Louise Cooper - Indigo 06 - Avatar

by Louise Cooper - Indigo 06

  A female voice rang out, wailing with an emotion that could have been anything from the hysteria of joy to the despair of misery. Uluye spun around, finding the source of the cry with uncanny accuracy.

  “You! Yes, I see you, and I hear you as the Ancestral Lady has heard you. Come forward, my daughter. Come to me. Don’t dare to hold back!”

  Slowly, shaking with fear, the young widow whose husband had died of a fever moved out of the press of people. Uluye waited; the girl approached and crumpled to her knees at the High Priestess’s feet.

  “Daughter,” Uluye said, “your man was called from his service to the Ancestral Lady so that you might look again on his face and renew your pledge to him. This you have done, and you are not found wanting. You have been true to his memory and have not deceived him or turned your face to another, and so I will tell you now how the Ancestral Lady has rewarded you. Within the year you will know another good man, and your grieving heart will be healed. You may cleave to this other man without fear of your dead husband’s wrath, and you may take him as your own and lie together under one roof in the knowledge that no vengeful shade or hungering hushu shall come creeping to your bedside when the night is at its darkest.“ She reached out and laid a hand on the crown of the girl’s bowed head. ”Go now, daughter. Make your obeisance, and return to your home without fear.“

  Still trembling uncontrollably, the young widow rose to her feet. Across the width of the arena Indigo saw her eyes shining like lamps in the torchglow, and the look on her face of dawning joy, of hope rekindled where before there had been only despair, was like a physical blow. As the girl, ushered by Uluye, began to move hesitantly toward her, Indigo felt as though something deep inside her had turned to ashes. She understood the girl’s grief; understood, too, what it was to be granted the hope of a new love when the old seemed lost beyond recall.

  In her mind’s eye she saw a face, not Fenran this time, but another who once, years ago, she had for a short while believed might taken Fenran’s place in her heart. She had been grievously wrong, and the stinging guilt of her folly still haunted her. But perhaps tonight, as the Ancestral Lady’s oracle, she had in some small way made amends for that old mistake by being the instrument through which this sad young woman was to be granted a second chance for happiness. It was a cruel irony, for it seemed she had the means to achieve for another the one thing that she herself yearned for above all else but could not reach. No one could grant Indigo the certainty of hope. Not the oracle, not Uluye, not even the Ancestral Lady herself.

  The widow came to the rock and stopped. She dared not raise her head to look the oracle in the face, but she dropped to one knee in an awkward curtsy and her uncertain hands touched the hem of Indigo’s robe. Over her hunched figure, Uluye’s gaze and Indigo’s met, and the priestess’s eyes narrowed as she glimpsed something that Indigo had not wanted her to see.

  “Enough, daughter.” Uluye touched the girl’s shoulder, drew her back. Her expression was speculative and just a little uncertain.

  Indigo watched the girl move away, and the worm of envy that had been squirming within her faded. How could she begrudge the young widow her fortune? She didn’t know whether the Ancestral Lady’s promise would prove true or false, and in some ways it seemed irrelevant. The girl believed, and in belief there was hope and healing. Indigo prayed silently that, for this girl at least, the hope would prove to be real and not an illusion.

  One after another they came before Uluye for judgment. It seemed that the Ancestral Lady had been merciful tonight, for almost all of the postulants were granted some measure, however small, of comfort in their unhappiness, or reparation for their loss. The madwoman’s sons were told that the Ancestral Lady had taken pity on their mother and would restore her wits in the Afterworld. The brothers of the headless man were promised that within three more full moons, the murderer would meet an untimely end and his possessions would be rightly theirs. Utterly scrupulous, yet coldly detached, like an austere and domineering matriarch, Uluye dispensed justice, and with it, hope—with one exception.

  At first Indigo didn’t understand when the woman who had killed her children broke free from the two priestesses who held her and flung herself in the dust in front of the rock below her litter, yelling hysterically. Indigo could make no sense of the babble of words, which sounded from their tone as though the woman were cursing her and imploring her by turns, and only when the priestesses pounced on the murderess, pinning her down while Uluye interposed herself between the woman and the oracle’s sacred person, did Indigo begin to comprehend. As the woman was hauled away screaming, Uluye turned her head and looked up at the oracle’s throne. For the second time that night, their gazes clashed, and Uluye said in a tone that only Indigo could hear, “Don’t look so shocked. You spoke the words that condemned her.”

  Without waiting for a reaction, she stalked off in the wake of the priestesses and their struggling prisoner, and Indigo looked quickly around for Shalune. Shalune, though, had gone. Only Yima stood alone, a few paces from the rock, staring at the small drama with dark, expressionless eyes.

  At the lake’s edge three more priestesses were maneuvering into position what looked like an upright framework of lashed branches some six feet square. The woman was dragged toward it; as she saw what awaited her, her shrieks redoubled, but the cries were ignored and she was manhandled to the framework and tied to it, spread-eagled and helpless. As the last knots were pulled tight, she seemed to accept her fate, and her cries faded first to whimpering and then to nothing. She was still, hanging from the frame, her head drooping forward in defeat.

  The crowding watchers were silent now. Uluye turned to them once more.

  “Go,” she said. “Go back to your villages and give thanks for the boon we have all been granted tonight. The Ancestral Lady has spoken, and her will and her justice have been done. Turn your faces now, and depart in awe and in gratitude to the rightful mistress of us all.”

  There was no more ceremony, no drums or horns, nothing. In an eerie atmosphere of anticlimax, and without even the smallest murmur, the crowd began to disperse. On quiet, shuffling feet they melted away into the forest, and within minutes the lakeside was deserted and only Indigo, the priestesses and the bizarre wooden framework with its motionless prisoner remained on the dusty arena before the ziggurat.

  At a signal from Uluye, the torch-carriers began to extinguish their brands. One by one the guttering yellow flames were plunged into the sand and went out, and the night’s natural darkness closed in like a shroud. The moon stared down at its own distorted reflection in the lake, and the figures of the priestesses became faceless silhouettes. Shalune’s heavyset form loomed out of the gloaming with the litter-bearers behind her; she glanced up at Indigo and put a finger to her lips, forestalling anything Indigo might have tried to whisper to her. Silence, it seemed, was the women’s watchword now, and in silence the litter was lifted from the rock, and the procession, with Uluye at its head, turned toward the cliff-side stairs.

  As she was borne away, Indigo thought she heard a sound from the lake’s edge, a whimper of despair and misery and abject fear that carried over the litter’s creaking and the soft, muffled hush of the priestesses’ bare feet in the sand. She looked over her shoulder, asking herself uneasily what the murderess’s ultimate fate would be. Death by starvation, or by broiling in the heat of the sun? Or something still worse? You spoke the words that condemned her, Uluye had asserted. Indigo wondered what she had said. What dire punishment had the Ancestral Lady decreed through her lips and tongue?

  They reached the foot of the first staircase. Just before the litter carriers turned to begin the ascent, Indigo had one last glimpse of the lakeshore. A column of mist was forming on the water, an oddly isolated patch of moonshot silver-gray. Though she couldn’t be sure, Indigo thought she saw three small figures forming in the mist, and saw them begin to move, drifting over the surface like wraiths as they slowly converged on the wooden frame and
its condemned occupant.

  Then her bearers turned, set foot on the first stair, and the high back of her throne obscured the arena from view as she was carried away toward the high caves.

  •CHAPTER•VIII•

  In the pearl-gray mist of predawn, Indigo woke from a nightmare screaming Fenran’s name. Grimya, who had been curled at the foot of the bed, sprang to her feet and ran to her, licking her face and projecting messages of comfort and reassurance until Indigo had struggled through the awful borderland between dream and reality and was fully awake.

  For several minutes they sat together, Indigo hugging the wolf close. “I’m sorry,” she said over and over again. “I’m sorry, Grimya.”

  “Wh-at is there to be sorry for? You cannot control your drreams.”

  “I know, but I thought those nightmares were behind me now. It’s been so long since they’ve haunted me, I thought I might at last be free of them.”

  Grimya said hesitantly, “You dreamed of… him?” She was reluctant to speak Fenran’s name in Indigo’s presence.

  Indigo nodded. “I dreamed I was standing on the lakeshore, and he … he came out of the water, searching for me. Only when I looked into his face, I realized that he wasn’t the Fenran I knew. Something had happened to him, something terrible. He was mad, and he didn’t know me, and I knew he meant to kill me, so I ran, but whichever way I turned, he was always there in front of me, waiting…“ She shuddered. ”Why did I dream of him like that, Grimya? Why?“

  “I don’t know.” The wolf looked up at her unhappily. “Perhaps it was because of last night.”

  They both fell silent for a few moments. Returning to her quarters after the somber procession back up the great stairways, Indigo had found Grimya in an abject state. The wolf had been desperately ashamed of the fear that had made her run away from the ceremony and hide herself in the cave, but at the same time, as she told Indigo, she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that something very evil was taking place, and she simply hadn’t had the courage to face it. The incense smoke had been affecting her head, she said, so that she could barely distinguish reality from illusion, and she had felt so sick and disoriented that when Shalune told her to go, she obeyed immediately and with relief.

  Indigo didn’t blame her. She too had had a similar feeling, though her senses, less acute than Grimya’s, had been dulled rather than painfully sharpened by the narcotic smoke. She still couldn’t recall anything that had happened during her trance. Even though the earlier events were now clearer in her mind, there remained a gap in her memory, a void that it seemed she couldn’t cross and bring back to consciousness.

  She gently pushed Grimya aside and rose to her feet. Thankfully, her scream as she woke hadn’t brought anyone running; she couldn’t have tolerated the priestesses’ anxious solicitude at the moment, and even Shalune’s presence would be unwelcome. The cave was making her feel imprisoned and claustrophobic. She wanted to get out in the fresher air, be alone for a while with only Grimya’s company and no one else to intrude on them.

  “How long before dawn breaks, do you think?” she asked the wolf.

  Grimya considered. “Not ll-ong. It’s dark still, but there is a heavy mist, and that means morning must be near.”

  If they had only half an hour before the citadel started to wake, that would at least be better than nothing. Indigo reached for her clothes. “Let’s walk by the lake for a while, before anyone else is about. I feel I need to clear my mind.”

  Grimya agreed eagerly, and as soon as Indigo was dressed, they left the cave. Outside, the darkness was intense; the moon had set and no starlight could penetrate the mist that folded around them, heavy with the damp smells of the forest. Faint and muted, the myriad small sounds of the jungle impinged on Indigo’s ears as its nocturnal inhabitants began to give way to the wakening creatures of the day. Insects chirred, their endless chorus broken now and then by the twitter of a bird stirring to utter its first tentative welcome to the morning. In the distance, something large and unidentifiable grunted hoarsely and there was a brief rustle of undergrowth. Of human activity, though, there was no sound or sign.

  Groping her way down the long flights of stairs behind Grimya’s more surefooted descent, Indigo began to relax a little. The sting of her nightmare was fading, and the predawn cool and stillness had a primordial feel that she found oddly comforting. They reached the sandy arena, which was scuffed into chaos by crisscrossing footprints, and walked on toward the water’s edge. Then suddenly Grimya, several paces ahead of Indigo, stopped with a yelp of consternation.

  “Grimya? What’s wrong—oh, Goddess!”

  She saw it before Grimya could intercept her and turn her aside: the framework of branches at the edge of the lake. She’d forgotten it—perhaps her subconscious had deliberately blotted it from her mind—and so the shock of coming upon it now, looming from mist and darkness, was all the greater. The woman, the murderess, still hung where she had been lashed to the frame, her back to Indigo and her face staring out across the lake. She wasn’t moving, and whether or not she was breathing, Indigo couldn’t tell. Slowly, driven by a perverse fascination, she started to approach the frame.

  “Indigo.” Grimya hung back, her voice unhappy. “Leave it. Don’t look.”

  Indigo paid no heed. She drew level with the skein of branches, some of which had wilted leaves still clinging to them, then stepped around the frame’s edge.

  Grimya heard her sharp intake of breath, but Indigo didn’t speak. She only stared at the frame and what it contained, and after a few moments’ indecision, Grimya ran to her side.

  The woman was dead. Not from dehydration or from any other natural cause; she had bled to death, killed by a savage slash that had opened her throat and all but severed her head from her shoulders. Blood covered her arms and torso, drying now into a brownish crust like an obscene garment. Her eyes, staring widely even though all traces of life were gone, held an expression of unfettered terror.

  Abruptly the spell that had mesmerized Indigo snapped and she jerked her head aside, shutting her eyes in revulsion. She started to turn, stumbling blindly away from the gruesome corpse, but a sudden mental alarm from Grimya halted her.

  Indigo! There’s someone coming!

  Indigo froze and, opening her eyes once more, peered into the mist. She could see nothing, but after a few seconds she heard a new sound. Soft footfalls; someone—or something—was moving stealthily toward them. Images of the horrors she had witnessed last night tumbled into her mind and she felt a flash of panic as a shape, indistinguishable in the darkness, loomed ahead. Grimya growled defensively, hackles rising.

  The shape hesitated; then Uluye’s voice said, “What are you doing? What do you want here?”

  They stared at each other as tension and shock ebbed. Uluye lowered the machete she was holding, and with a great effort, gathered her poise. Her eyes were wary, mistrustful. “You shouldn’t be here alone,” she said with a hint of aggression.

  Her tone nettled Indigo. “I’m not alone, thank you, Uluye,” she responded crisply. “Grimya is with me, and she provides all the protection I need.”

  Uluye flicked the wolf a brief, dismissive glance. “All the same, I would prefer that you return to the citadel. It is not right for the oracle to show herself to any casual gaze by walking about like an ordinary person.”

  Irritation began to turn to anger, and Indigo retorted, “I hardly think I’m likely to be looked over by anyone when I can barely see my own hand in front of my face!” Then suddenly a new and unpleasant thought occurred to her. Why did Uluye seem so anxious for her to leave? Could it be that there was something she didn’t want her oracle to see?

  She looked at the machete in Uluye’s hand and her suspicion took a tighter hold. “It was you …” she said softly.

  “What?” Uluye frowned. “What was me? What do you mean?”

  Oh, she was a good actress, Indigo had seen that for herself. She met the tall woman’s arrogant st
are directly and unflinchingly, and pointed back to the wooden frame, barely discernible in the mist behind her.

  “Tell me the truth, Uluye,” she said harshly. “That—that woman—you killed her, didn’t you?”

  For a moment Uluye looked genuinely puzzled, but then her expression cleared. “Oh,” she said. “I understand.” She walked past Indigo and Grimya and stopped before the frame. Her eyes took in the corpse with a single critically assessing glance. “So she is dead. It was swifter than I’d anticipated.” She glanced in the direction of the lake. “The Ancestral Lady has seen fit to be merciful.”

  “Merciful?” Indigo repeated, appalled.

  Uluye looked at her in surprise. “Of course. There are many far less easy ways to die than this. I imagine she must have lost consciousness quite quickly.”

  Indigo returned her stare, feeling a shudder of revulsion at the High Priestess’s sanguine indifference. “You imagine … are you telling me you didn’t kill her?”

  “I?” This time Uluye’s surprise was unmistakably genuine. “Of course not!”

  “Then who did?”

  “Her victims. Who else? As she slew them, so it is right that she should be slain by them in turn.”

  Last night, Indigo remembered, as she was carried to the stairs, she had seen the mist re-forming, glimpsed the three shapes moving shoreward…. “Sweet Goddess,” she said in an undertone.

  A small, cold smile played about Uluye’s lips. “As I said to you at the ceremony, why should you be shocked? She was condemned to die by the word of the Ancestral Lady, not by any decree of mine. Indeed, you might as easily look to yourself as her judge, for you are the oracle through which the Lady speaks.”