Courtship Rite

28

THE MOUNTAIN INN was tucked into the branch of a gorge high among peaks that had taken an unseasonable snow cover. Like all inns of the Long Road, it was run by the Ivieth. Old porters, who could no longer bear the burdens of the road, brought wood for the fire and kept the soup hot and cared for travellers who might seek shelter, as well as tending the healthy Ivieth who passed through with pack and wagon.

Young children abounded, bigger and broader-shouldered than they should have been, unruly with each other, racing through the halls of the inn, but unreservedly polite with the inn’s clientele. Their half-grown siblings were already out on the roads to carry the burden that clan kalothi demanded. Before puberty an Ivieth hauled his load or was walked to death and eaten.

Oelita sat in a corner alone but as close to the fire as she could get and still be inconspicuous. She was subdued. Ordinarily she would be sitting at a table with the Ivieth or would have intruded upon travellers to make new friends and joke away the tiredness of feet. But this was already Kaiel territory. The fear had grown as the rolling hills had given way to rocky slope and twisting trail and heights that awed her while chilling winds played with her body like the bush she had seen caught and tossed into a ravine.

She had sent the crystal ahead by trusted messenger and it would be safe — but still she was afraid.

One of the little Ivieth boys rushed up with a cloth and over-eagerly wiped her table. Then he noticed her bowl and sniffed at the broth that was no longer steaming. “I’ll get you some more,” he said before whisking it away, tiptoeing with a careful eye on the bowl’s rim, remembering that he had already slopped some on the floor and had had to mop it up.

He was the same age as her boys had been when they were taken to the Temple of Sorrow.

Presently a white-haired woman, who was stooped and old but still far taller than Oelita, brought in a new bowl of hot soup followed by her angry grandson who was displeased that his grandmother did not see fit to trust him to carry it. “He’s being such a help, busy as we are with all the road building. I’ve scarce seen such a crowd!”

As she spoke three other men entered the door and pulled it closed behind them against the tugging wind. One Oelita recognized as clan Mueth from the brilliant headdress of fibers woven into his hair. One was of a far clan she did not know. The third stood shorter but carried himself with such authority that she knew him to be of the formidable Kaiel.

“Gaet!” said a man at the far end of the room, raising his mug. The Kaiel returned the gesture but went to another table and was lost in animated talk. Three Ivieth children, obviously well known to him, rushed forward and began to climb all over his back to remove his outer garments. For a moment Oelita glanced up and saw the grandmother standing transfixed, smiling in the Kaiel’s direction, waiting, as if she expected to be noticed shortly. He ignored her, making his rounds, a joke here, a backslap there, a fistclasp at another table, a hair ruffling for a child.

“Gaet!” said the old woman impatiently.

Finally, he turned to her, warmly. “You think I’m hungry, eh? You know I’m hungry. I could eat the bark off a tree! What’s in the soup?”

“Gaet, you sit yourself with this young traveller who’s braving the mountains without escort — it’s the only table we have free — and I’ll work up something to fill you.”

The man sat down. His shirt was open and Oelita could see the hontokae carved into his chest. She wanted to run, she wanted to be among her friends on the coast, yet he was smiling at her easily enough. She faced him with her back to the wall and smiled the soft smile she used to seduce men.

“How’s the broth this low day?” he asked to make conversation.

“Very good.”

“You’re far from the coast.”

“How else am I to reach Kaiel-hontokae?” she asked gently.

“It is a long journey. You must have deep purpose to send you such a distance.”

“I do. I hope to plead for the lives of my people. Perhaps in doing so I shall speak against your beliefs. You must have equally deep purpose. We are as far from Kaiel-hontokae as we are from the coast.”

“The improvement of the road through the mountains has been a recent concern of mine. But truly I am this far west for one reason only.” He grinned. “I’ve come at breakneck pace since I heard a rumor that a certain beautiful woman passes through the mountains unescorted. It seems to me that she courts unnecessary danger.”

Oelita started. He knew her then! He had been sent. He was here for the crystal. He was one of Joesai’s men. No, I cannot use him. I shall fly from him! “Would a Kaiel escort give me safety?” she asked ironically.

“Ah, then you have met Joesai!” he exclaimed, slapping the table. Her heart began to pound at the mention of this name. Here was a game she did not understand. “I want no Kaiel escort. I value my life.”

“There are disparate factions among the Kaiel. Is that not the case among all priest clans? I represent the faction of the Prime Predictor who very much wishes you alive.”

“Who is Joesai?”

The man called Gaet laughed at her intensity. “Joesai might perhaps be called a lonepriest. He has strong loves and his own ideas of the way things should be. He survives best when he is a long way from the reach of orders generated by men he disagrees with.” He sobered. “I don’t believe you have anything to fear from Joesai. We have reason to believe that his group was captured near Soebo.”

“The Mnankrei have him?” Oelita was incredulous.

“We know only that the Mnankrei took his ship and fifteen of his band. He may have been killed.”

“You lie!” she said hotly. “He and two of his men were with me in Sorrow too short a while ago. I’ve travelled at night afraid that he was at my back.” She watched a profound look of reaction cross Gaet’s face. What was it? Astonishment? Hope? Relief? Such a response made her afraid again. This stranger was no enemy of Joesai.

“Was he with a woman when you saw him last?”

Ah, I cannot trust this man. He loves Teenae. “She was stabbed. They took her up the coast somewhere to recover. Wherever Joesai might be, she is not in Soebo.”

“Thank our God.”

“Joesai sent you?”

“Hardly. We’ve had no word from him. Hoemei of Aesoe’s staff bid me escort you safely into Kaiel-hontokae. Hoemei is purveyor of the relief program to the coast. We have sketchy information that a famine approaches. What say you?”

“The underjaw ravages the land. The Mnankrei burn our stores. We need help.”

“It is fortunate that we have met.”

“The price you will ask for your help is too high.”

Gaet laughed a short burst and trailed off into silence. He began to turn his soupbowl with extended fingers, staring at it. She noticed that he only had nine digits. A little finger had been amputated. Over the soup, the aromatic vapors rose and dissipated like thoughts forming and unforming. “This pottery — pleasant design, eh?” he began. “I like the mix of cavorting moon-children who chase each other as if the chase was all. Do you like it?”

“I’ve never seen such shape before or such pure subdued color.”

“A fine glaze. The pieces chip easily. It’s not stoneware. These pots are common in Kaiel-hontokae, perhaps not so common on the coast. They are fired in a small mountain village and I mention it only because of a Kaiel bargain made long ago that created the markets. Did we ever need the pottery? Hardly. The village was suffering and this was the way out. Did we strike a hard bargain? No. We could have. We had and have the power. But we Kaiel see the future with almost the clarity of dreams. A hard bargain struck while we have advantage leads always to strife in the future, always, always, always. We make bargains in hard times, yes, for that is our skill, to mute misfortune, to merge leg and arm and head and heart and liver and anus into harmonious marriage, but we do not consciously forge bargains that have no use when times are better.”

“You will offer us food for rule — just like the Mnankrei,” she said bitterly.

He shook his head. “We cannot even offer you food in the weight that can be shipped from the Mnankrei islands. The mountains and the distance are great obstacles, but we offer you sounder rule. It is not the Kaiel who blended human gene with underjaw body so that children will not have the wheat that has been nourished by the sweat of their parents.”

“They did that? That, too?”

“Someone did.”

“You found human genes in the underjaws Nonoep sent to Kaiel-hontokae?”

“Yes.”

“That’s criminal! That’s horrible!”

“It is power gone awry as power will. When a priest needs power more than he needs to be a craftsman of human destiny, such things happen.”

She saw the burning silo at Sorrow, saw the arrogant sea priest Tonpa clearly by its light. Yet were the Kaiel more honest?

Annoyingly, he went on to disparage others in the hope of making his own kind look good. “The Stgal have failed you. You should be rich and you are poor. You have more wealth in your land than Kaiel-hontokae. Sorrow should have fleets of ships to match the Mnankrei but it is a minor maritime center. Does Soebo have a better harbor than Sorrow?”

She had had enough of his sly boasting. “And you will bring your creches with you and fill our meat markets!”

His answer was easy, glib, as if he had spoken it a thousand times before. “Only the Kaiel have creches. It is the way we breed for leadership. We do not interfere with the breeding rules of any other clan. In times of famine the clan groups who have sworn us allegiance accept our will. They are free to move and swear their blood to a better priest clan.”

“When I see the blood in the temples, I think we might do without the priest clans!”

Gaet shrugged. “It has been tried. And those who tried it did not survive their famines.”

She had a moment’s memory of her children, carrying them to the sea in her packsack because their legs were useless. Bright eyes they had, watching a nest of sand beetles. She felt tears. Her hand took Gaet’s. “Do not quarrel with me.”

“Your interests are mine,” he said comfortingly, reading her thoughts.

“How will you possibly get wheat through these mountains? I was not awed by them when they were only words to me and a hazy jag along the horizon — but here I am and I’m awed.”

“Come.” He kept her hand and led her outside into the wind that howled along the gorge. Her skirts flapped. He endured the cold, shivering. The world seemed dreadful and dark with Scowl-moon eclipsed by the mountain peaks.

“We’ll freeze out here!”

Gaet brought her body closer to his own, maneuvering her around to the back where the wind clawed less, sheltered as the spot was by a craggy wall of rock. They came to a filigree machine with three fine wheels partly buried in the drifting snow. “A new device. It looks fragile but it amplifies the power of an Ivieth enormously. It can’t carry more than a one-man wagon but it moves much faster. We’re rebuilding the roads to take them. Wheat can move west in such vehicles which can then return people eastward to famine camps in the foothills above Kaiel-hontokae.”

She saw the swift Mnankrei ships and the good harbor at Sorrow, and at the same time she saw the Wailing Mountains and the treacherous trail through the Valley of Ten Thousand Graves. Was he aware of how absurd his challenge appeared — a frail vehicle against this frightful terrain? “Let’s go back inside.”

“You don’t seem impressed?”

“How could I be?”

“Neither am I,” Gaet said, subdued by her coolness. “It’s the best we can do.”

She invited him to her tiny room and he built a fire for her, then rummaged about finding a quilt to warm her back. It was a lesson to her. All the Kaiel were different. This one was not violent like Joesai. He had an easy compassion. “I must ask you one more question.”

Gaet nodded while feeding another bush trunk to the blaze.

“Were you sent here to get the crystal from me? I do not have it with me.” There was defiance in her voice.

He looked up at her, the flickering light playing over the scars of his face. The face revealed nothing, no surprise, no alertness. He was merely waiting for her to go on. He had not understood what she said, and so perhaps it was true that he had not been in contact with Joesai.

“The crystal that Joesai called A Voice of God,” she explained.

“You have one of those? Yes, that would catch Joesai’s fancy. I know little of such things.”

She was disappointed. Gaet did not react at all as Joesai had. His disinterest frightened her. She was staking her safety on the value of that crystal to the Kaiel, for whatever superstitious reason they might want it. “It is of no value to you? I thought I might exchange it for wheat.” That had seemed like a good idea once. Now it sounded foolish.

“I’ll introduce you to a woman who will be extremely interested.”

“You’re still insisting on escorting me?” She did not feel so safe now.

“I must. This is Kaiel territory. You have no choice.”

“I have been challenged by the Kaiel to a Death Rite. I wish that ridiculous game to be cancelled. I wish protection from such nonsense.”

“Joesai?”

“I’m afraid of him. I feel haunted by him, as if he is following me through the mountains.”

“Lovely woman, I will protect you from him.”

Impulsively she began to search Gaet for knives. He only laughed and squatted by the fire, letting her touch him.

“Is this Death Rite a personal obligation of Joesai, or is it a clan obligation?”

“Once he has initiated it, the Death Rite becomes a clan obligation.”

“I’m going back to Sorrow.”

“No need. There are many ways these things can go.”

“Yes,” she flared. “You could kill me tonight. I have no reason to trust you.”

“How many of the Seven Trials have you survived?”

“He has said three. I count four. And I’m frightened.”

Gaet was amused. “Aesoe seems to have been correct about your kalothi.”

“I’m just a woman. I can die. Living is itself a Death Rite and no one survives!”

He pondered. “I’ll tell you what we can do. It will fit each of the criteria. We won’t return via the road. We’ll knife through the mountains, over the White Wound. That will be Trial Five.”

“You think so little of your own traditions that you mock them!” she snarled scornfully, backing away from him to the pillows where she wrapped herself in the quilt.

Gaet reproached Oelita with a hurt look. “The White Wound is no mockery. That mountain still kills.”

Horror gripped her. He was serious! “A moment ago you promised to protect me!” She had walked with the specter of the Death Rite at her back, hurrying, furtively watching over her shoulder — suddenly to glance forward and into the eyes of the Fiend himself! He was roasting his hands there beside the fire between her and the door.

“I will protect you. There is nothing in the Death Rite that requires you to face an ordeal alone. Is it not true that a person who cannot have help is low in kalothi?”

“They say you Kaiel are born of machines. It’s true! It’s true! You’re a machine! Just like Joesai!” she raged.

“The climb over the White Wound is an exalting experience. Why should one face death and find horror and pain when one has the choice of facing a beautiful death?”

These Kaiel! The way they lived with the Death Fiend! Morbid people! “I want peace! I want peace! I’ve always wanted peace!” she raged against her pillow until she was sobbing. “I want to be left alone by you priests! Leave me!”

And he was beside her, stroking her hair. “It is never that easy.”

Gaet became Oelita’s lover in the wilderness during the ascent up the ragged slope of the White Wound’s north face. The danger wore her out and his tenderness revitalized her. She did not understand why she had come to trust him, or why it was becoming important to her to impress him with her strength, or why she was beginning to love him.

At the top of the peak, windblown, cold, barren, she huddled with Gaet, amazed by the most incredible sight of her life, mountain shapes, blue and purple below her and a vast plain in front of her, yellowish to the horizon. She could even see the smudge that was Kaiel-hontokae. They were so high that the moon was no longer hidden. The sun rose in reds of glory. Here, man was nothing.