Shallows of Night - 02 (21 page)

He heard chanting, far off and aloft, and the dimness gave grudging way to warm yellow light as the priests entered the grotto from some hidden doorway, carrying before them immense lanterns constructed from the whole skins of giant fish, dried, blown, and lacquered to stiffness. Various pigments had been used to cleverly reproduce and enhance the original aspect, heighten the character of each creature.

The priests wore swirling cloaks of sea-green which left their strong arms bare. They were long-skulled and yellow-skinned, hairless and quite young.

They set the fish lamps down in prescribed places and now he could see that towering over the pool, on the far shore, was a statue. It was of solid gold, carved most cunningly in the shape of an enormous dragon, its thick coils entwined about a regal throne of gold. But where he had expected a female head to be was carved a skull of semi-canine structure, with long grinning muzzle, sharp-toothed and flaring-nostriled above which large round eyes of sea-green jade sparked in the brighter light.

Kiri gripped his hand in hers and her breathing was heavy as she stared at the priests.

All were assembled now and kubaru were stationed at each entrance, he supposed to discourage intruders though in all the crowd he had not seen any glint of weaponry save his own.

One of the priests now gave a signal and incense was thrown into a wide brass brazier. Clouds of yellow steam rose into the black mists of the grotto and spices came to him on the moist air. A young boy appeared leading an animal that Ronin could not readily identify; perhaps it was a young boar. Squealing, the animal was laid out upon a stained stone slab and the chanting began again from the priests and this time it was echoed by the assembled: “Kay-Iro De. Kay-Iro De.”

One of the priests reached inside his cloak and produced a knife with a hilt of yellow crystal. Lifting it high over his head, he spoke in the ancient tongue, words that neither Ronin nor, he suspected, Kiri could understand. Yet the meaning seemed clear and Ronin was not surprised when the gleaming blade flashed downward in a shallow arc and pierced the flesh of the animal. Hot blood spurted from the severed artery, spattering the robes of the priests. Dropping the knife, the priest reached his hand into the still trembling interior of the animal and pulled out the warm heart. This he tied with coarse thongs to the knife and cast it into the center of the sea pool while his fellow priests set about collecting the blood of the animal in a glazed yellow bowl. With the splash a kind of sighing went up from the multitude and the chanting began again.

The priests marched silently around the perimeter of the pool toward the golden dragon on the far side and, laying the bowl of blood at the foot of the throne, each in turn bent to dip his hands into the crimson liquid. One by one, then, they climbed the huge throne and daubed the blood onto the eyes of the dragon until it dripped down the muzzle, into the mouth, staining the teeth darkly and thence from the points into the deep green waters.

Now they returned and with them was a young girl in a white robe with silver fish embroidered on it. He felt Kiri against him now, warm and trembling, as they brought the girl before the multitude. She was white-faced and beautiful, tall and shapely with black almond eyes and dark hair that came down to her buttocks. She seemed very young.

Ceremoniously, the priests washed their hands and, at another signal, more incense was thrown into the braziers so that now a green cloud rose into the thick air. Ronin felt then the heat of the throng and the denseness of the atmosphere and he was obliged to take deeper breaths to get sufficient oxygen.

Their hands still wet, the priests donned masks of papier-mâché that caused them to take on the appearance of articulated fish, scales gleaming, gills starkly delineated, round eyes staring unblinkingly. Slowly, they moved in a semicircle around the young girl and the chanting from the throng took on volume and urgency. With infinite slowness their hands lifted and unwound the robe from the girl.

Naked she was breath-taking, with wide hips and heavy breasts and firm thighs. In that electric instant, the priests’ robes fell away and she collapsed to the floor of the grotto.

The chanting was all but a roar now and Ronin strained along with the others to see clearly as the priests followed the descent of the girl to the cavern’s floor. For many moments the rhythmic movements of the muscular bodies moved to the cadence of the chanting. “Kay-Iro De, Kay-Iro De,” and when the priests had finished they rose as one and servants of the temple clothed them once again and removed their fish masks. The girl lay whitely, her breasts heaving like waves upon an agitated sea, fists clenched between her legs. Kiri moaned softly next to him.

Up from a small side pool was drawn a flapping sea creature of some kind, black and sleek and gleaming. It was surely not a fish, for when the priests slew it, this time with a knife of purest green jade, the thing bled red blood as an air-breathing animal would. Again the priests caught the blood in a bowl and with it drew near the prone girl once more.

They grasped her arms and lifted her until she was standing, cradling her as they forced her head back and made her drink the warm blood. Choking and gagging, she drank and when it was all gone they took her to the far side of the sea pool and thrust her roughly upward onto the golden throne, so that her legs entwined with the metallic coils. She clung weakly to the dragon’s slippery hide, her head hanging so that the face was concealed by the black forest of her tossed hair. And in no time her body convulsed and she vomited the red liquid so that it drenched the fierce head of the statue.

She shuddered and her grip upon the tiling loosened and the priests’ arms were retreating and, like the sticky spume that now dripped from the fanged mouth of the golden dragon, she slid inexorably from its slippery embrace into the cool green waters of the sea pool, into the bloodstained salt sea.

There was a collective gasp from the crowd and the chanting began once more from the mouths of the priests, “Kay-Iro De, Kay-Iro De.”

The girl thrashed in the water, choking, seemingly not able to swim. Her head disappeared, then she surfaced again, mouth open in a silent scream and with a thrash, descended into the depths.

At that moment the waters of the pool appeared to swirl as if subject to a swiftly passing current, fierce and unnatural, and the air above the water seemed to shimmer as if from some terrible heat.

Tension stung the crowd like an incipient thunderstorm and they seemed caught between an urge to press forward and an instinctive fear to pull back. As a result, they milled about chaotically as the chanting of the priests rose to the howl of a tornado, the rock walls of the grotto hurling the sounds back upon their ears.

“Kay-Iro De. Kay-Iro De.”

And now, though he could scarcely believe his eyes, a whirlpool was forming in the center of the sea pool and abruptly the green waters darkened. Emerald mists rose from the pool’s sides and salt foam fountained from its core.

“Kay-Iro De. Kay-Iro De.”

And the fountaining presaged the presence of something from deep within the sea. He saw the ill-defined shape, black and monstrous, through the imperfect lens of the water, staining the pool with its bulk.

“Kay-Iro De. Kay-Iro De.”

And now it broke the water’s surface, a reluctant, elastic barrier, into the molten atmosphere of the cavern, heavy with incense and freshly spilled blood, hot with the body warmth of the frenzied people. Foam flying from the tangled seaweed of its hair, black almond eyes huge and baleful.

“Kay-Iro De. Kay-Iro De.”

Oh, surely not, thought Ronin. The black eyes within the human head surveyed the throng, the body arching upward so that within the green foam and white spray of its thrust could be seen thick, sinuous coils, scaly, encrusted with algae and yellow barnacles. And within those twisting coils, a glimpse of a white broken torso, slim legs.

With a crash like the collapse of a building, the thing shot straight down, merely a ripple, dark and remote now beneath the waves clapping at the sea pool’s edges. And then nothing, only the trembling of the water, limpid and deep green once again.

For an instant, all sound ceased, and had it not been for the tiny slap-slap of the diminishing wavelets, Ronin might have believed that time itself had stopped.

Kiri, shuddering, gripped his arm.

“Look,” she whispered hoarsely. “Look.” And his eyes lifted to the far side of the pool, at the immobile dragon. There, instead of the canine head darkly dripping blood, was the golden head of an exquisite woman with almond eyes carved of sea-green jade.

When he awoke, the sun was already past its zenith. He lay quite still for a moment, watching the bright whips of sunlight rippling like molten lead across the floor, listening to the close sounds of singing, hoarse shouts, the frenetic slap of jogging feet, the creaking of ships being outfitted, the metallic grate and the splash as a ship weighed anchor.

For a moment he floated above the receding abyss of his unconscious where rose…

And sat up. Slatted wooden doors through which the salt breeze blew and light streamed and he knew then that he was in Llowan’s harrtin, though why Kiri had brought him back here instead of to Tenchō he could not remember. He was alone in the room. He stood up and, naked to the waist, went out into the day.

The veranda too was empty yet still he felt the complex shreds of last night clinging to the edges as if they were real and fluttering in the wind.

He looked out at the sluggish sea, clogged with vessels large and small. It was a bright, clear day with thin high clouds near the lid of the sky and he squinted in the sunshine. Below him, the activity along the long wharves of Sha’angh’sei was fierce with loadings and unloadings, the compradores calling to the stevedores, who in turn shouted at the singing kubaru, jogging under the weight of bales and barrels filled with the wealth of the city, the foods and textiles of the continent of man.

His eyes moved from the white billowing sails studding the near waters to the yellow sea farther out and, like a wave pungent with salt and phosphorus washing over him, the events of last night flooded in on him.

Kay-Iro De. Kay-Iro De.

He shook his head. Perhaps it was only the aftermath of the substance which he had taken. What had Kiri called it? The tears of the Lamiae. Merely an illusion, rising and falling like the tide. Sun dancing on the restless water, shards of liquid gold. A memory elusive and vague, as if it were part of another lifetime, lapped at the edges of his consciousness. What? A shape, dark and vast and inconstant and…

He heard a sound behind him and turned, passed through the open shutters into the cool room to find Matsu, serene, lithe Matsu, standing in the center in a pale green silk robe edged in rust, leaves of the same color falling across its surface. She held a deep blue lacquered tray on which sat a clay pot glazed gray and red and several small cups painted in the same pattern.

“I have come to take you to the Council,” she said, kneeling and setting the tray down before her. She lifted a slim arm. “Please. Sit. I have brought your breakfast.” Her dark eyes stared up at him unblinkingly and for a moment his stomach contracted.

He ran a hand across his face and went to her, knelt, the tray a low barrier between them. He washed his face and hands from a large bowl of water which she handed him. She patted his face dry with a clean white cloth. He sat back. “Matsu, where is—?”

“She has much to accomplish today and it is already afternoon.”

“How is the woman I brought to Tenchō?”

She did not answer but concentrated on the ceremony of the tea, the turnings of the cup, the stirring, the pouring, all the precise movements that made it so special. He sat quietly and watched her deft hands.

At last the tea was steaming in the cup and she lifted it, an oblique offering, saying, after he had accepted it, “She has awakened. Her name is Moeru, she wrote it for me.”

He sipped the tea and it tasted better because of the way she had served it to him.

“Has she still a fever?”

“I think not. The sweat no longer rolls off her and she is eating now.”

“That is good.” Her eyes hiding behind sooty lashes.

“She wished to remove the bandage.”

“What bandage?”

“The one high up on her thigh. The dressing is dirty.”

He put the cup down on the tray.

“Ah, no. The apothecary told me to leave it on. There is a healing poultice beneath the cloth.”

“But she says that she has no pain there.”

“Then the poultice is working.”

There was silence for a time. He continued to sip his tea. Matsu watched him, her small white hands folded on her lap. Leaves rustled as she breathed. Smells of sweat and spices and fresh fish from the wharves. Shouts and hoarse laughter. Oval face like still water, strands of hair floating in the breeze, the perfect column of the neck, slender and ivoried.

“Your friend’s husband,” he asked. “How is he?”

“Ah,” sighed Matsu, her head minutely in motion so that a wave of black hair fell over one eye, across her cheek. “It is most sad. He was knifed last night, fighting in a tavern.”

“I am sorry.”

She smiled wanly. “It is as well he died. The war had changed him. My friend no longer knew him. He brought only sorrow to those who loved him, even his son who lies paralyzed on a bed in my friend’s house.”

“I do not understand,”

“His back is broken but he still has eyes with which to see. His father resented that.” she shrugged. “As I said, it is perhaps better this way.”

“Will you have some tea?”

Matsu shook her head. “It is for you.”

Outside, the sun beat down out of a deep cerulean sky. They smelled the gutted fish drying in the heat, a hint of cinnamon, of cloves, of coriander, and Ronin’s nostrils dilated for a moment as if recalling on their own a distant and odious scent.

Then they were in the ricksha, moving off down the narrow, baking streets, past the blind faces of the harrtin which Ronin now knew opened opulently their splendid verandas onto the bund—the wharves of Sha’angh’sei and the swelling yellow sea.