Lilith’s Castle

Her mother used to carry her in safety, in front before the saddle, so that she could sit straight and believe she was riding alone, stretch forward and embrace the striding warmth of the mare’s shoulders or, leaning back, nestle into the fur binding of Lemani’s jacket: when they were all young and hopeful, Nandje not yet leader of his people, Lemani a beautiful young woman whose silver and jet jewellery was handed down from the oldest ancestors, perhaps from Hemmel herself; when she had sisters still alive and was herself a child, Garron a little boy, and Kiang an unborn soul in the Palace of Shadows. Those were the days, the Ima at peace with their enemies and with one another, the grass rich, the horses glossy and fat, Nandje himself strong and ardent, but wise. Gry let herself pretend, feeling the white wolf-fur and the cold, hard beads and the sharp-pointed silver stars touch her back. She grew tolerably warm.

The grass flowed like a dark river beneath them, the Horse and herself; but sometimes he made mighty bounds and sideways leaps across streams or into the stretches of gravel that appeared with greater frequency as they neared the wastelands; and always a restlessness or a tensing in her mind preceded these leaps and bounds so that Gry knew she must likewise move back a little way or tense the muscles of her legs to keep her seat on his back. The Horse, it was clear, was trying to confuse anyone who might find and follow his hoofprints.

The low hills of the open country gave way to steeper, rocky hills. Narrow valleys, which the Horse must thread, passed between them; falls of water dropped suddenly, cascading out of the dark; a rustling patch of bushes, which might hide any number of thieves, or lions, appeared on the left. Yet, the Red Horse hardly slowed his pace and, in Gry’s mind, nine words constantly jumped and span,

‘Good. Free. Good Bridle. Free of. It is good to be free of the Bridle.’

In Garsting, Aza, flushed with kumiz and the madness of failed magic, crawled from the Meeting House and squinted at the sky. A flight of cranes passed overhead, marking the ground with their cleft shadows. Aza read what the shadows told him: the Heron is dead. The hoofmarks in the grass told him the rest: the girl has fled with the Horse. He plodded wearily across the village to the storehouse.

It had become a death house during the long night. Aza crouched to examine Heron’s throttled, bloodstained body, primming his thin lips briefly, almost smiling when he saw what carnal conquest the historian had been attempting when he died, his scarlet, double apron cast aside but still attached to his unbuckled belt, his unwound loincloth stained with the tinctures of his last, greedy act and with the bright blood which had spurted from the unstoppable fountain of his heart.

‘She did not have a dagger – she found a dagger? One was lost among the skins, perhaps?’

The shaman puzzled over Heron’s death-wound. As to the throttling, it was all too obvious how that had come about: the iron grey horsehide which was still wound tight about Heron’s head and neck had come from the stallion, Winter, jealous rival of the Red Horse, fast and cunning, if a mite too weak to usurp the rule of the Horse. Both stallions had favoured the white mare, Summer, but the Horse had won and taken her; now she nursed and nurtured the Red Colt while Winter had died in the last Killing, driven over the precipice of the Rock of SanZu. Leal had skinned him; Garron and Kiang had disembowelled and cut up his carcass; Leal’s mother had made him into wholesome food, dried hross, succulent stews, sausages thin and thick, lard – but it had been Heron who spoke the ritual of placation over all the dead horses of the killing-harvest. So.

Aza frowned and struck his forehead with his rattle. None of this explained the heart-wound. None of it made sense. And his head was thick with kumiz-ache, his mouth and tongue parched, longing for a draught of clear river-water.

Heron was dead. Nothing remained of the Ima’s long history but a few fragments in the head of Heron’s successor, Thrush – who had committed only one third to memory. What was left? Gossip and women’s talk; some songs; the Lays, the Tales too – inaccurate fables which praised the ancestors and the deeds of the rare and heroic strangers who strayed into the Plains. Heron was dead. History was dead.

Henceforth, all Ima history would begin with the Red Horse’s Flight.

Why had he gone with her?

Aza trembled then, recalling his accusations in the Meeting House: ‘this daughter of foxes, this sister of the wolf, has stolen the will of the Ima’ and ‘how else but by sorcery could she tame and ride the Horse?’ He had not known fear since he had fought to rid himself of the death-curse of his last wife, and now it visited him, licking the nape of his neck with its long and slimy tongue, laughing and blowing up the skirts of his gown so that he shivered. He wanted to rid himself of it, lie down upon the spirit bear and surrender to the dreams which lived there – he could not. He must discover Revenge, drag her out and parade her before the Ima until they, too, were possessed with her spirit.

Aza closed Heron’s eyes and weighted them with stones. That was all he could do: for rites, for burial, the historian must wait; meanwhile, let him haunt whoever and wherever he would. The shaman crawled into the day, uncovered his drum and began to beat it. He pounded it, walking always about the village, hurrying before the crowd as it gathered.

Leal Straightarrow, Garron and Kiang, Nandje’s sons, ran in a pack with their supporters:

‘Gry is gone!’

‘May Mother Earth protect her.’

The men rushed from their beds, or from their drunken slumber in the Meeting House:

‘Who is dead?’

‘The story of the Ima has been murdered.’

The women came from their milking, wild-eyed and wailing:

‘Where is the Horse?’

‘Search for the Horse! Find our Red Horse!’

For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf,

and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack

Night stayed a long time in the wastelands where it was hard for the sun to penetrate the valleys and drive away the shadows which dwelt amongst them. The crags seemed to build themselves up about Gry and the Red Horse, towering high, until they resembled buildings made by men. Nandje had told her how the city men, they of Tanter, Myrah, Pargur, made themselves artificial cliffs and tors from stone, great hollow eyries where men and women ate and slept, made love, gave birth and died. Castles, they were called. So, Gry imagined these fabled people as she rode, lords and ladies, sorceresses and magicians, lovely Nemione, evil Koschei.

Overhanging bushes caught at her clothing. She could duck and dodge them but the shadows, which travelled with them and tormented her because she could not make out what they were, she could not avoid; and, soon, she noticed that the shadows had legs and were running; she saw ears, long, bushy tails and ‘Wolves!’ she breathed. Wolves, which could catch the birds out of the air and pull down a charging wisent and, easily, a horse, even one as fleet and mighty as this, her saviour.

‘But wolves are Good Animals,’ murmured the Voice.

It was clear that the wolves were driving the Red Horse. He had lost impetus and his pace had slowed. The wolves knew where they wanted him to go and pushed him on with small rushes and nips at his heels. Gry tucked her feet up, as high as they would go on the undulating back of the Horse. Above and before them, the lowering cliffs and giddy bluffs had joined themselves together to make a castle indeed, an ominous pile of deep, unpierced darkness which loomed huge at the summit of a pile of jagged rock. She was terrified, feeling the Horse tremble too. They were forced on, always on, and upward towards the walls in which, at the last dreadful moment when she believed the wolves would trap and overcome them against the barrier, she saw a doorway – yet it wasn’t a doorway, only an arched formation in the rock and the great room beyond was no chamber but an open space, walled in by the rocks and roofed with the dark sky and a welter of glittering stars. This castle had not been built by men.

The wolf pack had fallen behind, dragging itself like a furred train after the Horse; ready, she thought, to run in and dismember them whenever it would with teeth of ivory and jaws of iron, and she crouched lower on his back and bit into a strand of his mane in her fear. He had stopped moving altogether and was bowing his head, cowering before a lone wolf almost as big as he. The wolf pointed its nose in the air and howled, ‘Foe, foe, foe!’ and the pack answered, ‘Woe, woe, woe!’, its hundred voices reverberating among the rocks and echoing across the sky, loose and terrible among the cold stars.

‘It is their queen,’ whispered the Voice and Gry, in the same moment, thought, ‘It’s the Wolf Mother.’

The great wolf sniffed the air and put out her red tongue. She panted and her tongue lolled over her teeth and moved about her jaw and her thin black lips – ‘She’s smiling,’ Gry said aloud. ‘Just like my Juma when I give her sweet grass to eat,’ – The tail of the wolf thumped audibly on the ground. ‘And they are going to eat us.’

The wolf walked slowly all round the Horse, who had become a horse merely, a poor mesmerised animal stripped of his power; about to die. Again, she circled them and stopped, was approaching, was close, her head level with Gry’s knee. Gry shrank back, and felt the wolf’s wet tongue lick her foot. She looked into the beast’s eyes where a yellow flame flickered in a ring about pupils as dark and deep as wells; soon, when she had enjoyed her triumph, the wolf would pull her by the ankle from her perch.

The wolf continued to lick, smoothly, softly. She backed away and crouched on the ground, her hindquarters high and her tail tucked so far in, it was no longer visible. Her ears shrank; she pulled them tight against her head; she made tiny, puppy-like whining noises.

‘She’s bowing to you.’

‘Oh …’

‘Say something to her!’

‘Good w-wolf,’ stammered Gry.

‘That’s hardly appropriate! She doesn’t speak our language.’

‘What …’ said Gry, ‘Ah –’ and put her hands suddenly to her head, holding them high and confident, like ears. Then she lowered one arm and swung it like a tail. The wolf sprang up, Gry shrank away and, growing bold again, leaned forward, talking with her ‘ears’ until, at last, the wolf persuaded her with whines and gigantic thumpings of her tail upon the ground, to jump from her last refuge on the back of the Red Horse to the certain peril of the hard and open ground.

Gry glanced behind her fearfully. The wolf pack was still, its two hundred eyes upon her and glowing with desire. Her ‘tail’ drooped and all the wolves tremulously lowered their tails and shrank into their skins until they looked more terrified than she.

But wolves are treacherous.

‘Not to their friends.’

Gry looked at the Red Horse. He stood tall, huge and invincible; his ears were up. What did he mean? Meanwhile, the Wolf Mother had crouched down beside her and was delicately sniffing her crotch.

Gry heard the voice in her mind. Its tone was one of amusement and delight:

‘Just like a faithful dog!’

‘It’s you!’ she cried and the Red Horse nodded his head.

‘It’s me.’

‘But –’

‘Not the time to explain – attend to your hostess. She is not interested in me: I’m just your conveyance.’