Starfire Saga, page 6
It seemed that the rest of the Boru were still at Stronghome, having not made the journey to Convalee this time. Variel set the basket down at the edge of the pool and took from it two large towels, a cake of flaky, coarse white soapstone, a hairbrush, and some new clothes, including boots and a long ribbon for my hair.
“I’ll tell you about Convalee while we walk back,” Variel said. “I’ll wait for you out on the path.”
“Thanks,” I said. I knew academically that many women bathed together, just as men did, as Coney and Kray always had. But except for the few months I’d shared my life with the maimed Sarai, and my enforced bath in front of the servingmaid, I’d always been alone at very personal times like bathing, sleeping, and using the eliminatory, and I would have felt awkward if Variel had stayed. I stripped off the boots and the two pieces of ragged clothing, found a place among the rocks where I could take care of my waste elimination, then took the soapstone and waded out into the water. Some of its chill had been dispelled by the sunlight, and I closed down my heat/cold receptors to get rid of the chill that remained. There was some pretty birdsong from higher on the cliffs, and I enjoyed it as I washed off the crust of dirt and unbraided, patiently untangled, and soaped my hair. The sensation of being clean again, in addition to being rested, was so welcome and so invigorating that soon I had completely forgotten I was naked out in the open on an alien world. I scrubbed until I shone, and then I gathered and took the time to find the remnants of my injuries, including the branch welts, and healed them cell by cell.
When I was unmarked again, I walked back out of the pool, toweled myself dry, and began to dry my hair. I was a little thinner, but my muscles were in tone and firm under the skin. Suddenly I realized I was still naked, dropped the towel and dressed.
The shift I had been given was pale blue, very soft and gauzy, and fell to mid-calf. The talma was dark blue, embroidered in silver at its neck and hem, and the boots were black. Everything was comfortable, and once again, surprisingly, the boots fit perfectly. I brushed my hair until it crackled, then gathered it up and made a long, thick braid out of it, tying the braid at top and bottom with the silver ribbon that I also worked through one strand of the braid.
I put the old clothes, dirty towels, soap, and hairbrush into the basket and went out of the rocks to find Variel. She was sitting on a boulder by the path, her arms around her knees, singing softly to herself in a high, sweet voice. She turned to me as I came up, smiling at the transformation from mud-caked drudge to woman. Then she seemed to look a little more closely at my arms and her expression changed. “You healed yourself,” she said. “That was very fast. It takes me a couple of days.”
“You have talent?” First it was a question. Then, “You have talent!” as I remembered Dogul saying something about “Samish arts.” It went some distance toward explaining how Gundever might have caught me when I ran from the stonehouse, though I still didn’t believe that he had.
“We call it power,” Variel said. She slid down off the rock, and we started back on the path. “All of the Samothen have it to some degree or other. The Boru have a good strain of it, but not many of us are that fast.”
“Is Lord Jemeret?” I asked.
She smiled. “He’s so strong and fast that when he fights I don’t think I’ve ever seen him have to heal.”
“A whole population of Class C’s,” I said softly. When she asked, “What?” I shook my head and said, “Never mind.”
She turned shy again. “Gundever and I were hoping you would permit us to serve you an evening meal in our tent,” she said quickly, as if she was afraid I would say no.
I almost did, but thought better of it. I liked Variel, and I had no real reason to dislike her warrior. To be utterly practical, I needed allies here—and as far as I knew, I had no other pressing engagements. “I would be pleased to come,” I said.
Her smile grew wider and brighter, and she reached out and took the basket from me, overriding my objection that I could certainly carry it. “Convalee is a gathering of the tribes,” she said, as if she had been preparing her explanation while I was bathing. “We come to this plain once every four years from our separate places. The Boru come far, but the Marl come farther, as they live on the seacoast, in Salthome. The Nedi and the Paj come almost as far as we do, from Glen Nedi. They live together, because the Paj do not keep warriors. We have five days together on the Plain of Convalee, although we sometimes visit back and forth—well, mostly the leaders do. The other tribes are the Dibel, the Elden, and the Genda, who all live in the area of the Forge.” Her voice hardened as she said the rest. “And then there are the Resni, the Vylk, and the Ilto, and the last two are much less to be trusted.” She thought about it for a moment or two and added, “They’re not nice people.” She dismissed the subject and brightened at once. “The five days of Convalee are so we can trade with one another, socialize, play some games, and refresh ourselves by paying homage to the stars. And some of us will ask for the bracelet.” She blushed.
I decided, not too incorrectly, that it had something to do with mating and little to do with me, and we had reached the bottom of the path and were back among the tents, so I didn’t ask for clarification. There were no children visible any longer, and a lot of the women seemed to be busy cooking. Besides the guards, I saw no men. Variel explained that most of the men had ridden into the forest in separate hunting parties and would be bringing in food for the next tenday, and the children were at lessons, as they were every afternoon.
“What do the women do?” I asked. “Just cook and mend and breed?”
Variel blinked, taken aback either by the question or by my tone when I asked it. “We have some woman warriors in the Boru,” she said, “but this trip to Convalee they were left to guard the people who remained at Stronghome. Also—” Her mouth twisted as if she were debating whether she should say any more, and then she took a breath and went on. “My Lord Jemeret’s last claim was a warrior named Shantiah. He never braceleted her, and he asked her to leave his house more than two years ago, but I don’t think he wanted the woman warriors coming to Convalee this year. Here is our tent.”
She gestured to a tent fronting on the circle that contained Jemeret’s tent. “You can honor us by entering,” she said. “I must take the basket to the washing pile, but I’ll be back very soon.”
I opened the tent flaps and tied them back, letting in light from the day. The tent was smaller and simpler than Jemeret’s. It contained only a trunk and a pile of rugs and cushions. But on the trunks were some scrolls. I went to one and unrolled it, and it seemed to be a book of short historical sketches and biographies. It didn’t appear to be the first scroll in the series, and when I searched for that, I found one called “Lives and Times of the Wintada Period.” The first notation under the heading began, “326-328. The Wintada rulers of the Lowlands took control upon the failure of the Lestigan line to produce an heir.”
I rolled it back up and set it aside as I heard Variel returning. She was carrying a slingful of wood to build a small fire outside the mouth of the tent. “There’s a pot stand behind the trunk,” she said to me. “I’d appreciate it if you could bring it here.”
I glanced around and found the pot stand. I didn’t want her to think I was simply obeying her orders, for I didn’t much like obeying orders, even those couched as such polite requests. But it occurred to me that I was more likely to get information and, ultimately, freedom, if I appeared to be cooperative. So I cooperated. As I carried the tripod with its hanging pot out of the tent, I asked, “Is Convalee the name of this place?”
“It’s the name of the festival,” she said as she laid out the logs. “We are under truce for the five days, and they’re called the Day of the Sheaf, the Day of the Laba, the Day of the Clouds, the Day of the Bell, and the Day of the Fire.” It sounded like a complex set of rituals, and I had not a lot of academic interest in it, so I moved on to a subject closer to my heart.
“Being a man’s claim. Does it have rules?”
“Rules? You mean like a contest, or a market trade?”
“Something like that.”
She thought for a moment, frowning. “It means that Gundever and I will be together and concerned about each other as long as we can,” she said at last. “But that hasn’t to do with rules. That’s just the way it is.”
“Sort of like marriage,” I suggested, and was surprised when she grimaced and spat into the dust at her feet.
“Marriage is what the Honish do. Someone ties them to one another and leaves them to each other no matter what. They don’t have tribes for support, just houses. Claiming is a tribal thing, and it doesn’t have rules because the tribes have rules. Sometimes the rules are the same for most of the tribes, but sometimes they’re different. For instance, among the Boru, no man can claim a woman against her will, but some of the other tribes don’t have that rule.”
“Both you and Venacrona have called me Lord Jemeret’s claim,” I said slowly, almost afraid that if I spoke it it would become somehow inevitable. “But I didn’t want it or have anything to say about it.”
Variel’s frown deepened. “That’s not true, Ronica. Gundever says he witnessed your going into my lord’s tent after Lord Jemeret asked you to enter of your own free will.”
Trapped! If I hadn’t been angry, I might have laughed. “You don’t understand,” I said carefully, and I think I did it to try to keep the anger from coming out at the girl. “I didn’t have any choice.”
“I’m very young, I know,” Variel said calmly, but just as cautiously. “And I haven’t an extraordinary amount of power. But even I know there are always choices. It just seems to me that sometimes people don’t like any of them.”
I was not used to being lectured by anyone except Mortel John, and I was not used to arguing, either. I had been accustomed to winning by using the sting, and while I could not then admit she was right—and perhaps disconcertingly overwise—I didn’t know how to fight back. I fastened my lips together and swore to myself that I would learn.
Variel barely seemed to notice that she’d won an argument. She made sure the tripod was steady, then took the pot off it. “I’m going to the supply wagons for dinner now,” she said. “Want to come?”
It was not as if I had a lot else to do.
Across the camp in a direction away from the cliffs were four large wagons, wooden-sided and open at the tailgates. They were just within the path of a guard riding picket on a tivong.
“Are the Boru at war with someone?” I asked.
“Not really,” Variel said, “though there’s always the chance of a raid. We just maintain alert in case one of the other tribes decides they’re at war with us.”
At the first wagon, she collected a fair-sized chunk of dralg meat; at the second, a good quantity of vegetables; at the third, a loaf of fresh bread, which I carried; and at the fourth, a container of some sort of foaming ale.
“How do you pay for it?” I asked.
“We don’t,” she answered. “The tribe eats what the tribe has to eat. I told them we’d be four at meal, and we have food for four. If there was a shortage, we’d have less.”
“Four,” I repeated, but I already knew.
“Lord Jemeret honors our tent, too,” she said. “He and Gundever are friends since Gund was a child.”
“How old are you?” I asked her.
“I will be twenty at Midwinter. Gundever will be twenty-five at Convalee.” She was my age, and I had thought her such a girl.
We started back toward the tent. “I’m twenty standard, too,” I volunteered.
“My Lord Jemeret is forty-two at Midwinter,” she said. “It is very rare for a chief to reach that age without braceleting someone. So we hope—” She stopped, biting her lip as if she had said too much.
The notion of braceleting was suddenly no longer of limited academic interest. “All right,” I said, “if braceleting doesn’t mean marriage, what does it mean?”
“It means that a claim is made more,” she said. “Two people joined by the bracelet are joined by the fire, and are one in the sight of the stars.”
“Joined by the fire?” I repeated. “That sounds a little grim.”
“It’s really beautiful,” Variel said wistfully. “It’s the closest the Samothen ever come to being only one tribe. You see, if there’s a claim between tribes, one of the people has to change allegiance, and that’s hard. But if there’s a braceleting between tribes, the couple can belong to both.”
I didn’t understand, and said so.
“You can’t try to learn a tribe or a people all at once, by asking,” Variel said. “You have to live with us and come with us through Convalee.”
“I came from a very—very—different place,” I said.
She nodded. “It’s always that way when someone comes from the stars. Sometimes they talk about it, and sometimes they don’t. We’re told that mostly they end up with the Honish, because mostly they don’t have power.”
That made sense, except—”Mostly? You mean some come who do have tal—power?”
“Well, you have,” Variel said, “and the High Lady did.”
“The High Lady came from the stars?”
“Of course she did. She brought us the starsong, the gifts, and they say she brought us the power in the first place. She made us the Samothen. We were just scattered and isolated before.”
We had reached her tent, and while she hung the pot back on the tripod, I put the bread and ale on the trunk. “There’s a waterskin hanging on the tent pole,” she called to me. “Will you bring it out here?”
I went and got it, then carried it to the front of the tent. “Who else?” I asked with what I hoped was only casual interest. “Who else has come from the stars with power?”
Variel took the waterskin and poured a little into the pot, then drew a small knife out of her boot top and began cutting up the vegetables. She thought very hard about the question, her brow wrinkled and her tongue caught between the edges of her teeth. Finally she said, “I don’t think I know any, Ronica. I think you’d better ask Lord Jemeret.”
“Ask him what?” The voice was deep and even, and I recognized it from last night. Jemeret and Gundever, both of them grimy and looking healthily weary, had come up on the side of the tent. They were wearing heavy leather breastplates and carrying helmets. Variel leaped to her feet threw her arms around Gundever’s neck and kissed his sweaty cheek.
“Who else came from the stars with power besides your High Lady and me?” I asked him. “Variel couldn’t remember any more.” He regarded me steadily with those startling gray eyes, and for some reason my heart beat a little faster and I automatically gathered to slow it. His gaze dropped to my clear arms, the welt marks completely gone, and then he looked back up at me, his face unreadable.
“Sandalari,” he said at last, “priestess to the Genda. You will probably meet her at Convalee.”
“Did she come from the stars?” Variel asked, surprised.
“Are we all women?” I didn’t realize I’d asked the question until it was out.
“Sometimes men come,” Jemeret said. He nudged Gundever. “Let’s wash and change.”
As they started away, Gundever said, “We ought to come early to Convalee every time. These long spaces are wonderful for training.”
I had put together the only two four-syllable names I’d heard. “Is Venacrona a priest?” I asked Variel.
“He’s key priest,” she said, “but he is also the priest of the Boru.”
It all seemed suddenly overwhelming. I wished I’d spent several tendays asleep after I crashed here and awakened knowing all there was to know about this world, these people. Until I learned it, I could not manipulate it, not control it. And learning about it was so tiring, for nothing was ever quite what I expected it to be. I sank down on the ground inside the tent and rested my chin on my fists.
“What’s the matter?” Variel asked, startled and a little apprehensive.
“I’m praying!” I snapped, without thinking. “All this talk of priests has made me reverent.”
She left me alone. It must have been my tone, for I did nothing to correct the impression that I was angry at her. She went on preparing the meal in silence, and I sat still and stared at the ground.
I had given up believing in anything or anyone more important than myself when I was about fifteen—if, indeed, I had ever believed in it at all. For several years when we were around the age of ten, the three of us had been systematically exposed to the major religions of the Com: Purism, with its oversoul and the doctrine of self-sacrifice; Responsion, which posited a supreme being’s existence in the reactions of the environment and other people to each individual adherent; Epicyclism and its doctrine of the magnificence of a creator through the workings of a balanced, interdependent universe; the Macerates, who demanded worship of a preserver through atonement and proselytization; and Essencism, a pantheon of aspects of a deity said to watch over the great currents passing through civilization.
Coney seemed to take a little to Epicyclism, but Kray and I didn’t find anything to appeal to us in all the superstition we were listening to. Perhaps our scorn at the idea of finding truth in religion kept Coney from being more positive about his own inclinations, but he never made much of it. We teased him a little at first, then let it go without Mortel John even asking us to or lecturing us about it. We felt a kinship with Coney that, even as children, made us wary of undervaluing anything that he valued highly.
Perhaps I might have been more inclined toward worship of some sort if I had not, at about age eight, begun interacting with the MIs, the machine intelligences on which so much of the government’s power rested. The MIs—sociological, political, economic, technological, and astrophysical—held the bank of knowledge about the far-flung worlds of the Com. The machines helped the government rule. Each world had governors, and the government was centered on Orokell, but the ruling council was largely composed of the MIs, coordinating among all the other worlds. Other than Jasin Lebec, the only name from the central government known to most citizens of the Com was Pel Nostro, Com Counselor, the nominal liaison between humanity and the machines. Jasin Lebec, of course, was the only other Class A alive, and he was known because it was he who mediated disputes, made judgments, and negotiated from world to world. Someday, I always believed, it would be my role.
