"I didn't take the angel from him," Polly pointed out. "He tried to take it from me."
"He is angry and he is fearful. He says that you are withholding rain from us, and the people are angry."
With Klep, Polly could not understand every word, but enough to get the gist of what he was saying.
"I don't control the rain," she said. "I want it to rain here as much as you do."
The healer murmured, but Polly guessed that he was saying that a broken leg was easier to heal than anger.
Briefly Polly closed her eyes. Her voice shook. "I thought when Zach kidnapped me it was for me to be the sacrifice so the healer would fix his heart."
The healer shook his head. "No, no." And from his mumblings she guessed that it was Tynak who had prevented the healer from working with Zachary until Polly came. A healer heals.
Klep said, "That is what Zak thought, what Tynak wanted him to think, maybe what he still thinks. But the people do not care one way or the other about Zak. They are tired of raiding to get food. They want the sacrifice so there will be rain."
Polly thought of Anaral singing her hymn of joy to the Mother after she had placed the flowers on the altar, of the People of the Wind greeting morning and evening with harmony. "Your god demands sacrifice and blood or the rain will be withheld?"
Klep said what she took to mean "For each person the god is different."
"There is a different god?"
"No. Each person sees differently."
"Klep, what do you believe?"
"That you are good. That you have nothing to do with rain or drought. That your blood is your life and, while it is in you, you will use it for good. But the power is when you are alive, not when you are dead and the blood has spilled on the ground." He added, "Anaral says I am a druid," and smiled.
Polly was listening intently, translating Klep's words as he spoke into words she could comprehend.
"The healer has much power," Klep continued. "I have seen him bring back life where I thought there was none. But even he cannot bring your blood back into you if it is spilled out of your body."
The healer spoke. His vocabulary was far more in his hands than in his mumbling and this time she could not understand what he was saying.
Klep translated, "Go back to your own place."
"I wish I could."
Klep turned to the old healer. They spoke together for a long time, and Polly could not understand what they were saying. Finally Klep nodded at the healer and turned to Polly. "Tonight, when the moon rises, there will be much noise, many people. We will help you get to the lake, stop the arrows and spears, so you can swim."
"You can do this?"
Klep was fierce. "There will be no sacrifice. The healer has great power. No one would dare throw a spear at him, no one would dare try to stop him in any way. He will protect you as you run to the water."
It was a slim hope, but it was a hope. She did not think she could make the swim again, but better to drown than be put on that terrible altar rock. "Thank you. I am grateful."
"You were good to me," Klep said. "Your People of the Wind were good to me. I would become one with Anaral. From you I have learned much. I have learned that I love. Love. That is a good word."
"Yes. It is a good word."
"What I do, I do not do just for you, though I hope I would do what I do even if it were not for Anaral. But if you are sacrificed, do you think the People of the Wind would let me see Anaral, to love? Do I learn love and then let love be sacrificed along with you?" Again his brow beaded with sweat. "You will swim?"
"I will swim." She tried to sound certain, for Klep's sake.
The healer spoke again.
Klep said, "You have the gift. The healer says you must serve it."
"Tell the healer I will try to serve the gift." As surely as Dr. Louise had done, all her life, so would Polly try to do.
Klep nodded. Looked out at the village, where people talked in small groups, the sound ugly, menacing. "I will stay with you. I cannot do much, but my presence will help."
The healer looked at Polly. "Will stay."
Surely the healer's presence would keep the people from coming to the lean-to and dragging her out, at least until the full moon rose. And the very fact that these two men, the young and the old, were with her, cared enough to stay with her, filled her with warmth.
She asked, "Klep, what about Zachary? I came back across the lake with you because of Zachary."
"Zak? Oh, he is of no importance."
She did not understand. She repeated, "But I thought I was to be sacrificed so that his heart could be mended."
"That is--" Klep searched for words. "That is not in the middle. Not in the center."
Well, yes. She could understand that Zachary was peripheral. But did he know it?
"If rain comes, if the people are quiet, then the healer--" Klep glanced at the ancient man, who remained squatting back on his heels, as comfortable as though he were in a chair. "He will try to help Zak, because he is healer. Where there is brokenness, he must heal. Tynak wanted you to think that Zak was important because he thought the line was drawn close between you. That you--that you loved him."
"No, Klep--"
"I know that the line is between you andTav, not Zak."
Again she shook her head. "Where I came from, it is too soon. I may sense a line between Tav and me, but love--" She could not explain that not only was she not ready to give her heart to Tav or anyone else, that she had much schooling ahead of her, that in her time she was too young, but also that her time was three thousand years in the future. Perhaps in the vast scheme of things three thousand years wasn't much, but set against the span of a single lifetime it was enormous.
Thunder rumbled. She looked across the lake and saw dark sheets of rain.
Klep looked at it. "Ah, Polly, if you could bring rain here!"
"Oh, Klep, would that I could!"
The healer remained squatting on the ground just inside the shadow of the lean-to. The strange light gave a greenish cast to his face and he looked like an incredibly ancient frog. His voice was almost a croak. "Healer will not let healer go." His ancient eyes met Polly's. Not only was he offering her his considerable protection, he was calling her a colleague.
Groups of villagers were muttering, hissing, sounding like a swarm of hornets, looking toward the lean-to but not coming close. Had it not been for Klep and the healer there, with her, for her, she was not sure what would have happened.
The storm across the lake moved away, farther away, and the brazen sun glowed through angry clouds. The heat was wilting the leaves which were left on the trees and they drifted down, sickly and pale.
Polly closed her eyes. Felt a hand touching hers, an old, dry hand. The healer. A cool wind began to blow, touching her cheeks, her eyelids. The waters of the lake rippled gently against the shore. The angry people fell silent.
Slowly the sky cleared. The thunderheads dissipated. But the sound of drums continued.
The day dragged on. Klep slept, lying on his side, breathing like a child, hand pillowing his head. The healer, too, lay down, and his eyes were closed, but Polly thought that he was not asleep, that he was holding her in a still center of quiet. She could feel her blood coursing through her veins, her living blood, keeping her mind, her thoughts, her very being held in life.
Would she give up that blood willingly?
Where was Zachary? Was he still greedily grasping at life, any kind of life, at any expense? There was no willingness in him, no concern, except for himself. Did he really understand what he was demanding?
There was no sunset. The daylight faded, but there was no touching of the clouds with color. It simply grew darker. Darker. Cook fires were lit. The muttering of the people began again. Here the full moon would not lift up above the great trees of the forest as it did for the People of the Wind, but would come from the lake, rising out of the water.
She heard with horror a hissing of expec
tation. Tynak strode into the center of the clearing, looking first across the lake, then turning around, looking beyond the compound to the heavy darkness of the forest and the clearing with the bloody stone.
A thin scream cut across the air. It was a scream of wild terror, so uncontrolled that it made Polly shudder. It was repeated. Was there already someone at the terrible altar stone, someone facing a sharp knife? She tried to find the source of the scream.
She saw Zachary struggling, screaming, held by two men of the tribe. He was trying to break away from them, but they had him firmly between them, taking him toward Tynak.
A faint light began to show at the far horizon of the lake.
"No!" Zachary screamed. "You can't kill her! I didn't mean it! I didn't! You can't do it, you can't--" He was babbling with terror. "I'll die, kill me, kill me, you can't hurt her--" He saw Polly, and suddenly he was convulsed with sobs. "I didn't mean it! I was wrong! Oh, stop them, somebody, stop them, let me die, don't let them hurt Polly--"
Tynak came up to him and slapped him across the mouth. "Too late."
Zachary was shocked into silence. He tried to pull one hand away to wipe his mouth, but the two men held his arms, and a trickle of blood slid down his chin.
"The sacrifice must be unblemished," Tynak said. "You are not worthy."
Polly was as cold as when she had swum across the lake. Not only her body seemed frozen, but her thoughts, her heart.
The healer stood, helping himself up by pressing one hand against Polly's shoulder. Then he kept it there, in a gesture of protection.
Klep pushed himself up into a sitting position. Polly saw, without really taking it in, that he had a curved knife at his belt, which he now took out and held firmly.
"Tynak, I warn you," he started, but Tynak raised his hand threateningly. With his position of authority as chief of the tribe he did not need a weapon. And Klep, with his broken leg held stiffly between two staves, could not move.
Tynak gestured contemptuously to the two guards who held the struggling Zachary. They dropped him as though he were a dead beast. He fell to the ground, whimpering. The guards came to Polly. They looked at the healer, but he did not take his hand from her shoulder. Polly did not recognize these men, who were not Winter Frost or Dark Swallow. Murmuring what sounded like an apology, one of the guards moved the healer's hand, not roughly, then jerked Polly away.
"Stop!" Klep shouted. "Stop!" But he could only watch in frustration and rage as the men dragged Polly toward Tynak.
"Tynak!" Klep warned. "If you hurt her, it will be disaster for the tribe!"
"Blood!" the people screamed. "Blood for the gods! Blood for the ground, blood for rain, blood for growth, blood for life!" The wind rose, making the flaring torches smoke. The moon began to lift out of the lake, enormous, red as blood. Polly thought her heart would stop beating. The people shouted, stamping their feet rhythmically in time to the drums, in time to their calls for blood. Zachary's thin wails were no more than a wisp of smoke. "Blood!" the people chanted. "Blood! Blood!"
Slowly Polly was being dragged across the compound and toward the path through the forest that led to the terrible stone.
Zachary lurched to his feet and threw himself at Polly. One of the guards struck him and he fell again to the ground, mewling like a sick child.
"Look!" Klep cried, his shout rising above the noise of the mob. "Tynak! People! Look to the lake! Do you not see!"
There were shouts of surprise, of terror.
Polly looked, struggling to stand upright. Silhouetted against the great orb of the moon was a large canoe, with carved and curved ends. As the canoe came closer, she could see two men in it. Holding a great paddle was Karralys, with Og standing proudly by him. Standing in the prow was Bishop Colubra, with Louise the Larger twined about his arm in great shining coils.
"See!" Klep cried triumphantly. "The goddess has called and they come! Do you dare touch the goddess?"
The guards released Polly, recoiling in fear.
"Bishop! Karralys!" Polly raced to the shore.
Tynak was not far behind her.
The bishop and Karralys were dark silhouettes against the sky.
Polly splashed into the water, trying to drag the canoe to the shore. Tynak gestured, and Dark Swallow and Winter Frost pulled the canoe up onto the pebbly beach.
Suddenly the moon was obliterated by a black cloud which spread rapidly across the sky, blotting out the stars. The wind gusted, sending smoke guttering from the torches. Cries of fear and confusion came from the people.
"An omen!" Klep called. "Heed the omen!"
Karralys sprang from the canoe, then helped the bishop out. The old man's legs were wobbly, and he leaned on the druid. Louise the Larger clung to him in tight coils. The healer came up to them, peering first at Karralys, then at the bishop, whose face was suddenly illuminated by a startling flash of lightning. It was followed almost immediately by thunder, rolling wildly between the two chains of mountains, those of the People of the Wind and those of the People Across the Lake.
Then the rain came, at first spattering in heavy drops into the water, onto the beach, the skins of the tents. Then it came in great sheets, almost as though the waters of the lake were rising to meet the rain clouds.
When Karralys and Tav had been blown by the storm to the People of the Wind, the rainbow had arched across the sky and been seen as an omen. Rain had been threatening for days and now it had come, but the People Across the Lake did not accept it as a natural result of clouds and wind patterns, a storm born of a cloud blown by a wind that veered around and came at them from the east, followed by downdrafts producing great charges of static electricity which birthed fierce bolts of lightning and roaring thunder. The storm was seen by the People Across the Lake as a wonder brought by the bishop and the snake, by Karralys and the dog, and by Polly, who had summoned them.
"To the tents!" Tynak cried, and people began to run, women gathering up their children, scurrying across the compound. Tynak held his face up to the rain, his mouth open, swallowing rain in great gulps.
The healer led the bishop to Polly's lean-to, and she and Karralys followed.
"Oh, Bishop," she cried. "Oh, Karralys, thank you. And you, too, Louise, Og. Oh, thank you."
Klep was already soaked by the downpour, and Karralys helped the healer and Polly drag the young man to shelter.
Zachary was still huddled on the ground, the rain pelting down on him. Nobody seemed to notice him.
Polly looked at the bishop. Everybody was dripping rain. Louise the Larger had retired to the farthest corner of the lean-to. The lightning flashed again, hissing as it struck water. When the thunder came, she ran out to Zachary. "Zach. Get up. Come."
"Let me die," he moaned.
"Don't be dramatic. Come on. It's raining. There isn't going to be any sacrifice."
Zachary tried to burrow into the hard ground. "Let me alone."
She pulled at him, but he was a dead weight and she could not move him. "Zach. Get up."
Karralys was at her side. Between them they raised Zachary to his feet.
"Come on, Zach," Polly urged. "Just get away from the lightning." She flinched as it struck again, thunder roaring on top of it.
Karralys helped her drag Zachary to the lean-to. When they let him go, he fell to the ground and curled up in fetal position.
"Leave him be," Bishop Colubra said gently.
The rain continued to sweep from the lake across the village. The lean-to was small protection, but the rain was warm. Lightning arrowed down, striking into the lake, onto the rocks of the shore. There was a horrible cracking sound, and then a crashing, which echoed as loud as the thunder.
"A tree," Klep said. "The lightning has hit a tree."
Slowly the storm moved off. Polly counted five beats between lightning flash and thunder, then ten. Then the lightning was only a general illuminating of the sky at the horizon; the thunder was only a distant rumbling.
Tynak came
to them, holding his palms out to show that he was weaponless, and bowed to Karralys. Then to Polly. "You brought rain." His voice was awed.
"No, Tynak. Rain came. I did not bring it."
But there was no way she could make Tynak believe that the rain had not come because of her powers. Polly was a goddess who brought rain.
She did not like the role of goddess. "Bishop," she implored.
The bishop was sitting on the pallet. The clouds had gone with the storm, and a flash of moonlight entered the lean-to and struck the topaz of his ring. "It is enough that the rain has come," he said to Tynak. "We do not need to understand."
"You are healer?" Tynak asked.
"Not as your healer is healer, or as Karralys. But that has been my aim, yes."
Tynak looked at him, looked past him to Louise the Larger coiled in the shadows, then nodded at Karralys. "You will come?"
Karralys nodded. "Polly, too."
"Where?" Polly asked.
"To hold council," Karralys said. "It is meet."
"Zachary--"
"Zachary will wait." There was neither condemnation nor contempt in Karralys's voice.
"Bishop Heron," Karralys said, "it is fitting that you come, too." He held out his hand to help the bishop to his feet.
"I go, too," Klep announced. Klep had authority. Ultimately he would be the leader of the tribe. Winter Frost and Dark Swallow were summoned to help him.
"Klep," Polly demurred, "you promised Anaral you'd be careful. This is going to be terribly hard on your leg."
"I go," Klep insisted.
There was still a tension of electricity in the air. Clouds were building up again, scudding past the brilliance of the moon so that light was followed by shadow, shadow by light, making strange patterns as they walked. When they reached the end of the path that led to the clearing, they were blocked. A great oak, the tree the lightning had struck, lay uprooted across the path. There was no way they could get across it to the clearing with the rock.
Karralys went to the felled tree, putting his hand on the enormous trunk. Og leaped up to stand at his side. Tynak drew back, but only slightly, standing his ground.
"This tree will do for our meeting place," Karralys said.
"The goddess"--Tynak bowed toward Polly--"she has great and mysterious powers."
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