Soldier of Sidon by Gene Wolfe

I myself went to the woman in the corner and spoke to her. She did not reply. I touched her forehead then, in a place where Myt-ser'eu's blood had not been smeared. It was wax. When I touched her hand, her eyes saw me. It was as if I had awakened her from sleep, though she did not move a muscle. I backed away.
    After that Myt-ser'eu and I waited a long time, kissing once or twice but saying little.
    When Sahuset returned he laid a finger to his lips, and with a rod of ivory motioned for us to follow. We did, saying nothing. He led the way through several rooms and down a steep winding stair to a dark chamber where the air was cool but without life.
    It must have been far underground. The floor had been strewn with black sand, or perhaps with sand mixed with ashes. A tall box shaped like a man stood there. A man's face had been painted at the top, so that it almost seemed the man stood before us, a hard and handsome man who had lost something else before losing life, and told himself many times that the thing lost was not important. This box was painted as the chests and other things had been, though this paint was old and dull. In places, it had fallen away. In some, the wood was cracked.
    Sahuset put my hand upon Myt-ser'eu's shoulder andhers on mine, indicating by signs that we were to stand so. Then he drew a circle around us with his ivory rod, he himself standing always on the inside of this circle he drew. Three lamps stood in his circle too, near the edges of it. He drew a triangle whose points were these lamps, and kindled them by tapping each with his rod and muttering words I did not understand and could hardly hear. As he spoke to each, its flame sprang up, yellow and bright. Strange fragrances came and went in that chamber.
    After that, we waited again.
    Soon it seemed that someone walked in the house above, the footfalls sounding only faintly down the steep stair. I supposed that it was the wax woman, Sabra, who walked there; and perhaps it was. After a time, it came to me that the walker was searching the house, going from room to room in search of someone or something. Someone screamed, but the steps came neither faster nor slower.
    Steps sounded on the stair. The flames of the lamps sank, turning green, then blue. Something or someone taller than Sahuset descended the stair. It was not a man but was like a man. It wore a mask of fresh leaves.
    Sahuset spoke to it in a tongue I did not know. It answered in the same tongue, uttering three words each time it spoke, neither more nor less.
    "The xu will remain in you until the wind that stirs the grain is in your face," Sahuset told me. "Then it must depart." With these words he took my hand, led me to the edge of the circle, and indicated by a gesture that I was to step out of it. I did.
    I will not believe this when I read it, but after that I remember little. What I do remember, I set down here. I walked a dark street with a woman I did not know, and talked loudly and very fast. The faces of my father, my mother, and my sister floated around me. I knew our farm again, every meadow and field, and I relived the deaths ofmy friends. The woman beside me spoke often to me, but I did not heed her, only telling her everything that raced across my mind--a thousand things I have forgotten once more.
    At last I recalled Justa and struck the woman. "You're a whore!" I remember shouting it. I drew my sword and would have killed her, but she cowered and I could not strike.
    She led me to this inn. I was speaking loudly all the time, but in this tongue, not in hers. Men stared at me and laughed, thinking me drunk. We climbed many steps to the roof, where there were two bright tents and a hundred flowers that lifted lovely faces to the rising sun. She turned me from it. "Look!" she said. "Look, Latro!" I looked and the morning wind was fresh in my face, cooling it, drying my sweat.
    "What is it?" I asked in her tongue. "What are you pointing at, Myt-ser'eu?"
    "At the