Lilith’s Castle

The Horse walked into the water. Gry clung tight, looking down, horrified as each wave rose and threatened to engulf him and her clinging self, and passed them by to be succeeded by another just as great. Nothing was steady now, nothing sure. The good ground had vanished; in its place, the treacherous, moving water.

The wolf, who had remained behind, spoke in his throat, neither whining nor growling: ‘Rurr – rrr – rurr!’ And, having voiced his opinion, followed them.

They soon reached the nearest limb of the tower. A stairway hung from it, giddily down to touch the water.

‘You must climb it, Gry.’

‘I can’t – Red Horse – I can’t. How can you climb stairs?’

‘I shall wait here, up to my withers in sea water. Mouse-Catcher will go with you so there is no need for fear.’

‘It is high; I can’t tell how high!’

‘Fear not, trust me. You won’t fall – look, there is a rail.’

There it was, a handrail looping and scrolling at the staircase-side, though she had not noticed it before. She reached out and took hold of it. The Horse was warm beneath her. Wasn’t she well-used to climbing trees at gathering-time, when the women journeyed across the Plains to pick a harvest of nuts and berries from the trees at the forest-skirt, and mushrooms, toadstools, puvush-cushions, puff-balls and spirit’s saddles from inside the forest itself? The stair looked firm. She swung suddenly on to it, climbed two steps and looked down. The Horse was afloat already, solid, glossy, alive in the cold, wet Ocean, his tail fanned out like weed behind him. Mouse-Catcher was swimming too and his ears were up. She tried to be brave.

‘Goodbye, dear Horse!’ she called.

‘Climb, my sweet Gry! I shall soon welcome you back.’

Thirty steps, and she was in translucent cloud, chasing raindrops and rainbows as she climbed. She felt the wolf behind her, hairy, soaking wet, and then his nose against her hand, comforting her. The rust-coloured limbs of the tower bent about and enclosed them as they climbed. Thirty steps more: her head was above the mist, in sunshine. She looked up and saw, flying on the tower-top where two metal beams made a huge, jagged cross, the blue flag of her people, the Ima of the Plains. Its fluttering challenge stirred her heart and she climbed more rapidly, passing through a circular doorway in the floor of a rickety platform. The nose of the wolf touched her hand once more.

A table had been placed there, far above the sea, a table set for a feast. The guests were waiting for her and two stools were empty. She crept forward, wary and reassured by turns for the other feasters were dressed like her, in tattered indigo and skins. The wolf at her side began to moan quietly, in that midway voice: ‘Rurr – rrr – rurr.’

The old ones had been sitting a long time, wind-dried and wizened in the eye of the sun, neither on the land nor in water, each one salt as grief and dead as stone.

Gry buried her fingers in Mouse-Catcher’s thick mane and looked at the circle of shamans. They were fearsome, shrunken like trophy-heads, preserved but loathsome like the food on their plates, withered plums, black slivers of meat and grey heaps of mulberries. The skulls of some were visible through leathery pates, under wisps of hair; from others, the fingers had dropped and these lay on the table among the dishes. They wore creased robes of balding stuff which had once been good horsehide, and were hung about like Aza with necklaces of birds’ skulls, thunderstones, claws and bones; a circlet of wood, which had been a drum, was propped against the foot of one; another had lost its nose although its lips had dried into two hard ridges which were pinched together in disapproval.

Gry curtsied to the dead shamans, while she wailed, ‘Oh, my father – protect me!’

The shaman nearest the stair was less cadaverous than the rest: he must be Voag, Aza’s master, who had died when Nandje was a boy. To propitiate him, she spoke his name and said, as she might to any one of her people, ‘The grass grows!’ Immediately the words were out, she clapped her hands over her mouth: what if he should answer with thin words blowing? She listened hard, but no sound issued from Voag’s cracked lips and she sighed with relief and bent close to the wolf, putting her own warm lips against his head. She kissed his muzzle and spoke softly in his ear.

‘Why am I brought here?’

Mouse-Catcher licked her hand and his voice came to her, a tiny whisper in the terrifying silence: ‘Yours is not theirs.’

Gry went a little closer to the old ones. One of them was a woman who must, in life, have been a great beauty. Her skin, even in death, was smooth, though it was blue with tattoos; her head had been shaved and a wig of black horsehair, dressed in a crowd of little plaits, put skew-wise on it and, over that, a tall wooden crown from which hung small figures of horses and deer. She wore SanZu silk under her horsehide and furs and Gry, without thinking what she did, touched the shaman lady’s hanging sleeve.

So, she woke the sleeping princess who raised her tattooed arms from where they rested on the table, turned her head to look at Gry with blind, opaque eyes and spoke with the sad voice of the winter wind:

‘Who disturbs the Lady Byely?’

Gry fell to her knees and bowed her head.

‘Gry, Madam. Only myself, Lady. Gry, Nandje’s daughter.’

‘Look at me!’

Byely was holding a sharp knife like doom above her. She was too frightened to move and could only stare at the skeletal fingers and the dagger-hilt they gripped, a doubled ring of bone chipped at the top – and with a dark smoke-stain below it running all the way about and down to the steel, Pargur steel.

‘That is my father’s dagger!’ Gry exclaimed.

‘Do you need it? Do you demand it?’ Byely loosed her hold and let the dagger fall lower between her naked finger-bones.

‘It should be with him so that he can cut his spirit meat – yes! – give it me!’

And Byely let the dagger fall altogether, clattering on the rock.

‘I can – not … harm … yooo …’ she said, and slumped down on her chair and was again a corpse and withered remnant many ages dead.

‘Poor lady,’ Gry whispered, while her eyes filled with tears and she felt her heart beat strongly in her chest.

‘Not poor. Once great, greatest shaman in the world. Past – pastures of Heaven,’ sighed Byely.

‘Sad lady, you must struggle for your voice.’

‘Sad now – go, Gry – know you …’ Byely, spent by her efforts, fell across a bowl of desiccated plums and mulberries, sundering her frail bones and dispersing her lovely face, brittle as an eggshell, across the table. Mouse-Catcher, who had stood by silently, opened his mouth and whimpered so loudly that Gry swung round. The scabbard which belonged to Nandje’s dagger lay on the table in front of Voag whose ruined hand covered it as a spider covers her young.

Touching Byely’s sleeve had woken her. What might Voag do, if his sleep were violated?

Nandje, when he put away the dagger, had always been careful to lodge its sharp tip exactly in the chape, the hollow horsehead of shiny cherrywood which protected it. Gry bent, picked up the dagger and felt its edge and tip: still keen. She must have the scabbard as well. Moving stealthily, she tried to pull it free and did not touch the hideous hand. The copper sheath slid forward, once and again, but the hand came with it, keeping tight hold, and the voice of Voag snapped out at her, a scratchy thorn-snared twig.

‘Aza sent me this! Why should I give anything to Aza’s enemy?’

‘Because I am the daughter of Nandje, the Rider of the Red Horse, and the Lady Byely gave me his dagger.’

‘The vultures stole it from Aza and storm-birds carried it to her, but Aza gave me the scabbard. Why should I part with it?’

‘Because it belongs with the dagger.’

‘Because, because! What has reason to do with the matter? Nandje is like me now, girl, dead as mutton, blind as a granite boulder. He does not need either: dagger or scabbard.’

‘The scabbard protects the blade.’

‘Well, well: common sense too from Nandje’s daughter who was condemned by the Ima, ravished like a captive, forced to flee –’

‘My father’s spirit spoke to me.’

‘That is – not a bad thing –’

‘The Red Horse travels with me.’

‘– and, I was about to say before you interrupted, you are a murderess into the bargain.’

‘I did not kill Heron!’

‘I know you didn’t, quick little fool; but Aza thinks you did and so do Battak and Konik, all the men except your brothers, who do not know what to think. And Leal, of course, but he is blinded by love … that, in your hand, is what killed Heron: Nandje’s dagger, and the grey horsehide which had an old score to settle.’