Lee, Tanith - Birthgrave 1 - The Birthgrave

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''Wake, and come to me...

I am Karrakaz, the Soulless One, who sprang from the evil of your race . . . There is no escape

from Karrakaz now . . .

"The steps beyond the altar lead upward and out into the world. But if you go, you are

cursed, and carry a curse with you; there will be no happiness. The civilization which

bred you is dead uncountable years.

"Your palaces are in ruins.

"The lizards sun themselves in the driedup fountains and the fallen courts.

"And you-I will show you to yourself. Recollect, you should have been powerful, a magician

who ruled the elements, the stars, the seas, the deep fires of the earth. All things might have done

your bidding. The power of flight was yours, the chameleon art, the art of invisibility-and

beauty.

"Let me show you what you are."

The

Birthgrave

TANITH LEE

DAW B o o k s , I n c .

DONALD A. WOLLHEIM, PUBLISHER

1633 Broadway, New York, NY 10019

PUBLISHED BY

THE NEW AMERICAN LIBRARY OF CANADA LIMITED

FIRST PRINTING, JUNE 1975

56789

DAW TKADEMAK XBGIsnUD U.S. PAT. OFF. MAKCA KBGI3TSADA. KECHO IN U.&A.

PRINTED IN CANADA COYER PRINTED J.N U.S.A.

INTRODUCTION

by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Don Wollheim wrote to tell me he had just bought a long novel by an unknown Englishwoman whose only previous

books had been written for children. He asked me to read it and, if I felt it was something I could honestly praise, to

write an introduction.

It arrived on a morning full of annoyances. I was still recuperating after a slipped disk, so that I walked with a sort of

careful crouch and winced when I hefted the thick manuscript. Still, I'd promised Wollheim and he is my own publisher,

so I surveyed the fat mass of copy paper without enthusiasm, cautiously lowered my aching back into a kitchen chair, and

spread out the manuscript on the table.

So I turned the first page and found myself in the heart of an extinct volcano, in darkness, with a woman who did not

know who she was, or where she was, or why. . . .

And before long I forgot that I was reading this out of duty, or a promise to an editor, or anything else. I even forgot

the kitchen chair and the bad back, although after a couple of hours (sleepwalking, still reading with the manuscript box

under my arm, unable to set it aside even to hunt a really comfortable place) I did shift myself from kitchen table to

living-room sofa. I had forgotten everything except the nameless woman and her mysterious quest.

I am a remarkably fast reader, but it was almost five hours later when I turned over the last page, read THE END,

and surfaced with a start and a shudder. Wow, I thought, Oft, wow!

All I thought about the task of writing an introduction was that I'd have a chance to share with the other readers

something of how I felt about this terrific new discovery.

It's a strange and rather disturbing book. It's filled with adventure and beauty, rich alien names, half-sketched barbarian

societies, ruined cities, decadence and wonder. A nameless woman, knowing only that she is under a curse, comes out of the

heart of an extinct volcano. Everything is strange to her. Is she healerwoman, witch, goddess, as the various peoples call

her? Can she choose to be courtesan, warrior, queen? She goes from tribe to tribe, city to city, with the curse of her past

following her wherever she goes. She can suffer pain-but she is deathless, except by her own will; she is drawn endlessly by

the quest for her identity, her forgotten name, the mysterious Jade which-she believes-holds the key to her soul; and

everywhere she is pursued by the image of the Knife of Easy Dying, which alone can kill her.

Comparisons are odious, yet as I read this I thought most often

of the "Dying Earth" stories of Jack Vance, under whose spell I had fallen as a girl. THE BIRTHGRAVE has something

of the same color and wonder; something, too, of the strange undertone of doom and sadness.

And there was something else.

Most women in science fiction write from a man's viewpoint. In most human societies, adventures have been

structured for men. Women who wish to write of adventure have had to accept, willy-nilly, this limitation. There seems an

unspoken assumption in science fiction that science fiction is usually read by men, or, if it is read by women, it is read by

those women who are bored with feminine concerns and wish to escape into the world of fantasy where they can change

their internal viewpoint and gender and share the adventurous world of men. Maybe this was true at one time. The women's

liberationists would say that we women writers, too, had been brainwashed into accepting this pervasive social trend.

By and large, most of us have accepted the unspoken dictum that this is a man's world, and if we wish to compete in it,

we shall do so as men. All of us, and I include myself, have written mostly of men's doings and concerns, and all too often

from a man's point of view.

So maybe this is the book we've all been waiting for.

Here is a woman writer whose protagonist is a woman-yet from the very first she takes her destiny in her own

hands, neither slave nor chattel. Her adventures are her own. She is not dragged into them by the men in her life, nor

served up to the victor as a sexual reward after the battle. For the first time since C. L. Moore's warrior-woman, Jirel of

Joiry, we see the woman adventurer in her own right.

But this book is not an enormous allegory of women's liberation, nor an elaborate piece of special pleading. It's just a big

delightful feast of excitement and adventure.

It's a long book. You get involved, learn to know the people, get fully submerged in the colorful and fascinating world

Tanith Lee presents. And I predict that when you, at last, satisfied but regretful, turn over the last page, you too will

wish there were more.

As I found out when I read it through under what must be called acid-test conditions, it's what Don Wollheim calls "a

good read." But it's more than that. It has something to say to every reader, man or woman, about the eternal questions of

existence and identity. And, although as I said before, it is not a piece of propaganda from women's liberation, it may say

more for all of us, women and men too, than the whole humorless crowd of Steinems, de Beauvoirs, Friedans, and all their

weighty tomes.

Now get on with it. I won't keep you any longer from the excitement of sharing with me this rich new discovery-THE

BIRTHGRAVE by Tanith Lee.

BOOK ONE

Part I: Under the Volcano

To wake, and not to know where, or who you are, not even to know what you are-whether a thing with legs

and arms, or a beast, or a brain in the hull of a great fish-that is a strange awakening. But after a while, uncurling

in the darkness, I began to discover myself, and I was a woman.

All around was blackness and no-sound. With my hands I felt old crusts of rock. There was an ancient bitter

smell without a name pressing into my nostrils. I crawled out of the recess I had been lying in, and found a sort

of passage where I could stand upright. Oddly, I did not wonder if I was blind. It was cold and airless as I felt a way

along the passage. My foot struck hard on an obstruction. I kneeled and felt it carefully. A step, followed by other

steps, hewn out roughly from the inner rock, and not much trodden. I could remember abruptly other staircases, made

of smooth veined white stuff, slippery almost as glass, deeply indented at their center from countless feet passing up

and down.

I went cautiously up the steps, feeling always with my hands. I did not think to count them, but there were

many, at least a hundred. And then a flat space without steps. Foolishly I had quickened my pace, thankful to be

on level ground, but I was punished. Suddenly there was no more stone in front, only an unsensable void. I

swayed like a dancer on the brink of the invisible drop, then flung backward and saved myself. A skitter of stones

fell down into the blackness. I heard them falling for a long time, bouncing often against the walls.

I was terrified now. How could I go on without seeing? The next mistake might be fatal, and already, without

even

knowing who I was, I knew my life was important to me. I sensed, too, something fighting against me in the dark, a

malignant, one-sided battle, and I feared it and was angry.

On hands and knees I went forward very slowly, away to the left of the drop. After a moment, my outstretched

hand clawed at emptiness. I turned back, going to the right. A few seconds, and the third corner of the abyss was

sucking at my grasp.

I was rilled with fury. I screamed out a curse in the dark, and the sound echoed and echoed until I thought the

rock would split in pieces.

Where now? Perhaps there was nowhere. I lay on the ledge and wept, and then curled again, like an animal or

a fetus, and slept. That was the end of my first awakening.

The second time was better. The original sleep had been no normal sleeping; this was, and I woke with a

different awareness of things.

I reasoned in the dark that if the staircase ended in nothing, then I would have to go back down the stairs to the

passage, and retrace my steps until I found some other way. It occurred to me then, for the first time, that I was

seeking the surface, with an instinctive knowledge of being underground..

Crawling back across the platform to the stairs, my hands and then my knees encountered a square dip in the rock.

I searched it and discovered a seam. This must be a door. Even while I was trying to find some way to open it, it

slipped suddenly inward. I found myself, still in absolute blackness, hanging over another unguessable void, my

scrabbling fingertips clutching at one smooth edge of the door. There was no hope. My fingers lost their grip and I

fell. I thought that was the end of it, but the drop was not very far. I bit the stone floor, and rolled, loose-limbed

enough that I did myself no harm.

I turned around slowly, and now, unmistakably, there was the merest glimmer of light, far off, at the end of

what seemed another long passageway. Drawn by that light, I set off quickly, almost running.

Now I could see the dim outline of the rock sides, and the little veins of glitter in them. The passage wound and

wound, and the glow deepened and bloodied. Then abruptly I had turned a corner and threw up my hands to shield

my eyes.

The light was as blinding as the darkness, but soon I could rub away the tears and look around me.

I was in a vast cavern, lit only at its center where a great,

rough-hewn bowl, at least six feet in diameter, poured out a ceaseless storm of red and golden flame. Beyond the fire

a flight of steps ran up to a narrow door high in the wall. Otherwise the cavern seemed featureless and empty.

Somehow the narrow door was important to me, and I knew I must reach it.

I started out across the floor, suddenly aware of how the cavern, stretching up endlessly into darkness, dwarfed me

like an ant. I passed the flame-bowl, had my foot on the first stair. There was a groaning thunder behind me. I

swung around and looked in astonishment. Countless little fires had cracked open the cavern floor, and were blazing

there. At the next step, fresh flames burst through. Not stopping to see any more, I ran to the top of the stairs, as if

speed could outwit the mechanism below. With my hand on the narrow door, I glanced back. The floor where I had

walked was now a sea of savage gold, and the scarlet smoke clouded up and turned to purple in the high roof. I

pushed the door and ran through when it opened, thrusting it shut behind me.

The room was full of light, though it seemed to have no source. In front of me was a long hanging curtain, and

when I pulled it aside, a stone altar and another stone bowl, where something stirred and brooded at my presence. I

could not see this thing, only sense it, and when it spoke, I did not hear the words except with the ears inside my head.

"And so you could not sleep forever. I knew that you must wake one day, for all the sleep I gave you. Wake, and

come to me. Even the abyss could not take you, as I hoped. Well, then. I will tell you things. I am Karrakaz, the

Soulless One, who sprang from the evil of your race, a world of years before your birth, and finally destroyed that

race, and everyone of it, except yourself. And you escaped destruction because you were a little child, and had not

yet properly learned the ways of evil. But now you have grown to womanhood in your sleep, and you will learn.

Evil will come and you will welcome it. Remember, wherever you go, I will be near you. There is no escape from

Karrakaz now. Look."

On the altar something flickered and glittered and took on substance. A knife, with a sharp bright blade.

"See how easy it would be to be rid of me. Pick up the knife. You have only to tell it where to strike, and it

will obey you. Then you can sleep forever, without fear."

But I stood quite still and did not take it. A million pictures and memories were blazing through my mind, and

my hands were icy with terror.

"You wish to go out, then? Easy. There is the way. The steps beyond the altar lead upward and out into the

world. But if you go, you are cursed, and carry a curse with you; there will be no happiness. The civilization which

bred you is dead uncountable years. Your palaces are in ruins. The lizards sun themselves in the dried-up fountains

and the fallen courts. And you-I will show you to yourself. Recollect, you should have been powerful, a magician who

ruled the elements, the stars, the seas, the deep fires of the earth. All things might have done your bidding. The

power of flight was yours, the chameleon art, the art of invisibility-and beauty. Let me show you what you are."

The new thing in the air shone coldly clear, and in it I saw my reflection begin to form. A woman-shape, slender,

small; long hair, very pale, and then the face-the hands of the reflection covered its face, and kept a little of its

hideousness from me. But only a little. I knew. The face of a devil, a monster, a mindless thing, unbearable to look

on.

I was crouching low against the floor, one arm over my head, my chin pressed down against my breasts, and, in

the other hand, the knife from Karrakaz' altar.

But before I could speak the death words to the blade, & soft lamp filled my brain, cool and green, and very old.

"Yes," said the no-voice in my skull, "there is always that. If you can find it. Your soul-kin of green jade."

I jumped up and flung the knife through the image of the mirror so that it shattered. Beyond the door a massive

explosion rocked the cavern, and the floor juddered under my feet. I started for the steps.

"Wait," it said, the he-she thing without a soul. "Remember you are cursed, and carry a curse with you. You

have been asleep in the depths of a dead volcano. Leave it, and it will wake as you have woken. The red-hot lava will

pour out through every passage and pursue you down the mountain. It will cover villages and towns, ruin crops, and

burn to death everything living in its path."

But I scarcely heard. My instinct for freedom was too strong, too terrible. I rushed up the steps, up and up,

away from the glowing room and the possession there, into cold darkness that soon lightened. As I paused a moment

to rest, leaning against the mountain's gut, I looked up and saw stars and moonlight pouring in my eyes. Behind me the

dark was reddening, and rocked with endless paroxysms of anger or pain. The stench of sulfur filled my belly and

head and lungs and made me sick, but I toiled on, my hands like limpets on

the stone. At last a ledge, and beyond the ledge the outer slopes of the volcano, running downward into dark

valleys. Above, wide now from horizon to horizon, the brilliant sky.

I jumped from the ledge, and, as my feet touched soil, a demon belled in the earth. Sky and earth came toppling

together and turned scarlet, and I fell, and continued to fall, down into the night.

I fell faster than I could have run, too stunned to be frightened yet. Then I was in a pit, and was stopped like

a heart in death. I crawled out, gazed back. The clouds above the grumbling mountain were russet, and the first

bright snakes of lava were sliding forth after me. A shower of boiling coals exploded outward, and fell all

around me. Black-ash rain filled my eyes and mouth. I wrapped a corner of the dirty garment I wore over my

mouth and nose, and fled again.

Down to the valleys. No longer dark. Lights were flying here and there and everywhere, and I could hear

them screaming and shouting even over the noise the mountain made. There was no hope for them, for myself.

Where would any of us hide from this burning demented hatred?

I was on a road, and scarcely noticed it. I bore away from the first village, ran across an orchard, where already

the sparks of the volcano had started a fire. Vines were popping as they blazed. A flock of bleating, terrified sheep

came plunging past and were gone.

I ran on. Where was my instinct taking me?

Something snapped with a clang; I stumbled and fell. A wicked little trap had bitten shut on the hem of my tunic,

by some miracle missing my bare foot. I wrenched the tunic free, tearing it, and saw ahead the low glitter of

water.

A palace pool, clotted with a cream of lilies and swans, dazzled behind my eyes, but the night was crimson now,

and the mountain thundered. I got up and ran toward the water. The vines whipped around me. Through a gate,

across a furrowed field, smoking in places. All the while, the coals burst over me. A million little blisters were

forming on my body, but I scarcely noticed them. Suddenly through a thicket, against the ghastly sky, a long lake

stretching wide, its glass

changing to red, steaming where the hot things fell in it and went out.

Stumbling to the edge, I found several moored boats, little fishing canoes. Why hadn't the fools in the villages run

to these and saved themselves? I felt helpless anger at them, as I expertly pushed my boat out from the shore, using

the long rough pole. I bore the guilt for everyone of them to die. And here was the means for them to live, ignored.

Damn them, then, let them perish.

Deep on the heart of the lake, I watched through the night, the imperceptible dawn, while the fury of the

mountain expended itself. Around me the water heaved and bubbled, the air was black, hot, and stifled with

falling ashes. The sounds were of a great beast vomiting. I thought of the stone Karrakaz had used as its altar,

consumed with all the rest, but I knew that that thing at least had survived. It would be always with me, an emblem

of the waiting evil in my soul, a reminder of my hideousness, the curse upon me, and the easiness of death.

At last, a sort of twilight, green and lavender, with one last pulsing cloud above the volcano. I strained the boat

across the water to the farthest shore, but even there the land was cinder-fields. In places the ground had cracked open,

erupting stones.

I would have kept away from the cots and huts, but it was so difficult to tell now. Everything was down, trees

smoldering in the path. A dead child lay on its face; dead birds had fallen from the air. I began to weep, running

frantically in all directions to escape this evidence, but always seeing it. Had my sin come already? Even in my

unconquerable desire to be free, had I begun to unlock darkness?

And now I seemed to be moving down a narrow alleyway between the ruined walls of little houses.

A corner, swerving sharply, and now an open place. There were about fifty or sixty people huddled together here,

their backs to me, ragged and grimy as I was. The sight shocked me. I stopped. A little hot wind hissed through my

hair.

And then they began to turn, singly, in groups, sensing me as a wild animal senses danger or food. Their cold

reddened eyes fixed on my body, halted, and turned from my face. I wanted to put up my hands to hide my face, but

they were wooden and nailed against my sides. A child began to cry somewhere in the throng. Men shouted and

women muttered. Their hands were moving as mine could not, in some ancient

ritual; against evil, I thought. Suddenly a new voice rang out, clear, but with a little crack in it.

"The Goddess! The She-One from the Mountain!" And all about me, as if at a signal, they were falling on their

knees, entreating me for mercy, and pity, and succor, and all the things I could not give. Mixed in with their

wailing was a cry about their sins, and the word Evess. It came to me abruptly that they were speaking hi some

language I had never heard, and yet I knew every syllable. Evess meant face, but not in the human sense. This

was the face of holiness which to them could be both beautiful and ugly, equally terrible, and must never be looked

on. Glancing behind them, I saw what they had been grouped around at the end of the open place: a rough-hewn

stone, resembling a woman in a red robe with white clay hair. It held a mask against the Evess, which could not be

seen, but the hair and stature of it were unmistakable. These people were big and large-boned, dark-skinned and

black-haired. The image was not of them, but they and I knew it at once. It was myself.

So I stood facing myself across the humped hills of their bodies. I, who had brought the scarlet death of the

mountain, worshiped in fear as the ancient goddess some legend had implanted in their minds.

I ended the paralysis of my bewilderment by turning to walk away.

Softly, whispering their invocations, they followed me. What now? If I broke into a run to escape them, would

they too run to keep up? My eyes grew strange, and everywhere I looked, I seemed to see the glitter of the Knife

of Easy Dying. Die, and let them follow me into death if they would. But I was still too new to life to let it go.

Finally, sick and weary and in pain, I sat down on the rubble of some wall. I sighed, and countless eyes lifted,

hovered, and fell away.

A woman came crawling to my foot.

"Spare us who have seen, unwilling, the Evess of the Goddess."

"Let me alone," I said, but too faint for her to hear the words.

She took it as some kind of malediction; perhaps I had not even spoken in their tongue, but in my own, consciously

forgotten, yet learned in my first years as a child, before the ending of my race. She began to wail, and beat her

breasts, and rend her hair.

"Stop," I said.

She gazed at me blankly, her hands suspended in midair.

A callous hysteria overcame me, and I laughed weakly at her, at all of them, as I sat on the rubble.

They thought me a goddess. I was quite incomprehensible to them. No need then to explain, only do as I wanted.

There would be no hindrance.

I got up, and every joint seemed ready to crack open.

An old long low building, upright, with several shallow steps, and an oblong doorway leading into cool dark.

There was a smell there-cold yet close, not unpleasant, but alien. The smell of Human Life, and of something else

too. I guessed soon enough when I saw the repeated image of the She-One. This was their temple, and the smell was

holiness, fear and incense blended together by generations of unquiet belief.

They were hesitating below the steps, dark against the bronze and lilac sky. I held up my hand, my palm facing

out toward them.

"No farther," I said. "Mine."

They seemed to understand. I went into the gloom alone. Beyond the altar, a screened door: the ultimate sanctuary.

It was only a little cold stone room. Ash had collected on the floor, as it seemed to have collected everywhere. A

priest's pallet lay in a corner. I stumbled to it and lay down.

Would they come now, dare the abuse of a deity, realizing I was not a legend, but something much worse? Would

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摘要：

'Wake,andcometome...IamKarrakaz,theSoullessOne,whosprangfromtheevilofyourrace...ThereisnoescapefromKarrakaznow..."Thestepsbeyondthealtarleadupwardandoutintotheworld.Butifyougo,youarecursed,andcarryacursewithyou;therewillbenohappiness.Thecivilizationwhichbredyouisdeaduncountableyears."Yourpalacesare...

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Lee, Tanith - Birthgrave 1 - The Birthgrave

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