The Gate to Women's Country

  "Well" she fell silent, thinking, thinking, as it happened, about a good deal more than the periodic journey of exploration "since you recommend it so highly, Morgot. If they will assign me to the southern exploration, I'll go. After four years in close quarters in Abbyville, I'd rather not join any of the larger groups."

  "IT'S AS I SAID in my letter," Chernon muttered through the hole in the wall. If she only knew what it had cost him to get that letter secretly delivered! "I've looked it up in the ordinances. There's nothing there about taking a leave of absence."

  "I know that's what you said in your letter," said Stavia, patiently. "But there's nothing that says you can." She shut her eyes, listening to his voice, summoning up the Chernon of ten, eleven years ago. He sounded different, looked different, but that boy was still there, inside somewhere.

  "There's nothing that says I can't," he persisted, unable to tell her about Michael's assurances. "If I just go, when I return I'll tell them I thought it was permitted. They'll yell at me. They might even discipline me, but they won't execute me for cowardice or anything because I'm not yet twenty-five. In a few months, I will be twenty-five; then it will be too late."

  Stavia shrugged, unobserved, torn between argument and good sense. She had read his eloquent letter over a dozen times with different responses each time, responses varying from anger to pain, from laughter to longing. He had begged her to go away with him, just for a time. Begged her for something to remember in later years, something to make his life seem worthwhile. "Why do you want to do this, Chernon? You chose to stay with the warriors. If you're not contented, you could still come back through the Women's Gate. Why this!"

  "Because going off on a trip with you this way isn't dishonorable," he said, half angrily. "They may call it foolish or wrongheaded or even childish, but they won't call it dishonorable."

  "It matters that much to you what they call it?"

  He chose not to answer the question. "Stavia, you owe me this." Another of Michael's ploys, perhaps it would work.

  "I?"

  "If you hadn't given me books, you wouldn't have started my mind boiling about things. I'm not satisfied with the only choice I had. I want to know more about life than that. You got me started on this, and it's up to you to let me satisfy it honorably!"

  She mumbled something he could not hear.

  "What did you say?"

  "I said, what makes you think this will satisfy it?"

  "You have my word."

  She did not really believe his word. "Why drag me into it?"

  Stung, Chernon said something that was almost the truth. He had seen Stavia on the wall with Beneda. She had been a pretty little girl when he had seen her last. Now she was a stunningly beautiful woman, and the thought of having her to himself stirred him in ways he had not known were possible. "Because I can't give you up. Because I can't forget you. Because I love you," he cried. "The whole point is to be with you, Stavia. Isn't it? Isn't that what we both want?" In the instant he said it, he knew this is what he should have said all along.

  She sat stunned. Was it what they both wanted? If he had asked that question years ago, before she left for the academy, she would have said yes. Yes, at once and without thinking about it. She had ached for him, longed for him. Even now, parts of her went all wet-crotched at his words.

  She could feel some inner part of her breaking loose, panting against the thick wall between them, ready to dig through it to him, some frantic bitch part with hard little tits and all four feet flailing. "Yes, I want to be with you, Chernon," she said, being honest, almost appalled at the longing in her words. "At least part of me does. But I think I could wait until carnival."

  "No!" It was almost a shout. "Not carnival. Not orgy time, with everybody in the city falling in and out of bed with everyone else...."

  She was angered at this. "I didn't say I intended to fall in and out of bed with anyone!"

  "I don't mean that! I mean I don't want what I feel for you to be..." he reached for loftier words than those that first came to mind. "I don't want it to be part of some general... some ritual indulgence. I don't want us surrounded by a thousand drunken warriors and giggling women. I want it to be... something finer than that." These were Michael's words, and Stephen's, cynically composed and now offered out of desperation.

  "Simeles," she said, her lips quirking, half amused.

  "What?"

  "Your warrior poet Simeles. Doesn't he have a song about being in paradise alone with the beloved."

  Silence. Then, "I don't care if it's paradise or not. But I do want it alone, with you. Without some assignation mistress tapping on the door saying time's up."

  She couldn't answer him. The observer Stavia was paralyzed, bitten by some viper of indecision, unable to say yes, no, perhaps later, let's think about it. She didn't want this conspiracy, this subterfuge. She felt herself standing aside, felt that other Stavia taking over. The actor. The actor who made it all seem so easy, right or wrong, so easy.

  "All right," she said, not letting herself feel anything except that this was Chernon, and that her heart turned over when he spoke to her. She had wakened in the night sometimes in Abbyville, dreaming of him. He was not merely another warrior, not one like Barten, not a loudmouthed braggart. He was Chernon. Beneda's own brother. He was in her marrow. She had tried exorcising him, and she couldn't.

  "I'll be leaving shortly for an exploration trip to the south," she told him. "I'll arrange for you to have transportation to a place well south of Emmaburg, and I'll meet you there. You'll have to cover your brand and shave off your beard, not that you've got much, and plait your hair like a servitor."

  Stubborn silence. "I don't want to...."

  The actor Stavia could deal easily with this. "Chernon, it's that or nothing. I can't be seen wandering around with a warrior down there. You may not be seen, but if you are, so far as anyone knows you'll be a servitor named Brand from Agathaville. No one knows you, you don't know anyone. I'm the only team member from Marthatown, so there won't be any questions asked. Unless we're alone, you'll take orders from me, politely. You'll call me ma'am."

  "What about the real servitor, the one who was supposed to go with you?"

  "I'll have to figure something out. Some way to send a message telling him not to come. You and I will do the exploration I would have done anyhow, then we'll return separately. I'll come back to the town; you'll come back to the garrison. According to you, that will satisfy you." Her voice gave no indication of the turmoil inside. She wondered at that, finding it inconceivable that she could sound so cool and feel so hot.

  He had to agree to what she wanted. His visions of quest had always concluded with his return to the garrison, his return to honor and glory. That there was something unsatisfying about the plan Stavia laid forth, he perceived only dimly without in any way recognizing what it was. If he had been capable of analyzing it, he would have been astonished and shocked to find he did not really like the idea of returning.

  "I'VE BROUGHT MORE MEDICINE for Bowough." She was drinking tea in the room Septemius shared with old Bowough. "That's the favor I'm doing you. As for the favor you can do for me...."

  "Yes," he asked, interested, conscious of the quiet in the next room where Kostia and Tonia were hanging upon every word.

  "I want you to travel south from here, as soon as Bowough is able to travel. Once you're a mile or so outside the city, someone will hail you by name and ask for a ride farther south. I hope you'll be sympathetic to that request."

  "Where might this person want to go?"

  "South. Almost to the sheep camp you mentioned to me before. There should be no trouble taking him there. The roads that far should be quite safe. It would be very helpful to me."

  Septemius didn't say anything.

  Tonia, who had overheard this with a pang of apprehension, came in from the neighboring room. "Do you believe in fortune-telling?" she asked Stavia.

  Stavia looked up abstractedly. "Fortune-t
elling?"

  "Kostia and I are very good at it. We'd like to lay the cards for you, Stavia. Would you mind?"

  Stavia gave Septemius a suspicious look.

  "Let them," he sighed. "They are good at it, and it won't hurt anything."

  Bonelessly, Tonia sank to the rug before the stove, pulling over the bench that stood beside it. The deck was in her right hand, and she passed it to Kostia who shuffled the cards before passing them on to Stavia. "Shuffle," she said. "Any way you like."

  Almost angrily, Stavia shuffled the deck, knocking it into alignment with a sharp tap. "So?"

  "Cut it."

  She split the deck into two.

  "Now choose which half is your future, Stavia."

  Still angrily, she tapped the left-hand stack. Tonia picked it up, turning it in her hands.

  "How old were you when your trouble began?"

  "What trouble?!" Stavia demanded, now really angry.

  "Oh shhh," urged Septemius. "Let us have no hypocrisy. You are in some difficulty, Stavia, or you would not be asking our help. How old were you when it began?"

  "Ten," she said sulkily. "I was ten."

  Tonia counted cards onto the bench, turning the tenth one face up. A black-cloaked woman spread her cape across the chill stars on a field of snow. "The Winter Queen," she said. "Lady of Darkness. Bringer of cold. Nothing will grow begun under this sign, Stavia. How old were you when he sent you away?"

  "How did you know he sent me away?"

  "We know things. How old?"

  "Thirteen."

  Tonia counted three more cards, turning the third one face up. A man in motley leaned against a tree, his head turned to one side. On the back of his head, he wore a mask so that a face looked in each direction. One side of the tree was alight with blossoms. On the other, snow covered the branches. "The Spring Magician," she said. "The two-faced one. Who says yes and means no, or t'other way round. How old are you now, Stavia?"

  "Twenty-two."

  Nine more cards. And the one turned face up was of a warrior standing over his recumbent foe, leaning on the sword that had killed him. "The Autumn Warrior," Kostia said. "Death, Stavia. Not for you, though. For someone else."

  "What are you telling me?" she demanded.

  It was Septemius who answered. "This journey will not profit you, Stavia. It will be full of lies or misdirection. And it may be full of death, as well."

  "But not mine?"

  "Not necessarily. Someone's."

  "You're refusing to do me the favor I've asked?"

  He shook his head, sighing. "No. Why should I? What business is it of mine? Are we family that I should thrust unwanted advice upon you? Are we friends? I am only an itinerant performer, an oldish sort of man, with an ancient father and two weird nieces, four donkeys, and five dancing dogs. If I am reluctant, it is only out of memory of my sister. She, also, heard the blandishments of a warrior...."

  "She went with him," said Kostia. '

  "She got pregnant with us," said Tonia.

  "He was typical of his class. He wanted sons. And then, when he saw we were girls, he left her," said Kostia.

  "And she died," said Septemius. "I always thought it was from a broken heart, though the midwife said not."

  "Unlikely," Stavia commented, dryly. "Broken hearts are more common in romances than in life." She had told herself this for several years and had not yet had any evidence to the contrary.

  "And yet you are listening to the blandishments of a warrior...."

  "Not exactly," she said, trying for the hundredth time to explain herself to herself. "And not blandishments. I made someone unhappy, without meaning to. Perhaps I tried to buy his affection by doing something I knew was wrong. Even if I was not wholly responsible for his unhappiness, I still contributed to his misery. It's my responsibility. I must do whatever I can to set it right. Perhaps to give him something else in place of what I cannot give him. Even though it may cost me a great deal."

  Septemius said nothing more, although he shook his head at intervals all through the evening and spent the night turning restlessly upon his bed.

  STAVIA SLEPT SOUNDLY, though not so soundly she did not hear her door open in the night and the voice that spoke her name.

  "What is it?" she asked him, not yet quite awake.

  "A dream I had," Corrig said, sounding disturbed. "A dream I had, Stavia."

  "Is it part of normal servitor's behavior, Corrig, to walk about the house involving the women of it in his dreams?"

  "It was about you. No, it was partly about you."

  "Ah."

  "Don't do it. Whatever it is you plan, don't do it. There's trouble there. Danger and pain. I've seen it."

  "You sound like Kostia and Tonia, Corrig! Do you see the Winter Queen in my future? Or the Spring Magician or the Autumn Warrior?"

  "I see pain."

  "Again, I ask, is this normal servitor behavior?" She was awake enough now to be slightly angry, though she was more interested than annoyed.

  "It is... it is servitor behavior to see things, Stavia. I have seen, and I've told you. Don't do it." He turned and left the room.

  She lay back on her pillow, thinking she might have dreamed the exchange. She didn't believe him, any more than she had believed the twins. Perhaps it was better not to believe.

  "Perhaps it's better not, if all you see is blood and splintered bone," she quoted to herself, her mind running on among the lines of the old play.

  How strange of him to have come to her in that way. Evidently he shared Joshua's strange gift. "It is servitor behavior to see things." To see what things, in what way? Was he claiming some extrasensory ability? Clairvoyance, perhaps?

  She snorted. It was a subject for fairy tales. Still, he had sounded very sure.

  Suddenly she remembered the trip made years ago with Morgot and Joshua. Joshua, too, had been very sure. Afterward, Stavia had wondered who he was, what he was.

  Now she wondered about Corrig, again taking a line from the play to ask herself, "But if they do not hear him when he speaks... then who is he?"

  AT THE DEEP-WELL, which was at the bend of the valley, Third wife Susannah Brome could look both south, to the slope where Elder Jepson had established his family manor, and northeast, to the grassy hill where Elder Brome's wife-houses surrounded the Father-house in a similar clutter of sun-faded wood. Susannah's own house was there, a small, peak-roofed cottage half hidden behind the hay barn. The dozen or so other elders were established farther south or over the passes in the adjacent valleys of the Holyland, and except in times when All Father punished his sons with desperate drought, their womenfolk did not frequent the deep-well. The shallower wells of the upper valley were quite sufficient at most times, and the bachelors made do with water from the intermittent spring behind their quarters down at the mouth of the valley, toward the north. Thus there was little excuse for Susannah to linger at the deep-well, since the best she might hope for would be a quick word exchanged with one of Elder Jepson's wives, and them so terrified of him they hardly dared say boo.

  "Mama?" whispered Chastity, tugging at Susannah's sleeve. "Oughtn't we be getting back? Papa'll be angry with us if we're not diligent."

  "I thought we might see Charity or Hope," Susannah said, honestly enough. "Charity wasn't feeling well last time I saw her, and I wanted to inquire after her health." Which was a perfectly sound reason for lingering, having no lack of diligence connected with it. Womenfolk were expected to take care of one another since no man would lower himself to do it, and it was well recognized that some women, Susannah among them, had more nursing skills than others.

  "Besides," Susannah went on, "you know Papa pays very little attention to us when we're unclean."

  "He still watches," the girl said, her voice shaking a little. "He might not say anything today, but he will later."

  Poor chick, Susannah thought, reaching out to pat her daughter's face after a quick look to see no one was watching this unseemly expression of
affection. Chastity took everything so hard, so much to heart, as though any amount of diligence or duty could prevent Father bellowing at her if he felt like it.

  "We'll get ourselves back, then," she said, raising the yoke and settling it onto her shoulder pads. Chastity raised her own yoke and buckets, only slightly smaller. At thirteen, she was just come to her uncleanliness and not yet to her full growth. No use praying to All Father to let her have a year or two yet before setting her to breed. Someone would be after Chastity before fall, even though it was hard on the very young ones, and there was just no excuse for it but black lechery, no matter what the elders said about it. She remembered her own initiation at fourteen, and no one could convince her that all that puffing and grunting had been divine duty. She'd never seen a man doing his duty so outlandish pleased with himself and so eager to do it all over again.