That was quickly come on, here. It was a butcher’s block, still steaming from a recent sacrifice, while blood had overflowed the drain below. Above all this, the statue, if it could even be enhanced with such a name.
Cah was black, as Panduv, but nearly shapeless. Bulges of breasts, and a bulge that was the face, for two amber eyes were set into it.
Something strange suggested itself to Panduv. What was it? These eyes—yellow eyes. Eyes for snakes, or Lowlanders.
A draft caught the meager lamps. The quarter light wavered, and the amber Lowlander eyes seemed to blink and steady upon Panduv.
Did the beautiless hump have some life? Was their goddess present in it—would she deign to be? The stone was very old.
Panduv made a gesture of politeness to a foreign deity.
The eyes went on, boring into her.
“What’s your riddle, lady?” murmured Panduv. “Do you want something?”
A man shouted harshly from the shadows.
“Back you! Zakr sow—stand off. You’ll defile the altar.”
“But I forgot,” said Panduv to the stone, “you hate your own sex, don’t you, lady.”
She bowed her head in suitable abnegation and stepped away among the columns.
The shouter did not pursue her. Very tired now, Panduv slipped down a pillar, to sit with her back against it, on the floor. She let her eyelids fall. She began to dream she was in Saardsinmey, inside the theater. The white Amanackire woman stood in front of her.
Panduv said, “You think you’ll need my tomb before I shall?”
“Oh, yes.”
She had unveiled. Her pallor was exquisite after all, her eyes like bright silver. She said, “And did I not say, Panduv, you would not need the tomb?”
“I’m dead. I’ll never dance again, with the fire.”
“Life is the Fire,” said the Amanackire. “We dance with it constantly, and burn off with it the draperies of blindness. It scorches us, till we learn, how to dance, the meaning of the dance.”
“He was your lover,” said Panduv, “Rehger. I’m at his birthplace. But he’s dead.”
“No,” said the girl. “He lives. I gave myself to death. He followed me in the death procession, up into your well-built, obdurate tomb. There he was, Panduv, when the wave broke Saardsinmey. The tomb withstood the water, as I knew it must. But what a terrible thing. I should have saved that city. I could rescue only the man I loved. A woman’s foible, Panduv.”
Panduv shook herself and opened her eyes wide.
Someone was standing over her. The shouting fellow again? No, it was a young woman, her own age, or a very little older.
Panduv was puzzled by an awareness of seeing someone that she recognized, had known at least by sight for many years. But she did not know this woman. She was an Iscaian, a wife who wore her hair in the ordained way, twelve plaits ending in copper rings. Her garment was darned and patched all over, her feet were bare and smeared with the dust.
But her beauty, that was another thing. Coming after the white girl’s glamour, so sharply recaptured in the dream, it needed to be of a fabulous sort. And so it was. The eyes that were the fulcrum of the beauty looked down on Panduv, as if questioning her state of heart or health.
“Don’t be afraid,” said Panduv. “I’m the body-slave of the Watcher priest. Quite tame.” And with a feral smile denied the sentence instantly.
But the Iscaian wife did not flinch, she only looked another second or so. Then she turned and walked to the bloody altar.
She stayed there some time, her back to the hall, her face turned up now to the shadow-face of the Cah.
Panduv watched intently. It seemed to her, from what she had heard and seen, even Iscaian women were not normally allowed so near the goddess. But no one shouted.
Presently the Iscaian left the altar. She crossed back over the temple hall, looking neither left nor right, and went out of the doorway.
Panduv came to her feet. For some reason she was going to follow the Iscaian. She did not know why.
As she emerged on the terrace, Panduv spotted her again immediately. The Iscaian was on the sun-baked mud of the street, walking slowly along, her hands loose at her sides. That in itself was unusual. Every other woman who went by, even to children of six years, ported something, baskets, jars, or bundles. As for the other persons on the street, they were aware of the girl. They did not stare at her, greet her, avoid or make way for her—but their actions became somehow self-conscious in her vicinity. They were like bad actors playing a scene in which one of their number goes among them supposedly invisible.
Then a man, a burly brute, stepped into the girl’s path. She halted, and all around the bustle of the street stilled. Now they could see her. Now they could stare. It was so quiet the chirrup of birds and insects might be heard, and the voice of the big man carried.-
“Cut my hand. Won’t close.”
And he thrust before the girl-wife a great wodge of paw and dirty bandage.
“Your leave to see, master?” said the girl. Her voice was soft. It was the Iscaian tone, pleading to be unvaluably of assistance.
Involuntarily, Panduv clenched her fists. Unclenched them. They all went on that way here, and she, too, when she was sensible.
The girl was unwrapping the bandage. Her movements were deft. She had been honored and must now take care to show herself worthy.
Panduv could not make out what she did, with the hand, the wound. It happened in a few seconds. The man gave a snort. Then he threw up his arm, over his head, flexing the hand. With the other he gave the girl-wife a light push. “Ah,” he said. “Cah be praised.” The raised-up hand had a blemish on the palm, a bluish ridge like a clean ten-day-old healing.
In the fever Arud had mentioned sorcery repeatedly. He had even once called the sorcerer she.
The girl was walking on, and the crowd pleated round her. Panduv after all stood rooted. Was this deceit? She herself had not been able to see the open cut. The man was merrily elbowing away to the tavern. Perhaps Arud’s outriders would hear his summary over their cups.
A knot of women meanwhile was just below the temple terrace, and they were muttering together, looking off now where the girl had gone.
Panduv ran lightly down to them. She touched one on the shoulder. The whole group cowered away from her, disliking, nearly showing their teeth.
“Who was that?” said Panduv, slurring her words forcibly, to offer them a nice homely sound.
“Who?” said one of the women.
The rest were speechless.
“The healer,” said Panduv.
The woman who had spoken shook her head. She, too, was a wife, all of them were, and the twelve rings on her hair clashed together.
“Yes. I saw her do it. If it wasn’t faked.”
The peripheral women were beginning to slink away. Two ran off suddenly. Panduv reached out and got hold of the one who had spoken. Panduv said, “My master is a Watcher of Cah. He’s in the temple now, with the High One. He wants to know the name of that woman. Dare deny him?”
A second woman spoke now.
“Her name is Thioo.”
“And she lives here, in your village?”
No answer, which meant she did not.
Precisely then Arud came out on the terrace, announcing himself by ranting: “Panv!” (Definitely agitated). “Here, you bitch!”
Which scattered the women like terrified beetles.
Panduv went back to him.
“He denies it all,” cried Arud in boiling passion, dignity superfluous. “The old imbecile in his stenchful bird-head. There is no witch. Nothing happens here.”
“Oh, master,” said Panduv, “I have just seen it happen.”
“What?” said Arud. His face collapsed.
“I was questioning those women, when you spoilt my luck by bawling and scaring them off. But I’ve seen her at her work, your sorcery-maker.” Arud was speechless. As an Iscaian woman with a man, he hung on her words. And, having divined its form, since one of the Iscaian acrobat-girls had had a lost sister of the same name, Panduv concluded, in the clear accents of Alisaar, “She’s called Tibo. She lives outside the village. But then again, if you go to the wine-shop, I can point out to you her victim, the man she cured.”