by Emanuel, Ako
“Thank you, Ya’kano,” she whispered. “Thank you for your blessing. I pray to be worthy of your benediction and the position of trust I will hold. Thank you, ashe.”
She rose slowly, picked up the last gem, and set it in its place just as the Priestesses appeared behind her to prepare her for the turn’s Trials.
…the light turned, rose and mauve…
As Av rose over the curve of the world, the gates to T’Av’li swung open slowly, silently, as if in response to the lazy deluge of light framing the Palace.
All assembled waited, breath held, for the first sight of the High Queen. For, with her first step onto the path carpeted with specially harvested grasses and flowers, the Festival officially began. She would walk, unclothed, through her people, to the main Festival grounds, five yori’turns away. They would see her without adornment, save the smallest pec’ta, without concealment; this was indicative of the baring of fields and souls, the time when secrets were brought to light as was the earth brought to light with the reaping of the harvests.
The royalty nearest the gates gasped and pointed, drawing the attention of their neighbors. The members of the Queens’ Families were also sparsely dressed, feeling themselves akin to the High Queen in doing so. This was to show their trustworthiness not only in return to High Queen and the Goddesses, but to their Tribes.
Audola stepped out of the main entrance of T’Av’li, and descended the stairs with slow grace. She looked stunning in the early morn light, none the worse for her personal eve’s vigil. Her skin seemed like amber over burnished bronze, and her hair was a river of obsidian that hung in a single, heavy braid composed of the numerous smaller guinne that tamed the natural tight spirals of her tresses, rather than the traditional Dakua crown. It hung down her back and looped over her arm to keep it from dragging on the ground. She walked alone, naked and shorn of clothing and entourage and any recognizable device of office save her hair and the subtle glow of her av’rita. Her demeanor was still the same as ever, serene, almost aloof without the coldness, as if she did such things every turn. She flowed down the last step and walked the short path to the Gate of T’Av’li. There she stopped and spread her arms and the aloofness fell away as she smiled a welcoming, embracing smile, and received the loving smiles of her people in return. She did not think about those who were not smiling, but plotting against her. This turn she was in the Goddesses hands.
Still smiling, she stepped on the Golden Way, the same path that Jeliya had traversed the turn before, but the quality of the Way had changed, allowing anyone to traverse it. A giant cheer rose and those nearest her began singing the De’ak’ani, the traditional song that began the De’en’nu Festival. She began walking, unprotected and unescorted, on the path through the crowds. No warru was near enough to reach her by foot through this throng. They might av’tun, but not in time to prevent anything. This was the truest test of the love of the people for their sovereign. She could surely protect herself, but any attempt on her life would be a horrible threat to the morale of the masses, a break in the faith placed in the High Queen. The people themselves, with their song and their love, put protective rites upon her, and any weapon or offensive rite strong enough to breach these would mean that there was a significant faction of Queens against her.
No such attempt had ever been made.
Audola moved in measured paces down the middle of the prepared way. It was wide, but not wide enough to prevent anyone who wanted to touch her from doing so. But to do so, they would have to actually step onto the path. It was the High Queen’s Way, not exactly, explicitly sacrosanct, but by tradition inviolate. Setting foot on the path also implied a threat to the High Queen and the trespasser would be dealt with by her or his neighbors.
She walked serenely down the path, unhurried, not flinching away or avoiding the outstretched hands that attempted to brush her arms and shoulders, and every so often, even reaching out to be touched. One hand actually lightly caught hers and drew her over to kiss her fingers. She followed it and the outstretched hands brushed her arms and legs like gentle kisses of reverence, bathing her in soft caresses. Not one hand was heavy upon her, not one grabbed or grew coarse. Soon they were touching almost every part of her, but always in worship. After a polite sils she moved on, leaving worshipful admirers in her wake, carried along by the sea of voices and the sea of hands.
Once she disappeared in the distant folds of the straightway, heads turned. The singing followed the High Queen. Once she was out of sight, the people looked back to the Palace entrance. Now the real spectacle would come. Now all the rumors and melae flying around about the Heir would either be confirmed or laid to rest. Was she really crippled? Had she been captured and disfigured? Was she horribly sick with a version of the Zehj’Ba, just like the Av’rujo? Would she be able to walk the Golden Way in the footsteps of the High Queen to the Festival Grounds, symbolically in the footsteps of inherited power?
The crowds hushed, anxious, excited, anticipatory, and a little fearful. The Heir would be their leader in the times of trouble, if what had filtered down from the upper echelons was true. What did it mean when Turo’dan was upon them, if she could not walk the path? Would she be weak, then, too?
She appeared at the top of the steps leading down to the Gate. A sound, indeterminate, moved through the throngs as she came into view. She, like her mother, was dressed only in a slight pec’ta, and her own beauty and power. But when she stepped to the head of the Way and paused, a sound of shock greeted her. The effects of her ordeal were still visible. Her skin had not quite returned to its former glory, not glowing as the High Queen’s had. She was still lean, though not as lean as when she had first been found, but there was not a spare ounce of fat on her. Compared to what the people had seen of her before, she was half-emaciated. Dark circles still underscored her eyes, and of course, her back was still a road map of slowly fading scars. Many noted how she squinted faintly in Av’s gentle light.
She smiled and gasps of empathy were returned. She raised her arms and when the people saw the slight impression of her ribs through her flesh, a rising noise of disbelief came from the crowd. Some of the young women began to shed silent tears. Some of the young men raised voices in outrage that anything should harm the person of the beloved Heir. Their thoughts, unguarded, were like shouts ringing in the air.
Jeliya dropped her arms and steeled herself for the march to the Festival Grounds. Warru would be moving through the crowds, flanking her, ready to rush to her side should she falter.
Me, falter, she thought grimly, trying not to heave a sigh or take a deep breath. Look what I have come to.
Valiantly she stepped onto the path. Once she started, by tradition, she was not really supposed to stop. But she knew that she might have to.
The light that suffused the path when the High Queen had passed had been golden, light and sweet, buoyant. The power that surrounded the High Heir now was heavier, richer. It was not just love, it was -strength, strength in the form of formless av’rita, as the people around her unconsciously tried to help her. It also buoyed her up, tried to fill her. She fought not to stagger under the weight of it, not to be crushed under the crowd’s combined will to help. She took as much as she needed to sustain herself and held the rest at bay before it overwhelmed her. It also magnified the light of Av, which made the beginnings of a spectacular headache. She pulled herself upright as straight as she could, and with slow, measured, almost hesitant steps began to eat away the length of the path.
Only after she was well past the starting point did someone remember to start singing. The song rose and swelled behind her, feeding the rites that surrounded her and making the weight of av’rita even heavier.
Jeliya struggled against them. She knew her people meant well, but they were doing more harm than good. What was hard enough alone was made harder by good intentions of unasked for aid, and she could not do anything about it but endure.
Or can I? After an eve of fasting and keeping v
igil, her strength seemed a ghost of a thing beneath the battering will of the people, and her mind a fog of doubt. The more they sought to help, the more it drained her. She could not quite make the idea trying to surface in her brain come clear. Then, like mist through rain, it came to her.
The Av’rujo. At the Bolorn’toyo, the Av’rujo would have to deal with av’rita from a thousand different minds, with a thousand different pay’ta’ri, for light carried information about its source. How does she do it? Does the Av’ru, perhaps, help in some way?
She had to do something. So, as much as she hated to, she stopped and concentrated, imagining herself not as a vessel, but as a conduit, a hall of mirrors within her soul. She directed the wild, many voiced av’rita to her tenuous connection with the Av’ru. The thin connection ballooned open, letting the av’rita pass without pooling, and it seemed as if a beam of light shot from her straight toward the heart of Av. It collected in the Av’ru, and bubbled there, but the Av’ru was infinitely vaster than the av’rita of ten thousand minds. The different discordant pay’ta’ri quieted into the single song of one. And then it shot back down and filled Jeliya, so that she glowed, and the sand beneath her feet fused to glass. But it was not her song, but the song of something bigger, even than the Av’ru. It was too much. It was like being lifted by the molten hand of Av, and she fought to move forward through liquid light, but she could not escape it. She threw it away in every direction - and felt it absorbed by the multitudes around her. When the feedback finally ended, she found herself on the ground at the end of the path, and beneath her beaten body was a perfect impression in glass. And the throngs were standing in hushed silence around her.
CHAPTER XII
the darkness turned, worlds lost on its infinite folds, myriad wrinkles in space and time...
The Worlds turned. One held pain above her, sharp and spiny like spikes of bone honed to knives. The Other held pain below her, dull and soft and wet like pulverized tissue clenched in hand.
She has rejected us, the first World-thing chimed, clicking the pain-bones above her.
She has betrayed us, the second World-thing hissed, squishing the pulp-pain below her.
Her feet are on the path; she will choose, the World above her sang.
Let her be without the countenance of either until she chooses, the World below her rasped.
And Silonyi found that she could not reach to either World, that she was caught in the in-between places, cold and void and utterly alone. She saw that each World sat upon a path of some type and she began to spin, first oriented to one path, then the other, but she could not see which way was the right way. She tried to cry out, tried to throw her arms out to slow her spin, but she was bound by some unseen force and she only spun faster and faster, becoming dizzy, and then both Worlds threw their held pain at her...
the darkness turned, playing upon honed bones strung with flesh torn into cords, dizziness and pain the melody of its theme...
...Dizziness and pain. Those two sensations, like old friends, found her in the depths of unconsciousness and followed her up to waking, so that they would be with her when she finally opened her eyes. And they stayed close so that she could always be aware of their presence. Dizziness and pain. The dizziness was like spinning opposite to the rest of the world, or perhaps between worlds, both pulling on her to claim her. And the pain was sharp like knifed, crushed bone and dull, throbbing, like battered tissue. She woke with the beginnings of a groan on her lips, but even the prelude to sound made the two pains meet in a slice of torn flesh and sent the dizziness to whirling even faster, so she whimpered only in her thoughts. Her eyes opened but saw only the keen edge of blood-red pain; she squeezed them closed again and opened her ears instead. There the pain was less and she managed to push the dizziness away enough so that she could at least hear what was going on around her, if she could not see.
“...Come, here, out of her earshot, should she awaken without us knowing,” K’lad’mi, the ol’bey’woman said, her voice low.
“How fares she?” That was Imraja, also talking in a hushed voice. Don’t they know how keen being skilled in chi’rito’ka makes my hearing?
“She is recovering as quickly as can be expected from the fracture in her skull,” the ol’bey’woman replied, “though I cannot imagine what would cause her to be thrown clear across the garden from within the lain. And - well, the skull fracture is not so hard to mend, but there is something else wrong. She is showing the first signs of - it is the lor’den, but there is an aspect I do not understand, an unknown quality to her symptoms I have never seen before. And it is this other unknown that really worries me. I would gather that this is tied into whatever it was that happened while she was performing the Rite of Solu. But since none of us knows what did happen, and nothing like this has ever happened before, I am lost as to how to begin to cure her. I did my best to take the dissonance out of her pay’ta, but it keeps coming back. Without knowing the exact cause, I am powerless to stop its advance.” K’lad’mi lowered her voice even more. She sounded very disturbed. Silonyi strained to hear.
“In strictest confidence, Imraja, there has always been something peculiar about the pay’ta of both the Queen and the Heir. I have never said anything before, because neither of them has ever had a serious enough injury to where it would make a difference. I - cannot say more, without...”
“You have my oath that no harm shall come to you from your words spoken to me by any word or action of my own,” Imraja said in a grave voice. Then their voices disappeared completely. Silonyi wanted to curse in frustration.
I want to know what’s wrong with me! But the pain stepped closer and reminded her of its boundaries. She stopped trying to hear them and let her mind drift back to a light doze.
*:I can take away the dissonance,:* K’lad’mi ‘tunned, *:but when I try to fill her with av’rita so that her body can continue to heal itself, it does not - stay. It drains out of her as if - I do not know what. As if it has rejected her, or she is rejecting it.:*
*:And her chi’rita?:*
*:Chi’rita? I was not looking for that. Very few practice the advanced forms of chi’rita anymore. It is a lost art, disfavored since its perversion by the Outcast One.:*
*:It is a - peculiarity,:* Imraja said delicately, *:that both the Queen and her Heir have - both are versed in chi’rita and use it quite extensively, I believe. I - I suspect that they may even use an aspect of it when they perform the Rite of Solu.:*
K’lad’mi looked shocked and intrigued all at once. *:How did you come to this conclusion?:* she asked, after making the same oath to the Voice.
*:Small things that I have observed,:* Imraja replied, leaning closer as if guarding her thoughts from all but the healer. But she did not elaborate further, saying instead, *:Let us just say that I am a bit sensitized to its workings, and I see and feel hints of it around the Queen and daughter both. This is only what I suspect.:* She paused, then continued as if she were plunging ahead without really having a choice. *:There is something else.:*
K’lad’mi gestured for her to continue. Imraja hedged, looking off into the distance of the outer lains. When she spoke again, she seemed to have completely changed conversations. *:Did you know that when a major Rite is used to construct something permanent, the types of ritas used must be included in the name? Like av’ani. And T’Av’li.:*
*:I wasn’t aware of that,:* K’lad’mi said guardedly, not sure where the conversation was going.
*:Most people are not,:* Imraja nodded, still looking off to the side. Then her eyes settled on K’lad’mi, and the ol’bey’woman knew that the Voice was about to impart some little-known and probably unpleasant tidbit of information.
*:Did you know that the place where our Queen and Heir go to perform their turns’ Rites is called the chi’av’an?”
*:The chi’av’an...?:* Enlightenment, not exactly pleasurable enlightenment, was dawning in K’lad’mi’s eyes.
*:I went near the - the
place to investigate, though I did not violate the consecrated ground,:* Imraja said, as if the first conversation had not been interrupted by her non-sequester. *:A wall of force of some kind had sealed it off and the area around it for two arm lengths. It is unlike any other I have ever seen. Save maybe the Av’ru.:*
K’lad’mi was silent, assimilating all this as gracefully as she could. How the Voice came to know all of this - she knew Imraja would never say, so there was no point in asking. And the deeper ramifications? She could not even begin to guess. She did not think she wanted to know even if she could guess.
Imraja gave her a long sils to digest the information before saying, *:This is all to say that the unknown quality to her illness - may have something to do with the use of chi’rita.:*
K’lad’mi nodded understanding. *:I will look into it. But I must warn you that if that is the case, then I can do very little to help her. No one has seen an illness related to the use of chi’rita since probably the first High Queen’s time.:*
“This is serious,” Imraja said aloud, softly, glancing back to the lain where the Princess lay. “Can you think of anything we can do?”
“We-ell, yes, though I’m not sure the Queen will be amenable to it.”
“What is it?”
“A Priestess or Priest of the Temple of Ya’kano or of Ak’ana. All ol’bey-trained must become at least initiates - most of us are priestesses and priests ourselves. But the Higher Priestesses may have an understanding that the ol’bey do not - for those who live almost constantly in Av’s influence and are so much more powerful in av’rito’ka are sure to have more insight into this than we who are not so deep within Av power. Like the High Queen and her Heir - their positions and av’rito’ka almost demand that they are the equivalent of High Gadayi of Ya’kano. But whether the servants of Ya’kano - or Ak’ana, who are the only ones known to actively practice the pure forms of chi’rita - will come is anyone’s guess. The Gadayi have not graced the halls of T’chi’la in hundreds of cycles, as far as we all know.” And the fact that the Palace itself had a name, though unofficial, and that that name also used the syllable chi, the spirit of air, had new meaning for K’lad’mi. No other palace in the Realm save T’Av’li was named. And T’Av’li was the seat of greatest power of av’rita in the entire Realm. What did that make T’chi’la?
