Pacing, impatient now for Venniver to be there, not to be left alone with whatever forces crowded her, she stood once more before the locked books so neatly arranged. What could they contain of such importance?
Maybe one day Venniver would unlock them for her. Or perhaps she would unlock them herself.
When she turned, her hand trailing the brass binding, Venniver stood in the doorway looking at her. He moved into the room slowly, removing his cloak. “Do they interest you, my locked books?”
“They—they are beautifully made,” she said quickly. “As is everything here. To find this,” she said, indicating the room, then her eyes holding his, “to find all this in a city where everything else is—yet so unfinished . . .”
“So rough.”
“Yes.”
He came easily toward her. “You fit this room nicely. You have an elegance, my dear Tayba—when you are dressed for it, when you have washed the grease away—that goes very nicely here. Now come and pour some wine for us.” He set out an amber flask and two glasses and, while she poured, he laid aside his belt and scabbard of arrows.
And so her life became suddenly one of such contrasts as she would not have thought possible in so crude a town. If, in the daytime, she scrubbed on her knees and hoed, sweating, in the hot sun, her coarsespun scratching unbearably, nights were another matter. Then she bathed herself and dressed in something soft and entered into Venniver’s opulent apartments and into his overbearing and satisfying presence.
She did not speak of this new part of her life to Ram, nor did he. She hoped he had the decency to leave her some privacy. Besides, Ram seemed, since that night on the mountain, completely wrapped in some inner life. And he seemed so much stronger and surer of himself. Once he said, in a moment of confidence and quite casually, “It is not so hard to deal with the Seer of Pelli now. Fawdref has shown me many things.”
“What sort of things?”
“He shows me how to take what I want from HarThass and remain untouched by him.” His dark eyes were inscrutable. She dared not ask him more, but prayed to the gods for Ram, then wondered what good that did and felt helpless and inadequate.
“I must take what I need from the Seer of Pelli. When the time comes that he calls me, when he commands me to leave Burgdeeth, then I will be the stronger and need not follow his command.” He stared up at her, unsmiling. “Yes, Mamen. That is what he prepares me for—or thinks he prepares me for. To come to him. He has never ceased in that.”
“But you can’t—you cannot think to defeat him so easily. No one is stronger than the ruling Seers, Ram!”
“I do not do it easily. I work very hard at it And I will be stronger one day.”
“But if he knows what you plan . . .”
“He does not know. I can shield from him now. And I have help in that.” He looked at her steadily.
She could do nothing but believe in him and pray for him, whether the gods heard her or not.
Ram’s ninth birthday came, and she caught a bird for him in the traditional Zandourian way, in a trap Dlos provided, and let him free it at first light. He stood staring after it, wish making, but too solemn, the wish having a power in it that no normal child’s wish would have.
She knew Ram went to the mountain at night sometimes, and sometimes she heard the wolves’ chilling voices close to the town. If Venniver woke and heard them, he would sleep fitfully and be cross and irritable the next day, so the guards, and Tayba herself, avoided him. Why did the wolves upset him so? They should be—to Venniver—only wild animals no different from foxes or stag. But he never hunted wolves, Dlos told her that, though he went out after other game.
Once he said, “They are not normal wolves. Last year I cornered one in a canyon while I was hunting stag. I meant to kill it, but . . .” He scowled at her, seemed loath to reveal his feelings; but then he continued. “It looked at me the way a man would look. Wolves don’t—ordinary wolves don’t—look a man in the eye, Tayba. Never. This one did. Something—something prevented me from shooting, made me turn my arrow away. I wish—I wish they were not on the mountain.” She felt he was not telling her all of the reason for his fear. But she did not ask Venniver questions. She only listened when he wanted to talk.
He began to give her occasional gifts from the locked trunk at the foot of the bed, then from a safe hidden beside the fireplace. An amethyst ring, a deep rose pendant. He poured out amber wines for her late at night and unwrapped delicacies of soursugar and candied onyrood pods, treasures hoarded from his once-yearly trading in Aybil or Farr. Venniver’s pampering was heady fare; brought her really alive once more, his rapt attentions so very much what she wanted, what she needed to make life seem complete.
And when he told her of his plans for Burgdeeth, his eyes burned with excitement. She marvelled at his words. He had begun this town from nothing; only the plum grove had stood here beside the river Owdneet. He thought it an omen that the grove should stand, missed by the flowing lava. An omen prophesying good for Burgdeeth.
On this site he had found stone, trees for timber, dragon bone nearby. Everything except labor; and Venniver had taken care of that, had ridden into the wild hills to the east with an army of thirty men strongly mounted and routed families there, bringing out not only good slaves, but the gold they mined. Some years later when he rode out again down the river Urobb, he had taken two dozen more prime slaves, five of them Seers. Venniver smiled “I had a Seer of my own then. A willing man with a rare skill. He could block the minds of Seers so completely they never knew we were there. He died later. Died wishing he could go quicker than he did.”
He told her how he had captured the slaves along the river Urobb, slitting the sentries’ throats and driving the horses off to be rounded up later. “Fine horses, as fine a catch as those slaves, or nearly.” He lived the battle again, lustily. “They fought well. And fought the whole night before we routed them. We clubbed and bound them—a real catch, you can pick them out. The tallest, strongest ones. They’re the cleverest, too. And we have two bronze workers among them, just the thing to make the statue. That short, fat fellow, he’s of passable talent, and as strong as a bull. But the tall, defiant one with the long hair, the Seer. He’s a troublemaker, but he has real skill with the metal. He’s worth the extra trouble—until the statue’s done.”
“What—what will you do with him then?”
“Kill him, I suppose. He’s a nuisance to have around. Sell him, maybe.”
She felt a sickness grip her, then a sudden compelling desire to look at the statue, to look at Jerthon again. Felt a terrible sickness for Skeelie, who loved her brother too much. She tried to understand Venniver’s pride in the ownership of men. He looked at the slaves as if they were work animals. She rose from the deep chair, nearly spilling her wine, and began to pace. She couldn’t understand her own concern. For Urdd’s sake, what did she care! They were only slaves. “What were they doing anyway, riding along the Urobb?” she said irritably.
“I think they were fitted out for some expedition. Seeking new land, maybe. Well,” he chuckled, “they found their new land all right.” He laughed heartily, and she felt a moment of revulsion, but then watched him with increased interest. His lust for living, his cruel, headlong lust in taking life, in taking what he wanted, excited her.
And when he talked about his plans for Burgdeeth, she could see the town as he did, the grandeur of the finished city. He drew her to his desk one night to show her drawings of the Set he would build south of town, a sprawling white stone building with inner gardens and fountains where a man could live as he was meant to live. A Set with a high wall around it, and a gate that could be locked. With stables to house the mounts of the army he would keep. And at the gate of the Set, a white temple of worship for the people of Burgdeeth—but with all this, still he did not show her what was so carefully locked in those brass-bound books.