The Rose upon the Rood of Time (Dark Spiral Book 1)

by Segoy Sands

  “I’m here, child,” Ootha crooned. “Ootha’s here. I’ve lived a hun’red year and mo. And mo. Ya fire feeds on all, but on us, on our kind, more than they’s. It uses us; it never let go. Tonight there’s na but fire, even for ma old bones. Look how it sings.”

  “Please give her here,” Erete asked. Valla was at her side, trying to make her drink a repugnant mixture of congealed sheep blood, honey, clotted seaweed, and herbs.

  “Shush,” Ootha’s toothless gums flapped. “Ya were trained. Ya feel the warmth. Ya endured it ya nine moons.”

  Erete felt a flash of pure resentment. Why had the aksa come and spoiled the birth? Why was she preying on them, that old obtrusive vulture, her days of joy long past?

  “Anger do rise,” Ootha watched her. “Warmth become tainted with self.” She came closer and laid a hand – a sensate glove, leathery and cool, worming with purple veins - on Erete’s brow. “Rest na. Stop ya struggling. Stop ya worries. I will do seal this child.”

  “Please don’t seal her.” She said it, but without conviction. Unsealed, would she even be her daughter? Would live to womanhood?

  “Ya seal will na hold, girl,” Ootha cackled softly, wheezing. “Were you na taught? No seal can hold La Teine. But let her be sealed fo’ a time, chil’. Don’t be na cracklin’ fool.”

  As Erete lay back, and closed her eyes, Ootha chanted the foldings of the implicate knot, gave breath to its subtle corners, and blew the seal into the white conch of the infant’s left ear. In Ootha’s sunken face, one might have read grim resignation. She was shutting the door, if only briefly, that she had given every moment of her life to open.

  “I am old, old lady. I won’t na stay much longer.” Erete wasn’t sure if the hoarse crooning was for her or the baby. “Life is terrible, terrible. You will understand, little one. Ya fire eating you bittie by bittie. Bittie by bittie.”

  Old though she was, Ootha never seemed to tire. She let young Valla sleep while she sat at Erete’s bedside and helped coax the babe to suckle again. Dawn came in slow gradations. By first light the arthritic aksa had imparted to Erete a set of intricate instructions. She warned that misfortune would come now to the women of Paidrin.

  We do seal this child, from La Teine. We seal ya red door.

  *

  Something dry and brittle, bone of bird, mouse, or bat, crunched under her bare heel. The air was cool and dank, the light dim. She and Ashe were under the earth now. Erete reached back her hand, and felt Ashe take it with a sure cool grip. Even as an infant, the girl had never taken fever. Even in the heat of day, she was always cool. She had never seen Ashe sweat, never seen her cheeks red. All of that would begin to change now. The bad luck that had fallen on Paidrin, pray the Lady that too would change!

  Through smooth narrow tunnels, they walked barefoot to Red Flower Qiva. Erete had delayed as long as she could for fear of how the Red Flower might affect the seal that was on her child. For years, Erete had pretended Ootha had meant for her to await a sign: one day Ashe would mention a vision of the Rose come to her in dream, maybe. But now too much was changing. Skårsan marauders looted Paidrin. They had learned that the warmth of the Red Lady no longer rose through the coning, save in a few, and so they had plundered. No other spiral would come to their aid, for they were naalöyö, forbidden to exist at all. The Red sisters that did not flee were taken into the bondage, as whore-wives. In the coming time, there would be no Red Spiral, even when the seals set on Ashe came undone. The secret sisterhood was broken. In other ways, too, the Spiral was changing. There was talk of crossers, rumor that the Blue Spiral was no more, that the Nilai had unsealed an avä of the Dark Lady, if such a thing could be believed, for the sisters of Naarwa Isle had always been held the most prudent and temperate. Erete would do as Ootha said. She would take Ashe to the Red Flower, and then send her to sisters of the Serai.

  *

  Up above, a thousand carnelian sand petals erupted - calyx, pistil, style – in the concentric rings of the cavern ceiling of iron-infused silica. The Blood Rose glowed above and around her, incarnadine, self-arisen in the shape of a flower, filled with the sunlight pressing from above. She had seen the gypsum rose in dreams and waking visions, though she kept it to herself. In real life, it was just as it was in the vision. She was seven years old. Her mother’s voice was soft as the first down of anther on a quince bud, or the first velvet on a yearling’s antlers. “When you were born, the roseate flame glowed through you. I named you Ashe.”

  *

  Flash of memory. Presence of the past. Part of Ashe’s training in the Serai had been to sit in darkness and allow pure memory. An acolyte must realize that the self is an empty bundle of memories, most of which had never been conscious in the first place. The fleeting images of things perceived but never experienced must be harvested as poems for her amba, Eccle.

  red dunes roll

  sea of blood

  metal iron

  mixed

  sand

  small hands

  trace rough skin

  of damp red rock

  white-crested rollers break

  on white powder dust

  A few times in the qiva dark, Ashe had visions of her mother sitting by a fire or walking by the sea. She wished Erete were less alone, and had not held so many secrets from her. She served the hidden spiral still, somewhere near Paidrin, a raven-haired woman secretly tattooed with the implicate knot, a lonely lady who watched the sea for Skårsan raiders, who had razed her village. They knew better now than to return to that stretch of the Red Coast, for Erete lived the withered old lady, Ootha, whose anger they had roused. Not since the Sei Sí, when Saiorse rode with Ailil in the Rhiannon, had an aksa of La Teine dared risk open use of the warmth, for fear of drawing the attention of the Ymecla of the Calyx, but Ootha was surely one of the last guardians of the red door, and had nothing to lose.

  Ashe called her mind back from its drifting in memory waves, mental images. Tonight, she needed vigilance. Tonight, the clinging forms of mind, the fabricator, would come crowding to divert her. Tonight, she would become yeme.

  Four younger girls knelt before her on the smooth floor of Yellow Flower Qiva, at the heart of the honeycombed Serai complex, La Sierrellä, at the center of the southern arm of the Spiral. This night, she held the forked branch of serawood and bowl of seed-water, Nembulo Nucifera. This night, she presided over the rite, without Eccle, who had always guided her. What happened this night in the qiva would be her responsibility. Nembulo, the Irri manifest, would come because she called.

  Fifteen, with long red hair, Ashe was a slender flame of middle stature. By her look, one might have guessed she hailed from Paidrin, a daughter of the Blood Dunes that ripple, iron-rich, serpentine along the southern tip of the east coast. Many knew the women of Paidrin venerated the Red Lady, meeting in secret in the Qiva of the Red Flower, hidden in catacombs that bubbled through the Blood Dunes.

  The moon was full. The first circle of the night was closed, and the girls had no selves. Their village names had been blown from their foreheads, with three puffs of air. Nembulo, one of the three high Elkirri, the antlered and hoofed ones, would give them new names. He, Nembulo, would show them. None of the girls had been told her wind. Ashe alone knew, or hoped she knew. This was her test too. She must find the four distinct winds. All four must be in the qiva, and no two the same, or the rite would be polluted. She must also speak with the voice. She must be a hollow reed for la narañanye. The spiral-telling would enter the conch-helix of their ears; the strength of that first speaking would determine the girls’ strengths as lakesha, sisters of the Spiral.

  Ashe was first to drink, tilting the conch to her lips, tasting the bitter water filled with power. Just holding the conch was enough to feel the medicine. Drinking those first drops pushed her past the second plateau to the third, a shift that took two to three hours for new initiates. The medicine bubbled through her, into words. Her voice sounded strange to her, like the voice of the othe
r yemes she had heard in the nara trance; it quavered into the listener’s being, better than music, a vibratory link to Zoe.

  I was like you. All new sisters tremble at this threshold. Afraid of outside, afraid of inside, afraid of others, afraid of self. Now I am on the healing arm of the spiral. I am on the healing arm, and I am healing. I am spiraling toward Zoe.

  Firelight flickered on the bronzed limbs of the cross-legged girls. She was caught in a double consciousness: she was the yeme, performing the rite, but she was also the mind that filled the qiva, watching the yeme in action. With a thrill that ran up her spine, into earth and sky at once, she knew the yeme had spiraled into her channels. The absolute yeme was watching her perform the actions of the relative yeme.

  Naked, body painted in serpentine bands, purple around the brow, blue around the throat, green around the shoulders and breasts, yellow around the solar plexus, orange around hands and womb, red around hips and yoni, she swayed before the adepts and shook the forked branch thrice over their heads. Only three moons ago, Eccle had taken her into the fourth initiation, which was not complete until this night. Eccle had told her that on this night, if the rite was proper, she would become a different person. She would have a strong, clear mind. Now she understood that her amba had told her what would happen, but not how or why. She saw the wisdom in that. The yeme had to be recognized directly, by oneself, for oneself, or it was not the yeme. The yeme was the strong, clear mind.

  If Nembulo rejected any one of the girls, he would go wild. Ashe had seen it in her own first rite. Ajieka had set the wrong girl in the place of the Serai, the north wind, the life-bridgers. The first sign of disaster had been a stamping of hooves. Fey, Nembulo shook the qiva, his horns silver, nacreous, and many times spiraled, his eyes like opals, milky and weird. She had thought he was always like that, but later, in the monthly moon rites, she saw that he was a gentle inquisitive moon deer, the Guide. The aspirant yeme had made a mistake. Because of that mistake, there had been delays in Ashe’s training and in the training of the other three girls there that night, Seve, Tamra, and Fione. They had seen the fey face of Nembulo, and were thus required to endure additional rites that were not explained to them.

  Later, when Ajieka entered the seventh initiation, and finally became full yeme, she had come to Ashe’s tent, knelt on her floor, and looked into her eyes.

  “I did not choose wrongly. There was a reason. Do you know it?”

  Ashe could not turn from those irises, burning tesselations inlaid around onyx. Ajieka spoke one word.

  “Naalöyö.”

  It was the old tongue, the word for the forbidden spirals.

  *

  But, again, she called back her mind. Memory currents were vitiating her awareness. She made herself see the four girls before her. Kneeling on the stone floor, under rippling, concave stone walls, they were trembling reeds, but they would not anger Nembulo. She was sure of that. She passed the first girl the white conch, its base cut to form an open bowl with three smooth, perfect, down-winding spirals, like the helixes of the ear. Each girl took one sip from the bowl. The last girl passed it back to Ashe, who drank off the remaining contents.

  With the second drink of navan, she sensed la narañanye and could not breathe. It was opening, a channel through the worlds, both inner and outer, a blazing helix, and at its edges hummed the sivan and the nog, the benign and malign spirit beings pressing toward the world. She closed her eyes and saw the Hungering Gyre, infinitely narrow at its terminus, infinitely wide at its mouth, an hourglass spindle ceaselessly unmaking the fabric of the world, the subtle threads made visible as they passed into the inverse mouth of the Nourishing Gyre. In the charged qiva air, the patternless pattern was driving furiously. Space was bubbling through her; she was a bubbling in a tube, a sacred seed sound, a concatenation of seed-syllables passing through more particles and more dimensions than the mind could comprehend. Zoe was the mother yet also the daughter.

  From her core, a heat burst and spread up through her chest, down through her legs, so that she arched her back, her spine ablaze. At the center of the qiva, the four subtle winds arose, like whirlwinds the size of a child, each of a different hue, with a different feeling: yellow, orange, green, and blue. The four spirals spun before the four Lakins. Four spirit roads. Nembulo would guide them into the seed patterns, into the subtle imprints of their lives, past, passing, and to come.

  But, as for her, she must see the great vision, for which there was no preparation. The air was forced out of her lungs. Invisible, relentless, a void force pressed on all sides, and from no sides. There was no calm to cling to, no remembering Eccle’s instructions about the ejection of the wind. There was no way to survive. She saw her coarse body slumped on the qiva floor, and realized that she was a body of light mounted on Nembulo himself. With one step of his prancing feet, he carried her to towering snow-peaks. Naked molecules sang in the air around her. Another step and she was among supernals engaged in infinite forms of blissful lovemaking and of war. One more step and she was in a place of seven colors. All three Elkirri and innumerable lesser irri were there, their presence unbinding the subtlest ties of her being. She felt herself dissolving into primordial space.

  She opened her eyes.

  Four girls knelt on the sand floor, each seeing their own vision. None saw Nembulo, there at the qiva’s center, fey-eyed, silver, his very substance spinning out of the patternless pattern.

  Though she could not see the world outside the qiva, she sensed the morning star shining alone in the lightening sky. She knew she should remember her name, but it seemed she was spiraling with Nembulo. Her winds channels were her, yet not her, not anyone.

  The four girls lifted their faces to her, as one.

  *

  Deniela poured steaming tea into two green enameled cups. She handed one to her guest and watched her sip it, a fragrant brew, with sage, mesquite, mace and citrus hints. Several of the higher sisters of the Serai had lain awake last night, terrified, herself included. They were the few who knew that this girl, a skinny, stubborn twig sent to the Serai almost ten years ago, was an ava of La Teine. Officially, the whole business should have been handed over to the Calyx. Officially, the little red haired ava should never have been born. The trouble was, the Calyx had been involved and, in keeping with their traditional reluctance to play an open hand, had chosen to act through proxies.

  Not even she, the Aksama, was informed of the details, but the facts were plain enough. Acting through intermediaries untraceable to the Spiral, they had enticed Skårsans to raid Paidrin, most likely persuading them that the old red aksa had died, or had grown too feeble to be of concern. The raid had almost been a success. Many red sisters had been taken slave or killed. Perhaps the old lady was actually weakening, or perhaps, as the rumors went, she had not even bothered to protect the other red sisters, or to repay the Skårsans in kind for their assault. She had only protected one pregnant woman. Perhaps she knew too well that the Calyx was there, amid the Skårsans, waiting for the two of them to be separated. Yet if the old lady had outwitted them, they would certainly have resorted to abandoning their reluctance to biseach through the pattern, which could only mean one thing. The old lady was too strong for them. And so the Calyx had failed in what mattered most. They would never admit failure, and so, officially, there was no red ava.

  Deniela had sent her own agents to bargain with the old woman and the mother, Ootha and Erete. Only a handful of her closest ambas knew what had been agreed, but the weight of it fell most heavily on her. The red heresy had been resolved, with future dangers for the Serai, and sad consequences for the women of Paidrin. In sealing the newborn babe, the old lady sealed the red sisterhood’s doom. Ootha would have no successor. In return, the red ava, so long as the seal held, would be trained and initiated in the Serai. The girl would be given a place, and the red lady honored again, a promise Deniela meant to keep in her own manner. Yet there was still the problem of what might happen if the se
al failed. Initiations posed the greatest risk, and last night’s rite was the first true test. After a night of such fear, she knew action must be taken, though she had hoped to wait longer.

  Deniela smiled, she hoped warmly, at the new yeme across from her. It was customary of course for the new initiate to have this private chat with the Mother after the first rite. Everything, the rugs on which they knelt, the tea they drank, the cups and plates, were used only to mark this passage, yet all the formalities that adepts were forced to obey to the letter were cast aside. The new yeme was led from the qiva to the steam pools, then robed in a plain saffron sarasra. If she rose higher, her sarasra would be fringed. Deniela’s own sarasra had silver trim; the sides were embroidered with spiral horns, sigil of Areieliela Lareielia, the female Elkirri.

  Cold as it made Deniela to think of what the sisterhood had passed through the past night, there was yet work to be done. She must make the girl comfortable. The first time one became a hollow reed could leave one cold. The new yeme had to be warmly welcomed. The more one touched the unbinding, the more one needed closeness with others, because the alternative was terrifying. There was such a fine line between emptiness of true existence and absolute non-existence. Now was not the time to study her or question her.