Darkness Risen (The Ava'Lonan Herstories Book 4) (24 page)

“It is our belief that this is so, Highness,” Imraja
replied.

“Who are ‘we’?”

“We are the ol’bey’woman K’lad’mi and myself,
Highness.”

Silonyi wondered tiredly how much of a fuss to make.
Then she decided to forego her usual suspicions. If she were sick enough to warrant
outside help in her advisors’ purview, why go through an act of being
suspicious? In light of Imraja’s unspoken words two turns before, the need to
distrust seemed absurd.

“Then I give all permission and blessing necessary
to enlist and entreat the aid of our well met Priest,” she said, again
inclining her head. She did not miss the brief, minute look of surprise on
Imraja’s face. Clearly the Voice was expecting a show of belligerent
obtuseness, and maybe, before, Silonyi would have given it because such was her
nature, but right now she just did not have the strength. If this Priest could
make her feel better, why not let him try?

My, how a little bit of pain and discomfort can
change one,
the sour voice of a turbulent World seemed to sneer.
So pliable and
compliant! So malleable! What will she say yes to next?

And should she ignore the concern of her Voice and ol’bey’woman?
another asked.
Should
she be difficult because that is the way she has always been?

Silonyi dismissed both voices and watched with the
eye that hurt less as the Priest, after giving her a curt nod, stalked around
the lain, while the smaller version of him, obviously his assistant, began
setting up a small camp at the foot of the pallet. He shook his beaded and
feathered and rattle-draped spear at certain intervals, pausing to murmur, then
continued his circuit about the place. When he was finished, he bade all to sit
in a circle around the pallet with Silonyi as its apex and the assistant at the
center. The boy pulled out a very small set of tym’tyn and struck up a slow
beat as the servants in the lain stopped their various tasks and followed his
directions. They all settled into place. The Priest Ejai’li then uttered a
sharp cry and the assistant broke into a fast, driving percussion, chanting,
making an accompanying exhaling sound, a syllable of air that helped give
potency to the Rites of Ak’ana. The Priest leaped into a wild dance around the
circle, swinging his short spear like a bo. A light breeze sprang up, reminding
Silonyi of the beginnings of the last Rite of Solu that she had performed
before the - accident. The zephyr chased the Priest’s footsteps, giving up -
something, or perhaps taking away something. Then Silonyi recognized the traits
of a cleansing rite. Twelve times the priest and the wind made the circuit
around the group, each time the moving air growing stronger and each time both
stopping at her side - he could not continue because the head of the pallet
pressed against the wall. It was almost as if she were being partially excluded
from the cleansing.

Why? Don’t I need it, or won’t it have effect on me?
Perhaps it’ll obscure what’s ailing me if I were included?
It was all very
puzzling.

Finally the rite ended with the Priest directly
facing her across the circle. Abruptly the pain began to lessen. He gave a
benediction, and in the next breath sternly ordered all but Silonyi and his
novice to leave. Silonyi was amazed at the immediate compliance.
Do all
Gadayi command such authority?

When the lain was empty, the novice helped his
teacher to take off all the vestments and ceremonial jewelry until he was
stripped to a loincloth and the paint; over his body the novice placed a white
linen robe with gold embroidery and on his head, which was almost completely
bald, a matching kufi. The novice also removed his own garb and donned a
simple, knee-length de’siki.

The Priest sat at the foot of the pallet, beckoned
her closer. With the help of the novice she moved nearer to him.

“I am Ejai’li dul Shai, of the Elah’ori Gadayi of Ak’ana,”
he said in a smooth, pleasant voice, glancing at the novice who nodded and
began mixing various oils and unguents without further need of instruction. “My
assistant is Kom’mon’li sul Shai, my brother, both in and out of the Elah’ori.”

“I am Silonyi sul -” she stopped as he raised a hand
and shook his head.

“Tell me only your given name, please, Princess.
More might impede what is to follow.”

Mystified, she began again. “I am Silonyi.”

“And can you tell me everything you remember before
your ‘accident,’ Silonyi?”

She nodded and dug into her memory, fogged as it was
by turns of pain. She did not, however, fully describe the rite she had
performed, merely saying that it was the Rite of Solu. Nor did she voice the
suspicions that she had over-heard from the Voice.

“After the flash of light, I remember waking up to
pain,” she concluded.

He gazed steadily at her for a long moment, until
she started to feel like a boro under the circling eye of a tar’rari, bird of
prey. “I shall attempt to help you as much as I am able, based on what you have
told me. You have questions, but they must wait until my findings are
completed. Is there anything further that you wish to add?”

At her head-shake he gestured to the novice and
stood. The boy came and set a small gold-rimmed calabash between them. Then he
offered a black bundle to Silonyi, which turned out to a black, shapeless robe.
She looked at Ejai’li. His assistant helped him again divest himself of his
outer garments, then painted red ceremonial symbols among the white. Shrugging,
she struggled into the robe, having a care for the fading pain in her head.

To the side, the novice beat tym’tyn and tuk’ni in a
drowsy, hypnotic beat. Ejai’li murmured a ceremonial rite, his head and body
weaving slightly with the current of the rhythm, his eyes closed and his body soon
bathed in sweat. Silonyi began to sway to the beat also.

His eyes snapped open and the drums stopped
simultaneously. His gaze bore down on Silonyi, crushing her with internal fire
and awesome presence, as of standing at the foot of a smoking mountain. She
felt like cringing but held her poise. He reached down, never taking his eyes
off her, picked up the bowl and offered it to her.

“My Goddess must know that you do this of your own
free will,” he said, his voice deep and resonant, as if it came from all around
and not from his body. “All who petition my Goddess, Ak’ana, must be open to
Her and Her judgment. All who seek Her wisdom, must enter Her influence without
reservation. Do you wish Her guidance?”

“I want to know,” she said in a small voice, “I want
to know what’s wrong with me.”

He raised the bowl higher and she took it, sipped
from it - it was coconut water with something bitter mixed into it that burned
its way down her throat.

*:Drink half,:* came his stern instruction.

She complied, tried not to make a distasteful
expression as she handed it back. He drank also then set the bowl between them
again.

The bitter stuff burned in her stomach in a bright
lump, then seemed to spread out into a general warmth that made her feel - not
drowsy, but detached, like very strong wine.

Through the detachment she watched the novice give
the priest a drink of something else. The Priest began to shake, his muscles
spasming, his face vacant. He wove before her eyes, distorted and unreal.

Someone eased her back and the world danced on a
crazy tilt. There was a sharp cry, but she could not coordinate enough muscles
to sit up and investigate. The drums began again, faster, frenzied, and a shape
began to gyrate around the edges of her vision.

Burning eyes. A vast, almost overwhelming presence.
A wordless question. She answered. Another question, sharper, deeper, more insistent.
Again she answered.

“In the Light of
my Goddess,

In the Dark of
the morrow,

In the Heat of
Av’s eternal truth,

Bequeath unto me
your true nature!”

Pain lanced through her mind, and she screamed a
numb scream into the wavering detachment of the lethargy surrounding her. It
held her, and she felt as if she were being pulled apart by two ancient forces,
one above and one beneath, if above and beneath could exist in the confused
floating of her senses. She arched and screamed again as she was stretched
taut, and snapped back into herself. She would have cried, but the impulse
could not seem to find her eyes. Only the screams seemed able to find their way
out of her.

A murmur almost like pleading fluttered to her ears.
A vast deliberation or consideration, a stern declaration in reply. Darkness.

darkness, wrung
and wrought into fantastic shapes, turned...

She opened her eyes, coming to consciousness all at
once. Her world seemed to consist of darkness and pain of late, of opposing
poles. She tried to sit up, and immediately a supporting hand helped her. She
saw it was the novice. Ejai’li was just beyond the pallet, deep in some rite of
communion.

“I have found - something,” the Priest said
unexpectedly, without turning, his face still raised in the patch of Av in
which he knelt, his arms spread. He lowered his arms and looked at her.

“Tell me what you have found, holy one.” She found
that she was no longer in the black robe and he had once again donned his
gold-trimmed vestments.

“You are under the influence of two very powerful
and conflicting Rites,” he said, coming to sit close and taking her hand. “Both
are very ancient and almost equally matched.” He dabbed his fingers into a
fragrant oil and herb mixture brought by the assistant and rubbed it into the
skin on the back of her hand, then traced a symbol of power there.

“What are these rites?” she asked as he repeated the
anointment on the other hand, then used a different mixture on her palms.

“As near as I can tell,” he said, moving down to her
feet, “they are both known as the Rite of Solu.” This clearly troubled him.
“One is steeped in blood, the other tinged with pain. They both lay claim to
you, and both claims are equally strong. But both now seem to have rejected
you.”

“What does that mean?” she wondered.

“It means that they and the powers behind them have
both denied you sustenance. You cannot perform either now.”

Silonyi’s head whirled. She
had
been exposed
to two different Rites that went by that name; but which one was true and which
one false? And how could the Rite that she had only witnessed once have as
strong a claim to her as the one she had been practicing all her life?

“So what should I do?” she asked as he made a sign
on her chest and back and moved to her forehead. He then sat back on his heels and
took out a small suede pouch which revealed seven objects that he called ori hadai
- two jewel-like stones, three almost cubic bones, a petrified seed bigger than
her thumb and a cowrie-shell from the distant coast. He held these up and
murmured a rite over them, then cast them. He studied their seemingly random
pattern, then looked up at her.

“You must choose.”

“Choose one of the rites?”
But both reject me.
Neither will sustain me,
she thought desperately.

He nodded, pointed out a crooked path in the set of
the objects. “You are at a branch in your life’s path, and you stand with a
foot upon each branch. Soon you will have to choose one branch or the other.”

“How do I choose?”

He raised his eyebrows at her. “You will face a
series of decisions or tests, and whatever decision you make determines the
path that you will ultimately follow.”

Silonyi remembered her doomed teacher, looked at the
ori hadai. “Which one is the right one?”

“All paths are equally valid. You must choose which
one is right for you.”

She licked her lips. “Tell me, Ejai’li’ra - would -
would a sense of
wrongness
be tied to this? Could this sensation be
trying to influence me in one direction or another?”

Ejai’li looked intrigued. “‘Sense of wrongness?’
Tell me about this.”

Silonyi told him about all the instances when she
felt the wrongness, carefully editing the contents of the meeting of her mother’s
allies. He nodded understandingly.

“That is one path trying to show you its way, so
that you do not summarily choose the other.”

“Do the ori hadai say anything else?” she asked.

He cast them again. “They say that your decision
might be pivotal in the coming turn of the Age. What you decide may have very
far-reaching repercussions. And they say that you must go to the Ritious City.”

The Ritious City? The heart of the Aba’jae’s
influence?
“How - how can that be? How will going to the Ritious City fix anything? And
how can my one decision change the course of the turning Age?” And if it were
so important, would it not take place where she was strongest, here in T’chi’la?

“Because all things are interconnected, Princess.
All decisions shape the future of a people - and even the smallest choice can
eventually bring about the movement of mountains. The way you choose to go may
change the entire course of this world and its people for generations to come -
or it may only change you. As to why the Ritious City, that is where most
pivotal decisions of the turn of the Age will take place. You must go there.
Soon.”