Gill Alderman - Lilith’s Castle

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.’

Gry held the dagger more tightly, moved it about as if she would strike.

‘I’m already dead!’ Voag shrilled.

‘I don’t understand …’ said Gry.

‘Are you a magician? Are you a shaman? No? Well, accept what you are told by one who knows. Go away now, go! I shan’t give you the scabbard: you don’t deserve it. Yet.’ His fingers rattled on the table, reaching for her.

‘Unless you would like to sit beside me,’ he said. ‘This is your seat, next to the one that waits for Aza.’

‘No!’

The Lady Byely lifted her drooping head with broken fingers and began to collect the shattered fragments of her face from the table-top and put them back in place.

The dagger, useless here where the dead stood up and spoke and the living had no defence against them, was in her hand; Gry gripped it and with her other hand the mane of the grey wolf. They ran together, fleeing unsteadily down the steps. The sound of the sea came up to meet them and, from above, rang down the clatter of bone joining with bone and of angry voices skirling. The stair plunged into deep water and only the heavy body of the wolf, pushing her back, stopped Gry from falling in. The Horse – where was he?

She saw him then, a red island rising and falling with the waves, and she leaned down to grasp his trailing mane and slide on to his back. Mouse-Catcher jumped into the sea and struck out, paddling hard.

‘All’s well,’ said the Red Horse, with a smile in his voice. ‘The dead can’t harm you. So welcome, Gry. Have you got it?’

‘My father’s dagger, which should be in his tomb – how did you know?’

‘I guessed.’

Her feet trailed in the water, so high had it risen, but she must sit there, watching the bobbing back of the wolf and the mobile ears of the Horse, which signalled his discomfort and the effort he made to bring her safely to the shore; and she must continually look behind, over her shoulder, for a sight of the angry ancients; for she knew better than the Horse, that dead shamans were not as the common dead. But only the thickening clouds appeared behind them, gathering together in a dense wall of fog. She wanted a clear view – they might all come leaping out of the cloud and fall on her; she was certain they had no need ever to swim but could fly and levitate themselves across any obstacle. The water soaked her and the dampness crept upwards until she felt it reach her waist and, rising still, begin to soak her bodice.

The sound of the Horse’s hooves, striking rock, woke her. She had been dreaming, or daydreaming, of Leal who was lost to her; and it was no longer day but a grey evening as full of moisture and mists as she felt herself to be, cold and nodding on the wet back of the Horse. Were those lights, low down but sparkling, just there? She blinked, and blinked again. He was cantering now, easily.