Courtship Rite

by Donald Kingsbury

  She was totally confused. “Is that why you’ve brought me here and offered me my soul’s desire with a plan that must defy all of Geta, because you lust me?” There was sting in her voice.

  He lifted her to her feet, undisturbed by the anger. “It is uncanny to be the Prime Predictor. I see Kaiel power born through your womb — the vision is clear — but who knows if that is a future I see because I’m a prophet or because my lust for you drives me to create it? Who knows? Not I.” He was amused.

  Kathein fled from him. “Take me to my room,” she demanded of his servant. Her lone backward glance showed her one of the Liethe women moving to Aesoe’s side. Safely in the room, she barricaded the furnishings against the massive door and lay on the bed sobbing out her love for Joesai and tender Gaet and shy Hoemei and Teenae whose kiss was as soft as the hoiela wing and Noe who loved her. It was hopeless. She would never touch them again, never kiss their scars. The most powerful man on Geta had seen her body and desired it. She sobbed and sobbed and sobbed and when there were no more tears…

  Thump.

  A jerk of her head brought her facing the sound. The window had been taken from its casing. He was hunched there in the frame, grinning like a carnivorous ei-mantis ready to spring.

  “You!”

  “You don’t think a simple barricade would stop me?” he said, climbing down into the room.

  “I’ll refuse you! I’ll dig my claws into you!”

  “No you won’t.” He was laughing. “I wouldn’t be here if you were going to say no. It is a prediction I would put in the Archives.”

  She pushed him away and turned her head while he kissed her cheeks and eyes and slipped about her neck some golden lace that held a foggy gem set by Liethe hands.

  “You don’t love me,” she wailed.

  “Of course I love you. You’re the finest woman I’ve desired all week.”

  20

  The fei flower that traps the pregnant geich female savors but briefly the eggs of the ferocious geich larvae waiting within her abdomen.

  Proverb of the Stgal

  THEIR BASE OF OPERATIONS had been shifted from inn to ship. Below deck Joesai quizzed his wife in depth with the skeptical thoroughness of a professional. Eiemeni, who was an expert in the Bnaen technique for cueing memory recall, helped him with questions. It did not seem probable that Teenae was right. Why should the Mnankrei risk burning a Stgal granary while they were negotiating to supply the Stgal with grain?

  Teenae grew impatient. “You play the doubting fool when you could be sharpening your knife. We must warn the townspeople and lead an ambush. We’ll be heroes and make up for the stupid way you treated Oelita, the cruel way you treated your betrothed.”

  “At the present moment we couldn’t get away with accusing the Mnankrei of washing their bums in sea water. Maybe next week.”

  Teenae was calmer now. “I told you exactly how they are going to attack and when. That is what is important; not what people believe!”

  “You told us that Arap told you,” said Eiemeni.

  “You’re still angry and want sudden vengeance,” said Joesai.

  “Of course, I want vengeance!” Teenae raged.

  “Vengeance is a waiting game for one who can control his passion.”

  Sensing a stone wall, the tiny woman changed tactics. “That’s why I have chosen you as my instrument!” She took his arm as if she needed his protection, grinning all the while. “I’m just an overemotional woman and would spoil everything.” She paused. “That’s why you have to look out for me,” she added petulantly.

  “Ho!” he said, feeling her tease and trying to edge her back toward reason. “It is not logical for them to burn a granary now. It would make people suddenly forget how virtuous they are.”

  “They could blame it on us,” she suggested wickedly.

  Such a sobering thought prompted him to take her story seriously. He sent her away and four of his counselors analyzed the tale she had been told aboard the Mnankrei freighter. In the end they decided that it was probably the invention of a boy trying to impress a beautiful woman but to be on the safe side they had to assume it was true.

  Joesai left a small crew in his ship and sneaked the rest of his men out onto the peninsula within striking distance of the granary. He deployed them efficiently. None of his watchers were in sight, but they could maintain patrols that kept the coast impenetrable. Any small waterborne vessel that might attempt to beach itself could be captured within a matter of heartbeats.

  Scowlmoon, fixed in the sky, overlaid six times as much of heaven as did Getasun. At sunset it was darkly huge but as the night progressed and the crescent expanded from its evening sliver, the moon began to cast considerable illumination. On the moonless side of Geta a surprise maneuver under cover of night might have been possible — but not there. By halfmoon Joesai was ready to believe that it was already too bright for an attack. Either sea priest Tonpa had changed his mind or the boy was a mischievous liar.

  Joesai glanced at the granary and for no particular reason was staring right at it when the orange roiling balls of flame erupted. The flames had soared to four man-heights before he heard the explosion. Firebombs! His first impulse was to run toward the fire — until the horror of their situation struck his imagination. The bombs had long been in place! Probably they had been set off by fireproof Kaiel clockwork.

  He had been keel-hauled twice in one day!

  There would be no Mnankrei about. But Joesai and his band were close to the fire and they would be blamed because there was no way to sneak back to the village without being seen. Thus it was an emergency. They were heartbeats away from their lynching!

  “Ho!” He was rising as he yelled. “Avalanche formation! Run!” The piercing cry from his caller’s pipes echoed his order.

  The only thing they had going for them in their dash was that, though they might meet angry people on their way, none of these people would know how to fight or attack. Such were the children of the Stgal. And so nothing stopped Joesai’s wedge until it reached a growing crowd on the stone wharf where their small ship had judiciously retired to a moat’s distance. The ugly crowd half retreated as the wedge appeared but one braver group penetrated the Kaiel ranks — and were quickly catapulted into the water. The crowd moved back while Joesai lunged to protect his wife.

  “Teenae!”

  But Teenae was already falling with two stab wounds, crumpling, then pitching forward crazily. Raging, Joesai and five men slashed the crowd back while simultaneously their ship docked, first inflowing two men bearing the dying Teenae, then the other Kaiel in exact formation, and finally the rear guard, bumping the quay only once before casting off. With one reach of his massive hand Joesai retrieved the knifeman from the sea by his hair, tossed him to a subordinate, and returned to Teenae.

  Eiemeni was tending her on the deck.

  “Back off, you meat-dresser. I’m the surgeon.” Joesai had had hours of meticulous practice on rejected babies of the creche before they were sent to the abattoir. “I need a cloth!”

  One was produced instantly from some back. On Geta there was no need to sterilize for routine surgery. Sacred bodies killed profane bacteria just as sacred wheat killed the beetles who tried to eat it.

  “I’m dying,” came a feeble voice.

  “Yeah, yeah. The pieces need to be sewed together. How can you kill an o’Tghalie body?” he said gruffly. “They make them out of chromium-nickel-iron. God knows from where they get the gene combinations. They locate them with some kind of damn mathematical juggling. They don’t tell us how they do it. It’s a damn clan secret.”

  “I’m weak.”

  “That’s because you need a transfusion. As soon as I can plug Otaam into you, you’ll get it.”

  “Dearest Joesai, even if you lose at kol every time you play, I’m glad… to have you around.”

  “Shut up.”

  Otaam, who had her blood type, was spliced into her. He did not move while she sl
ept. Joesai stood guard until Scowlmoon was full and the eclipse came and passed. No ships attacked them. He promised himself that he would someday bring her those leather boots etched with the flying-storm-wave cicatrice of the Mnankrei. Silly, how he was willing to do anything for this strong-headed and rather foolish woman.

  21

  Whether you be saint or fiend, those you touch, through time and persistence, will eventually be successful in doing to you what you have so casually done to them.

  Dobu of the kembri, Arimasie ban-Itraiel in Rewards

  TEENAE AWOKE AT DAWN. Blood-red Getasun bathed her from its perch above the mountains with hands that rippled redly over the bay. She examined the pain of her wounds with her mind. “I would drink blood for my strength,” she said, meaning the blood of her assailant.

  Joesai was brooding out across the bay and was not aware that she had finally roused from her delirious sleep. He did not hear her faint voice.

  She rolled her head toward him and raised her voice. “I would drink blood for my strength!” she repeated angrily.

  “Is that wise?” counseled Joesai, still deep in his reverie. “He is one of Oelita’s people. She showed us mercy. I am in her debt. We can return mercy. Tae ran-Kaiel once said that you can only hold a land where you have three times as many friends as enemies.”

  “I do not forgive a man who tries to kill me. I have contempt for a man who tries to kill me and is captured. I wish to see his generous offering to the Race so that the Race may be purified.”

  “Revenge should wait until your pain has healed.”

  “No.”

  Joesai shrugged. “It will be dangerous to bring him on deck and to give him a knife he might throw at you.”

  “The obvious continually eludes you,” she said impatiently. “Strap the knife to a mat so that it cannot be thrown. Leave one arm of my assailant free to rub his wrist against the blade.”

  And so they carried to her the youth bound upon an iron-reed frame. Joesai, in his role as priest, invoked the ceremony in the expected musical monotone. His bearing changed. He spoke for the Race.

  “We did not have kalothi. We died of the Unknown Danger.” The pain of the Race was in his voice. Then his voice became resonant until it challenged even the sea. “And God in His mercy took pity and carried us from the Unknown Place across His Sky so that we might find kalothi. We wept when He gave us Geta. We moaned when He cast us out. But God’s Heart was stone to our tears. Only in a harsh place beneath His Sky might we find kalothi. And only with kalothi shall we dare to laugh our laugh in the face of the Unknown Danger.”

  Joesai brought out the priest’s Black Hand and White Hand, each with special scars, each carved from wood and mounted on short rods. He held them above his head so that he became long-armed. “Two Hands build kalothi.” With a vibrating sound that was half formal laughter, half formal grief, he meshed the wooden fingers together. “Life is the Test. Death is the Change. Life gives us the Strength. Death takes from us the Weakness. For the Race to find kalothi the Foot of Life follows the Road of Death.” The small ship heaved upon the waves. No land, no sea on Geta was immune from this ritual.

  Joesai’s voice was implacable. “All of us contribute to God’s Purpose. All of us help distill the racial kalothi. Some of us are here to give Life. Some of us are here to give Death. Of these the greatest honor is to contribute Death for we all love Life.” He paused for only a moment but in that moment spliced irony into his monotone. His gaze was upon the youth. “It is with awe that I accept the offering of your defective genes.”

  “It is against the Code to kill,” said the youth serenely.

  “Oelita’s code, not mine!” snarled Teenae with such a thrust of hatred that her wounds stabbed her again.

  “It is against the Kaiel Code to kill,” he sneered.

  Joesai silenced Teenae with a piercing glance before she could reply a second time and returned his eyes to the youth. The Black Hand and the White Hand slightly askew, he answered in a voice that was more vengeful than priestly, “Of course. And we shall not kill. We are only here to receive your offering.”

  “I have no offering for you.”

  Joesai continued the ritual, unperturbed by such blasphemy, bringing forth from his robe certain sensual delights which were the Receiver’s obligation to the Giver. They were simple delights, for this was only a ship, not a temple. There was pure water, the touch of smooth glass, a shave, the taste of a berry. Each was refused.

  Then came the time for the Cutting of the Wrists. But the youth defiantly held his fist away from the knife. Joesai placed the blood bowl. His men began the Chant of the Blood Flow, harmonizing like a giant heart in vigorous pulse, a heart whose beat began to slow and fade until it drifted away in silence. The youth laughed, proving he was still alive, but no man noticed because to them he was already dead.

  Carefully, as if the Cutting of the Wrists had indeed been performed, as one would if he were planning to tan and shape and sew a fine leather coat from the hide of a corpse, Joesai began to skin the boy, unmindful of the surprised and then terrified screams that carried across the water and into the hills of Sorrow. The skinning was hardly begun before the boy’s pain and fear took his wrist against the knife that had been bound into the mat. He cried out for mercy, for the skinning to stop until he had had time to die, but Joesai did not stop.

  The butchering went quickly. No part was wasted. The meat was salted or hung in strips to dry, glands were set aside for medicines, tendon and gut preserved, the bones went into a soup. A bowl of blood was presented to Teenae as her due.

  Eiemeni, who had come to admire Oelita, expressed his regret as he washed the blood from his body in the sea with Joesai beside the wooden bulk of their ship. Joesai was unmoved as he sudsed his hair. “He chose to approach Teenae by my rules while he expected Oelita’s rules to protect him from reproach. Oelita lives by her rules and is protected by them. For her I have sympathy.”

  They showed Teenae the hide as they stretched it for drying. She fingered the especially well-cut wheat stem cicatrice of the heresy. It would make a fine design on a leather binding for her copy of Oelita’s book.

  Oelita!

  A thought startled her, causing her pain because her whole body reacted. “Joesai! I forgot! In all the excitement I forgot to tell you that Oelita owns a Frozen Voice of God!”

  22

  I was impressed by the style in which you faced the Mnankrei Tonpa while being true to the code you have forged for yourself. You gamed with Death and won. How could I not count that as the Second Trial of seven? You have earned my respect. Someday, if you live long enough, perhaps I shall earn yours.

  Joesai maran-Kaiel to Oelita of the Gentle Heresy

  OELITA CRUMPLED THE NOTE that had been penned in high script on fine blue paper and delivered anonymously. She threw it across the room at the four advisors she had convened for a council. “Manyar!” she raged, “the Mnankrei and the Kaiel are crushing us like a nut between the arms of a nutcracker! We have to fight! It is too soon!”

  “It is always too soon,” said Manyar, pulling his robes closer to his body.

  “And you, Eisanti, is that all you have to contribute, bland homilies that serve no further purpose than to keep the high day conversation sparkling? The Mnankrei offer us food while the Kaiel improve the road through the mountains. The famine isn’t even here yet and the beetles are already laying their eggs to feast off our death. The famine will come and then it will go, but will we ever rid ourselves of the Mnankrei priests who will take our men and women daily to that slaughterhouse in the Temple? Will we ever rid ourselves of the Kaiel priests who salivate after our tender children? We must resist them!”

  Eisanti played nervously with his bracelets. “We will have to compromise until we are in a stronger position. Manyar is right; we cannot take an unyielding stand as yet. The tree bends until it is thick enough to resist the wind.”

  “Tomorrow the Stgal are calling for the f
irst of the Ritual Suicides. We have food! We don’t know how much of the new crop the underjaws will devour! We don’t know how much food we can buy. We don’t know that it will be impossible to rely on our other sacred sources!”

  Old Neri interrupted. “O’Tghalie Sameese has calculated that there will be less death if the Stgal begin now.”

  Oelita flared. “Of what use are the numbers the o’Tghalie manipulate? If you have measured the breadth of your field wrong it does not matter that you have the length correct for you will not be able to calculate your acreage!”

  “Perhaps she is right,” said Taimon from the back of the room. “Perhaps the Stgal find this the opportune time to eliminate their opposition. Who will be able to say that they move with wrong motives?”

  “It is our weakness,” added Manyar, cleaning his nails, “that we attract the low in kalothi.”

  “That is our strength,” retorted Oelita.

  In the end, as she always did, she made her own decision. She waited until her council had dispersed inconclusively. Her fists were clenched. It was a shock to her to discover that because they all had high kalothi they weren’t motivated enough to oppose the priests. But how could she form a council of the low in kalothi? She’d have to do all the thinking and she’d be constantly handling mistakes like that fool attempt to meet the Kaiel threat by murdering Teenae. I suppose it was always thus, she thought bitterly, a society stays stable by preying on those least able to defend themselves.

  Her final decision was impulsive. She walked out into the town of Sorrow with only two bodyguards, down where the old buildings began, and pulled together a fearful crowd of those who had the most to lose, melding them into a group large enough so that they might find courage in each other while she led this mob toward the Temple.