Arud exclaimed, then excused himself to the goddess.
Panduv was dismayed to find herself content at this miniscule victory, over a man.
No women were allowed in the wine-shop. Small boys did the serving. Panduv waited doglike at the door, under the shade of the tattered awning which comprised the roof.
There was no necessity for anyone to point out the cut-cured man, for he was noisy in his relief, and the two outriders had bought him a jug of drink.
Having been convinced Arud was a Watcher priest, the man divulged that the woman Thioo would already have gone home to her husband’s farm. She came in early to sell vegetables: She saw to the women. Panduv heard Arud say, “And to you.”
“I let her, yes. My woman’s useless, can get nothing right. I’ll smack her hard when I get home. I’ve got a good firm palm now to do it.” (Panduv gazed on the dust and wished the whole arm might drop off there.)
“Are you perhaps,” said Arud, “in league with the woman Thioo, to make a mockery of the temple?”
The man was shocked, infuriated, and frightened by this accusation. He was devout. He had made sacrifice to Cah only two days ago, which was why he was here. As for being in league with a woman—what man could be? He might as well plot with his cow. But Cah had given the sloven power that she might be of use to Ly. Cah cared for the men of Ly. They were lusty. She favored them.
“When did all this begin?” Arud interrupted eventually.
None of the men in the wine-shop was positive. Years gone. In the long snow. At the time of the disastrous harvests—hadn’t she stopped the fire, then? The woman had been thought an adulteress once, but that was previously. One of her men, her husband’s brother, had fallen off a pass in the rains. But Cah had proved the woman was dutiful. Maybe five years after that, at Big Thaw—Now certainly that was the month she saved a neighbor’s son, when the mother was killing him, trying to birth him out feet first.
Thioo’s own son had been sold, did you remember that? The slave-takers came. Ahsaarians. So poor, Orhn’s farm then, he had had to give his own boy. And Orhn was never much of a man, as a man should be. And the woman was barren again, after that.
(Panduv, at the door, had locked herself against the upright. Something was amiss in this tale—)
Arud said, “Well, then, let’s date this from when the slave-takers came.”
“Twenty summers, or more.” “More, more.”
“This woman isn’t young, then?”
No, they said. But nubile, still.
(In those mountain valleys a woman of thirty could look like a city woman of sixty. The woman Thioo—Tibo—had been near to Panduv’s age. She was young. Yet if she had borne the child the slavers took for Alisaar—Panduv realized, not the wonder of Tibo’s youth, but the aspect of the information from which she had been thoughtlessly advancing. She knew then why Tibo had seemed familiar. Tibo was the mother of Rehger.)
Arud was exasperated. His voice was full of high blood and Panduv could hear him banging on a table.
“You will all of you be questioned, at the temple, before the Cah.” A desperate silence fell. “Meanwhile I’ll want directions to the farm of this man Orhn, the woman’s husband.”
When he came out, Arud said to Panduv, “Another curse of a ride. But I’ll sleep before I do it. I vow that, Panduv. I’ll go tomorrow. She and her witchcraft can wait.”
Panduv walked the expected number of paces behind him to the temple.
She would have to walk behind the zeeba to the farm. Arud might not want her company. She must explain how useful she would be, to wash his feet and ease his back at the ride’s end. He might be forced to remain overnight at the farm. He must have a handmaiden, not trust to the domesticity of the witch.
Panduv had a violent need, a yearning, to see Tibo again. It was like love. How strange that now this unknown Iscaian woman should be the only link, the last representation, of Saardsinmey and the days of life.
13
The Witch
Up and down the tracks went, down and up. It had become the only mode of travel. The passes were tortuous and unsafe. The crags across the border stood northward like transparent paper. Beyond—Zakoris, and Panduv never gave it a thought.
The farm lodged in a valley, in a bowl of mountains, under a sky wheeling with three black eagles.
The poverty and ugliness of the place were almost dreamlike. Nevertheless, there were fowl in the yard, a cow or two on the pasture, and beyond these a rocky upcrop with a thick plantation of citrus trees already in young orange fruit. There seemed another low building in among them, something that shone pale through the rocks and trunks. Could anything to do with the farm have a sheen on it?
In the yard, a healthy-looking oldish man sat on a bench, with an elderly black dog at his feet. Both were asleep in the sun. As the travelers drew nearer, the dog heard them, lifted its head and began to bark. The man also woke up and made a flurry, waving his arms, and next running into the hovel.
“Cah bless us, a bloody ninny” said Arud. “The cup of plenty spills.”
He rode down into the yard, the one outrider (who had lost on the throw of the dice) behind him, and Panduv some three or four paces to the rear. The dog flattened itself growling, hackles high, to maintain the house door. But just then the girl came out.
“Hush, Blackness, hush. So,” she said. The dog hushed.
Arud had claimed from the temple a coarse-woven, poorly dyed, cack-handedly-stitched fresh robe. Seeing it was not only a man but a priest who had arrived, Tibo kneeled among the fowl, bowing her head.
Aarl’s night, thought Panduv. If she has any power. Why kneel?
Arud was dismounting.
“Get up,” he said to Tibo. “You are the woman Thioo?”
“Yes, priest-master.”
“That Thioo who claims to be a witch?”
Tibo waited, her eyes down on the pecking fowl.
“Answer,” said Arud. “Do you?”
“No, priest-master.”
“But you healed a man yesterday of a cut hand.” Another pause. “Do you deny it?”
Then Tibo raised her eyes, only to Arud’s sparkling-new-shaven chin, nevertheless, that high.
“It is the will of Cah.”
“You add to your crimes the crime of blasphemy.”
“If I blaspheme, may she blast me.”
They stood half a minute at attention, as if for a volley of lightning.
“I won’t say,” said Arud, “that you are a liar and a cheat. I’ll ask you only how you, a female, came by such gifts as they say you have, of healing and conjuration. Well? Do you dare tell me the goddess visited you?”
Arud had been questioning the villagers all morning, in the temple. He did not put them to any trial, but their terror was apparent, and they babbled. The witch could stop an outbreak of fire in the fields with a word. She could summon it, too, into a lamp or on a hearth. She had caused various animals to drop double sets of twins. Women in childbirth, or the sick, always wanted her. Barren women turned fertile at her handling. (Interesting, there, she could not see to herself.) She could send away storms and call the rain. She—
“I’ll say again, and you’ll answer me, woman: Did Cah visit you?”
“No, master. But once I was questioned before Cah. They let me lay my hand on her. I’ve guessed it started then.”
She believes that, Panduv, ferociously. She thinks that the stone passed magic into her, and that all is well in this land. She consents to kneel to the male priest, and to serve that witless one as if he were a king, since he must be her husband. She isn’t much like Rehger. The eyes. And then Panduv, thinking of Rehger, visualized the firm gentleness behind his fierce barbaric strength, the curious innocence she had once or twice noted in his beautiful face. Nothing foolish; more—profound. The eyes of a child several hundred years old, who has been able to unlearn the cleverness of his younger seniority. Tibo had a look of that.