Tanith Lee - The White Serpent

Tibo seemed reluctant to make the journey to Ly, so Orbin told her she would be going. The hopeful Orhn, he decided conversely, must stay behind to guard the house. Orhn was crestfallen, and watched them sadly as they set off into the wet dark morning.

Tibo walked the correct eight to ten paces behind Orbin, carrying their provisions tied on her back.

Orbin strode ahead. The sun rose. The passes through these mountains were ramshackle and unsafe, slick with water now, and here the surest danger lay in wait. Glissades of melted ice roared down the distances between huge disembodied fanglike crags. Pebbles dashed underfoot and fell over the slopes, sixty feet or more, to smash on levels beneath. After an hour the travelers began to descend through the stoops of broken valleys. Soon the rain began again. Neither took much notice. This was the way life was.

The robes of the priests of Cah were colorful, the most colorful things to be seen at Ly, umber reds and bold ochers, with discs of polished brass, lozenges of bone and beads of milky resin sewn on. The High Priest’s robe was also trimmed with feathers, and during the mysteries of the temple he wore a mask like a bird’s head. But women were not admitted to the mysteries, saving the temple prostitutes who took part.

Orbin purchased a pig from the temple pen, and went inside to see its throat cut on the altar. Sometimes, after the cold months’ long incarceration, Orbin would want to go with one of the holy-girls. Tibo had seen from his demeanor as they passed under the girls’ window, where two or three of them always sat on display, that this was the situation now. She stood meekly among the short pillars, while the sacrifice was attended to. It seemed not much more to her than the butchering that went on later in the year. Indeed, the butchers who visited the farms were temple-trained.

When the pig was dead and its blood spilled copiously, Orbin said his prayers, after which he and the priests went away into the shadows beyond the altar. It was now allowable for Tibo to approach the goddess.

The smell of blood was raw. In this place, it did not repel Tibo, for it was the untranslatable symbol of life, as of death.

The girl came to within three feet of the altar, so her boots were in the blood that had overlapped the drain. The carcass itself had been taken off to be portioned. Above the blood-pool Cah was, looking down into Tibo’s eyes and heart.

Women could not make sacrifices or offerings. They had no property, and to put anything aside would be considered a theft from their menfolk. All a woman could do to please Cah was to bear children. That was a woman’s offering.

The goddess was a smooth stone, that had had, hundreds of years before, a face hewn from it, and breasts. Balms were constantly poured upon her, and blood splashed her and smoke stained her. These things had made her black. Just as belief had made her powerful. Her eyes were somber amber glass. As the incoherent light of the oil lamps caught her, shifting always with the fluctuation of the burning wicks, these eyes seemed full of sight.

Tibo did not say a word. She stood and let Cah gaze into her, and behold. Her thanks were her only offering. The offering itself—her thanks.

For aid, for protection, Tibo did not think to ask. The goddess was Life, and life would protect Tibo, in the same way that it had found her out.

When the passion was complete between herself and Cah, Tibo left the temple and went on to the terrace. She sat down stilly under the low roof, on the other side from the whores’ window, and waited for Orbin to come out.

He did so at length, sullen, as the sexual act always made him. He told her he meant to meet some farmers at the drinking-shop. He would be back in time for their daylight departure, he said. “As for you,” he added, “go about and see if you can barter those egg-cakes. Sit there and they’ll take you for a temple girl. You’re getting fat as one, you slug.”

He came back from the drinking-shop hours after, and it was darkening as they trudged home, and the rain rang like swords on the rocks. Climbing up to the farm valley, now Tibo had to go first, guiding him with the lantern from her pack. Orbin stumbled, and cursed her.

When they got to the house, Orhn was asleep, and the old woman had wet her chair.

Orbin, sobered on the return trip, became angry. He struck Tibo and ranted about her utter uselessness. He called her a fat moping bitch.

These two occasions, on this day, were the first that he appeared to have seen she had begun to thicken at the waist.

It seemed to her she would carry low, which her mother had said was the sign of a boy.

The year began to turn toward the sun.

Warm days came. Golden light parasoled the valley.

Men, earnest to be hired, had started to arrive and to be taken on, and made an untidy camp for themselves at the end of the pasture.

A flock of fowl pecked in the yard, unaware that others had done so before them.

The morning of the ploughing, Tibo was up two hours before the sun, to bake bread for the laborers. At dawn Orbin came into the room, and standing Orhn against one wall, drilled him in the kind of noises he must make, how to stand and how to walk over the fields before the men. Initially eager, Orhn grew frightened.

Tibo set porridge and bread on the table, and Orhn slunk to eat. As she bent to feed the old woman, Orbin came hard against Tibo, and slapped her hip.

“What’s this?”

Tibo looked at him, then lowered her eyes.

“I said, what is it? Answer me?”

“Orbin-master?”

“That great wodge of flesh. That belly.”

Tibo resumed calmly the task of spooning gruel into his mother’s withered old mouth. She said, “I’m childed.”

Orbin choked a moment on his wrath. Then he exclaimed: “Belly-full pregnant are you? How? Let me guess. Let me guess.”

Tibo wiped the old woman’s lips.

Orbin caught Tibo by the hair. He wrenched her about.

“Who did it then, you sinning rotted mare?”

Tibo lifted her eyes. Black Vis-Iscaian eyes, that had gazed into the gaze of Cah.

“Brother-master,” she said, “my husband.”

“Orhn!” Orbin screamed, ablaze with rage. And Orhn, picking up the inflection, made a raging sound of agreement. “No, Not Orhn, for the tits of Cah. Some visitor, eh? Some eastern thing. Not Orhn, eh?”

Tibo met the eyes of Orbin, on and on. He was unused to it, a woman who looked at him. Even holy-girls did not.

“Who else?” said Tibo.

“I’ve said who else.”

“That can,” said Tibo, “only be you.”

He stared. He thought. She saw him do this and was silent to allow it. Then he blustered a moment or so. She did not, of course, interrupt. When he stopped, she said:

“It it isn’t Orhn, we’ll be questioned. I, and you, master. You’ll swear you never touched me. I shall say you did. Your brother’s wife. I’ll be stoned. You’ll be castrated, and may be stoned. The easterner would never say he’d been here, for fear you had friends at Ly. There’s no other proof. No other man, then, here with me, but you. And Orhn. I prayed to Cah, and Cah heard me. Orhn has always lain with me as a man should. But I was barren. Now Cah has filled my womb. It’s a wonderful thing.”

Orbin’s mouth fell open.

Tibo lowered her eyes. She had never, in all her adult life, spoken so many words at a stretch, and she was rather breathless. Turning, she started again to feed the old woman.

Orhn tore bread at the table in an outraged manner, copying Orbin.

Until Orbin sat down at the board, staring blankly into space.

So the ripe leaves swelled on the citrus trees and the shoots came up behind the plough. Birds flew over the valley, free birds with only weather and fate to be wary of. A pair of black eagles, miles high, day after day swung from a sky that changed from blue to indigo.