Starfire Saga, page 40
She gasped, her hands clutching my shoulders, and she concentrated hard, frowning, her gaze going distant as she tried to use the power well, but stumbling in her haste.
I murmured something soothing and meaningless to her, demonstrating the step-by-step process of rebuilding the tube cells, the painstaking linkage of each to the next, the dissolving of scar tissue and its replacement with new, healthy cells. When I knew at last that she understood what to do and how to do it, I mentally stepped back, letting her perform the process herself, measuring the energy she would need to apply. When I saw that she was increasingly confident, I gently stopped lending her my reserves, and her eyes refocused on me. It would take her months to build up and use reserve energy over and over again to complete the task, but we both knew she could and would do it. I withdrew the sting. I had no idea of how much time had passed, but more than half my reserves were gone.
Shantiah’s eyes sparkled. She held on to me as I let go of her waist and asked, “Why did you do this for me?”
I decided to be entirely honest. “At the beginning, I disliked you, because you preceded me. But I don’t dislike you any longer, and I felt I wanted to make up for what I had felt before.”
She blinked. “But you helped me on the Ladder.”
“That was for all the woman warriors,” I corrected. “This was for you.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, seeming to fight the urge to hug me.
I stepped backward and glanced over at Sejineth once, then went back down to the stage and remounted the steps. Jemeret was expressionless, his shields up. Venacrona was regarding me with wonderment. The starfire began to hum again, and I took my place on the stage almost as if I’d never left it. I knew it had been at least an hour, and I suspected it had taken longer than that, but no one at all seemed to have moved during that time, and the starfire had waited as well.
Venacrona nodded at me, reminding me that I was supposed to do the next prayer. I gathered a little, though I was tired, and began the second prayer. It was singularly complex, speaking of a tribe’s need for dreams, of the need of the tribe’s members for their individual dreams, of the starfire’s need for the tribe and its dreams, of the tribe’s need for the starfire, and then of dreams themselves. When the song was done, I was really weary. I gathered more and drew in enough energy from my reduced reserves to hold me up.
As I had sung, the starfire columns had sunk slowly back into the bowls, which now seemed to vibrate slightly, not rocking on their bases, but rather appearing to tremble within themselves. The quiet ringing of their rims against one another was like a soft bell.
When I finished singing, Venacrona and his assistants began the song that recounted the legend of the High Lady and asked the starfire to judge the candidate the Boru had brought forward to approach it. As soon as they were done singing, the priest signaled to his assistants, who turned and jumped lightly down off the stage. The moment they were clear of the platform—as if it had been waiting for that very thing—the starfire flowed out of the bowls and around the four of us who remained, then whooshed up to an incredible height all along the edge of the stage, shutting us away from the outside world.
Venacrona lowered himself to his knees. I grabbed for Jemeret’s arm, and he pulled me in against his side, nodding to draw my attention to the klawit.
Tynnanna’s face had completely changed, a fierce intelligence shining out of the burning eyes. His larynx and tongue were—I knew from the experience with the protocanines—badly suited to speech, but talk he did, a deep, sibilant rumble, aimed at Venacrona. “You need not kneel to us. We told you so when last we talked.”
Chills ran over me. I was listening to the starfire, even as the body of its flames rose and roiled about us.
Venacrona rose, looking a little sheepish. “That was almost a hundred and forty years ago,” he said. “I may have forgotten a detail or two.”
Tynnanna turned his massive head toward me. “You have done well and more,” he said in a hissing growl. “A High Lady must most of all be the servant of her people. We have decided to rest our hopes for your people with you. We accord you the responsibilities and the title of High Lady.”
There was a silence, except for the humming of the flames, and I was enchanted by the old seductiveness of interacting with another sentient species. I started to reach for my sting, but Jemeret shook me suddenly, hard. “No,” he said harshly. “Just say that you are honored.” For a split second the grip of his hand on my shoulder was almost unbearably painful. Then he relaxed it.
I said obediently, “I am honored.”
Tynnanna turned that strange, brilliant face to Venacrona. “Our priests will know that we have done this. You must move quickly. You may not wait until spring. There are reasons for this beyond what you may know now. The Councillors of your inner Council must declare her High Lady as soon as possible.” The klawit looked at my Lord Jemeret, standing so rigidly beside me, and if a rumble could be said to contain affection, the cat’s voice—the starfire’s voice—did. “You have done exceptionally well. We know your heart’s most secret wish, though you have not yet spoken it. We tell you now, it is possible that it can happen. It is possible that you can help it happen.”
“Will I know what I need to know?” he asked, tense.
I looked sharply at him. He was, incredible as it seemed to me, uncertain. I believed I had never seen him uncertain before. He always seemed utterly confident, completely sure of his own rightness.
“You already do,” said Tynnanna, a conduit. “And you are no longer the only one.”
A tendril of the red flame split off from the curtain of fire that surrounded us and came, fingerlike, to touch his forehead and linger, like a caress. Then it withdrew.
“Move quickly,” the cat repeated, and then, even as we watched, the presence left him, and he was merely a klawit.
With a sigh the wall of starfire dropped down around us, except for four tendrils of the four colors from the middle bowl. These tendrils twined themselves into a cord and rose to me, circling above my head and creating a circlet—not a bracelet this time, but a brow-crown.
Jemeret let go of me and raised his hands to take the crown from the starfire. He held it out for the Boru to see and, one by one, they rose to their feet, even the children.
“The starfire has spoken!” Venacrona cried out, “We have a High Lady!” Tynnanna roared. Jemeret lowered the circle of fire onto my hair, over the silver brow-crown I was already wearing. I felt its peculiarly characteristic cold, and then had to iris my eyes down as it grew unbearably bright before it dissolved into my skin. The Boru began to cheer.
Jemeret smiled. “Take off your crown and look at it,” he said.
I irised my eyes to normal. The other priests climbed back up on the stage as I lifted the metal circlet from my head and brought it down in front of me. The silver, while still flat and featureless against my fingertips, glowed and danced with the starfire colors, as if the starfire were alive beneath the thin surface of the crown. I was beyond wonder, deep into the realm of acceptance of the incomprehensible, but even so, I stared in fascination at the coiling colors, slightly muted within the metal. The starfire had left a piece of itself in the crown; it was not, after all, silver, but instead made of the same metal as the bowls.
The crown before my eyes was suddenly blurred with tears I was too tired to gather more to contain, for I felt the same kind of delight, the same level of overwhelming honor paid to me, that I’d felt when the starfire danced with me on the Day of the Fire.
There was a slight thickness in my lord’s voice as he said, “You’ve grown up, my love. Do you realize that?”
I was about to deny it, to say that I really felt no different than I had when I first arrived here, but that was patently ridiculous. Even as stubborn as I was, I couldn’t fail to recognize that I had changed.
He took the crown out of my suddenly still fingers and set it back on my brow. The three priests had brought the cheering to an end and now they began to sing the ritual phrases of the Song of Life’s Gladness, which the Boru joined in. I took Jemeret’s hands as he lowered them down the sides of my face. “There’s no going back now, is there?” I asked him.
“You knew there wouldn’t be,” he said. He used one of my hands to stop a tear that rolled down my cheek.
We kept looking into one another’s eyes until the lengthy song was finished, and by then my tears had ceased without my gathering to stop them. With the finish of the song of thanksgiving, we were into the final part of the ceremonial portion of the day. There were only three prayers left—Jemeret’s, mine, and the last of the priests’.
Jemeret walked to the center front of the stage to lead the men of the tribe in the hymn of praise to the masculine aspects of the Boru and, hence, of the men of the world. It was a powerful prayer, unequivocal and strong, praising the qualities that made men men and unapologetic for some things I might have thought of as flaws.
I’d never heard the hymn before, but I saw how it fitted with the last prayer I would sing, which praised the feminine in the Boru and in humanity. It occurred to me that it might be best for everyone, in the long run, if we all sang both songs. The women should be able to praise their men, flaws and all, just as the men should be able to praise us.
I almost laughed. I’d only been High Lady of the Boru for about a quarter of an hour and already I wanted to change things. I had come to believe we all had to learn to love each other, and our male and female aspects were a good place to start.
I led my last prayer, trying to concentrate on the words and melody I’d carefully memorized, but half my mind kept straying to the as-yet-unfathomed task of being High Lady of the Samothen. I had known very well what it was to be the Com’s Class A—and I had failed it, or it had failed me somehow. I knew nothing at all about what would be required of me here. Maybe that gave me a better chance at success.
The women finished the song with me, and the three priests stepped forward as Jemeret drew me to the back of the stage. Tynnanna had vanished at some point while we were singing, but I hadn’t been aware of his departure. As the priests began the closing prayer, with faith that the springtime would come, as the next day would come, as our tribe would go on, I asked Jemeret, “What kind of hopes can the starfire have for us?”
“I’m not the starfire,” he said.
It wasn’t an answer, but I sensed it was as much as he was willing to give, and I didn’t press the issue. “Why didn’t you want me to sting the starfire?” I asked, instead.
He was very serious. “The starfire has great power—for our purposes, unlimited power. You might have died.”
I remembered Shantiah stumbling over the power I had let her use, and I understood what he meant. I closed my eyes briefly, the weariness pulling at me, and then jerked them back open. I had seemed to see, on the insides of my eyelids, the wash of sparkling golden light, with indistinct shapes somehow in it or behind it, that I had hitherto only dreamed. Now, seeing it while awake made it seem somehow frightening.
The song came to an end.
Jemeret put his arm around me again. The glittering curtain faded, and we left the platform so that I could receive the greetings and good wishes of my tribe. I don’t remember much of what anyone said, except for two people. Old Gannelel bent and kissed my hand. “Sho you have a third life, too, my lady.”
And Coney, kissing my lips lightly, murmured congratulations and then said quietly, “I never knew, Ronnie. I never understood.”
“What?” I held on to his arm to keep him from moving on in the line.
He struggled for a moment with the words. “I always thought we made life sacred—the Epicyclists, the Macerates, the Purists, and the rest. But life is sacred. We’re just the ones who recognize that.”
And Jemeret drew him away from me so that the line of Boru could continue passing by.
XI. Among the Samothen
The crown lay in the center of the dining table, the muted colors still moving beneath the surface. Everyone’s eyes went back to it now and then, almost as if the motion called us.
Jemeret and I sat at opposite ends of the table, listening to the discussion that had been proceeding for quite some time now. Venacrona and Mardalita, seated with Tuvellen and Coney—whose presence frankly surprised me—on one side of the table, had been arguing good-naturedly about which of them should go with us. We’d agreed to the necessity for the trip about an hour earlier, while I was still stifling yawns because I had not been able to deep yet to try to replenish my low reserves.
Across from them, Variel was insisting that Gundever could not go without her, and Morien was telling Wendagash that a large contingent of warriors would make it more difficult to travel quickly. Wendagash, on the other hand, was maintaining that to travel in winter was dangerous enough with protection, and would be even more dangerous without it, for the tribes were no longer under truce, as they had been at Convalee.
Venacrona interrupted his own argument with Mardalita to break into theirs, saying, “No, no, no. We will not be in any danger, because the priests have told the tribes that there is now a High Lady of the Boru, and the only ones we really have to worry about won’t try crossing the Honish lands in force. The Honish would fight them every centimeter of the way.” Then with barely a pause for breath, he turned back to Mardalita and went on giving her all the reasons why she had to stay in Stronghome so he could go.
The decibel level in the room rose until I was almost laughing. Numima brought a dish in from the kitchen, banged it on the table to make sure everyone would know she had brought it, snorted into the sudden break in the talking, and retreated into the kitchen, shaking her head.
Jemeret took advantage of the silence. He cleared his throat and waited until everyone had looked at him. “I don’t think there’s a great deal to discuss,” he said genially, “though you’re welcome to continue, and I’ve certainly enjoyed it so far.” He glanced at the priests. “Veen, you’ll have to come with us, and I hope the speed we travel at won’t be too much for you. You and Sandalari are the Inner Councillors, representing the stars, and you have to be there for the whole Council to make the declaration. If the Resni, the Vylk, and the Marl won’t come out from behind Reglessa Fen—and we don’t yet know that they won’t, but it’s a possibility—the rest of us will have to go to them. That means a great many warriors would be conspicuous and provocative, so the fewer the better.”
“I’m as spry as I was when I was a hundred,” Venacrona said a little indignantly.
Jemeret’s voice gentled. “I know, but we can’t take wagons, and it’s a long way to go on tivongs.”
“I don’t believe I’ll have any trouble,” the priest said.
I was too tired to wonder how it was that he, at what had to be a hugely advanced age, was in far better shape than Gannelel, who was many years younger. I had thought that only in the Com did aging get so long delayed.
“Also,” Jemeret said, taking advantage of the continuing silence, “we need to send Peraldi ahead, even though that will leave us without a Paja. I need Ginestra to send messengers out to all the tribes to assess whether they’re willing to go along with the declaration, or whether we’re going to have trouble. By the time we get to the Forge, the Paj ought to have some of the answers, at any rate.”
“Do you think there’ll be any trouble?” Gundever asked.
“Of course.” Jemeret said it lightly, but I sensed it was serious. “We won’t go to war over this, but I suspect some of the chiefs will be reluctant, and I’m a little concerned over the fact that we can’t wait until spring.” He smiled, a little grimly. “I do believe eventually they’ll all come around.”
“I still want to come, too,” Variel said, glancing at Jemeret as if she was certain he would deny her permission.
“Is there any reason why Variel couldn’t come?” I asked. “I’ve gotten used to having women friends. I wouldn’t want to just—turn aside from that.”
Gundever looked at me as if he wished I hadn’t spoken, but he didn’t say anything.
Jemeret was gentle again, half smiling at me. “I think it would be best if Variel remained at Stronghome.” He watched me levelly. “If, however, you order her brought along...” He didn’t finish.
I understood. He was telling me that my status had changed now, and he wanted to see if I had decided how I was going to behave toward him as a result of it. He was telling me that the trip could present dangers, and that Variel was less equipped to deal with them than some of the rest of us. He was asking me if I was going to contradict his choices. I shook my head. “If we have to move really quickly, perhaps it would be better for the warriors to know that those they care for are safe.”
Variel bit her lip and looked down at her plate. Gundever hid a smile.
Jemeret went on as if the moment had not occurred. “So we’ll leave at dawn. We’ve nearly a tenday until the next storm, which gives us enough time to reach the Forge. That assembles five sets of Councillors at one time, and we can shelter there for the duration of the storm.”
I retreated to my own thoughts as the planning continued, letting the words wash over me without taking much note of them until I heard Coney say, “I still don’t have much in the way of winter clothes.”
Jemeret replied, “Once we’re out of the mountains, the cold won’t be as severe.”
I realized then that Coney would be going with us. That surprised me even more than his presence here, for while he was a skilled fighting man, he was not a Boru. I wondered if I was being given Coney because I could not have Variel, but I did not raise the question.
Tuvellen stood as Jemeret said to him, “You’ll be in charge while I’m gone. I’m not sure how long this will take, and you did an admirable job while I was away before Convalee.”
Tuvellen nodded. “I’ll arrange to get the saddle cases packed. We’d better alert Sejineth early.” He held out his hand to Morien, and the group began to depart.
