by Speer, Flora
With numerous curious looks in Reid’s direction, the crowd meekly dispersed. Osiyar spoke to Reid again.
“Come with me,” he said.
Reid was struck by the deep coldness of the man. Osiyar had offered no word of greeting, much less of welcome or even curiosity, and his manner toward Janina was that of a person far superior to her. To his dismay, Janina left them as they reached the temple, hurrying along the colonnade and out of sight before Reid could call her back. Osiyar waited by the huge twin doors, watching him with cool eyes. Reid followed him inside.
It was just like the headquarters building at the lake, with an inner colonnade, twelve rooms arranged around the perimeter, and a large round central room. Unlike the other building, however, this central room held no computer. It was empty except for two women, but the strength and power of the older woman seemed to fill all the space. She was ancient, and so frail that she ought to have been laid low by the weight of her gold-and-white disk and crescent headdress. Her robe was white with gold designs on it of stars and fantastic symbols which Reid could not interpret. Blue eyes the exact shade of Janina’s looked him up and down.
The other, younger woman was stunningly beautiful, with golden hair and a mature, well-rounded body. She wore pale blue trimmed in silver. Reid saw her eyes fix first upon Osiyar’s handsome face before moving to his own face, then back to Osiyar again, as though looking for some clue from him.
Osiyar had just presented him to the priestesses when, to Reid’s great relief, Janina reappeared, without the water jar.
“You are late,” Sidra told her harshly. “You have delayed the midday ritual by your dallying.”
“Never mind,” Tamat said in a patient voice. “Janina has an excuse for keeping us waiting.”
Then, at Tamat’s order, Janina described how she had found Reid, while he wondered again that telepaths should use speech to communicate when there was no need.
“And there were others with you?” Tamat asked Reid.
“I don’t know if they are dead or alive,” he replied. “We mean you no harm, priestess, nor will we interfere in your lives in any way. The purpose of our small settlement on this planet is to watch the movements of Cetan warships and report them to the Jurisdiction. We would be happy to inform you of any possible danger to you from the Cetans.”
“The Jurisdiction has banished all telepaths,” Sidra said, her lovely face cold.
“Commander Tarik has a kinder view of those who differ from Jurisdiction norms,” Reid responded. Then, deciding there would be no better time, he made his important request of Tamat. “Priestess, I have lost my communicating equipment, so I have no way to contact my friends. Would you use your telepathic powers to reach our headquarters? I believe you would find Tank open to such a message.”
Sidra’s indrawn breath sounded like the long hiss of a beautiful, dangerous reptile.
“How dare you?” she whispered. “The Gift may not be used for trivial matters.”
“I have lost a cousin and a friend out there in the forest,” Reid declared. “I want to help them. Tarik will send others to try to find us, and they may fall into danger, too. The safety of intelligent life forms is not a trivial matter.”
“Well said.” It was Tamat who answered him.
Reid had looked at Sidra as he spoke to her, but now he turned his attention back to Tamat. Their eyes met and held, and Reid experienced the oddest sensation. It was as though gentle, invisible tentacles entered and caressed his mind, pressed delicately, and then withdrew.
Reid’s jaw fell open. It had been so easy, so effortless, yet he was certain Tamat now knew all that was in his mind at the instant she had touched it. He knew something else, too. She had wanted him to be aware of what she was doing. If she had not wanted it, he never would have known.
Everything in his mind. That meant Tamat knew how intensely aware he was of Janina, now standing quietly beside Sidra, and she knew what they had almost done in the grove. He thought he saw astonishment, anger, and then understanding in Tamat’s eyes, though the aged face did not change expression.
“He speaks true,” Tamat said.
“Then you will help me?” Reid asked, so relieved he almost forgot his embarrassment about Janina, as well as his concern that his mind had been entered and explored so easily. “You will contact Commander Tank and tell him where I am and about Herne and Alla?”
“I will consider it,” Tamat replied.
“While you are considering, my companions may die.” Reid reacted to Tamat’s measured tones with impatience. “They need help now.”
“You must understand,” Tamat said, “that the safety and security of my people is my primary concern. I will try to devise a means of warning your Commander Tarik about your lost friends without divulging the presence of our village. But you, Reid, cannot be allowed to leave Ruthlen to report our location, to bring other outsiders here.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Reid began, but Osiyar interrupted him.
“You could not avoid it. You would have to explain where you were, and inevitably your friends would learn about the blanking shield,” the priest said. “Tamat, will you allow him to live, or will you order him set adrift?”
“He will live, for now,” she replied after a moment’s deliberation. When both Osiyar and Sidra looked ready to protest this decision, Tamat continued, “Think how useful he could be to us. Think of the knowledge his mind contains about the universe beyond Ruthlen. But Reid has something more important even than knowledge. He appears to be perfectly healthy, despite the ordeal of defeating the full force of our blanking shield in the forest and the ravine. In fact, he is filled with amazing vitality. A man so strong, a man brave enough to face unknown telepaths and keep his wits with him must be made of superior genetic material. After so many centuries of isolation, we here in the village are all too similar. Our gene pool has grown weak. It needs an infusion from an outsider.
“Yes,” she went on, nodding to herself, “we will allow Reid to live, and in return he will lend himself to us. Reid will stay in the temple complex until he has learned our ways. Then, on the festival nights of the full moons and dark moons, he will mate with whichever women choose him.”
“He is not a telepath. It will never be a true mating,” Sidra objected before anyone else could say anything. “He will dilute the telepathic abilities of any children he begets.”
“Consider Janina’s situation and know that what you suggest is by no means certain,” Tamat returned. “Janina’s parents were both true telepaths, yet she is not. Therefore, it appears that variations in this inherited trait can occur. I believe it is possible that a non-telepath, mated to a telepath, can produce a child who is a true telepath. I am surprised you do not agree with me, Sidra. We have discussed this problem often enough - how sickly many of our people are, how they are born with defects that kill them at an early age. We know well the reason. It is because the same small group has interbred for centuries. Let us try this experiment. It cannot leave us in worse condition than we already are. It may help us.”
“As you wish, Tamat.” Sidra bowed her head in acquiescence.
“I have an obvious objection to this plan, and I’m surprised you haven’t thought of it,” Reid said, knowing he need not voice his true thoughts, for Tamat surely knew how he felt about Janina. He wanted to declare publicly that he would mate with no woman except Janina. He did not, because, recalling that she was sworn a virgin priestess, he feared that such a declaration would place her in jeopardy. Instead, he tried to make Tamat change her plans for him by raising a practical question. “Won’t the men of the village be angry about the arrangement you propose, and resent me because I can make free with their womenfolk? Wouldn’t that anger rebound upon you and the other priests and priestesses and thus create problems between temple and village?”
“Not at all,” Tamat replied with smooth confidence. “The men are accustomed to sharing their women, and the women to sharing thei
r men. The number of births among us is low, and freedom between men and women is one way to increase our population. Only a few couples prefer to keep exclusively to each other, and all of them live on farms well outside the village. Oddly enough, they usually produce four or five children, some of whom later come to live in the village, so we do not insist that those couples share themselves with others. Therefore, you will be required to lend yourself only to women of the village. You need not worry about angering anyone but me, Reid.
“Osiyar, I will see him housed with you,” Tamat went on. “You are the one who has the most contact with the villagers. Begin by teaching Reid their ways. We will also accustom the villagers to his presence. By the time the moons are both full again, by the night of the next festival, there should be at least one or two women who will choose him, if only for the novelty he represents. If he is successful in impregnating them, there will be other willing women at later festivals.”
It was then that Reid heard a sound from the previously silent Janina, just the beginning of a quickly smothered sob. Looking at her frozen face, gazing into her mist-blue eyes, he saw pain and knew with a stab of mingled guilt and joy that she was not indifferent to him even though she had refused his love-making. And he also knew that she believed there was nothing she, or he, could do to prevent the fate Tamat had just decreed for him.
* * * * *
In late evening, Osiyar joined Tamat in her small audience chamber for their daily discussion of events in Ruthlen. As always, no one else was present, not even Sidra.
“There is only one thing to talk about tonight,” Osiyar observed, seating himself next to her, “and that is Reid. The man has an incredibly strong will to live if the urge to destroy himself could not overcome him in the forest or while he was ascending the cliff. That is our last defense against anyone who tries to penetrate the shield to enter Ruthlen. Reid should be dead by now, would be dead were he any other man. Which makes me wonder, Tamat. Did you bring him here deliberately?”
“No,” Tamat replied. “I was informed by Philian, who was on duty then maintaining the shield, that a man had entered the outermost defenses. I am as surprised as you are that he succeeded in reaching us, but now that he is here, it is only sensible to make use of him instead of destroying him.”
“For the present,” Osiyar agreed, watching her face closely for any change of expression. “And in the future?”
“Ah, who can foretell the future?” said Tamat with an odd inflection to her voice.
“Under certain circumstances, Janina can,” Osiyar replied quietly, his eyes still on Tamat’s face. If he saw anything there to indicate what Tamat’s deepest thoughts might be, he gave no sign. After a pause he spoke again. “I would not disagree with you when anyone else was present, but Sidra’s objection to allowing Reid to mate with the village women is a sound one. I can only conclude that you have some well-founded but unrevealed reason for your decision to use him in such a way.”
“Osiyar, you have shared my growing despair at the decline in our population, and at the inherited ill health of so many of our people. You know my fear that within another generation or two, Ruthlen may cease to exist, for few will remain alive.” Suddenly Tamat’s eyes were shining with excitement. Her voice became that of a much younger woman, a woman with renewed purpose to her life. “Dear friend, share now my joy at the new hope we have been given, for Reid could well prove to be our salvation. I searched his mind thoroughly, and he has a portion of the Gift. He has never been trained, of course, having spent his life in the Jurisdiction where use of the Gift is strictly forbidden. He could not control his ability should it be set free in him, so we must take care never to rouse it, or he would go mad and be useless to us. But his children can inherit the Gift from him as well as from their mothers. Reid brings us not only new genetic material, but a fresh infusion of telepathic strength. He is exactly what Ruthlen needs.”
“I knew you had some deeper purpose.” Leaning back in his chair, Osiyar regarded her with respect and affection. “I am also certain you have some other plan for Reid besides this mating arrangement. You would never do anything so serious as allow a stranger to live here without several good reasons.”
“I see certain possibilities,” Tamat replied, not denying what Osiyar had said. “More than that I will not say just now.”
“And Janina? What of her?”
“Janina has done nothing wrong,” Tamat declared, a little too quickly. Osiyar’s eyebrows went up, and he looked at his Co-Ruler with a slight smile.
“Nothing?” he asked in a tone weighted with meaning.
“Very little,” Tamat amended. “Janina is a victim of her own innocence. She cannot be blamed for anyone else’s transgressions.”
“And you love her. That is enough for me to know. I am willing to drop the subject of Janina’s actions.”
“She will remain true to her vows, unless she is released from them,” Tamat declared.
“Will you release her?”
“Not I. Not yet. But, dear Osiyar, there are greater powers than those of Tamat of Ruthlen,” the High Priestess said with a soft laugh. “Even I cannot rule over the emotions of others, and emotions, as you and I know, are often unruly and have been known to spoil the best of plans.”
Chapter 5
On the morning after Reid arrived in Ruthlen, Sidra summoned Janina as soon as it was daylight.
“On Tamat’s command,” Sidra said, “you and I will go to the sacred grove to make certain nothing has been disturbed by Reid’s presence there.”
“I told Tamat all was well,” Janina answered. “Reid did not touch the Water.”
“Nevertheless, you will come with me.”
When Sidra used that tone, Janina knew there was no way to stop her. Obediently, she strapped the water jar to her back and walked beside the older priestess through the village, where Sidra was greeted with low bows of reverence and wishes for a pleasant day while Janina was pointedly ignored as if she were invisible.
The people of Ruthlen had never been an especially kind folk. Their constant fear of renewed attack from the Cetans and their precarious perch on a tiny crescent of land at the edge of a dangerous sea did not incline them toward the gentler virtues. But they had always been honest and hardworking, and usually fair toward one another. These were necessary qualities for a community that was so few in number.
Lately, however, Janina had been disturbed by signs of increasing dishonesty. In the distribution of fish on days when the catch was poor, in the settling of a boundary dispute between farmers, in the question of who would inherit a tiny cottage just outside the village, Sidra had recently begun to speak for the side that paid her the greater honor. Though Osiyar was the final judge of all such disputes, and though he prided himself on his unbiased fairness, he listened to Sidra’s opinions when they were offered, as well as to Tamat’s. Sidra had no hesitation about speaking her mind on these occasions, nor any apparent qualms about favoring those plaintiffs whom Janina had previously noticed currying her favor in anticipation of the day when she would become High Priestess. All was done so subtly, so delicately, that neither Tamat nor Osiyar could object to Sidra’s careful reasoning.
Thinking how different Sidra was from Tamat, forcing to the bottom of her mind an uneasy sense of encroaching corruption, Janina heaved a deep sigh and turned with Sidra onto the road leading to the sacred grove. And there, when she lifted her eyes toward the tall peaks, her thoughts were distracted from Sidra’s activities.
“The mountains are casting out more steam than usual,” Janina observed.
“Perhaps they are displeased by the presence of a stranger among us,” Sidra observed sourly.
Janina Knew Sidra did not believe what she had just said. In fact, Janina doubted that Sidra believed in anything at all except the telepathic powers of her own mind and of the minds of the other priests and priestesses. And Tamat. Sidra’s love and reverence for Tamat was deep and true. It was that fac
t, and that alone, which made Sidra tolerable to Janina.
When they entered the sacred grove, Sidra went directly to the pavilion, while Janina stood on the moss, looking into the pool. She felt the quiet presence that nearly always greeted her there. Whatever it was, it had not been disturbed or offended by Reid or by what they had done the day before. Glancing at the khata bush with its weight of crimson flowers, Janina drew a deep breath. She did not regret allowing Reid to embrace her, but she understood it was best never to let him touch her again. Remembering the strength of his arms around her and the warm pressure of his body on hers, she began to tremble. It would be difficult to stay away from him.
Sidra’s cool voice recalled her to duty.
“lift the stone,” Sidra ordered. “Let me see if more medical supplies are needed. It is almost time to go into the ravine to gather the last herbs of the season, and we ought to be prepared in case someone is injured on the way.”
Once convinced that the only result of Reid’s unauthorized visit to the sacred grove was the need for a full pot of salve to replace the nearly empty one Janina had used on his wounds, Sidra appeared to relax.
“Before we return,” she said with a last glance around the grove, “let us investigate the tunnel Reid used.”
She led the way to the opposite side of the grove. She knew exactly where the tunnel was. It was no secret to the priestesses. Sidra pulled back a bush that had grown during the warm weather until it partially blocked the mouth of the tunnel. She entered it, Janina following her.
The ceiling was low enough to make them bend their heads while they walked through it to the opening in the face of the cliff. They stood together on the narrow rock shelf, looking across the ravine to the forest. Janina saw nothing but the green trees and the dome of the purple-blue sky above them. She knew Sidra, trained as she was and possessing telepathic powers second only to Tamat’s, was able to see the shimmering boundaries of the blanking shield.