Kirith Kirin (The City Behind the Stars) (10 page)

1

We arrived at camp the next day, in mid-afternoon.

For me to reconstruct my first impression of the place would be both foolish and fruitless, since I brought with me only my ignorance, colored with bits of information garnered from the soldiers during our journey. Our party reported to the quartermaster tent where all the soldiers except Uncle Sivisal were dismissed. I remained too, mounted. I did not make much of the delay, my curiosity being focused on the duties that awaited me in the lamp-shrine.

Soon Prince Imral signaled us to follow. Kirith Kirin was watching me solemnly, maybe to see my reaction to this unfamiliar city of tents. We rode toward high ground, a rise of land where the tents of the gentry had been pitched.

So subtle are the colors of a Jisraegen weave that one could hardly see the airy pavilions behind the concealment of leaf and branch. I studied them as I was able but we were riding pretty fast, down a trail marked with slender wooden obelisks, each bearing aloft the charred remains of a torch. The torches looked pathetic and listless in the light of day.

The path took a steep turn and we rode through forest, such a long time I thought we were heading for open woodland. But finally we reached a clearing where a many-chambered tent had been pitched among a grove of vuthloven trees, their gray trunks blended perfectly with the dreamy fabric of the tent. Two wide flaps were staked open, the inside of each blazoned with intertwined letters forming the name of YY-Mother, in the form of the eye-sign, she-who-sees-the-world. So this was the shrine tent.

The others dismounted and Uncle Sivisal signaled I should do the same. Since this was the end of my journey, he directed me to untie my bundle of belongings from Nixva’s saddle. I followed through the broad flaps, gawking at the rich interior. The altar was fitted with brass lamps and adapted so that one could slide in an axle and bolt on wheels, otherwise no one would ever have moved it. Fine carpets were strewn underfoot, soft as a bed and far more fragrant than my straw mattress in the attic at home. On either side of the altar and by each side of the wide flaps, incense drifted upward from brass pots, pungent and sweet. I had never seen any god-place more elaborate than the wandering priest’s shrine which could be carried in a bundle the size of a saddlebag. Here was a beauty that brought the mind to YY — rich colors and scents, the play of sunlight and branches overhead, the sighing of vuthloven leaves.

A shadow crossed the altar, tall and broad. The shadow crossed me too. A man stood before me in a drab cloak trimmed in many colors of thread, his hood thrown back over broad shoulders. He had close-cropped hair the color of polished steel, a fleshy nose hooked to one side, and ears with fleshy lobes. His face was handsome in an odd, craggy way. He stooped down to study me, hand pressing the small of his back. Beneath the cloak I could see he wore the full gown that is customary for priests. He had eyes clearer even than Kirith Kirin’s, liquid, like clear water, with only the faintest hint of color. He touched my brow with his fingertips. “You’re the boy from my dream,” he said. “Your face is the same.”

Kirith Kirin, who had kept apart while the old man inspected me, approached us. The Prince said, quietly, “There’s been little doubt, Mordwen. He fulfilled every sign you sent.”

The man before me — Mordwen Illythin, about whom I had heard many tall tales — tapped my head with his fingertips. “You’re the son of Kinth, called Jessex? Child of Sybil, of Fysyyn, of Aretaeo?”

“That is my mother line, sir.”

He asked me a question that I would long remember, because it seemed urgent to him and the urgency tinged his voice. “Who was the mother of Aretaeo?”

“Matvae,” I said.

“You’re certain.”

“Yes, I learnt my ancestors ten generations back at my grandmother’s knee.”

“You come from an old-fashioned family, where tradition means something.” When he said this his face became gentler. Uncle Sivisal beamed at this praise. Mordwen looked at Kirith Kirin. “Curious,” he said. “All parts of my dream fit, except that.”

Mordwen asked something in the other language, which I had come to understand was true Jisraegen.

“Never mind,” Kirith Kirin shook his head but answered in Upcountry, “we have other proofs that we’ve brought the right boy, beyond those in your dream.”

Mordwen raised both brows. “Oh really? This I need to hear.”

He told the story of Julassa Kyminax while kneeling on those rich carpets. The story affected Mordwen but did not appear to surprise him. After consideration he said, “One cannot expect to keep many secrets from Drudaen. But I wonder how he knew to send Julassa to that particular patrol.”

“So do we all,” Kirith Kirin said.

He let the subject drop there. After a moment more he stood, turning away abruptly and pulling up his hood. “We’ve had a long ride, anyway,” he said, “and I’m tired. The boy’s in your charge, Mordwen. He’s too young to live in the main camp; keep him here.” Kirith Kirin turned to Uncle Sivisal for his assent, which my uncle freely gave. Kirith Kirin added, still in that tone as if I were not present, “The shrine is always guarded, the boy will be safe.”

“I think that’s best, sir,” Uncle Sivisal said, glancing at me.

“Once upon a time it was the custom,” Mordwen said.

“It’s a custom again.” The Prince glanced at me. “Serve well, Jessex.”

He turned to go before I could answer. Uncle Sivisal knelt to kiss my brow. After a moment he said to Mordwen, “The boy knows Velunen and Kithilunen already, in true Jisraegen. My mother taught him.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Mordwen said, gruffly. “You never know what ignorance you’ll run into these days.”

He withdrew then, to let Uncle Sivisal say good-bye. Suddenly, I felt as if this really were good-bye and was afraid; little as I knew him. I knew no one else better, and he was my blood. “Well, Jessex,” he said, “I have to go to my own tent now.”

“Where is it?”

“Down in the main camp.”

I took a deep breath. “They won’t let me live with you?”

He shook his head. “It wouldn’t be proper. Not for a boy of your age.”

“My age?”

He smiled. “I told you, uncloaked boys never come here. But you’ll be safe in the shrine. And I’ll see you at supper.”

2

With Uncle Sivisal gone, Mordwen Illythin closed the tent flaps, signaling me to help him. He led me through the other chambers of the tent: the workroom where the lamps, oil and incense are stored — the oil in sealed jars, the incense in cedar chests. Wood-smell mingled with the sweet odor of the incense sticks. He showed me where I would live, concealed behind another flap. Once I saw it, I felt better. It was not large by anyone’s standards but mine, since I had never owned any space that belonged to me alone. I had a small frame cot, a wash-basin, a pitcher, a chest and a small table. I must have gazed at the objects with something like awe, for Mordwen said, “Don’t just stand there as if you’re completely daft. Go ahead and set down your things. You have a lot to learn by sunset.”

I set my pack on the floor carefully, afraid of disturbing the neatly-made bed by laying my pack on the canvas-covered mattress. Mordwen returned to the lamp altar and I knew he expected me to follow him quickly. But I hovered in my small room for a moment, breathing the smell of the wood.

The lamp ritual is older than anybody remembers, going back at least as far as the days of the Forty Thousand, when written Jisraegen history commenced; and as ancient as the ritual are the three songs that have been handed down with it: Velunen, Kithilunen and Kimri. There are many stories about the ritual’s origins, the most likely being that the ceremony is the result of some agreement between Cunavastar and the Three Sisters, who were the first to worship YY-Mother in Arthen, long before the Jisraegen people came to be.

The ritual is simple and easily performed. A person of the proper age, of either sex, assembles a lamp, sets it into the alcove of an altar and lights it at sunset. At sunrise the same person puts out the lamp, cleans it and places it in a wooden case. The lighting of lamps and the ceremonial singing honor the endless cycle of light leaving and returning, which is the essence of our worship. YY-mother sends darkness and light, but she is removed from both. The person who served the shrine in this way was called a kyyvi and in older days would have then studied the reading and writing of High Jisraegen and would have learned the Calendar and the Days and thereafter might have served as a priest and a day-counter.

I would perform the lamp ritual morning and evening every day. No one should serve the shrine after attaining the nineteenth year, according to a custom as old as we are, though exceptions are made. But I might serve till then.

Mordwen patiently taught me the use of the lamps. I absorbed details about oil-chambers, wick-making, and the rate of burning for various oils. He showed me the roch stone that makes the fire, and the different wicks for the lamps, including the ones that would coil atop the oil and float and burn through the night. He showed me the altar and taught me the proper ceremony for refueling a lamp while it was burning, for replacing the wick without extinguishing the flame, and for reading the sunstone to determine the moment of sunset and sunrise. It was nearly time for the ceremony when he finished. But when I went through the various steps of the ceremony, Lord Illythin affirmed I had performed correctly.

I spent my last moments gazing into the round sunstone, called muuren in High Speech, which formed the crest of the godmask. The muuren is a clear stone the Tervan mine at whose heart a point of fire will burn for as long as daylight lasts. When that point of fire disappears, the kyyvi must light the lamp. The seeing stones that are on the High Places are made of the same stone, purchased at great price.

When folks began to gather for the evening ceremony, I hid in my little room, dressing in a fresh white tunic with two blazons on its breast: the sign for YY and the sign for Kirith Kirin, both worked in crimson thread. Listening to the voices of those gathered, I studied the ka-lamp I had chosen to light, a spherical lamp of blown glass with the oil chamber in its lower half, the fire-colored liquid shimmering. Mordwen, who waited in the before-shrine where the broad tent-flaps had been tied open, fetched me when the proper moment arrived. I walked into the before-shrine, bearing the unlit lamp in my uplifted hands, watching both the lamp and the floor under my feet, treacherous with stacked carpets. I laid the lamp safely into its niche, fasting the lock-pin through the base, and, quietly turning my gaze first toward the muuren crystal and then toward the sun itself, began to sing the Evening Song.

In the ceremony, when one’s mind is right, one is outside the body, almost as if the spirit expands or contracts with the light; and one never sees those gathered until this first turn toward the sun. One is free to watch those assembled for only the few moments in the song when one faces outward. In those moments I saw faces in the before-shrine and in the clearing beyond the tent, more people than I had ever seen in one place at one time, hundreds, it seemed. I never faltered in my singing but this image of faces struck me deeply, and when I turned toward the God Mask again I clung to the objects, the roch stone that lit the ifnuelyn-treated wood cupped in my palm. I dropped fire onto the wick just as the heart of fire died in the clear crystal muuren.

The lamp burned with a cool blue flame. The ka-lamp is noted for the purity of its light, which filled that translucent pavilion with a glow like the full white moon. It was as if a star had fallen into my hands. I finished Kithilunen cradling the lamp between my hands, my heart full of reverence, the sound of the song dissolving in the twilight. An echoing silence followed, and no one moved.

I felt a first clear moment of joy in being there, in having been called to this life. I kept my back to the many gathered eyes. Their thoughts, like mine, should be with YY. I closed my eyes and kept my brain as empty as possible. After a moment I felt a pressure on my shoulder. When I turned, Mordwen was watching me, smiling this time, though still with the trace of his previous scowl. “You’re finished,” he said, “Well done.”

Only when I left the altar-dais did I see Kirith Kirin. He had placed himself close to the tent wall, behind many other faces I did not know, the rust-colored cloak wrapped round him as if this were winter. He vanished soon after.

But Karsten was still there, having changed her riding leathers for a softer robe of pale blue, the drapings low on her bosom, flesh splendid with health, her shapely arms adorned with three silver bracelets, simple bands inlaid with the jewels of her house. When she knelt to embrace me I smelled a fine scented oil along her soft neck and shoulders — flowers I remembered from the long ride, though I could not recognize them.