A Time of Changes

54

Several days after Noim’s departure some guilty impulse drove me to the Stone Chapel. To fill the time until Jidd could see me, I roamed the halls and byways of the dark building, pausing at altars, bowing humbly to half-blind scholars of the Covenant holding debate in a courtyard, brushing away ambitious minor drainers who, recognizing me, solicited my trade. All about me were the things of the gods, and I failed to detect the divine presence. Perhaps Schweiz had found the godhood through the souls of other men, but I, dabbling in selfbaring, somehow had lost that other faith, and it did not matter to me. I knew that in time I would find my way back to grace under this new dispensation of love and trust that I hoped to offer. So I lurked in the godhouse of godhouses, a mere tourist.

I went to Jidd. I had not had a draining since immediately after Schweiz first had given me the Sumaran drug. The little crooknosed man remarked on that as I took the contract from him. The pressures of the Justiciary, I explained, and he shook his head and made a chiding sound. “You must be full to overflowing,” Jidd said. I did not reply, but settled down before his mirror to peer at the lean, unfamiliar face that dwelled in it. He asked me which god I would have, and I told him the god of the innocent. He gave me a queer look at that. The holy lights came on. With soft words he guided me into the half-trance of confession. What could I say? That I had ignored my pledge, and gone on to use the selfbaring potion with everyone who would take it from me? I sat silent. Jidd prodded me. He did something I had never known a drainer to do before: hearkened back to a previous draining, and asked me to speak again of this drug whose use I had admitted earlier. Had I used it again? I pushed my face close to the mirror, fogging it with my breath. Yes. Yes. One is a miserable sinner and one has been weak once more. Then Jidd asked me how I had obtained this drug, and I said that I had taken it, the first time, in company with one who had purchased it from a man who had been to Sumara Borthan. Yes, Jidd said, and what was the name of this companion? That was a clumsy move: immediately I was on guard. It seemed to me that Jidd’s question went far beyond the needs of a draining, and certainly could have no relevance to my own condition of the moment. I refused therefore to give him Schweiz’s name, which led the drainer to ask me, a little roughly, if I feared he would breach the secrecy of the ritual.

Did I fear that? On rare occasions I had held things back from drainers out of shame, but never out of fear of betrayal. Naive I was, and I had full faith in the ethics of the godhouse. Only now, suddenly suspicious, with that suspicion having been planted by Jidd himself, did I mistrust Jidd and all his tribe. Why did he want to know? What information was he after? What could I gain, or he, by my revealing my source of the drug? I replied tautly, “One seeks forgiveness for oneself alone, and how can telling the name of one’s companion bring that? Let him do his own confessing.” But of course there was no chance that Schweiz would go to a drainer; thus I had come down to playing wordgames with Jidd. All value had leaked from this draining, leaving me with an empty husk. “If you would have peace from the gods,” Jidd said, “you must speak your soul fully.” How could I do that? Confess the seduction of eleven people into selfbaring? I had no need of Jidd’s forgiveness. I had no faith in his good will. Abruptly I stood up, a little dizzy from kneeling in the dark, swaying a bit, almost stumbling. The sound of distant hymn-singing floated past me, and a trace of the scent of the precious incense of a plant of the Wet Lowlands. “One is not ready for draining today,” I told Jidd. “One must examine one’s soul more closely?’ I lurched toward the door. He looked puzzledly at the money I had given him. “The fee?” he called. I told him he could keep it.