* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
"They sent Pahid--you know him? High priest, from up this way, I think. He was born up here and ran away to the great temple and they took him as a student. He speaks with gods face-on. Studied night and day ten years, bathes every morning at sunrise, winter and summer, in flowing water. Well, they've sent him to Itscriye to take a part of the seed grain. Because they aren't to plant as much, you see. They want to make sure."

"The greedy dogs," Hex put in.

"Shut up, hag," someone told her.

Several women on both sides got to their feet, including Morgen and Meta.

"Well, they're raising the portion because the weather's been good," the shepherd said.

"The weather's been good," Hex mocked. "It's blasphemy against earth to say that. And they're taking the seed grain so the peasants will starve."

No one disputed the point. Seed was not taxed, so they all held back a little extra for the spring Fool Days, when they lived on the grain they had fooled the priests out of.

"Well, it may be they're too harsh just at first," the shepherd conceded tactfully. "It's a weighty question. Is there any parish not heard from?"

"Nichayu," Berthe called.

He was in luck. "I did hear something...we've gone there, but we didn't get that far north last summer. Oh, yes, it was a girl that told me. The peasants' priest was killed. They said the priest's apprentice did it, to get his place. An old reprobate he was, anyhow, fallen into bad ways. He got up in the temple to tell a lie--they say he was going to call our mother goddess a name, saving her. More likely something about the apportion, or some incitement against the taxes. Priests want to keep more for themselves, a lot of times. Well, they don't know what he would have said. He opened his mouth and a blast of fire hit him. A bolt hurled straight from Ayekar. Struck him clean dumb. He opened his mouth and nothing came out. All round his head there blazed a fire like his soul was burning before he even died. Soon afterward, his boy turned on him and killed him. It was a boy he'd raised like his own son. Seems the boy was a bad one, too. They caught him at the field girls."

Berthe heard them laugh at that, and she saw the stars flicker and move as she looked at them through swelling tears. The old women's tongues were working.

"It's an evil thing."

"Evil priest, born to soulfire."

"Born to the fire, all right."

Hex laughed loudly. "If priests never did worse than that, I'd be the religionest old bag in the province. I'd go to the temple every day for prayers and I'd stay the nights." She sat down at Berthe's head. "What was your priest really like?"

Berthe shrugged.

"What are you crying for? Look, the baby's shivering, he's wet. Here, bring him by the--"

Hex had lifted the baby and held him in the firelight. A stream of black urine ran down his leg and collected in droplets on his toes. "--fire," she ended in a whisper.

"Put him down," Meta said.

Hex did it.

Ube, who was a little deaf, wanted to know what was wrong. Soon all five of Berthe's friends had clustered around. Berthe lay still, watching the stars shift apart and then run together as her tears distorted their light. Perhaps they are always longing to approach one another, she thought, but can do it only when someone weeps. Will I die now, she wondered. She doubted it. Religious law said an infant with the dragon's blood-sign should be killed, but its mother could be left alive so long as she did not conceive again. Her husband was free to remarry and drive her out of his house as an evil being unfit to farm.

Evil. She could not think of herself as that, but it might be, she thought, that those possessed by evil no more controlled their destiny than those called to good. As the gods might use a human being to their own purposes without consent, so might the evil ones. Perhaps the two sides had devided up the world, and Berthe and her son must be given to evil in order to preserve some virtue elsewhere. These were the thoughts that would console her if she were driven out. But the chance remained that there might be mercy. As farmers draw food for gods from sullied Earth, so these women might learn good through her and thus win a double victory over the evil ones. Was it also because she feared death? Berthe wondered whether she would ever learn to suffer.

"Who is still with me?" she asked.

For a moment there was silence.

"I'm with you," Meta answered, giving her a little kiss on the forehead that felt like a bright little star on the face of night.

"I am, too," said Schwalbe the beauty, tossing her head.

The rest nodded.

"Don't worry, I'm not running anyplace with the story. My goddess doesn't care," Hex told them. She might have gone on to one of her lectures about the supremacy of earth above all other gods and goddesses, but Meta suddenly gave her a hug, and she retired in embarassment.

"And the roads," the shepherd was saying. "They're good but they need mending. You can walk all day in ruts up to your shoulders. They're drafting a crew from the farmers now for after the harvest. They say winter may catch them on the way back, and many die when that happens. Without the roads we may as well be beasts, though..."

In the days of constant work between then and midsummer, Berthe scarcely had time to worry about her son, but sometimes after Glukish had thrown himself on his bed for a few hours' rest between midnight and dawn, she lay awake listening in the hot breeze for the voice of evil to call her. She thought of her life, so hard-won by work and secrecy, so given over to nursing the fruits of her misdeeds, and wondered whether it were possible for a soul to pass through even a single lifetime and not be charred beyond recognition by its passions.

Midsummer's Day began with a fine clear morning. Women and children began to haul wash water from the stream. The full buckets felt light, the sun sparkled on the droplets that flew behind as boys and girls raced back and forth. The young women sang gaily and the older ones chattered.

The men left their houses. Each made some contribution, carrying blankets or mats to the stream, dragging a sack or barrel too heavy even for the mother of the family, or leading the cow or the mule, if there was one, down to the water to be washed. Then the young men retired to the barns, where they spent the day drinking and playing games and cleaning the hoes, scythes, harrows and plows and repairing them and debating their worth in grain, in copper, and in gin. The old folks sat under the trees around the shrine and told stories. The young women and children worked as the young men did, and about as quickly.

Berthe took Hovenun to the shrine, and sat a few minutes there herself. The neighbor of the cow had established himself under a fan-nut tree where he was building a small fire for his in-laws and father.

"Tell us about the golden people," his boy was pestering.

The man's old father leaned against the tree with his eyes closed. "How does that one go?" he asked.

"Rani..."

"Yes. Rani...thought he was the only child of Fatayad and the Mother Goddess...and the only man in the world. This was long ago, before the battle and loss of Ayekar through Ather's treachery against Verloring...Rani lived happily in the forest. The whole world was forest then. He played in the shining Lir."

Berthe knew this story well. But what was this about "the loss of Ayekar?" She sat down to listen to the local version.

"What is the shining Lir?" the boy asked.

"A river, like our stream but much bigger. This stream is a little child of the Lir. One day, Rani met Rania, the first woman. He began to learn many things. The first was that he might want something and not get it. He wanted Rania--"

"Why?"

"Because she made the light light. He saw for the first time that there were things around him. Now, he asked her to come and live with him and she said, Why? He said--"

"Because you made the light light."

"Make. And she refused."

"Why?"

"He didn't know. When you understand why, you'll be grown up. Now then, one evening he sat watching the moons, and the big moon swallowed up the little one. We saw that happen last spring, didn't we? Well, Rani was very surprised. He said, 'The moon has swallowed his little brother!' But there was no one to hear him. He thought that if Rania were there, he could say it to her. So he learned about lonliness. He went to Rania again, and asked her to come and live with him. She said, Why? And he said--"

"He said he was lonely."

"That's right. And she agreed and came to live with him."

"Then what happened?"

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
CONTINUE.....................

Go to Chapter: 1 2 3 4 5 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21
INDEX