Rehger was sitting beside the water tank. The moon had risen, and the fish in the tank, by day golden as Lowland eyes, were rising to the surface to see it.
Enclosing the garden’s stillness was the breathing lull of a late city night. The dark beyond the walls was sparingly patched with glowing windows. Now and then a strain of music might be sounded, or mellow voices on the streets below. Sometimes even there rose the murmur of the sea. It was not an hour or a spot for altercation. And, despite any likenesses, it was not Saardsinmey. “So, you’re to stay here and be a Moiyan.” Rehger looked up, and another fish broke the moon on the tank, or it might have been this time one of the sintal flowers, falling down there. “Vanek’s proposal meets a need, I think.” “And was arranged beforehand, I think.” “Yes,” said Rehger. “As we’ve noticed, Arn Yr’s a generous man.”
They had conversed, the Lydian and the Corhl, only rarely on the ship. It was not that Rehger pushed him off, avoided him—it was that Rehger gave him attention—yet did not seek any response in turn. There was none of the comradeship of survival that Chacor anticipated. Rehger did not confide. He listened and replied, and was often alone. And as they went away perforce to the pale shores of the foreigners’ country, Chacor missed, and wanted, something. He had, from the beginning, wanted something of Rehger. To best him, or be bested. To vaunt, to copy, the polish of abrasion. Events had made them reluctant sharers, or—she had done so.
They had walked, each of them, behind her bier. They had taken shelter in her tomb. Together they had escaped.
Chacor said suddenly, “Was it true?”
Rehger did not say What do you mean? He seemed only to consider how the fish rose and the flowers fell, and the moon, breaking and reforming, shattered and born. Then: “I believed I’d killed you. That horrified me. I’d never killed in that way. You know why it happened? It occurred to me you saw.”
“The Anack priest-trick, sword to snake.” (Something else hers, shared.)
Chacor leaned on a tree. It no longer seemed to be anything to do with him, the death-blow, the healing. Could his indifference be sane, or wise? Better to suppose, maybe, his memory was at fault. When he spoke of it, it was as if he forced himself to do it, not in terror, but out of courtesy to some nameless element of his physical personality, or some aspect of his goddess. (He should make Corrah a decent offering. If anyone had saved him, it was Corrah.) After all, the Amanackire had died herself.
As though there had been some clamor, now stillness returned, the living stillness of garden and night. In the vine arbor, if they spoke, it was without any words.
“Before she died,” Rehger said, “Aztira told me I’d meet my father in Moih. When the time came due. I’ve never known my father. For several reasons, I’m curious about him.”
Because Rehger had not said previously What do you mean? Chacor, now, did not blurt out, Oh, was that how she was called—the Lowland witch—Aztira?
“Would she be accurate about a thing like that?”
“I think so.”
They had been lovers (Something not shared.)
“I intend,” said Chacor, “to go north. Xarabiss sounds a likely venue. Or Dorthar. I gather Ommos stinks. But I regret I’m in his debt, our ship lord.”
“I don’t imagine Arn’s much of a man for keeping tally of debts.”
A fish, larger than the rest, leapt through the reflection of the moon. The continual breaking of the light ... It was destroyed, it could not be destroyed.
“Well, I’ll look for your Raldnor statue, coming into Xarabiss, on a car of gold, with trumpets,” said Chacor.
Walking along Amber Street half an hour later, Chacor heard a wolfish step pacing to catch up to him. You did not expect footpads in Moiyah, but that was not to say they were absent. Chacor, knife most ready, turned about and found Annah’s betrothed on his heels.
“You handle yourself like a fighter,” said the latter. “Not ready for sleep? Listen, excuse my frankness, but do you want a girl? There’s a very appealing house I can recommend. They used to know me there, before I cast myself at Annah’s feet. Quite a few of the officers go there. The girls are mostly Xarabians; winsome. Don’t worry about money. I can cover that.”
“Why?” said Chacor belligerently.
Annah’s betrothed shrugged. “Why not? I’m happy tonight.”
His proper name was Jerish. He was the captain of one hundred men of the Moiyah garrison. The curl in his accent came from his father’s being a Vathcrian, and the tongue of the other continent the first language at home. He had once observed in Chacor’s hearing that his father accused him of speaking his Vathcrian conversely in the accents of Vis.
“You know what’s wrong with your Moiyan city?” said Chacor.
“No, what?”
“You give too much.”
They began to stroll northwest, into the streets behind the race-track. Moiyah was never dark, painted all over and well-lit at night by street lamps. Where they burned closest to the sintal trees, with which every park and garden of the city seemed planted, a warm fragrance wafted out that filled the avenues.
“My pack are starting for the fort in two days. You could travel with us if you want. Save you the chance of robbers on the border.”
“And if I like, you’ll help me get into the army, which is always in need of fit and healthy men, regardless of race or religion.”
“That’s true. I tell you, we still get reavers on our bit of sea. And we like to show New Alisaar fair will and a firm face.”
“But as luck has it, you can now forget Saardsinmey.”
They parted near the cattle market, from which a faint shifting and lowing mocked Chacor as he strode off.
Passing back again by the race-track, he took unfriendly note of tomorrow’s races pinned up on the gate.
Even Anack gave.
At noon the next day, plunged from a sleepless bed, he had put put the ultimate scrap of his financial hide upon a black Shansar racer, and won twenty silver parings, Moih rate.
Then when he reached the Corrah temple, he saw Elissi passing in under the porch and petrified, thinking he had gone mad.
But no, there was the little maid against a pillar, rocking the pet monkey like a baby.
Chacor stationed himself in the doorway of the shrine opposite, and waited, in a bemused fury. After perhaps the third of an hour, Elissi came out of the temple. There was a brilliant flush in the clear honey of her cheeks which, as Chacor arrived in her path, faded into pallor.
“What were you doing in there?” said Chacor. When
Elissi only stared at him, he said, “Do you go there regularly, you pious ones, to spit on the altar?”
“No.”
“What then?”
Elissi ran suddenly from guilty shame to annoyance.
“What do you think? To make an offering.”
“What? The worshiper of Anack the Serpent goes to the dirt-heap of the unbeliever to offer?” (He had chosen to forget Arn and the fire god.) In her face then he saw a struggle to be serene, as when dealing with an irrational, fractious child. This caused him to burst out loudly, “And won’t the snake woman enviously strike at you for it?”
People turned to glance their way, good-humoredly, not catching the gist, probably guessing here were two lovers quarreling.
Elissi blushed now with embarrassment, but raising her head, faced him out, as if across a shield rim. “Anackire has no jealousy. Anackire is everything,” she told him stingingly. “Anackire is the name we give the State of Life, of existence, body and soul, earth and eternity. But you give it the name Corrah, And so I came to your Corrah, and made an offering to your Corrah, since we seldom offer to Anackire, and Anackire isn’t yours.”
Chacor could only glare at her. Her flaming black jets of eyes glared back.
At last, “Why?” he said again.
“That the sympathy should pass directly to you, if able. As I’d speak where I could to a man in a language he knew. I asked that she might give you peace of mind.”