Courtship Rite

38

A HARD-EARNED gold coin can slip through a hole in a pocket. In this fashion Oelita vanished.

Aesoe, wearing only sandals with bath towel draped about his shoulders, raged and paced in his den, his genitals swinging to his wrath like gongs. He gestured quick motions that seemed to skin an invisible adversary. His Liethe, whichever one he had kept for the pillows — Hoemei remained unable to discriminate between them — lay sprawled on the cushions of the bed, a sheet between her legs, head buried from the ranting, tortured by a whisky hangover. She wore a tiny amulet on a single fine chain of gold about her neck.

Hoemei, unshaven and unslept and still in party dress, moved not a muscle. He carried a note from the Gentle Heretic, all they had been able to find of her. It said: “Forgive me for being wrong. Please, please take good care of my people.” Nothing more.

Aesoe raved. “See that Joesai banishes himself from Kaiel-hontokae by the first sunset of the Reaper or I will personally conduct services for his Ritual Suicide at the Temple of Human Destiny! He is a meddling nuisance, fouling the best plans of genius to soothe his woman-hating heart! And you meddle, too! Your sly hand is creeping everywhere. I told you and I tell you; that woman is vital. Find her! Will I graft the skin of you, still alive, to the wheels of wagons? Will I use your wired jawbone as a paper holder?”

The maran-Kaiel had already searched for her, of course, all during the remainder of the night, but had not found her. How does one find a woman who, as a youth, had wandered the desert plains with a shrewd father-teacher who lived to walk in the open world beneath the sky? Teenae was still out asking questions among the Ivieth. The task was hopeless.

Events disgruntled Hoemei. He had grown fond of Oelita. Her energy and intelligence pleased him, even to the point where he had been seriously dreaming of taking her as a replacement for Kathein. The family was far less sure of her suitability but he saw them beginning to meld with her, even Joesai in his churlish way. Gaet warmed to a woman easily, without agonizing debate. Teenae was outwardly friendly from the start, but was secretly threatened by another woman until she had a chance to know her well. Noe merely demanded that another woman be kind, affectionate, and easy to live with — and unquestioningly loyal to the family.

Now Hoemei was left with a breach in his plans. It was like having a route set to ascend a craggy mountain and finding the chosen path suddenly rendered impassable by landslide. He would have to send Gaet into Sorrow sooner than he had anticipated. Who else could convince Oelita’s people that she had not been murdered in some treacherous deal? A delicate mission.

Shifts, shifts. Quickly he would have to find others to do Gaet’s work here in the city. The inconvenience annoyed him. He cursed Joesai for the stubborn pressure he had kept on Oelita, then sighed. That was the price a Predictor paid. The future did not happen. People created the future with moment-to-moment action and decision, always adjusting to the unexpected. More than one route led to the same peak.

Hoemei bowed, dropping all the way to one knee. He had delivered his dreadful message. The Liethe creature stirred and stretched, smiling gaily at him behind Aesoe’s naked haunches. Instantly he recognized Honey’s special sweetness. She was here!

The unnatural smoothness of her back launching itself into the summer hills of her buttocks sent a shiver through him more fearsome than Aesoe’s anger.

“Come here,” she said.

He did not dare move lest he further provoke Aesoe. Nor could he find words.

Lazily she brought herself upright, amused at the silence, aware that her movements suspended even the Prime Predictor in mid-emotion. The chain with its tiny amulet swung between her breasts. “My lover is afraid of my lover.” She was watching them both so that neither knew whom she meant. “Come here.”

Hoemei remained frozen.

Her eyes, as blue and flecked as Assassin’s Delight, remained fixed on him. “Aesoe, tell him that you are not afraid to have him touch me, so that he will come here.”

“By God’s Balls, Hoemei,” roared Aesoe, his mind completely distracted from its train of thought, “don’t just squat there on your knees playing her game! Crap and wipe yourself!” He nudged Hoemei impatiently with his foot, sending his councilman sprawling. “They send me leftovers from the creche tables! I need men! Men!” he raved.

“My nice man,” said the Liethe called Honey, suddenly at Hoemei’s side, “I won’t be with you before the first sunset of Reaper so you must give this to Joesai.” She slipped the golden amulet from around her neck and pressed its tiny eurythmic form into Hoemei’s hand. “I was pleased to serve your husband and brother. Give him this to wear. No man comes to harm wearing a Liethe charm.” She rose gracefully to face Aesoe while Hoemei quietly recovered his dignity. “You see,” she said innocently, “I protect your man upon his mission. I am with your Gathering. Liethe overcraft will guard him.”

“Nothing will save that imbecile!” snarled Aesoe, remembering what had moved him to anger.

Hoemei carried the amulet to Joesai with Aesoe’s wrathful instructions. Joesai remained stoic about Oelita’s disappearance in the face of all anger — as if she were merely a promising student of his who had gone bad. Teenae returned from her search and lambasted Joesai, out of worn frustration, blaming him. He took it all like the desert drinks a cloudburst. “She did not have kalothi,” he said, genuinely saddened, for he too had grown fond of Oelita.

Hoemei knew his brother’s mind. Joesai suspected that Oelita had slit her wrists somewhere, and worse, slit them in hiding, denying even friends the nourishment of a Funeral Feast. She had found the Awesome God and been shattered by the magnitude of the concept. Those would be the silent thoughts of Joesai. He would pity her without ever being able to say so. What was a woman if she could not let awe run through her veins without being destroyed by the power of it?

Oelita had failed at the Sixth Trial. Hoemei remembered their brother Sanan. The eve of every victory, it seemed, was married to pain. Sanan would have loved Oelita at another time and another place. He dreamed of Sanan as a Roman senator and Oelita as a barbarian druid princess from Gaul.