Танит Ли - The Storm Lord

“She has my measure,” he thought in a moment of leaden anger, but he pulled the animals around and hurled to the right of the opposing vehicle. The wheel blades churned through their near axle; the car tilted and spilled its contents on the road. “But not quite, my lady,” he thought, “not quite.”

The city streaked behind, and the hills opened like honeycomb on either side. One black chariot was still at his back.

“I should have reckoned on the advent of this day, and planned for it,” he reproached himself.

Between cleft rocks he saw the sudden pearl gleam of water: Ibron far below.

At once he visualized the cave. Could he but have found it now.

“What do I offer you, Anack, to persuade you to reveal your hidden ways to me?” his thoughts whispered with a bitter humor. “My Vis soul?”

There was a bend in the road. A great bird fled up before their coming, and the animals swerved madly at its passage. Rocks struck the wheels and flew off into air. Amnorh felt the chariot give a great lurch, then sky and earth were momentarily juxtaposed, after which there was only sky.

The black car careered to a halt. The two men jumped down and ran to the lip of the road, staring over at the mangled remains of the broken chariot and team caught on the teeth of the scarp some way below.

“Where’s the Warden?” one asked the other.

“The lake. He’ll die just the same.”

“It’s a better death than she would have allowed him.”

The wind shrilled. The burning whip of the wind had beaten him semiconscious. He turned in mindless spinnings toward the great mirror which would swallow him.

At the last instant, a thought—death.

Amnorh struggled with his numb flesh, striving to arrange his body for that moment when it would cleave the water. He took huge gasping breaths at the air.

The impact was of a white hot furnace. His bones seemed to run like molten gold. Stifling ringers probed in every orifice. There was no sound.

Deep below the surface now, Amnorh turned more slowly, a foetus trapped in a womb of inky sapphire.

Death.

“I lie soft,” he thought. “I am no longer a man but a piece of this water.”

A pain flared in his chest. His lungs convulsed uselessly on nothing.

“Let the water in and die.”

But he could not.

There were bubbles lisping upward through the dark; he felt dimly the pull of a new current and let it take him. He shut his eyes, lifting so gently. Presently raw light pierced his lids and stone thrust against his inert body. He floundered like a fish in a net, all instinct suddenly to achieve the light. His hands grasped the stone and air splashed on his face.

He lay by the brim of a great pool, breathing, spent, the terrible spasms of coughing and retching past, and his body a lifeless heaviness containing the pale flickers of his thoughts.

“There is a door. A rusty door. She is all about me. I am in Her entrails like Her egg, Her child. When I reach the door and go through it and crawl out into the cave, I shall be born of a goddess.”

After a time he got to his feet and staggered to the stone wall of the pool, edging along it until he found the door. He pulled and the door gave, but he fell to his knees with the effort and crawled, as he had fantasized, out of the golden tail of Anackire.

He opened his eyes and saw the narrow pale mask of a giantess gazing down at him, framed by a gold seething of serpents. And he thought: “The face of my mother.”

And grinned, thinking of the Iscaian slut who had conceived him in a wine shop under a minor Dortharian prince. Bastardy had been useful, as Amnorh had realized when he climbed the first rungs of the social ladder. She might so easily have brought forth from a respectable marriage to a hod carrier.

He got to his feet. His wet clothes clung unpleasantly, for it was chill in the cave.

“So you saw fit to save me, Anack,” he called out at the statue, “and now I’m your firstborn. My humble thanks.”

Her eyes bored into him.

“What gifts will you give me, Mother, now that I’m cast penniless on the cruel world?”

He went forward and laid his hands on her fiery tail—a million scales, each a plate of hammered gold.

Experimentally he grasped one of the plates and wrenched at it. How long ago had she been made? Too long—she was in sad need of repair. The plate came away in his hands, and Amnorh let out a bark of wild derisive mirth. Again and again he wrenched. A rain of gold fell round him, and he plucked violet jewels like grapes from a vine.

When he had stripped her as high as he could reach, he made a bundle of his cloak and slung the riches into it.

“So I despoiled you after all, Mother mine. Unwise to take such a thief to your bosom.”

He fancied impotent rage on the white face, and at the arch he turned and saluted her, crazy from the water and the falling gold.

In the dark he moved with inadequate care. The bundle bumped and clanked. This time he had no flint and no guide. He did not reach the steps.

At last it grew apparent to him that he had taken a wrong turning somewhere in the blackness.

He stared about him but could make out almost nothing. He became aware in that moment of the far-off, high-pitched singing note that he had heard before. And, as he moved on in his blind search, the sound seemed to grow fuller, as though several more voices had joined the first.

“Anackire weeping,” Amnorh mocked aloud.

But sweat broke on his forehead and his hands. He moved more quickly.

The stairway was lost to him for sure. What then? Retrace his steps? Somehow the thought of turning back toward the cave repelled him. And the sound, the sound was louder. It penetrated his skull like a knife.

Amnorh turned to look behind him.

There was a man in the passage, distinctly visible against the dark. A man with black-bronze skin and yet pale hair and eyes—even as Amnorh stared the hair and eyes spread and merged like flames; the whole face melted and became Ashne’e’s face. The mouth opened, and out of its serene pallor burst the singing scream of the cave.

His own cry mingled. He ran. The bundle in his hands doubled, trebled its weight—he almost threw it down and left it there, but somehow could not despite himself. The walls bruised him, and colored sparks exploded before his eyes.

Suddenly daylight.

He flung himself into it, blind and moaning, and the ground left his feet and he fell.

“Wake up,” said an insistent female voice, as it seemed mere seconds later.

Amnorh turned his head and saw a girl kneeling beside him. She had a brown peasant face and too-big, simple eyes.

“I thought you were a devil out of the hill,” she said conversationally. “I went in there once, and there was a light, and I ran away.” She ogled him. “But you’re only a man.”

He sat up. The hot sun had already dried his garments. How long had he lain here with this laborer’s bitch watching him? He glanced apprehensively at the bundle of his cloak, but it seemed undisturbed.

“Are you going to Thaddra, across the mountains?”

“Yes,” he said shortly.

“There’ll be men going there over the pass. Our farm’s just down the slope. Will you wait there for them?”

Amnorh looked at her. It would be reasonable to travel in company. He had no provisions, and an early snow might soon lock the mountains in walls of ice. There were also bandits on the mountain shelves.

The farm was little better than a hovel. A bony cow picked at yellow grass outside, and there was an old man minus eyes sitting like a dried-out insect against the wall.

Amnorh waited in the shade of the house while the girl went about her tasks. The traders did not come. He wondered if she had dreamed them up to keep him here for some villainous purpose, but she seemed too stupid for that. He tried to question the old man, but he was apparently deaf as well as eyeless.