HIGH PRAISE FOR SHERI S. TEPPER’S
THE GATE TO WOMEN’S COUNTRY
“What keeps us reading is the gradual unfolding of the workings of the society…. What makes the story good… is Tepper’s experienced pen. She not only keeps us reading, but by carrying several feminist dreams to the point of nightmare, she provokes a new look at the old issues.”
—The Washington Post
“A rewarding and challenging novel that is to be valued for its provocative ideas.”
—Publishers Weekly
“In The Gate to Women’s Country, Sheri S. Tepper has produced a book which exemplifies all of her previous virtues, and which is in addition poignant and profound. I’m deeply impressed.”
—Stephen R. Donaldson
Bantam Spectra Books by Sheri S. Tepper
Ask your bookseller for the ones you have missed.
BEAUTY
THE GATE TO WOMEN’S COUNTRY
GRASS
SIDESHOW
A PLAGUE OF ANGELS
SHADOWS END
GIBBONS DECLINE AND FALL
STAVIA SAW HERSELF AS IN A PICTURE, FROM THE outside, a darkly cloaked figure moving along a cobbled street, the stones sheened with a soft, early spring rain. On either side the gutters ran with an infant chuckle and gurgle, baby streams being amused with themselves. The corniced buildings smiled candlelit windows across at one another, their shoulders huddled protectively inward—though not enough to keep the rain from streaking the windows and making the candlelight seem the least bit weepy, a luxurious weepiness, as after a two-hanky drama of love lost or unrequited.
As usually happened on occasions like this one, Stavia felt herself become an actor in an unfamiliar play, uncertain of the lines or the plot, apprehensive of the ending. If there was to be an ending at all. In the face of the surprising and unforeseen, her accustomed daily self was often thrown all at a loss and could do nothing but stand aside upon its stage, one hand slightly extended toward the wings to cue the entry of some other character—a Stavia more capable, more endowed with the extemporaneous force or grace these events required. When the appropriate character entered, her daily self was left to watch from behind the scenes, bemused by the unfamiliar intricacy of the dialogue and settings which this other, this actor Stavia, seemed able somehow to negotiate. So, when this evening the unexpected summons had arrived from Dawid, the daily Stavia had bowed her way backstage to leave the boards to this other persona, this dimly cloaked figure making its way with sure and unhesitating tread past the lighted apartments and through the fish and fruiterers markets toward Battle Gate.
Stavia the observer noted particularly the quality of the light. Dusk. Gray of cloud and shadowed green of leaf. It was apt, this light—well done for the mood of the piece. Nostalgic. Melancholy without being utterly depressing. A few crepuscular rays broke through the western cloud cover in long, mysterious beams, as though they were searchlights from a celestial realm, seeking a lost angel, perhaps, or some escaped soul from Hades trying desperately to find the road to heaven. Or perhaps they were casting about to find a fishing boat, out there on the darkling sea, though she could not immediately think of a reason that the heavenly ones should need a fishing boat.
Near the Well of Surcease, its carved coping gleaming with liquid runnels and its music subsumed into the general drip and gurgle, the street began its downhill slope from the Temple of the Lady to the ceremonial plaza and the northern city wall. At street level on the right a long row of craftswomen’s shops stared blindly at the cobbles through darkened windows: candle makers, soap makers, quilters, knitters. On the left the park opened toward the northwest in extended vistas of green and dark, down past the scooped bowl of the summer theater where Stavia would play the part of Iphigenia this summer. Not play, she thought. Do. Do the part. As someone had to do it. In the summer theater. In the park.
A skipping seawind brought scents of early spring flowers and pine and she stopped for a moment, wondering what the set designer had in mind. Was this to remind her of something? All the cosiness of candle flame and gurgling gutters leading toward this sweet sadness of green light and softly scented mist? Too early to know, really. Perhaps it was only misdirection, though it might be intended as a leitmotif.
The street leveled at the bottom of the hill where it entered the Warrior’s Plaza, unrelenting pavement surrounded on three sides by stories of stolid and vacant colonnades. The arched stone porches were old, preconvulsion structures. Nothing like that was built today. Nothing so dignified, so imposing, so unnecessary. The ceremonial space seemed far emptier than the streets behind her. The arches wept for spectators; the polished. stones of the plaza cried for marching feet, the rat-a-bam of drums, the toss of plumes, and the crash of lances snapped down in the salute, kerbam! The plaza sniffled in abandonment, like a deserted lover.
Oh yes, the journey had been meant as a leitmotif, she could tell. The plaza made it clear.
On three sides of the plaza, the colonnades. On the fourth side, the towering wall, high-braced with buttresses, glimmering with mosaics, pierced by the Defender’s Gate, the Battle Gate, and the Gate of the Warriors’ Sons, which comprised a triptych of carved timbers and contorted bronze depicting scenes of triumph and slaughter. The Defender’s Gate was at the left of this lofty arrangement, and she stood close to it for a long time—perceiving herself before it as though from a front-row-center seat, the compliant lines of her cloak melting before the obdurate metal—before reaching out with her staff to knock the requisite three times, not loudly. They would be waiting for her.
The small door at the base of the great portal swung open; she walked with every appearance of calm down the short corridor beyond. In the assembly room she found an honor guard. And Dawid, of course.
How could she have forgotten
