“If so, it’s yours,” Megan returned. “There’s not even a whisper of messiahs in this myth. It’s far more pragmatic. The struggle will go on until the Darkness ends, or lifts or passes, whatever. Nothing will help it along, not prayer or good works or sacrifices, nothing but the passage of an unspecified length of time. That’s why the business of this culture is survival, for the sake of that day when peace will be restored.”
Megan was silent for a while, walking, chewing her lip. She gazed ahead, at Ghirra’s gray silhouette outlined by the glow of the Cluster and the black of its encircling smoke. “I tell you,” she added softly. “if I had this damn climate to deal with, theirs is exactly the sort of myth I’d develop, as a weapon against self-hatred and despair. A society cannot be allowed to feel responsible for this sort of random suffering.”
“A culture in limbo,” mused Susannah.
“Exactly. Seeing them that way answers a lot of my questions about them. It explains this dogged acceptance of theirs. Have you ever heard a Sawl rage against the injustice of his goddesses?”
Together, as she said this, their eyes went ahead to the Master Healer’s back.
“Except for him,” Megan whispered. “It also explains the lack of a coherent ethic tied to the religious teachings, because it shows that the Sawl religion is not an ethical system, it’s a survival system. Behavioral ethics become irrelevant in religion when they aren’t seen to influence the response of a deity. If prayer and good works won’t end the wars, then the only true moral imperative becomes survival, or I should say, survival until. The day to day issues of ethics and behavior are left to the guilds within each settlement to teach and administer. The PriestGuild deals with the long-term issue of surviving the wars, with the Rangers as their active analogue. Aguidran and her guildsmen teach the practice of survival while Ashimmel teaches its philosophy. The ceremonial association of ranger and priest that puzzled me at the Leave-taking represents their dual guardianship over their people.”
Her mouth dry from talking, Megan uncorked her canteen. The heat was like a weight on her brain. But there was a further thought to add.
“Now the gambling is a classic reaction to despair. Gambling elevates the power of luck-khem-in their lives, which are denied free will. If the Goddesses view them with such disdain, then so be it, life will be treated as an ironic game. What better response for the powerless? The philosophy of luck encourages two hopes: first, that it’s your luck and not you that’s at fault if you suffer, and two, that things might get suddenly better. You might win.”
“The Darkness might end.”
“Right.”
Susannah walked a while, considering. The caravan ahead was a long line of gray shapes receding into steamy night. She laughed softly. “Stav would be scandalized.”
“That is often his response to my ideas, yes.”
“I mean, elevating gambling to such noble heights.”
“Well, there’s no one here getting rich off the losers. Plus it helps let off competitive steam. This society must work together to survive. In the long run, it’s still share and share alike.”
They trudged along some more, listening to the wagon wheels grind through the brittle grass. Beside them, the hjalk snorted wearily. In the driver’s seat, little Phea crooned gentle encouragements. Somewhere in a wagon behind, a father sang to his fretful child. The pace music of the pipers seemed caught in a mournful key.
“You know what else he would say?” Susannah said finally. “He’d remind us once again that the Goddesses are real to the Sawls. Not a colorful metaphor… no mere article of faith.”
Megan was acutely aware of Ghirra’s rigid, listening posture. “Doesn’t change my thinking one iota. Valla and Lagri could sit down to dinner with us and the theory still stands, with fact substituted for mythos. That’s why I’m happy with it.”
“Meg, does this mean you’re leaving yourself open for the possibility?”
“It means I’ve decided to leave issues of faith and reality to the theologians, or to young linguists who care to act as theologians. As the poet said, ‘There are more things twixt heaven and earth, Horatio…’ ”
Susannah sighed. “Amen to that.”
Ghirra was silent through the mid-throw meal. He ate quickly with lowered head, then excused himself, claiming business with his sister. Megan watched him stride away through the dim starlight. She wondered if the slight jerkiness of his step was due to roughness of the ground or to anger. >
“He was listening,” she worried to Susannah.
“To every word.”
“And understanding it?”
“Stavros said Ghirra’s intellect was awe inspiring. That’s a quote.”
Megan shifted uneasily, setting her empty plate aside. “Even allowing for Stav’s penchant for exaggeration, he’s got a point. I have a feeling we’ll hear about this sooner or later.”
Ghirra rejoined them at supper. He brought a lantern from the back of the wagon and set it lit in front of them. He bent the stiff grass into a mat beneath his long legs, then settled himself comfortably with his laden food tray balanced across his knees.
He smiled at the two women, who had ceased even pretending to eat the moment he sat down.
“This was much interesting talk, Megan,” he remarked gravely, without letting go of his smile.
“I thought you might have been listening,” said Megan lightly.
Susannah said nothing, feeling that the moment was rightfully his.
The healer turned his smile to her. “It is like, I think, when you lie on the stone and the doctors talk about how you are sick and how they will do for you.”
Megan cleared her throat. “Ghirra, I didn’t mean to offend. Only to try and understand.”
“Yes,” he replied, drawing out the final consonant into a faint hiss of resignation. Yet his back was straight and his manner hinted at challenge through the veil of his smile. “Do you want knowing of how I think with this?”
The two women leaned forward with an eager deference that made him laugh. His dark face relaxed with the line of his back. He set his food aside and leaned forward as well, still smiling. He folded his hands in a mimic of Megan’s professorial air, his elbows resting on his knees. The yellow lamplight caught the occasional strand of silver in his curls.
“I think that you understand this right, Megan, in many matters. It is true that we wait for many generations for the ending of the Arrah.” He paused, and then said, without a trace of resentment, “For many generations more than all Terrans have lived on your world.”
Susannah felt a little jolt at the word ‘Terran,’ a term that Sawls rarely used, favoring their own ‘wokind.’ Ghirra’s use of it seemed intended to emphasize his recognition of their differences.
“That old?” Megan prodded.
Ghirra nodded. “We counted this, Ibi and me. If I tell him a history, always he wants knowing when it was, and it is not good enough I say, a long time past. He say…” The healer was struggling now against the limits of his imperfect English, but slipped into a passable imitation of Stavros’ edgy tones. “He say, ‘but when? When exactly did this happen? How long? How many times?’ I begin wondering that Terrans are so worried with time.” He sat back and cocked his head at the women questioningly. “You take a short cycle, you need sleep very often, eat very often. A thing of work must end for you at… at a time that you say, instead when it is finished.”
He looked aside, seeming to remember his meal cooling on the tray. He nibbled a spoonful of mashed kamad root. Megan took this as a cue and began eating with a restrained care that allowed her to keep her mouth full and her eyes glued to the Master Healer’s face.
Ghirra swallowed. “How I understand now is that our time here is different. Also our animals and our plants and what you call our ‘weather.’ Suzhannah say, the plants grow too fast, this is ‘abnormal.’ But Megan say, the Sawls do not grow fast, and this is abnormal.”
He ate anothe
r spoonful, using the moment to form his next sentence.
“What I say is, the things here are as they must be to live, so this is not abnormal for these things. Also I say, we do grow.” He leaned forward again and Susannah was moved by the depth of passion he managed to express within such calm, measured phrasing. “The winch you talk of, Megan, was a better winch than the old winch.” He tapped his chest in restrained emphasis. “I am a better healer than she that taught me. It is only you, Terrans, that have not these Sisters to hold you back, only you can grow so fast that it seems to you that the Sawls stand still.”
Listening in creeping shame, Susannah heard Emil Clausen’s bored voice repeating its lesson in her head. “… these little brown folk have a brand-new view of their universe simply because we appeared in it, out of the heavens…” She finally understood why he scoffed at the noninterference regulations. The only true noninterference was to stay away.
“Meghan, your talk of accepting is correct. The priests teach this and they say this is to be until the Darkness ends. They mean this is a comfort, yes, a…” He quoted Megan neatly. “A weapon against despair. For me, it is no comfort. Not ever.
“But,” he continued, into the silence his eloquence had created, “same as you learn and watch me and ask your questions, I learn also. I learn that a box can have words and knowing inside. I learn about the other worlds, that have no Sisters. I learn also this what Ibi calls ‘impatience,’ that it is not wrong, Aguidran and me to ask our questions about these Sisters. I learn that accepting is not the only way of men.
“And I feel more angry at these Sisters from this learning, but I am happy at it.” He regarded them both seriously, then smiled with a clear intent of irony.
“For me, Meghan, this learning is a faster growing.”
13
The light was dim in the BathHall. Four of the pools had been drained. The water was low in the remaining two, and a faint soap scum floated about the tiled edges.
Stavros did not care. He tossed his pants aside at the nearest pool and dropped into the waiter’s tepid embrace with a grateful sigh. Liphar dunked, washed himself hurriedly, then sat with his legs dangling over the edge, watching over his shoulder for Edan, still clearly astonished that they had managed to elude her. Stavros swam the length of the pool and back, rolling his body around and around like a playful seal.
“Lifa!” he challenged, “She comes, we’ll just throw her in! She could use it!”
Liphar grinned, but nervously.
Stavros dove and surfaced, scattering water with an exuberant shake of his head. Then he noticed a small group of bathers at the shallow end of the other undrained pool. His legs drifted down and found bottom as he floated motionless in surprise.
Kav Daven hunched naked on the green tiled corner steps, his knobby thin legs soaking in the water. Two other elderly priests sat nearby in weary conversation. At Kav Daven’s side, his child companion wrung out wet cloths to drape on his bent head and shoulders.
Stavros climbed slowly out of his pool. He had never laid eyes Oil the ancient Ritual Master outside of a ceremonial context. At ritual times, he had felt that the frail body barely contained that vibrant spirit with its aura of power and magic. Now he saw how tenuous the old priest’s grip on life really was, how his withered skeleton was sadly burdened by the heat, how surely he was failing. Stavros had a moment of reluctant sympathy for the Master Priest Ashimmel, understanding why she must press Kav Daven to designate an heir to his office. Should he die without training an apprentice, ritual knowledge that he alone possessed might be lost to the guild forever. But according to Liphar, the old man resisted stubbornly, refusing all candidates that had been offered him so far.
What is he waiting for? Does he think he can go on forever? Stavros was almost ready to believe it possible, to believe anything possible, remembering the miracle of the guar.
“Lifa!” he whispered, motioning Liphar to join him. The dim fire in his palms, almost forgotten over the past cycles of concentrated brain work, flared anew as he padded across the tile.
The other priests nodded at Stavros with neutral wariness, but the blind Ritual Master did not acknowledge his approach. His bony shoulders were drawn up high about his neck as he muttered soundlessly, faintly rocking. His small attendant looked away from Stavros shyly and laid a damp cloth gently across Kav Daven’s back.
Stavros crouched tentatively at his side. “Kav…?”
The old man ceased rocking at Stavros’ murmur. He sat up a little straighter and a smile lit his gaunt, papery face. “Raellil,” he said, liquid syllables but distinct, spoken softly as if in welcome.
Stavros did not recognize the word. He glanced at Liphar.
“OldWords,” the priest-to-be mouthed apologetically.
“Tell me later.” Stavros stored the word in his memory but did not want to waste precious time with the Kav debating appropriate translations. He had so many questions, pounding at his mind like a crowd outside the door, and had lost confidence suddenly in his ability to express them.
“Lifa, please, tell him I need to understand better what happened at the Leave-taking.”
Liphar’s look was reproving, as if miracles were not meant to be questioned, but he bent respectfully and spoke beside Kav Daven’s ear.
The Ritual Master nodded and smiled, but continued to murmur unintelligibly, and Stavros began to suspect that this long-awaited meeting was not going to be the clarifier of mysteries he had dreamed it would be.
“Ask him about the guar, Lifa. Why didn’t it burn my hands like it burns everyone else’s?”
Liphar tried again, his thin mouth set in protest.
Kav Daven’s smile widened but he continued to stare blindly ahead, his head marking the unheard music of his silent chant.
“Kav, please…” Stavros squeezed his eyes shut anxiously, wondering if the priest was somehow testing him. He gathered his courage and framed the next question himself.
Is there not away, he asked, to talk to the Goddesses, and if one decided to try to reason with them, how would one go about doing it?
The Kav’s answer came in whispered OldWords, sounds like water, and fabric falling in silken folds. Stavros noted that the word “raellil” fell softly among them.
“Lifa?”
Liphar’s expression was as cryptic as his Ritual Master’s.
“This kav say you have this answers.”
“What?”
“Yes. But only, Ibi, you not see this yet.”
That’s for damn sure, thought Stavros, frustrated into irreverence. He sat back on his heels, watching the old man chant and sway.
“What is ‘raellil,’ Lifa?”
“This is like me, the learning ones, that brings the words around.”
“The guild messengers, you mean? The apprentices?”
“Yes. Like me. I am raellil.” Liphar tapped his chest, and then glanced up abruptly, past Stavros, toward the entrance to the hall. Stavros let his head droop, knowing who the young man saw.
“She found us already, did she?”
Liphar nodded.
“Damn, Aguidran trained that girl too well.”
He leaned toward Kav Daven, opening his palms in offering though the blind man could not see them. “When I find these answers you say I have, I will ask you, Kav, if I have them truly.”
Then, as Edan strode angrily across the hall, he rose regretfully, leaving the old priest to his private litany.
14
The descent across the grassy savannah to Ogo Dul took far longer than Susannah had estimated from atop Imvalla’s dizzying precipice. The succession of gently rolling meadows was treeless, though not so arid as the upper plain, despite its sandy salt-rich soil. The grass grew tall and even, like a field of wheat, and stretched before them as featureless in the gray half-light as an ocean before dawn.
The caravan followed the windings of Imvalla’s river for two full throws. During meal stops, lanterns glimmered along the
line of wagons, like bright beads between the flickering jewels of the cookfires. But while moving, Aguidran’s rule was to make eyes to adjust to the lowest level of light. At the end of a throw, Susannah’s entire face ached from constant squinting.
With darkfall, the wild creatures grew bolder. The rangers patrolled the train constantly, guiding stragglers closer to their wagons, keeping up the pace. During sleep rounds, though there was never a breath of wind, the grasses rustled mysteriously beyond the light of the lanterns. Once Susannah woke to the cries of a terrified hakra and the pounding of the rangers’ feet as they raced past to its rescue. Visiting her brother at dinnertime, Aguidran watched the darkness with narrowed eyes and muttered about the continuing heat.
Ahead of them always was the glow of the Cluster, a cloud-wrapped beacon that inspired their constant wonder. Susannah remarked that it felt like marching fully aware into the maw of a smoking inferno.
“The Celestial Firepit,” quipped Megan.
Susannah groaned. “You’d expect to see Valla up there roasting her dinner.”
“Poetry was never my long suit.”
Susannah drew her long hair back and fought a comb through its mats. She felt sticky and dirty and longed for a bath, but Aguidran would allow no river swimming in the darkness. “We could use a poet on this expedition,” she ventured more seriously.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Megan replied heavily, “but it wouldn’t do a bit of good. Beauty is a recidivist sentiment. It wouldn’t move the Court an inch without the legal legs to stand on, even if Stav could muster eloquence enough to bring tears to the judges’ eyes. I’m resting my hopes on our boy surprising us with all the instincts of a crackerjack lawyer…”
“He’s got CRI for a research assistant. That should help.” Susannah smiled, picturing Stavros as he struggled through the baroque jungles of legal precedent under CRI’s machine-patient tutelage. And picturing him, she wanted him with a sudden fierceness that startled her. She had been right, then, not to let herself dwell on him and the risks he had undertaken. At certain times, certain things just did not bear thinking about.
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