Shadow's End

  Our willingness to be penned up seemed to have quieted some of the panicky gestures and voices around us. The clumsy guards backed off a little, allowing us to concentrate on the view of the omphalos our low hill afforded.

  The temple was now surrounded by several nearly complete concentric circles of kneeling men, some spirit people, and some songfathers, distinguishable by the colors of their robes, black for spirit people, hide brown for the others. Each had his own cushion, and each knelt at an equal distance from his fellows. The circles were neat and perfectly regular, and as new men arrived they filled in the gaps and started new circles concentric to the old ones. I saw no women anywhere near the temple.

  Lutha laid her hand on my arm and jerked her head toward the eastern cliffs. There were other black-clad forms huddled at the base of the buildings and in the windows. She borrowed the glasses from Trompe and gave them a good looking over before passing the glasses to me. They were the female spirit people, all of them disfigured or maimed and as thin as the men.

  Lutha said, "They're too thin for childbearing. Starving women don't get pregnant. They don't even menstruate."

  "But this valley is fertile!" I told her. "The soil is wonderful. And they have a river! They should have lots of food! More than we can raise in the canyons!" Perhaps it was significant that we had seen no sign of cultivation anywhere in the valley. The grass was of a different sort than I knew. Perhaps it too was sacred and farming was forbidden.

  "Look at the temple," urged Leelson. "At the floor!"

  The temple was in the form of a circular dais made up of three concentric steps. The first was below the pillars. The second formed the base for the circle of pillars that supported the roof. The third was inside the pillars and made up the floor of the temple itself. The south half, a semicircle of this inner circle, was one step higher yet, with massive metal links protruding at both the east and west ends of the low step. A long and heavy rope had been attached to the eastern link, then threaded around the golden base of the northernmost pillar, back across the raised floor, around the southernmost pillar, then back to the north again, making a Z shape.

  "It's a tackle," said Trompe.

  So much was obvious. We used similar gear to get water from the deepest wells. The loose end of the rope lay stretched along the ground to the north, and it was now being tugged at by a few dozen songfathers. They managed to pull the east end of the semicircular floor a hand span closer, rotating it on its diametric center, then nodded in satisfaction at one another as they dropped the rope and departed.

  "Those golden rings around the pillars are metal sheaves," remarked Leelson, who was looking at them through the glass. "What are they moving the floor for? And what's it made of?"

  "It is made of one great block of stone," I told them. "It was brought from the cliffs by the Gracious One, who, having created the great gate, then opened it unto us. The stone covers the navel of the world. The sacred sipapu. The gate through which we came. Now it will be uncovered and the beautiful people, those who carry the spirits of our beloved dead, will depart through this gateway to heaven."

  Leelson threw Lutha a startled glance, and she gave him a look that meant "don't ask." He glared, but he clamped his lips shut. I had just revealed the holiest secrets of our religion. It didn't matter now. There would be no secrets soon. He would see, as I would.

  More songfathers arrived. There were other brief episodes of rope tugging with nobody trying very hard. Groups came and went, rehearsing separately, accustoming themselves to the feel of the rope. It was as Leelson had said at one point during our journey: every participant was here for the first time. They knew what was to be done, but not precisely how to do it. They had to practice.

  By midafternoon there were tens of thousands of wains filling a shallow valley south and west of the temple, a good distance away. The ordinary men and women who had accompanied the song-fathers fringed every slight rise of ground, none of them close enough to get a good view and none of them equipped with glasses. Evidently these laymen were to view Tahs-uppi only from a distance.

  During the afternoon, groups of songfathers came up the hill to the pen to take a look at us. Late in the afternoon, one came who was well-known to me. Hah-Hallach, songfather of Cochim-Mahn. He summoned me to the fence.

  "Foolish woman, what have you done?" he demanded in a soft voice full of suppressed rage.

  "I have come to say good-bye to my mother," I replied.

  "You have led strangers here! You have blasphemed the Gracious One. You have risked our immortality!"

  "So, let the Gracious One deal with me," I said. "He can cause me little more pain than he has already done."

  "Because you doubted," he said, cursing. "Because you doubted!"

  I shook my head. "The sisterhood knows better than that."

  "All heretics. All doubters. Why you?" he shouted.

  I turned my face away, not answering, sobs welling up inside me. Lutha came to me, put her arms around me, and said across my head:

  "If you're asking her why she came here, it's because she believes what we have told her. Your people and your world are in danger. She does not care for herself, but she is going to have a child. She wants that child to have a future!"

  He turned his glaring eyes upon Lutha and spoke from a mouth contorted by wrath. "There is neither future for blasphemers nor children for those who doubt," he said. Then he turned on his heel and went back down the hill. Lutha's arms held me while I wiped my eyes.

  "Thank you for trying to help me," I said. "But there is no help against … them."

  "Them?" she whispered.

  "Old men who enslave us, then rebuke us when we rebel, calling us disobedient daughters, doubters, even heretics. I told him the sisterhood knows better. He did not like it much."

  We had no time for discussion. The crowd of songfathers and spirit people around the temple had grown larger and noisier, and now it erupted with shouts and waved fists as the Great Flag of the Alliance came bobbing and wavering toward us through the mob. The kneeling circles of spirit people opened up with some difficulty to let the flag come through, and I saw that each man had attached himself to a metal eye set into the ground. Now, what was that about? I scanned the temple, finding more such metal eyes set into the semicircular stone inside the temple.

  The flag jounced up the hill, carried by a youngish, long-faced man who walked beside the Procurator, he all aglitter like a fish just out of water. With them was a huge red-faced woman driving a chariot, and behind that a stolid Dinadhi driving a cart loaded down with heavy packs. Leelson opened the gate for them.

  The Procurator greeted us with a nod, then said to the woman, "Madam Luv, this is Leelson Famber."

  "Who has much to answer for," said the big woman, in a disapproving tone.

  Leelson took no notice of their disapproval. Fastigats, Lutha was to say, often don't take notice of others' disapproval, even that of other Fastigats. While the bearers stacked their burdens in a pile near the pen gate, Leelson made introductions as though we were at tea. The long-faced man was the ex-King of Kamir, who seemed embarrassed at seeing Leelson, though I could not imagine why. The large woman was Poracious Luv, an Alliance councilwoman, flamboyant, but with good sense, so Lutha said. I gathered she had been visiting the king when both of them had been dragged into this business more or less accidentally. Or, if not accidentally, for some reason they did not, at the moment, choose to explain.

  As the cart driver shut the gate on us and clomped off down the hill, Poracious joined Lutha and me at the fence while the three Fastigats went to the other side of the pen and put their heads together. They were looking at a small, hand-sized mechanism that the Procurator had taken from the baggage. A retriever, said Lutha, asking Poracious what it was they intended to retrieve.

  Instead of answering, the big woman took her by the shoulder, saying, "So, Lutha Tallstaff, what's happened thus far? Have you solved our problem?"

  Before Lutha
could answer, Leely appeared suddenly at the door of the wain, totally naked, his skin darkly and oddly blotched with chill. I went quickly to him, leaving Lutha to deal with the demands of Poracious Luv. I could hear them from inside the wagon.

  "Your son?" asked the big woman in a kindlier voice. "No doubt he likes the feel of air on his skin. I did, when I was smaller. Now I have rather too much skin for the air. I understand your son is an amazing artist."

  "Where did you hear that?" Lutha asked, surprised.

  "I heard of it in Simidi-ala," Poracious said. "I was told he did some excellent portraits there. There is one on the wall of a women's convenience. They have framed it and put Perspex across it. They say he is beloved of Weaving Woman."

  I glanced outside, to see Lutha much discomfited, digging her toe in the dirt.

  "I know all about him," Poracious confided. "You needn't be diffident or defensive with me. We are both women. We understand our feelings, whether these men and Fastigats do or not."

  "Leelson doesn't think Leely's human," Lutha blurted.

  "My, my," Poracious said. "He is exclusionary, is he not?"

  Exclusionary was an improper word in the Alliance, so Lutha had said, more than once. The Alliance likes to think of itself as an egalitarian organization.

  Lutha said, "That's not quite accurate where Leelson is concerned. His prejudice is limited to his own children. His family has certain well-defined expectations for its posterity, that's all."

  "Oh, my, don't we all know that," Poracious murmured. "I've met his mama." She winked at Lutha. "Don't take me for a fool, lovely girl. We fat old things have not laid aside our brains with our silhouettes. We put on flesh for as many reasons as others make love, have you ever thought about that? Out of lust, out of habit, out of greed, out of ambition. Out of time, too little or too much of it, or too little else doing in it." She sighed. "The flesh does not represent the spirit, for which observation one can thank the Great Gauphin. Though one wonders, sometimes, what the purpose is of either spirit or flesh."

  She gave Lutha a kindly pat, ignoring her confusion, then beckoned to the ex-king, who had been standing diffidently to one side, looking rather lonely.

  He came over, hesitantly, asking, "Has your group been threatened at all?"

  It seemed an odd question. Lutha said, "Threatened by the Kachis, certainly. Not particularly by anyone else until we came near the omphalos."

  "Have you learned anything?" asked Poracious.

  Lutha said, "We found a voice recording that Bernesohn Famber left in Cochim-Mahn. It was old, fragmentary, not at all clear. It mentioned three things—the abandoned gods of the Dinadhi; the omphalos, which is why we came here; and finally a few enigmatic words about the rejoinder of his posterity."

  "Abandoned gods?" the ex-king asked with an intent and eager look. "Tell me?"

  "The Dinadhi claim they came here from somewhere else, or perhaps were sent here from somewhere else, after being commanded to leave certain of their gods behind. In return, they were to receive"—she paused, glancing through the open door of the wain at me—"immortality?"

  "You don't sound sure," said the king, still in that intent voice.

  "I'm not. The whole matter's complicated." She led them away from the wagon slightly, and when I heard the king ask, "What's a Kachis?" I knew she was telling them about our beliefs.

  They talked quietly, then Poracious's voice rose:

  "These Kachis must have a lengthy life span if one of them has been around since Bernesohn's time!"

  Even Lutha forgot to keep her voice down. "I have no idea whether there's been one or a succession of different ones. Saluez believed the Kachis cannot die, but we saw dead ones during our trip, which has sorely tried her faith."

  Tried, but not defeated, I said to myself as I fastened Leely's shirt.

  "Does this relate in some way to the Ularian problem?" the ex-king asked.

  I came out of the wagon, bringing the now clothed Leely to stand beside his mother as the king went on: "I see no connection. These Kachis may be nasty, but the Ularians are … quite inexpressibly vile!"

  I looked at him across my veil, asking, "Have you seen the Ularians?

  "I've seen them. And tasted them. I've heard the sound of the waves on the world where they are now, heard the scream of seabirds and the weeping of the girl who's there watching them." He shook his head, making a face. "They're … horrible beyond belief."

  "What do they look like?" I asked.

  The ex-king gestured. "Big. Big as one of your hives. Shaped, oh, like any old thing at all. A massive middle, rather shapeless, with a lot of appendages or tentacles hanging beneath like a fringe. They float. Or they sit like mountains. Or they build themselves into rancid walls of flesh that can surround an encampment! On one side, their skin is bare, and they are able to show pictures on their skins."

  I felt my eyes widen. It was an unbelievable description. Leely slipped loose and started purposefully toward the fence surrounding us. Lutha caught him just as he was climbing through.

  "Dananana," he cried, struggling to get away from her. "Dananana."

  She pulled him into her arms and asked me to get his harness from the wagon. He hated it, but sometimes it was the only solution. I fetched it and we buckled it behind him, fastening the tether tightly to Lutha's belt.

  He looked at the harness, decided he couldn't get out at the moment, then opened his pants, peed onto the dirt, and sat down to make a mud picture on the bottom board of the fence. I saw Lutha flinch, but Poracious Luv watched him with lively interest and no discernible disapprobation.

  About this time the three Fastigats concluded their conference. Both Leelson and Trompe spat over the fence and then wiped their mouths. The Procurator said something to them, then calmly let himself out the gate and went off down the hill. The spirit people and songfathers had left an aisle open all the way from the pen to the temple at the bottom. He was confronted almost at once by one of those who had accompanied him up the hill in the first place.

  "Hah-Rianahm," Poracious whispered. "Lord high-muck-a-muck among this rabble."

  The Dinadhi's voice was strident. I could hear him clearly, though he spoke from some distance.

  " … must return to the pen!" he howled.

  " … must take time to experience this record," shouted the Procurator in stentorian tones, overriding the other, no small achievement considering how the skinny old man was screaming.

  "No time! Tahs-uppi!"

  "Until Tahs-uppi!"

  Gabble and shout, pushing and shoving, the Procurator was thrust back up the hill and through the gate that Leelson opened for him. The three Fastigats exchanged wry looks that said the result of the foray had not been unexpected. Then all three of them began dragging items from the baggage pile, opening sacks and cases, sorting out items of equipment. "When they had unpacked and assembled the first half-dozen elements, Lutha said:

  "Isn't that a wide-range retriever? The kind entertainers use?"

  Lutha was looking questioningly at Poracious, but the large woman was preoccupied with what was going on at the temple. There the circles of kneeling men were completely filled in and various ritual personages with towering headdresses had taken up positions atop the raised semicircular section of floor. As we watched, songfathers manned the entire length of the pull rope, and half a dozen black-clad spirit men were pouring the contents of large jars upon the northeast quadrant of the temple floor—oil, I presumed, to make easier the moving of the great stone lid across this lower stone. When their jars were empty, they departed. One of the hierarchy shouted a command. Though we could not see musicians from where we stood, the sounds of their instruments came to us clearly: drums, gongs, trumpets, panpipes, and several sonorous stringed instruments.

  First a blaring fanfare, then a whomp, whomp, whomp of drums and deep-toned plucked strings, then a shouted command, and those along the rope took up the slack. They began to tug, grunting with each pull. The arrangeme
nt of the rope allowed a one-quarter turn of the semicircular stone, and I held my breath, awaiting what this displacement would reveal.

  At first it was only a darkness. A darkness within darkness. A circular blackness. A pit, perhaps. A pit smeared with cloudy concentric lines to represent a … I struggled to find a word. A vortex.

  A blotch spun past, appearing at the edge farther from us, disappearing behind the edge nearest us. Well then, it wasn't a representation of a vortex, it was a vortex. A … maelstrom. Though it didn't look like water.

  "Not water," said the ex-king doubtfully. "It doesn't look like water."

  Leelson cursed briefly behind me. He had dropped some part of the device and now knelt to attach it once more. The loose parts were almost all attached; I assumed they were finished with it. Trompe knelt beside Leelson and they thrust a record file through a narrow slot.

  Poracious followed my glance.

  "A record from Perdur Alas," she murmured. "Unfiltered, if I don't miss my guess!"

  I only half heard her, for the ex-king made a muffled exclamation, drawing my attention back toward the temple where the steadily grunting line, ungh-ah, ungh-ah, ungh-ah, had moved the floor the entire quarter turn the tackle permitted. Now the whirling darkness was fully disclosed. The music stopped. We heard a shouted command. Then trumpets again, and a quicker tempo from the drums. The rope went slack. The ritual personages unshackled it from the eye, hauled it in, and carried thick coils of it away eastward to the accompaniment of panpipes and gongs. The members of the orchestra marched onto the northeast quadrant of the great stone lid and fettered themselves, facing north, while over their left shoulders the vortex whirled with hypnotic force. The musicians' hair whipped in the rising wind.

  "Look away," demanded Poracious. "Don't let your eyes get sucked in. Observe—the musicians are wearing blinkers, and none of the people are looking at it."

  As indeed they were not. The temple stood on a slight rise; almost all of the observers were on lower levels, where they couldn't see the vortex; if any were higher than we, they would see only the temple roof or the processions of spirit people and songfathers who were marching hither and yon, waving banners and censers while drums pounded, gongs sounded, trumpets brayed, and panpipes tweedled breathily. When the music stopped, no one looked toward the temple. All eyes were searching the far canyon edges, where they opened into the valley.