Lilith’s Castle. Gill Alderman

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СКАЧАТЬ but Leal, who seemed able to snatch courage from adversity, jumped up and swiftly made his way to the hearth where he fearlessly pushed Aza aside and took hold of Oshac. The older man grunted.

      ‘You have a bear’s grip,’ he said. ‘Keep it to defend yourself when you are proved wrong.’

      Leal did not answer, but flung Oshac aside, so that he lost his footing and fell into the first row of men.

      ‘Answer me this,’ Leal said. ‘How could Gry ride the Red Horse without his bridle? It is not made of the skin of the great Om Ren, Father of the Forest, for nothing; strong magic is necessary to control the Horse. Aza has scared the wits from you with his illusions. There are other reasons for his ill-use of Garron’s sister and they are all to do with the choosing of the next Imandi. For it is no secret that Aza favours Battak and no one but Aza claims to have seen Gry at the tomb and riding the Horse.’

      The shaman laughed, and his necklaces chattered their hideous song. On his back, he carried a talking drum, a flat disc of skin and wood shaped like a silfren shell or the face of the full moon. To subdue Leal, he quickly undid the string which held it there and, grasping the drum by the manikin whose outspread limbs made the frame of it, he stroked the taut skin with his nails.

      ‘Aza always tell the truth!’ said the drum, ‘Aza is a man of honour!’

      Like a man who has watched all night, Leal bent his head and let his body droop; and every man sat motionless and listened to the shaman.

      ‘This Gry,’ said Aza, making his voice hiss like that of the drum. ‘She! This false seductress has forfeited our protection – has been kneeling at the crooked feet of Asmodeus, kissing them no doubt; basely kissing others of his nethermost parts, for how else but by sorcery could she tame and ride the Horse?’ and the Ima all sighed and nodded their heads in agreement, except for Leal whose head remained bowed.

      ‘Nandje himself could not master the Horse without the Bridle,’ Oshac said, amid a chorus of agreement, ‘and Leal has condemned the woman out of his own mouth. Stand straight, Brother, and admit your error.’

      Leal did not move but only stared at Oshac and Aza as if they, not he, had lost their senses, while the shaman beat his drum and brought the violent sounds of quarrelling from it.

      ‘Many have spoken,’ he said, ‘but none harshly enough. Your punishments are fit for common criminals, mere transgressors of the Law; for tricksters and adulterers, for thieves and murderers. Have you not heard the wisdom of the ancients? The punishment must fit the crime. This woman has put herself in the place of a man and of her father, the Imandi of the Ima. Let me punish her for you! I will tie her to the strongest of the unbroken stallions and chase him for a day and a night until he tires; then, if the woman is still alive, she shall be put in the mound with her father’s soulless body and the ghouls and corpse-moths which tenant it; and the doorway filled with boulders.’

      At this, Leal rose like a hurricane and called out with its voice, ‘Never! Never! Not until the rivers dry up and the stars fall!’ His voice was so strong, so loud that the women of the village stopped whatever they were doing, sewing or cooking, and their children began to wail as Leal’s cry went leaping and echoing over them and across the grassland terrifying small creatures and large until it reached the horses which kept watch at the margins of the Herd. These sentinels pricked up their ears and stood ready to signal flight. The mares heard Leal and, turning to their foals, nuzzled a warning; Summer and the Red Colt heard Leal and the Colt danced in alarm as his complaint came at last to the two black-tipped ears of the Red Horse. The great horse turned his head to hear it better; nodded, almost like a man, that long, sagacious head; and cantered forward to join his sentinels.

      Then Leal, on the hearth of the Meeting House, called for compassion and justice for Gry and on his friends for aid and support. Seventeen men joined him there; the rest swore to follow Battak, all but Garron and Kiang who were left like abandoned princes between two armies. Each faction began to shout for its leader and Gry, lost in the noise, opened her bruised, sore mouth at last and spoke.

      ‘Nandje came to me,’ she said. ‘My father told me I might look on his body because his soul was on its way to the Palace of Shadows. He did not chide me for my friendship with the Horse.’

      Her voice was so low and full of fear that none but her brothers understood her, and they could not believe their ears. Nor did Gry dare repeat the words which had floated into her head as she and the Horse made ready to leave the mound: ‘You are the Rider.’

      Heron rounded on her, out of the throng. The rest, in their growing quarrel, had forgotten her, the source of it. The historian, by contrast, had become civil. Though he dominated her, leaning his bulky body too close to her and touching her indelicately with his eyes and thoughts, his voice was gentle and persuasive.

      ‘Not one of them is fit to choose the new Imandi,’ he said. ‘I must put you in a place of safety and then, by our fathers! we shall discover what your fate is to be.’ He took her arm and led her from the House and across the empty ground in the centre of the village where the communal hearth, which was used on feast days and for cooking the horsemeat at slaughtering-season, was deserted and cold, another testament to her alienation. She thought of escape, of flight; but her soul was terrified and had curled itself up like an unborn babe and retreated so far into her body that she could not tell where it was; she was nesh, her limbs addled as if she had a fever; and this weakness, she thought, was the shaman’s doing.

      Heron, not unkindly, pushed her into the low mound where the dried meat was stored; and came in after her.

      ‘You won’t be frightened in the storehouse,’ he said. ‘The children play here and lovers, too, at midsummer.’

      Gry felt obscurely grateful. He wasn’t so bad, the old memory-keeper. A man would have been tied outside in the cold and watched from the warm shelter of a house doorway. She knew this and began to think herself lucky, resting at last on the ground. It was dark in the storehouse. She heard Heron rummaging and the sound of a hide being dragged.

      ‘Here is a skin,’ he said. ‘Put it beneath you, there! Soon, I will bring you water and meat, and tomorrow I will speak for you in the House. I have heard many quarrels and listened to many judgements. It seems to me that your punishment will not be as terrible as that of Huçul.’ Again, she heard the sound of horse-leather being moved: it was Heron unbuckling his belt. Where was he, beside her, before? The sun-disks on the belt jingled. ‘Oshac’s solution is best, for then you will not die or have to leave the Plains, nor exchange them for the fiery wilderness of Hell.’

      Gry, in the blackness of her prison, felt his hand on her wrist.

      ‘I have the captive’s choice,’ she said.

      ‘Then choose wisely! If I am to speak for you, it would help your case to show how willing you are and how meek. Let an experienced man, weighty but wise in his knowledge, be convinced of your remorse.’

      His voice came from the darkness directly in front of her; indeed, she could feel, and smell, his breath, which was coming in short gusts like that of an animal which has been running hard.

      ‘It is no choice at all.’

      The man fell on her in a rush, all at once, pressing her down on the horse-hide. He was heavy and his calloused hands tore at her skirt and rasped her thighs. She did not dare resist, nor want to; everything the future held was dull and mean. Slavery meant being used. He was merely the first. She felt his thing nudge her. She thought it was huge and swollen like a stallion’s; it would hurt. It pushed against her as if it would devour her from the inside СКАЧАТЬ