Now he is actually asking me.
“There is a course.”
“Yes? Well? Well?”
“Inform them the rumors were grossly overblown. She’s a healer who sees to women’s complaints. She has the antique art of making fire with two pieces of wood. She does nothing, meanwhile, without invoking Cah, and her temple finds her virtuous. Besides, she’s married, and her husband wouldn’t permit her to do anything unlawful.”
“Falsehoods, woman. I’m to condemn myself before the goddess by lying?”
“Cah is only an idea ... the embodiment and symbol of life.” (The two outriders were some way behind them, out of earshot. The other absconding pair had vanished even from the town.)
Arud did not chide Panduv. Conceivably he recalled how she had defended his feverish avowals to the world at large. How she had mentioned, too, the outrider’s extreme unreliable drunkenness on the night in question. Should it ever be of use.
At last Arud said, humble before the infinite, “There are some who think in that way. Not gods, but their essence. In the capital, provided a man’s discreet . . . Even the Highest One—Cah is All. Everything. The fount of existence. Not simply a stone with breasts.”
“The Lowlanders, I hear, speak that way about snaky Anack.”
Arud frowned. “Cah is the one true goddess.”
“Then credit that the little Iscaian wife acts only in her name. Tibo’s a devout believer. Let her alone. What does your temple care? And you. You only want to be home.”
“Yes,” he said. He heaved a sigh. “I’ve a house, on a hill. Breeze-fanned in summer. Flowering vines. A fish pond. Blue walls. You’ll like my house.”
So I am to be in his house.
She thought of his love-making of recent nights, changed and passionate, and very deft. The dance of fire was over. She had become after all an instructress and courtesan.
Besides, she had not been able to safeguard herself. Or perhaps she should not have asked her own gods to fill the void in her days. Jokingly, Yasmat had intervened.
“Arud,” she said, for he was learning, too, that in private he would be addressed by his name.
“What is it now?”
“I’m carrying your son.”
He seemed to consider this. Some minutes passed.
“Well, how do you know it’ll be a boy?”
“I know.”
That would have been her role in Zakoris, in the sea village. To take men in, to thrust men forth. But she was fit and vital. A pregnancy would not quell her. It would be a child of late spring or early summer.
Yes, she was strong. The strength of any partner would be superfluous to her. Her lovers, whatever their reverence for a dancer’s genius, or their titles or intellectual knowledge of songs or stars, they had, none of them, been her spirit’s match.
And a warrior needed wars. Iscah would be one long campaign. She laughed aloud, and Arud said, “You’re glad then, you Zakr girl, to be filled with my son?”
“Only delighted to delight you, master.”
“You’ll be mistress of my house. Have no worries on that front.”
One must not employ irony. Be generous and lesson in generosity. At least, keep quiet.
He glanced down and saw her, striding by him, straight and royal, black as night, her long hair like a banner—having no past, for he had given her reality. He stopped his zeeba. He took her up before him. It was not Iscaian, and the outriders stared.
BOOK 4
Moih
14
A Moiyan Wedding
Unlike the nuptuals of most of Vis, the marriages of Lowlanders were not concerned with the Red Star. It was well-known, Vis over, the Plains Race was immune to Zatis. For the mixed blood, and the Dortharians, Xarabs, and others who interwed on the Plains, they did not seem to mind too much not waiting on into the hot months. The first of summer, after the rains, before the deluge of the heat, that was the favored time, in the southern south.
In the province of Moih, the dual city-state of coastal Moiyah and the inland metropolis of Hibrel, a thriving culture had for some sixty years been growing up. Giving fealty direct to the Storm Lords of Dorthar, the cities and towns of Moih were democratically governed by their elected councils, enriched by their merchant fleets and traders’ guilds, tolerant in the extreme of all gods, while cleaving themselves proudly always to Anackire, Lady of Snakes. There was neither racial, religious nor class stricture in the mores and legalities of Moih. Theoretically, there, you might befriend and worship whom you chose, and rise to whatever position you were capable of. Out of the melting pot of persecution, off the anvil of two famous wars, Moih had emerged, splitting herself free of the Lowland Way. Not for her the passive and unorganized fatalism still current in the southernmost Plains. Nor the xenophobia of the purist Amanackire, one of whose strongholds, the city of Hamos, lay four days’ ride from Hibrel’s outskirt, behind a barricade of ethnic ice. Correspondingly, as the frigid zealots had gathered to their own, into bustling Moih flocked the makers and doers of the Lowland people, along with representatives of almost every Vis-Plains mixture possible.
The wedding customs of Moih, therefore, tended somewhat to variety.
Upon this, one particular bridegroom was not pondering, late in the day in Moiyah.
Attired like a peacock for the event, it was nevertheless obvious that the good-looking young man was himself no son of the Plains. His hair and eyes were blackest black, his skin boldly metallic. Indeed, against the darkness of him, his Moiyan marriage clothes of white and gilt looked especially well.
She had seen him in something less elegant, the first time.
The bridegroom smiled. He was-exhilarated, and a very little nervous, for this sunset’s rituals were alien, and he meant to present them faultlessly. For her sake, of course.
If it came to that, what had he thought of her, at the first sighting? He had been half-blinded still by what had led up to it, and coming into the bay of Moiyah, among all the creamy shipping, the painted walls above with the golden Anackire perched there, and then beholding the flaxen throng in the port—he felt a sort of fear or disgust. Xenophobia was his portion, too. The ship had been difficult enough. Something in him was starving for the multitudes of his own kind—And in and out of the jostling crowd along the quayside, had come the two daughters of Arn Yr, with their maid.
Annah, the elder, was also the taller of the two, with a dainty porcelain head bound and wound with hair like ripened wheat. News had already run east, of the Aarl-mouth, the great wave, and their outflanking tempests. There had been unearthly dawns and sunfalls, too, at Moiyah. Arn’s ship. Pretty Girl, was anxiously looked for. Getting word from the agent that she was approaching the bay, his daughters hurried down to make sure of their father. But Elissi had seen the ship-lord first. Arn himself, enthusiastically waving in return, pointed out both girls to his passengers.
Elissi was slight and small, fair-skinned but summer tanned. Her hair was so light that the sunshine sent it up like a scarf of white fire. But she had remembered her Ommish granddam. Elissi’s eyes, like the eyes of Ommos, and of Ahsaar, and of Corhl, were jets.
Maybe Chacor had been consoled by her black eyes. When, later, he came to look into them.
He had meant to go away quickly. Up into Zarabiss, to Dorthar, or to the homeland, like a frightened dog. The kindness and the openheartedness of Moih he accepted, and was prepared to repay if he could, like provisions bought on credit. He knew these people were alive, had characters and minds, even souls perhaps, as he did. But they were nevertheless dream-people.
Of the daunting telepathy of the Plains there was not much overt evidence. The Amanackire prided themselves on their secret inner speaking, but in the mercantile peoples of Moih the art had been restricted, from craft, or common politeness, more to the family circle. On Pretty Girl they had seemed to take care not to bother their Vis passengers with displays of minds in dialogue. In Arn Yr’s house, though it was sometimes apparent a thought had passed between the kindred, they saved their wordless discussions for the private rooms.