The burial was also to be discreet. One hour before sunrise. The men the Guardian had conscripted to attend, provision against trouble, expected no one but themselves and the priests to wait on her.
They were therefore somewhat put out, just past midnight, to behold a man walking up through the grove. They did not know it, but later, they would be put out a second time.
Chacor Am Corhl discovered he would be in company with the Lydian after he had paced a little less than three hours in the side court of the temple. He had not wished to be in the fane itself. He disliked the form of Ashara, as he did the form of Anackire—fish or snake, she appalled him, offended him. Though he had had an instant of thinking her some perversion of the Truth, that was not enough to be able to endure proximity. Besides, he had called her names.
Firstly the soldiers had been at him. They frisked him for materials of desecration, and questioned him erratically as to why he was there. Their tempers were short but their tongues were long, and he heard all the story, and all the jumble of suppositions, in exchange for his stubborn: “It’s only decent somebody should walk behind the bier.” “Well, we know you didn’t have her,” they said. “Not with the competition.” The captain came over and said, “You’re the Corhlan. The racer. The one who nearly died. Only that’s a lie. Look at you. Some slight wound. I’ve seen that before. All blood, and no bother. She healed you, didn’t she, the witch?” “Yes,” he said, and he shook. “Well,” said the captain, “you lost a third time, didn’t you, if you wanted to thank her Zastis-style?”
They had been asking why he was there, and Chacor did not know, himself. Shaking, angry, he had not grasped now what was meant. (He had misunderstood the laments elsewhere, too, somehow even missed the name. Perhaps not desirous of learning.)
However, Hes and slight wound and no bother or not, the guardsmen seemed to become chary of him all at once and let him go on into the temple. Chacor found a priest—Shansarians held to a masculine order, unlike the Lowland sect, which was mingled, female and male, and the priestesses of some significance. This priest was a brown mix.
Chacor only inquired for the time of burying. Then again, what else had there been to ask? He could not have gone near her body, even if they had let him. Alive, had he ever properly seen her? That skull-whiteness, the touch of the hand of light—
There was a small shrine in the court, but delightfully lacking any image, only a flame burned there in glass. It rose very upright, very still. It was Chacor who moved about. Then he sat on a bench, and fell asleep. Some noise from the soldiers outside woke him. Then he got up and paced again.
When someone entered the court behind him he thought a priest had come to warn him they were setting out, or even to go away and wait in the grove. He turned with a snarl ready, his nerves primed high, and saw the Lydian between two pillars, looking at him, stock-still as the watch-flame.
In that instant, each seemed to fathom, and to its depths, why the other was there. Neither spoke. Neither challenged the other on his rights.
The Lydian nodded, as if to a man he knew from some supper they had both been at, where they had bartered a few phrases of no import.
Then he crossed to a bench, and seated himself. He sat in perfect cohesion, expressionless, gracious, like some carving poured with gold and then for some reason clad in a good plain mantle.
That man killed me, Chacor thought, and in there lies the corpse of the one who brought me back. He laughed aloud. Which was, in Corhl, unlawful at a burial. Then recalled that, and laughed harder. And, He doesnt care for the Shalian goddess, either, our hero.
And Chacor went out, after all, to wait in the cibba grove, a selected distance from the soldiers.
The statue of Ashara had claimed Rehger’s concentration only a handful of moments. He had seen god-images often, in the city temples. Rorn maned with black sea-waves, Zarduk with his belly of fire, and
Daigoth in the stadium precinct, the warrior, sword in hand and triumph on his forehead. Occasionally you would also come across tiny effigies of Ashara-Anack, in the bazaar. He knew her shape, and here it was, only a foot or so taller than he. Though her skin was white it did not look like skin. Her hair was yellow-gold, her eyes discs of citrine. Eight-armed, which made the shoulders unwieldy and unreal; the fish-tail of Shansar, yet patterned like snake-scales, and heavily jeweled. . . . She must be worth some sacks of money. She was not, in her way, unbeautiful. But she had for Rehger no look of Being, which the icons of his own race, modeled from men, or women, always had.
Ashara-Anack was not remotely like Aztira.
She had not informed him when her burial was to be. So he had walked up through the city to the Shalian temple and inquired. That done, those miles of time still washing about him, he had returned to the stadium, to pet and feed the team of hiddrax, to toil in the practice court alone. His arm was healing excellently. The wound had entirely sealed itself, and had the healthy dark, ridged color of ten days’ renewal. Rehger had not taken it to the surgeon, who would see everything was happening too quickly. Instead, a reliable man on Sword Street removed the stitching only this morning, with no interrogation.
Possessing her had been enough, it seemed. Her loveliness, her love. Unlike the Corhlan’s injury, this would leave its scar, seemly, decided. To remember her by.
Finding Chacor in the temple court Rehger had, it seemed to him, understood the cause for being there. Unlike the boy, Rehger did not reveal surprise at unwanted company.
When the Corhl laughed, Rehger, recollecting the chariot race, thought only, He does that when he’s sure of something in the heart of doubt. What has he discovered to be sure of? (The Corhl had seen the sword become a serpent, in the arena. Had he forgotten? Remembered? Was he laughing at that?)
They had been saying, all along the upper streets, that the sea was burning in the bay. Groups were setting out to look, some with wine-flasks and baskets of food, going to make a night of it on the wall or the beach. Others coming from there looked less happy. Rehger did not pay much attention, having noted the over-radiance of the sky, which obscured even Zastis, and the storm which did not come inland.
When the Corhl had gone, Rehger stood up again. He went to the empty shrine and regarded the flame.
Aztira had presumably worshiped the snake goddess. He touched the flat of the shrine. He said, to the silence: “Be for her what she needs the most. Tomorrow, I’ll bring you something, lady. Whatever they give you here. I’ll ask, and bring you something fine.”
He could not have said it to the statue in the temple. Yet for a second, without the unreality of the image in the way, he did suppose She heard him.
As he turned, a priest appeared between the pillars, and motioned him to follow. It was time.
Across the hill-slopes above the city, the Street of Tombs had gradually wound its way through the years. Richer Saardsins, taking up their abode on it, left orders for paving to be laid and kept in repair. Shade trees and aromatic shrubs were planted, and, between the sepulchers themselves, quantities of which were ornate to the point of jollity, stood altars, statues, and monuments. Meanwhile, on the lower southwestern side, astrologers, diviners, mages, and the practitioners of obscure cults, pitched their tents and cobbled up their mud-brick huts. Death Town throve.
Tomb Street properly began just above the cibba groves. As the funeral ascended on to it, there came the unavoidable impression of entering some benighted aristocratic avenue, mysteriously silent, but not always lightless. Very many of the mausoleums were large, and here and there a lantern shone out from a tall porch, or in some marble hand, for the Street watchmen were paid to effect this service.