Glasswrights' Test (17 page)

Even as she struggled to explain, she felt the Jair-shape within her mind, the perfect sphere, and she knew that it was not a complete vision. It was a symbol, a sign, a promise. It stood in her thoughts as a potential, as a glimpse of the true Pilgrim's power.

The crowd only cared about what they had seen, what they had witnessed.

“Stand back!” Father Siritalanu said. “Give Princess Berylina some room!”

Her title caused another swirl of whispers to curl among the pilgrims. A princess! In their midst! Communing with First Pilgrim Jair!

Father Siritalanu set his jaw. His boyish face matured in an instant, creased into lines of concern and determination. He placed a protective hand under Berylina's elbow, guiding her away from the central altar.

“Father,” she whispered, leaning heavily on him. Her breath caught in her throat as his fingers closed around her arm, and she used his solid flesh to anchor herself back in Jair's temple, back in Brianta, back in the corporeal world.

“Child,” Siritalanu said. He cleared his throat and repeated the word. “Child. It is time that you initiated your cavalcade. It is time that you officially began your pilgrimage.”

She saw that the other worshipers continued to look at her in awe. Grown men knuckled their foreheads; women wept as she moved by. Even children, the sort who had stared at her, who had pointed and laughed and mocked her deformities, even children gazed at her in amazement

“Bless us, in the name of Jair,” one woman pleaded as she passed.

Berylina stumbled on the uneven floor, and the praying woman caught her hand, accepted the touch as a blessing. “Yes!” a man cried. “Bless us! In the name of Jair!”

She was surrounded by hands, by grasping fingers, by clutching fists. She touched as many of the people as she could, desperate for a path to the door, to the outside, to escape and air and sunlight. Father Siritalanu moved in front of her, clearing the way, and she kept her eyes focused on his shimmering robes.

She felt eyes upon the caloya green of her own gown, and several people fell to their knees, reaching out for the hem of the garment, raising it to their lips. “No!” Berylina tried to cry. “Do not honor me! Find the strength of the First Pilgrim for yourself! Find Jair in your hearts!”

Father Siritalanu finally reached the door. Berylina felt, rather than heard, his hand brush against the prayer bell. She breathed the instant that his fingers closed upon the latch; she absorbed the power of his fist encircling the iron.

When the door opened, it brought in light and air and clear, free-flowing thought. Berylina gasped at the freedom. She had thought of Brianta as a dusty town, sere in its summer drought, but now the streets gleamed in clarity. She staggered out of the temple and into the road in front of the temple.

“Come, Berylina. Come with me.” Father Siritalanu was using a tone she had heard long ago, an urgent phrasing that she remembered from the days when they had first met in Liantine. He had pulled her then, urging her forward. He had given her the strength to flee the Horned Hind, to embrace the Thousand. He had paved a solid path beneath her lost and wandering feet.

Now, Berylina followed the sound of his voice, marveling at the crystal tones. She turned his presence around and around in her mind, enchanted by the solidity of it. “Here, Berylina,” he said. “Follow me. We'll walk around the temple. We'll speak with the priests. Follow me. There you go.”

She stumbled beside him, only vaguely aware of the people, the buildings, the things that they passed. Her fingers trembled as if she still cradled the white ball, and she felt the warmth, the power, the protective energy of Jair grow and spread within her.

Berylina knew the process for beginning her pilgrimage. She was supposed to speak to a priest. She was supposed to state her name and her homeland, to outline why she had come to Brianta and who she hoped to honor especially among the Thousand Gods. Before she was ready to begin her official journey, though, she found herself standing in front of an ancient priest.

A young boy stood beside the old man, stretching up to whisper something in one of his hairy ears. The child wore the short green tunic of an acolyte; he clearly served the Thousand Gods in some temple. In the House of Jair, Berylina realized, as she made out the small badge on the child's shoulder, a woven emblem of a perfect white sphere.

The child stepped back, and the old priest took in her caloya robes and frowned. Lines were carved so deeply into his jowls that she thought his face might split. His voice was dark as mahogany as he asked, “Who comes before the Thousand Gods making a mockery of First Pilgrim Jair?”

Already? How could he know? That boy! The child must have been inside the temple. He must have seen her touch Jair's holy relic. He must have seen the ball roll toward her, the candle flare high.

Berylina knew that she must answer the priest. Father Siritalanu could not speak for her here. For just an instant, though, she felt as if she were a child herself again, as if she were huddled in her father's court. She longed for the nurses she had known then, the loyal women who had guided her along the dark and confusing paths of a princess.

Those women were gone, though. One had been slain when Berylina fled her ill-fated nuptials; the others had long been left behind, when Berylina abandoned her homeland in pursuit of all the gods.

She was alone here. She must stand before the Thousand and their earthly representative, the priest.

She stepped up to the old man and made a holy sign across her chest, swallowing hard before she summoned the courage to speak. “Father, it is I, Berylina Pilgrim, who stands before you, but I never meant to mock First Pilgrim Jair.”

“You touched his holy relics, did you not?”

“I prayed before the First Pilgrim's altar, if it may please your grace.” Berylina felt the solid wholeness that she had sensed as the ball touched her fingers—she remembered the feeling of all colors, all sounds, all tastes, all touches commingled in her mind. She gathered up the power of that wholeness, and she said, “First Pilgrim Jair came to me, Father. He offered up his relic.”

Before the priest could respond, Berylina heard more words that she should speak; she felt them in the marrow of her bones. Jair was delivering a message. She was afraid. She wanted to deny the Pilgrim; she wanted to refuse. But there was no declining to embrace the word, the power, the glory of Jair.

“The First Pilgrim says that his house is ill-tended, Father. He says that the priests have . . .” Berylina struggled for a moment, trying to think of a softer word, trying to think of a gentler blow. Jair stirred within her, though, glowing, pulsing,
being
within her, and she abandoned all attempts at editing his holy words. “He says that the priests have hoarded coins that should have gone toward his worship. He is meant to be worshiped in the light. There should be tapers at every one of his altars, at every corner of his house. The priesthood should not prosper on the coins they save by leaving the house of First Pilgrim Jair in darkness.”

“What!” The priest's lined face flushed crimson, and Berylina stepped back from the fury in his eyes. He sucked in breath, as if he would extinguish every candle in Brianta, and when he howled at her again, spittle flicked from his lips. “What blasphemy do you speak here, false caloya?”

Berylina might have cowered at making demands in a foreign land. She might have doubted the new voice that whispered in her thoughts, that spoke to her in shades of white, that brushed against her mind with utter stillness.

She knew, though, that she was no false caloya. She knew that the Thousand Gods spoke to her, that they came to her because she was good and true and faithful. She knew that the priest before her might criticize her for her physical failings; he might call her ugly or twisted or flawed, but he could make no claim about her fidelity, about her faith, about her true, true power.

She pulled herself to her full height and ran her hands down her green robes. The gesture stilled her pounding heart, lent strength and power to her spine. “I say again, Father, that I am Berylina Pilgrim. I speak the words that First Pilgrim Jair bids me say. He wants candles in his sanctuary. He wants light to mark the place of his birth.”

Berylina became aware of the crowd that had gathered behind her, aware of the people who pressed into the tiny courtyard. There were all the pilgrims who had prayed in the house of Jair, and others who had been passing in the street when this commotion began. Even now, rumors whipped through their ranks, and she wished that she could silence the speakers, could restrain them and remind them that she did not desire their thoughts, their speculations, their surprising conclusions based upon her prayer. Her desire to silence the crowd grew sharper as she heard someone exlaim, “She speaks against the priests!” Another voice rumbled, “Witch!”

Nevertheless, the believers hushed the skeptics. People who had witnessed Berylina's prayers whispered about what they had seen. The voices of dissent flickered into silence.

The old priest was no fool. He read the crowd with bulging eyes, and then he clambered to his feet behind his oaken table. He, too, wore robes of green, but his gown was embroidered with leaves, with reminders of richness and power and blooming spring-time beauty. He moved his fingers in a complicated gesture, a symbol that was aped by half the crowd. Berylina could not decipher the meaning behind the motion.

“Pilgrim, if you would complain about the keeping of a church, then you must speak to the Keeper of the Temples. We have no power to respond to the complaints of every weary wanderer here. The Keeper sits at dawn on every third day, in the center of the market. Plague him with your demands.”

“I will, Father,” Berylina said, and a part of her was grateful that she could address someone other than this angry priest. She had not meant to condemn the man, only to question the practice, only to clarify the words that Jair spoke within her mind.

“Be gone, then.” The priest glared at her, as if he would roast her caloya gown with his eyes. His hands moved in a sullen pattern that she could recognize this time—it was clearly a dismissal. She started to gather up her skirts in her fists, using the old gesture of her childhood.

No, she reminded herself. She was no longer an awkward Liantine princess. She was a pilgrim, beginning her long journey in service to the Thousand Gods.

“In a moment, Father, I will be gone.”

“In a moment!”

“Yes, Father. If it please you, if it please all the keepers of the Pilgrim's paths, I would start my cavalcade today.”

“Your cavalcade!” The man might never have heard of the instrument of faith.

“Yes, Father. I mean to journey in service to the Thousand Gods, if it please your grace.”

“It would
please
,” the priest started to grumble, but then he caught himself before he could utter more harsh words. He glared at Berylina, and she knew that he was wishing her far away.

The crowd, though, pressed forward. Four pilgrims fought to stand behind Berylina, as if they waited for their own cavalcades. These men defied tradition, for each was a burly soldier, and each set a hammy fist upon the hilt of his dagger. Pilgrims were not supposed to carry steal. Well, pilgrims were not supposed to bandy about accusations of witchery, either.

One man said, “We watched the girl in Jair's Temple. She prayed on her knees like everyone else.” The crowd murmured.

Another man added, “The Temple
is
dark. There
should
be more candles.”

The other two men only nodded, but they shifted their hands on their weapons, managing to convey their ominous displeasure. The choleric priest paled.

He glared at Berylina, and she whispered, “If you please, Father. Just sign my cavalcade, and I'll be on my way.”

Swallowing hard and eyeing the men, the priest started to say something else to Berylina, started some further protest. “In the name of Jair and all that is holy,” she said, falling to her knees, “allow me to redeem myself, Father. Allow me to speak glory in the name of all the Thousand Gods. Allow me to find the paths that First Pilgrim Jair has made for me; permit me to walk in his grace and his safety and his shadow for all the days of my existence.”

The words were part of an ancient formula, a prayer that Berylina had learned from her nurses long ago. She had known that they were part of the timeless power of religion in Brianta, that the priests here had taught schoolchildren, decades past, before Berylina had ever been imagined by the royal house of Liantine.

Something about the words worked magic. The formula soothed the priest, made him recognize the exuberance of the pilgrim before him. Berylina might have frightened him. She might have inspired the warrish men who glared at the assembled masses. She might have disrupted the order in the old man's life. But she spoke the words of the faithful. She embraced the religious truth as he knew it.

She watched his fury melt away, and she knew the precise moment that he decided to assist her. She started to breathe a prayer of gratitude, but she was not certain which of the Thousand Gods had interceded for her, which had broken through to the cornered man. Lest she offend one of the Thousand, she settled for thinking a prayer toward Jair, toward the First Pilgrim who had guided her steps along this shaky path. Clumsily, she wove her fingers into a Briantan symbol of gratitude.

The priest reached down to the ground beside his throne-like chair. An ornate box rested on a cloth-of-gold pillow, nestled between four extravagant tassels. The sides of the box were covered with pounded gold, and intricate enamel designs twisted across the gleaming metal. In a flash, Berylina took in the paintings that showed the life of Jair. A fitting start to Berylina's own official pilgrimage.

The priest raised the lid of the golden casket, and he produced a piece of parchment. Flourishing the document before the assembled crowd, the holy man dug in the box for a fine quill pen and a pot of blackest ink. He took his time settling the writing implements on his table, making certain that every symbol was neatly lined up, that all was in its proper place.