Maia (54 page)

Suddenly she caught her breath, all her ribaldry gone as for an instant the face of Lespa looked out at her from among the leaves.

"Oh, Occula! Did you see?" She turned and, despite the crowd and the blaze of noon, seemed almost ready to run.

"Steady!" said the black girl. "It's only a trick, banzi. Cran and Airtha! you were Lespa yourself the other night- and very good, too, by all I hear."

"Why, whatever can valuable property like you two be doing standing out here in the boiling sun?" said a voice behind them.

They both looked round. It was Nennaunir, strikingly beautiful in a purple robe cross-stitched with gold thread, her high-piled hair fixed with jewelled, ebony combs. Maia, hoping she had not noticed her naive alarm at the face in the leaves, smiled back at her.

"Oh, we're just gettin' toasted, ready for the supper-

party by the Barb tonight," said Occula. "It'll go easier with sunstroke, I dare say."

"But have you really been told that you've got to stand out here all through the ceremony?" persisted Nennaunir.

"Well, tell you the truth, I'm not sure," answered Maia. "Reckon as long as we're back here 'fore the ena"-"

"You can't go in?"

"We're slaves, aren't we?" said Occula.

Nennaunir looked quickly and covertly round the crowded precinct, rather like a child contemplating mischief. Then, dropping her voice, she whispered, "I'll get you in, if you like-both of you," and at once began leading Maia towards the temple. Occula hesitated a moment and then, shrugging her shoulders, followed.

The temple steps and portico, built of stone blocks, faced east across the precinct, presenting a solemn and majestic front. The rear of the building, however, rather like that of a theater (which to some extent it was), comprised all manner of storage and robing rooms, administrative quarters and other odd corners-the priests' refectory and kitchen, offices for conducting temple business, tally-rooms, cellars, a yard and shed where parts of the mechanism of the Tamarrik Gate were overhauled and maintained-and so on. Nennaunir, slipping quickly along a sunk path running beside the temple's south wall, turned, between two out-buildings, into a paved yard piled with firewood on one side and empty wine-casks on the other. Here a dark, scowling young man, dressed in the gray-green smock of a temple slave, was sitting on a stool, peeling brillions into a pail with a broken-bladed knife. He had dirty finger-nails and a stubble of beard, which he scratched with the knife as he paused, looking up at the newcomers.

"Hullo, Sednil," said Nennaunir, halting beside him in a cloud of perfume and trailing gauzes. "Found you easily, didn't I? How are you, my darling?"

The young man looked up at her with a grin which, while probably meant to express bravado, only succeeded in making him look mortified and rather pathetic.

"I was all right until just now. What d'you want to come round here for, looking like that?"

"I didn't come here to torment you," said Nennaunir. "Really I didn't, Sednil. Cheer up! Honestly, I believe it won't be much longer-"

"Three years," said he. "D'you call that long or short?"

"It might be'much less," answered Nennaunir. "It might, Sednil, truly. I'm doing my best, but it's a matter of finding the right person and the right moment."

''Like when you're on your back with someone else, you mean?" said Sednil, spitting into the peel-bucket.

"Well, that might turn out to be a good time, yes. You must be realistic, darling. I shan't miss any opportunity I get, I promise you."

Sednil made no reply, only continuing to gaze at her like a man looking through the barred window of a cell.

"Sednil, it
will
be all right-you wait and see! And look, I've brought two charming friends of mine to meet you- Maia and Occula. They both belong to Sencho, poor girls."

"Cran help them!" said Sednil. "Why aren't they squashed flat?"

"Well, there you are, you see; there's always someone worse off. They want to go in and watch the ceremony. You'll help them, won't you?"

Sednil said nothing.

"Won't you?"

"It's risky," said Sednil.

"I'm sure they'd really appreciate it. They'd show themselves very very grateful, I expect."

At this moment there rang across the city the clangor of the gongs striking noon, and from the steps of the temple a trumpet sounded.

"Yes or no?" said Nennaunir. "I'll have to be quick: I've got a friend waiting."

"Oh, twenty, I dare say," answered Sednil bitterly. "All in line." He turned to the girls. "Well, come on, then!"

By this time Maia, who had not been paying much attention to the talk, was as much agog as a child being taken to a treat. Smiling at the young man and taking his arm, she thanked Nennaunir warmly and then set off with him through the door, across an untidy, deserted kitchen and along a stone-floored passage.

"You're a friend of Nennaunir?" she asked conversationally.

"I used to be," said he.

"Before you came to the temple, you mean?" Maia was puzzled.

"How long did you get?" asked Occula from behind them.

"Five years. Oh, she's not a bad sort, I suppose. All the

same, she knew the truth of it and never said a word. Oh, never mind! What's the use?"

Maia still felt none the wiser.

"You mean you're here against your will? Couldn't you- well, run away or something? I mean, all these crowds of people from all over the empire-"

"Run away? Where d'you come from, lass? Look!" Sed-nil, pausing by a window on the staircase they were now climbing, stretched out one hand. Across the back extended a white scar, fully three inches broad, in the shape of a pair of crossed spears. In parts the flesh was proud, and in one place the wound had not entirely healed.

"M'm-so that's the forced service brand, is it?" said Occula, craning over Maia's shoulder. "I've never seen one before. Did it hurt?"

" 'Course it basting well hurt!" replied Sednil irritably. "What d'you think?"

"I don't understand," said Maia. "You mean it's-"

"If a man who's been branded like that can't show a token-either from whoever he's workin' for or else a 'released' token once his time's up-it's death straight away," said Occula.
"That's
why he doesn' run, banzi. He'd have to run to Zeray." She turned back to Sednil. "I didn' know they sent people like you to the temple. It's usually the Gelt mines, isn' it, or somewhere like that?"

"Yes, but Nennaunir persuaded one of the priests to ask for me, on a promise of good conduct. She's got friends everywhere, that girl-priests and all. I've seen one or two things while I've been here, I can tell you."

They had reached the top of the staircase and now Sednil, turning to the left, led them into a gallery which ran the length of the back of the temple. About thirty yards along this was a door set in the inner wall. As he opened it the girls could hear from below the murmur and movement of a crowd.

"Now, we've got to keep quiet," whispered Sednil, "and mind you do."

Maia followed him into what seemed for a moment to be darkness, the more so as he immediately closed the door behind them. Then, as she stood still in uncertainty, she became aware of light, its source, however, somewhere below them. Sednil, taking her hand, led her forward until she found herself looking down, from the rather alarming

height of a roof-level balcony, into the interior of the Temple of Cran.

Fifty feet below lay a circular, tessellated pavement, some nine or ten yards across, slightly sunk below a surround of veined, gray marble. Immediately within this surround the tiles formed a border depicting a crested serpent with red, green and blue scales, which stretched entirely round the edge of the pavement until, at the eastern point, it grasped its own tail between its jaws. Round its body was twined an intricate design of vines, fruit and corn, the various motifs being repeated at regular intervals throughout the circle. Within this again was a variant of the divine group represented on the inner sphere of the Tamarrik Gate. Upon a ground of green malachite inlaid with colored blooms and with animals, birds and fishes, the golden-bearded figure of Cran stretched out its arms, whilst opposite, Airtha of the Diadem extended hers towards him. Each of their hands rested upon the base of one corner of • a rectangular marble slab, about two feet high, standing in the center of the pavement.

Maia was so much fascinated by the design and by the brilliant colors in the pavement-of which, of course, looking directly down from above, she had the best possible view-that it was some little time before she began to notice the less ornate central altar-slab and the figure lying upon it. When she did so, however, her first reaction was one of bewilderment and disappointment. Somnolence and passivity was not what she would have expected at the very core of the empire's worship. She had always imagined the god in his temple armed with lightning, majestic, vigilant and mighty to protect the empire. The reality was much unlike.

The low, marble slab was carved in the form of a couch resting upon scrolled clouds. Upon this lay a life-sized, bronze figure of Cran; but very different from that of the Tamarrik dial with its attendant circle of ecstatic nymphs. The god, his head and shoulders raised on marble pillows, was supine, in the posture of one asleep. Indeed, he plainly
was
asleep, for his eyelids were closed, giving him-since his body was unmoved by breathing-the appearance almost of one dead. He was naked, and his flaccid zard, like any mortal man's, lay across the hollow of his thigh. Something about its appearance puzzled Maia, though from this height she could not quite make out what it might be: it

was flexed, and seemed to be fashioned out of narrow, overlapping, cylindrical scales. But apart from this, she had never before seen the god represented without his attributes-crown, lightning and serpent torques. She would hardly have recognized him. The figure, in fact, displeased her. It seemed an unworthy, almost impious, representation, not at all god-like, inappropriate in its resemblance to mere humanity.

The three of them were standing, she now realized, near the top of an octagonal lantern tower, the whole of the interior of which was open to and visible from the floor of the temple. This was supported upon the lintels and square columns of a circular arcade surrounding the pavement below. At a height of about thirty feet, a narrow gallery ran round the lantern (their own standpoint was a mere box just below the roof), and below it were narrow windows admitting daylight to the floor of the temple below. This was augmented by eight branched candlesticks, each carrying some twenty or thirty candles, which had been placed round the edge of the pavement, one in front of each column.

Looking between the columns to the further side of the arcading, Maia could glimpse tiers of stone seats rising one above the other. It seemed strange to her that the temple should apparently not be lit by windows at ground-floor level. She was not to know that these had all been shuttered, to intensify the effect of the lit central pavement and the sleeping figure of Cran.

The temple was filling. As the girls continued looking down, a scarlet-robed priest, carrying a staff, entered beneath one of the lintels, followed by Durakkon and a train of barons and other nobles. These, conducted round the edge of the pavement to the west side of the arcade, passed between the columns and seated themselves within. On Durakkon's right, Maia noticed, was her admirer Ran-dronoth, the governor of Lapan. Sencho himself she could not see anywhere, and could only suppose that special arrangements must have been made to spare him the unendurable discomfort of having to sit upright.

The placing of the various notables, their wives (who occupied a separate bay of the arcade) and the remainder of those eligible for admission, took a considerable time, the priests continually disappearing between the columns, re-emerging, conferring under the candelabra, and once

or twice leading out some important personage to seat him more befittingly. The assembly, however, showed no impatience and there was no noise above a low murmur of talk as they waited for the ceremony to begin.

At length the priests retired, the central circle stood empty; and complete silence fell. It was hard to believe that nearly a thousand people were seated in the twilight beyond the columns. Maia, allowing herself a tiny, nervous cough, was overcome as the sound seemed to fill the roof and echo round the walls. Frightened, she crouched quickly down behind the balustrade. After a moment Sednil's hand, trembling slightly, and rough compared with those she had become accustomed to, caressed her shoulders and drew her back up beside him. Glancing sideways, he put a finger to his lips and then returned to watching the floor below.

Side by side two files of priests were entering in procession. Parting, they paced slowly round either edge of the pavement until the leaders met once more, whereupon all halted, turning inward to face the central stone before which their leader, advancing, had taken up his station.

Maia, though familiar from infancy with the myths and legends of the gods told her by old Drigga, had heard relatively little about the actual worship of Cran as performed in Bekla. To her, therefore, as perhaps to no other person in the entire temple, everything seemed fresh, direct and heartfelt. The chief priest, in an invocation to the god interspersed with chanted responses from his followers, told of the harsh quenching of the land and the hardships suffered by the people during Melekril. While he still slept, Cran's sacred empire had been threatened by the chaotic powers of winter-storm, rain and darkness. Of themselves his people had no resource or defense, weakened as they were by hunger and by their sins. They implored him to waken and renew the fertile year.

This opening part of the spring liturgy, which was very ancient and couched in ornate, archaic language, expressed a dignified yet heart-broken sorrow which overpowered Maia entirely, leaving her beyond even tears. The priests' hymns, supporting their leader's pleas with lyric descriptions of the failing land and of mountains, plains and forests languishing under the long weeks of cloud and rain, found a ready response both in her imagination and her memory. She even found herself feeling sorry for Morca,