Louise Cooper - Indigo 06 - Avatar (14 page)

Indigo didn’t blame her. She too had had a similar feeling, though her senses, less acute than Grimya’s, had been dulled rather than painfully sharpened by the narcotic smoke. She still couldn’t recall anything that had happened during her trance. Even though the earlier events were now clearer in her mind, there remained a gap in her memory, a void that it seemed she couldn’t cross and bring back to consciousness.

She gently pushed Grimya aside and rose to her feet. Thankfully, her scream as she woke hadn’t brought anyone running; she couldn’t have tolerated the priestesses’ anxious solicitude at the moment, and even Shalune’s presence would be unwelcome. The cave was making her feel imprisoned and claustrophobic. She wanted to get out in the fresher air, be alone for a while with only Grimya’s company and no one else to intrude on them.

“How long before dawn breaks, do you think?” she asked the wolf.

Grimya considered. “Not ll-ong. It’s dark still, but there is a heavy mist, and that means morning must be near.”

If they had only half an hour before the citadel started to wake, that would at least be better than nothing. Indigo reached for her clothes. “Let’s walk by the lake for a while, before anyone else is about. I feel I need to clear my mind.”

Grimya agreed eagerly, and as soon as Indigo was dressed, they left the cave. Outside, the darkness was intense; the moon had set and no starlight could penetrate the mist that folded around them, heavy with the damp smells of the forest. Faint and muted, the myriad small sounds of the jungle impinged on Indigo’s ears as its nocturnal inhabitants began to give way to the wakening creatures of the day. Insects chirred, their endless chorus broken now and then by the twitter of a bird stirring to utter its first tentative welcome to the morning. In the distance, something large and unidentifiable grunted hoarsely and there was a brief rustle of undergrowth. Of human activity, though, there was no sound or sign.

Groping her way down the long flights of stairs behind Grimya’s more surefooted descent, Indigo began to relax a little. The sting of her nightmare was fading, and the predawn cool and stillness had a primordial feel that she found oddly comforting. They reached the sandy arena, which was scuffed into chaos by crisscrossing footprints, and walked on toward the water’s edge. Then suddenly Grimya, several paces ahead of Indigo, stopped with a yelp of consternation.

“Grimya? What’s wrong—oh, Goddess!”

She saw it before Grimya could intercept her and turn her aside: the framework of branches at the edge of the lake. She’d forgotten it—perhaps her subconscious had deliberately blotted it from her mind—and so the shock of coming upon it now, looming from mist and darkness, was all the greater. The woman, the murderess, still hung where she had been lashed to the frame, her back to Indigo and her face staring out across the lake. She wasn’t moving, and whether or not she was breathing, Indigo couldn’t tell. Slowly, driven by a perverse fascination, she started to approach the frame.

“Indigo.” Grimya hung back, her voice unhappy. “Leave it. Don’t look.”

Indigo paid no heed. She drew level with the skein of branches, some of which had wilted leaves still clinging to them, then stepped around the frame’s edge.

Grimya heard her sharp intake of breath, but Indigo didn’t speak. She only stared at the frame and what it contained, and after a few moments’ indecision, Grimya ran to her side.

The woman was dead. Not from dehydration or from any other natural cause; she had bled to death, killed by a savage slash that had opened her throat and all but severed her head from her shoulders. Blood covered her arms and torso, drying now into a brownish crust like an obscene garment. Her eyes, staring widely even though all traces of life were gone, held an expression of unfettered terror.

Abruptly the spell that had mesmerized Indigo snapped and she jerked her head aside, shutting her eyes in revulsion. She started to turn, stumbling blindly away from the gruesome corpse, but a sudden mental alarm from Grimya halted her.

Indigo! There’s someone coming!

Indigo froze and, opening her eyes once more, peered into the mist. She could see nothing, but after a few seconds she heard a new sound. Soft footfalls; someone—or something—was moving stealthily toward them. Images of the horrors she had witnessed last night tumbled into her mind and she felt a flash of panic as a shape, indistinguishable in the darkness, loomed ahead. Grimya growled defensively, hackles rising.

The shape hesitated; then Uluye’s voice said, “What are you doing? What do you want here?”

They stared at each other as tension and shock ebbed. Uluye lowered the machete she was holding, and with a great effort, gathered her poise. Her eyes were wary, mistrustful. “You shouldn’t be here alone,” she said with a hint of aggression.

Her tone nettled Indigo. “I’m not alone, thank you, Uluye,” she responded crisply. “Grimya is with me, and she provides all the protection I need.”

Uluye flicked the wolf a brief, dismissive glance. “All the same, I would prefer that you return to the citadel. It is not right for the oracle to show herself to any casual gaze by walking about like an ordinary person.”

Irritation began to turn to anger, and Indigo retorted, “I hardly think I’m likely to be looked over by anyone when I can barely see my own hand in front of my face!” Then suddenly a new and unpleasant thought occurred to her. Why did Uluye seem so anxious for her to leave? Could it be that there was something she didn’t want her oracle to see?

She looked at the machete in Uluye’s hand and her suspicion took a tighter hold. “It was
you
...” she said softly.

“What?” Uluye frowned. “What was me? What do you mean?”

Oh, she was a good actress, Indigo had seen that for herself. She met the tall woman’s arrogant stare directly and unflinchingly, and pointed back to the wooden frame, barely discernible in the mist behind her.

“Tell me the truth, Uluye,” she said harshly. “That—that woman—you killed her, didn’t you?”

For a moment Uluye looked genuinely puzzled, but then her expression cleared. “Oh,” she said. “I understand.” She walked past Indigo and Grimya and stopped before the frame. Her eyes took in the corpse with a single critically assessing glance. “So she
is
dead. It was swifter than I’d anticipated.” She glanced in the direction of the lake. “The Ancestral Lady has seen fit to be merciful.”

“
Merciful
?” Indigo repeated, appalled.

Uluye looked at her in surprise. “Of course. There are many far less easy ways to die than this. I imagine she must have lost consciousness quite quickly.”

Indigo returned her stare, feeling a shudder of revulsion at the High Priestess’s sanguine indifference. “You
imagine
... are you telling me you didn’t kill her?”

“I?” This time Uluye’s surprise was unmistakably genuine. “Of course not!”

“Then who did?”

“Her victims. Who else? As she slew them, so it is right that she should be slain by them in turn.”

Last night, Indigo remembered, as she was carried to the stairs, she had seen the mist re-forming, glimpsed the three shapes moving shoreward.... “Sweet Goddess,” she said in an undertone.

A small, cold smile played about Uluye’s lips. “As I said to you at the ceremony, why should you be shocked? She was condemned to die by the word of the Ancestral Lady, not by any decree of mine. Indeed, you might as easily look to yourself as her judge, for you are the oracle through which the Lady speaks.”

“So you tell me,” Indigo replied. “But I have only your word for that, haven’t I, Uluye?”

Uluye’s expression changed. “What do you mean? I don’t understand you.”

The darkness was beginning to lighten perceptibly. Dawn was close; the mist was already thinning and soon the sun would rise. Indigo began to walk away from the corpse on its frame, wanting to remove herself from its vicinity before daylight forced her to see it in all its stark and grisly detail. Uluye followed her. She didn’t repeat her question, but Indigo sensed that she was holding back only with the greatest difficulty and through a sense of stubborn pride.

Somehow, without knowing how or why, she had touched Uluye on a raw nerve. There was something more to this, and here and now, with no one to overhear them, Indigo wondered if she might have found a weapon with which to crack the High Priestess’s stone mask and challenge her to tell the truth. Uluye’s cold-bloodedness in the face of another human being’s ugly death had made Indigo angry enough, and thus reckless enough, to try.

She stopped near the rock where her litter had been set the previous night and turned to look Uluye squarely in the face.

“You may or may not be aware of this, Uluye,” she said, “but I have no recollection whatever of anything that happened to me in the trance state. I don’t know what I said or what I did. For all I can tell, I might have sat in that chair squealing and grunting in a fair imitation of a pig, while you laughed inwardly at my animal noises and told your congregation whatever you wanted them to hear.”

Uluye looked appalled. “That is blasphemy!”

“Not to me. The Ancestral Lady is your goddess, not mine. That is, if you believe she exists at all.”

The color drained from the High Priestess’s lips and her eyes widened with rage. “Don’t
dare
to speak such perversion in my presence! I will not
tolerate
this!”

“You have no choice but to tolerate it, have you?” Indigo retorted. “Not if I am what it suits you to claim I am. Which is it to be, Uluye? Am I your chosen oracle or not? Did I truly speak last night, or did you stage the whole spectacle to inveigle a gullible and superstitious crowd into believing what you wanted it to believe? Tell me the truth!”

Uluye hissed like a, snake. “Do you dare to call me a charlatan?”

“Oh, no. You’re no charlatan, I know that very well. But when the oracle speaks to the people, at whose behest is she speaking? At the Ancestral Lady’s—or at yours?”

Uluye stared at her for a long time. The sun’s first rays were touching the treetops now, and in the mist the priestess’s tall figure seemed to be haloed in cold fire. Then she spoke.

“You are treading a thin and perilous path, Indigo. I am the chosen servant of the»Ancestral Lady, and by impugning me, you also impugn the Lady herself. I warn you, be careful, or you may find that your time in this world will end far sooner than you expect.”

Indigo stood very still. “Is that a threat, Uluye?”

“Not a threat; a prophecy. Foresight isn’t the province of the oracle alone, and I know the Ancestral Lady’s ways far better than you do.” She stepped forward, then reached out and took hold of Indigo’s arm. “You may be the Lady’s chosen oracle, but you are as much her servant as any of us.”

Indigo tried to pull her arm away, but Uluye held on. Grimya came forward, a growl forming in her throat; quickly Indigo sent a mental message warning her back. She had broken through Uluye’s barrier, albeit in a way she hadn’t expected, and she didn’t want to lose her advantage now. Uluye wouldn’t hurt her; she didn’t think the priestess was even angry anymore. If anything, she was afraid.

“I give fealty to only one goddess,” Indigo told her with icy calm. “And that goddess is the Earth Mother herself.”

“No,” Uluye said. “You serve the Ancestral Lady. She has chosen you, and she rules you, as she rules us all.”

Suddenly Indigo experienced a terrible sense of
dija vu
. Her own declaration, Uluye’s emphatic reply—she had heard such words before; she had clashed with someone, wrangled in this same way. When, and where? She couldn’t remember!

I have chosen you, and you have no choice but to obey me....

Uluye’s grip on her arm tightened suddenly. “What? What is it?” For the space of a moment, the scene before Indigo’s eyes winked out. Then her senses returned and she found herself staring blearily into the priestess’s avid and wide-eyed face.

“Does she speak to you?” Uluye demanded breathlessly. “Tell me—
tell
me!”

Before Indigo could respond or protest, Grimya, snarling, sprang at the priestess and knocked her off balance. Uluye reeled back and the wolf interposed herself between the two women, head down, showing her fangs.

“No, Grimya!” Indigo had recovered her outward composure, though she felt shaken. “She meant no harm.”

The wolf relaxed a little, though still bristling, and over her head Uluye met Indigo’s gaze uncertainly. “She understands your own tongue ... ?”

“Yes.” Indigo reverted to the Dark Islers’ speech. “She won’t attack you unless she believes you want to hurt me.”

The other woman’s eyes narrowed and the frown reappeared on her face. Indigo realized suddenly that Uluye wouldn’t
dare
to harm her, for whatever personal animosity she might harbor—and that was an unknown quantity—she believed in her goddess as unshakably as Indigo believed in the Earth Mother, and she also believed that the Ancestral Lady had chosen Indigo as her own avatar.

Uluye said: “She came to you. Only for a moment, but she
came
. I know; I felt her presence.” There was a peculiarly defensive note in her voice that Indigo had never heard before; then suddenly her tone changed and the old arrogance was back. “What did she impart to you? I insist that you tell me! I am her High Priestess. I must know!”

Indigo’s anger rose afresh. Something had happened, she was well aware of it, but it had come and gone so swiftly that she was left with only the memory of a momentary blackout, nothing more. And Uluye’s probing did little but raise her temper. She had had more than enough of this arrogant, imperious tyrant.

“I can’t tell you, because I don’t know!” She met Uluye’s challenging stare with a challenge of her own. “Unless you have the power to delve into my mind and discover the truth for yourself, I can’t help you!” And before Uluye could answer, she stalked away across the arena.

“Wait!” Something in Uluye’s tone—a pleading note?— made Indigo pause. She looked back. The High Priestess hadn’t followed her but stood rigid on the sand. From her expression, Indigo knew immediately that she had no such divinatory power and resented the fact.