Quest

by Shannah Jay

  QUEST Shannah Jay 1

  Quest

  Shannah Jay

  At fourteen, Katia is chosen to serve at the Sisterhood's temple in Tenebrak. But violent Discord engulfs the planet threatening the 20,000-year-old Sisterhood's existence. In a satellite far above Tenebrak, Davred, brilliant xeno-anthropologist, studies the Sisterhood, and risks everything by deciding to help them. But neither Davred nor the Sisters know all the secrets of this mysterious planet.

  Published by Shannah Jay

  Copyright 2010 Shannah Jay

  Cover Copyright 2010 David Jacobs

  Shannah Jay Edition, License Notes

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  QUEST Shannah Jay 2

  Chapter 1: KATIA-FIRST CHOOSING

  The girl crashed blindly through the wildwoods, her breath coming in agonised gasps, her heart thudding with fear of pursuit. Once she tripped over a tree root and rolled winded on the ground, but she clamped her teeth against a moan and was up again running within seconds. When she could push herself no further, she leaned against a tree, listening carefully. She could hear nothing but the faint noises made by the animals she had disturbed in her wild headlong flight and the rustling of foliage in the evening breeze.

  She’d done it! She’d got away!

  ‘Brother, don’t let him notice I’m gone till after dark,’ she prayed. ‘Don’t let him notice!’ And it was ironic that she called upon the Brother of the World, for she was fleeing from her god, as well as from Kensin.

  Dusk was gathering round her, but fear drove her to walk on again. She tried to leave no sign of her passing, but knew Kensin too well to think that he wouldn’t be able to read her footprints.

  By the time the first two moons had risen, she’d left the tangled growth of the wildwoods behind and was up among the sparse, spindly trees that clung to every crevice in the high rocky country. It would be difficult even for Kensin to track her across such terrain. Here, surely, she would be able to find a refuge until the Choosings had ended. After that, it wouldn’t matter. She’d be disgraced, but safe.

  She wished it were a three-moon night, for then she’d be able to continue, but the second moon lingered in the sky for a bare hour before sinking rapidly in the west, leaving her in the near darkness of a single pale crescent. She shivered. Always, the Choosings were held at the time of the Spring Darks. The day before she’d climbed a tree and seen the great temple wagon carrying the Sisters moving across the valley below her home towards the town of Danak, seen it and known a fear that crawled along every bone in her body. It was then that she’d decided to flee.

  She didn’t dare not offer herself to their Brother the God.

  It was a long time before she slept in the windy crevice that was too small to be called a cave, and even then her sleep was restless and unsatisfying. She woke and slept, woke briefly again, fear churning within her at every noise.

  * * *

  Just before dawn Katia woke to an unnatural stillness. Even before she opened her eyes, she guessed he was there. There were no animal sounds and besides, she could sense his presence. A groan choked to nothing in her throat as her eyelids fluttered open. There, outlined against the brightening sky, was a figure she knew all too well.

  ‘So. You’re awake.’ His voice was as chill as an icicle breaking in winter sunlight.

  It was a moment before she could form a word. ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘I’ve lived in the High Alder for sixty years. Were I blind, I could still track you, Katia. This is my land.’

  ‘Mine, too.’ But even to her own ears, her voice sounded childish and sulky.

  ‘Not until after the Choosing. You can own nothing, be nothing, until after the Choosing.’

  ‘Grandfather, please don’t make me go! I know something terrible will happen to me if I go down into Danak. I just know it!’

  ‘Then something terrible must happen to you, Katia, for you will go to Danak, even if I have to carry you there myself, trussed like a fowl for the market.’

  Before she could move, he had clipped the chain he normally used to restrain injured animals round one of her wrists. She stared at it in horror, then raised her eyes pleadingly to a face whose lines seemed no less hard than the rocks around them.

  ‘Grandfather, please! Not that!’

  He tugged her to her feet. ‘Come. We have a long walk before us if we’re to reach Danak today.’

  QUEST Shannah Jay 3

  ‘Please - don’t chain me!’

  ‘If you behave like a wild animal, you shall be treated like one. Maybe it will remind you of your duty.’

  With that he refused to speak to her further, so she could only stumble along in misery at the other end of the chain. When Kensin the Verderer set his mind to something, there was no moving him away from that path.

  Outside the town, he stopped and stared at her coldly. ‘Can I trust you to wash and change from your forest leathers, or must I give you to the Elders chained and filthy?’

  ‘I’ll w-wash.’

  ‘No running away!’

  ‘No, Grandfather.’

  He rummaged in his pack and pulled out a long blue gown and embroidered headdress. ‘Today, you must wear this. My sister’s second daughter sent it specially.’

  She stood staring at it.

  When she didn’t move, he added softly, ‘Your mother wore this very gown, once. Wear it for her sake.’

  ‘I hate gowns. And I hate the town!’

  He lost patience again. ‘Hate this, hate that! If you wish to live with hatred inside you, then get you to Kelandrak and join Those of the Serpent! We do not follow that path of pain and darkness in the High Alder.’

  She gulped back a sob and he laid a hand on her thin shoulder. ‘Would you really shame me before our kinfolk, child? Prove that they were right, that I was unfit to rear you when your parents were killed?’

  She burst into tears then and turned to burrow into his chest, snuffling wetly into the sharp smell of the leather she had helped him cure. The robe fell unheeded to the ground.

  His voice echoed above her head. ‘Well, Katia?’

  ‘I w-wont shame you. I won’t! But oh, Grandfather, I feel so afraid.’

  ‘You’ve been to Festivals of Choosing before, child. What is there to fear about them? The Sisters are good women. It’s always a joyful occasion.’

  ‘I wasn’t an offrant before.’

  ‘We must all offer ourselves to the God before we can take up our adult lives.’

  ‘But boys don’t get chosen! They can only be named as town Elders. Girls who are chosen are taken away. I couldn’t bear to leave the High Alder!’

  ‘Most girls think it a great honour to be called to serve our Brother the God.’

  ‘I’d die if I had to live in a city.’

  He shook his head and his voice was stern again. ‘I doubt our Brother would choose someone as unwilling to do her duty as you, Katia. I’ve failed him somehow in the way I raised you.’

  She could only hang her head, her throat too full of tears for speech.

  ‘Well,’ he pushed her away from him, ‘go and wash yourself now, child, and then put on your festival robe. We mustn’t be late for your night’s vigil.’

  Sighing she picked up the soft blue material and went over to the stream. She shivered as she washed herself, but not from the coldness of the mountain water, for she was used to that. So
mething was wrong; she knew it.

  Something was threatening her peaceful life.

  When she was ready, she presented herself to her grandfather for inspection and he checked her over carefully.

  His Katia took little interest in her appearance, and had been known to wear a tunic back to front before this. Thin QUEST Shannah Jay 4

  and leggy, like all young animals, he thought, but she’ll be a beauty one day. His dead daughter had had the same cloud of dark hair, but her eyes had been grey, not green. The resemblance always twisted his heart. He didn’t tell Katia that, of course; he merely nodded, put the chain and her leathers away, and picked up his pack.

  Just before they reached the first houses in Danak, he stopped and looked at Katia sternly. ‘You’ll not shame me tomorrow, child? You’ll do your duty?’

  She threw herself into his arms and hugged him convulsively. ‘No. I w-won’t shame you, Grandfather. I promise.’

  * * *

  Long before the sun rose the next morning, the townsfolk began to filter into Danak’s only square, gathering in groups on the paved pathways around the green. Not a word was spoken, not a child cried out, yet the excitement was as tangible as the stone walls of the houses. Music and laughter would fill the later stages of the celebrations, but the Festivals of Choosing always began in solemn silence.

  Slowly the darkness lightened and faces turned expectantly towards the east. A brightness crept across the sky until finally, rosy fingers of light touched the rooftops and gilded the garlands on the walls.

  There was a drum roll, then the doors of the Meeting House were thrown open and two Sisters of the God emerged, dressed in long full robes of glittering blue and silver, with tall, elaborate headdresses covering their hair.

  Even their faces were hidden behind jewelled masks. At this ceremony the Sisters had no individual identities, serving only as channels of communication with the God their Brother. When the fourteen-year-olds were offered to him every year, he would speak through his Sisters to call the chosen girls to his Sisterhood, or to name any young person as Elder-Elect.

  Kensin stood motionless, not part of any group. He leaned against an angle of the wall and waited with a hunter’s patience, his eyes on the sacred enclosure where the young folk from the district would be offered to the God. He had slipped out of town once he had delivered Katia to the Elders the previous day, and had spent the night beneath the stars, for he could not abide the crowded houses of his kinfolk. But he had slept little. The child’s anxiety seemed to have communicated itself to him, and his dreams had been troubled. Well, he sighed now, the God’s will be done, whatever it is.

  ‘ Brother, look down upon us! ’ The taller Sister’s voice rang out clearly, signalling the start of the ceremonies.

  Her call was echoed by the crowd. ‘Look down upon us all!’

  When the last murmurs had died away, the second Sister clapped her hands sharply together and the two women moved to stand on either side of the doorway of the Meeting House. The drum began to beat out an insistent throbbing rhythm, then one of the town’s Elders appeared in the doorway, resplendent in his red robes of office and moving in time to the pulsing sounds. A sigh rippled through the crowd. The Choosing had begun.

  The Elder was followed by a single file of solemn-faced young people. All were fourteen years old and all were clad in richly-embroidered garments, gowns or tunics of ceremonial blue, most of which had been handed down in their families for generations. They showed the nervousness natural to those facing a turning point in their lives, but most also betrayed their pleasure at being there, at being almost an adult, at last.

  Last night the youngsters had sat vigil in the Meeting House, and today, long before dawn, they’d prepared themselves for the ceremony. They hadn’t broken their fast, except to drink a full measure of festival wine. The secret of this dark, sweet concoction, drunk but once in a lifetime, was known only to the Sisters, for it was blended with special drugs which heightened consciousness.

  Katia had deliberately placed herself last in the line of offrants. Her head was spinning from the effects of the wine and everything had taken on a nightmare quality - sounds echoing, actions slowing down, colours beating at her eyelids, dawnlight tearing at her skin. Her urge to flee grew stronger, but her limbs were strangely lethargic and she stumbled once or twice as she moved across to the centre of the green.

  The townsfolk lining the square swayed like reeds in a breeze and without prompting the adults began humming the introduction to the festival song, while young children strewed white festival flowers and scented fern leaves in front of the offrants. The crushed petals filled the air with a perfume like no other for these flowers only bloomed in QUEST Shannah Jay 5

  the Spring Darks.

  Katia seemed unaware of the stares of disapproval from the crowd as she broke tradition by pausing at the entrance to the enclosure. She threw a terrified glance back towards the Sisters, who were still standing like glittering statues in front of the Meeting House, then her eyes raked the crowd in a desperate search for a tall, silver-haired old man.

  When her eyes caught his, Kensin frowned, shaking his head in disapproval, so she took a deep, sobbing breath and tried to pull herself together. She must not shame her grandfather before the townsfolk. She must not.

  As she entered the enclosure, it seemed to seal around her like a trap, and she shuddered as she took her place in the circle of offrants and bowed her head. A semi-circle of girls faced a semi-circle of boys. Katia was oblivious to the encouraging smile from the Elder who had led the procession and the friendly nod of the girl next to her. In fact, she was oblivious now to everything except the terror churning within her.

  When all was ready within the enclosure, the Sisters began to dance their way across the green, their complex steps at one with the rhythm which wove in and out of the melody like a live thing. The glittering figures paused in front of the enclosure and the music changed its beat. Four hundred adults began as one to sing the Great Chorus of Choosing.

  The music seemed to pluck at Katia’s nerves as if she were a stringed instrument. Its rhythm was strange, hypnotic, repeating the archaic cadences until they controlled her very heart beat. This chorus was never performed at any other time, and never rehearsed. It was only sung by those who had already been offered to the God. No one, save those who had heard it through the mind-enhancing haze of festival wine, could remember its complexities.

  And today it felt to be vibrating into Katia’s very bones.

  The chorus stopped abruptly. Katia swallowed hard and stared at the ground as she waited in numb misery for something dreadful to happen.

  The Sisters stood for several interminable minutes at the gates of the low enclosure, then one called out in a voice which blared in Katia’s ears like a trumpet call, ‘ Brother, look down upon us! ’

  This call was again echoed by every spectator. ‘Look down! Look down upon us all!’

  If she could have moved, Katia would have fled, in spite of her grandfather, but she couldn’t even twitch a muscle.

  Both Sisters clapped their hands in unison and an intense silence fell upon the crowd, a silence which seemed much louder than the singing, and which still echoed the rhythms of the song. The Town Elder left the enclosure to stand outside its entrance. Then, and then only, did the taller Sister begin.

  Walking slowly round the circle, she paused in front of each offrant, gazing deeply into eyes glazed with tension, weariness and festival wine. Each time she closed her own eyes for a moment to allow the God her Brother to speak within her. When he didn’t whisper in her ear, she reopened her eyes and nodded in dismissal. At this, each new adult took a step backwards, not knowing whether to be relieved or sorry not to have been claimed by the God.

  Once, halfway round the circle, the Sister spoke. ‘I name you, Steflin. One day you shall be Elder of this community.’

  The young man beamed with pride and remained where he was. In the crowd outsi
de, his family’s faces reflected his pride and joy, but the silence still held.

  The slow walk continued. To Katia, time itself seemed to pause and curl in on itself, as if waiting for this part of the ceremony to finish before it could start rushing on again. Nearer and nearer the Sister came, and still there was no hand outstretched to signify that the God had chosen one of the offrants to join his Sisterhood. It had been many years since a young woman from Danak had been called, and some of the townsfolk were saying that they had strayed from the God’s path and must live more strictly in future.

  The glittering robe stopped in front of Katia. She looked up obediently into the eyes behind the mask and gasped aloud. It seemed as if she was falling into a dark tunnel, as if a thousand lights were exploding inside her mind. To QUEST Shannah Jay 6

  her horror, she saw a hand stretch out to rest on her head.

  ‘You are chosen by our Brother, dear child,’ intoned a melodious voice. ‘Welcome to the Sisterhood, Katia!’

  Katia could only stand and stare into two implacable eyes while waves of terror washed through her. She heard her own voice say haltingly, ‘I shall serve our Brother with joy all the days of my life,’ even as her mind rejected the words and her spirit screamed for release.

  She could do nothing but turn and follow one who was henceforth her Sister in God.

  A murmur of surprise ran through the crowd as the Sister led Katia out of the enclosure, followed by Steflin.

  Who would ever have expected the wild grandchild of Kensin the Verderer to be chosen by the God? However, a shout of joy erupted spontaneously from them as they realised what this meant. Once again, Danak had been found worthy. They burst into the Song of Rejoicing.

  Katia stood motionless in front of the Meeting House while the joyful music beat around her aching head. The Sister must have done something to her, because she had only enough freedom of movement to swivel her eyes around desperately, searching for her grandfather. When she found him, she saw grief warring with pride in his face and she cried out mutely for him to come and rescue her, but he shook his head and stepped backwards.