Maia (55 page)

huddled in the drafty hut with the mud outside stretching down to the bleak shore.

Symbolic fire was carried in-a brazier borne between two priests on an iron pole-for the burning of the past and the winter season. And now the chief priest, kneeling, again implored Cran to waken and return to his people. Yet still the god lay sleeping on his marble bed.

At this point Maia, who as an audience was never insensitive or slow in response to a story or a dance, began to feel a mounting tension and superstitious dread. This, she realized, stemmed not from the priests' expressed fear that the god would not waken, but on the contrary from her own inward realization that inevitably he would. All her life she had been listening to tales by the fire, playing singing-games and at village festivals taking part in old dance-rituals and the like. Without reflection she knew that in stories and dramas the thing that seems impossible is always the thing that finally happens. The haughty maiden, rejecting gift after gift from her suitor, finally relents; the forgotten, friendless prisoner is released, the invincible giant falls to a trick, the magically trance-bound sleeper wakes. As the next part of the ritual began, with the bringing to the god of gold and jewels-the temple treasures- as a further inducement to return, she felt the hair rising at the back of her neck. Against all course of nature and possibility, ultimately the bronze figure below was going to waken. But how? And what would come to pass when it did? Craning forward, she looked down more intently still. No-she was certain that no human being could be concealed within that case of jointed metal.

Each episode of the service lasted for some time, for as one offering after another was vainly made to the god, the priests extolled its particular properties and merits in a succession of anthems-some solemn, some lively, but all appropriate. Their rhythmic power and melodic beauty made Maia want to dance. Swaying silently in harmony with the lilt of a song in praise of wine (while flagons were poured into crystal jars placed before the god's couch) she felt her hips gently pummefing against Sednil's and turned to smile at him, feeling a natural pleasure in being close to a young fellow before whom she did not have to act the part of the compliant slave-girl. Sednil, looking round at her and licking dry lips, put an arm round her shoulder and pressed her against his side; but to this Maia, who in

imagination was back among her younger sisters, dancing in the dust outside the door, attached for the moment little importance.

After the gold, jewels and wine, fine robes and then weapons and food were offered to the god; ornamental spears of silver; tasselled, polished bows and an inlaid, damascene sword and shield; roasted haunches from a goat, a sheep and a bull-calf, while the priests sang in praise of food and feasting. The smell of the roast meat, wafted up to the roof, made Maia's mouth water, for she and Occula, both become accustomed to good living, had today eaten nothing since an hour or so before setting out from the upper city.

At last the worshippers seemed driven to despair. The priestly chorus, prostrating themselves round the edge of the pavement, proclaimed, in a sobbing lament, that the god must himself have become the victim of winter and accordingly would never return. The chief priest, casting off his robes to reveal, beneath, the leather jerkin of a slave, called aloud upon any man or woman whatsoever who would come forward to save the empire in its peril. At the same time the candles round the arcade were extinguished and from outside the wailing of mourners was heard. As they ceased and all became silent, the god, in the dim daylight slanting down from above, lay alone among his unavailing gifts.

After a pause, during which the frightened weeping of a young girl-too young to be present, perhaps-could be plainly heard from among the women's seats, the silence was broken by a sudden, heavy knocking on the great door of the temple. The chief priest, rising to his feet, looked about him in apparent surprise. Taking up his staff, he made his way out and could be heard ordering the door to be opened. A few moments later rose the sound of girls' voices singing as they approached. Then a beautiful little child, about eight years old, crowned with spring flowers, ran into the middle of the pavement, flung out her arms and cried, "The Sacred Queen! The Sacred Queen!"

The girls, dressed alternately in green and in white, their arms laden with blossom (the scent of which rose up to Maia), entered, as had the priests, in two files, singing, as they came, that the empire was about to be delivered, since they were now bringing to the god the most precious gift in heaven and earth. When at length they too halted,

each was standing beside one of the prostrate priests, whom she raised to his feet, smiling at him in comfort and reassurance.

The girls, all young and beautiful, mimed this part of the ceremony with an air of happy gaiety, to which the priests responded by showing first astonishment, then disbelief and finally, puzzled expectation as their new companions turned towards the eastern entry, each raising one arm, both in indication and in greeting. The chief priest resumed his robes. Then, as he knelt to receive her, trumpets sounded and Queen Fornis herself entered alone.

Since becoming Sacred Queen of Airtha, Fornis had had the shrewdness to modify considerably the ways of her youth and to appear in public only to planned effect. (Maia, for example, had never yet set eyes on her.) She took the greatest care of her appearance and now, although in her thirty-fourth year, still possessed the flawless skin and almost luminous auburn hair which had made so deep an impression on the eleven-year-old Occula in the palace of Senda-na-Say. Together with these she had retained an extraordinary, energetic vitality, which was manifest in her manner, her movements and everything she did. A kind of swift, confident power and domination emanated from her, exhilarating in their effect and to most of the people evidence enough, together with her beauty, that she must be god-favored, the veritable talisman and luck of the empire.

As she now appeared, pausing for a few moments under the eastern arch, Maia heard Occula, beside her, utter a kind of stifled moan. She turned quickly towards her, but the black girl had already controlled herself and was once more looking down in silence, biting her lip.

Queen Fornis was dressed in the white, full-skirted robe of a Beklan bride and carried a long, trailing bouquet of green-and-white
golian
lilies, the first flowers of spring. In this she conformed to tradition. Like Sencho, however, she did not hesitate to modify old forms of dress to her taste. Her present robe, like the one in which Occula had first seen her, was half-transparent, ornamented with green ribbons at the sleeves and shoulders and gathered at the waist with a broad, green sash. Upon her head was the crown of Airtha, most sacred and costly of the temple treasures, its aquamarines and huge, irregular emeralds catching the light of the re-lit candles as she stepped for-

ward onto the central pavement. Maia, staring, caught her breath.

"Never seen her before?" murmured Sednil in her ear.

Shaking her head, Maia became aware of Occula leaning towards her on the other side.

"Those emeralds are Zai's," whispered the black girl through clenched teeth.

"But the crown's old, surely?" answered Maia.

"I doan' care," said Occula. "That big one in the middle- I've held it in my hand-I'd know it anywhere."

Now began a ritual of question and answer between the chief priest and the beautiful lady. Who was she, he asked, and whence had she come, professing power to save the empire and revive the year? In a clear, musical voice, with no more than a trace of Paltesh in the accent, she replied that Airtha of the Diadem had spoken to her, bidding her have no fear to put herself forward, for the goddess had appointed her as her chosen vessel.

Yet why did she think she could succeed where all other attempts had failed? Because, she answered, Airtha possessed her. This was even now Airtha of the Diadem speaking through her lips; she who had power to succor all things living, yes and even to raise the dead in the world beyond. She had come to awaken the god by bringing him the most precious gift in the world.

At this the chief priest prostrated himself; yet, giving as justification his sacred responsibility, he still wished to learn what warrant she might have for saying that she was the chosen incarnation of the goddess. To this she made no spoken reply at all, merely standing motionless while two of her maidens came forward, took her flowers and then divested her of her robe. It was fastened down the front with gold clasps, and as it fell open and was smoothly drawn away from her shoulders and arms, leaving her completely naked, neither her easy posture nor the calm, joyous expression of her face altered in the slightest degree. "Here is my warrant," she seemed to say. "Judge for yourself, since you have sought to know. Before, in using mere words, I was making a concession to your human nescience."

The chief priest, veiling his gaze, as though dazzled, with a forearm before his brow, begged her to deign to tell them what gift it might be-this greatest gift-which she

had brought to waken the god and rejuvenate his power. And to this she answered "Love."

Thereupon began, somewhere beyond, a low, barely-audible throbbing of zhuas. The chief priest and his followers withdrew, while the queen's attendants re-grouped themselves under the eastern arch, singing as they did so the wedding hymn with which all brides in Bekla were customarily escorted to the marriage-chamber. Meanwhile the little girl, unaided, extinguished the candles for the second time and then, once more raising her arms to the assembly, preceded the women out of the temple.

The queen, left alone with the sleeping god, turned, walked slowly to the side of the marble couch and, kneeling down, took his bronze fingers in her own. Maia, watching spellbound and recalling what it felt like to act before an audience a part of this nature, could detect in her manner no hint of artificiality or of anything that did not appear spontaneous and natural. Bending forward, Fornis kissed the god's lips and then, lying down lightly and easily beside him, put one arm round his shoulders and pressed her body against his.

And now it was all that simple Maia could do not to cry out in fear, for as she watched, the god's bronze eyelids slowly opened, disclosing blue-irised, black-pupilled eyes which, though unmoving and lacking speculation, appeared nevertheless most startlingly alert. The figure, too, seemed to be raising itself from the hips, and as it did so the queen, stretching one arm behind the head of the couch, picked up a cushion to support its shoulders.

Who will take it upbn themselves to condemn what followed as lewd or unnatural? The Shilluk of the White Nile, perhaps, whose custom it once was to wall up their king, together with a nubile virgin, to die in the dark of hunger and thirst? The ancient Carthaginians, who sacrificed children by fire to a calf-headed image, playing music the while to drown their screams? The inhabitants of Quilacare in southern India, where every twelve years the king, standing on a high scaffolding, would cut off his nose, ears, lips and genitals, scattering them among the people before cutting his own throat? Or the Christian peasants who on St Stephen's Day hunted down wrens along the hedges? The celebrant who to one is clearly nothing but a capering, mud-smeared charlatan of a witch-doctor, to another is a dread figure of power, expert by long study in dangerous

communion with ghosts and gods. What to an alien is indecency, to the devout and instructed is a symbolic enactment of the magnanimity of the immortals, by whose mercy men live and in whose grace they hope to die.

Before the eyes of the rulers and dignitaries of Bekla, Fornis lay beside the god, kissing and stroking him like any lass with her mortal lover. She fondled his shoulders, his smooth-plated belly and gleaming thighs. Then, laughing with mischief and half-pretending shame, as girls will in play, she performed for him such other things as are done by lovers in the mounting excitement of desire. So realistically did she enact her part that Maia, utterly absorbed, felt her own loins moisten and her breath come short.

As she gently caressed and drew apart the overlapping bronze scales so cunningly fashioned by Fleitil, the god's zard lengthened and grew rigid in his lady's hand, at its full extent locking with a minute click, inaudible to the watchers but to the queen the signal that she needed to hear. Thereupon, mounting her lover and drawing his jointed arms about her shoulders, she sank down astride him, crying out ecstatically and displaying to her worshippers, in the plunging of her thighs, all that they needed, for their spiritual renewal and fulfillment, to behold: and in what ensued she displayed the most skillful artistry, for not only did the great crown remain in place round her glowing hair, but never once did she lose the sacred thing which she had received.

Maia, hardly aware of what she did, turned and pressed herself against Sednil, thrusting her tongue into his mouth and at the same time pushing him back into the shadows. An hour ago it had briefly occurred to her to wonder why Nennaunir should have been at the trouble of seeking out this lad and asking him to run the risk of taking them into the temple. She knew now all right, no danger. Whatever it was that he might have done, Nennaunir evidently felt she owed him a good turn; and at this moment Maia felt no least objection to performing it for her.

"Sednil! Oh, Sednil-"

"Well, that makes things a lot easier, banzi," remarked Occula composedly. "I knew it was goin' to be one of us, but I'm not really in the mood, myself. You could charge him double if you like-he's got nothin'."

"Not here, not here," muttered Sednil. "Your dothes'd

get dirty and it'd show. There's a room along the gallery. But we'll have to be quick! We haven't got long."

Coming out into the yard, Occula and Maia made their own way back to the precinct, where Durakkon and some of the other nobles, in accordance with custom, were tossing handfuls of small coins among the crowd. After the girls had stood waiting for a considerable time in the blazing sun, the tryzatt of the litter-bearers came out to summon them back to the rear of the temple. Sencho, who had decided that it was not necessary for him to appear a second time in the hot, crowded precinct, had been lying down in the chief priest's private apartments. Here, having deigned to spend three-quarters of an hour over a light meal, he was ready for the girls to help him to his litter.