Secret Sacrament (26 page)

The day wore on. There were more than thirty needing surgery. Many of the wounds were minor, simple cuts needing sewing; but some people had injuries that were deep and complex, and Gabriel was unable to help them. He simply stopped the worst of their pain and left them with their loved ones to die as peacefully as possible.

The sun was almost gone when the work was finished, and Gabriel and Ashila washed their
hands in the river for the last time. As he crouched there by the coppery waters, Gabriel looked along the shore toward the mountains. Zalidas was painting the dead with sacred signs and chanting prayers over them, ready for their burning. The row was long; twenty-two Shinali had died, and more would probably join them before tomorrow. Past them, lying on the grass and covered with their shields, were the dead soldiers. Nine shields there were, blazing like fire under the evening skies. High above them wheeled birds of prey, ominous and waiting.

Gabriel looked the other way, toward Lena's farm. He longed to go and visit his family, but one of the army wagons was outside. He guessed that Lena, along with other farmers, was looking after wounded soldiers until wagons came from the city to take them to the Navora Infirmary. They would know now, in Navora, what had happened. Kamos, the army commander, would know. He would be with the Empress now. The image Gabriel had of the Empress with her advisers was very strong. Most clearly of all he saw Jaganath, domineering and inexorable, urging the Empress to send the entire army onto Shinali land to wipe out the mutinous natives.

Ashila watched Gabriel's face, saw his eyes narrowed against the low sun, weary, yet still full of
light. He seemed to see beyond the hills, to something far that troubled him. As if to wipe the vision from his mind, he scooped up a handful of glittering water and splashed it over his face. Ashila noticed again the silver ring he wore, shaped like a snake.

“What is that ring?” she asked, touching it.

“It's from the Empress,” he replied. “A pledge-ring. When she gave it to me she promised that if I returned it to her in a time of need, she would do whatever I asked.”

“She promised that?” asked Ashila. “Like our promises, with
sharleema
?”

“With the greatest Navoran
sharleema
,” said Gabriel. “But she gave me the pledge-ring before I was accused of treason. If I used the ring now, I'd be letting them know where I am, and they'd come and drag me off to Navora for execution.”

“You'll never use the ring?”

He smiled faintly and touched her cheek. “Only if I have a request worth dying for.”

As they walked back to the house, they smelled stew cooking and heard some of the women singing a lament. They stopped to listen, watching the first stars come out. Past the house, beyond the funeral pyre, a lone figure stood by the riverbank, facing the sacred mountain. It was Tarkwan.

“I have to talk to him,” said Gabriel.

The chieftain was chanting quietly, his eyes wet with tears and fixed on the snowy slopes of Sharnath. He finished his lament, then, without taking his eyes off the sacred place, he asked, “What are you thinking your people will do now, Gabriel?”

“I think the army will come in full force,” Gabriel replied. “I know it's wrong and unjust, but you'll be blamed for what happened today. The authorities in Navora want your land; this will give them the excuse to take it.”

“I'll die before I leave my land,” said Tarkwan.

“If you stay and fight,” said Gabriel, “you'll all be massacred. You'll lose your lives as well as your plain.”

“So we run like rabbits before the hunter, and leave our land to be taken?”

“Better your land than your lives.”

“You're not knowing what you say, Gabriel. Our life
is
our land.”

“No, it's not. And I do know what I say. I've lost everything, not just my land but my right to live in any place that's called Navoran. But it hasn't killed me. I still breathe, still live, can still heal and hope and love. Life and land are separate, Tarkwan.”

“You talk like a Navoran,” said Tarkwan angrily.
“You say that because you have no land, except what you took from us. So you trade it away, and keep it or lose it, and you don't love it with your heart because it's not yours and never was.” Tarkwan bent and scooped up a handful of soft dust. He shook it in front of Gabriel's face, his voice rising with grief and rage, and he wept as he spoke. “My ancient ones, their blood and bones, are in this dust! We were living here when your forefathers were sitting on far beaches dreaming on what lands they could go and steal. In distant time past, the All-father gave us this land. We were being here with the first grass, the first beasts. From when he made the sun, he made us for this land. All this land, far as you can see. And now we have only this, this plain where I stand. Today our kinsmen and kinswomen died on this land, they gave their blood to guard and keep it. And you say give it up, it's not life. If this land isn't my life, what is?”

“I'm only telling you what will happen if you stay,” said Gabriel. “If you want to die for your land, that's your right. But I think you should ask your people if they want to die. I think you should ask the mothers if they want their children to die. Ask the husbands if they want their wives to die. Even though you're chieftain, I don't think you have the right to make those choices for them.”

“They'll be doing what I say,” said Tarkwan.

Gabriel opened his mouth to say something else, thought better of it, and went back to the house. Just before he went down the steps, he looked again in the direction of Lena's farm. The lamps had been lit in the farm houses, and smoke rose from the chimneys. They heartened him, those signs of homely life and the memories of his family; but as he went down the dirt steps into the Shinali house, his heart grew heavy with foreboding.

Outside, in the darkening night, Tarkwan walked alone beside the rows of dead waiting to be burned. They had been covered with flax matting. He came to the last body, knelt beside it, and folded back the covering. Even in death Moondarri was beautiful, her eyes closed as if she slept, her countenance assured and serene. On her forehead Zalidas had painted the most sacred sign, because she had died for the land, and because she was kinswoman to the chieftain. It was the sign of the eagle flying. Tarkwan looked at her this last time, his face streaming with tears. He bent and kissed her hair and lips and eyes. Then he folded the covering back over her and walked a short distance away. Chanting, crying, he lay flat upon the ground, his arms spread wide, his face and body pressed against the earth. It was
an act of oneness, of worship; an embracement of the land he loved more than life, almost as much as he loved Moondarri.

The night was dark when he went into the house. The food was keeping hot on the hearthstones while the people waited for him. They looked at him as he stood on the lowest step, their faces uplifted and trusting. His voice was hoarse from grief as he spoke to them, and sometimes it broke, but it was still commanding. At his words Yeshi cried out angrily, and some of the other young men also shouted. The elders silenced them. When Tarkwan had finished talking, many of the people wailed and lamented. Ashila went and sat by Gabriel. She began to translate what Tarkwan had said but shook her head and wept, unable to speak for her despair.

Fear tore through Gabriel. “He wants us to stay and fight, doesn't he?” he said.

She shook her head. “No,” she sobbed. “He's wanting us to leave our land, and flee.”

T
HE
S
HINALI DWELLING
was emptied of everything that could be carried away. The only things remaining were the heavy looms, the largest cooking pots, the wall carvings, and the canoes, which had been placed around the barren sleeping place. The fire burned low, its hearth desolate. In the embers was a fragment of crimson cloth embroidered in gold—all that remained of Gabriel's Citadel clothes.

A sorrowful lament filled the vacant house, as the people carried in the dead to be burned. The soldiers, too, were brought in and placed side by side with the Shinali, and they all were covered with the firewood that remained. Then the clan gathered about, and Zalidas sang a prayer. Afterward he asked Gabriel if he wished to pray for the souls of the dead soldiers. Gabriel did, trying to remember the prayer said over Myron's
body before it was cremated. Ashila stood by him, her hand in his.

Then, with all the people, they went out into the night. Tarkwan left last, bringing with him a branch with one end aflame. The clan's priest hung a skin over the doorway and drew a sacred sign over it with red paint. Then, while his people watched, Tarkwan ran the burning branch along the low eaves of the house. The thatch caught quickly, and flames and sparks and pieces of blazing straw flew high into the dark. Within moments the beams caught alight, and wood cracked and spat. Some of the thatch collapsed, igniting the wood over the bodies inside. A pall of black smoke, rank with the smell of burning flesh, drifted across the stars.

The people mourned, their wails and chants rising with the increasing flames and smoke. A little way apart, out of the way of smoke and falling fragments of burning straw, lay the sick, surrounded by the clan's possessions. As the house blazed, the mourners went over to them and prepared to leave. Tarkwan was the last to walk away. His face streamed with sweat from the fire's heat, and with tears. He picked up his sleeping mat and spears and slung his roll of clothes across his back. Without a word he started to lead his people away, toward the mountains.

His clan trailed behind him, carrying their wounded and dying on stretchers made of sleeping mats. Many carried children, and they all were burdened with blankets, clothes, eating utensils, food in flax baskets, traps, and hunting weapons. Gabriel and Ashila walked together, both bearing heavy bundles. Myron's sword hung at Gabriel's side. Thandeka walked with them, her right arm in a sling. With her good arm she carried her sister's child, orphaned in the fight. The child struggled as they left, screaming for his mother and holding out his hands toward the blazing house. One youth carried two cooking pots, and they clanged together, ringing mournfully in the frosty dark. Most of the people walked alone, too laden with belongings to have hands free to touch or comfort one another. They made slow progress, because some of those carrying hurt loved ones were themselves wounded and weary, and often had to rest. Smoke swirled about them, blown by the night wind.

Ashila wiped her eyes on her sleeve and glanced at Gabriel. His face, too, was wet. She looked quickly away, anguished. “You're not having to walk with us,” she said. “I understand if you're wanting to hurry on.”

“Why would I want to hurry on?” he asked.

“To your ship,” she replied, her eyes straight
ahead. Gabriel put his roll of bedding down on the grass and touched her arm, stopping her. She would not look at him, so he turned her to face him, tilting her chin upward gently with his hand. She was crying. Fervently, tenderly, he kissed her, unmindful of the people trudging past. When at last he drew away, she whispered, “Is that your Navoran farewell?”

“No,” he replied. “It's to tell you I love you. And that, no matter what happens, I want to be here with you and your people. I'll never leave you.”

She dropped her things on the grass and flung her arms around his neck. “All night I'm being afraid,” she choked. “All night I'm thinking—”

He kissed her again and they clung together, half laughing, half crying. Lifting his head he looked over her shoulder, past the burning house to the farms. He raised his right hand and blew a kiss toward his own home. Then he released Ashila and they picked up their bags and bundles and walked away toward the mountains and Taroth Pass, and the far Hena lands.

Subin sat by her little window, watching the Shinali house burn. Her eyes glimmered in the light of a candle on the sill, and her face was red and swollen from crying.

Lena came in with a pile of freshly washed
clothes and put them on a shelf. “Will you make the soldiers some bowls of coffee, Subin?” she asked. “I have to tear up some more bandages. Some of them won't stop bleeding. And I told you not to light candles in your room. This is a wooden house, not a stone one.”

“The Shinali house is on fire,” said Subin.

Alarmed, Lena bent and looked out. “God help them!” she said softly.

“They're not in it,” said Subin. “They're leaving, see? They put all the dead people in their house and set it on fire.” She started crying again, and Lena sat down and held her, stroking her hair to comfort her. “I suppose they have to go, darling,” Lena said. “They must be using their house as a funeral pyre. Whatever happened today, the Shinali are going to be blamed for it. The whole Navoran army will be crawling over that plain tomorrow.”

“But it wasn't their fault!” cried Subin. “Topaz said the soldiers were wrong! It's not fair! Who's going to look after the sheep, now, and put them in the fold at night?” She wailed in renewed fury and sorrow, and Lena hugged her. Subin went on, distraught: “Everybody's gone! Father. Myron. The Shinali. Gabriel.”

“Gabriel will write to us,” Lena said, making a mammoth effort not to weep herself, failing,
and hiding her face in her child's hair. When she could speak again her tone was low, though the soldiers were downstairs. “It'll be fun getting his letters, Subin. They'll be all about some strange country. And he writes wonderful letters, doesn't he?”

Subin did not reply but stared out the window at the house devoured by fire. Suddenly a feeling of total peace came over her, and with it a knowing, undeniable and real. She sighed deeply and said, “He won't write. He can't. He hasn't got parchment and ink.”

“They have those things on ships,” Lena told her. “He'll send the letters when he gets into ports, and have them brought back here on other ships.”

“He's not going on a ship,” said Subin.

“Yes he is, darling. Salverion said so, when he brought us Gabriel's things yesterday. He won't be on the ship just yet, but he will be soon.”

But Subin's eyes remained fixed on the burning Shinali house and the people, misty in the smoke, fleeing across the firelit plain. She said, “He won't go on the boat. He's too late for it.”

“How do you know?” whispered Lena, a weird feeling crawling down her spine.

“I just do.” Suddenly Subin flung her arms about her mother's neck and kissed her cheeks. “I think
he doesn't want us to worry about him, Mama. No matter what happens, he doesn't want us to worry.”

Lena laughed a little, half amused, half wondering. But she too felt the peace, as she looked out at the fire on the Shinali land and the people setting forth on a journey. Above them the stars blazed around the moon. It was a crescent moon: the moon of new beginnings, of holiness and hope—the Moon of the Seventh Sacrament.

Tarkwan stood on a flat rock and watched his people toiling across the stone bridge. Behind them stretched the bleak ravine called Taroth Pass, with the gigantic fort looming in its entrance. Before them rose the rocky slopes of Sharnath, dark against the stars.

Burdened with his own belongings and sleeping mat and furs, Gabriel walked up and down the line speaking words of encouragement and touching those who moaned in pain. As he came off the bridge and passed Tarkwan, he asked, “How's your leg?”

“It's holding me up, this far,” Tarkwan replied, glancing down at his bandaged thigh. “Your clever sewing, it's working.”

At the foot of the mountain, the people dropped their bundles and placed their sick carefully on
smooth places on the ground. Many lay down on the blankets with them, falling instantly asleep. Gabriel and Ashila made their bed and lay down, their arms about each other. Somewhere in the darkness a child cried for its dead mother, and other mourners sobbed quietly. In a singsong, guttural voice an old man started singing a lament, and it wound about them in the dark wind, haunting and sorrowful.

Gabriel looked across the river and back along the plain. The Shinali house was only an emptiness in the earth now, with embers dying. Smoke drifted up, smudging the stars. Turning his gaze to the old bridge they had just crossed, Gabriel studied Taroth Fort. It was huge, its boundary walls built of rock and inclining slightly inward. The wooden gate was massive. At the four corners stood lookout towers. It was like a castle, lofty and impregnable. He guessed there were lodging places inside, and kitchens and utility rooms for the army that had once lived there and guarded the pass while the city of Navora was established.

On the lower mountain slope behind him, a man began to lament, his voice wild and tormented.

“It's Tarkwan,” whispered Ashila. “His pain and his guilt, they are too big for his heart to hold.”

“Why should he have guilt?” asked Gabriel.
“He fought well to keep his land. You all fought well.”

“But we lost,” she said. “As chieftain, Tarkwan bears the guilt of that, and guilt for his people who died.”

“But there's no need for guilt. He can't blame himself for things beyond his control.”

“Can't he?” she replied. “Have you never laid guilt on yourself, Gabriel, for what you could not help?”

He lay silent, very still, while the weight of the ancient bone
torne
grew heavy on his breast. At last he said, very quietly, “I do have guilt, Ashila. And no matter what I've done—no matter how hard I've tried to forget it or wipe it out—it's always there.”

“Some things we can't wipe out ourselves,” she said. “That's why we have this time of the sacrament. Up on the mountain, we give to the All-father our secret hurts and griefs and guilts, for him to finish or mend. It is better than holding on to them, trying to forget them. The holy rite, it's an outward sign of what is happening in our hearts, and it is strong and true.”

Gabriel was about to ask something else, when they heard a small landslide of stones from higher on the mountain. Glancing up, they saw that Tarkwan had begun clambering up the slope,
following a twisting path. He limped badly.

“I'll go with him,” said Gabriel, removing his arm from about Ashila's neck.

Ashila kissed him, saying, “He goes for the secret rite, Gabriel. The prayers, they're said in solitude.”

“I'll remember.” Getting up, he ran quickly between the people sprawled over the shingle and stones and began climbing the track Tarkwan had taken. The rocks were steep, and he was panting by the time he reached the chieftain. Tarkwan, too, was breathing hard, his inhalations long and torn by pain, or grief. The bandage on his leg was soaked in blood. Without a word Tarkwan put his arm across Gabriel's shoulder and leaned on him as they ascended the mountain together.

The sun was coming up by the time they reached the holy place. It was a flat rock overhanging a sheer precipice. Far below, the eastern desert glimmered, and the sun's rim trembled on the verge of the world. To the west the Shinali grasslands lay shadowed. In the south stretched the jagged coast and the sea. Looking straight out, Gabriel saw only sky, waiting for the dawn.

Tarkwan went and knelt on the rock, close to the edge. Gabriel waited against the cliff, torn between respect for Tarkwan's privacy, and the fear that he might throw himself over.

The chieftain had forgotten Gabriel. He knelt and touched his forehead to the rock three times, chanting in Shinali. While he chanted, he opened a hide pouch he carried, taking out a wisp of thatch from the house and a handful of earth from Shinali land. Crouching over the emblems, touching them lovingly with his fingertips, he cried out his shame and defeat, his intolerable guilt for failing to save his people's home and land. As his chant rose, he took his knife from his belt.

Gabriel stepped forward, stopped, hesitant and afraid. Tarkwan placed the blade edge on the back of his wrist, along his wedding tattoo. Between the two deer he made a cut, then laid the blade flat and sliced away the skin beneath the doe. The place where she had been became a hollow pool of blood. He placed the film of skin on the dust beside the Shinali soil, his chanting anguished and terrible. Several times he spoke the same word, and Gabriel guessed it was the name of the All-father. Often he heard the word
sharleema
, and then Moondarri's name, over and over, in tones hoarse with despair and love and grief.

Slowly, while he chanted and cried, Tarkwan picked up the emblems of all that he had loved and lost and flung them over the edge of the precipice, surrendering them to the All-father. They fell just as the sun leaped up, orange and
blinding. Then the chieftain lay down full length on the rock, his face to the dust, and lamented.

Without a sound Gabriel went and knelt beside him, a few paces away. As Tarkwan had done, he bent his head to the ground three times, then smoothed away the stones and grit on the edge of the rock. Tarkwan remained motionless, his eyes closed and his forehead bowed against the dirt. Gabriel lifted his arms and removed the bag from about his neck. From it he took the Shinali bone and laid it on the edge of the precipice. The ancient
torne
shone, its etched symbol stained still with the blood of the woman he had abandoned, stained still with his guilt. A guilt too heavy for his heart, though a hundred times he had atoned for it—and more than atoned. It was not even guilt, now, that bound his soul to the Shinali people; it was love. But behind that love, behind all the understanding and joy and healing, was the Shinali woman still wounded on the stones, and his silence when he might have gone for help. It was time, this holy morning, to let it all go.