"Yes indeed. Oddly enough, my love, I've heard there is someone in Vassashinay who can tell fortunes. Perhaps we should go to her."
Rinn made that expressive Miisheli gesture with two fingers and one thumb that signifies utter contempt. "That for any fortune-teller in this dirty little hole. We need a real soothsayer."
I smiled. "Quite right. In fact, I wasn't impressed with her yesterday. She's the one who produced that pathetic fireflash on the beach."
"That was a woman? That little ape?"
"Her name is Valsoria; they call her the Divinatrix. But you're probably right, my darling, we don't need some provincial bone-tosser, so we'll just forget about her. Anyway, we've got too much to do."
My wife frowned into the mirror. "What do you mean? There is nothing to do in this boring stinkpit."
"You're quite wrong, darling Rinn. This is our chance to get to know each other better. I have it all planned out. We'll go for long walks on the beach, and I'm sure Lillifer would lend us a boat to go fishing. And I'll read to you, of course—I've got quite an interesting scroll on Calloonic philosophy in my box, and a well-argued work on geometry by the great mathematician Mosphor of Zelf—"
She shuddered. "Enough, Tigrallef. It might be amusing to see this—this Divinatrix."
"A waste of time, sweetness."
Thunderclouds gathered. "But amusing. I think it would please me to consult this Divinatrix. Yes, we shall go. Perhaps tomorrow."
"Certainly, my flower, if it pleases you." I suppressed a smile, unnecessarily. She was absorbed again in her own reflection.
"That's settled then," she said absently. Then, with a quickening of interest, "Look at me, Tigrallef. So beautiful, like an empress. Do you see how beautiful I am?"
"Of course. You look—stunning." This was true. I was stunned, anyway. It stunned me to think that anyone would voluntarily look like that, much less spend three hours in achieving the effect. But Rinn was pleased with my reply.
Lillifer's idea of a feast involved a great many speeches, endless barrels of what tasted like innocuous fizzy fruit juice, and vast copper trays mounded with a porridge-like substance profusely larded with sharp little bones. The taste suggested chicken, though there was also a nuance of fermented fish, and I gathered from the lumps that the dish was based on some kind of coarsely ground root vegetable. Following the example of our hosts, we ate this directly from the trays, with our fingers, except for Rinn, who would not touch it at all.
The great hall where we were feasting occupied most of the ground floor of Lillifer's ancient beehive—exactly how ancient, I hardly dared to think. Rush matting and circles of cushions had been laid over much of the floor except in the centre, the place of honour, where the biggest and fattest cushions reposed on a very grand carpet that looked like it came from the best of the Tatakil looms. Inherited from the Sherank, I supposed, like the gold Calloonic candlesticks, the stemmed beakers from Kuttumm, the Gillish flagons carved from alabaster. Given that the building itself was inherited from some distant, long-forgotten precursor, I began to wonder if the Vassashin made anything themselves, other than speeches.
Lillifer himself led the Frath, the Bequiin, Rinn and myself to the grand carpet in the centre of the square, which was the signal for the other circles to fill, free-for-all. Chasco and Shree managed to shove their way into a circle that adjoined mine, so that Shree was directly behind me. Rinn was on my left, with a Vassashin notable on her other side. On my right were Lillifer, the Frath Major, and a very pretty young Vassashin woman who turned out to be Moscala, Lillifer's primary wife—he had seven, and this one was not the oldest, but she seemed to take precedence over the others. I could guess why. The Bequiin Ardin was seated on the far side of the circle between a couple of venerable Vassashin, and the interpreter Coll hovered behind our backs waiting for any opportunity to be of use.
The food was brought in with no ceremony—the great trays were simply slapped down in the centre of each circle, the beakers were filled with juice, and everybody proceeded to get uproariously drunk. This was because the fizzy fruit drink was nowhere near as innocuous as it tasted. Rinn, who was eating nothing, got very drunk, very quickly. I drank as much as anybody but remained depressingly sober and after a while, bored with the speeches and drunken antics around me, I lapsed into my own thoughts.
Gradually, I began to notice that no orator had risen for some time and the uproar had died down to a muted babble. I looked around. The mood of the feast had changed. Moscala was weeping softly on the Frath Major's bosom while Lillifer snored; Rinn was alternately giggling and hiccoughing; the Bequiin's eyes were dramatically crossed and one of his neighbours was making an earnest effort to grab the flame of the nearest candle. When I crawled over to move it out of his reach, he smiled and fell asleep with his head on the Bequiin's shoulder. Ardin uncrossed his eyes for a moment, but gave no other sign of noticing. All over the great hall, the servers were quietly moving among the supine diners, shifting candles and beakers out of harm's way, propping heads on cushions, wiping chins, removing trays. Behind me, Shree was lying flat on his back and dreamily counting and recounting his fingers. The interesting thing was, he kept getting the answer wrong. Chasco was fast asleep. I shrugged and pushed my beaker away.
A movement on the far edge of the hall caught my eye. It was at the very midpoint of the curved wall, opposite the great portal, about sixty feet away. A shadowy figure was sitting on a dark chair atop a dais at least six feet high—that's what it looked like, but I was puzzled, since I did not remember seeing a dais there earlier. I sat up, squinting.
There were other shadows lined up in a double row in front of it, holding in their hands candles that burned with dull points of flame. Their forms glimmered grey in the deep shadow; the shadow-man on the dais stood up and paced slowly down stairs I did not remember seeing, stopping at a dark translucent altar, placing on it a box of utter darkness, so black that my eyes seemed to fall into it as into a deep dry well and I had trouble looking away. Other figures appeared in front of me then, swaying along in a slow procession from the direction of the portal—grey cloaks that might have been white, faces that were ovals of darkness enveloped by the grey hoods, grey-flaming candles in their hands.
I watched with fascination. This was no ordinary procession. I began to doubt that it was even real. The men in grey robes paced through the snoring, babbling, giggling litter of the feast as if the floor were quite bare; I could see through them to the yellow flames of the candles beyond, only slightly dimmed, and the servers went unheeding about their business in the very path of the procession.
When the grey figures stretched in an unbroken line from altar to portal, the shadow-man from the dais stepped forward again. Slowly, he reached for the box of darkness and lifted the lid. Light burst from it, pure light like the livid thread down the core of a lightning flash, and the sordid jumble of the feast vanished as shadows do when a lamp is lit. Gone were the carpets and rush mats, the feasters, the unrelieved black stone of walls, ceiling and floor; the ceiling was plastered a blinding white, the floor tiled with white polished stone, the walls and columns blazing with a coat of silver leaf. The man at the altar, silver threads flashing from his white robe, raised a familiar shining cylinder in his hands—
Stop it.
The light winked out. The feast came back. I glowered at the featureless curve of wall opposite the portal: no dais, no altar.
Lady, I'm getting sick of this.
The past is your business, memorian. I thought you 'd like to see.
Just leave me alone.
Long ago, the great tree was rooted in this place.
I'd gathered that. I'm not stupid. Next you're going to tell me that empires always fall.
Empires always fall, Scion.
Oh, be quiet.
Surprisingly, she obeyed. I curled up on a cushion and waited gloomily for the feast to finish. After a while, like almost everyone else, I fell asleep. I dreamed of—nothing.
/>
* * *
24
THE DAY AFTER the feast was a quiet one in Lillifer's house. The Vassashin had headaches and spoke in whispers and winced frequently; the party from the Tasiil was virtually comatose. Since I wasn't affected myself, courtesy of the Lady, I passed the morning as a kind of angel of mercy. I spooned water into Rinn's mouth and flattered her on how ethereal she looked; swabbed the foreheads of Shree and Chasco; checked that the Bequiin Ardin was still breathing and found that he was not quite as dead as he looked; and paid a visit to the Frath Major, during which I was careful to make a great noise about his comfort. I also prevented a massacre when Han-Frath Zimin came ashore to ask why he was getting no signals from the Frath Major, and concluded on reasonably powerful evidence that we'd all been poisoned.
When the Han-Frath had been safely packed back to the Tasiil and Lillifer had returned unscathed to his bed, I found myself alone and free. I stole into the room where Rinn was groaning in her sleep and fetched a notebook from my book-box, meaning to pass the afternoon quietly mapping escape routes and hiding places in the centre of Vass. Nobody was stirring on the stairs or in the great hall and I trod lightly out of the front portal without seeing a soul, although I heard children playing in the trees across the deserted square. My first objective was a gate in the beehive's enclosure wall, just beside the grisly monument to Sher.
It was a stone archway, almost certainly of the same age as the beehive itself, and tantalizing chasings on the jambs suggested they might once have been covered with inscriptions, long since weathered away. I traced them regretfully with my fingertips and peered through the gate. Beyond it was a garden, a curving strip of greenery bounded by the black flank of the beehive on one side and the enclosure wall on the other. Gardeners had been at work here; the grass must have been scythed in the last few days, the encroaching creepers had recently been cleared from a fine blackstone pavement and were just starting to blur its edges again. The air was cool and green and altogether tempting. I hesitated, balancing my duty against the leaden, oppressive heat of the afternoon; then I stepped off the pavement on to the silken lawn and propped myself against a tree-trunk with my notebook tossed down beside me.
Sandals spanked along the pavement. I looked up, startled. It occurred to me that this was the first time in days I had been left unguarded.
"Ha, there you are. I thought I saw you come into the garden." Coll the interpreter, carrying a leather-bound pottery flask and two beakers, beamed at me as he plunged off the path. He looked heavy-eyed but cheerful. He set the flask and beakers down beside me and stretched himself out in the grass.
Rescued from my own sloth, I thought, not ill-pleased to see him. This way, I could sit quietly in the shade and still gather useful information. I picked up the notebook and opened it on my lap. Coll sat up and poured two beakers-full from the flask and handed one to me. I sniffed at it cautiously. It smelled like goat's milk seasoned with fish.
"What's this?"
Coll swallowed his in one gulp and poured out another. "We drink it after a feast. It flushes away the masollar, and makes you feel better. Drink up, Gilman."
"I feel fine already." I put the beaker down on the grass. "What is masollar?"
"Masollar! The wine of the fire-gods, may they be exalted. Did you not know what you were drinking last night, Gilman?"
"That fizzy fruit juice, is it? Yes, I thought there must be more to it than its taste. It's a good strong brew."
Shocked, he opened his eyes wide. "Not brewed. The gods give it to the Daughters at the Sacellum, and they distribute it among the people of Vass so that all might hear the echo of the gods' voices."
"Sorry."
He swigged another beaker from the flask. "How could you taste masollar from the Daughters and not know it for what it was? Did you not hear the echo of the fire-gods (may they feed for ever) talking to you?"
"Not that I noticed. Whose daughters are you talking about?"
He choked on his drink. "Whose Daughters? Gilman, do you not know anything? The Daughters of Fire, indeed! At the Sacellum, up on the mountain of the blessed living fire-gods. Their fame is everywhere—why, even the accursed Sherank honoured the oracle of the fire-gods! They took the Daughters to Iklankish sometimes, to bear the wisdom of the blessed fire-gods to the ears of the Princes. How can you not have heard of the Daughters of Fire?"
I heaved a sigh. It was not my place to tell him how broad the known world was, and how insignificant Vassashinay, nor why exactly a selection of the Daughters had been carried off to Iklankish. Anyway, I wanted to hear more. There's nothing I liked better than a good old cult.
"You must pardon my ignorance," I said humbly. "Tell me more about the Daughters. Did any of them ever come back from Iklankish to Vassashinay?"
"Aye, Gilman, heaped with honours."
"Oh." Oh gods, I thought. Shree had better hurry with his beard. "And the oracle? Is that where the Divinatrix comes in?"
"Not just that! The Divinatrix rules the whole Sacellum!"
Shaking his head at my ignorance, sipping from his vile goat/fish restorative as he talked, Coll launched into a long, confused exposition on the Daughters of Fire. As a cult, it sounded fairly typical of the volcano-feeding class—bringing to mind, say, the Flames of Zza and certain aspects of the Fathidiic tradition—but it had a few interesting twists; and sacrificing to appease the fire-gods of the volcano was only a small part of the Daughterhood's duties. I gathered that most of the Daughterly income derived from the sale of masollar and the profits from the oracle, plus offerings given in trust for an inmate of the Sacellum called the Kalkissann, which meant the Great Saviour. This modestly named personage, from Coll's account, sounded much like the Holy Fool of Zza—a puppet with few duties or functions except to swell the cult's treasury. I began to think the Divinatrix must be quite the wily old businesswoman.
"How does the Oracle work?" I asked Coll. "Do the gods speak directly to the Divinatrix?"
"No, no, no. No, the gods, may they be blessed, speak to one of the Daughters in the Oracle chamber, and then the Daughter comes out, and the Divinatrix interprets what she says."
"Why is that? Is it dangerous, speaking with the gods?"
Coll looked surprised, as if he'd never thought of it that way. "Dangerous? Maybe so. Some Daughters stay too long in the Oracle chamber—I've heard they bleed with the words then, and the words are more powerful than at other times, and the Daughter often dies in the next few days. Yes, I suppose you could say there is danger."
"It sounds hard on the Daughters."
"Ah." His face became wistful. "But it is a great honour to hear the gods—an honour that men are denied. They say we can hear the echo of the gods when we drink masollar, and it is true I have heard wonderful things after only seven or eight cups—but the Daughters hear them as clearly as I hear you, and you hear me."
"But it takes the Divinatrix to understand what they say?"
"Indeed so."
I leaned back on the grass to gaze at the bright flowers nodding on the branches, and beyond them to the dark column of smoke, shot with sparks, which was all I could see of the volcano. It seemed to me that Valsoria was on to a good thing—all the benefits of a direct connection with the gods (bless and feed them), with none of the risks. I reckoned she could well be the major power in Vassashinay, standing in the same relationship to Lillifer and his cronies as the Primate stood to Arkolef.
"How long has Valsoria been the Divinatrix?" I asked.
"Oh, many years. From the time of my grandfather."
"So she was there under the Sherank?"
"Of course."
"I see." The next question had to be tactful. "When the Sherank invaded my country," I said carefully, "they wiped out the priesthood almost to a man. Our temples were taken over or destroyed, our sanctuary desecrated, and anyone who spoke of the Lady in Gil was in the Pleasure or under the Claws by the end of the same day." Coll clicked his tongue with sympathy. "And after
Gil was liberated, anyone who had collaborated with the Sherank was given a very hard time indeed. Many of them were killed along with the survivors of the Sherkin garrison. Therefore, it seems strange to me that Valsoria was able to be the Divinatrix both before and after the downfall of Sher."
My tact was wasted. Coll looked quite uncomprehending. He glanced behind him. Over the enclosure wall, we could just see the top of the cage where the late Sherkin commandant adorned the edge of the square. Coll gathered a handful of little brown tree-nuts that had fallen into the grass and tossed them over the wall; we heard them plink down among the armoured Sherkin bones. He said, "It is not strange at all, Gilman. The Sherank had great faith in the Oracle. Valsoria, and Hassana the Divinatrix before her, always predicted great things for them, conquest and riches and empire."
"I see. They knew which pot their fish came out of—"
"No, no! All the words the gods gave to them were true. Sher did win a great empire, did it not? The gods did not lie, and neither did the Divinatrix."
I shrugged, taking the point. "And did the Divinatrix foresee the wrack of Sher?"
"Foresee it? Gilman, she and the fire-gods brought it about!"
"Oh?"
"Yes! Did you not know? Does not the whole world know that Sher was destroyed by the blessed fire-gods of Vassashinay?"
Coughing gently, I avoided his eyes. "Yes, well, actually, there have been a number of different stories going about since Sher sank into the sea, and a fair amount of controversy about who can claim the credit—"
"All lies." Coll dismissed the rest of the world with a wave of his hand. "Who better to know what happened, than we of Vassashinay?"
"How do you know?"
"The Divinatrix told us."
"Ah, yes. Now I see." Sighing, I turned to a fresh page in my notebook. "Tell me about it."
Gil Trilogy 2: Scion's Lady Page 18