The Birthgrave by Tanith Lee Read Free Book Online

coins, and lucky charms. The women had a couple of mules between them, and sometimes rode pillion with their particular bandit. Darak rode a black horse, fine and hot-tempered, unsuitable for the climbing, that shied every time a bird rose from a thicket. He went on something different, I thought, when it was a matter of business.
    As a woman, I should have walked. As a witch, I had my own mule, brought from some village stable. The red tunic of the goddess was gone, and the goddess’ white mask. I wore dark stuff now, and a face covering—the shireen Darak had seen among women of the plains tribes, whose faces must be hidden from puberty. Across forehead and eyes the cloth was close fitting, with narrow eye-holes decorated by their own raised upper lids, which cast a shadow over the eyes themselves. From the cheeks, over the nose and mouth and chin, hung a loose veil of the same material. A woman in the village had stitched it for Darak.
    When I had ridden out with them, the villagers had stood in the streets, among the rubble, staring at me, sullen, and afraid that going I took something from them. Darak grinned, riding his black devil horse. A few women plucked at me, crying. I hardly understood them, my ears closed to their village tongue. They were nothing to me, but what then was Darak’s hill camp? There was a weight of iron in my belly, but it lifted as we left the lake and the volcano behind.
    He had not spoken to me since the night on the cinder-slope. All his words had come secondhand, from the mouths of others: “Darak says you are to have this,” “Darak has told me to tell you.”
    At night, when he made camp, leather tents went up, painted with five or six colors. One of these was given to me, and here I could be as private as I wished. I ate a little when I must, and the pains grew easier, but never failed to come. The quietest of the bandit girls brought me the food and whatever other comforts Darak thought I might need. She said nothing, but her eyes darted, bright and black, like two agate wasps set in her head.
    On the dawn of the fourth day, a man came with a snakebite, his arm swollen and black. He swaggered in through the tent flap, anxious to be cured without losing the arm, anxious, too, to show he set no store by me. If I did him good, that was an accident of his fortune. He was at pains to tell me what he had been at when the snake got him, which was squatting among the rocks relieving himself.
    I touched the swollen flesh and looked in his face. He had no blind belief to take the healing from me, as they had in the village.
    â€œI cannot help you,” I said.
    He was sweating, and in pain, but he glared at me and lifted his good hand as if to cuff me; then thought better of it.
    â€œYou’re the healer. That’s why Darak brought you. So heal me, you bitch.”
    A small door opened in my mind. I recalled something, but not much.
    I drew his knife out of his belt, and he flinched nervously. I took it and dipped it in the flames of the little brazier the girl brought me at night. I got his arm again.
    â€œHold still,” I said, and made the quick incision before he could protest. He roared like a bull. “Now suck,” I said, “suck and spit.”
    He sat with his mouth wide open, amazed at my abrupt movement and the order—crude in its basic simplicity.
    â€œDo as I say,” I added, “before the whole of your body swells up and blackens too.”
    That galvanized him into activity. Kneeling in my tent, he set to work with frantic, wide-eyed speed.
    In the middle of this, Darak’s hand pulled the tent-flap wide, and he looked in. He had avoided me till now, and today had been away early, hunting; what had brought him here, I did not know. He stared in amazement for a moment at the rhythmically swaying, sucking, spitting bandit before me, then laughed.
    â€œSome new ritual to the goddess,” he said, and went away.
    The man