Shadow's End (42 page)

I went to Lutha's side.

“Are these your spirit people?” she asked me.

“I don't know,” I whispered. “Nobody ever told me they were … like this. Why are they like this?”

My words drew the attention of one of them, who darted forward, twitched my veil to one side, then screamed as he turned and fled. The others chattered among themselves, backing slowly away. Lutha took hold of the left-lead gaufer's halter and tugged him forward. The other gaufers leaned into the harness, and the wain creaked after. Trompe and Leelson dropped back to walk beside it.

“I am unclean,” I told her as we slowly pursued the spirit people, who were limping and stumbling away from us as fast as they could go. “He says the beautiful people
have rejected me, and now that he has touched me, he must go out of the valley and cut his hand off at once.”

“You sound quite calm about it. Do you think he means to do it?” she asked.

“I don't care if he does,” I said angrily. “They're all men, Lutha. They're eaten worse than I, but
they're
not unclean! What right have they!”

The fleeing bunch split before us, creating an open aisle that led toward a stout pen set upon a small rounded hill.

“Gaufer pen,” I said, sidetracked from my annoyance. “They're always set high like that, so they drain well and don't cause a muck.”

Whether intended for gaufers or not, the pen was now to be used for us. There were already a dozen spirit people arrayed outside the fence, muttering angrily to one another over the bulk of several large and shiny weapons.

“I hope those fusion rifles are not charged,” Leelson said to the air.

One particularly clumsy guard (not his fault; he had no fingers on his right hand) chose that moment to drop his weapon.

Lutha said, “I've had arms dealers as clients, and I've seen diagrams of that weapon. It looks to me like an Asenagi product, but he had it set on standby. If it had been set in firing position, this whole place would be gone by now.”

Leelson paled. Trompe gulped, “We are probably the first outsiders they've ever seen. They've obtained weapons for protection against intruders, but they have no idea how to use them.”

The idea of novices with deadly weapons was not cheering, and the others turned their eyes elsewhere, not to seem threatening.

“Let's not bother them with talk,” Lutha suggested. “If that's really the Great Flag of the Alliance coming down the hill, let the envoy or whoever deal with the problem.”

Our willingness to be penned up seemed to have quieted
some of the panicky gestures and voices around us. The clumsy guards backed off a little, allowing us to concentrate on the view of the omphalos our low hill afforded.

The temple was now surrounded by several nearly complete concentric circles of kneeling men, some spirit people, and some songfathers, distinguishable by the colors of their robes, black for spirit people, hide brown for the others. Each had his own cushion, and each knelt at an equal distance from his fellows. The circles were neat and perfectly regular, and as new men arrived they filled in the gaps and started new circles concentric to the old ones. I saw no women anywhere near the temple.

Lutha laid her hand on my arm and jerked her head toward the eastern cliffs. There were other black-clad forms huddled at the base of the buildings and in the windows. She borrowed the glasses from Trompe and gave them a good looking over before passing the glasses to me. They were the female spirit people, all of them disfigured or maimed and as thin as the men.

Lutha said, “They're too thin for childbearing. Starving women don't get pregnant. They don't even menstruate.”

“But this valley is fertile!” I told her. “The soil is wonderful. And they have a river! They should have lots of food! More than we can raise in the canyons!” Perhaps it was significant that we had seen no sign of cultivation anywhere in the valley. The grass was of a different sort than I knew. Perhaps it too was sacred and farming was forbidden.

“Look at the temple,” urged Leelson. “At the floor!”

The temple was in the form of a circular dais made up of three concentric steps. The first was below the pillars. The second formed the base for the circle of pillars that supported the roof. The third was inside the pillars and made up the floor of the temple itself. The south half, a semicircle of this inner circle, was one step higher yet, with massive metal links protruding at both the east and
west ends of the low step. A long and heavy rope had been attached to the eastern link, then threaded around the golden base of the northernmost pillar, back across the raised floor, around the southernmost pillar, then back to the north again, making a Z shape.

“It's a tackle,” said Trompe.

So much was obvious. We used similar gear to get water from the deepest wells. The loose end of the rope lay stretched along the ground to the north, and it was now being tugged at by a few dozen songfathers. They managed to pull the east end of the semicircular floor a hand span closer, rotating it on its diametric center, then nodded in satisfaction at one another as they dropped the rope and departed.

“Those golden rings around the pillars are metal sheaves,” remarked Leelson, who was looking at them through the glass. “What are they moving the floor for? And what's it made of?”

“It is made of one great block of stone,” I told them. “It was brought from the cliffs by the Gracious One, who, having created the great gate, then opened it unto us. The stone covers the navel of the world. The sacred sipapu. The gate through which we came. Now it will be uncovered and the beautiful people, those who carry the spirits of our beloved dead, will depart through this gateway to heaven.”

Leelson threw Lutha a startled glance, and she gave him a look that meant “don't ask.” He glared, but he clamped his lips shut. I had just revealed the holiest secrets of our religion. It didn't matter now. There would be no secrets soon. He would see, as I would.

More songfathers arrived. There were other brief episodes of rope tugging with nobody trying very hard. Groups came and went, rehearsing separately, accustoming themselves to the feel of the rope. It was as Leelson had said at one point during our journey: every participant was here for the first time. They knew what
was to be done, but not precisely how to do it. They had to practice.

By midafternoon there were tens of thousands of wains filling a shallow valley south and west of the temple, a good distance away. The ordinary men and women who had accompanied the songfathers fringed every slight rise of ground, none of them close enough to get a good view and none of them equipped with glasses. Evidently these laymen were to view Tahs-uppi only from a distance.

During the afternoon, groups of songfathers came up the hill to the pen to take a look at us. Late in the afternoon, one came who was well-known to me. Hah-Hallach, songfather of Cochim-Mahn. He summoned me to the fence.

“Foolish woman, what have you done?” he demanded in a soft voice full of suppressed rage.

“I have come to say good-bye to my mother,” I replied.

“You have led strangers here! You have blasphemed the Gracious One. You have risked our immortality!”

“So, let the Gracious One deal with me,” I said. “He can cause me little more pain than he has already done.”

“Because you doubted,” he said, cursing. “Because you doubted!”

I shook my head. “The sisterhood knows better than that.”

“All heretics. All doubters. Why you?” he shouted.

I turned my face away, not answering, sobs welling up inside me. Lutha came to me, put her arms around me, and said across my head:

“If you're asking her why she came here, it's because she believes what we have told her. Your people and your world are in danger. She does not care for herself, but she is going to have a child. She wants that child to have a future!”

He turned his glaring eyes upon Lutha and spoke from a mouth contorted by wrath. “There is neither future for blasphemers nor children for those who doubt,” he said.
Then he turned on his heel and went back down the hill. Lutha's arms held me while I wiped my eyes.

“Thank you for trying to help me,” I said. “But there is no help against … them.”

“Them?” she whispered.

“Old men who enslave us, then rebuke us when we rebel, calling us disobedient daughters, doubters, even heretics. I told him the sisterhood knows better. He did not like it much.”

We had no time for discussion. The crowd of songfathers and spirit people around the temple had grown larger and noisier, and now it erupted with shouts and waved fists as the Great Flag of the Alliance came bobbing and wavering toward us through the mob. The kneeling circles of spirit people opened up with some difficulty to let the flag come through, and I saw that each man had attached himself to a metal eye set into the ground. Now, what was that about? I scanned the temple, finding more such metal eyes set into the semicircular stone inside the temple.

The flag jounced up the hill, carried by a youngish, long-faced man who walked beside the Procurator, he all aglitter like a fish just out of water. With them was a huge red-faced woman driving a chariot, and behind that a stolid Dinadhi driving a cart loaded down with heavy packs. Leelson opened the gate for them.

The Procurator greeted us with a nod, then said to the woman, “Madam Luv, this is Leelson Famber.”

“Who has much to answer for,” said the big woman, in a disapproving tone.

Leelson took no notice of their disapproval. Fastigats, Lutha was to say, often don't take notice of others' disapproval, even that of other Fastigats. While the bearers stacked their burdens in a pile near the pen gate, Leelson made introductions as though we were at tea. The long-faced man was the ex-King of Kamir, who seemed embarrassed at seeing Leelson, though I could not imagine why.
The large woman was Poracious Luv, an Alliance council-woman, flamboyant, but with good sense, so Lutha said. I gathered she had been visiting the king when both of them had been dragged into this business more or less accidentally. Or, if not accidentally, for some reason they did not, at the moment, choose to explain.

As the cart driver shut the gate on us and clomped off down the hill, Poracious joined Lutha and me at the fence while the three Fastigats went to the other side of the pen and put their heads together. They were looking at a small, hand-sized mechanism that the Procurator had taken from the baggage. A retriever, said Lutha, asking Poracious what it was they intended to retrieve.

Instead of answering, the big woman took her by the shoulder, saying, “So, Lutha Tallstaff, what's happened thus far? Have you solved our problem?”

Before Lutha could answer, Leely appeared suddenly at the door of the wain, totally naked, his skin darkly and oddly blotched with chill. I went quickly to him, leaving Lutha to deal with the demands of Poracious Luv. I could hear them from inside the wagon.

“Your son?” asked the big woman in a kindlier voice. “No doubt he likes the feel of air on his skin. I did, when I was smaller. Now I have rather too much skin for the air. I understand your son is an amazing artist.”

“Where did you hear that?” Lutha asked, surprised.

“I heard of it in Simidi-ala,” Poracious said. “I was told he did some excellent portraits there. There is one on the wall of a women's convenience. They have framed it and put Perspex across it. They say he is beloved of Weaving Woman.”

I glanced outside, to see Lutha much discomfited, digging her toe in the dirt.

“I know all about him,” Poracious confided. “You needn't be diffident or defensive with me. We are both women. We understand our feelings, whether these men and Fastigats do or not.”

“Leelson doesn't think Leely's human,” Lutha blurted.

“My, my,” Poracious said. “He is exclusionary, is he not?”

Exclusionary was an improper word in the Alliance, so Lutha had said, more than once. The Alliance likes to think of itself as an egalitarian organization.

Lutha said, “That's not quite accurate where Leelson is concerned. His prejudice is limited to his own children. His family has certain well-defined expectations for its posterity, that's all.”

“Oh, my, don't we all know that,” Poracious murmured. “I've met his mama.” She winked at Lutha. “Don't take me for a fool, lovely girl. We fat old things have not laid aside our brains with our silhouettes. We put on flesh for as many reasons as others make love, have you ever thought about that? Out of lust, out of habit, out of greed, out of ambition. Out of time, too little or too much of it, or too little else doing in it.” She sighed. “The flesh does not represent the spirit, for which observation one can thank the Great Gauphin. Though one wonders, sometimes, what the purpose is of either spirit or flesh.”

She gave Lutha a kindly pat, ignoring her confusion, then beckoned to the ex-king, who had been standing diffidently to one side, looking rather lonely.

He came over, hesitantly, asking, “Has your group been threatened at all?”

It seemed an odd question. Lutha said, “Threatened by the Kachis, certainly. Not particularly by anyone else until we came near the omphalos.”

“Have you learned anything?” asked Poracious.

Lutha said, “We found a voice recording that Bernesohn Famber left in Cochim-Mahn. It was old, fragmentary, not at all clear. It mentioned three things—the abandoned gods of the Dinadhi; the omphalos, which is why we came here; and finally a few enigmatic words about the rejoinder of his posterity.”

“Abandoned gods?” the ex-king asked with an intent and eager look. “Tell me?”

“The Dinadhi claim they came here from somewhere else, or perhaps were sent here from somewhere else, after being commanded to leave certain of their gods behind. In return, they were to receive”—she paused, glancing through the open door of the wain at me—“ immortality?”