Killbird

and young Til was the first of my widows to birth, a girl. Now the village was a place of groans and scurrying women as child after child was born, not only to the seven widows but to the pairmates of Yorerie and Cree. Fanan give birth to a boy. Ouree the Unclaimed presented the family with a fine girl. Yuree, the last, birthed a girl. Ouree was weak, after the birth, and Mar moved her into our cave so that she could tend child and mother. Ouree was so gentle, so eager to please. She recovered, and the little girl was fat and healthy, sucking milk from Ouree with an eagerness which set us all laughing. Our daughter, Margan, fell in love with the baby. When Ouree was recovered and made preparation to move into her own house, Margan cried and protested. «Come stay with me, then,» Ouree said. «You stay us,» Margan lisped. «Why not?» Mar asked. «You are welcome. There is room.» «But you are pairmates and need your privacy,» Ouree said. «When we want privacy we will go into the cave of the games below,» Mar said. «Stay. Your daughter is our daughter, and our house is your house.» She stayed. I saw Yuree, baby on back, as I walked along the stream. «Why does the Unclaimed one live with you?» Yuree asked without greeting. «She and Mar are friends,» I said. «And she, being skinny and ugly like the inbreeder, appeals to you. Do you service them both at once?» «You have the tongue of an evil demon,» I said. «You failed me,» Yuree said. «How?» «It is a girl,» she said, speaking of her baby. «A very pretty little girl. She will have her mother's eyes and body.» «Eban…» «Yes, Yuree.» «A blessing.» «Gladly.» «Come lie with me. Make me with child now. I must have a son to care for me in my old age.» «I was never to touch you again,» I said, unable to resist. «I was angry. Come. I will make it nice for you.» «You know the custom,» I said. «Only when the baby walks.» «God curse the custom,» she said. It was only nights later when the women heard a wail from Yuree's tent and ran to find her holding the lifeless baby. When I arrived the women were already wailing. «It is God's curse,» Yuree said. «The baby died in her sleep.» My little girl. I had not known her, for Yuree had not even presented her for my inspection, and I was too concerned about Yuree's feelings to go to her. I grieved, inside, and walked away to let the women mourn and prepare the small body for burial. The Seer of Things Unseen caught me, took my arm. «I must speak,» she said. I nodded. «God did not come in the night,» she said. «The baby was smothered in her own bed, by her own sleepskins.» «How can this be?» «Ask Yuree,» she said. «Only a careless mother allows her baby to smother. Careless, or…» «Can you even suggest it?» I asked, shocked. «She wanted a boy. Already, even as you walked out the door, while she should have been mourning, she told me she demanded the right of the widow, and that means you to service her, now.» «If it is her right—» «But what did she do to earn that right before the baby walked?» Seer asked. «Seer,» I said, «you are a wise woman, but you are wrong. I have never told this. Only Mar knows. But in defense of my own life I have taken life, inbreeder life, and it is a horrible and saddening thing. No. You must not suggest it. Carelessness? Perhaps. Intent? No mother could do such.» «Women have done strange things for love,» Seer said. «And Yuree has had more than her share of grief. Perhaps it has sickened her mind.» «No, no,» I said. I could not even think it. But, gods of man, how many times I have wished that I had listened to the old Seer that night of the death of Yuree's girl baby. I went to Yuree's house to do my duty, and she wept and clung to me and begged me to stay the night, which I did, and then other nights, as the Seer decreed, judging Yuree's fertile period by the moon, and I, myself, took note of the time of Yuree's blooding, and when, going there on her request, I knew that she was not blooding at the time, I said to her, «Yuree, if you are missing your moon period my duty is finished.» «I confess,» she said. «I am missing it, but I am not sure. A few more nights to make certain, Eban.» «I cannot. I will go.» «Eban, please, for me. I am so lonely. I want your body so.» «No, Yuree,» I said. «A family head, of all people, must observe the customs.» «If you go I will kill myself,» she said. I went pale. «That is the sin of all sins,» I said. «Do not speak such evil.» «Go, then,» she said. «I hope you enjoy your rutting with your inbreeder.» Man, I suppose, is an imperfect creature and must live in an imperfect world. In my life there was only one unhappiness. Yuree. She was with child. Winter came. She would seek me out and beg me to come to her, to sneak into her house in the night. She said things like, «The inbreeder won't care.» Finally I had enough and I told her, «Yuree, I warn you, and it is a warning from the family head. Remember your honor. Observe our customs. Do your work and be happy or I will call the council of the entire family to punish you.» I spoke sternly and thought the matter settled, for she ceased to seek me out. Snow came, and the young were doing well. Ouree was like a member of our own family and her young one was a joy to me and to Mar. The two females fussed over the baby endlessly, aided by my daughter, Margan. I went back to my game, which was the same and boring, but I was getting some satisfaction out of doing it almost right every time. The thing came suddenly. We watched Margan play with the baby one night. There was a knocking on the plate and I opened it. Yuree was there. She had a longbow in her hands and a dragonskin arrow was in place, the bow stretched. It was pointed at me. «I give you one last chance,» Yuree said. «Leave them and come with me.» My impulse was to strike the bow from her hands, but there was a madness in her eyes. «Yuree,» I said gently. «Put aside the bow. Come. We will talk. All of us.» «Yes or no, killer,» she said. «Come with me or I will repay you in kind for the death you have given me.» «Yuree, Yuree,» I said soothingly, moving forward, seeing that she was maddened. I would knock the bow aside and the arrow would fly, if she released it, into one of the hard walls, doing no damage, but she saw my intent and with a wild cry loosed the arrow, which made a zipping sound as it passed my very cheek, and a cry of pain came from behind me even as I hit Yuree with my closed hand and sent her sprawling into the snow. I turned then and screamed. Mar was on her knees, and the arrow, so wickedly tipped with jagged dragonskin, was lodged deeply in her breast. I screamed my rage and pain and leaped to catch her as she fell forward. The arrow was deep. The head was jagged. And yet, it had to come out. «Eban,» she whispered. «Oh, Eban. Hold me.» «Yes, yes,» I said. I held her. «We must remove the arrow.» «No,» she said. «It hurts so.» «It must come out, and then we will fix it and you will be well again soon.» «No,» she whispered. «Eban…» And the dull look of death came to her eyes, which had been so alive and so loving, and I sat there, rocking her as the last of her breath went in a shudder and her legs did a violent little dance, and Margan was screaming and Ouree weeping and the baby crying, and maddened Yuree came, dragonskin knife in hand, screaming. My hardax is never far from my side and it was at my side, and with one arm supporting Mar's dead body I heaved the ax, and it took the killer in the stomach, burying itself. Yet still she came, the knife aimed at me. I rolled aside to dodge it and hit her with my closed hand, and she fell to the floor, bleeding, screaming now, and her blood mingled with Mar's and then she was dead. Gods of man. Gods of man. You are cruel and evil and endlessly inventive in the miseries you can imagine to heap upon your creatures. Chapter Nine Eban the Accursed. Has any man ever had so much death? A man buries his parents when they die peacefully in their old age. Now and again a man sees death. A hunter misses the vital point and the bear reaches him. In my father's case death was distant, for he died by a dragon far from home, and his bones, I suppose, whiten on some hillside near a dragon's lair. My mother died slowly and quietly. And then it came. Blast of killbird. Slash of ax at the inbreeders. The sickness claiming my son. Rattle of dragon's teeth as more members of my family died. My child by Yuree, and, I came to suspect, at Yuree's hands, for she was mad. And me, once again dealing death with my ax, and to a woman whom I had once loved, a woman I had serviced, whose arms I had known, whose belly had fertilized my seed and developed it. Blood and death and— Mar. Mar. Mar. I drove Ouree away. Then I tossed Yuree's body into the snow and closed the plate. Margan, not really knowing what was going on, had been snatched up by Ouree, along with Ouree's own baby. I cradled Mar's body in my arms and sang the song of mourning until I fell into a stupor and woke, limbs stiff and crying done. Outside, as I carried Mar's body, the family greeted me with a wail of mourning, and we sang the song of death and sadness as Mar joined the body of our unlucky son in the frozen ground. I spoke to them. «I am Eban the Sad, Eban the Accursed, Eban the Dead, for I live not from this day.» «Speak not so, honorable father,» Ouree said, weeping. «I mourn alone. Do not come to me. And hear this. From this day I banish death from our valley. I will not allow it near. I have had enough death. I have seen sacred life after sacred life ended before the appointed time. I will have no more of it. I will slay neither animal nor man, and I will eat only of the magic, for flesh, even if it is animal, is death.» Someone had entered my cave during the burial and washed away the blood of both Mar and the mad Yuree. I closed myself away. I ate nothing, drank only water. I became lightheaded. I went to the game cave, unable, since I had not been into the light outside, to know whether it was night or day, but I felt the passage of nights, how many I knew not. The game cave welcomed me with the usual display of lights, and I lost myself in following instructions, pushing and moving things until I was able to blank out everything from my mind but the flashing lights, the instructions of the deep and unnatural voice. How long? I know not. I pushed and thought of nothing and followed the instructions and hardly realized it when the voice said: «Well done. You are ready.» And now still another plate opened, and there was a cave of wonders. I took the chair, very small in it, having to stand on my knees to see the flat surface with its things to push and move and the eyes were spread all across the thing in front of me, blank and white. However, they came to life, and I saw wonders which were a puzzle. Some eyes showed, gods of man it is true, killbirds. They sat, did the killbirds, on their tails and were dead or sleeping in caves of dragonskin. The voice of the eye said strange things I did not understand. As best I can repeat the strangeness, it sounded like «See whence one.» I pushed and