“Jeh,” Greer said abruptly, “how is it that you speak our language? I just realized! You are not speaking the tongue of your people.”
“Your fame exceeds this valley,” Jeh explained. “Everyone, it seems, knows of you and your New Order, although not all choose to be a part of it.” Greer nodded, knowing it was true. No one could be Deliverer to all. “People passed through our forest both going to join you and leaving you; I persuaded one man to spend a winter with us and teach us your language.”
“Planning ahead?” Greer teased.
Jeh nodded.
“And what of Beth?” Greer asked. “Did she not come?”
“Is there a place we may sit?” Jeh asked abruptly. “We have walked far and are footsore.”
“Of course. This way.” Greer led them into the common room of the private apartments and brought fruit and tea to the table. She allowed the visitors to eat and drink and ease their tired legs before she asked more questions.
“Unfortunately,” Jeh said, “Beth has died. It happened this last spring, just before planting. She was so looking forward to one more planting.”
“I am so sorry,” Greer said, putting one of her hands over Jeh’s and Mesa’s. “We have also lost loved ones here. It is still hard.”
Jeh nodded. Mesa wiped an errant tear from her eye.
“We had talked one day of joining you,” he continued. “After her death, there seemed no reason not to. Also,” he looked questioningly at Greer, “I felt prompted to come. I felt I might be ... needed.”
“Needed?” Greer echoed. “I will not say you aren’t, but in what way do you mean?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Is there a problem here at all? I feel that I am drawn to help you—help protect you.” He looked to Khassis. “Is there any feeling of danger here?”
Startled, Khassis shook his head. “None. Except the words of the oracle.”
“The oracle?”
Greer was silent as Khassis explained the phenomenon and the uneasy message. Jeh took it all in with respectful thoughtfulness.
“That is something to be aware of,” he agreed, “but I do not feel that is the reason I was called to you. I don’t know,” he said, closing his eyes, “but I feel there is something else—waiting.”
Greer and Khassis exchanged uneasy glances. Khassis shrugged.
“We will remember that,” she assured Jeh, “and be aware. Now, will you stay? We can always use a weaver, especially one as gifted as you.”
“You couldn’t drive us away,” Jeh smiled. “How do we petition for living space?”
Greer and Khassis spent the rest of the afternoon telling the pair about their valley: the people, the advancements, the New Order. Then Greer directed Jeh to Abel for information on housing. By nightfall they had a small but comfortable hut to start with.
That evening, Greer and Khassis and Hannah discussed the prospect of unsuspected danger.
“I have felt no uneasiness,” Hannah said. “Nor have I sensed any from the children, and some of them are extremely sensitive.”
“I am afraid I can not be of much use in measuring impending danger,” Khassis admitted. “Since Joel died, I feel melancholy most of the time—whether I show it or not—and I think any distressful feelings I might have would be attributed to that. I haven’t felt any unease from outside.”
“Nor have I,” Greer agreed. “And I see no sense in courting disaster. As I told Jeh, we’ll be aware, but beyond that I see no point in becoming alarmed. If the Goddess is indeed turning Her dark face toward us, we will know in time.”
Jeh and Mesa were absorbed easily into the colony. Although Mesa did not share her father’s love of weaving, she nevertheless had a gifted talent for coaxing the most beautifully unusual colors from plants with which to dye her father’s threads, and the two of them worked comfortably together in their related industries. Their combined products were so different and pleasing to the colonists that the pair became well known quickly, and were able to trade for all they needed to rebuild a home for themselves. At the same time, young Zak, Nidia’s son, showed an awed fascination for Jeh’s loom, and soon the older man had a ready, energetic young apprentice to whom to pass his craft. In his original, smaller colony, Jeh had despaired of having anyone to teach his talents to, so the association with Zak was a matter of gratitude and relief for him. Just knowing his craft would live on inspired him to new, brilliant works.
Mesa, meanwhile, met Asherah, and was touched by that woman’s vision of design and pattern. Asherah continued to work with Ankutse and the pair had worked out interesting treatments of furniture, and now Mesa fell in with them and matched her colors to their shapes in a braiding of creativity. It was not long before the crafters—Jeh and Zak included—began to meet frequently in loud, chaotic and brilliant blendings of talent, and all the forms of dress and furnishings and esthetics took an inspired leap. The pool of creative consciousness seemed to seep outward, even beyond the crafters, and soon more ordinary residents were looking at their tasks in new, challenging ways. Over that winter, Greer felt a very real stirring toward growth, toward the kind of potential realization that she felt the Goddess had always intended.
Other areas of endeavor began to show signs of fruition. Hannah’s school, up to now a joy to her and the children, began to have far-reaching effects for others as well. The children who had so habitually been nurtured with love and acceptance and appreciation began to reflect those gifts back, and they treated each other, and their sometimes more cynical parents, with equal unconditional acceptance. It was that winter that Greer noticed more and more adults reacting to the children in the same positive, life-affirming way and, finally, to each other. People smiled more, in soft, vulnerable ways; complaints grew less. To Greer’s surprise, some of the children decided to start small communal gardens and several adults joined in cheerfully to prepare the ground for spring. As Greer watched from her silent Sanctuary, she saw the great circle of life completing itself; the wondrous unbroken ring of parent and child, of earth and humanity, of planet and universe and the spark of life that was the Goddess. For that brief season, she almost forgot the forecasts of doom.
One soft, breathless spring day, a runner came to tell Greer that a group of strangers approached from the mountain pass. An odd group, they said, all men and all dressed alike. Greer and Khassis prepared the meeting room to receive them.
Long before the strangers arrived, people began to gather in the open yard between the Sanctuary and the Ruins, and they talked among themselves in curious groups. There was rarely a gather of visitors as large as this and there had never been any group without women. The people’s speculations ran riot as they waited for the arrival of the strangers.
Finally a knot of excited children ran into the yard announcing the approach of the strangers. The people moved toward the Sanctuary, eager to witness what promised to be an unusual meeting. They filed into the meeting room and gathered around the windows, leaving always a clear corridor for the strangers to be welcome. In the murmuring excitement, Greer took her seat below the Goddess-stone, Khassis behind her right shoulder.
“Here they come!” someone said.
“Look! Look at their robes! They look so poor!”
“They all walk so slowly, and with their heads down.”
Then, through the murmuring, Greer caught the sound of low voices blending in a quiet, resonant hum. The sound carried through the thin spring air, deep-timbered, disciplined, in perfect agreement. She felt her scalp prickle at the sound.
Slowly, the strangers approached. Outside, people jostled and shuffled for a view or to allow passage. As the humming grew louder, the familiar murmuring decreased. Without being able to see, Greer could mark the strangers’ movements exactly by the sounds. She glanced at Khassis and felt reassured by his presence.
The first of the strangers appeared in the doorway of the Sanctuary. His head down, eyes on the floor, Greer could only partially see his featur
es. As he moved slowly forward, followed by his brothers, Greer saw that all wore very simple, coarse brown robes, and all wore their long hair down to their shoulders. Their hands were clasped before them and, still humming the odd, walking song, they assembled before Greer, fanning out in an arc behind their leader.
Abruptly, the humming stopped.
“Welcome,” Greer said. Her quiet voice rang in the tense stillness of the room, as if everyone there held a breath. “Welcome to our Sanctuary. Please tell us who you are, and why you have come.”
The leader moved a shuffling step forward and Greer wondered if he were old. But no, the hands clasped piously before him were not the hands of an ancient one. She waited.
“Our Lady of the Goddess,” the man intoned in a deep, quiet voice, “we come to pledge ourselves to you. We have committed our lives to you; we have lived simply and purely in order to purge ourselves of imperfections; we have withstood extremes of weather and hardship and traveled far to find you. We would be your servants. We would align ourselves with you and become your priests, your guardians, your army. My Lady,” he chanted, “we are at your command.”
So saying, the man raised his head and met Greer’s eyes with his own.
“Tarr!”
The breath went out of her as if she’d been kicked; her chest knotted and her heart raced. For a moment she met those eyes and felt again that sense of being a deer under the impaling gaze of the hunter, and she felt lightheaded and off balance. She struggled for breath, and at the edges of her senses, she felt the strengthening touch of Khassis’ fingers on her arm. In a split second, she felt his love infuse her, but she also saw the quick jump of Tarr’s eyes to that gentle touch and the immediate flare of hatred there.
Shuttering that flash of anger, he bowed low before Greer. “I am known as Celedon,” he corrected respectfully. “The impetuous youth you knew is gone.”
“Celedon,” Greer said, more to give herself time to regain her breath than anything. She wondered why he had shed the name of his youth. “You say you and your men come to pledge yourselves to me?”
“Yes, my Lady. We have committed ourselves to you. We have purified ourselves so as to be worthy and have taken on the Mark as proof of our commitment.”
“Taken on the Mark?” Greer echoed. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“We all bear the Mark,” Celedon said, his voice ringing through the Sanctuary as he lifted his head proudly. He put a hand to his neck and lifted the long hair away. “The Mark of Hannah.”
Across his throat, now laid bare, a scar gleamed. It sliced from ear to chin—just like Hannah’s.
Someone in the room gasped. Greer tore her eyes from the scar and looked beyond Celedon and was horrified to see that every man of his group was displaying an identical wound. Each man had lifted the hair away from his neck, and each man revealed his scar. They bore the marks proudly, as badges of bravery and honor.
Greer felt sick.
A woman in a back corner of the room fainted. There was a wave of anxious murmuring that cycled around the room, and people jostled for air. The gathering seemed close to explosiveness.
“Someone take that woman outside,” Greer said stonily. “And anyone else who feels lightheaded may leave.” Except herself, she thought. She wanted nothing more than to hide away in Khassis’ arms, but she couldn’t show such vulnerability to Tarr—Celedon. She had to get through this.
In the mayhem of transferring the unconscious woman outside into fresher air, the strangers had turned about or been jostled aside so that the offending scars were hidden again by the swing of their hair. When the woman had been cared for and the room returned to a tense order, Greer faced Celedon again.
“This ... Mark,” she began slowly. “What does it mean?”
Celedon looked pleasantly surprised by her question. “Very simple, my Lady. The story of the Mark of Hannah is well known, even beyond this valley. Everyone knows how Hannah laid on the ground at your feet and pledged herself, even when you might have slit her throat like a butchered animal.” Celedon lowered his burning eyes humbly. “We, also, pledge ourselves, and have faced the same death to seal our oath. We bear the Mark of Hannah so that all may know we are your servants, even unto death.” Looking up again, Celedon gestured to the man at his left. “Reyes, here, almost paid that price at the outset. His Mark was badly drawn, and he came very close to dying. This Mark of ours is no surface scar.”
His voice grated on Greer. She felt a knot of anger twist inside of her and she breathed deeply to control it. There was too much here to think about, too much to consider and to unravel. She wasn’t sure what it was about these men that distressed her so, only that they did, terribly. She wanted to get this interview over with as quickly as possible.
“You said you wish to be my ... priests? Priests of the Goddess?”
“Yes, my Lady,” Celedon said expansively. “We would help you keep your Sanctuary. We are ready to be whatever you may require—priests, guardians, army and protectors.”
Greer frowned. “There is no need. As you can see, I have a guardian in Khassis, and he is perhaps priest as well”—she saw Celedon’s eyes narrow—“and of an army I have no need at all. We are peaceful here. We require no strength other than our oneness with the Goddess.”
What might have been annoyance on Celedon’s face was quickly turned to a blank openness. “Perhaps there are other ways we can be of service to you. Perhaps they will present themselves in time.”
“Perhaps,” Greer said tersely. “Until then, be welcome in our valley. You are free to share our food and our labor, and whatever talents your men bring will be appreciated. Abel, here,” and she indicated him with a nod, “will see to your immediate needs.” She turned abruptly from Celedon, forestalling any further conversation. “Is there anyone else here who has concerns to give voice to today? If not, I will excuse this meeting.”
The Sanctuary was silent.
“Thank you for coming,” she said.
The people filed out, most of them anxious to tell absent friends what they had missed. Greer was afraid Celedon’s men would linger, but as her people moved through the door, they turned to leave also. Gathering all her will, she rose and turned regally toward Khassis. He was there immediately to take her arm and, turned away as they were, neither of them saw the look of rage on Celedon’s face.
In Greer’s private quarters, she allowed herself to feel the aversion and dread that had almost strangled her. Sitting on her cot, she buried her face in her hands and sat huddled like a frightened child.
“Who is this man?” Khassis asked softly. He sat close, not touching her, letting her decide if she needed his strength, but it was hard for him to see her so shaken.
“Tarr. He was a boy—a young man—in the colony I grew up in. He wanted to marry me once—”
“Marry!” Khassis cried.
Greer nodded, chilling at the memory. “He wanted to ... own me. He wanted my power.” She raised her head and stared at Khassis with dry, anguished eyes. “He still wants it.”
Khassis’ jaw was tight. “Yes, I think you are right.”
“Balat told me I should love him as one of the Goddess’ creations and for a time I seemed to be able to do that, but now ... he frightens me. He is ... the Dark Face, staring at me, leering at me. I don’t want him around me. I don’t want him anywhere here at all.”
“Then we shall demand he leave,” Khassis pronounced.
Greer shook her head helplessly. “No. I can’t.”
“Then I will,” Khassis said.
“No, no, it’s not like that.” She reached out and took his hand, twining her fingers in his. “The New Order is of the Goddess. Therefore anything that is a part of the Goddess—anything—has a place here. Even him. If I deny him, I deny the Goddess. I can’t turn him away.”
Khassis was visibly angry. “Do you mean to ... to ‘love’ him, because he is a creation of Hers, as your teacher would have you do? When
he upsets you so, you will suffer that, encourage that?”
“No, dear Khassis.” She smiled wanly. “Calm yourself. No, I do not pretend to be the Goddess, all powerful and all accepting. I am only Greer, a mortal woman with mortal limits. I will not suffer him near me any more than is necessary, but neither will I cast him out. Although I must keep to the will of the Goddess, I must also protect myself, for if I let myself be destroyed, I let Her instrument be destroyed, as well.” She kissed his hand and stared gratefully into his sea-green eyes. “You are my strength, Khassis. Will you stand with me in the shadow of the Dark Face?”
Grimly, he nodded. “As you stood with me,” he vowed.
Celedon and his men—the Marked Ones—settled into a makeshift camp on the high ground beyond the stream. They refused the residences that were offered them, saying they wished to live simply and purely, and built their own structures out of wood and stone. They began their own small garden there and kept mostly to themselves.
Greer asked Abel to keep an eye on them for her.
She found it slightly perturbing that they insisted on keeping themselves separate from everyone else. She had thought they would participate in the workings of the colony and thereby be absorbed into it, drawing off the strange fanaticism. But only a few of their number ever crossed the stream to the colony side. The man Reyes—the one who almost died by that horrifying ritual—seemed more willing than most of his brothers to offer his help and Greer heard that he was gifted with a great knowledge of medicinal plants. She thought perhaps in time Hannah could trade secrets with him but for now, Greer wanted only to watch the strangers and wait.
As spring lengthened toward summer, it became more and more usual to see the coarse-robed, long-haired men on their errands about the valley. A handful more of them began to contribute to the colony—one offered to learn masonry, another had ideas for renovating the irrigation canals and one was a genius in the kitchens—and those that did seemed likable enough. Greer heard good things about them and even about Celedon. He, it seemed, made it a point to be visibly personable and to offer help wherever larger groups of people gathered. She heard more and more how affable he was.
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