Secret Sacrament

by Sherryl Jordan

  He backed away, stumbling. His feet were in the water, sinking into soft mud. He looked down and noticed, under the murky flow, the gleam of something white. He stooped and picked it up. It was a carving of some sort. Bone, threaded on a piece of severed leather thong. When the woman saw what he had found, she gave a frenzied cry and lunged toward him, gripping his ankle. She wept, saying things in her strange language. Terrified and bewildered, he pulled free and raced up the rocks to the city wall. Her agonized calls followed him. He did not stop. Sprinting along the narrow path at the top of the rocks, he fled through the same doorway the men had used earlier.

  Along the dim streets he raced, sobbing and panting as if demons were after him. There were few people about. He sped between the deserted stalls of the fish and vegetable markets, past the narrow alleys where the poor lived, and along the wider streets to the wealthier sector of the city. Here high walls guarded the courtyards of the rich, where fountains played and small trees in urns cast shadows over cobblestones. There were no gardens in Navora; the city was built of stone, on stone.

  He came to his own wrought-iron gate and hammered on it. An elderly slave came out, his face creased with anxiety. Seeing who it was, the slave almost laughed in his relief. “Thank God you’re alive, master!” he cried, drawing the bolts and swinging the gate open. “Your mother’s beside herself with worry. Your father’s been out all night looking for you, with sentries.”

  Panting, Gabriel ran across the courtyard and sat on the seat between the pillars of the grand front porch, to remove his muddy sandals. Then he pushed open the front door and crept in. Shadows enveloped him, cooling his feverish skin. He stole between the great pillars of the foyer, past the grim marble bust of his grandfather, and the terrifying stuffed owl on the wall with its outstretched wings and menacing claws. He crept on, past the huge murals depicting Navoran ships being unloaded at the wharves. For a moment he stopped to look up at the pictures, glimmering and ghostly in the dawn. The ships towered over him, their misty sails furled, their dark hulls seeming to heave on the shadowed tide. On the wharves their cargoes gleamed: precious silks, golden urns, statues, cages of exotic animals and birds, and heavily shackled slaves. Looking at the manacles on the slaves, Gabriel thought of the woman’s hand reaching out to him, and the rope on her bleeding wrist. The painted slaves, too, were dark-skinned, their eyes large and beautiful and afraid. In the semidarkness the images on the wall blurred and changed, looming and vanishing like people in a dark mist. The eyes of the slaves were fixed on him, moving when he moved, pleading with him. It seemed that even their voices called to him. Suddenly he cried out and ran.

  Finally he reached the hall leading to the bedrooms. On one side of the hall, by a window in a small alcove, a lamp burned. His parents stood there, waiting. One of the city sentries was with them, his smooth bronze breastplates and helmet shiny in the lamplight.

  Gabriel’s mother gave a relieved cry and moved toward him, but her husband gripped her wrist, restraining her.

  “Where have you been, Gabriel?” he asked. His face, always impressive and severe, was more fierce than ever. His red tunic and trousers were dark as blood, and jewels winked on his wide belt.

  Gabriel tried to speak but could not. His breath came and went in deep, painful gasps. He shook his head.

  “We’ve been searching for you all night,” said his mother softly. “I’ve been so worried. I—”

  “Silence,” said his father. “You go to bed now, Lena. There’s no more need to worry. I’ll deal with the boy.”

  “Please, be easy with him,” Lena begged. “It was an accident.”

  “It was no accident that he stayed out all night,” muttered his father. “Now leave us.”

  Gabriel watched as his mother went down the hall. She did not notice as the sentry bowed to her; her head was held high but she walked slowly, as if she were unspeakably tired. He dared not look at his father. He stared at the sentry’s high boots and noticed the horse, symbol of the Empire, embossed in red on the brown leather.

  “I’m glad to see the lad is safe, sir,” the sentry said. “I’ll go now, and call my men back from their search.”

  “I’m sorry I’ve wasted your time,” said the father. “It seems he had run away, as I suspected. I’m happy to pay you for your trouble. Would five hundred hasaries be enough?”

  “Please don’t even think of it, sir. We only did our duty.”

  The sentry bowed, and a slave stepped forward to show him out. Gabriel waited, his head bent, his heart thudding in his chest. He could feel his father’s gray eyes boring into him.

  For a long time Jager did not speak but stood looking at his son with an expression of contempt. At last the man said, “You made a fool of me, son. I’ve had twenty sentries out looking for you. You’ve piled wrong on top of wrong. But first things first. Come.”

  He led the way along the hall, toward the schoolroom where the family tutor taught the boys to read and write and do math, and where they learned the great Navoran creed and the history of their Empire. Outside the room was the pedestal on which the statue had been. The pieces were still on the floor where they had fallen hours before. Jager opened the schoolroom door. “Pick up every bit,” he said. “Put them on the table in here.”

  With trembling hands Gabriel obeyed. Carefully he placed each piece on the table. Each fragment he tried in vain to join with the part it belonged to; he tried to join the two halves of the beautiful head, the hands to the shattered arms, the legs to the cracked body. It was no use; they fell apart again on the dark wood of the table, glowing and lovely as living flesh, each piece a witness to his wickedness.

  “You’re a great disappointment to me, Gabriel,” said his father. “You’re seven years old, and you still haven’t learned integrity. You’re a coward. You wouldn’t even stay here to tell me what you’d done. You let me find out from your mother. Have you no courage at all, no sense of what is honorable? You’re Navoran. Do you know what that means?”

  Gabriel wiped his nose on his sleeve.

  “It means you bear responsibility for your actions,” said his father. “If you make a mistake, you do your best to right it, or you take your punishment like a man. You don’t run away and hide. Look at you—you’re filthy. Your tunic’s torn. Your feet are muddy.” He hesitated, then asked in a low voice, “Were you down by the river?”

  Gabriel nodded.

  For a while the father did not speak. When he did, his voice was shaking and deadly quiet. “I never thought you’d go there, Gabriel, not after what I’d told you about that place, not after all my warnings. You don’t know how lucky you are to be alive. Were you alone there? Did you see anyone?”

  The boy lifted his face. He opened his mouth to speak but had no words for the horror he had seen. Instead he wept, and Jager made an impatient sound.

  “You have to learn obedience, Gabriel,” he said. “This isn’t just for the statue. It’s for wasting the sentries’ time, and mine. It’s to teach you to be strong, to be a true son of Navora. Also, it’s for distressing your mother. Take off your tunic and bend over the table.”

  While Gabriel did as he was told, he heard his father go to the cupboard and take out the bamboo rod. He waited, hands clenched, his face pressed to one side against the table’s smooth wood, his eyes on the gleaming shards of the broken statue. And all the time his father whipped him, he saw only those fragile, ruined pieces, glowing and warm in the morning light like real flesh, the slender arms broken, the hands outstretched toward him, the beautiful eyes tormented and full of grief and pleading. He wept in agony and guilt, and when he could not stand the pain any longer, he cried out words of which he did not know the meaning. Then his father shouted something furious and hit him harder. And it was only later, when he found himself lying on his bed with a cool sheet laid over him, that he realized he held in his right hand the alien bone carving on the leather thong, and it had cut his palm, and his fingers were slippery with blood.<
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  All day he lay there, dozing. The first time he woke, he felt his brother Myron leaning over him. “I tried to tell Father it was my fault,” Myron whispered, “but he knew it was you, because you’d run away. I wish you hadn’t. I can’t stay; Father said we weren’t allowed to see you.” Myron’s voice broke as he wept, and he kissed Gabriel’s cheek before he crept out.

  Several times Gabriel’s mother came in. Gently she washed his back, and he smelled herbs and wildflowers she had added to the water. Though her tender ministrations were agony to him, he made no sound, pretending to remain asleep. Once he thought he heard her softly crying. And once she lifted his head and offered him a drink. It tasted bitter, and he guessed it was drugged. He slept again, drifting in and out of painful dreams.

  When he awoke the midday sun was streaming through his window. He stared at it, narrowing his eyes so they were almost shut and his lashes made shadows like tawny grasses shimmering in the light. He felt the smooth surface of the bone carving in his hand, and timidly opened his fingers. He expected the bone to glint at him like an accusing eye; instead, to his amazement, it gave him comfort.

  Dreaming, he lay in long grass on a wide plain. The wind was warm and sweet on his face. High above, an eagle soared in a cloudless sky, and nearby a river rushed, gurgling, across shifting stones. He could smell sheep, their wool warmed by the sun. Somewhere a woman sang, her voice rising and falling on the wind as smooth as a silken flag. Her words were foreign, yet he knew she sang of a summer’s day, and of the earth laughing. The song moved across his soul, easing it. Never had he felt so much at peace, so much at home.

  When he awoke the dream was still with him, holding him warm in its power, the smell of wool and wind and grass still vivid and strong. He realized he was cradling the bone carving against his cheek. He lifted the bone into the sun and watched it swinging there on its short thong. The etching was filled with blood, and Gabriel wiped his thumb across the bone, smoothing most of the redness away. What remained colored only the lines engraved in the creamy surface, and for the first time he clearly saw what the carving depicted.

  It was a design made up of an eagle and a man. Only the man’s head was shown. His face, etched in profile, was strong and steadfast, almost fierce, and his eyes seemed to look beyond, to places ordinary people could not see. Behind his head, worked so that his long hair flowed and became the feathers of the outstretched wings, was an eagle in flight. It was a striking design, skillfully executed, and wonderfully blending the images of bird and man.

  Gabriel pressed the carving against his aching forehead. The bone was smooth and cool, and seemed to vibrate softly against his skin. Instinctively he knew it was old, very old, and precious. He closed his eyes. He heard his brothers running down the hallway outside his room, their footsteps muffled on the narrow strip of thick carpet. The sound was prolonged, became deep and haunting, like the throbbing of drums. He heard the rushing of a river, and men shouting. The sounds faded. An old man was chanting, his voice grating and cracked like stalks of grain falling on dry ground. Thunder rolled, rain hissed onto the parched earth, and cool water ran deliciously over his naked skin. Inside an earthen dwelling a fire roared, and fish sizzled on hot stones, smelling good. Again the odor of wool, and the sound of women singing. Then a curtain rattled on its wooden rail, and the enchantment was shattered.

  It was Gabriel’s mother, drawing his curtains now because it was evening and the air was chill. Gabriel slid the bone beneath his pillow. He longed for the dream-images, the solace and the joy. Desolation swept over him, as if something unspeakably precious was gone.

  “How are you feeling now?” asked Lena gently, sitting near the foot of his bed.

  He did not reply.

  She sighed and looked down at her hands, tensely clasped on the soft blue linen of her robe. She was again carrying a child, and her long dress flowed loosely about her. Her hair, tied back in a knot, was chestnut brown.

  “There’s something you have to understand, Gabriel,” she said. “You’re a very special child. Your father is one of the most honored merchants in Navora. You’re his eldest, his heir and future hope. But the city’s full of desperate, unhappy people, and some of them do terrible things to get money. You must never wander the streets at night, never go outside the city walls, never go down by the river. We’ve told you this a hundred times. I worried so much about you, last night. I thought you had been kidnapped. I couldn’t bear that. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  He shook his head, distraught. “I’m not special. Father says I’m a coward. He says I run away, instead of facing my responsibilities. He says I’m not a true son of Navora.”

  “Strength isn’t always a matter of muscle, Gabriel. And, in a way, you were brave to run. But there are times to run, and there are times to stand firm. You’ll learn the difference as you grow up.”

  “I’m not brave,” he said, choking, tears streaming down his cheeks. “I ran. I shouldn’t have. I shouldn’t have left . . .”

  “Hush, hush,” she said, stroking away his tears with her hand. “It’s all right, it’s over now. Try to sleep some more.” She smoothed back his damp, disordered curls and caressed his face. When he was quiet she stood up and went out, closing the door behind her.

  He lay on his side crying, hot with guilt. Afterward he took the bone carving out from beneath the pillow and looked at it again. Slowly, like a dawn, peace came to him: a Shinali peace, full of the sweet scent of the grasslands and the grand freedom of the skies. With that clear, unquestioning trust that only children have, he opened his heart and accepted it. Sighing deeply, he curled his fingers about the bone, held it close against his heart, and lay for a long time staring into the gathering dark.

  2

  HEALING DREAMS

  THE YOUTH WAITED at the top of the mausoleum steps, staring down at the open ancient doors and the musty dark beyond. Though he stood in bright sunlight, and his black funeral clothes sucked up the summer heat and made sweat run down his back, he shivered. He looked across the stone steps at his mother. She appeared calm and assured, but she was very pale, and there were deep shadows under her eyes. Her youngest child, her three-year-old daughter, Subin, dragged on her hand and whimpered in the heat. Beside them, lined up in single file on the steps, were her other four children, all sons. In silence they waited, while the funeral bier bearing their father was carried up through the winding stone paths of the huge city cemetery. All Navora’s dead were interred here, in family crypts hewn out of the rocky hillsides. On the lower slopes were the simple caves where the poor were buried; but where these mourners stood, on the highest ground, were the stately tombs of the wealthy, adorned with carved obelisks and statues. There were no plants or trees, and the dark stones glinted in the sun and threw back the heat like a furnace.

  Gabriel wiped his sleeve across his face, pushing back the heavy curls. Glancing at the other mourners on the path behind him, he saw mainly uncles and aunts and cousins, and close family friends. Among them were several distinguished citizens: dignitaries from the palace; a famous astronomer from the country of Sadira, tall and majestic and olive-skinned, and now a Master teaching at the famed Citadel; and the commander of the Navoran navy. They too looked uncomfortable in their formal clothes, their faces flushed but dignified. In spite of the hot day the commander was in full naval uniform, his heavy cloak falling in deep blue folds to his black boots. He wore several jeweled rings, and priceless stones fixed his cloak to the shoulders of his tunic. The front of his tunic was richly embroidered with the sign of the horse, cleverly intertwined with the Empress’s initials. He was an imposing man, a famous navigator and warrior, and one of the most powerful people in the Empire.

  The heat intensified. High above, gulls wheeled and screamed in the blazing skies. Elsewhere in the cemetery children laughed, the sound echoing and incongruous in the solemnity. There was a scuffle farther down the path, and the mourners heard men laboring, heavily burdened, up
the steep slope. Gabriel looked straight down the steps, his eyes narrowed, his expression suddenly tense. As the bier was carried past him, he noticed the sickly odor of embalming liquids, precious oils, and spices; and he glimpsed his father’s face, stern and resolute even in death. He tried not to think of the rest of his father’s body, the lower half crushed by a marble block that had fallen while it was unloaded at the wharves; tried not to think of his father carried home, wrapped in an old boat sail that dripped with blood, with the slaves wailing and sobbing; tried not to think of his mother’s screams, or of his own horror and powerlessness in a household suddenly devastated.

  The bier disappeared into the cavernous dark below, and Gabriel glanced at his mother. She saw his tension, the beads of sweat across his upper lip, and she smiled a little to encourage him, and nodded.

  As eldest son, he led the way down into the hollowed earth. From brilliant light he passed into utter darkness; from birdsong and summer warmth into silence, ominous and cold and suffocating.

  Slowly he grew accustomed to the dark. Immediately in front of him was the stone sarcophagus, its huge lid propped against one side. Beside it stood the bearers, his father’s six brothers, stern and straight as they held the bier. Beyond them, indistinct in the dimness, loomed the stone coffins of previous family members, some richly carved and bearing statues of those interred within. Gabriel looked away from them and concentrated on the living. His relatives stood close by, and the more important family friends. They stood very still, the shadows pitch-black about them, their faces glimmering in the torchlight. In the hollowed stone even their breathing seemed loud, and their fine clothes rustled like moths’ wings against the dark.

  A priest stepped forward and said an old Navoran prayer, and the body of Jager Eshban Vala, merchant and navigator, was lowered into the stone coffin. Other people made speeches and placed gifts in the tomb, or messages from those who could not attend but who wished to honor the dead man. The navy commander said a few words and placed across Jager’s body a Navoran banner flown from his ship when he had won a great victory for the Empire. The banner was gold with a scarlet horse and was splendid. Then one of the palace officials read a eulogy written by the Empress Petra herself, in which she called Jager one of Navora’s most faithful and worthy sons. “‘You brought to our city not only wealth and foreign splendors,’” the palace envoy read, “‘but you brought to it the greatest glory there is—the presence of a true Navoran. In you we saw a man who not only loved the ideals and dreams that first made our Empire great, but who lived them. You were an honest Navoran, a brave navigator, and a wise and discerning merchant. We all are richer because you lived.’”