Ashton's voice said quietly, "Eric, he's unarmed."
The man's face stared at Stark, already darkening, its mouth and eyes stretched with the beginnings of fear. His body was rigid, trying to accommodate the throttling grip it had not yet considered resisting. The Nithi had a reaction time more suited to trees than to fighting animals.
Stark grunted and let go. "You were crouching over me," he said.
The man sucked air and hugged his throat. "I was curious," he whispered, "to see a man from another world. Besides, you are on my bed." He looked at Ashton. "Is he, too, from another world?"
"Yes."
"But you are not alike."
"Are all men of Skaith alike?"
He thought about that, rubbing his throat.
Stark was aware now of the sound of music from outside, sweet and melancholy, and a murmur of voices gathered and purposeful rather than scattered at random. There was also a smell of cooking.
"No," said the man, "of course they're not, but that has nothing to do with foreigners." He was young and supple, with the secret brown eyes Stark was beginning to dislike intensely. "I am Ceidrin, brother to the Bridegroom. I am to bring you to the feast."
He led the way out of the pavilion, his shoulders stiff. He did not look back to see whether he was followed.
Old Sun was going down in his customary senile fury of molten brass and varying shades of copper and red. Some two hundred men and women, and half as many children, were gathered in the open space between the pavilions and the glooming House of Winter. They faced Old Sun. Atop a pillar of eroded rock a fire burned. Cethlin stood beside it. Behind him stood Norverann, holding one of the golden ewers. The music had ceased. After a moment of intense silence it began again, small flat drums and pipes and two instruments with many strings; and this time it was neither sweet nor melancholy. It was strident, hard, clashing.
It sank into the background, and the people began to chant.
"Old Sun goes down in darkness, may he never return. Old Sun dies, may he never live again. May the hand of the Goddess strike him, may the breath of the Goddess shrivel him. May the peace of the Goddess be upon Skaith, may it be upon us all . . ."
Cethlin took the golden ewer from his mother's hands.
At the exact moment when the disk of the ginger star vanished below the horizon, he drowned the fire on the pillar top.
"Old Sun is dead," the people chanted. "He will not rise again. The Goddess will give us peace this night. There will not be a morning . . ."
Water and steaming ash ran down the sides of the pillar.
When the chanting was finished, Stark asked Ceidrin, "Do you do this every night?"
"Every night aboveground."
"Most people pray Old Sun up in the morning, glad of another day."
"The Goddess will punish them."
Stark shivered. He had felt the breath of the Goddess, what time Hargoth the Corn-King and his sorcerer-priests had sent it upon the wagons of Amnir, the trader out of Komrey, and Amnir with all his men and beasts had been received into the peace of the Goddess with the cold rime glittering on their faces. But even Hargoth had sacrificed to Old Sun, lest the Dark Trinity conquer the land too soon. The Nithi, apparently, were possessed of a full-blown death wish.
The people were finding places on the ground now, around large squares of heavy cloth spread there. Yellow birds wandered among them unconcernedly. Cauldrons steamed over thorn-wood fires.
Ashton sniffed. "I wonder what's in those pots."
"Whatever it is," Stark warned, "eat it." Ceidrin motioned them to sit between Cethlin and Norverann. The food was served in vessels of stone which were ground fine and thin, and in baskets of woven reeds which must have been brought up from the jungles below. Coarse unleavened bread was served, with bits of Mother Skaith still in it to grate the teeth, as well as a stew made of grain and vegetables and a minute amount of meat, which was white and stringy and came on small brittle bones. Stark glanced from the portion he held to the companionable birds. "We ask their pardon," said Norverann, "as we ask pardon of the grain when we reap it, and the growing things when we tear them from the ground. They understand. They know that they will feed on us one day." She made a circling motion with her hand. "We are all the same, each in his season."
"And your son," asked Ashton. "When his time comes, will you strike the knife into his heart yourself?"
"Of course," said Norverann, and Cethlin looked at him in mild-eyed amazement.
"Who else," he asked, "should have that honor?" Stark ate, and the yellow birds pecked around him, eyeing him sidelong, aware of his alienage. The musicians finished their meal and picked up their instruments again. A woman rose and began to sing, her voice carrying like a flute above the gabble of voices.
"Now," said Norverann, "I wish to know what forces threaten our eastern body."
Stark explained to her as well as he could. "I think they will do no more damage, except for the landing of the other two ships when they come. Soon after that, they will be gone."
"Gone from the heath. But from Skaith?"
"Yes. The Wandsmen have driven all the ships away. There will be no more."
"That is well," said Norverann. "Mother Skaith must look to her own children now."
"You have some foreknowledge?"
"Not I. But my son has heard the Goddess speaking in the night wind. She has bidden him make ready for the wedding. This winter, or the next . . . I think we have not long to wait."
Torches had been lighted. The remains of the feast were being cleared away. The music had taken on a different sound. People were rising, moving onto the open ground between the torches, arranging themselves in the pattern of a dance.
Norverann rose and spoke graciously. "You are fed? You are rested? Good. Then it is time for you to go."
Stark said, "Lady, it would be better if we could wait until the morning."
"You will have a guide," she answered, "and the Three Ladies will light your way. Ceidrin . . ."
The young man said sulkily, "I shall miss the dancing."
"The one who waits for these two must not be kept waiting. Nor must she be cheated, Ceidrin, remember that."
Stark caught the young Bridegroom by the shoulder as he moved away toward the dancers.
"Cethlin," he said, "your mother said I must ask you. Who has claimed us, and why?"
"If I told you, you might try to evade the claimant. Is that not so?" Cethlin brushed his hand away and smiled. "Go with my brother."
Ceidrin fetched a torch and called two other men. He marched off with them toward the House of Winter. Since there was no choice, Stark and Ashton gave Norverann thanks for her hospitality and followed.
They passed by the dancing place. Cethlin had reached out and taken the hand of a girl with dazed eyes and garlands in her long hair. Langorous beguiling pipes and muttering strings lured them on. Cethlin stepped out with his partner, treading the intricate pattern of a maze dance that was both graceful and sinister. The drums beat, soft and insistent, like tiny hearts.
"How will it end?" Ashton asked Ceidrin.
"The girl with the garlands—she is Summer, you understand—the girl will be led deeper and deeper into the maze until she falls exhausted."
"Will she die?"
"Not for several nights yet," Ceidrin said. "At least I shall not miss that. It is not so easy to kill the wicked season."
"Why," asked Stark, "are you all so eager for the peace of the Goddess?"
Ceidrin gave him a glance of pure scorn. "Her rule is inevitable. We seek only to hasten the day. I hope it comes in my time. But I hope that before the Goddess takes me, I may look down from this high place and see the green jungle black and shriveled, and the worshipers of Old Sun struck dead."
"There are many of them," Stark said. "All sacrificing to Old Sun to keep him going. It will be a while before the Goddess rules all Skaith. Where exactly are you taking us?"
"Down," said Ceidrin. "To the jungle. Once there, you may go where you will."
"We need weapons."
"There are none here but kitchen knives and reaping hooks—and those we cannot part with." He added, "Even if we would."
The squat and ancient bulk of the stone house swallowed them, swallowed the sound of music and the sight of dancers treading their mazy path. Inside was a different sort of maze, full of traps and pitfalls to discourage any intruder. Ceidrin, with the single flickering torch, led the way safely past these and into a network of burrows, poor and meager in comparison with the magnificent caverns of the House of the Mother, but adequate for persons who wished only to survive the winter—though Stark doubted that winter on the plateau was all that severe. The sanctuary was probably rooted more in ritual than in necessity, though food might be a problem; the heath would be a barren enough place even in summer.
"What do you do in these dens?" he asked. "Besides the obvious."
"The flowers and the grasses rest. So do we." In a sort of communal chamber, with a tiny fireplace and a roof so low that Stark must bend to avoid the interlaced and knotted roots that held it, Ceidrin opened one of several great stone jars that were set apart from corn bins and cisterns. The jar was packed to the top with dried flower heads. The compressed and dusty fragrance that rose from them was enough in itself to make the mind reel.
"In life they bring us comradeship, in death they bring us dreams. The winter is dark and sweet."
Reverently he replaced the lid and they passed on. The burrows were well stocked and clean. Nevertheless, Stark did not envy the Nithi their well-adapted lives.
They stooped their way along a narrow passage and finally came out abruptly into the open night, on a tiny ledge or landing like a bird's perch high above the jungle, which showed as a vast and spreading darkness far below. The first of the Three Ladies, newly risen, shed enough light so that Stark could see the way. Ashton saw it, too, and muttered something, a curse or a prayer or both.
Ceidrin put out his torch and laid it aside, because he needed both hands more than he needed light He started down.
The cliffs were broken, pitted with erosion, gashed by falls of rotten rock. The way was sometimes a path and sometimes a stair, and sometimes no more than chipped-out foot- and handholds across a leaning face. Warm air rising from below was twisted into turbulent currents that twitched and plucked at the climbers with seemingly malicious intent. Sometimes the path was cut inside the cliff, and here the wind rushed ferociously, almost hurling them bodily upward like sparks in a flue. Certain places held ingenious arrangements of ropes and windlasses, and Stark surmised that they were used to aid in the ascent of men coming back from the lowlands laden with spoil.
The great milky cluster rose higher. Her light strengthened. In the darkness below, a glimmer showed.
It spread and ran, became a silver snake winding through the black. A great river, going to the sea.
"How far?" asked Stark, shouting to be heard above the rush of wind.
Ceidrin shook his head with arrogant disdain. "We have never seen the sea."
Stark marked the direction, knowing that he would lose sight of the river later on.
The third of the Three Ladies was at her zenith and the first one had already set when they reached a hole in the rock no more than fifty feet above the treetops. Inside the hole was a landing and a narrow shaft straddled by a windlass with a mass of fiber rope wound on its drum.
"I will go first," said Ceidrin, "and open the way for you."
He lighted a torch from a ready pile and sat in the sling end of the rope. The two other Nithi men, who had spoken no word all the way, cranked him down with a creaking and a clacking of ancient pawls. The rope had been spliced in many places and did not inspire confidence. Yet it held. Ashton went down, and then Stark, fending off the smooth sides that trickled with condensation, growing green slime. A tiny chamber was at the bottom. In the torchlight, Ceidrin moved a ponderous counterweight and a stone slab tilted open.
"Go," he said, "to whatever arms await you."