For several hours each day, Indigo and Shalune took instruction from Uluye in the sponsors’ duties; then there were long and tedious rehearsals for the ceremony itself and for the procession that would precede it, and late into each night, small ceremonies at which, Indigo reported, she and Shalune must sit mutely while Uluye prepared her daughter in ritual fashion for her coming ordeal.
The few free hours left to Indigo were only just enough for the basic needs of eating and sleeping, and so yet again Grimya had felt obliged to restrain her urge to tell her story and had forced herself not to ask—as she longed to do—if they might not help Yima in some way. She hoped that there would still be a chance to make her plea, but the opportunity for that diminished with every new day; besides, she was forced to admit that she could see no way in which Yima could be helped now. The die was cast; Indigo couldn’t change matters even if she were willing to try to, and Yima herself seemed quietly resigned and as obedient as always. That in itself puzzled Grimya, who had expected a show of resistance, or at the very least, some sign of bitter regret, at this eleventh hour. It seemed, though, that Uluye had imposed her authority so thoroughly on her daughter that any spark of rebellion in Yima was extinguished beyond recall.
Grimya spent an unhappy night in the cave. The storm continued for hour after hour, until it seemed it would never end, and she slept only fitfully, frequently wakened by the thunder as it rolled around the bluff. Once, startled out of an uneasy doze by a double crash directly overhead, she saw that Indigo had returned and, still fully dressed, was climbing into her bed, but Indigo was too tired to even greet her, and disconsolately, the wolf laid her head down once more and tried to go back to sleep.
With dawn, though, the storm finally abated, and at last Grimya opened her eyes to see, instead of the ceaseless flicker of lightning against the black night, the first rays of the sun rising above the trees. She rose, stretched stiffly and shook herself from muzzle to tail. Indigo was still asleep, and the wolf padded to the cave’s entrance, pushed through the curtain and emerged onto the ledge.
The morning was clear, cool and quiet after the storm’s night-long racket. A few isolated puddles shone in the arena below, but most of the torrential rain had already evaporated under the sun’s early rays. The lake was brimming, its surface choppy in the breeze and glittering in the brilliant light; two women crouched at its edge, filling pitchers with water for washing, but most of the citadel’s inhabitants weren’t yet astir.
It should have been a peaceful, almost idyllic scene; yet as she gazed down from the ledge, Grimya felt something dark and oppressive underlying the apparent tranquility: the sense that a subtle, but inescapable, influence was reaching out to taint everything around it. Brooding; that was the word. Brooding and waiting. She remembered Uluye’s strange behavior as the storm broke, and she looked up to where the truncated peak of the ziggurat loomed. The open temple wasn’t visible, but a thin trickle of smoke was rising above the towering wall, and intuition told Grimya that the High Priestess was there still, as she had been throughout the night.
Her sharp ears caught a sound behind her, and she turned to see that Indigo was awake and sitting up.
“Grimya …” Indigo’s voice was heavy with weariness. “Is it already morning?”
“Yess.” Grimya ducked back through the curtain and approached the bed. “You can’t have had more than a few hours’ sleep. You c-came back so late last night.”
Indigo smiled tiredly. “I’m all right.” She rubbed her eyes with clenched knuckles, forcing herself to full wakefulness. “Has Shalune been here yet?”
“No. Should she have been?”
“She said she’d be early. We’re to spend the day with Yima, making the last preparations for tonight.”
Grimya’s tail drooped. “With Y … ima? But I thought that today we would be able to be together.”
“I know; I’d hoped so too.” Indigo reached out and ruffled the wolf’s cheek fur. “I’m sorry, my dear. By tomorrow it’ll all be over.”
Grimya wanted to say, But it won’t! Then, at the last moment, she stayed her tongue. There was something wrong with Indigo, something the wolf had never encountered before and that she didn’t comprehend. Indigo seemed preoccupied, distant. In one sense that was understandable, Grimya thought, for she was overtired and the last few days had doubtless been disorienting; but Grimya couldn’t shake off the conviction that her distance was deliberate, that she was concealing some emotion or some intent that she didn’t want the wolf to see. And Grimya was certain that whatever might take place at the initiation ceremony, this coming night would not be the end of it.
Indigo was out of bed now and crouching by the hearthstone, where she poured herself a cup of water from a pitcher. The water was stale and she grimaced at the taste, but drained the cup, set it aside and then poured more water into a bowl and began to splash her face. Grimya watched her uneasily. She thought of Uluye alone in the high temple above them. She thought of Shalune’s secretive visit to the forest to meet Tiam. She thought of Yima and of the other, unknown participant—she; no other identity, just she—in this affair. Something was wrong; she knew it as surely as she knew that the sun rose with each dawn. And, like the scent of hunters on the wind, Grimya sensed danger.
She spoke so suddenly that Indigo started. “Indigo, I have made a decision. When you g-go to the c … eremony tonight, when you go down into this Well, I am coming with you.”
Indigo blinked. “Grimya, you can’t. You know that.”
“I d … o not know it. I don’t w-want you to go there alone.”
“I won’t be alone. Shalune and Yima will be with me. There’s nothing to fear, truly there isn’t.”
But there was. Grimya’s muzzle quivered. “Indigo, please ll-llisten to me! There is something wrong with this, something bad. I don’t kn-know what it is, but I have a terrible feeling about it! Shalune—”
“Shalune has no wish to harm me.” Misunderstanding what Grimya had been about to say, Indigo interrupted before she could explain. Then, seeing the misery in the wolf’s eyes, her voice softened and she turned to face her, taking her muzzle gently in both hands. “Sweet Grimya, it’s quite simple. You can’t come with me. Uluye won’t allow it, and I’m not in a position to argue with her. I understand your fears, and I’m touched by your concern, but truly, I don’t believe that I’ll be in any danger.” She frowned suddenly, and for a moment her look grew very introverted. “I don’t know why I should be so sure of that. It makes no sense in the light of all we’ve said and all we suspect about the Ancestral Lady. But somehow I am sure, Grimya. I am.”
This, Grimya realized, was something else entirely. Preoccupied with her own doubts, she’d forgotten what lay at the core of this affair. Not Shalune, not Yima and Tiam, but the Ancestral Lady herself—or whatever dwelt down in the unknown world below the Well and spoke in the Ancestral Lady’s name. This, by all standards of reason, was where the danger lay, if danger there was, for this was the demon to which Indigo’s lodestone had led them.
Yet Grimya wasn’t convinced. Whatever peril the Ancestral Lady might impose, the wolf felt in her bones that Indigo was about to be faced with a far greater threat, and one over which the demon had no influence. But how could she explain such a feeling to Indigo? She had no evidence, no foundation, only her instinct. And in Indigo’s present state of mind, that wouldn’t be enough.
Indigo was still stroking her muzzle, but absently, her mind elsewhere. Grimya pulled free, backed a pace and made one final effort. “Please, Indigo,” she said throatily. “I m … ust tell you what is in my mind. There is something you don’t know. Something about Yima herself. She has—”
“Indigo?” The querying call came from outside the cave. Instantly Grimya fell silent, and Indigo looked up quickly. The curtain parted a fraction, and Shalune’s face appeared in the gap.
“Ah, you’re awake.” She made her customary ritual bow, then entered. “That’s good. We must m
ake ready. Yima’s robes are being prepared now and it’ll soon be time to dress her for the vigil.”
Grimya echoed, silently and in dismay, Vigil?
I told you: Shalune and I are to stay with her throughout the day, Indigo communicated. We must say our good-byes for now.
“You’ve eaten nothing?” Shalune asked, before Grimya could reply.
“Nothing,” Indigo confirmed. “I drank some water, but I understand that’s permissible.”
“Yes, yes, of course.” Shalune seemed nervous, as though something had either excited or alarmed her. Grimya strove to meet her gaze, but the fat woman’s eyes avoided her, whether consciously or not, she couldn’t be sure.
Indigo…. She tried again to project her thoughts as her mind began to crawl with disquiet. But Indigo either didn’t hear or was too distracted by Shalune to answer. Her mind was filled with other matters, mundanities, the small necessities of the day ahead; she slipped her feet into plaited sandals, cast a thin cotton shawl over her shoulders, and followed the fat woman toward the cave’s entrance. Only when she reached the threshold did she turn and bend down to rub Grimya’s head.
“Be patient, dear one. Inuss will bring you food and see that you’re all right, and I’ll be back tomorrow.”
It had been Shalune’s suggestion that Inuss be deputized to take care of the wolf in Indigo’s absence. Uluye had agreed to spare the young priestess from the cliff-top ceremony, and Indigo was secretly relieved that someone would be here to prevent Grimya, if necessary, from following her to the temple. Under any other circumstances, she wouldn’t have wanted to leave her friend behind, and she knew that she was guilty of deceiving Grimya when she had said that Uluye would never have allowed her to come. Uluye could have been persuaded; even blackmailed if Indigo had had the determination. But Indigo didn’t want to persuade her. This time she wanted to face her demon alone.
She kissed the top of the wolf’s head. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” And to salve her conscience as well as to reassure Grimya, she added silently, Don’t fret, and don’t worry about me. I’ll come to no harm.
Grimya couldn’t reply. She didn’t have the words to express her fears, and there simply wasn’t time to search for another way to explain. She licked Indigo’s face, then watched dismally as the two women left the cave. The soft sound of their footsteps diminished along the ledge, and the she-wolf was alone.
The awesome voice of a single horn seared across the night, arousing a cacophony of shrieking and chattering from the forest’s denizens. Not this time the brittle, brazen sound of the priestesses’ welcoming trumpets, but a single deep and ominous note that set the air throbbing and vibrated through the ziggurat. Grimya, keeping her solitary, unhappy vigil in the oracle’s cave, shot to her feet with a yelp of shock, then stood quivering as the horn’s echoes slowly faded like thunder dying away in the distance. This was the signal Indigo had told her to expect—the sign that the initiation ceremony was about to begin.
The wolf moved toward the cave’s entrance. One part of her didn’t want to watch the procession as it went by; another part, though, was drawn helplessly to it, like a leaf in a fast-running stream, and its influence was the stronger of the two. She nosed the curtain aside, took a step put onto the ledge and looked down. There were lights, little more than flickering pinpoints, several levels below her, and rising on the still, humid air came the sound of voices in a dirgelike chorus. Grimya stood still, watching—and at last, as the procession reached her own level and began to move along the ledge toward her, she could see it clearly.
Uluye led the train of women. She was dressed in a dark robe that in the thin starlight looked almost utterly black, and on her head was a tall, bone-white crown that highlighted her face into; sharp relief. Behind her walked two torchbearers, and behind them—Grimya cringed in shock as she saw a figure out of nightmare, its head huge and grotesquely distorted; vast, pale eyes staring mindlessly ahead as it walked. Then suddenly rationality slipped back, and she realized that what she was seeing wasn’t a true face, but a mask, four or five times the size of a human head and carved to represent a creature that was neither human nor animal nor bird nor fish, but with elements of all those and something more. The mask flowed down over its wearer’s shoulders; multicolored ribbons shimmered in the torchlight, forming a bizarre cloak that fell almost to the ground. Glimpses of a plain white robe showed beneath the ribbons, and small bare feet, painted with sigils and adorned with anklets, moved beneath the robe’s hem as they followed a little unsteadily in Uluye’s wake.
Grimya backed a pace into the cave as the procession drew nearer. Yima—for the hideously masked figure could only be the candidate herself—was followed by her two sponsors, and though their appearance was less grotesque, they were still barely recognizable as Indigo and Shalune. Both wore veils of a fine, translucent material, decorated with a myriad of bone and wood carvings that clinked as they walked. Their robes were dark like Uluye’s; their faces, dimly visible beneath the veils, were whitened with wood ash and their eyes ringed with charcoal. After them came two more torchbearers, and then, like the tail of a comet behind its bright nucleus, the whole mass of the cult priestesses, two by two, their expressions a strange mixture of the solemn and the rapt.
Grimya, her muzzle just protruding through the curtain, watched with wide eyes as the silent file of women went by. No one so much as glanced at her—she doubted that any of the celebrants were even aware of her presence in the shadows—and as the last pair passed and walked on toward the final flight of stairs and the temple on the summit, the wolf shuddered as though a cold wind had blown from another dimension to chill her through fur and flesh to the marrow of her bones.
From above her, the great horn sounded again, a darkly triumphant clarion that was shockingly echoed by shrill blasts from the more familiar trumpets. Yima and her attendants must have reached the temple….
Grimya slunk back into the cave, her tail between her legs. A whimper bubbled in her throat, but she suppressed it. She didn’t want to see any more, didn’t want to hear any more; and above all, she didn’t want to think about what was happening on the cliff top. All she wanted was for tonight to be over, and for Indigo to return safely to the world.
Smoke rose in a dense column from the great bowl of the brazier, sulphurous yellow in the torches’ glare. The drums, which had begun a muted beat as the procession’s leaders stepped into the rectangle of the temple, were now rising to the pitch and intensity of distant thunder, and on all sides of the square the massed ranks of women swayed with the hypnotic rhythm. Their bodies glistened with sweat; their skirts swirled in a kaleidoscope of fierce colors, while the flying dark mass of their hair hurled ghastly and almost bestial shadows across their faces.
High above the heads of her followers, beside the brazier and wreathed in its smoke, Uluye stared down like some primitive and savage goddess, her arms outspread as though to encompass and embrace the wild scene about her. Her eyes blazed with joy as she surveyed the heady mayhem of the rite; she was drinking in the energies of the stamping, swaying crowd, feeding on them, drawing power from them and focusing it with the fearsome intensity of a diamond lens.
In the flickering light she looked almost as unhuman as the weird, masked figure of Yima, who stood below her in the center of the sandstone square. Indigo and Shalune flanked the candidate now, each with a hand resting lightly on one of her shoulders to signify that she was in their charge and that they, her sponsors, were also her sworn guardians.
Indigo was giddy with the intoxicating effects of the drums, the sea of movement around her, the dancing torchlight, the clouds of incense that billowed from the brazier and stung her eyes and nostrils. She had vowed that she would remain detached from this, do no more than play her appointed part, but she couldn’t control the primal excitement that rose in her as the ritual neared its climax. Civilization had been stripped away; this was raw, unreasoning energy, and she was a part of it; it flowed
in her veins, thrummed in her bones, drilled deep into her soul. She felt Yima’s skin trembling under her touch, felt her own body quiver as the current of anticipation grew and grew—
Suddenly Uluye flung her arms skyward and let out a shriek that could have awakened the dead. The drums stopped. The echoes of Uluye’s voice died away, and for a time that must have been mere moments, yet seemed to Indigo like half of her life, there was silence. Uluye was smiling, that same wild rictus Indigo had seen before, as though a naked grinning skull were about to burst through the flesh of the High Priestess’s face.
With a dramatic gesture, Uluye dropped to a crouch before the brazier, and when she rose again, she was holding what looked like a gigantic, stone-headed hammer. An ululating yell went up from the women; the horns blared out in cacophony, and Uluye reared to her full height, swung the hammer above her head, then brought it hurtling down on the dais where the brazier stood. The crash of stone meeting stone dinned in Indigo’s ears, and from deep within the cliff itself came an answering rumble. The square beneath her feet shook; then there was a new sound, a grinding, grating sound, the protesting voice of ancient mechanisms creaking into life—and at the foot of the plinth, between the brazier and the oracle’s chair, a section of the temple floor moved. As though a huge hand had pushed it from below, one of the stone slabs rose on its end, teetered, then keeled over and fell with a crash that shook the floor afresh and sent a cloud of fine dust flying to merge with the scented smoke.
An awed gasp rippled through the crowd. As the dust cleared, Indigo saw the gaping dark rectangle revealed by the stone, and where the torchlight could just reach, the first few uneven treads of a flight of steps spiraling down into blackness. The Well was open.
Louise Cooper - Indigo 06 - Avatar Page 17
