Here in Cold Hell by Tanith Lee

Author:Tanith Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media

FOUR

Sometimes they flew, or levitated. Sometimes they ran. The dogs would not go up in the sky, but bounded below, or alongside on the ground, barking now and then as if to say, ‘See, we’re dogs!’ The two women strolled. All the men but Curjai and Kuul had been disapproving. Heppa’s girl was in the family way, and chariots were so easy to come by here. But she did not like, the girl, who was named Wasfa, Hell’s animals, except the dogs who were now so dog-like. She preferred therefore to walk. And after all, like all the rest, Taeb and she could travel in the air if they wished to rest their feet.

The Red Witch who had abducted Vashdran’s mirror-body had flown generally east of Uashtab by the sun. They could see her sky-trail, fading only slowly, like a rusty scratch.

As always, the armour had fallen from them, not being appropriate. They wore random clothing of many lands and styles, formed by thought.

Night was the time they really talked to each other; as they sat unsleeping under the underlit stars, and the narrow new eyes of the jatchas glinted in firelight. And then conversation or monologue was always of home. That was, of life, who and what they had been and done. Curjai did not say much about this. Vashdran said nothing.

Kuul praised his wife Jasibbi. He said neither of the brides he took here had matched up to her, and seeing his lack of affection they had both carelessly wandered off. Swanswine knew no ordinary woman was worth a woman of Olchibe. Heppa, resuming their speech patterns, talked of the Vorm Isles, the mountains and sea voyaging, mentioning no woman of any kind. Behf’s provenance remained unclear, though his community seemed to have been of a fisher-warrior sort. He muttered only of women. The current two, Wasfa and Taeb, waited on the men and did not reminisce. Both already knew how to summon food from the earth. Wasfa did not object to the pale shoots that sprang out, or the loaves of bread from stones. Joints of meat would come too, but those bloody and convincing dinners Wasfa did not touch, and neither would Taeb eat them, even after roasting them on witch-invented fires. ‘Some food always comes out of the ground,’ Wasfa said. ‘But not ready-butchered dead animals.’

Taeb called water, wine or beer from the sky. That was probably only her sense of theatre; it could have come from anywhere. It poured into a big round cup made out of the ground of Hell, and they would scoop off goblets-full, and later the goblets, cast aside, would return to shards.

Some nights Wasfa began to tell stories: heroes, deeds, riches.

They liked this. Even Vashdran liked it, though it pierced him to the quick. He had always felt isolated, as indeed he was, but never so much as now.

He began to wonder, as perhaps he already had, if any of the others were real or only more inventions of Hell.

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