Shadowplay sq-1

by Jo Clayton

  "Luck."

  "Oh, yes." He turned his shoulder to her and went back to watching the scene in Cell 1 unfold.

  CELL 1

  The stink of perfumed oils brought her back. She was tied to the center pole of a Sacrifice Pyre, her boots sunk in the carved sticks, Mlowee bound beside her knees like a slave sacrificed to serve her mistress in the afterlife, Kayataki beside her mother, bound and gagged so she wouldn't cry out when the Fire took her, both of them tethered to the center post. Shadith tried to say something, but all she could do was croak; her throat felt destroyed. He should have ended it, that priest. He was too cruel. Ropes wound round her, knees to neck. No more running, no more maybes left for her.

  Kikun was slumped on her left. He was alive, but his soul was somewhere else, the body was an empty sac.

  Rohant was on her right, struggling with the ropes that bound him to his pole, so much rope he was like a worm in a cocoon. Blood dripped from the wound on the back of his head, his eyes were glazed, wild, no intelligence left, only the ancestral beast glaring out.

  The Gospah Ayawit came from the side and stood in front of Shadith. He was furious and afraid of the consequences flowing from the past hour's events. For one thing, Oppalatin had almost been denied his prime Sacrifice-the thought of his God's vengeance for this failure made him sweat all over. And there were Kiskaids bloodily, publicly, dead-already howls out there for his hide, rebels stirring everyone up against him. And against the Nistam-his hold on power would be even more precarious and the Nistam was not a man to tolerate the lapses of his subordinates. Both aspects of the Gospah's ambitions, the sacred and the secular, were put at risk by what the Singer had done. What they all had done, those cursed Avatars. If they were such.

  "By your choice, so be it," he chanted, his voice carried out over speakers suddenly cleared of noise. (or so it seemed to Shadith as she twisted her wrists against the ropes, searching for a way to slip her hands clear). "You chose to begin the Last Battle beforetime, so do you bring the Culmination on you also beforetime. Come the sundown we send you home." He bowed, turned and walked to the front, brought his staff down three times on a sounding board and the ritual took up where the priest-Mimes, the Longhomers and the choir had left off when she brought their gods to life.

  For a moment she gave'in to panic, then she bit down hard on her lip, closed her eyes and reached-searching for something, anything she could use to disrupt what was happening, rats or any sort of furry capable of chewing the ropes off her… I won't give up, she croaked, the words lost in the hoom of the horns, the doorndoom of the drums…1 won't give up as long as I'm breathing… there has to be a way… has to be… She spoke aloud to help focus her efforts, to escape from a terror-induced paisivity, to remind herself of the fragility of the body she wore.. despite the pain in her throat, she kept on talking as she searched.

  Shadows crawled across the bubble as the sun descended, time was running out…

  7

  "Ginny, we're ready. Give the word and we go."

  Ginbiryol grimaced. He was going to miss the Burning. Well, what could not be cured must be endured. He glanced at the ship-track; at the rate she was going, the Hunter would reach Kiskai about sundown, a nose to nose finish with the Fire. He spent a second hoping she would be just too late, then he unlocked the Kill-link and touched the sensor. "Right," he said. "The Bang's set for the moment we cross the Limit. Go."

  8

  As Ginbiryol Seyirshi's ship slid into the insplit, her detecs registered an enormous burst of radiation. He turned his head, smiled at Ajeri, then coaxed the Pet into his lap and began stroking the simi's velvety fur.

  Chapter 24. Boom!

  Shadith let the reach fade. Even Sassa was too far off to answer her call, driven away like all the other beasts and birds by the turmoil in the crater.

  She was shaking with fatigue; her strength was gone, her mind was mush.

  All she could see was fire.

  All she could think about was fire.

  Their voices deep, burring, near subsonic, the choir was chanting: Ma Ma Ma…

  The lug-ikes picked up the sound, transmitted it to the pilgrims along with the Longhorn bellows and the beats of the god-Mimes' feet on the great Drums.

  The cameras at the front of the Bubble sent images dark and bright of the choir, the Gospah and the god-Mimes out to those thousand screens scattered about the crater, showed the pilgrims their shadowforms circling through the ancient dance of the gods.

  The back of the Bubble was dark and quiet, the cameras there were turned off until it was time for the Fire; there was no lug-ikes close enough to pick up the screams of the burning Avatars. That would be aesthetically unpleasing.

  The ropes were wound round and round Shadith, knees to neck, were jerked so tight they dug grooves in her flesh. She fought against them until her arms and legs were numb and swollen and she couldn't move them anymore.

  Finally she rested her head against the pole, closed her eyes.

  Out on the crater floor, new trance-nodes were forming about ghost dancers and chanting rebels.

  Men were calling for the Avatars, they were calling for the Three to come back, they were cursing Priests, Pliciks, and the Nistam.

  Women, children, and grandparents moved into enlarging knots and began pushing toward the edges of the crater.

  Rage built across that floor, rage against the Priests and the Pliciks and the Nistam himself, Tanak and Maka blaming him and his followers for the dead, blaming him for the vanishing of the demigods-the pilgrims' demigods, not the priests', not the Pliciks', most of all, not the Nistam's.

  It was unifying them again, that rage, pulling them together almost as strongly as Shadith had.

  The sticks were heavy on Shadith's feet and the stench of the oils that saturated them crawled up her nose. She wanted to sneeze, but she was too tired.

  Her eyes burned with the sweat dripping down her face.

  There were Na-priests out among the pilgrims, exhorting them, threatening them. Ayawit had given the orders.

  They moved in a fog of rage, untouched by it, arrogant in their reliance on the terror their black vizards produced in everyone who saw them.

  The pilgrims moved back from them, muttering inaudibly, not yet worked up enough to overcome their fear and attack these symbols of the sacred AUTHORITY.

  A row of Na-priests were crouching across the front of the stage. They weren't watching the captives any more, they were watching the pilgrims.

  Like the pilgrims they had dropped out of the celebration; like the pilgrims they paid no attention to the ritual, they no longer felt its compulsion. They were too afraid, too angry.

  Serene in his conviction that he was right and would prevail, the Gospah chanted his litanies and moved through a choreography of worship so old it antedated the arrival of the Kiskaids on Kiskai.

  Shadith was so tired. So very tired. Maybe it was time to accept the inevitable. She'd lived long, she'd known more worlds than most people knew cities, it was a strange life but a good one-in many ways though not all. She didn't want to die. Not now. But there was no way, no way…

  The Pyres were cubic piles of seasoned hardwood, each piece of wood carved and saturated with sacred oils, raised two meters high about the center post. The top of each pile was relatively flat, two meters by two meters square.

  Tethered to that center post by short lengths of rope, Miowee and Kayataki lay on the wood by Shadith's feet, more cursorily bound than she was, hands tied behind their backs, Kayataki's ankles also bound. The child was gagged (presumably because the celebrants didn't fancy listening to the screams of a little girl), but they hadn't bothered with the woman.

  Miowee had forced her body around until her back was pressed against Kayataki's.

  She was cursing and struggling with the rope on her daughter's wrists, her fingers bleeding as she tried to solve knots she couldn't see so her child could wriggle loose.

  A SOUND came from the Maka and
the Tanak, a low growl, not loud enough yet to overcome the volume of the chant pouring through the speakers, but it was growing, a wordless, shapeless SOUND, as the men began pressing toward the Bubble and the portable Crystal Palace where the Nistam sat.

  Shadith heard that SOUND and she savored it; she wouldn't be going into the dark alone-the men who murdered her would be just as dead.

  It wasn't much of a comfort, but it was something.

  She managed a wry smile as she remembered telling Miowee: if you're set on dying, take him with you (him being Makwahkik)

  What with one thing and another, Makwahkik was the one that went, not Miowee, not Shadith.

  The Nistam would go this time. Probably. The Gospah. The Na-priests.

  She wouldn't see it. Sun was almost down.

  For sure, not much comfort.

  The Gospah finished his supplication and began turning in stately circles while the choir slid into another litany of praises.

  He was pressing on to the end despite all distractions.

  A moment ago, when he moved offstage for a change of paraphernalia, the Ni-ot Pipondihek (chief of the Nistam's Personal Guard, ex-liwa to Kati Mola), brought orders to cut the ceremony short and light the fires so they could get the hell out of there before the place exploded.

  He nodded politely, acknowledging the command. And ignored it thereafter.

  The Nistam's wishes were not important now.

  There were things that must be done if the Sacrifice was to be acceptable.

  That was more important than the Nistam's life, more important than his own.

  Miowee was whining with frustration, an odd little sound, rather like the noise an exhausted and angry puppy might make; her fingers were strong and agile but she couldn't see what she was doing and the knot had been pulled tight by a Na-priest with long experience in the unnatural strength of people pushed beyond their limits.

  Shadith blinked the sweat out of her eyes, twisted her neck around so she could look down at the singer.

  "Mee." It was more of a groan than a word, but her voice was beginning to come back to her. This body was resilient as hard rubber, recovering with a speed that still managed to astonish her. It was too bad…

  She, shrugged off regret, tried again. "Mee! Listen!"

  "What?" Miowee didn't look up, just kept on clawing at the knot.

  "If you can reach my left boot, there's a knife in it, but be careful, don't get near Kaya with it, you'd cut her in half before you knew what was happening."

  "What good is it, then?"

  "Cut the tethers. Roll her off the Prye. At least she won't burn."

  "Ah." Her eyes closed, her mouth working, Miowee slumped for a moment against Kayataki's back, then she shuddered, collected herself and began working her body back around until she could reach the boot top, listening as she moved to Shadith's explanation of how to get into the sheath.

  The Nistam was in a rage almost as great as the pilgrims', a fury he intended to exorcise by ridding himself of that idiot Ayawit after this stupidity was over with and he was back safe behind the Kiceota walls.

  Until the ceremony was completed, until the Culmination was enacted, he couldn't leave. He had to perch on this ugly uncomfortable throne and put his neck on the line. His OWN neck.

  Elementary precautions were one thing, running from' a gaggle of Maka clods was something else. His legitimacy and the power it conferred on him came from family tradition and the reputation of his ancestors. Running now would destroy that-and him.

  There were dozens of other Pliciks and Plicik clans with ambitions to replace him and his, half of them sitting around him now, watching him.

  In the cavern behind the portable Palace, the Ni-ot Pipondihek was calling in reinforcements from the city and the countryside, every Plicik capable of bearing arms.

  It was a desperate throw, the landlords and their forces might prove more dangerous to him, than the pilgrims, but they were a greedy lot with delusions of competence, feuding with their neighbors, trusting no one and far easier to manipulate than the bloody fanatics out there now.

  Divide and buy. His ancestors had done it before and won.

  In smaller ways he had kept himself intact and in power buying and dividing. He could do it again-and win.

  The Nistam sat impassively behind glass and steel and watched the not developing around him.

  Miowee drew the crystal knife from the sheath in the boot, but her hands were clumsy because she couldn't see them and she didn't fully understand the danger of the blade; as she pulled it out, it sliced through ropes and cloth and pared away skin and muscle from Shadith's leg.

  Until she felt the warm gush on her hands and twisted around to see what was happening, Miowee wasn't aware of what she'd done. She sucked in a breath as she saw the red flood. "Shadow…"

  "Yeh, I know." Shadith managed a creaky laugh. "Told you."

  "Death to the Pliciks! Death to the Godkillers!"

  Dencipim came out of the crowd, leaped the rope, and buried the pistol in the belly of the nearest Royal Guard. As he pulled the trigger, he snatched off the Guard's gilded helmet, threw it to the men following him over the rope. "Death to the Pliciks. Death to the Godkillers!"

  Darkness flowed across the crater; the shadows at the back of the. Bubble thickened. Shadith froze, but the rite went droning on and the sun came out again. Cloud or what?,

  Maka and Tana began throwing themselves at the Guards and the portable Palace, coming at it in waves, individual men dying and dying and dying, the waves never dying. "Death to the Pliciks! Death to the God-killers!"

  ***

  Miowee shifted cautiously, located the tether that bound Kayataki to the pole. "Kaya."

  "Mmmmphmm." It was a small sound, but as much noise as the girl could make around the gag. It was just audible above the chanting of the choir, the groan of the Longhorns, the doomdoom of the Drums.

  "Child of mine, you know how to fall, soon as you're loose, go over the edge, then scoot for the back, find a hole and crawl in, you hear me?"

  "Mmmooohminm!" The sound rose in protest. The child shook her head.

  "Do it. I'm coming soon as I'm loose, but I swear, baby, I won't move till you're out of sight."

  "Mmnimm." It was a falling sound this time, acquiescence. Shivering and icy pale, Kayataki hunched forward, pushed her head against her mother's side, then pulled back, stretching the tether taut so it'd be easier to cut.

  Miowee handled the knife more awkwardly than she intended, applying too much force despite her care. The blade went through both ropes, hers and Kaya's, without noticing them and kept on going, missing her buttock by a hair and sinking into one of the oily sticks. She let go of the hilt as if she'd closed her hand about a snake.

  A redheaded woman came riding through the Cicipi Gate, sitting in an arslibre howda mounted on the arching back of an immense and ugly warbot like the worst possible cross between a spider and a lobster. Two more paced alongside and a third followed behind. They shot gouts of steam through spiracles along their sides, opening a path for themselves through the surging throng of Kiskaids, walking with ominous, sinuous inevitability through the self-created clouds of steam.

  The pilgrims scrambled to get away from the things, frantic with terror, seeing them as demons from hell's cellar.

  Maka and Tanak were swarming over the glass palace, stomping on it, kicking at it, shooting at it with guns they'd brought with them or taken from dead guards; the glass was chipped and webbed with cracks but would not break, the cage groaned from the weight it was carrying but refused to collapse.

  Men died, their bodies piling up against the glass. Inside the portable Palace, the Nistam stared grimly at grotesque dead faces staring sightlessly back at him.

  Loyal Guards fired into the mob, killing hundreds, but a half a million men were coming at them, they couldn't kill them all. There wasn't enough room for aiming or even for using their rifles effectively. One by one they were falling.
<
br />   About half the Guardforce deserted and slid into the crowd the moment they got a chance to tear off their uniforms.

  By will and the force of the discipline he'd imposed on Aspirants all the long years he'd been Gospah, Ayawit was holding the rite together despite the chaos out on the floor of the crater.

  Though he was gradually losing some of his priests, the core held. The Longhorners played their bassnotes, the choir sang, the god-Mimes danced-and the Na-priests crouched in the guardline between the Gospah and the people.

  One by one the weaker souls slipped away, throwing off their robes and cassocks, stealing clothing off the dead, melting into the mob outside. But the core held.

  ***

  As Miowee went over the edge and landed with a thump on the planks behind the Pyres, Shadith sagged against the ropes.

  They gave a little. She could move her hands, her arms.

  After a moment, she understood why.

  Getting the knife out, Miowee had cut through several loops of the coil that bound her to the pole and that coil was beginning to unwind.

  Her leg burned a little, but she still wasn't feeling much pain, the crystal cut too clean.

  She flexed her knee, gasped at the sudden agony, felt sick when her foot sloshed in the blood that was filling the boot; the knife hadn't touched an artery, but she was leaking like a holey pot.

  I'm going to bleed to death, she thought. No!