Louise Cooper - Indigo 06 - Avatar (11 page)

Abruptly there was a great churning in the lake, and Uluye rose. Water streamed from her hair and clothing, and the rattling groan as she sucked air into her lungs echoed across the lake. The warriors splashed into the water and caught her arms as she seemed about to fall; she was rigid in their grip, head thrown back, eyes wild as though possessed, and her mouth stretched wide in an agonized but triumphant smile. Her helpers pulled her back toward the edge, until they all stood knee-deep in the water. Then, as though suddenly regaining her strength and her wits together, Uluye shook off their guiding hands and raised her arms high.

“The Ancestral Lady favors us!” she cried. “I have stepped into her realm and returned unscathed, and I am strong in her eyes!”

A howl of approach went up—mingled, Indigo thought, with more than a little relief. Nodding gracious acknowledgment, Uluye left the water and stalked toward the rock where the litter was set. As she approached, her gaze met Indigo’s briefly, and Indigo saw the truth behind her proud demeanor. Uluye’s immersion in the lake for minutes on end without drowning had not been magic, though to her simple and superstitious audience it surely had all the trappings of something supernatural. It had been a self-imposed test of endurance, proof to herself, as much as to anyone else, that she could triumph where others would fail. Proof of her faith in her own will and her own strength. Was that, then, the crux of Uluye’s religion, and was the Ancestral Lady nothing more to her than a means to an end, as Indigo was? Did Uluye even believe in the goddess she professed to worship?

Grimya, catching the thought, looked up from where she sat by Indigo’s feet.
She may not believe
, the wolf communicated silently,
but the people do, and that is all she needs
.

Uluye stood now before the rock and turned to face the lake once more. On the cliff side, more torches were being lit, turning the ziggurat into a strange and shimmering wall of dancing flames that illuminated the arena below as brightly as day. Indigo smelled incense, saw clouds of smoke rising from braziers set around the dusty square and tended by the younger priestesses. Uluye gazed on the scene with taut satisfaction, then raised her arms again, her fingers clawing toward the sky.

“Come!” she cried in a fierce, stentorian voice. “Come to us, you who are bereaved. Come to us, you who have cause to fear the departed. Come to us, you who would dispute with the dead. I, Uluye, will partake of your offerings! I, Uluye, will intercede for you! I, Uluye, in the Ancestral Lady’s name, will put wrong to right and see justice done. Come to us, and let the rites of Ancestors Night begin!”

From somewhere away to the left of the arena, where the trees crowded thickly, a woman’s voice screamed out. “Oh, my husband! Oh, my husband!”

Uluye’s head turned sharply; she snapped her fingers and two priestesses hastened toward the source of the cry. Moments later they returned with the woman—hardly more than a girl, Indigo saw now—and brought her before Uluye, where she collapsed sobbing in the dust at the High Priestess’s feet.

Uluye stared down dispassionately at her. “Your husband serves the Ancestral Lady now. Would you try to deny him that privilege?”

The girl struggled to bring her emotions under control. “I would see him, Uluye. Just once. Just once more,
please
....”

“What gift do you bring to honor him?”

The girl fumbled with a small sack slung under one arm. “I bring the soul bread ...” her voice quavered, almost broke “... baked with my own hands, that he may eat. I bring the sap of the
paya
tree, sweetened with honey, that he may drink....”

She reached out, holding a leaf-wrapped package and a small water skin. Uluye gazed thoughtfully at the offerings for a moment, then took them. She unwrapped the soul bread—a flat, unleavened loaf—and ate a corner of it. Then she drank a mouthful of liquid from the skin. The girl covered her face with her hands, trembling with relief, and Indigo heard her whisper over and over again, “Thank you, Uluye! Thank you, Uluye!”

Her two escorts led her away to stand at one side of the arena. As a second supplicant shuffled forward into the torchlight, a figure, fire and shadow in the shifting glare, moved close to the rock where Indigo sat, and Indigo looked down to see Yima at her side.

She leaned down and whispered to the girl, “What’s happening, Yima? Who is that woman, do you know?”

“Yes, I know her,” Yima replied softly. “Her husband died of a fever three full moons ago. She has been grieving for him ever since, but has only now found the courage to ask to meet him again. It’s very sad. He was only twenty-two years old.”

There was compassion in her tone. Indigo frowned. “How can she meet him again?” she whispered back. “Surely Uluye won’t—” She checked herself, amended hastily: “The girl doesn’t mean to
die
?”

Yima turned wide, surprised eyes up to the litter. “Of course not,” she said. “He will come to her. From the lake.”

Shalune, who stood a few paces away beside another young girl whom Indigo didn’t recognize, heard the whispering and gave Yima a warning frown, at the same time nodding expressively in Uluye’s direction. Yima flushed, made an apologetic gesture to Indigo and moved away. Indigo stared after her, alarmed by what she had said. The dead rising from the lake? Surely that couldn’t be literally true. She tried to catch Shalune’s attention, wanting to whisper an urgent question, but Shalune either didn’t see or felt it prudent to ignore the signal.

Grimya was still staring at Uluye, who now was repeating the question-and-answer ritual with a spindle-shanked old man, and Indigo asked silently:
Grimya, did you hear what Yima said
?

I heard. But I don’t know what she can have meant
. The wolf darted Indigo a quick, troubled look.
You don’t think that it could be true? That the dead will really return
?

I don’t know. I truly don’t know.

The old man had been dismissed to stand with the still-weeping girl; two more people were coming forward. The clouds of incense were thickening with no breeze to carry them away; the smell was acrid in Indigo’s nostrils and becoming unpleasant as it mingled with the tarry stink of the torches. She already felt a little disoriented—there
was
a narcotic in the incense, she was sure—and the scene and the atmosphere were beginning to take on a dreamlike tinge. At all costs, Indigo thought, she must keep her wits. She had to discover the truth about this rite; whether it was a simple trick to soothe the bereaved and frighten the troublesome, or something more sinister.

Six supplicants had now brought their offerings to Uluye, and a seventh was led before her. The sound of Uluye’s voice raised suddenly in anger alerted Indigo, and she looked up to see a scrawny woman cowering on her knees in the red dust with three other grim-faced people, two women and a man, behind her.

Uluye loomed over the groveling woman like an avenging angel. “Justice?” she roared, her voice carrying across the lake. “Justice, for a murderer of children?”

“I didn’t do it!” the woman whined. “He did it,
he
was the one! He said we could feed no more mouths, that seven was too many, that three must die! What could I do? I tried to stop him, but he beat me ... look, Uluye, see, here are the marks. I am only a poor, weak woman and he is so much stronger than I—”

Uluye interrupted chillingly. “Where is your man now? Why is he not here to speak for himself?”

“He ran away, Uluye. He ran away because he is guilty and he knew that you would punish him. He killed three of my children and he took the other four, and he has left me to mourn my little ones alone and uncomforted. See, see the marks he made on me, the scars—”

Uluye’s voice cut across her babbling. “Where are your offerings?”

The woman scrabbled in a bag she carried and brought out a parcel and a water skin, but she held them close to her breast, clearly reluctant to proffer them to the priestess. “I have brought them. Food and drink. Look, I have them. But they have cost me dearly; I must go hungry now, for my murdering husband has left me with nothing. Have pity on me, Uluye; have pity on me!”

Uluye stared at her for a long moment. Then, very slowly and deliberately, she reached out and plucked the offerings from the woman’s hands. She unwrapped the bread, unstoppered the skin. She ate. She drank.

The supplicant’s face crumpled into an ugly, childlike expression. She didn’t try to argue, but as her three companions—or perhaps, Indigo suspected, “guards” was a more apt word—took her to join the other postulants, her hands and feet began to twitch in mute but uncontrollable terror.

Uluye’s stare raked the gathering and she said with deceptive mildness, “Who is next?”

As the eighth candidate came forward, Indigo darted a glance at Shalune. The fat woman was watching her whilst appearing not to; Indigo signaled surreptitiously and Shalune edged away from her companion and sidled toward the litter, until she was just within murmuring distance.

“You should not talk.” The pitch of her voice reminded Indigo of the Southern Isles hunters’ whisper; Shalune had learned the knack of suppressing any sibilance in her voice. Indigo smiled thinly and answered in a similar tone.

“I know. But there’s so much I don’t understand. Who was that woman?”

“Her? Child slayer. Poisoned three of her brood and claims her husband did the deed. He’s disappeared; it’s likely she killed him, too, though his body hasn’t been found yet. Her whole village knows she’s guilty, but they haven’t any proof. So they forced her to come here, to find out the truth.”

“How
can
they find out?”

Shalune looked straight at her, faintly surprised. “From the children, of course. They’ll know their own murderer.”

“But—” Unthinkingly, Indigo had raised her voice, and Uluye snapped a venomous glare over her shoulder. Swiftly Indigo turned the exclamation into a cough, but when Uluye looked away again, Shalune made a quieting gesture.

“No more talk,” she whispered. “Wait and watch. You don’t need to do anything more.” She pulled a face at Uluye’s back and sidestepped to rejoin her young companion.

Indigo sat back in her chair, stunned as Shalune’s careless remark reverberated in her mind.
From the children, of course
. She still couldn’t bring herself to believe that it was possible. She didn’t
want
to believe it, for if it were true, if tonight the spirits of the dead were to rise and walk again in the world of the living, then—then—

“Nnn—” The sound came involuntarily from her throat; she couldn’t silence her tongue in time. Uluye turned again swiftly, but this time in anticipation rather than in anger, as though expecting to see some change in her.

Indigo shut her eyes against the priestess’s intense stare, thinking:
No, Uluye, this isn’t the oracle, this is me, me
! Something flicked across her inner vision: eyes, silver-fringed, but they were gone so quickly that they didn’t take root in her memory.
Control yourself
, she told herself savagely.
Get a grip on your wits
.

It was the incense affecting her ... this sudden light-headedness that seemed to come from nowhere, as though she were rising from the litter and floating above it. Narcotic smoke in the air. She was starting to hallucinate; she thought that mist was rising from the lake and clouding its surface, blurring the reflections of the torchlight, turning the water into a huge, golden mirror. How much longer would this ceremony continue? She wanted it to be over. She was thirsty. Hungry, too. She wanted to go back to the familiar cave retreat, to sleep....

Indigo shook her head, and the miasma cleared. Blinking, she saw that fifteen people were now clustered to one side of the arena and that no new plaintiff stood before Uluye on the red sand.
Fifteen
postulants? Perhaps she had dozed after all. And Grimya had gone. Where was Grimya?

Grimya
? She sent out the call and was relieved when the wolf’s mental voice answered immediately.

I am here, Indigo. Behind your chair
. A pause, then:
I... I don’t like what I am feeling. I can smell something. I don’t recognize it, but it makes me very uneasy
.

The drums began again then. At first the sound was so subtle that Indigo was aware of it only on an unconscious level, but it grew stronger, louder, faster, until it seemed that the air was thick with the throbbing rhythms. Disruptive and unsettling rhythms, crossing and recrossing, clashing one with another, making Indigo shudder, she felt, to her bones. She looked at the lake and saw that the mist had returned, not a hallucination this time, but real, rising in silent, smokelike curls from the water and forming a pall like steam over the surface. The priestesses had begun to chant with the drums’ impossible beat; yodeling, shrilling, ululating noises like a cacophony of mad birds.

Shalune had gone, Yima had gone; they were with the others, a line of stamping, shouting women advancing down toward the lake’s edge, and with them went the supplicants, stumbling, crying out in joy or terror. Indigo heard the bereaved girl calling her dead husband’s name, heard the murderess’s shrill protest as she was dragged across the sand by two machete-wielding women, and for one terrible moment she felt that she had become both those unhappy creatures. The bereaved and the guilty. Weeping for her lost loved ones, yet carrying the knowledge that she was a slayer and that for her, there could be no redemption.

Indigo
! Grimya’s telepathic cry rang in her head as she pushed herself to her feet, but she didn’t heed it. She was standing now, unsteady, the oracle’s heavy crown making her sway like a tree in a gale. Something was trying to force its way out of her soul, through her heart, through her ribs, through her flesh. A word, a name, was trying to form on her lips, trying to compel her to say it, shout it, scream it aloud. The drums were inside her and a part of her, her own pulse, her own chaotic heartbeat. The women’s voices dinned in her ears ... and something was forming in the mist over the lake. The surface waters were moving, agitating, broad ripples spreading to the banks and lapping there in tiny waves.