The Sorcery Within

XVI

AN OLD PRIEST NAMEDGerat led Alemar and Elenya more than a league from the T'krt camp in the central reach of the Ahloorm Basin, alone and in silence, and stopped in the middle of open desert. The place was a curious mixture of terrain. Several outcroppings of brittle, volcanic rock pockmarked the landscape, the sands varying from miniature, fine-grained dunes to patches of coarse material. Silt from prehistoric flows of the Ahloorm could be found in the areas where the sage was thickest. Gerat reached down and broke off a chunk of ancient lava, his grip stronger than one would expect of a priest.

"What is this called?" he asked.

Alemar sighed. "Seti'i."

The old man made no overt acknowledgment of the correct answer, merely stepped over to a ridge of sand and picked up a handful of its grains. "This?" he asked Elenya.

"Mah,"she replied.

Gerat was an aged, gaunt Ah-no-ken rarely possessed of either enthusiasm or impatience. His expressions and manner were etched into him as deeply as the lines on his face. Dour and owning a monotone voice, something in his speech nevertheless caused his words to remain in the memories of those he instructed.

Gerat pointed to the coarsest sand. "Choo,"Alemar answered.

Gerat nodded slightly. Soon he picked up another handful from a dark section of earth where a pool had been not long before, a remnant of the sudden, thunderous rain earlier in the week. He stared at Elenya.

"Mud," she snapped.

The Ah-no-ken waited with his infuriating calm. He never criticized, never complimented. He also never allowed his pupils surcease from his lessons. Alemar opened his mouth to word the answer, but Gerat said, "No. I askedhim."

She sighed. "Leism,"she said curtly.

Gerat looked at the mud in his palm. "What is the significance ofleism?" he asked.

She could think of several uses for that particular handful, but she held her tongue. The past four months had taught her that spite washed completely past Gerat. She cited the passage: "After God created the world, He took the mud of its shores and made from it the first men, that there should be physical containers for the souls that He took from His being. Man's original substance is recalled each time he spits, or bleeds, or urinates, creating mud again from earth and the fluid of his body."

"And the lesson thatleism gives us?"

"That man should guard his fluids – drink water only to the extent of his actual requirement, spill his seed only into a female, and let blood only as ritual and war demand. There is power within the liquid of the body, which devils and sorcerers may twist to their own ends."

Gerat nodded. "Good," he said. "You are ready."

"Ready for what?" Alemar asked presently.

"Next week, the youth of the T'krt journey to the oasis of Shom, to perform the rite ofpulstrall, as do all boys in their thirteenth year, if, as have you, they have absorbed the teachings required of them. The other Ah-no-ken have decreed that you will go. My vote is the last."

Gerat began walking back toward camp, drawing the twins with him as he spoke. "You have been trained very hard. You have been with us four months – hardly long enough to learn what a man must know. But thepulstrall comes only once a year, and it is not appropriate that you, who are grown, should be as children. We had no concern for you in the physical tests, but a man who knows nothing of language and law is not a man. You have done well."

It seemed odd to finally hear his judgment. Gerat had early been given the responsibility for the twins' education. He had drowned them in Zyraii. During the first few weeks, Fumlok had been allowed to explain the difficult concepts and points of grammar, but as the twins' fluency in the desert language reached a proficiency equivalent with Fumlok's weak command of the High Speech, the lame man appeared less and less often, and finally, not at all.

"This ceremony – we've heard it mentioned often. What's involved?" Alemar asked.

"It lasts eight days. A small party of Ah-no-ken and Po-no-pha will take you to Shom, a place used only for thepulstrall, and you will be put through tests to prove that you are ready to become men. You'll find out the rest when you get there."

"What happens if we fail to pass the tests?" Elenya said.

Gerat shook his head. "How can a boy not become a man? That is God's design. Thepulstrall does not create manhood; it celebrates it."

"Stranger things have happened," she said to herself.

Sometime later, Gerat asked, "Is it true that you do not have circumcision in your homeland?"

A false dusk fell as they returned to camp. Motherworld, full and swollen on the eastern horizon, held off darkness. Elenya paced off her restlessness, waiting for dinner. The tents and people beamed back the ochre and beige of the great planet, the illumination so altering appearances that she scarcely recognized Lonal as she passed by him. She started at the sound of his voice.

"Good evening," he said.

"What's good about it?" She used the High Speech, knowing that however comfortable Lonal might seem speaking it, it required effort on his part.

Unruffled, he replied in the same language. "I have heard that you will go to Shom. Congratulations."

"So I'll have my adulthood back. That's half a recovery," she said sarcastically.

Lonal pursed his lips. "I suppose I could persuade the Ah-no-ken to reconsider. You could always go through thepulstrall next year."

She decided to drop the banter. She knew Lonal could keep it up as long as she. Instead, she asked, "Am I really to participate?"

"Of course. Why shouldn't you?"

She glared and turned away. "May you be reincarnated as a sand tick," she said as she walked away. It was a powerful slur.

"Don't be angry," he said, and caught up with her.

"I thought you might be the one person here who would give me an honest answer."

"I gave the appropriate answer."

She stopped. "Is it that hard to think of me as a woman?"

"It has been decreed that you are a man. Even I am not above the law. Otherwise the matter of your gender would never have become as complicated as it is."

"So – you admit it's complicated. I had begun to think the whole tribe considered it nonexistent."

Some of Elenya's neighbors were watching. Here, deep within T'lil territory, the tents were spaced widely by Zyraii standards, but still closer than Elenya liked. She led them around her own tent, managing at least to cut off the view of Omi and Peyri.

Lonal sighed. "I can't understand someone who fails to acknowledge good fortune. Be glad that you're participating. Never mind the talking I had to do with the elders to beat down resistance to the idea. Women are not allowed at Shom – ever. But according to the decision,you must be. Some of the tribe want to use your 'manhood' as an issue to displace Toltac and myself."

"I'm sorry for any inconvenience," she cooed.

He found a date pit on the ground and picked it up. "It mystifies me. I would have thought that having your adulthood denied for four months must have been the worst insult, but you act as if you'd prefer not to have a soul."

"I happen to like being female. And I don't believe in souls. Do you?"

He squeezed the date pit. "Of course."

She smiled. "No, you don't. I can tell. You believe whatever furthers your goals."

"I believe I see why you became a warrior. No man would put up with such a wife."

She paused. It was strange how she and Lonal always ended up baiting each other. For a moment, she almost admitted that she was intrigued by a Zyraii who didn't swallow his people's gospel whole. Despite his attempts to make her obey, he himself seemed the most understanding of her urge to sway tradition.

"You're not like the others, Lonal. Why is that?"

He avoided her eyes. Had she embarrassed him? It occurred to her that a nonconformist here would be a lonely individual. It surprised her when he answered seriously, "It's my father's doing. In order that I learn the High Speech, he sent me to the cities. I used to feel it was unfair that I could not be taught the same lessons as any Zyraii boy. Now I am glad. I can see God's plan. It was done to help me fulfill my destiny."

"You have a destiny, too," she said softly. "What is it?"

"To become opsha."

"What's that?"

"The military ruler of all the Zyraii people."

The thought captured her interest. She pictured one man ruling all of the steppes, an authority over all its bickering factions. "Why haven't I heard this title before?"

"There has never been an opsha. The tribes have not been united since the sons of Cadra left their father's tent more than a thousand years ago. Many have tried. I will be the first to succeed."

His tone said he believed it. Elenya did, too, though she knew that the people had split into twenty tribes and over a hundred clans since the patriarch of Zyraii begat his fifteen boys. "That's a bold claim."

"Had I been raised as my brothers were, the thought might never have occurred to me. I could have lived exclusively among my own clan for all of my life, and have been content to be war-leader of the T'lil. But my journeys have shown me that there are possibilities beyond what has always been true before. Does that seem strange to you?"

"No. Not anymore."

He stood up straighter, facing her. "I have watched you in the drills. If you were larger, a bit older, you would be a nearly invincible fencer."

"Thank you," she said, puzzled by the shift in the conversation.

"I would like you to know that, had it been possible to defy custom, I would never have insisted on these months of lessons of you."

"I'm used to training," she said. "I've been training from the moment I left my cradle."

"It will be different, once you return from Shom. You can ride as a warrior – then you will feel what it is like to be Zyraii. A child is nothing. You will have rank. Maybe you will find that the desert is not such a terrible place. God made it hard, but that's part of the beauty of it."

His fervor attracted her, but he had missed the point again. She wasn't a Zyraii boy.

"Tell me," she said, her voice regaining some of its curtness, "when thepulstrall is over, will Tebec and I ever be allowed to go to Setan?"

"No," he said, glancing toward the east.

"That's very good," she said. "Most of your countrymen look northwest when I mention the place."

He flicked away the date pit. "What you want has been strictly denied by Toltac, and no one, myself included, will defy that edict." Elenya regretted the withdrawal of their brief camaraderie. "We can help each other, westerner, but only if you give up your fantasies. There is nothing for you in Setan."

"How are you so sure of that?"

"There is a good well, a school for the ken, and some ruins. Despite the stories they love to tell in Surudain and Nyriya, there is no hint of treasure."

"We've tried to tell you it's not treasure we're after."

"Then what is it you want?"

Elenya closed her mouth.

"You see? If your reasons for seeking it were innocent, you would tell me," Lonal said calmly. "Setan is reserved for the ken. I myself have only been there once. Unless you werehai-Zyraii, you would never be allowed near. It is not a place for warriors. In fact, all men must strip off their weapons within the boundaries of the school. I suppose you could have legitimate purposes there – if you wanted to become a priest. Is that what you're after?"

She sighed. "No."

"Then forget Setan. Only those who prove themselves to Zyraii deserve to see it."

As Elenya entered the tent, she startled Peyri. The woman almost spilled the pot of millet that she carried. She set it and its steaming contents in front of Alemar and hurried back behind the purdah, face averted. Elenya was used to it. She was neither man nor woman; to Peyri's mind that left only demons and rythni.

Alemar stared morosely at his bowl as she sat across from him. They began to eat. She still disliked the desert cuisine, but it kept them going. In fact, the aridity preserved meat, her favorite staple, over periods of time that would have rotted it in Cilendrodel.

"What's wrong?"

"Rol has a fever."

Elenya shrugged. "Why should you care?"

"We are responsible for this family," Alemar said.

She winced at his tone. For his sake, she lied and said, "I only meant that he's a strong boy. He'll be well in a few days, probably sooner."

"I hope so. Peyri has lost three sons now. She has never seen one live past puberty."

Elenya briefly pictured Rol's wisps of facial hair, grown since their arrival. To her, it indicated the accelerated life of the Zyraii – Alemar's beard had only recently filled in at the thin places. Most of the tribe married within a year after thepulstrall, and had half-grown offspring by the age of the twins. By forty, their teeth were worn away from the sand that inevitably migrated into the food, and their grandchildren far outnumbered the years they had left to live.

"Well, if it's serious, what can you do?"

"I don't know."

He was angry and feeling impotent. She herself had known the emotion all too often these past months.

"Alemar, how long are we going to stay here?"

He slowly ate a spoonful of millet. She hadn't asked that question since shortly after they had arrived in the Ahloorm Basin.

"Nothing's changed," he said. "We've nothing to gain by leaving except a long run or death."

"Do you care?"

He lifted one of the unlit lamps to fill it with oil, its chains tinkling as he lowered it. Its reservoir wasn't particularly empty. "How do you mean?"

"You get enough to eat. You keep your mind occupied. And those women wait on you as if that's all they were ever meant to do. They'd probably lick you clean if you asked them. I think you're getting to like it here, just the way it is."

He replaced the lamp. His hands inevitably came away oily. He scrubbed them in the cleansing sand. "I wish you'd be kinder to them."

"Why?"

"They're victims, too. They didn't choose us."

"They help keep us prisoner," she argued.

"They've done us no harm."

"Alemar! We came to this country with a purpose!"

"We came here in search of a myth," he murmured.

She sank down to her haunches. Soon she picked up her bowl and jabbed half-heartedly at her food. Alemar remained in the corner by the cleansing sand, doing something out of Elenya's sight. When he returned to his place, he handed her a flower.

She blinked. "What's this?"

"For your hair. I picked it today, when we were in the desert with Gerat. They only bloom one or two weeks a year."

Tears. "Thank you," she said hoarsely.

He arranged the petals over one of her ears. "I know it's been harder here for you than for me. The legend may be true. Maybe not. But we're here now, and have to live as best we can."

"I'm so tired," she said.

They said nothing for a while. The noises of the camp quieted. Alemar blew out all the lamps but one. The rest of the household went to sleep. Soon they heard the distinctive boom of sand shifting out in the dunes, a sound that had shocked them their first nights in Zyraii.

"What is that called?" Alemar whispered.

"Ohoom,"Elenya said. They managed wan smiles. They scooted nearer and nestled against each other, two tiny tidepools in the midst of a beach with no ocean.