My eyes slid to the volcano. Dark pinnacle, without a cloud. Asleep again, sated, terrible for all that. A black two edged sword waiting in the sky, to let fall its red blows on the back of the land, whenever its passion moved it. There then, is the king, Darak.
A darting movement, snake’s-tongue flicker over rock.
A woman hurried across the open space before the temple, casting an indigo shadow. A man stirred uneasily in a doorway, holding a stave, looking up the road to where the people had followed Darak.
“Help us!” cried this woman. “Our three children are sick, and the doctor from Sirrain has said they’ll die.
I couldn’t bring them—they screamed when I tried to move them.”
I looked at her closely. She was no more than twenty years. Perhaps I was her age. But she looked old, her young face creased into lines, her hair faded by the sun.
“Quickly, Mara,” the man hissed from across the street.
“Please,” she said.
“Do you believe the goddess can cure your children without seeing them?”
“Yes—oh, yes—”
“Then believe I can, and they will be cured.”
Her face changed, the lines smoothed out, ripples running from a pool.
There was noise from the hill.
“Mara!” the man cried. , She turned to run with him.
“Wait,” I said. They stopped, nervous, anxious not to offend either Darak or myself. “Tell whom you wish,” I said, “whoever invokes my name, believing in it, can cure or be cured of any sickness. There is no longer any need to come to me.”
They made obeisance to me, blessing me, then ran like frightened mice.
Dust billowed down the street. The crowd was coming back, noisier than ever. There had been wine up on the hill. A small shrine there, perhaps, some old sacred meeting place Darak had thought would impress them.
There was a stone bench set at the top of the temple steps. I sat on it, waiting.
The cow ran down the street first in fright, lowing indignantly. Then came men, talking, impatient, grasping wineskins, followed by groups of women. Darak’s people were easily spotted. They were better dressed than the villagers, and more gaudy. Leather boots with tattered silk tassels, silk shirts, scarlet and purple. Belts with iron studs, gold rings, fringes on the jackets—torn like the tassles, not so much from wear as from hard fighting. Mostly they were men, but five or six girls slithered by with them, dressed like them for the most part, but with several ounces more gold around their necks, fantastic earrings, and jet-black hair, roped through with ribbons and flowers. This seemed enough. I wanted to go in, almost drunk from the sight of them, but I waited for him as I had known I would. When he came he was thoughtful, discontented, sullen. Whatever he had sought on the hill had not come to him.
More quietly dressed than the others, the two girls, one on either side of him, made up for it. They were incongruous. Their hair was a kind of parody of a court woman’s—elaborate, but too unruly to be kept in place. It stood up on their heads in hills, in plaited ropes, in twists and loops, transfixed by the blades of gold combs and jasper pins. The one nearest to me had wound pearls in and out like a pale snake trail.
Strands had unfurled onto their shoulders where they tangled in the masses of goldwork. Their dresses were silk, one crimson, one black and yellow, and under the fringed and embroidered hems were the boots of bandit-bitches, covered with muck and filth and dust.
My eyes were moving away from them to Darak, impatient. No one had seen me yet as I sat in the shadow of the door-mouth. Then I saw what hung from the throat of that pearl-haired, crimson girl. A tiny green and cool shining thing on a gold ring and chain. Jade.
I got up before I could think, my hand went out, and I shouted at her.
The whole procession stopped, stumbled around, stared at me. I did not see their expressions, only sensed them, my eyes pinned to that green cool thing between her brown bitch’s breasts.
There was silence, and then he said: “Bow to your goddess, people. Ask her to do a few tricks for you to earn her bread.”
It was very still then. The hot raw day hung close. I did not look at his face, only at the face of the girl with the jade. She grinned, raised her eyebrows, one after the other, then spat on the ground before the steps. But her eyes were tight.
I went down the steps very slowly, and I was trembling. I stood a few feet from her, and pointed to the green thing without speaking.
She laughed, and spat again. Then looked at Darak.
“What is it you want, witch? You can’t eat a green hard stone.”
“Give it to me,” I said to the bandit girl.
She made her fear into anger.
“Keep off. It isn’t yours. It’s mine. He gave it to me.”
“Not yours. He stole it. Mine, now. Give it to me.”
In spite of herself, the girl shrank away, back against his body.
“In our camp,” Darak said softly, “if one of us wants something from another, we fight for it. For food, or gold, or a knife, or a woman. Or a man. Shullatt here fought for me. And I took her. You want the green stone, you can fight her too. Shullatt’s not afraid.”
Shullatt’s eyes altered. Her courage was back. She was on her own ground again. Another moment and she would have me under her, her cat claws in my eyes, hammering my breasts with her hard elbows. I would rather fight a man than a woman. Another moment—I could not wait. My hand went out. The jade leaped into my fingers. I tugged and the chain broke.
Like cool water in my palm, the jade lay sleeping but alive.
Her moment was over, but still she moved. With my other hand I caught her hard and stinging across the whole face. Blood jetted from one nostril as she reeled backward. Darak might have steadied her. but did not bother. She went down by his feet and screamed curses at me without getting up.
Abruptly Darak smiled grimly, set the toe of his boot against the girl’s side, and quite gently kicked her.
“Be quiet,” he said. “You’ve lost the stone. She fought you for it, in her own way.”
Someone began crying and shouting. Heads turned. I could not see who it was, but I heard the voice of the woman.
“She saved my children! The doctor from Sirrain told me they’d die—but they’re alive! She made them live!”
Darak’s face set hard and contemptuous. He too spat, and turned down the street to a side alley, pushing the crowd out of the way. His bandits shouldered after him, and the girls ran to keep up. The murmuring was growing all around. I went up the steps and into the temple before they could move about me and close me in.
I pulled the broken screen against the door opening, and lay on the pallet, on my side, my knees drawn up, my hands under my chin, and against my lips the green smooth thing that was made mine, and seemed like a beginning.
Night came and blackened the world, and red stars ripped their places in the sky. I would go tonight, out, across the wide lands. Nothing mattered but the green promise. Even Darak seemed nothing at that dark twilight. But then the need of food came, unexpectedly, and with it nausea at the thought of eating, and the shrinking from the inevitable pain that would come after, and torture and slow me, and keep me from going away. How long had it lasted before? An hour, or two perhaps? Not so bad. I could bear it because I must. But it was ten days now I had not eaten.
I went out onto the steps.
A few lights flickered in open windows, in ruins, in rebuilt rooms, many in the wooden shelter Darak had had put up for the homeless. Food smells from there, thick and musky. I went that way.