Secret Sacrament (24 page)

Gabriel came back to the fire, and Ashila gave him his soap and a bowl of warm water. He
washed his hands carefully and dried them near the flames, his expression pensive.

“You're being tired, Gabriel?” Ashila asked gently.

“A bit,” he answered, smiling. “Thank you for giving me this time to heal your people, Ashila. It means more to me than you know.”

“I'm glad. Will you be resting now, or would you be liking a walk with me?”

“I'd love a walk with you.”

Gabriel got his fur cloak, had a few words with Thandeka about the ones recovering, and followed Ashila out of the house. As they went up the steps they passed the weapons standing in an alcove by the entrance. Among the bows and stone axes and spears stood Myron's sword, alien and shining.

As they walked along the riverbank toward the mountains, a large group of children started to follow them. All afternoon the children had watched the operations, making noisy comments of encouragement or revulsion, one or two of them getting sick and having to be carried outside. They had been a boisterous audience, after the dignified witnesses Gabriel was used to at the Navora Infirmary. As the children followed him now, he turned and waved his arms at them, telling them to go. They shrieked with laughter and ignored him, until their elders called them
back. He walked on with Ashila, blissfully alone with her at last.

“Thank you for helping me today,” he said. “You were excellent.”

“It's a word I'm not knowing,” she said.

“It means wonderful, praiseworthy, perfect, a high lot good.”

She laughed, and, for the first time, he saw her blush. “I'm not being any of those,” she said.

“You're all of them.”

“I'm wanting to ask you something.”

“Then ask.”

“In the house, when you were saying it was a high lot to you, healing my people, what were you meaning?”

He was thoughtful for a time, before answering. At last he said, “There's an old reason, and a new one. The new one is that you gave me back my work, my purpose. Until today I couldn't see beyond leaving the Citadel, couldn't see myself healing anywhere else. I couldn't imagine going on a ship to another country and beginning again. Now I can. You've given me hope, and I thank you, with
sharleema
.”

An icy wind was blowing off the mountains, and Ashila drew her blanket more closely about her. She made a small sound like a sob, and he took her in his arms, holding her close and kissing
her hair. “I can't stay, you know that,” he said. “I'll be put to death if I'm found.”

She tried to speak, but the words were lost in deep sobs, heartrending and terrible. He held her closer, struggling with his own emotions, not knowing what to say. After a while she pulled away, wiping her face on her hands. “I'm being sorry,” she said. “I mean to be helping you, not sorrowing you.”

“I didn't mean to be sorrowing you, either,” he said. He took her hands in his and kissed them, tasting her tears. “Let's make a rule. We don't think about tomorrow. Only today. Now.”

They started walking again, their arms about each other, and came to the place called
Ta-sarn-ee
. The hollowed earth was full of mud after the rain.

Ashila began collecting branches that had broken off the tree during the storm, piling them on the grass for collecting later, and Gabriel helped her. “Tonight we're feasting,” she explained. “That's why the men are hunting. It's the last moon of the winter, the time of the yellow flowers. It's a high rich feast, and we all go joy-wild. Will you dance tonight, the Shinali way?”

“If you show me how,” he replied.

“I will. We can be painting your face, too, then if the soldiers come they'll be thinking you're Shinali.”

“I doubt it,” he said. “Not with my hair.” Suddenly he remembered the vital thing he was supposed to do. “Do you mind if we go back now and dye my hair?” he asked.

She picked up the firewood but would not let Gabriel help her carry it.

Back at the house, Gabriel got the bag of seeds and pods Ferron had given him for the dye. He poured them all into a wooden bowl and crushed them, then mixed in a little water. “It's looking like something the sheep did,” Ashila said, peering over his shoulder and wrinkling her nose at the fetid paste. “Aren't you fearing it'll make a mess, Gabriel?”

“I'm terrified,” he confessed, standing up and giving the bowl to her. “I'll probably end up green. And smelly. After the dying, we'll wash out the mixture with my Citadel soap. Where shall we do this?”

“Out by the river. Are you being sure, Gabriel?”

“This sure,” he replied, striking his right fist hard into his left palm.

He took off his shirt and dropped it on the floor by the hearth. Immediately one of the children pounced on it and pulled it on over his own clothes. Gabriel left on the small leather bag with his amulets. Ashila noticed it and looked curious, but asked nothing. As she and Gabriel
went outside the children followed again, eager to see what marvelous bewitchment the Navoran would do next. But Ashila ordered them all to go away, and led Gabriel down to a secluded part of the river where smooth rocks edged deep pools. By the river she made him lie down on his back with his head over the water, and she crouched down and wet his hair. The water was glacial, and he yelped, shuddering. Then she worked the stinking mixture over his scalp.

“What color is my hair?” he asked.

“I can't be knowing yet,” she replied. Her voice sounded strange, and he thought she was laughing.

“It's green, isn't it?” he cried, alarmed.

“No,” she said. “No, it's not green. Keep still. The dye, you're getting it over both of us.”

So he lay passive, and she worked in silence, painstakingly, hardly seeing for tears as she rubbed the thick black dye through all the gold.

Afterward, when he went into the house, the people gathered about him, awed at the transformation. Many of the young people touched his hair, and the old ones shook their heads, muttering and mystified. Ashila had done her task well; his hair was evenly colored, deep brown with warm red lights, and his eyebrows, too, were dark. To complete the change, he warmed some
water over the fire and had his first shave in three days, removing the red-gold stubble that looked odd now. Ferron had forgotten to give him a mirror, and he cut himself twice. When she saw him, Ashila licked her forefinger and wiped the two places on his jaw where he bled. She looked very grave.

“Do I look different enough?” he asked anxiously. “Will anyone know me, do you think?”

“I'm hardly knowing you, myself,” she replied, her dark eyes shimmering.

Shortly afterward the men came back from the hunt, carrying two deer. They were dumbfounded when they saw Gabriel, though Tarkwan laughed and gave him a handful of bone beads to thread through his hair. “Make a good Shinali,” Tarkwan said.

“A better Shinali than I do a Navoran, I hope,” Gabriel replied.

Ashila was busy helping the women prepare vegetables for the night's feast, so Gabriel went out and helped the men cut up the deer. It was a work, he discovered, almost as skilled as surgery. Nothing was wasted. The bones and antlers were kept for making jewelry or pipes, the tendons would be used for sewing clothes, and all the meat was for eating. Even the hooves were kept, to be hollowed for small containers in which to
mix paint and dye. The first steaks and the offal were given to the women to cook, but darkness had fallen before all the work was done. Gabriel enjoyed his part in it. Though he understood none of the words, he liked the cheerful banter of the men as they worked, and the way they took care to show him how to make the cuts properly. Yeshi worked with Gabriel and asked him about Navora and the Citadel. Gabriel told him, his voice husky at times, his head bent low over the butchered deer.

Inside the house the fire was roaring, and hot bowls of tea had been prepared. Gabriel went to see the people he had healed that afternoon and found them all comfortable. They thanked him again and joked with him about the magic way he stopped their pain. Then he went and sat by Ashila and Thandeka, to drink his tea. Every now and again Ashila stole a long look at him, her expression wistful.

“The man's heart is not in his hair,” Thandeka said to her daughter, in Shinali. Ashila just sighed, tore her eyes off Gabriel's strange dark locks, and sipped her tea.

In one part of the room the men were having their faces painted. A girl came to Gabriel and shyly asked if he would like to be painted too. He agreed and went with her to the painting area. He
sat by Tarkwan, who was having his face decorated by his wife. Gabriel noticed that Moondarri had a tattoo on the back of her left wrist, identical to one that Tarkwan had on his. It was a stylized picture of a stag and doe leaping over the sun. Moondarri noticed Gabriel looking at it. “It's our wedding mark,” she explained. “When Shinali marry, a mark is made in their skins for life. The deer are us, together long as the sun remains.”

The girl who was going to paint Gabriel brought him tiny pots with several colors, and told him to choose. He returned to Ashila with half his face a stunning red, and with a fine white zigzag down his chin. Ashila gazed at him, her eyes admiring and disturbed. “Why are you choosing those colors?” she asked.

“I like them. We wore red at the Citadel.”

“It's our color for love and sacrifice,” she said.

The feast was almost ready. Iron pots, traded years ago from Navorans, hung on sticks over the fire, and stew bubbled enticingly, while steaks cooked on bone skewers over the embers. A flax mat was spread with baskets of unleavened bread, and bowls of salads made with wild herbs and cress. When the meat was cooked, it was put into bowls. Everyone chose their bowls and put in them the bread and salad they wanted. As chieftain, Tarkwan chose first, then Gabriel, as
the clan's guest. Next the children came forward, then the elders, and last everyone else. Silence fell as Zalidas blessed the food, then they began eating.

Gabriel had not realized until now how hungry he was. He had hardly eaten at the breakfast, and his last proper meal had been the fateful dinner at the palace two days ago. He frowned a little, thinking of it, and Ashila noticed. “There's something you're not liking?” she asked.

“No. I like it all, thank you,” he replied. “I was just thinking of the last dinner I had, at the palace.”

“I'm fearing this is poor besides that,” she said.

“No. This is a high lot better,” he said. “The company's better, too.”

After the feast the bowls and baskets were cleared away, then hollowed gourds of cold river water were passed around and shared by everyone. Then it was time to relax while the meal digested, and to tell stories and jokes. Gabriel delighted in the Shinali talk, with its soft accents and lilting rhythms. He enjoyed it more when Ashila interpreted, her head bent close to his, her exquisite hands describing in signs the words she did not know.

Then a drummer began to beat a throbbing tattoo. The pipes and flutes joined in, and several
of the people got up to dance. The men and women danced together, stamping, clapping, whirling, leaping, moving with the tempo of the drum. At times the dance was violent, fierce; at times slow and incredibly sensuous. It was not unlike the Navoran fire-dance, except that this dancing, uncomplicated and spontaneous, had a kind of innocence that was more appealing to Gabriel. As he watched, he beat time with his hands against his thighs. Ashila smiled sideways at him. He caught her gaze and smiled back.

“We can dance if you're wanting to,” she said.

The children hooted and cheered as they joined the dancers. Gabriel felt suddenly self-conscious and clumsy, knowing he was watched. But gradually the music got into his blood, reached back to some deep, primeval part of him; and he gave himself to it, dancing instinctively, impassioned, his Navoran inhibitions abandoned for the first time in his life.

Later he sat with Ashila and the other young people and watched the last couple dance.

Tarkwan and Moondarri looked good together, both tall and lithe and beautiful. Perhaps because the drumbeats slowed, perhaps because they were the last, they danced close, watching one another, smiling. Their skin glistened with sweat in the firelight, and Tarkwan's painted face shone. They
never touched, but the energy between them was dynamic.

When the dancing was over and the drums and flutes put away, the people spoke a night blessing to one another and moved to their sleeping places. Before they retired each person took a small bowl of warm water and, by their own bed, stripped and washed all over. No one watched anyone else, and the ritual was unself-conscious and strangely private. Ashila brought Gabriel a bowl and two pieces of soft cloth. “Your sleeping place is by Tarkwan's,” she said. “Is there anything else you're needing before you sleep?”

He hesitated a moment, then shook his head.

She leaned across the bowl and kissed his lips. There was applause and whistling from across the house. Wiping the red paint from her mouth, and ignoring the jests, she went over to her own bed. It was several sleeping places along from his. Gabriel took the bowl over to the place beside Tarkwan's and, as nonchalantly as he could manage it, removed all his clothes, and washed. The paint from his face turned the water the color of blood.

Soon everyone was in bed. Across the firelit house a child sobbed, and a mother crooned to it. Elders talked, their voices hushed. There was the muffled grunting of a little pig as it was cuddled
under the blankets. Unable to sleep, a girl sang to herself, very low, making shadows on the firelit wall with her hands. Tarkwan laughed at something Moondarri said, and they kissed and murmured lovingly together. Feet padded between the beds where the young people lay, and there was furtive giggling. Gabriel listened, watching the firelight glimmer on the thatch. He thought of Ashila across the room and yearned for her.