Ever (26 page)

We should have thought this out and decided what to
say. “I was at your brother's wedding. I met Kezi there.”

“I want to hear everything,” Aunt Fedo says. “Olus and Kezi, speak slowly. There's no hurry.”

“Yes, slowly,” Mati says. “The priest can wait.”

Senat glances obliquely at the altar flame and says nothing.

Mati moves her chair close to Kezi's and touches her cheek. “Nothing is as soft.”

Kezi catches her mati's hand and holds it.

Senat says, “My eyes have ached from not seeing my Kezi.”

“Aren't you going to eat, Pado? Mati? Aunt Fedo?” Kezi leans over the table and puts food on a plate for each of them. “A large slice of barley cake for Aunt Fedo.”

Aunt Fedo says, “Your voice is different, Kezi. My rabbit ears hear—I'm not certain—an echo. Why is that?”

Kezi shrugs. It's the goddess in her voice.

No one eats.

“Speak, daughter,” Senat says.

She nods. “Aunt Fedo introduced me to Elon. Remember?”

“I remember. He was so eager to meet you!”

I hear people in the street outside the red door. A dozen priests are coming.

“He persuaded me to walk—”

“Go on,” Merem says.

“Listen . . . do you hear?”

The street door opens. The priests hurry across the courtyard. A priest knocks over a potted fern. Everyone hears the crash.

KEZI

T
HE PRIESTS ARE CLAD
in yellow tunics. The first one to enter wears a silver necklace. A high priest. He has a squared-off black beard and wears a curled wig as the asupu did.

Pado stands. Mati moves her chair closer to mine and doesn't let my hand go.

“Senat . . .” the high priest says. He knows Pado. “We've come for your daughter.”

Mati's grip tightens. “Take me! I shouldn't have—”

Aunt Fedo pounds her cane. “Take me. I would—”

Pado commands, “Hush!” To the high priest he says, “Wait, Lesu,” and goes to the eating-room altar. “Admat, send a sign. We beg your mercy.” He prostrates himself. “Send a sign that my daughter need not die. Send a sign that no one need die. As you wish, so it will be.”

I feel a breeze. The flame flares. Dies down. Flares again. Dies down.

I look at Olus and know. He is causing the flares.

The flame brightens a third time. Maybe I can escape this Lesu's knife and we can stay in Hyte. I look at Mati, whose face is awed.

Pado rises. “Admat—”

Lesu intones, “Admat has revealed himself. Admat accepts the sacrifice.”

Oh no!

Does Lesu have a way of understanding Admat? Or does he himself want me sacrificed?

Pado says, “Lesu—”

He interrupts. “As he wishes, so it shall be. Senat, it is Admat's wish. You know, or you wouldn't have told me
to come today.”

The breath flies out of me.

“You called him?” Mati yells.

“I knew I wouldn't be able to send for the priest after you came,” Pado tells me. “I had to do it before.” He's weeping. “Kezi, ‘Admat's wrath is worse than death.'”

I nod. He is quoting the holy text. The words that follow are
Admat's love is better than life
. Pado loves me. He just believes what I used to believe. I remind myself that we came home for me to be sacrificed.

Olus's face is furious. I fear he will do something terrible with his winds. I say, “I accept my sacrifice,” and catch his eye.

His expression softens. “So it will be.”

Lesu says, “Admat is pleased.”

How does he know?

I strengthen the echo Aunt Fedo heard in my voice. Louder than I used to be able to speak, I pronounce, “So it will be, but remember these words: Admat hates human sacrifice.” This was my idea when I awoke this morning. “My sacrifice will be the last. Admat loves the people of Hyte. He is not a punishing god. He never brings anyone suffering.”

“I will not argue theology with the sacrifice,” Lesu
says. “Come.”

OLUS

L
ESU LEADS US OUT
of Senat's house as if he owned it. In the street Kezi walks with her mati and aunt. Aunt Fedo leans heavily on her cane, her limp worse than usual. Merem's arm is around her daughter. Senat and I follow them. Lesu and the other priests form a loose circle around us.

People stare. A stray dog trots at Lesu's side.

I have to restrain my winds, which want what I want: to cast the priests and even Senat into the desert, to blind them with sand, to deafen them, to make them feel the wrath of this god.

The temple rises ahead, blocky and graceless. We enter through groaning bronze doors into a vestibule, and from there into a windowless room hardly big enough to contain us. I wouldn't have been able to stay here for even a moment before my trial.

Lesu asks Senat, “What is the sacrifice's name?”

“My name”—she waits until he meets her eyes—“is Kezi. I am a weaver. I love to dance.” She raises her arms. There's no space to dance, but she kicks out her left foot, then her right.

Merem sobs.

Senat says, “When I swore the oath, I thought—”

“Kezi will come with me now. It won't—”

“I'm her mati,” Merem says. “Her mati should be by her—”

“Quiet!”

“I gave her life. I—”

“Quiet. Senat may stay during the ceremony . . .” His voice becomes less formal. Briefly, he stops being his office. “Although I think you'd best not.”

I can come too. If I use my winds, no one can prevent me. But I do nothing. I'll see and hear everything. She knows I'll be with her from here.

“Will it . . .” Aunt Fedo raps her cane on the floor.
“Will it . . .” She raps the cane again to make her words come out. “Will it . . . hurt?”

“Admat will dull the pain,” Lesu says.

Perhaps when this is over, I will kill him and Admat will dull his pain.

Kezi rushes into her aunt's arms. “Don't worry, Aunt Fedo. Good-bye.” She embraces her mati. “Good-bye, Mati.” She holds her hands out to me. “I must tell you good-bye.” So softly that no one but a god can hear, she whispers, “Can Admat kill a god?”

I shout, “No!”

Kezi nods. To Lesu she says, “The sacrifice is ready.”

Yet an all-powerful god probably can kill an Akkan god anywhere, any time. If Admat exists and if he is wrathful, there is no escape.

KEZI

I
CAN TELL
O
LUS ISN'T
certain. In spite of everything, I may die.

Admat, don't kill me! Don't be wrathful. Don't exist!

Lesu takes Pado and me to the liver-shaped central prayer room. We enter through the small door behind the altar. Across the room are the double doors that are opened only twice a year.

A screen stands between the altar and the wall. Lesu tells me to go behind it.

A priestess waits there. She raises my tunic and examines me without saying a word. She seems unaware of the blush that covers every inch of my skin.

Let her find something wrong. Make me unfit to be a sacrifice. I point out a birthmark on my ankle. She runs her thumb across it, presses it, and then continues her inspection. Her hands turn me, lift my right leg, lift my left, while I try to think of another flaw. I show her the scar of an old cut on my forearm. This she barely looks at. She isn't gentle or rough. I am simply a task.

Finally she lowers the tunic. We come out from behind the screen. She tells Lesu that I'm “acceptable.”

Two priests lift me onto the altar. I stiffen. I didn't re
alize, but until now I thought something would keep this moment from coming. My ears buzz. My temples pound. I ball my fists—tight, tight, tight—to keep from screaming.

The priestess places oil lamps around me. I turn my head so I can see Pado.

He gazes back. I don't look away and neither does he. Someone lights the lamps. I feel their heat. I smell incense. Lesu chants: