Rhodia was not a native of the priest-ruled city, but of Lelanos, which was not very far from here. Not far, that is, in distance…
She had caused herself to be captured and made a slave. Her capacities had quickly raised her to a position of trusted wardress of captives who were to play a leading part in the sacrificial ceremonies. Many were the unfortunate ones whom she had guarded, cared for, and seen lifted up on the plinth above the blood-filled stone god. No, she had not been able to save any of these, not one of the important victims, though she had managed to spirit away a few, not many, of the lesser slaves. Her task had been to position herself ready for my capture, so that she could save me. She… she… I was making myself use this word, as I saw a dim light begin to fill the passages we fled along, and as I saw her, Rhodia, this strong, tall, handsome female, running along beside me where I was being carried in the arms of a male slave. I had to say she, think she—yet in my half-trance or sleep, in the almost complete dark of the deep earth, I had been able to feel only Nasar, his presence had been there around me.
What is that quality in an individual so strong, so independent of looks, sex, age, species—independent of the planet “he” or “she” or originates from—that enables one to walk into a completely dark room, where one had not expected anyone to be, and to stammer out—a name! It doesn’t matter what name! Nasar. Rhodia. Canopus.
Yes, it has happened to me. More than once.
But it has only to happen once for it to become impossible ever after to do more than salute an appearance, or the distinctions of a race or a sex, while recognising that other, deeper truth. I had known this unique and individual being as Nasar, the tormented man in Koshi. And so the associations of my brain made me want to name her “Nasar.” Had I met this being first as Rhodia, then other names would come just as reluctantly to my tongue.
The light was growing stronger, and I kept my eyes on Rhodia, reaching out with my sight, as if there was some truth there I could not grasp. She was Nasar, and she was not; he was Rhodia, but he was not… whatever was there inside that female shape was deeply familiar to me. But beyond this puzzle something else. There was a bleached look to her, and she had a pallid and even repelling aspect at moments when the light fell more strongly at the angle of a passage. I wondered if she had been struck lightning, or had some disease… In the dungeons, and in the room with the eight men, I had not seen her clearly, either from the dimness of the light, or because of pressure from anxious thoughts.
So disquieting did I find these glimpses of her that I tried to turn my attention from her, and instead reviewed what I knew about recent events so to make some kind of coherent picture.
Rhodia’s main concern, when I was taken prisoner, was to make sure that the talismans should not fall into their hands: very evil use would been made of them. For, in spite of their efforts, Grakconkranpatl had not once managed to steal any of the articles that had, for this time, Canopean effect.
Her second concern—and I was expected to understand and to agree with this order of priorities—was to get me away. She had caused the priests to believe that I had powers they would be wise to fear. They believed I had made the ornaments vanish by use of these powers. But they had not been of one mind, the group of Overlords, or Chief Priests, whom I had seen: they had almost decided to take me out of their city and leave me to make my way back to my own kind if I could—if I could. But I had actually been seen arriving “from the heavens.” They could not cause the memory of this to vanish from the minds of their enslaved peoples. So it had been given out that I was an enemy, drawn to the city and into their hands, by their cunning powers. Enemies were always publicly sacrificed. If I simply vanished, never to be seen again, this could weaken the powers of this caste, who ruled by fear. So in the end it had been decided to cut the heart from my breast, in the temple, had been always been done. But Rhodia had strengthened their doubts.
When I was pushed up on to the plinth they were all apprehensive. There was a point in the ceremony when the priests shouted and sang to their “Gods” that they were the Dead, identifying themselves temporarily with the sacrificed ones who would almost immediately in fact be dead: the victims were in some ambiguous and rather unsatisfactory way—to a rational mind—the same as those murdered them. My call, Death to the Dead, condemned the entire priestly caste. Behind the idol was a stone that moved on levers, used for purposes of trickery and illusion in the ceremonies. As my threat momentarily froze the priests and then made them run from where I stood bathed in the unexpected green ray, Rhodia and her accomplices turned the stone, and pulled me down into the rooms underneath the temple proper. This was the most dangerous part of the escape, for of course those clever priests were not likely to remain confused for long. It was, for a few moments, speed that had to save us. There were passages under the buildings of the city, running everywhere below the tunnels used by the slaves. These were complicated, and none known to all of the priests: a tyranny is always self-divided, always a balance of competing interests.
It was this that saved us, the jealous knowledge of mutually suspicious sects. But Rhodia had learned of every one of the passageways. As our band fled deeper and further, the guards of the priests were running parallel to us at times, or above us, and they might very well come on the right turning by accident and encountered us—but Rhodia knew of a very old and disused system of tunnels, made long ago by slaves who had tried to dig their way to safety and had been caught. Once we found the entrance to these we were safe.
We found ourselves on the side of a high mountain, in a little cleft among rocks, screened by bushes. Far below us was the priests’ dark city. And I saw those poor slaves who had come with us fling themselves on the sun-fed earth and kiss it and weep. And when they lifted their faces, of that faded red-earth colour, to the sun, I fancied that I saw health come into that starved skin even as I watched. And as Rhodia watched, standing aside, waiting for them to be past their first convulsion of delight.
She caught my questioning thought and said to me: “These are the slaves I was able to talk to, and who I was able to trust.”
It was an obvious, a simple, thing to say. She could have said nothing else! Yet it struck me so painfully then, the strength, the inexorableness of the laws that govern us all. Down in the chilly dim prisons under the priests’ city, slaves who—some of them—could remember nothing else, having been born there, had been able to respond to some quality that they—recognised? remembered?—in a fellow slave who was better than they only in as much as she was able, so it must often seemed to them, to torment them, stand in authority over them… But they had seen, felt something in her, listened; and because of some—chance?—qualities in themselves, had been found reliable. Trustworthy. And so it was they who now kissed the earth on the free mountainside, and lifted their faces to the sun. For the first time in their lives, for some of them. It was a thought enough to chill the heart—my heart that, if it were not for Rhodia, would now have been lying in a pool of blood in the idol’s hollowed-out belly. And she knew what I was thinking and smiled. And for the first time I caught from her a physical memory of Nasar, and his derisive angers. It was Nasar, for that moment, sharing with me an appreciation of our grim necessities… so strongly there that I could have been back him at the top of the tall cone with the snow flying past.