Lilith’s Castle. Gill Alderman

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      Heron gestured at Gry with the stem of his pipe.

      ‘This glorious lineage is of no significance,’ he said. ‘Aza has already told us the woman is no longer one of us.’

      ‘Then you have no right to try her!’ Leal shouted from his seat, so passionately that heads turned in his direction.

      ‘She was found on our lands and has committed a crime there,’ said Heron.

      ‘Can you prove it?’ Konik spoke, for the first time.

      ‘We do not need to prove what the Shaman has declared who sees with the eyes of the night and the wind.’

      ‘But Aza said we would discuss her!’

      ‘Discuss? Is she comely, Leal? Would she be a good mother of sons?’

      ‘I am willing to attempt a proof of that.’

      Garron jumped up.

      ‘I did not hear myself bless your forefathers nor give you leave to court my sister!’

      Kiang was half a pace behind his brother. Both men moved from their places and stood on the hearth. They laid their hands on their dagger-hilts and waited for Leal to make the first move, ready to fight without the formality of a challenge or the reason of war. Then all the men were on their feet, shouting and shoving each other, every man of them yelling the name of his champion. Leal! Garron! Some were so excited that they shouted for Kiang, who had lately taken his seat in the Meeting House and was scarcely out of boyhood.

      Aza, sitting without in the dark, heard the shouts and smiled to himself. The clouds raced in the sky; there were no stars. All was in turmoil; but let him honour his pledge to the earth and complete the ritual he had begun with the bone horse and the puvush. Swiftly he drew his dagger and drove its point into his arm. The blood came, rapid and hot from the vein. He let it flow until it reached the earth; and let it flow still until there was a wet patch of it beside his knee. The zracne vile overcame him, reached into his hazy mind and set his body on the narrow branch which swings between sky and earth. He swayed giddily there with them, looking down on Garsting and seeing the creatures which, though they walk by night, men ignore: the cockroach and the louse, the green slug and the snail which is the puvush’s horse, and countless spiders weaving their webs of guile. And while Aza was between heaven and earth, the zracne vile played with his thoughts, tossing them like coloured balls through the air.

      At last, the shaman became so light and insubstantial that he floated from the spirit’s airy realm and was wafted down to earth, where he lay exhausted in the dirt. He rolled over, and sat up; he wiped his brow. The night heaved and swam about him like the Ocean which, Voag had taught him, lapped at the edge of the world. The angry voices had not ceased. He staggered, half crawling, through the low doorway of the Meeting House and used the lintel to pull himself upright.

      They did not see him, full of their manhood and turmoil. The girl stood silent in the midst of their tumult, exactly where he had left her. Rage possessed Aza, empowered by his blood-sacrifice, a cold and holy rage which differed from the anger of the Ima as does a lawful killing from murder. He pushed his way through the throng, his mantle with its stoats’ heads flying and his strings of corpse-gleanings singing the chorus of Retribution, and pulled a burning brand from the fire. Flourishing it, he drove the men back to their seats, a hyena before a herd of cattle. He forced Heron to crouch in a corner and stood on the bear’s skin himself, his flaming torch throwing his spidery shadow across the roof.

      The shaman spoke scornfully.

      ‘It is the usual thing for a herd led by a mare to be strayed and destroyed. She has you all there, beneath her little thumb, pressed as firmly to the ground with your passion and desires as if you lay with her and the position was reversed! Garron is a man of his word and so is Leal; both of them honourable and strict, master horsemen and great kumiz-drinkers. Garron led the wolf-hunt last winter and it is not so long since Leal went adventuring with the Paladin who came to us out of the storm. You are all horsemen and Ima.

      ‘Yet –’ Aza paused to whirl his brand about until the sparks flew. ‘And yet, you allow your reason to depart and blow about you as wildly as these fire-imps. You let her unman you, in body as in spirit. You bring yourselves as low as she.

      ‘Keep away from her, Ima. Draw back your feet, draw in your horns! – unless you wish to see the devils which dwell in the cold regions she is destined for!

      ‘I will tell you what the woman has done; when you have heard me you will know that there should have been no argument.’

      Aza let the branch in his hand burn out and smoulder. The smoke from it gathered in a cloud above him; when he had enough for his purpose, he dropped the wood in the fire.

      ‘Look, Ima!’ the shaman cried. ‘These are her crimes.’ He blew into the smoke, which swirled about and formed itself into the semblance of Nandje’s burial-mound. The men, staring at it with wide eyes and fear raising the hair on their necks, saw Gry standing there; and saw the woman they knew to be the flesh and blood Gry, Nandje’s daughter, stand amazed in the place she had not moved from, the edge of the hearth. The false Gry crouched down and entered the mound.

      ‘And more!’ Again, the shaman blew into the smoke which, gathering itself once more into a cloud, grew legs, a head and tail, until it looked like the Red Horse. And, in silent dread, the men of the Ima saw the phantom woman, other-Gry, mount the Horse, sit tall upon his back, sit boldly on him like a man as the Horse moved forward and, passing through the solid wall, left the house.

      ‘Which is the greater crime?’ said Aza into the chorus of sighs and groans. ‘You cannot tell! You can tell nothing because this woman, this daughter of foxes, this sister of the wolf, has stolen the will of the Ima, the hearts of every man of you. She laughs and throws dirt in your eyes while she pretends to be a dutiful sister and to mourn her father as a good daughter should. Let Aza wipe your faces clean: I will free you from your disgrace and send your dignity back to you. The woman deserves to die.’

      ‘N-ooo!’ Leal’s shout was a cry of pain. ‘No. Give her to me and I will take her and myself away, out of this place and land, to whatever – long life in exile or sudden death on the way to it – lies before us.’

      ‘Never!’ said Garron and Kiang together.

      ‘Hear me!’ cried Battak. ‘This is what we must do, and secretly, without the knowledge of the men of Rudring, Sama and Efstow or of the far villages: let us take this instrument of our humiliation to the river and, when we have shaved off what is left of her hair and stoned her into repentance, drown her there – and let her body be left to float downstream as far as Pargur and beyond, to be a warning to light women and Southron sinners.’

      ‘It is my opinion,’ Konik said, ‘that she should be fastened to the earth, which she has disgraced, and left to her kin, the wandering wolves and the Wolf Mother.’

      Oshac said nothing, but got up from his place and walked slowly to the hearth. He stood close to Gry and began to stroke her face.

      ‘She has been weeping!’ he said. ‘Perhaps she is sorry.’ He let his hands wander over her breasts. ‘She is a pretty girl, and will soon learn willing. Give her to me for a night and, the next night, she shall be yours, Battak; and then yours, Konik; and yours, Heron, and every man’s, even her brothers’, for they should share in the shame she has brought on the family. After this, she will be fit only to carry refuse and ashes to the midden.’

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