Shadowplay

Chapter 22. Riding to a fiery finish?

Knowing that Ginny was watching and savoring her growing terror, recording it for his loathesome clients, Shadith fought it and with it, a sickening sense of helplessness and a rage that nearly strangled her. She could put on a face to fool Miowee and Kikun and Rohant and their captors, but HE could read behind that face and gloat over what he saw. And sell her fear, her frustration, her fury. In all her long hard life she had not hated anyone so much, not even the slavers that took her and murdered her family.

Late on the third night in the Kisa Misthakan, Shadith lay on the cot with her eyes closed. The bare lightbulb that hung from the center of the ceiling was swinging slightly at the end of its wire; it was never turned off and she was not allowed to cover her face. A priest with a shaved head and a brown leather half-mask sat on a chair by the door, arms folded, eyes following her every move. At regular intervals he got to his feet and came over to her, stood looking down at her. She ignored him; he was just one more irritation.

There were no rats or mice, not even any spiders in this prison wing, so no ears and eyes were available to her; it was like living with a sack over her head and boxing gloves on her hands. Her cell, every cell in this section had all been scrubbed until they stank of disinfectant; even the microbes were annihilated. Either Ginny had warned the Gospah about her talent, or he was by nature obsessively neat. Perhaps both, the one reinforcing the other.

Outside the walls of the Misthakan the city teemed with small lives, this was a time of feasting for them, the streets were full of dead meat, much of it fried. The kanaweh were deeper than ever into their killing frenzy, preparing their own doom though they semed incapable of realizing that as they went from looting shrines to raiding the Plicik Ispisacos. She shuddered away from the bloody chaos and brought the small black furwing she was riding into the Misthakan Courts and sent it sniffing around for the others.

Kikun, Miowee, Kayataki and Rohant were one, two, three, four down from her, in cells that stank of disinfectant with watchpriests sitting by the door. She hadn't seen them since they were dumped here. In her training sessions young Aspirants took their parts in the choreography the Gospah was drilling into her. No doubt the same was happening with them.

They all had small barred windows high in one wall. Unglazed. Coneshaped. Cut through several feet of stone. She tried flying the furwing through the bars into Rohant's cell, but the watchpriest saw it and killed it. She wrenched her mind loose, but not before the creature died and its small agony seared into her. She moaned and curled into a fetal knot, crying with a grief that, reached to her toes, that filled every milliliter of her body.

In the morning, heavy-eyed and so angry still that she couldn't eat, she went to the training court and worked on the songs, the stylized stiff movements of the sacred choreography. After. a while she was almost happy; the work absorbed her and kept her from replaying the death of the furwing and remembering the Fire that was beginning to haunt her dreams.

And so it went, day after day. No threats were made overtly, but now and again, whenever Ayawit felt she wasn't cooperating as enthusiastically as he thought proper, Kayataki was brought in and whipped gently, her skin reddened but not broken. It was enough.

Shadith bled again, was isolated and purified, and put back to work.

The priests who watched her would not talk to her, would not respond to anything she did; even when she hit at them, they only moved away. She was not alone, never alone. Despite that, her days in the Misthakan were very like those in the cell on Ginny's ship. This time, though, she couldn't let herself give up. The Fire was waiting for her.

She kept trying to find a crack to wiggle through, but there was nothing. By the time the wagon was finished and the trek to the Otcha Mistiko Cicip was about to begin, the futility of everything she did was beginning to wear her down. When they came for her, she stared at them, then went without comment. She was taken with the others and incorporated in the PROGRESSION, riding in a palanquin with Miowee and Kayataki, Kikun and Rohant walking beside it, the cats at Rohant's heels and Sassa flying overhead.

Ignoring the warning hiss of their priestguards, Shadith leaned out, bringing her head close to Rohant's. "Any ideas? My mind's blank."

"Nada. Can't breath without a damn priest up my nose."

"You too, huh."

"Ten days on the road, maybe there's something there."

"We wait and see, I suppose."

"Yeah. You better pull your head in, our guards are getting nervous. We want to keep them sweet."

"Sweet, hunh." She straightened and looked around with considerable interest as the parade formed up, the court like painted paper butterflies fluttering around a slight figure she took to be the Nistam until Miowee told her otherwise.

Day drifted into day as the wagon moved along the Pilgrim Road; Shadith sang when she was ordered to, Kikun danced, Rohant preened and posed (and muttered angry sarcasms that almost made her laugh.) Each day the response was more intense, so intense she was battered to a nub by day's end and Kikun was reduced to a lump of skin and bone. Day after day after day, the wagon crept among the crowd that spread from horizon to horizon, funneling onto the long twisty grade that led to landing place, the dead volcano. The place where they were going to die.

They could talk, they were freer than they had been, but there was even less chance of escape; they'd have to push through the throng of pilgrims and it was obvious at half a glance that they'd get two steps, three, before they were herded back.

Night… ghost dancers like painted shadows pale against the dark watchers… Tapwit priests ladling soup in pilgrim bowls and passing out hard biscuits… pilgrims sitting motionless and hushed around the wagon, focusing on the Three, praying at them, worshiping them, like a blanket smothering… Shadith couldn't think, could barely breathe… Kikun huddled close to her, used her as a buffer, a far too inefficient barrier between him and the silent demands of the watchers… Rohant, more and more the predator… restless, irritable, pacing, pacing, sniffing at every crack for a way to escape.

Death by Fire… it hung over them all… burned alive… and no way of escaping it… burned alive… they weren't thinking about helping the others, not any more, it was how can I escape. I… I… but there was no escape… unless… Unless Aleytys came faster than Shadith had a right to expect… vengeance was ashes in the mouth, what good would it do them when they were dead… eighty-three days… eighteen now, fifteen when they reached the Mistiko Otcha Cicip, twelve when the Fire was lit… Lee would get here too late, at least a week too late, maybe more. Unless… unless Shadith could finesse a way out… contrive a holding action… something, something…

Mid-afternoon on the tenth day, the wagon labored across the floor of the crater and pulled up before an immense broken Bubble of black volcanic glass.

The PseudoNistam climbed down and vanished into the housing cavern while the VraiNistam took his seat in the crystalpalace (pellet proofed glass on an armorsteel cage), on the crystal throne with his court around him.

The Kam priests got the wagon into the store cavern and unhitched the kekelipis.

The Gospah and his Na-priests herded the rest of the sacerdotes and the Three up one of the twin ramps into the black-glass Bubble and began laboring to bring order out of Chaos.

By sundown they all were settled in, pilgrims and Pliciks, prisoners and priests.

Small fires bloomed across the crater floor and climbed the walls as high as people could perch. The Otcha Cicip hummed with sound, laughter, music as people ate their dinners and exchanged the gossip they'd packed in with them. The noise rose to a peak as Sisipin Full reached zenith, then faded as families and clans and single travelers settled to sleep.

Shadith crouched by the front of the cage they'd put the prisoners in and watched the moonshadows crawl across the floor. Three days, then the Fire. She reached into her boot, touched the welt that hid the crystal knife and was tempted. Then she sighed and took her hand away. There was a solid rank of Na-priests sitting like stone teeth across the mouth of the Bubble and a score of others rolled in their blankets, sleeping on the floor. She wouldn't get two steps before she woke at least one. No chance. Not now. Gods, Lee, put your foot down and GET HERE!