“He has never bothered with provision. They say it’s notable, Panduv. The women, though mostly less exposed to obvious danger, always see to it first.” The Amanackire paused. Then she came toward the Zakorian girl, and as she did so lowered the veil from her face. She stood looking up at Panduv. The Lowlanders generally lacked the height of the Vis. But all at once, her slender smallness, the always-unrecollected youth of the white girl, stirred the dancer, sexually and emotively, and, therefore, to an awareness of the human.
“Panduv,” she said, “forgive me. My race are arrogant and cruel. I know no better than to demand. Let me crave your pardon, and ask, then. Please, Panduv Am Hanassor, I beg you. Permit me to buy from you your built black tomb on the hill. With the riches I can give you, you can build at once one even finer. Although, I promise you, you won’t need it. Your days will be long.” Panduv shivered.
“Not yours? Yes, I see. Why else this hurry.” “You will hear quite soon that I have died. Then rejoice, if you want. Sell the tomb to me. Take my blessing for your curses.”
Velva had entered the Salt Quarter, the warren of narrow streets and ruinous lots that lay between the warehouse district and the eastern slums of the city. She had told the inn-lord the Lydian wanted her. Her employer had not argued, or looked for further payment. He had not guessed it was a lie. Would it were not.
There was a thin twisting sooty street that coiled and wriggled through the warren. Though leading nowhere of import, and of revolting appearance, it was well-known in its way, or ill-known, certainly.
Sometimes, from some black crack, a hand reached out and plucked at the girl’s cloak, or a face squinted. But they were feeble, indeterminate attentions. Prosaic lust was not what prompted this defile of night.
She passed all the doorways, not looking, and the alley-mouths. She passed the cavelike open entries, shelved with mortal flesh. In this worm-wend, all manner of drugs and essences were sold. Incenses and elixirs, inducements to dream or drown, the recipes of many lands. Here even they sold Aarl’s Kiss, that had its fame, now, Vis over. It was the juice of a yellow fruit, plucked from a mysterious island that lay at sea beyond the shores of Alisaar, and off the proper routes of the traders. They said the blond Storm Lord, Raldnor, had found the island on his journey of discovery that ended at the Second Continent. The fruit, when eaten, made one drunk. More. In sufficient quantity, the rind and pith mixed in, it made all things beautiful; it opened the portals into the kingdom of the gods. But it also killed, in great pain, and swiftly. Crush the whole fruit, however, distill and dilute the juice, one might imbibe the pleasant drink moderately for some years, knowing something of the ecstasy often. Or, if in haste, much ecstasy and death in a few months. Those that took the juice a decade denied it was an assassin. They loved it as their friend. They tried to hold it off, as a loved friend is held off, and gave in finally, and in the last seasons of addiction, married it. Those that went more quickly acknowledged it was death. What had life, anyway, to offer them, that was delicious as this?
In the deep porch, Velva touched the cord of a bell.
She did not hear it ringing, but the door, after a moment, was opened, two inches.
“What?” said a voice.
“Aarl’s Kiss.”
“Cash? Or do you barter other things?”
“Coins.”
“Let’s see ’em.”
Reared among the tenements of Saardsinmey, she knew to show just one flash of one bright drak. She had saved the Lydian’s money, which he had pressed on her, meaning to give it back to him. But he had not sought her again. The witch had ensorcelled him instead.
“Come in,” said the unseen one. He held her arm through the door, and she pushed him off.
The darkness stank of sea-damp and filth. A light burned, very low. Neither purveyor nor client wished to be illumined. Velva had slight fear she would be plundered and slain. She would be more profitable alive. For this medicine, she would come back. Taste, and you must return to it.
“How?” said the man she could not see.
“Not the usual mixture. Undistilled. From the pulpings.”
Now she was in some unsafety. She had implied she meant this venture to be unique.
“That’s not so simple,” he said. “Why d’you want it that way?”
Velva turned a fraction, for he was shifting the lamp, trying to spy her better.
“My lover. He’s old. Sick. The juice does nothing for him, watered.”
“You want him packed off, eh?”
She hid her face in her cloak, and threw weighted dice.
“I need his money. Fill another vial for me—that one distilled.”
And the vendor cackled, pleased to be of service. Since, hooked by her elderly paramour, she also was his, and—youthful and hale—might stay so an entire ten years.
It was a winter morning when slave-takers came to the fishing village a mile below Hanassor. Above, the dark conical cliff that held the city, blocked the sun, but the sea was sheened. It was never really cold in Zakoris.
Panduv’s aunt-mother—her birth-mother was long dead—was gutting fish and pegging them to dry out on the posts. She was bare-breasted, and big-bellied, always with child, as was the old way, by any one of the village men, who held all their women in common. Other women worked farther along the stony shore, seeing to the nets or the fish the men had brought in just before sunup. Smoke swarmed from the hut-holes.
Panduv, who in those days had been called something in the way of Palmv, had also been caught turning cartwheels when supposed at toil with the pots in the water tub. Her aunt-mother had damned her, naming her not only Palmv but the Hated-of-Zarduk. Nearly three years old, eyes wet (for the blows had been harsh), Palmv scoured the clay. She did not know the bruises of those blows would fade in another world.
Zakoris was Vardish, since the Lowland War, over a century: Var-Zakoris. The might of Hanassor was done, and there was a new capital inland with another title. Sometimes pale-skinned men with yellow hair were seen in the village’s vicinity. They were not liked, or annoyed. The gods had had their say. Zarduk was chastising his old kingdom. In Free Zakoris, over the mountains, that was where the soul of the land had gone.
Seeing riders coming down on them, Palmv’s aunt-mother had called the other women. They spoke of Vardians or Tarabines—but the riders were not white men. Dortharians, then, the lovers of Vardians and Tarabines.
Nor were they Dortharians.
They came along the stones, the zeebas picking a way. The women stood ready to fight if needful. Their men, resting after a night’s fishing, were not to be disturbed.
Then a couple of the riders explained what they wanted. Children. Very young. Girls—for boys were not sold at Hanassor. Boys were still considered warriors here, and powerhouses of seed. But girls were expendable. Particularly a girl like Palmv, whose mother had died of childbearing and might have passed this stigma on.
Palmv heard the exchanges. She heard herself offered, for the slavers’ price. When they came and looked her over, she barely struggled. No man was consulted. No one knew who her father was, she had never been an asset to the village.
Presently she was carried away to Alisaar.
She thought all this while that it had happened to her because she was inferior. Because she had turned cartwheels. Useless, this was her punishment. It was in the stadium, in the girls’ hall, that she learned, gradually, painfully, disbelievingly, that she had been taken for her beauty and her strength, and that her name was Panduv, and she would be a dancer and a princess in glory. When she might otherwise have scratched at pots, dried and pickled fish, and lain with her legs open, either taking men in or pushing them, new-born, out, all her days.