Night's Daughter, Page 2

  "That one is getting above herself," Disa said, entering with a processional robe flung over her arm. Pamina cast fascinated eyes on it. It was somewhat like the one Disa herself wore, soft silk which flowed like water and sparkled with lights woven into the very fabric of the robe; never had she been allowed to wear one of this kind. But as the guard laid hands on Papagena, and the bird-girl gave a terrified screech, Pamina forgot the unaccustomed finery and flung herself on them.

  "No! I promised her—let her go!"

  "Pamina, be quiet," Kamala said angrily. "It is not your place to interfere."

  "You have no right to take her for sacrifice! I won't let you!"

  Kamala moved swiftly to her side, laying hold of her arm. She moved, Pamina thought, like a striking snake. She said in an undertone, "Hold your tongue, you little fool. This is the will of the Starqueen, and neither you nor I have any right to question her decisions. Nothing that happens here is done except by her will; you are a child and that is enough for you to know."

  Pamina stared at her, her eyes wide. She felt she had never seen her half sisters before. For the first time it occurred to her: they are Halflings too. She had known all her life that Kamala and Disa and the third sister Zeshi had been fathered by the Great Serpent, but not until this moment had she realized what it meant.

  Am I Halfling too, then, and can I too be taken for sacrifice? she wondered. But no; she was the daughter of the Starqueen.

  Yet so were they

  "No," she said, though she was so frightened that the words seemed to stick behind her teeth. "I do not believe that. Our mother is kind and just. All my life I have heard that those who are taken for sacrifices are criminals, those who have killed or robbed or broken some other law. Tell me, what law has Papagena broken? What evil has she done to any? If she were a lawbreaker, then, would Mother have brought her here to sing and to entertain me at the festival on my birthday?"

  "This is no time to talk of laws, Pamina," Kamala said. "What you say is true for the sacrifices of the seasons. But have you not seen the face of the moon tonight in its blood? At this evil time all the laws are suspended, for the blood-faced moon demands innocent blood. And Papagena has been chosen. Stand aside, Pamina, and let us take her, as it has been ordained. "

  But Pamina refused to release the trembling Papagena, and Disa commanded, furious, "Let her go or I will have you dragged away!"

  "I won't." Pamina was sobbing and terrified, but she did not let go of the bird-girl, and at last, in angry frustration, Disa gestured to the guards. One of them grabbed Papagena with both hands; another stepped purposely toward Pamina. Her obvious intention was to drag them apart by force. Rawa growled menacingly; there was a howl from the guardwoman and she kicked out at Rawa, hard. The dog-halfling went down on the floor, but she was up again in a moment, growling now in deadly earnest.

  "Lay a hand on the princess, will you? I'll have the flesh from your very bones!"

  "Let me," said Disa, every line of her body taut with threat, and stepped toward Pamina, jerking her head at the guard to step away. "If the bitch touches me she will be flayed alive, and she knows it." She hauled Pamina bodily off Papagena, while Rawa growled and whined with rage, and Pamina sobbed angrily, striking out at her half sister.

  "I won't let you! I promised her! What does Papagena have to do with the moon?" Between fury and grief, Pamina was almost incoherent.

  Then there was a sudden silence in the room. The guards went down on their knees with a gasp. Even Disa and Kamala bent low, while Rawa gave a whine of terror and backed whimpering against the wall. The Starqueen demanded, "What is all this commotion?"

  Only Pamina was unafraid. She ran to her mother and demanded, "Don't let them take Papagena for sacrifice! I told them you were fair and just and that you would never allow an innocent person to suffer!"

  The Starqueen looked at her youngest daughter, with a momentary, tender smile. "Did you indeed, my precious?" she asked.

  The Queen of the Night was a tall woman, and in the flowing processional robe she wore, with its high headdress of owl feathers, she looked even taller. Her features were narrow and austere, her eyes the blazing blue seen only in the very center of flame.

  "You won't let them take her, will you, Mother?"

  "If you have promised her that she shall not be taken, I will not let them take her," the Starqueen said. "But in future make no such promises without consulting me, Pamina. To do so, you infringe upon my prerogatives; do you understand this?"

  Pamina gave a mute nod.

  The Queen looked at the guard, who was rubbing an arm from which blood still trickled. She said, "Outside, all of you—this business should never have begun, and having begun, it should never have gone so far. I am not pleased with you, Kamala," she added, in silky menace, and her daughter trembled. "Take the guards outside. No, Disa, you may stay. Papagena, your young mistress has made you a promise. See that you reward her by serving her well from this day."

  Papagena fell to her knees and cried, "Always, Lady!"

  Pamina said urgently, "Mother! Mother, why— what—you have told me that no one is sacrificed unless they have broken a law. But Disa told me that the red moon demands the blood of an innocent! Why? What has Papagena to do with the moon?"

  The Starqueen looked impatient and Pamina flinched. But her mother only said quietly, "Nothing whatever, child. Yet when the moon turns like this to blood, ignorant people are frightened, and they become hysterical and demand a sacrifice. We give it to them because it turns away their wrath from the priests and rulers. Also, ignorant people believe that for some reason these things happen because of their sins. If we make a sacrifice, they can forget whatever imaginary sins are troubling their minds, and go on about their business again."

  "That's terrible," Pamina said.

  "Indeed it is, my child. But be grateful that you live now and not a thousand years ago, for in those days, when the moon turned red like this or the sun went dark at midday and the stars came out, then only the death of a daughter to the Starqueen would assuage their guilt and terror."

  Pamina trembled, for her mother's face had turned stern and remote again.

  "Now, Pamina, you have created a great disturbance, and you have made me late for the procession. Disa, I do not hold you blameless in this. You are perhaps not entirely to blame, for we both thought Pamina old enough to attend the sacrifice. She has shown herself still too much a child, and as punishment she shall be forbidden this procession. Go to bed at once, Pamina. Papagena shall stay with you."

  "Mother—" Pamina begged as the woman strode toward the door, and the Queen turned back for a moment, her face shadowed with the impatient look Pamina dreaded.

  "What now?"

  "Mother, don't let them send Rawa to the stables to be a rat-catcher! She would be so unhappy!"

  The Starqueen smiled and said, "I promise you Rawa will not go to the stables." Even long after that, when Pamina remembered that smile, it froze her into silence. But the Queen's voice was tender, and Pamina thought she must have imagined that look.

  "Go to bed at once, my child."

  She never saw Rawa again.

  And the years passed...

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE desert stretched away before him, bare and clean, a few low bushes breaking the horizon in the distance. So far away that it hurt his eyes to focus on it, he could see low hills and some dim outlines that could have been buildings.

  Why, Tamino wondered, did they call this deserted wilderness the Changing Lands? It would have been more accurate and descriptive to call them the Unchanging Lands.

  He had been traveling now for the best part of a moon; when he had set out upon this journey, the moon had been full. Now again the moon rose in a pale circular disk at the edges of the night, and he did not know whether he was yet in sight of his goal.

  Tamino looked at the pallid face of the moon and remembered that he had eaten nothing since the early morning. He set down his pack,
and rummaged inside it. Little remained of the provisions with which he had set forth: a few bites of dried fruit and a strip of dried meat, final scraps left over from his last hunting—the body of some small desert animal, no larger than a squirrel but unlike any squirrel he had ever seen in his entire life. Perhaps tomorrow he could hunt again—if any game of any kind could be found in this howling wilderness.

  Carefully, he untied the waterskin at his waist. Tomorrow, at the latest, he would need water too. He thought briefly of building a fire, for company—the sight even of sparks against this deserted and silent waste would be friendly. But there was little to burn, only the dry and woody stems of the barren plants. And such as they were, dry and inhospitable, they were the only living things he could see, and he was reluctant to take from them even the little life they possessed without real necessity. Tonight, then, he would sit in the dark.

  He sipped a few mouthfuls of water and chewed thoughtfully on the dried fruits.

  A year ago, a moon ago, he had never believed that he would find himself in any place like this. He wrapped himself in his shabby traveling cloak—it had been fine and new not long ago, but since then it had served him for blanket, garb, and shelter in all weathers, and it had aged. Like I myself, Tamino thought.

  Until a bare moon ago, Tamino had been no more than the pampered younger son of the Emperor of the West and had known no hardship and little exertion, except for games with his companion and some hunting.

  Then he had been sent forth, knowing only that it was the will of his father, the Emperor, that he should travel to the great Tempie of Wisdom in Atlas-Alamesios—of which he knew only that it was about a month's journey distant—to undergo the Ordeals. During much of this journey he had wondered about the Ordeals, when they would begin and if this journey were, indeed, the first of them. In accordance with the instructions given him, he had traversed the mountains which bordered the Empire of the West, crossed the Great Waste which separated that Empire from the lands of Great Atlas, and entered upon the Changing Lands, which, so far as he could tell, did not change at all.

  Yet now, as he lay beneath the distant stars, shivering a little—for the night was cold and his cloak had been intended for the warmer climate of his father's lands—he began to wonder if, indeed, this wilderness and this journey had not wrought a change, at least, in himself. He was perhaps not exactly the same Tam-ino who had set out thirty days ago from his father's place. For one thing, he was thinner. Never before had he missed a meal, and on this journey he had missed a great many. Many of those he had eaten, in fact, he had had to provide for himself by his skill at hunting.

  Nor had he ever known what it was to be alone, or to be afraid. Not that the journey had been unduly perilous. But it had been solitary; never before this had Tamino lacked for counsel or for companionship. There had been none to advise the better road, the safer path on steep crags, none to guide his hand or arrow when he shot for game. He had had no guide but the rough instructions he had been given to follow the rising sun; no adviser; no company but himself, no counsel but the memory of his childhood's advisers— and now he was all too aware that he had made all too little use of that guidance.

  Yet he was no longer, as he had been earlier in the journey, afraid. He no longer felt the want of someone to talk to, nor the need of anyone to guide him. Not only was his body harder, but it seemed to Tamino that his mind and determination as well were more firmly muscled, more self-reliant. When he notched an arrow and let it go, he knew it would fly swiftly to its target and strike. This was no longer a game, no longer a competition to prove his superiority, where at least half the time the companions chosen by the Emperor for his son would hesitate to best him in the game.

  Here in the desert, if the arrow went wide he would likely go to sleep supperless, and must hunt, as well, for an errant bolt, since there was no way to replace one.

  No, he thought, I am still Tamino, but a stronger Tamino, perhaps—the thought was hesitant, almost shamed—more worthy to be called prince. Even if nothing further came of this journey, if he should come to the edge of the very world and find nothing but the barren sea, the Ordeals no more than a delusion, so that there was nothing for him to do but turn around, retrace his steps and go home again, he would not regret the journey nor think it wasted.

  He lay looking at the stars. In his father's palace he could not remember ever having taken any more note of the stars than of the brilliant ornamental lanterns which adorned the palace ceilings. Rather less, in fact, for it had sometimes been necessary for him to order the lanterns changed or replaced. Since he had come on this journey, he had seen more of sunrises, sunsets, moon, sun, and stars than in his whole lifetime before this. He had come to rely on them; clear sight of sun and sky telling him that he could travel without losing his way, clear sight of moon and stars that he could sleep in the open without needing to seek the shelter of cave or overhang or even a convenient thicket or bush. At home he had slept through the sunrises, insulated by silken curtains, and if a hunting party kept him abroad long enough to see a sunset, he thought of it only as a tiresome delay before the evening's revelry. Here for entertainment he had only those same sky and stars.

  Lying now and looking up at the clear desert sky, he remembered. Years ago when he was still in the schoolroom, he had had a tutor who had tried to teach him the lore of the stars, but Tamino had hardly listened, always eager to get out to his pastimes and companions. He could have learned all the wisdom known to mankind, become familiar with the influence of stars, sea, tides, and clouds, all the things which he should have known before he ever came on this journey. Instead, he had had to learn all these things painfully by studying them and discovering for himself how they affected his progress.

  He had not been trained to rule. That had been for his elder brother, the crown prince. Yet he had been provided with a good education; it was not the fault of his father that he had made no use of it.

  Well, tomorrow would be another day of travel, and perhaps it would bring him a little nearer to his unknown goal. He took a final frugal sip from his wa-terskin; his mouth was dry and he could gladly have drained the skin, but he had made that mistake, too, early in his journey, and had learned to conserve his last water until he was sure where he could next replace it. Carefully, he re tied the neck of the waters kin, thrust it beneath his neck for a pillow, and slept.

  The first light wakened him. The sky was flushed crimson, an ominous color; he had learned on this journey that it meant rain or storm. Yet there had been no rain in the desert in ten days of crossing this waste. Was he about to see rain here, then, or did a crimson sky in the desert mean something other than crimson at sunrise in a more hospitable territory? It seemed he was about to learn something more about weather.

  A few sips of the stale water from the waterskin, and the last few bites of his dried fruit made an unsatisfactory breakfast. Perhaps, when he reached the Temple of Wisdom where he was to undertake the unknown Ordeals, they would let him have at least one good meal first.

  But here and now there would be no meal at all, good or otherwise, unless he provided it for himself, and in this wilderness it would probably be otherwise. There was little game here—he had seen none of the peculiarly shaped squirrel creatures for several days— and even less vegetable food that could be eaten. His most crucial need at the moment was for water. Only a little, and that dank and musty, remained at the bottom of his waterskin; he had learned enough of the torture of thirst that he was unwilling to repeat that particular lesson.

  He looked around to try to get his bearings. To the east the sun was just rising from a sea of crimson cloud. The horizon was broken by some squarish shapes which might have been rock formations or possibly—Tam-ino's breath caught in his throat—buildings. If so, this would be the first human habitation he had seen since he left his father's city.

  But they were very far away, at the very edge of the horizon of his sight. A month ago he might have made th
e error of thinking them closer than an hour's walk, deceived by the clear desert air.

  Now he knew they were a day's walk, and perhaps even further away than that. Excited though he might be at the thought of once again encountering men, first it was imperative to renew his supply of food and water; after, there would be time enough to think of the buildings—if they were buildings at all, and not strange formations of rock. Once before he had been deceived, thinking he saw a city where there were only cliffs and spires of rock.

  Dismissing the thought of the buildings, he turned about to assess the other directions, to see if there was in his immediate surroundings any chance of renewing his supply of food and water. He had seen nothing the night before, but he had walked until dark and might have missed something in the twilight.

  He turned round to gather up his cloak, which had served as his blanket, then stopped and rubbed his eyes. Last night, of this he was certain, he had slept in the open; he could remember lying and looking up at the stars. Surely he had not been deluded, had not been actually looking up at them through the branches of a tall tree?

  No, for he remembered, just before sleep had taken him, that he had taken note of the lack of all vegetation except for the dry and spiny bushes. Yet now, above the crumpled cloak which still bore the creases and impress of his body, the tall corrugated stem of a date palm swayed; and the thick golden brown bunches between the leaves were surely clusters of ripened golden dates.

  Tamino blinked and rubbed his eyes again. This marked the return of one of his earliest fears during the first stages of his journey: that the solitude might drive him mad. A date palm, and furthermore a date palm laden with ripe dates! Yet, when he went to sleep—right under it, by the evidence of his eyes— there had been nothing of the sort.