Darkness Risen (The Ava'Lonan Herstories Book 4) (23 page)

Audola stepped out of the main entrance of T’Av’li,
and descended the stairs with slow grace. She looked stunning in the early morn
light, none the worse for her personal eve’s vigil. Her skin seemed like amber
over burnished bronze, and her hair was a river of obsidian that hung in a
single, heavy braid composed of the numerous smaller guinne that tamed the
natural tight spirals of her tresses, rather than the traditional Dakua crown. It
hung down her back and looped over her arm to keep it from dragging on the
ground. She walked alone, naked and shorn of clothing and entourage and any
recognizable device of office save her hair and the subtle glow of her av’rita.
Her demeanor was still the same as ever, serene, almost aloof without the
coldness, as if she did such things every turn. She flowed down the last step
and walked the short path to the Gate of T’Av’li. There she stopped and spread
her arms and the aloofness fell away as she smiled a welcoming, embracing
smile, and received the loving smiles of her people in return. She did not
think about those who were not smiling, but plotting against her. This turn she
was in the Goddesses hands.

Still smiling, she stepped on the Golden Way, the
same path that Jeliya had traversed the turn before, but the quality of the Way
had changed, allowing anyone to traverse it. A giant cheer rose and those
nearest her began singing the De’ak’ani, the traditional song that began the De’en’nu
Festival. She began walking, unprotected and unescorted, on the path through
the crowds. No warru was near enough to reach her by foot through this throng.
They might av’tun, but not in time to prevent anything. This was the truest
test of the love of the people for their sovereign. She could surely protect
herself, but any attempt on her life would be a horrible threat to the morale
of the masses, a break in the faith placed in the High Queen. The people
themselves, with their song and their love, put protective rites upon her, and
any weapon or offensive rite strong enough to breach these would mean that
there was a significant faction of Queens against her.

No such attempt had ever been made.

Audola moved in measured paces down the middle of
the prepared way. It was wide, but not wide enough to prevent anyone who wanted
to touch her from doing so. But to do so, they would have to actually step onto
the path. It was the High Queen’s Way, not exactly, explicitly sacrosanct, but
by tradition inviolate. Setting foot on the path also implied a threat to the
High Queen and the trespasser would be dealt with by her or his neighbors.

She walked serenely down the path, unhurried, not
flinching away or avoiding the outstretched hands that attempted to brush her
arms and shoulders, and every so often, even reaching out to be touched. One
hand actually lightly caught hers and drew her over to kiss her fingers. She
followed it and the outstretched hands brushed her arms and legs like gentle
kisses of reverence, bathing her in soft caresses. Not one hand was heavy upon
her, not one grabbed or grew coarse. Soon they were touching almost every part
of her, but always in worship. After a polite sils she moved on, leaving
worshipful admirers in her wake, carried along by the sea of voices and the sea
of hands.

Once she disappeared in the distant folds of the straightway,
heads turned. The singing followed the High Queen. Once she was out of sight,
the people looked back to the Palace entrance. Now the real spectacle would come.
Now all the rumors and melae flying around about the Heir would either be
confirmed or laid to rest. Was she really crippled? Had she been captured and
disfigured? Was she horribly sick with a version of the Zehj’Ba, just like the
Av’rujo? Would she be able to walk the Golden Way in the footsteps of the High Queen
to the Festival Grounds, symbolically in the footsteps of inherited power?

The crowds hushed, anxious, excited, anticipatory,
and a little fearful. The Heir would be their leader in the times of trouble,
if what had filtered down from the upper echelons was true. What did it mean
when Turo’dan was upon them, if she could not walk the path? Would she be weak,
then, too?

She appeared at the top of the steps leading down to
the Gate. A sound, indeterminate, moved through the throngs as she came into
view. She, like her mother, was dressed only in a slight pec’ta, and her own
beauty and power. But when she stepped to the head of the Way and paused, a
sound of shock greeted her. The effects of her ordeal were still visible. Her
skin had not quite returned to its former glory, not glowing as the High Queen’s
had. She was still lean, though not as lean as when she had first been found, but
there was not a spare ounce of fat on her. Compared to what the people had seen
of her before, she was half-emaciated. Dark circles still underscored her eyes,
and of course, her back was still a road map of slowly fading scars. Many noted
how she squinted faintly in Av’s gentle light.

She smiled and gasps of empathy were returned. She
raised her arms and when the people saw the slight impression of her ribs
through her flesh, a rising noise of disbelief came from the crowd. Some of the
young women began to shed silent tears. Some of the young men raised voices in
outrage that anything should harm the person of the beloved Heir. Their
thoughts, unguarded, were like shouts ringing in the air.

Jeliya dropped her arms and steeled herself for the
march to the Festival Grounds. Warru would be moving through the crowds,
flanking her, ready to rush to her side should she falter.

Me, falter,
she thought grimly, trying not to heave
a sigh or take a deep breath.
Look what I have come to.

Valiantly she stepped onto the path. Once she
started, by tradition, she was not really supposed to stop. But she knew that
she might have to.

The light that suffused the path when the High Queen
had passed had been golden, light and sweet, buoyant. The power that surrounded
the High Heir now was heavier, richer. It was not just love, it was -strength, strength
in the form of formless av’rita, as the people around her unconsciously tried
to help her. It also buoyed her up, tried to fill her. She fought not to
stagger under the weight of it, not to be crushed under the crowd’s combined
will to help. She took as much as she needed to sustain herself and held the
rest at bay before it overwhelmed her. It also magnified the light of Av, which
made the beginnings of a spectacular headache. She pulled herself upright as
straight as she could, and with slow, measured, almost hesitant steps began to
eat away the length of the path.

Only after she was well past the starting point did
someone remember to start singing. The song rose and swelled behind her,
feeding the rites that surrounded her and making the weight of av’rita even
heavier.

Jeliya struggled against them. She knew her people
meant well, but they were doing more harm than good. What was hard enough alone
was made harder by good intentions of unasked for aid, and she could not do
anything about it but endure.

Or can I?
After an eve of fasting and keeping vigil,
her strength seemed a ghost of a thing beneath the battering will of the
people, and her mind a fog of doubt. The more they sought to help, the more it
drained her. She could not quite make the idea trying to surface in her brain
come clear. Then, like mist through rain, it came to her.

The Av’rujo.
At the Bolorn’toyo, the Av’rujo would
have to deal with av’rita from a thousand different minds, with a thousand
different pay’ta’ri, for light carried information about its source.
How
does she do it? Does the Av’ru, perhaps, help in some way?

She had to do something. So, as much as she hated
to, she stopped and concentrated, imagining herself not as a vessel, but as a
conduit, a hall of mirrors within her soul. She directed the wild, many voiced
av’rita to her tenuous connection with the Av’ru. The thin connection ballooned
open, letting the av’rita pass without pooling, and it seemed as if a beam of
light shot from her straight toward the heart of Av. It collected in the Av’ru,
and bubbled there, but the Av’ru was infinitely vaster than the av’rita of ten
thousand minds. The different discordant pay’ta’ri quieted into the single song
of one. And then it shot back down and filled Jeliya, so that she glowed, and
the sand beneath her feet fused to glass. But it was not her song, but the song
of something bigger, even than the Av’ru. It was too much. It was like being
lifted by the molten hand of Av, and she fought to move forward through liquid
light, but she could not escape it. She threw it away in every direction - and
felt it absorbed by the multitudes around her. When the feedback finally ended,
she found herself on the ground at the end of the path, and beneath her beaten
body was a perfect impression in glass. And the throngs were standing in hushed
silence around her.

CHAPTER
XII

the darkness turned, worlds lost on its
infinite folds, myriad wrinkles in space and time...

The
Worlds turned. One held pain above her, sharp and spiny like spikes of bone
honed to knives. The Other held pain below her, dull and soft and wet like
pulverized tissue clenched in hand.

She has rejected us
, the first
World-thing chimed, clicking the pain-bones above her.

She has betrayed us
, the second
World-thing hissed, squishing the pulp-pain below her.

Her feet are on the path; she will choose,
the World above
her sang.

Let her be without the countenance of either until
she chooses,
the World below her rasped.

And Silonyi found that she could not reach to either
World, that she was caught in the in-between places, cold and void and utterly
alone. She saw that each World sat upon a path of some type and she began to
spin, first oriented to one path, then the other, but she could not see which
way was the right way. She tried to cry out, tried to throw her arms out to slow
her spin, but she was bound by some unseen force and she only spun faster and
faster, becoming dizzy, and then both Worlds threw their held pain at her...

the darkness
turned, playing upon honed bones strung with flesh torn into cords, dizziness
and pain the melody of its theme...

...Dizziness and pain. Those two sensations, like
old friends, found her in the depths of unconsciousness and followed her up to
waking, so that they would be with her when she finally opened her eyes. And
they stayed close so that she could always be aware of their presence.
Dizziness and pain. The dizziness was like spinning opposite to the rest of the
world, or perhaps between worlds, both pulling on her to claim her. And the
pain was sharp like knifed, crushed bone and dull, throbbing, like battered
tissue. She woke with the beginnings of a groan on her lips, but even the
prelude to sound made the two pains meet in a slice of torn flesh and sent the
dizziness to whirling even faster, so she whimpered only in her thoughts. Her eyes
opened but saw only the keen edge of blood-red pain; she squeezed them closed
again and opened her ears instead. There the pain was less and she managed to
push the dizziness away enough so that she could at least hear what was going
on around her, if she could not see.

“...Come, here, out of her earshot, should she
awaken without us knowing,” K’lad’mi, the ol’bey’woman said, her voice low.

“How fares she?” That was Imraja, also talking in a
hushed voice.
Don’t they know how keen being skilled in chi’rito’ka makes my
hearing?

“She is recovering as quickly as can be expected
from the fracture in her skull,” the ol’bey’woman replied, “though I cannot
imagine what would cause her to be thrown clear across the
garden
from
within the lain. And - well, the skull fracture is not so hard to mend, but
there is something else wrong. She is showing the first signs of - it is the
lor’den, but there is an aspect I do not understand, an unknown quality to her
symptoms I have never seen before. And it is this other unknown that really
worries me. I would gather that this is tied into whatever it was that happened
while she was performing the Rite of Solu. But since none of us knows what
did
happen, and nothing like this has ever happened before, I am lost as to how to
begin to cure her. I did my best to take the dissonance out of her pay’ta, but
it keeps coming back. Without knowing the exact cause, I am powerless to stop
its advance.” K’lad’mi lowered her voice even more. She sounded very disturbed.
Silonyi strained to hear.

“In strictest confidence, Imraja, there has always
been something peculiar about the pay’ta of both the Queen and the Heir. I have
never said anything before, because neither of them has ever had a serious
enough injury to where it would make a difference. I - cannot say more,
without...”

“You have my oath that no harm shall come to you
from your words spoken to me by any word or action of my own,” Imraja said in a
grave voice. Then their voices disappeared completely. Silonyi wanted to curse
in frustration.

I want to know what’s wrong with me!
But the pain
stepped closer and reminded her of its boundaries. She stopped trying to hear
them and let her mind drift back to a light doze.

*:I can take away the dissonance,:* K’lad’mi ‘tunned,
*:but when I try to fill her with av’rita so that her body can continue to heal
itself, it does not - stay. It drains out of her as if - I do not know what. As
if it has rejected her, or she is rejecting it.:*

*:And her chi’rita?:*

*:Chi’rita? I was not looking for that. Very few
practice the advanced forms of chi’rita anymore. It is a lost art, disfavored
since its perversion by the Outcast One.:*

*:It is a - peculiarity,:* Imraja said delicately,
*:that both the Queen and her Heir have - both are versed in chi’rita and use
it quite extensively, I believe. I - I suspect that they may even use an aspect
of it when they perform the Rite of Solu.:*

K’lad’mi looked shocked and intrigued all at once.
*:How did you come to this conclusion?:* she asked, after making the same oath
to the Voice.

*:Small things that I have observed,:* Imraja
replied, leaning closer as if guarding her thoughts from all but the healer.
But she did not elaborate further, saying instead, *:Let us just say that I am
a bit sensitized to its workings, and I see and feel hints of it around the
Queen and daughter both. This is only what I suspect.:* She paused, then
continued as if she were plunging ahead without really having a choice. *:There
is something else.:*

K’lad’mi gestured for her to continue. Imraja
hedged, looking off into the distance of the outer lains. When she spoke again,
she seemed to have completely changed conversations. *:Did you know that when a
major Rite is used to construct something permanent, the types of ritas used
must
be included in the name? Like av’ani. And T’Av’li.:*

*:I wasn’t aware of that,:* K’lad’mi said guardedly,
not sure where the conversation was going.

*:Most people are not,:* Imraja nodded, still
looking off to the side. Then her eyes settled on K’lad’mi, and the ol’bey’woman
knew that the Voice was about to impart some little-known and probably
unpleasant tidbit of information.

*:Did you know that the place where our Queen and
Heir go to perform their turns’ Rites is called the chi’av’an?”

*:The
chi
’av’an...?:* Enlightenment, not
exactly pleasurable enlightenment, was dawning in K’lad’mi’s eyes.

*:I went near the - the place to investigate, though
I did not violate the consecrated ground,:* Imraja said, as if the first
conversation had not been interrupted by her non-sequester. *:A wall of force
of some kind had sealed it off and the area around it for two arm lengths. It
is unlike any other I have ever seen. Save maybe the Av’ru.:*

K’lad’mi was silent, assimilating all this as
gracefully as she could. How the Voice came to know all of this - she knew
Imraja would never say, so there was no point in asking. And the deeper
ramifications? She could not even begin to guess. She did not think she wanted
to know even if she could guess.

Imraja gave her a long sils to digest the
information before saying, *:This is all to say that the unknown quality to her
illness - may have something to do with the use of chi’rita.:*

K’lad’mi nodded understanding. *:I will look into
it. But I must warn you that if that is the case, then I can do very little to
help her. No one has seen an illness related to the use of chi’rita since
probably the first High Queen’s time.:*

“This is serious,” Imraja said aloud, softly,
glancing back to the lain where the Princess lay. “Can you think of anything we
can do?”

“We-ell, yes, though I’m not sure the Queen will be
amenable to it.”

“What is it?”

“A Priestess or Priest of the Temple of Ya’kano or
of Ak’ana. All ol’bey-trained must become at least initiates - most of us are
priestesses and priests ourselves. But the Higher Priestesses may have an
understanding that the ol’bey do not - for those who live almost constantly in
Av’s influence and are so much more powerful in av’rito’ka are sure to have
more insight into this than we who are not so deep within Av power. Like the
High Queen and her Heir - their positions and av’rito’ka almost demand that
they are the equivalent of High Gadayi of Ya’kano. But whether the servants of
Ya’kano - or Ak’ana, who are the only ones known to actively practice the pure
forms of chi’rita - will come is anyone’s guess. The Gadayi have not graced the
halls of T’chi’la in hundreds of cycles, as far as we all know.” And the fact
that the Palace itself had a name, though unofficial, and that that name also
used the syllable
chi
, the spirit of air, had new meaning for K’lad’mi.
No other palace in the Realm save T’Av’li was named. And T’Av’li was the seat
of greatest power of av’rita in the entire Realm. What did that make T’chi’la?

“Send a message to the Gadayi of Ya’kano and Ak’ana and
make the appropriate offerings. Let us hope that one will come,” Imraja said
decisively.

“What of the Queen?”

“The Queen cannot undo what has occurred before she
could forbid it,” Imraja replied calmly. “If she has objections when she learns
of this, I will take full responsibility. I have only the Princess’s best
interests at heart.”

K’lad’mi nodded and went to send for messengers and
scribes.

Imraja, tiredness whispering to her, looked in on
Silonyi. And Silonyi awakened as they resumed talking, and was aware of the
Voice, though she gave no sign.

She is not totally lost to us,
Silonyi
suddenly heard from Imraja, though the thought was not directed toward her - it
was more like a loud whisper that one overhears, if a thought could be loud.
The
- aberrations of the mother do not seem to have taken full root in the
daughter. We will save her, no matter the cost.

And though the slur against her mother should have
outraged her, Silonyi was strangely touched by the loyalty and devotion of the
Voice.

So, there’s something peculiar about my pay’ta, is
there? Something so peculiar that the ol’bey’woman can’t understand it? And I was
thrown out of the chi’av’an, across the garden?
No wonder her
head hurt as if it had been used for warru dom’ma-practice.
What could have
done that?
She strained to remember, but not too hard because the pain was
hovering over her and the dizziness was somewhere off to the left, waiting for
her to do something stupid.
Was there
- she furrowed her brow and was
rewarded by a sharp prod from pain -
was there an explosion?
There had.
What was the last thing she remembered?

The sins of the mother.
She wanted to
groan, but pain looked sharply at her. She had asked that question and then the
world had turned to a universe luciferous with penumbran gems.

I
will
find out the significance of
that phrase,
she vowed fiercely, and dizziness decided that it was time to
visit her again.
But - later...

the light,
sluggish and slow, turned...

The Priest of Ak’ana was an apparition of beads,
feathers, brightly patterned strips of aku cloth and white body paint, all
topped by a wooden mask that covered his face. He entered the lain with Imraja,
and was followed by a smaller, less severely costumed version of himself.

Imraja bowed to Silonyi and then to the Priest.
“This is Ejai’li, Second High Priest to the Goddess Ak’ana,” the Voice said by
way of introduction. “He has come by my request and countenance to this place,
but will only stay and give all aid that is within his power with your
blessing, Highness.”

Silonyi inclined her head with crystalline care to
the holy man, least it crack with pain, then gazed with a pain-limned squint
speculatively at the Voice. “I bid the High Priest welcome, but is his aid
required?”