by Speer, Flora
“Tamat? Are you ill? I knew the walk was too long for you.” Sidra reached out a hand to steady her, but Tamat drew herself up, brushing aside her assistant’s concern.
“I am not ill. You are right, Sidra. Janina must remain with us as a lesser priestess. It shall be as you say.” Tamat silently promised herself she would think of something else for the future. Tomorrow, after she had rested, she would think of another plan. “Osiyar, can you carry her to the temple?”
“Easily,” the priest replied. “She is a small weight.”
Tamat turned and began to walk toward the villagers. Behind her back, Sidra and Osiyar shared a long, silent look.
* * * * *
“Beloved, come to me. I need you…help me…” Reid jerked himself awake, uncertain if it was day or night. He had been walking for so long that he had lost all sense of time. He imagined that days must have passed because he was so tired. His food packets were gone. He must have eaten them, which further convinced him he had been in the forest for a long time.
He had given up hope of finding Herne and Alla. Poor Alla was probably frantic with worry over him. He was sorry about that, yet he remained confident they would all be found soon. If he did not send periodic reports back to the headquarters building on the lake, Tank would begin a search for them. But how could anyone find him in this strangely luxuriant forest when his instruments would not work to guide rescuers to him?
His instruments. Reid felt for his communicator. He found it in the waist pocket where it was supposed to be, but the packet of other communications equipment he usually carried slung over his left shoulder was gone. He could not recall having dropped it. He decided he had most likely removed it the last time he slept, and then forgotten to pick it up again when he moved on. He turned around, half determined to retrace his steps to try to find it, before he realized that he had no idea which way to go to backtrack. At that moment, he wasn’t even certain in which direction he had been going when he had heard the voice. With all the greenery pressing around him, he had no means of orientation. Shaking his head at the dense lushness of trees and undergrowth and hoping to get a better perspective on his location, he stepped backward a couple of paces.
He stepped off the ground into empty air.
With well-trained reflexes immediately alert, he caught at a bush to stop his fall. To his horror, the bush began to pull out of the ground. Grunting with the effort it took, he heaved himself upward to catch at another bush. This one was sturdier than the first, with deeper roots. It held while Reid slowly, painfully pulled himself back to solid ground. He lay on his belly, his legs dangling into emptiness, unable to move any further until his heart stopped its thunderous pounding and he could breathe normally again. Then he pulled himself all the way up, rolled over, and looked down into the abyss into which he had almost fallen.
It was a deep, narrow ravine. The thick foliage had screened it from his view, and he was so tired and confused that he had not noticed the brighter quality of light where the ground suddenly fell away and the trees ended.
He stared across the tops of tall trees to a rock wall on the opposite side which towered so far above him that its uppermost heights were lost in clouds and mist. The only interruption in the solid, gold-brown rock was the narrow veil of white water cascading down its length to lose itself in the green far below. On either side of him, the ravine extended as far as he could see.
“Beloved…please…”
“Stop tormenting me!” he yelled. “Star-blast you for a coward! Whoever you are, show yourself!”
“Please…”
“Leave me alone!” Jumping to his feet, Reid formed his hands into fists, ready to fight the possessor of that ghostly voice, but nothing materialized. “I can’t help you if I don’t know who or what or where you are. Damnation! Either stand where I can see you or go away!”
The response to his furious outburst was silence. Temporarily relieved of the annoyance of the voice, Reid considered his situation. He knew there was no ravine on the computer model of this area that he had studied so carefully back at headquarters. Remembering that model, he felt a prickling at the nape of his neck, accompanied by a sense of something eerily wrong, something far beyond his experience. He knew deep in his soul that he had wandered into a place where he should not be.
He thought later that he must have been mad or delirious to be so indifferent to danger or common sense, but the longer he stared at the bare rock escarpment confronting him, the more strongly it beckoned to him. He thought that if he could get down into the ravine, cross it, and somehow climb far enough up the cliff face, he would surely be permanently free of the irritating voice that was either inside his head or whispering into his ear, he couldn’t tell which. He believed if he could just get above the smothering leaves, his communicator might work again. If it did, he would be able to contact Alla and Herne, or, failing that, to reach Tank at headquarters and ask for help.
The first thing he did was make certain the communicator was securely fastened inside his pocket. Then he grabbed at the dangling end of a long, thick vine, pulling at it until it unwound from the branches of the tree where it had been growing and tumbled to the ground beside him. He wrapped one end of the tough, fibrous vine around the trunk of a sapling. Once convinced that this makeshift rope was secure, he held onto it while he let himself down over the edge of the ravine. He slid almost to the end of the vine, which brought him within reach of a particularly tall tree. Kicking his feet against the rocky side of the ravine to swing himself outward, he reached for the topmost branches.
He was not to have a second chance. When he was at the outermost limit of his swing, the vine tore loose from the sapling. With a loud whoop of dismay, Reid fell into the treetop. Grabbing for anything that might stop his fall, he clutched at leaves, small branches, and round, yellow, sticky fruit. He fell through a tangle of branches, bumping and scraping his hands and face, until he caught a branch strong enough to support his weight. He thought his arms would be pulled out of their sockets by the jerk when he stopped falling, but he held on tightly to that lifesaving branch while around him the debris he had created fell away toward the ground.
Cautiously, Reid edged his way along the branch to the tree trunk. Having reached it, he clutched it tightly and began to descend, using the branches as though they were the rungs of a ladder.
It was a long way down, and he paused on the lowest level of branches to look around. Here at the bottom of the ravine the still air was misty with moisture. The voice he had heard before was silent, perhaps because the roar of the waterfall was so overwhelming. If he followed that sound, he would come before long to the cliff wall. He dropped to the ground and, ignoring numerous bruises and cuts, began to walk again, pushing his way through ferns almost as tall as he was, slipping now and then on moisture-soaked mosses.
He was frequently distracted by swarms of brilliant blue butterflies or by small red-and-yellow birds with exceedingly long tail feathers. The waterfall blotted out any sounds the birds made. By the time he reached the cliff, Reid’s head was reverberating with the noise.
He did not waste time looking for the pool into which the water fell. The sound of it had guided him as he’d intended, but he knew he would have to get away from the roaring of that relentless cascade or he would be unable to use his communicator. Turning left, he made his way along the base of the cliff, brushing aside the undergrowth, trampling delicate flowers without thought in his eagerness to find a place where he could climb.
The waterfall was a muted rumbling in the background before he located what he sought, a section of rock face rough enough to offer foot and hand holds. It offered even more, for as he tilted his head back to look upward, he saw a narrow gap in the rock, a shelf backed by a cleft that looked just big enough for a man to fit into. He could climb to it, use his communicator to call for help, and then take shelter in the cleft until the shuttlecraft arrived.
He began to climb. It was hard wo
rk. The sun was high overhead and mercilessly hot. Reid was worn out by the lack of food and sleep, and his hands were already torn and bleeding from his descent into the ravine. Drugged by fatigue, he grew careless. He slipped, scraped his cheek against the rock, and tore two fingernails to the quick. Worse, he tore his treksuit. The strong fabric saved his life when a waist pocket caught on a jutting rock and stopped him from an almost certain fall, but he heard the fabric rip. A moment later, as he scrambled to get better hand and footholds, he heard something bounce against stone, then strike a second time and shatter before falling earthward.
He did not have to check to know what it was. The communicator, his last hope of summoning help, was gone. He clung to the cliff in despair, spread out upon the rocks like some bizarre human sacrifice clad in fluorescent orange. He was too weak by now to curse or weep.
He knew he had only two choices. He could release his grip on the slippery rocks, lean backward just a little, and follow his communicator into the green denseness below and be done with it. Or he could pull himself together, continue to climb, and try to reach the niche he had seen from below. Once there he could rest and think what to do next.
Reid pondered those two choices for long, agonizing moments. The eerie quality of the last few days impressed itself upon him again, along with the recognition of how strange and unnatural it was that he, a man in vigorous, reasonably happy youth, should think with pleasure and relief about dying. He knew something was wrong, something was happening to his mind, yet during those few moments when he clutched at the slippery surface of the cliff, he, who loved life, almost succumbed to the temptation to give up, to end everything. He was so incredibly tired, and it would be so easy ... so easy…The lure was seductive beyond all resistance.
“Beloved.”
Just as Reid began to allow the fingers of one hand to loosen their hold on the rock, a familiar soft voice sounded in his ear. Then, softer still, and now a murmuring inside his head, the voice came again. “Beloved…come to me ... I will help…come.”
Somehow, he knew not how, the choice of living or dying had been made for him, and in some deep recess of his mind he gave thanks to the possessor of that gentle, insistent voice. He did not really want to die, not before he had discovered what lay ahead once he was off that star-blasted cliff and far away from the abnormally dense forest. He wanted to find the owner of the voice that had saved him.
Gathering his last reserves of strength, he began to climb again. He went upward so slowly, so painfully, that when he finally reached the cleft in the rock, he had to crawl into the cool shade and lie down for a while before he fully realized where he was.
He found himself face down on crumbled dead leaves in what was not a niche at all, but a tunnel leading back into the cliff. There was air blowing through it, sending the dead leaves scurrying along the stone floor, a breeze that echoed a woman’s whisper.
“Beloved…come…”
He saw a dim light far ahead. Wearily, Reid dragged himself to his knees and began to crawl deeper into the tunnel.
* * * * *
Janina lay on her bed in her room in the temple, staring at the ceiling and trying to recall what she had just dreamed. She remembered a face, dark and filled with pain, seen for the second time. She had tried to touch him, to tell him not to worry, that she would help him. She thought she had asked him to help her, too, but she could not remember now what she had wanted him to do for her. When she tried to think about it, the dream faded away completely. Her feeling of loss was so strong that she wanted to cry. She told herself her depression was one of the after-effects of Tamat’s herbal potion, which had probably also caused her strange dream.
After her Test, she had slept for most of the day. When she wakened near evening, Tamat told her all that had happened and the decision that had been made about her position at the temple. Sidra would rule after Tamat - Sidra who disliked Janina - together with Osiyar, who loved no one. Her life would be in their hands. Janina did not really care about not being High Priestess. She had never wanted that burden. What distressed her was the knowledge that she had failed Tamat.
She told no one, not even Tamat, that she remembered everything. She did not quite know why she kept silence, except for a desire not to hurt Tamat any more than she already had. She knew that a true priestess would not have remembered what happened while she was in a potion-induced trance.
She thought again about the man she had seen. She could not get his unusual face out of her mind. She felt as though she had known that stranger for all of her life, and yet she had never met anyone who looked the least bit like him. No one in Ruthlen had dark, curly hair or a large, slightly hooked nose. Nor had she ever wanted to put her arms around any man who lived in the village or the surrounding farmlands.
Sighing over all the unanswered questions that troubled her, Janina rolled out of her low bed and went to the bathing room to perform her morning ablutions. Then, dressed in the loose, untrimmed white robe of a scholar priestess, she entered Tamat’s audience chamber.
Sidra and Osiyar were there before her, both of them facing Tamat. Their words to the elderly High Priestess sounded to Janina like an attack.
“What are we to do about her prophecy?” Osiyar demanded. “We all know it must be true, though we followed your command and did not touch her mind during the Test. We could have helped her, you know. It is allowed.”
“You surprise me, Osiyar,” Tamat replied with a touch of dry humor in her voice. “I did not know you cared about Janina’s welfare. She had to do it alone. It was the only way to make the Test a true one.”
“What of this dark man she saw?” Sidra asked, shivering. “Is he a Cetan? Does the prophecy mean they will attack us again?”
“He’s not a Cetan,” Janina answered her, advancing into the room. Her intent in speaking had been to reassure Tamat, but when Sidra and Osiyar swung toward her with puzzled faces, she realized her error. She wasn’t supposed to remember what she had seen. “From what Tamat has described to me of my prophecy, it was not violence I foresaw. Therefore, the man cannot be Cetan.”
“Just so.” Tamat looked relieved. “We can’t know if the man is friend or foe until he comes here.”
“But if he will change everything,” Sidra insisted, “then we ought to prevent him from coming. We need to strengthen the blanking shield. Let us join our power, Tamat, you and Osiyar and I. We will search for his mind, too. Once we hold him in thrall, we can destroy him or send him elsewhere.”
“Later. I will speak with Janina now.” Tamat dismissed Sidra and Osiyar with a slight gesture of one hand.
“Dear Janina,” Sidra said in her khata-sweet voice, “when Tamat has finished with you, remember it is your turn today to visit the pool in the mountain and bring us the Water. I know you won’t mind, as you are so fond of the grove.” She went out with a smile in Tamat’s direction.
“I sometimes wish,” Tamat said, “that we were not bound so tightly by the laws our ancestors laid down for telepaths, to control the Gift and preserve the privacy of each person. I would dearly love to steal deep into the minds of those two.”
“They would know at once what you were doing,” Janina said, more than a little shocked at Tamat’s suggestion. Prying into the minds of fellow telepaths was strictly forbidden except in dire emergencies.
“I think that in her heart of hearts,” Tamat went on, “Sidra is not so chaste as she would have us believe.”
“She would never break her vow,” Janina whispered, horrified at the idea.
“She would not,” Tamat agreed. “Not since my great-grandmother’s day has any priestess willingly surrendered her body to a man. You will recall from your studies that the High Priestess Sanala was soon discovered in her lustful perfidy. When the time came for the Sacred Mind-Linking, she could not hide what she had done, so she was overthrown and set adrift. That was when my great-grandmother’s older sister became High Priestess, and the honor has remained in our f
amily ever since.”
“Until this day.” Janina spoke the last words of the story, knowing them by heart. She had heard the tale many times.
“The honor would have ended with you in any case,” Tamat said, making light of a sorrow Janina knew hurt her deeply. “Since your parents left no younger daughter to marry and bear future priestesses, you would have been the last Tamat to hold the position. Sidra will be no worse than many High Priestesses we have had in the last six hundred years.
“My child, are you well today?” Tamat changed the subject abruptly. “The potion you drank can have unpleasant aftereffects, but it was necessary to give it to you.”
“I’m so sorry I failed you.” Janina’s silver-blue eyes were filled with tears. “I wish I could be everything you wanted me to be.”
“Hush. I love you no matter what you are, or are not.” Tamat’s frail hands cupped Janina’s face. “You have never failed in love or respect toward me. We cannot change what is. You can still live a safe and useful life here in the temple compound.”
They both knew that was true only so long as Tamat lived. No one could foretell what would happen afterward, under Sidra and Osiyar’s rule.
“Go,” Tamat said, kissing Janina on the cheek in a rare gesture of affection. “Bring us this day’s Water for the rituals.”
She looked after the departing girl with a secret, knowing smile.
* * * * *
Reid thought he must be dreaming, or possibly he had gone completely insane. With growing incredulity he stumbled through the last few feet of the smooth-walled tunnel, toward the astonishing vista opening just ahead of him. Now there was moss beneath his feet once more, and trees and bushes growing everywhere, but this was not the overgrown thickness of the forest. This looked like a garden. He knew it could not be a garden, because he was in the middle of the mountain. He could see on every side the sheer gold-brown of solid rock rising upwards for thousands of feet until the rock ended and the cloudless, purple-blue sky began.
