and faced the room as if an enemy waited for me. There was in this place—something—something I feared yet must find, deep in the bones of the tower. I had sensed it from the beginning, but the silver star chariots of Asutoo’s gods had peeled away the last layers of my blindness.
In the morning the limping girl brought a pitcher of water, a silver cup of the wine drink, and a little later returned with a selection of silk and velvet clothes, and a silver mask—a curious shape which seemed to be the head of a lynx. Apparently the tower Warden had sent these things, and I wondered to whom they had belonged. Perhaps to an absent wife or lady, for he appeared to keep neither here at present. They were all shades and tones of Eshkorek yellow and rather full, but that seemed suited to my condition. The mask presented a subtle problem. The Warden’s rank would not entitle him to wear the gold, and therefore he could not provide a golden mask for me, and yet, if only by chance, I was demoted by going in silver now. Yellow strings hung from the lynx head over my hair, each one ending in an exquisite marigold carved from yellow amber.
Mazlek came up the stairs soon after. I saw his eyes take in the silver mask, and then discard the thought which had come to him, as it had to me.
“What is happening, Mazlek?”
“A man has been sent to the City to inform the Javhoyor that Vazkor is here.”
“Vazkor’s Javhovor,” I said softly.
“Yes, goddess. Vazkor’s men expect immediate loyal help from that quarter—honored welcome into Eshkorek Arnor, a war council, fresh troops—but things are not so simple, goddess, I think.”
“Why?”
“This man, the Warden—he is very uneasy. I don’t think Vazkor is a welcome guest either to himself or his master.”
I remembered Vazkor’s words on the road, harsh, affirmative. Yet he could do nothing without the support of the Cities of the desert. If he had lost it, what would become of him?
“Where is Vazkor?” I asked Mazlek.
“A room on the east side of the tower. One man keeps guard outside the door, and no one has seen him since last night.”
“Mazlek,” I said, abruptly anxious to put Vazkor from my mind, and attack my fears of this fortress instead, “there is something in this place—something I must find.”
“Goddess.”
He was quite ready to follow me, to protect me, yet he did not understand. I think I had half hoped he might have sensed also the secret feeling of the tower. A sort of mental intimacy had seemed to grow between us during the flight from Belhannor; we had spoken little, yet things had been clear enough. I was reminded of Slor suddenly, and the blind offering of his life for mine, and thrust the thought away.
“I have explained badly,” I said. “I do not know what troubles me here, even if anything exists to trouble me. But I have to search until I find it, or fail to find it.” I discovered I had locked my hands together tensely. “Something hidden,” I said.
He went after me, down the flights of stairs, to the oval dark hall, needing candles even in daylight, and stood ready behind me as I spoke to one of the three gray soldiers lounging there. I noted they did not leap to instant attention at my entrance, as they would for the golden cat goddess of Ezlann, and I learned a lot from that.