by Ako Emanuel
Finally all the voices changed in unison, the drums rising to a crescendo.
“Daughter hear
Daughter call
Daughter know
This empty hall
“Daughter’s laugh
And Daughter’s cry
Return our song
Ere eve is nigh!”
A roll of papi’ras writhed into life, unfurling itself and rising, stretching the length and breadth of the insubstantial map. The papi’ras was prepared with special inks that danced right above its surface, waiting to be shaped by the rite. The glowing image contacted with the scroll and became one with it, giving form to the vivid pigments upon the smooth, prepared surface. The drums reached a height, as the voices reached their peak, and the amalgamation of vision and parchment completely melded. The harmony froze in that breathless instant of perfect union, then spiraled down in lazy circles, bringing the finished map down with it, the creation diminishing in size as the harmony diminished. The great conglomerate of voices melted into a heartbeat-like pay’ta, releasing the map into the hands of the High Queen. Her voice held the last quavering note as the lain held the shimmering light. Reluctant to die, the light faded gradually, leaving behind only the softly pulsing map as proof of its glory.
Audola slumped, spent, and the two attending Rit’ati’u, her assistant Rite-casters, caught her, eased her back into the cushions. Then they bowed, murmuring parting praise, and rose to leave, their cream and gold embroidered silk robes swirling around their slippered feet. Audola, however, stayed where she was, remaining in her Av’rit’ain as the light had lingered, raining golden sparkles around her. She lay watching the golden specks dance about her, her fatigue allowing her to do little else. Then, when she was able, she sat up and slowly unrolled the enscrolled map, gazing at the stationary point, touching it ever so gently, as if at any moment it might disappear. It was a warm spot of light, and she fancied she could feel it pulsing beneath her fingertips with life. Dry tears flooded her throat.
It is part of her soul, her av’rita, she mused darkly to herself, - perhaps it does have life at that.
She sat quietly, awaiting the return of her strength, tasting the bitter/sweet flavor of the notion. Then, abruptly, she swallowed at the dry tears, snapped the scroll closed and stood. She slowly exited the Av’rit’ain like an old woman would when hurried, as if she would leave the thought behind. Servants awaited her in the outer lain. She deposited the map into a treated leather tube, sealed it, and passed it to one of the carriers.
“Please take this to Rilantu,” she said quietly, seating herself to hide her temporary weakness. The attendants bowed and left.
When her vitality returned, Audola walked through the wide corridor from the Av’rit’ain, her special lain for performing complex Rites, to her resting lain in a dream-like daze. It was no dream, though, but rather a light-mare of vague, half-formed notions of the worst aspect, scenario after dread scenario wriggling into existence, giving up their fruit, and expiring before they were fully realized. She moved almost by reflex to the cushioned window seat facing the Este and sank to her knees there, her eyes large and glazed in a stiff face.
:She is alive,: the deep, satin voice of the Av’rujo said soothingly.
“She is alive,” Audola echoed, a strange tightness in her chest that was no stranger at all. The dry tears threatened to become wet, but would not spill. Her stomach was hollow, contracting painfully and her sinuses flooded. But the sadness again would not pour forth - the tears, again would not come. Not as they had before the Salaka. She could not even admit how much she truly missed and feared for her daughter.
:I have finished my contemplation of the matter,: the Av’rujo said quietly. :I believe the Doan can be trusted.:
“Thank you, Mother.”
When Audola said nothing further, the Av’rujo seemed to withdraw. Audola bowed her head in her un-shed grief. She closed her dry, scratchy eyes, felt her face grow long with sorrow. A soft hand gathered her head to a gentle shoulder.
“Mother,” Audola cried in a whisper, burying her face in the loving embrace.
“Hush, my child,” the glowing voice said, the hand stroking her hair.
Audola clung to her mother’s form and finally wept the dry tears.
The attack stunned them. Not ten’granes after the completion of the Rite of Seeking it came, a surge of malevolent ‘rita, tearing, rending, seeking a way in, red claws on the surface of her mind. Audola lunged to her feet, throwing up a shield of av’rita around herself and her mother. The Av’rujo put up her own shield and Audola needed only to worry about herself. The assailant battered away at the shield, clubbing at it with raw, blunt power. She formed a mental spear and cut disdainfully through the jagged, amorphous bludgeon, for it was crude and inexpertly wielded, though powerful. It was like nothing she had ever encountered before - almost like the opposite of av’rita, like the spirit of the void of light, if such a thing existed.
“Mother, I will deal with this,” Audola said through clenched teeth, tracing the energy surge back, and holding the wriggling, squirming mind that had spawned it. It tore at her, but it was no match. It was spiky-sticky, a nest of snake heads with no tails.
The Av’rujo concurred, and Audola turned back to her captive.
“Who and what are you?” she asked, squeezing. She was not in the mood to be charitable. The mind squealed, then wrenched suddenly, fracturing and slipping through her grasp. It flowed away like slimy water in a sieve. All it left was a spiteful laugh and a nasty feeling in her thoughts.
Audola turned and whispered a purification rite, trying to cleanse herself of the feel of it.
“Unritious, unclean, unlight
Hold forth the raging glare
Begone from Av’s own sight
Begone before Av’s stare
“Unfoul the inner lain
Of Av’s own house and grace
Untouch the knowing mind
As rain before Av’s face.”
:Daughter.:
“Yes Mother, I know. Someone knows. Someone is toying with us. If that attack had come during our Rite-casting…”
She left the rest unsaid. It would have been disastrous, perhaps fatal to one of her Rit’ati’u. The Rite would have been undone. Her family, her mother and her daughter, could have been injured.
And the culprit had managed to get away.
Audola no longer felt tears. All she felt now was rage.
CHAPTER X
shivering, the darkness turned and turned...
Jeliya shivered, the dark that surrounded her deep with the embrace of cold. She huddled, cub-like, in on herself, staring with eyes of stone into the nothingness.
“Where am I?” she whispered out into that ungiving void, the cold a living thing that bit with teeth of glass and burned with flames of ice. It sucked at her av’rita, her life-force, trying to drain her dry of the bright aura of light that did not stay so bright in the crystalline cold.
The gila cat gleamed in the dark, paced closer, a white shadow in the shadeless place.
“You are in the earth, kitling, in Loro, deep in the soil of your world,” it sang, smiling a terrible, cruel smile.
“But why is it so cold?” she rubbed her freezing palms together, chafed numb arms, the filmy wrap that she wore only mocking her with its impotent protection. “The earth should not be so frigid, not with all the av’rita.”
“Ah, but there is no av’rita in this part of the earth,” the gila cat replied, sitting and blinking small orbs of Av at her. “At least, not very much, not any more.”
“N - not any m - more?” The cold became a physical thing weighing upon her and she hunkered down, hugging her knees, the air around her seeming solid and aflame with cold. “But w - what happened? W - where did all the av - v’rita go?”
The gila cat laughed. “Long ago, this earth was full of av’rita, and one with itself, and av’rita and lor’rita and the di’rita and the chi’rit
a danced in harmony. Then came the Yo’teng, the division of the world.” It licked its whiskers, blinked, grinned. “The earth and the earth spirit Loro cried out in despair; the waters and the water spirit Dio cried out in anguish. And the life, the light, the light spirit Ava and the air spirit Chia fled. All was haled from this soil and rock, the wholeness of the earth divided. The earth has its own ‘rita as does the air and the water and the flame, but the earth’s ‘rita has little warmth. The creatures that lived within and upon this part of the earth too, cried out in despair. But they have grown strange and cold of blood and little remember the warmth and the light.”
Jeliya felt nothing in her fingers or her ears, her nose or her toes. It was as if those extremities did not exist, having been replaced with dead, unfeeling stones. She felt her life force, her av’rita, retreating from the greedy, cold fingers of the earth into the inner most core of her being. The heat withdrew with the spirit, leaving her limbs wooden, petrified with cold. The words of the gila cat crackled in the brittle emptiness, falling laughingly and mocking on dumb ears. Lor’den. The cold-dark sickness.
“But the earth is poised, do you feel it?”
She did feel it. She could not move nor answer and no part of her seemed to work as every cold thing turned to the preservation of the tiny kernel of warmth her essence had become. But still she could perceive the heavy anticipation of the earth, the sense of a thing coiled and waiting, a crystal shard balanced upon a knife’s edge. All that she was, her awareness, her consciousness, reduced to a small knot of warmth inside the huge frozen vessel of her body, quaked and knew fear as the oppressive cold crushed her with its ominous foreboding. The cold invaded her body slowly, patiently, as patiently as it awaited this coming unknown event. The Loro’dan.
“It waits, the earth is poised,” laughed the gila cat, wagging its hindquarters and glaring at her with eyes of green flame. “It waits for the inevitable, the bringing together of what was so long ago torn asunder, that which you have striven to keep sundered, Jeliya of the land of light. The end for you is near; then will this earth again joined with itself and whole and full of light and warmth!”
It’s coming, the earth sang as it reached icy fingers for her. It’s coming! Dal’yo’teng is near its end!
The cold laughed. The gila cat laughed. But Jeliya, could she move, would have quaked with terror, as the terrible cold laughter surrounded her, drowning her...
Jeliya’s body pushed her out of sleep. She was deeply chilled with lor’den, the cold-dark. Her head throbbed, ached with cold.
“Hello?” she called weakly, shuddering uncontrollably. The strains of cold-dark echoed through her. It was bad.
Hoof steps answered her almost immediately.
“Yes? Is something wrong?” his deep silver voice asked.
“Y-yes,” she curled in on herself, the outermost extremities beginning to lose feeling. His hand touched her forehead - it burned.
“You don’t have a fever,” he said, but his voice was questioning. “In fact, you feel like your temperature has gone down a little too much.”
“I’m in lor’den,” she said through chattering teeth. Her speech was clipped, for fear of biting her tongue.
“I don’t understand. What is this ‘cold-dark?’ ”
Jeliya turned her head to him, stunned. She regretted it, losing valuable heat in the process. How could he not know of the lor’den?
“I have been out of the light of Av for too long,” she said, shaping the words carefully. “I need to get into the light.” Further explanation would have to wait.
“Why did I not detect this before?” he wondered, sounding angry with himself.
Jeliya forced herself to think and answer; he seemed reluctant to act without information. “M-maybe fever masked it-t.”
His hand lay like a heated weight upon her arm. Her muscles began to lock and cramp, and her back spasmed. Her stomach tied itself in a knot and her throat began to tickle with the cold.
“I - I don’t know how to treat this,” his voice said, filled with despair. He sounded helpless.
“N-need Av-v-l-light,” she tried to say, but lost the rest of the words in coughing.
“No good, it’s eve time. Av won’t be up for another ten san’chrons.”
Jeliya felt the chilling despair that colored his voice. Her performance of the Rite earlier that turn had not been enough to stave off the cold shock. She needed the light of Av, but in lieu of that, she needed heat. And lots of it.
“M-mus-s-st k-k-k-keep-p w-war-rm-m,” she choked out with a dead and leadened tongue.
His hooves immediately clattered away. He returned an ice-age later with something that instantly made the temperature of the room rise, and his deep silver voice murmured rites as he worked. Again he left and returned, and again. The lain was stifling, but the warmth was slow to penetrate through the cold fog that surrounded her. At last his weight settled on the pallet and he fed her hot broth and lemon-grass tea. Then he lay down beside her and gathered her to his chest, desi and all, and wrapped a second, thicker desi around the both of them. She pressed against him, revulsion and apprehension forgotten, his body hot and sweet. She sighed, her body slowly heating up, pushing back the biting cold and she went back to sleep in the warm embrace of his arms.
He held her close, as he had done several times before. He prepared himself to endure a night of uncomfortable heat, for he had brought in two braziers full of sweet oil that he used during severe storms and hurricanes that frequented the rainy seasons and in his subterranean storerooms at other times. But Jeliya pulled heat from him as fast as his body could produce it.
He soon became tired from pushing his metabolism up so high. His eyes grew heavy, though he struggled to stay awake and keep an eye on his charge. But he, too, eventually fell deeply asleep.
the light turned to him...
He woke to find himself chilly and yearning for light, with a hot body against him. Jeliya had worked her way out of the first desi to press the full length of her body against him. Embarrassingly his body had responded, as it had the last time he had bathed her. Feeling himself turning red with shame, still he did not get up right away. Av still swam upon the rim of the world casting, only pale rose veils across the sky. For a time he lay there and enjoyed the feel of her body against his, her skin silky smooth, and her guinned hair fragrant from the oils he had applied the turn before. When he tightened his embrace, she murmured and snuggled closer, wedging her head comfortably under his chin. He sighed. And for a moment he wished himself fully a man...
Stop such silly thoughts, he chided himself. You haven’t thought such nonsense since Jenikia...
He sat up, pushed away, as if by distancing himself from her he could distance himself from his desire, his memories. She shivered and reached after him. He took hold of himself, shivered his skin as though to slough off the remembrance of the feel of her. It did not work.
He bundled her in the abandoned desi and sidled backwards off the bed, pushing with his forelegs. He placed his hind hooves on the floor, and reared off the bed altogether, the surface rebounding slightly as their combined weight left it. He carried her in his arms, not trusting that she could stay on his back. He took his short spear-hook as he hurried out of his home.
She needs the light. The closest place is Este and Sor’n of here. In lu’mar territory.
His hide gave an involuntary shiver as he traveled deep into the forest with her, coming eventually to the stream to which he had run with her when her fever had soared to dangerous levels. This place was the nearest break in the forest canopy, where direct light could be seen. But the lu’mari had been dormant then, in the last shreds of eve. They were stocky, deadly creatures with thick, muscular bodies and powerful legs, heads like canines that might wrestle cattle, and slick, razor-sharp scales from nose to the spear-like tail. And they were Goddess-cursed smart, and vicious. They were most active at Av’dawn, coming out of a long eve of torpor.
&nb
sp; He stood upon the bank facing Av, his every sense alert for the distinctive musk of the lu’mari. He was at a loss.
“We are in the light of Av, Jeliya,” he said, squinting. “Now what do I do?”
She did not answer. He looked down at her, tried to rouse her. She murmured and stirred, but she would not fully awaken. He sighed wearily and shifted her weight, considered settling to the ground, then decided against it. Tired. What was he to do? He knew nothing of this ailment. True, every now and then he craved to see the morn star and stay in its light for a while, but this cold-dark illness he had never heard of.
Could it possibly have anything to do with the rite that Jenikia and I shared? he wondered, then glanced around, nervously. They were in the open and without any real protection, for he was drained of energy. He set only the most basic of wards, but they would not discourage anything that was determined to get to them. If those that hunted her should come upon them, or the lu’mari catch their scent...
As he thought it, he heard a faint, high hunting call, and his hackles rose. Were they being hunted? Whatever Jeliya needed to do, she needed to do it fast!
She moved, drawing his attention. Her face was turned to the light and her arm outstretched. She was smiling. And glowing.
He nearly dropped her. Only his fast reflexes saved her from a spill onto the stream bank. She seemed oblivious, her lips moving. Preoccupied with hanging on to her, he did not notice right away that she did not speak the words aloud, and yet he heard them as if she murmured in his ear.
“In you there is Light,” she whispered rapturously. Her fingers moved in some complex yet discernible rhythm against the taut skin of the wind. “In you there is Peace.” Light around her fingertips seemed to coalesce into a gentle golden rain that showered both of them. He jerked back, startled, and then, and only then, noticed that he was glowing too. Dull bursts of alarm rang through him. This was all too familiar, from that forgotten age. Should he put her down...?
