Rather then dismay, the memory energized her. Almost in gladness she turned, her eyes on the amber embers of the goddess’ gaze, and set her hand firmly on the base of the image.
Never before, never in all her life normally, would she have been allowed to touch. How cold the goddess felt, like sheerest snow, yet her eyes were fire. Suddenly an outburst of sweetness rushed through Tibo. Only in the arms of her lover had she felt any comparable emotion. She could not keep back a cry of love and joy.
Then the grip of the priests came, prizing her brutally away. They turned her again, and pulled her right arm out from her body, to look at it. In her whirling ecstasy, for a moment, Tibo was not properly aware. But the peak could not sustain her forever, or she could not suffer it. She sank back into herself, and found she stood alone, the men as before in a circle around her, muttering nervously.
The nasal impeded voice of the High Priest cut through this hoarse soft hubbub.
“A wonder. The goddess.”
Some knowledge came to Tibo. She looked down at her hand, still held out before her palm upward. It stung her faintly, as if indeed she had put it on to frozen snow. Even as she saw its unmarked surface and considered the sensitivity, already fading, Tibo felt another thing—a blast of great heat emanating from the statue of Cah behind her.
The image grew hot during a testing. A malefactor, touching Cah, was burned, and so the crime was proved. It was not spontaneous psychic combustion. An oven, set under the altar and the statue, was fired at such times, until the hollow stone of the goddess scorched. When the suspect was thought to be blameless the oven was kept low, and the stone only warmed. When reckoned culpable, they stoked the oven high. Some, usually women, nevertheless tried to keep their hands against the surface.
Today the furnace under Cah was leaping. But Tibo, flesh plastered to the stone, was forced away unburned.
If they were terrified, or only perplexed, still they trusted the power of Cah. The world was simple. Such things could only be accepted.
When Tibo emerged on to the terrace before the temple, she saw people were waiting under the hill. The priest who had come out with her called to the crowd in a high voice: “Cah has judged this one innocent.”
Tibo moved down the hill slowly. The hill was muddy and the street more so. Face upon face stared at her, and one of the men snatched up her right hand, and gaped at it, and showed it to others, and let it fall with an oath.
All that remained now was to make the four hours’ journey back to the farm.
As she went up out of Ly, rain began to fall again, hard as stones, across Tibo’s neck and shoulders.
The fire had perished on their hearth, Orhn, shivering even in his sleep, having forgotten to put on the branches and logs his wife had left ready. Fifty years before, it would have been a tragedy, but in recent times, even to the uplands of Iscah, had come flint and tinder. Tibo brought the fire to being again. The universal symbol of death, a fire gone out, did disturb her. But she was very tired. Tired as never in her life.
She sat at the hearth as the flames bloomed to vitality, and comforted the head of Blackness. She had brought both the bitch-dogs into the house with her. Neither was fecund, after the winter; the warmth of the hovel might bring it on. Orhn would not mind. In his childish way he liked the dogs.
When he woke, her husband, Tibo rose and began to prepare food. Her mind was quite empty, darkened and contained, its vistas closed, like the valley when a deep mist clung on the mountains. If anything had happened, it was over.
“Eat, master,” she said to Orhn, setting down the platter.
She would care for him. He was now the only child she had.
BOOK 2
Alisaar, part one
4
The Fire Ride
The city skies were filled by the morning hunt of the hawks. They stooped and fell and rose again, broken prey in their grasp, with an unalterable motion.
Until one single hawk stooped, fell, and continued to fall-Through all the rings of light and color, dawn and distance, it plummeted—into the garbage of an alley.
The man who had come oversea from Vardian Zakoris that morning, was a four-generation mix. His skin was black, his hair light brown, and his eyes, too, had been washed down from the blacks or yellows of his ancestors’, to one of the strange occasional grays you saw now in such breeding. He was otherwise unremarkable, a merchant-trader off one of the score of foreign ships in the harbor.
New Alisaar perhaps interested Vardish Zakorians, still themselves under the full sway of blond rule. For New Alisaar, while she paid dues to her Shansar king in the north, was elsewhere solely independent Vis. And of her ruby cities, the port of Saardsinmey was queen. Ninety years had gone into her building, her long boulevards, her teem of alleys, the red tiling that dragonplated her. She flew into the bargain the three-tailed dragon-banner of the former kingdom. As for the northern half of Alisaar, the Shansarian province, they termed it here, with a scathing lightness, Sh’alis.
It was also a propitious time to be in town. This evening would bring Saardsinmey’s great summer race, the one they called the Fire Ride. The city was a hotbed of wild and spirited gambling, aglow with all the blood-lust and factious rivalry of secondhand danger.
Thinking of this and working at his accounts under the awning on the inn’s roof, the mix trader had not neglected his cup, but others had, and now there was a dearth in it. The inn was of the best, far up along Five Mile Street. You expected decent service.
“Hey!” the Var-Zakor shouted, banging his cup on the table.
The noon hour was a busy one, but the three girls catering to roof top custom were not hurrying, rather pausing here and there to chat and flirt. They were thorough Visians, too, oil-black hair and eyes, and firm brazen skins that seemed to invite a caress, a pinch, or a slap. The Var-Zakor took pride in his own elements of pallor, such as they were. As the nearest girl came leisurely toward him, he gave her a glare which, in certain quarters of the homeland, would have made any Vis step lively. But she only stood by, wine-pitcher on hip, and, what was more, raised her smooth-strung brows at him like two black bows.
He thrust his cup forward.
“The jug’s empty,” she said.
“Then get on and fill it, you lazy cat.”
She was well-dressed, with gold on her arms, no less, and a flower in her hair. She looked back at him and she said, “Keep a civil tongue, if you please.” Making no move to obey.
“Don’t try any of your lip with me,” said the mix. “Get about your business, or do you want something to speed you up, sow-face?”
“You’ve got a foul mouth,” said she. “I doubt if our wine will wash it out.”
At that the mix rose. He brought down his left hand on her shoulder, liking the feel of it even as he drew back his right hand to strike her. To his astonishment—and pain—her knee came up and struck him first in the belly. The trader doubled over, aware even as he coughed for breath that all along the benches customers laughed, thinking it funny. Saardsinmey was a Vis stronghold, and needed teaching manners. Better start with her.
She was hastening back toward the stair when the Var-Zakor caught her. Someone shouted her an amused warning across the tables, but that was all. The mix snared her by her Vis hair and pulled her around. She tried to hit him with the pitcher now, but he pushed off her arm. This time he landed out with his fists. The pitcher went flying and was smashed. She gave a faint scream as she dropped. He had struck her just under the left eye, she would have a fancy bruise to remind her of him, but he was not done yet. As he drew back his foot to gift her a good sound memento of a kick, someone said to him politely, “Wait a moment.” This checked the mix. He glanced up and noticed a stillness had come over the inn roof. Suddenly it was so quiet the rumbling noises of the street below intruded, one might hear crickets in the creepers and the bells on the awning in a passing breeze.