The Birthgrave Read Online Free Page B

endless sun, his face paled slightly. His lips drew back from tiger-teeth, wolf-teeth, snarling white. He was so much larger than I, taller, great bones, a big spare frame, beautiful and alien in its masculinity. Yet our looks seemed level. Long curling black hair ran down from his head to his shoulders like the black wool of a ram.
He
wore no mask but his face shook me through and through in a way I could hardly bear, for this face, this seen face, was the face in my dream—long, male, with high-set, narrow, black-chip eyes.
    He cleared his throat. His tongue darted on his lips to moisten them, and we stood, each one half in the other’s power, and my sex stirred in me, and woman stirred in me, and an ancient humanity I had not known was mine.
    And then he made himself move. His hand closed on my shoulder, hurting and immediate. In the other hand came a dull, sharp hunting knife.
    â€œWell, bitch, and who are you?”
    I said nothing. I looked at him, drinking him to quench the surge of life burning up in me, which was not quenched but only burned the brighter.
    â€œYou don’t make me quake, bitch. Some healer-witch from a cave in the mountain, eh? Come to live off their charity because they’re fools and afraid?” His hand reached into my hair and pulled it hard. “Hair of an old woman, but not the body of one. And your face, behind this mask—what?”
    His dislike washed over me, his contempt curdled in the pit of my belly, and if this was all I was to have of him, then I made it welcome. But his fingers touched the hook of the mask, and I recalled my face—the face Karrakaz had given me. I pulled back. I put up my hand, palm flat against his chest.
    â€œTo see my face is death to you,” I said.
    His skin burned against my palm; I felt the heartbeat start up under my touch. He ripped my hand away from him, took a step back.
    â€œVery well, healer-woman, hide your plain little looks. And stay here if you want. But no more food, and no more worship. If you want bread, you can work for it. Help us build their homes again, help us salvage what we can in the fields. Help their women give birth to replace what the mountain took from them. Otherwise, starve.”
    He turned to go.
    I said: “You who were not here when the fire came, where were you then? On the far road, bandit, killing for gold and food. That then was your work. Out of the place that birthed you, without a care for it until the light of the red lava brought you back, hard with your guilt, and cruel with your shame.”
    I did not know how the words came, or why, till I had spoken, but he looked around at me again, and his face was white now, the rims of his eyes red, and his nostrils flared on anger and pain, and I knew I had read him accurately and to the last letter.
    â€œSo someone whispered to you of Darak, the Gold-Fisher. Don’t mouth it at me and think you can scare me with it. I’ve told you what’s for you, and there’s the end of it.”
    He went from the temple with great strides, his hands clenched, and now I knew my prison very well.
    * * *
    Now I could go.
    I was free. No more gifts to me of food, and no more entreaties.
He
had stopped all that. There was activity and work outside. Once there was screaming, and the noise of things falling just beyond the temple door—some women daring to go against his order.
    I had not eaten now for nine days, and felt no hunger, or any particular weakness.
    I could steal out by night, to be sure no one would see me; I could run across the endless country to the sea, and let them forget their goddess, and let Darak forget her too.
    But now that I could go, I would not go at all. I was chained by the roots of my senses like a bitch-dog to a post.
    How well Karrakaz had trapped me here, and kept me from all knowledge of where I must walk, and what must be done to free myself. First by the need of these people, now by
my
need. And if all my