A man in a strange, baggy robe stood in the entrance; as Shaso stepped back to let Briony step through the man bowed. For a moment she won¬dered if the robe marked him as a mantis, if this was indeed, despite Shaso's own denial, some back-alley temple, but when the gatekeeper finished his bow and looked up at her he proved to be a bearded youth as dark-skinned as Shaso.
"Welcome, guest," he said to her. "If you accompany Lord Shaso, you are a flower in the house of Effir dan-Mozan."
They entered the main part of the house by a covered passage beside a courtyard-Briony could dimly see what looked like a bare fruit tree at its center-which led into a low building that seemed to take up a great deal of space. A covey of women came to her and surrounded her, murmuring, only every fifth or sixth word in Briony's own tongue. They smelled charmingly of violets and rosewater and other, less familiar scents; for a
moment she was happy just to breathe in as they took her hands and tugged her toward a passageway. She looked back at Shaso in bemusement and alarm, but he was already in urgent conversation with the bearded youth and only waved her on. That was the last she saw of him, or of any man, for the rest of the evening.
The women, a mixture of old and young, but all dark-skinned, black-haired Southerners like the man at the door, led her-herded her, in truth-into a sumptuous tiled chamber lit with dozens of candles, so warm that the air was steamy. Briony was so astounded to find this palatial lux¬ury in the poorest quarter of a fishing town that she did not realize for a moment that some of the women were trying to pull her clothes off. Shocked, she fought back, and was about to give one of them a good blow of her fist (a skill learned in childhood to deal with a pair of brawling brothers) when one of the smaller women stepped toward her, both hands raised in supplication.
"Please," she said, "what is your name?"
Briony stared. The woman was fine-boned and handsome, but though her hair was shiny and black as tar, it was clear she was old enough to be Briony's mother, or even her grandmother. "Briony," she said, remember¬ing only too late that she was a fugitive. Still, Shaso had passed her to the women as though she were a saddlebag to be unpacked: she could not be expected to keep her caution while under attack by this murmuring pigeon flock.
"Please, Bri-oh-nee-zisaya," the small woman said, "you are cold and tired. You are a guest for us, yes? You cannot eat in the hada until you are bathing, yes?"
"Bathing?" Briony suddenly realized that the great dark rectangular emptiness in the middle of the room, which she had thought only a lower part of the floor, was a bath-a bath bigger than her own huge bed in the Southmarch royal residence! "There?" she added stupidly.
The women, sensing a lull in her resistance, swooped in and pulled off the rest of her sodden clothes, murmuring in pity and amusement as Briony's pale, goose-pimpled skin was exposed. She was helped to the edge of the bath-it had steps leading down! — and, to her further astonishment, several of the women disrobed and climbed in with her. Now at least she understood why the bath was so large.
The first shock of the hot water almost made her faint, then as she set¬tled in and grew used to it a deep languor crept over her, so that she nearly
fell asleep. The women giggled, soaping and scrubbing her in a way she would have found unduly intimate if it had been Rose and Moina, who had known her for years, but somehow she could not make herself care. It was warm in the bath-so blessedly warm! — and the scent of flowery oils in the steamy air made her feel as though she were floating in a summer cloud.
Out of the bath, wrapped in a thick white robe like those the women wore, she was led to a room full of cushions with a fire in a brazier at its center. Here too an inordinate number of candles burned, the flames wa¬vering as the women walked in and out, talking quietly, laughing, some even singing.
Have I died? she wondered without truly believing it. Is this what it will be like in Zona's court in heaven?
They seated her amid the cushions and the older woman brought her food; the others whispered in fascination at this, as though it were an un¬usual honor. The bowl was heaped with fruit and a cooked grain she did not recognize, with pieces of some roasted bird sitting on top, and Briony could not help remembering the woman back in Kinemarket with her broods of chickens and children. She wondered if that woman in her damp, smoky cottage could even imagine a place like this, less than a day's walk away.
The food was excellent, hot and flavored with spices Briony did not know, which at other moments might have put her off, but now only added to the waking dream. At last she lolled back on the cushions, full, warm, and gloriously dry. The younger women cleared away Briony's bowl and the empty goblet from which she had drunk some watered wine, and the older woman sat beside her.
"Thank you," Briony said, although that did not suffice.
"You are tired. Sleep." The woman waved and one of the others brought a blanket which they draped on Briony where she lay among the embroi¬dered cushions.
"But… where am I? What is this place?"
"The hada of Effr dan-Mozan," the woman said. "My… married?"
"Your husband?"
"Yes. Just so." The woman smiled. One of her teeth was covered in gold. "And you are our honored guest. Sleep now."
"But why…?" She wanted to ask why this house in such a strange
place, why the bath, why all these beautiful dark-skinned women in the middle of Marriiiswalk, but all that came out was that word again."Why?"
"Because the Lord Shaso brought you here," the woman said. "He is a great man, cousin of our old king. He honors our house."
They didn't even know who she was. Shaso was the royalty here.
Briony slept then, floundering through confusing dreams of warm rivers and icy cold rain.
5
At Liberty
But the first son of Zo and Sva, who they named Rud, the golden arrow of the daytime sky, was killed in the fight against the demons of Old Night. Their younger son Sveros, lord of twilight, seized Rud's widow Madi Oneynafor his own, and swore that he would be a father to Rud's son Yirrud, but in truth he sent a cloud to breathe upon Yirrud where Onyena had hidden him in the mountain fastness and the child sickened and died.
Instead of giving Oneyna a new child to replace the one he had taken,
Sveros also took her twin, Surazem, who we call Moist Mother Earth,
and fathered three children upon her,
who were the great brothers, Perin, Erivor, and Kernios.
— from The Beginnings of Things The Book of the Trigon
F
REEDOM WAS BOTH frightening and exhilarating. It was won¬derful to be able to walk the streets on her own, with nothing be¬tween her and life but a hooded robe-she had not known such liberty since she was a young child, when she had known nothing else and had not appreciated what a sublime gift it truly was.
In fact, it was a bit confounding to have so many choices. Just now, Qin-nitan couldn't decide whether to return to the main road winding through Onir Soteros, the neighborhood just behind the Harbor of Kalkas which she had called home for almost a month, or to continue following the
winding streets farther into the great city, expanding her area of conquest as she had almost every day.
What a place in which to have gained her freedom! Hierosol was a huge city, perhaps not quite as large as Xis, the place she had escaped, but not a great deal smaller, either-a massive rumpled blanket of hills and valleys sit¬ting athwart several bays, commanding both the Kulloan Strait and the Os-teian Sea, nearly every inch covered with the constructions of several different centuries. Ancient Xis sat on a high plain as flat as a marble floor, and from any of its high places you could see all the way to both the north¬ern sea and the southern desert. Here in Hierosol she had not yet managed to climb high enough to see anything but other hills, Citadel Hill the tallest of them all, looming above the others like a noble head gazing out across the straits, the rest of the city trailing down the slopes behind it like a cape.