Echoes of the Goddess. Darrell Schweitzer

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СКАЧАТЬ the speaker, saying nothing. He stood opposite me, a spear with a rabbit impaled on it in his gloved hands. He had a long beard, black hair streaked with grey, and he wore a long robe alternately striped blue and red. For an instant I feared he was the man from my vision, but by the way his hands worked, spitting the rabbit over the fire, I was sure he had all his fingers. I guessed him to be slightly younger than myself, and by his speech, a foreigner. He seemed to take my presence for granted, as if we had met before this instant. Carefully, trying not to reveal the gaps in my memory, I got him to tell me what I wanted to know.

      “You may have heard of my country,” he said. “Here in the north the people say the air is so thick in Zabortash that men carry it around in buckets, into which they dunk their heads when they want to breathe. They blame our foul dispositions on this. But these things are slanderous lies. Am I not a man, like any other?” He smiled when he spoke, and I felt sure he was deliberately mocking me. This was a new terror, but I forced myself to remain calm. I allowed that he seemed a man, like any other.

      “Now you, on the other hand,” he went on, “seem strange. Last night when you came upon my humble camp, you were like one walking in his sleep. ‘Who are you?’ you asked, and I said ‘I am Kabor Asha,’ but a few minutes later you asked again, and again I answered, and it seemed that your mind wandered even farther than your body did. Most strange.”

      He offered me some of the rabbit. When we were done eating, he noticed that I was watching him as he wiped his gloves clean, without removing them.

      “You are wondering why I don’t take them off and wash them, of course. I can’t, you see, because I am not alone. In my country no magician bares his hands in public. It’s obscene.”

      “You are…a magician?”

      “That’s another rumor they have here in the north, that everyone in Zabortash is a magician. It’s not true, but they are so numerous that there is no work for many. That is why I wander, you see, to practice my art.”

      And again I wondered if he were mocking me, but I made no sign. An idea came to me. Another magician could help me against my enemy. At the very least, it would complicate Etash Wesa’s plans. So words poured out of me in a torrent. I was well into my story before I realized what I was doing. Then there was nothing to do but finish. I told him all.

      “I know of Emdo Wesa,” he said when I had finished. “I can take you to him. Then the whole unpleasant business will be over and you’ll be free.”

      “Wait! What business? What am I supposed to do? Who are you? How do you know—?”

      Before I could do anything he stood over me. He had opened his robe. Beneath he wore some sort of armor. The scales glittered blue and black, close against his skin. I had a sudden fear that it wasn’t armor at all, that he was some kind of reptile—

      The cloak closed over me, covering my head as he knelt to embrace me, hugging me to his chest.

      His flesh was cold and hard as iron. I couldn’t feel any heart beating.

      “Help! Wait! Where is my wife? What have you done—?”

      “You didn’t tell me you had a wife,” he said as he pushed me over backwards and tumbled onto me.

      The ground did not catch us. We were falling off a precipice, tumbling over and over in the air, the wind roaring by us, for a long time. I screamed and struggled, and then all the strength went out of me and I hung limp. He straightened out from our hunched position and stopped somersaulting. I could see nothing but darkness beneath his cloak, but somehow I had the impression that he bore me in his arms like a bird of prey carrying off a fish.

      The fish, from out of the crag, wandering into the wide ocean, bursting into the air, snatched away by a sea hawk—

      —falling among faint lights, false images behind my eyelids, but then stars, as pure and clear as any seen by night over the open plain, as if Kabor Asha had all the universe inside him.

      We stopped falling without any impact or even a cessation of motion. My vertigo simply faded slowly away, and after a time I felt solid ground beneath my feet.

      He took his robe off me, and I saw that we stood on a little hill before a vast city which rose up tier upon tier, like something carven out of a mountain. Every stone, every wall, every rooftop of it was of dull black stone, and it stood silent and empty against a steel grey sky. As far as I could see the ground was bare and dusty grey. Every color, every trace of life seemed drained out of this place.

      “Behold the holy city of Ai Hanlo,” said my guide and captor, “where lie the bones of the Goddess. But this is not the Ai Hanlo to which pilgrims flock, where the Guardian rules over half a million citizens. No, this is one of the shadows of the city, in a world of shadows. Where the bones of the Goddess lie all magic intersects, all powers are centered. All shadows come together here, branching out into separate worlds. Thus, in a sense, all practitioners of deepest magic, not that petty and shallow stuff you yourself use, the sort you can see on any street corner in Zabortash, but the deepest, most secret magic, which partakes of the inner nature of things; all who know this and immerse themselves into it—all these dwell in Ai Hanlo, alone, in some shadow or other, where ordinary men cannot follow. In this particular shadow Emdo Wesa dwells. You must go to him.”

      I looked up at the city in dread. It was no city, but some monster, waiting to devour me in the labyrinths of its mouth, to dissolve me utterly.

      Dadar though I was, if I had any will, I would resist.

      I ran down the hill, away from the city, away from the one who called himself Kabor Asha.

      “Stop! Fool!”

      The spider in my chest scurried to my heart and squeezed and sank its fangs deep. I screamed once, but the sound broke into gurgling, and the pain filled me.

      The next thing I knew the Zaborman was helping me to my feet. I was numb and weak. I could not fight him.

      “Don’t try to run away,” he said. “Listen to me. I can still help you. I can be your friend.”

      “Who are you really? You didn’t find me just by chance.”

      “No, I did not. Let me merely say that I am one who wants to see you complete your mission and go free. I want to help you do what Etash Wesa has sent you to do, and get it over with.”

      “You seem to know what I must do.”

      “Yes, I do. It is quite simple. You will find Emdo sleeping. Reach beneath his pillow and take out the jeweled dagger you find there. With it, cut his throat from ear to ear.”

      “Why should I murder a man I do not know, with whom I have no quarrel?”

      “Because you were created for that very reason. Be comforted. You have no more guilt in this than does the dagger.”

      “That’s very comforting,” I said bitterly. “What happens to me afterwards?”

      “In all honesty, I do not know. You could go on for a while, the way ripples do in a pool, even after the stone that made them comes to rest on the bottom. If so, take that as reward for services rendered.”

      So, filled with helpless dread, like a victim led to slaughter, even though I was supposed to do the slaughtering, I let him guide me through the dark gate СКАЧАТЬ