“Ah …” she whispered. “Ah, no …”
Indigo looked at her in surprise as she moved back hastily. “Shalune, what’s wrong? This is no worse than anything we’ve encountered so far—better, in fact, for at least we’ll be away from this tunnel.”
Shalune shook her head, her veil ornaments clinking rapidly. “No,” she said harshly. “It isn’t that.”
“What, then?”
“I… I can’t… oh, Lady, help me!” And to Indigo’s astonishment, Shalune flung back her veil. Her face was clear in the light from the trap door, and a hard, bright challenge glittered in her eyes as she looked directly at Indigo.
“It’s no use,” she said. “I didn’t intend to tell you, I meant you to find out only when it was too late to argue, but I see now that that would be madness. You have to know before we go any farther, or you may well put us all in danger when we face the Lady. I daren’t risk that.”
Beside her, Yima started to protest, her voice muffled by the mask, but Shalune snapped, “No! Be quiet. Indigo has to be told. And it’ll make no difference. It’s still right.”
An unpleasant suspicion was beginning to crawl to the forefront of Indigo’s mind. She asked, “What haven’t you told me, Shalune? What’s going on?”
Shalune looked speculatively at the hole and the staircase. “I think,” she said, and suddenly she sounded peculiarly calm, “that those steps are the last stage of our journey. So it’s best that we’re shriven now. It’s too late to change matters anyway.” And she turned to the tense figure at her side. “Take off the mask.”
The girl hesitated, and for a few moments it seemed that she might disobey. Then, slowly, she raised both hands to the wooden contraption. There was a faint click as she unfastened it, and then the whole front of the mask swung aside.
And Shalune’s young protegee, Inuss, looked out at Indigo with frightened but defiant eyes.
Grimya had lost the trail. Caution had been vital, for her quarry was more nervous than a hunted deer, glancing back every few seconds and stopping time and again to listen for any sound of pursuit. The wolf had hung back as far as she dared, but now she realized that she’d made the mistake of being overcautious, for the forest had swallowed Yima’s fleeing figure and suddenly even her scent was lost in the pungent smells of the undergrowth. But although she railed at her own failure, Grimya knew that in one sense, her ability—or lack of it—to track the girl hardly mattered anymore. She’d come close enough to identify Yima beyond any doubt, and she knew enough to guess, also beyond doubt, what was afoot.
She’d been a fool, she told herself bitterly. She had seen a little, heard a little, and had presumed that her surmise was the truth. Now she knew better. Now she knew that Shalune hadn’t been simply a messenger carrying Yima’s last sad farewell to her lover; instead, she’d been an active conniver, perhaps even the prime mover, behind Yima’s plan to escape the future her mother had decreed for her, and elope. Snatches of the conversations she had overheard—first between Shalune and Yima, and later between Shalune and the young man Tiam—crowded into Grimya’s memory. She could put a very different interpretation on them now, and some missing pieces of the puzzle fell into place. The mysterious she was still unidentified, but the wolf was certain now that whoever she was, she had taken Yima’s place at the cliff-top ceremony and at this very moment was descending through the Well with Indigo and Shalune, to meet the Ancestral Lady.
Grimya’s skin turned cold as she realized what that might mean. Indigo knew nothing of this, and the wolf didn’t believe for one moment that Shalune and her unknown accomplice had any intention of telling her the truth. What, then, did they intend? Grimya had been afraid for Indigo, afraid of what she might find waiting for her in the Ancestral Lady’s realm. But now there was a more immediate and human danger for which Indigo was totally unprepared. She’d suspect nothing—why should she? And she was only one, alone, while they were two….
A shudder ran the length of the wolf’s body, and she whimpered, looking back over her shoulder to where the lake gleamed between the trees. Yima and Tiam were forgotten; they meant nothing to her. But Indigo might be in peril.
She thrust into the undergrowth, pushing through the tangle of vegetation with all her strength, desperate to reach the lakeside by the shortest possible route. Over and over again she told herself that this was her doing, her fault; she should have insisted on telling Indigo what she knew, not waited and waited, until it was too late and the deed was done and Indigo had gone unsuspecting into that dark shaft with Shalune and her companion. Now there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t reach Indigo’s mind; she’d tried already and failed. She couldn’t warn her, couldn’t help her, couldn’t protect her.
Grimya burst out from the trees and stood panting on the path. On the far side of the lake, the ziggurat loomed darkly against the stars, and she could see the ceremonial fire still burning at its summit: an angry, orange-red eye in the darkness.
A disturbance without visible source stirred the lake waters suddenly and ominously, and the ripples spread until they lapped at the path’s edge with a faint and unpleasant noise. Grimya stared at the lake, and her hackles rose with a sense of horrible foreboding. Even if—and it was a slender hope—Shalune and her cohort meant Indigo no harm, what of the creature that awaited them down there below the water in that eerie, unknown realm of demons? The Ancestral Lady, too, had been deceived. What would she do, in her power and in her fury, when the truth was revealed?
Grimya made her decision. She didn’t like it, she feared its consequences, but there was no other choice open to her. She had already held back for too long. For Indigo’s sake, she must conquer her fear and follow the candidate and her sponsors down into the Well.
She set off along the path, running with all the speed she could muster. Something chittered at her from the forest; she ignored it, raced on. As she reached the sandy arena, there was another disturbance in the lake, out toward the center, where the darkness was too intense to see whether the ripples were simply an effect of the night breeze or something more dire. Shuddering, and resisting the impulse to look, Grimya ran for the stairs and streaked up them, flight by flight, along the ledges, past the cave mouths, until at last she was scrabbling the last few feet to the top of the ziggurat.
Gasping for breath, she slumped down onto the stone of the temple square, but allowed herself only a brief respite before staggering up again and hastening toward the plinth and the great bowl where the votive fire blazed. The Well, so Shalune had said, lay beneath the largest flagstone of all and was directly in front of the plinth. Grimya ran forward—then stopped, horrified, as the flames’ glaring light showed her the temple floor smooth and unbroken. The Well had been closed once more. She was too late.
Whining with fear and frustration, Grimya began to scratch at the stone. It was a futile gesture; she could no more move the slab than halt the sun and moon in then-tracks across the sky, but desperation drove out reason and her paws scrabbled frantically at the thin line between the flag and its neighbor.
Then, under the bowl of the votive fire, a shadow lurched.
Grimya jumped as though she’d been shot, flying into a defensive crouch and baring her fangs in a frightened snarl. Staring at her from the plinth, where she had been sitting cross-legged in solitary vigil, was Uluye.
They faced each other, both shocked, both wary. The incense used at the ceremony had burned to ash now, but its effects lingered and Uluye’s eyes looked drugged. She had been in a soporific semitrance until Grimya’s scrabbling disturbed her, and she still wasn’t entirely sure whether the sight confronting her was real or a delusion. For her part, Grimya was faced with a terrible dilemma. She disliked and mistrusted Uluye—it was, after all, the High Priestess’s obsession with her own power and status that had given birth to this disaster. Yet, at the same time, she recognized that Uluye alone could help her now. In this, they must surely be allies and not enemies. She must turn to
Uluye. There was no one else.
The she-wolf’s body quivered. She stood upright, and her tail began to wag with the first tentative stirrings of hope. Then, to Uluye’s stunned astonishment, her jaws parted and gutturally but clearly, she spoke.
“U-luye… I n-need your help. Indigo is in d … anger. And the girl who went into the Well is n-not Yima!”
•CHAPTER•XV•
“I don’t regret what I’ve done.” Shalune’s eyes glinted with something like their old fierceness as she faced Indigo. “The Ancestral Lady does not choose her High Priestess; we do. But in this case, the choice was wrong.” She jabbed an extended forefinger at her own breast. “I know it was wrong; I know Yima better than her own mother does, and I know Inuss, too. Yima has never wanted to be High Priestess. She knew she couldn’t live up to the standards Uluye set for her, and she didn’t want to try. But Uluye wouldn’t listen to anyone; she was determined that her dynasty must be carried on, no matter what the wisdom of it or what the cost. She would never allow Yima to leave—even for a short time to bear a child—because she knows Yima might escape her grasp.”
She jerked her head aside as though she were about to spit, then thought better of it. “Uluye’s frightened. Frightened of growing old, of losing her power and being overthrown. She thinks I want to take her place, and she’s wrong in that, too. I only want what’s right for us all, and that means a candidate worthy of the Ancestral Lady, with the ability to rule wisely in the citadel.” She scowled. “Uluye isn’t wise. Strong, yes; too strong for anyone’s good at times. And she’s dedicated to the Lady’s will, I wouldn’t deny that for one moment. It’s simply her interpretation of the Lady’s will that I question.”
Her interpretation of the Lady’s will … that, Indigo thought, was the crux of it. The story Shalune had told her had confirmed a great many of her own feelings about Uluye, not least her conviction that the High Priestess’s tyrannical attitude masked a deep-rooted and acute sense of vulnerability. Her determination that her daughter should also be her successor had, so Shalune said, been Uluye’s way of ensuring that her power could never be challenged, and she had systematically crushed any opposition to her plans, including the opposition of Yima herself. Unable to persuade her mother to even consider that she might have some say in her own future, Yima had finally turned to Shalune for help. She knew that Shalune privately favored Inuss as the candidate for the High Priestess’s mantle, and Shalune had promised to use all her wiles to persuade or, if necessary, force Uluye to acknowledge that she alone was not the final arbiter. They had had another ally in the cult’s oracle, but her death and Indigo’s subsequent arrival had, as Shalune put it, cast a snake into the kemb.
Then when the Ancestral Lady had spoken through Indigo and said, “Come to me,” Uluye had grasped her opportunity, and that had forced Shalune’s hand. She hadn’t wanted to deceive Indigo, she said; but at the same time, she couldn’t bring herself to trust that Indigo wouldn’t betray them to Uluye. At the last moment, when the candidate had been left alone for a final meditation, Inuss had taken Yima’s place, and masked and heavily robed as she was, not even Uluye had known the difference. It had been that simple.
Indigo glanced at Inuss, who throughout Shalune’s diatribe had stood mutely watching her mentor. Then she looked at the fat woman again. Strangely, despite the fact that she couldn’t claim to know her well, she didn’t doubt Shalune’s sincerity or her claim that she herself had no interest in usurping Uluye’s place as High Priestess. Shalune, she suspected, would have been shrewd enough to have found another route to preeminence if that was what she had wanted. All the same, though, something in her assertions didn’t quite ring true, and as Indigo looked at the woman and then again at Inuss, her suspicions took form.
She said, no hint of her thoughts in her voice, “And you believe that Inuss will succeed where Yima would have failed?”
“I know it.” Shalune’s reply was emphatic. “I should. I’ve been her teacher since she was little more than a toddler.”
Indigo thought: Ah…. “Just her teacher?” she queried gently.
Shalune didn’t dissemble. “She’s my sister’s child,” she said. “When my sister died, Inuss was brought to the citadel and I became her guardian. No,” she turned her head sharply as Inuss tried to interrupt her, “there’s no reason why Indigo shouldn’t know the whole truth, Inuss. I’e no cause to hide the fact that I want the best for my own flesh and blood. Who wouldn’t?” She faced Indigo once more. “And Inuss is the best. The Ancestral Lady will know it. She doesn’t want an unwilling servant; she’ll accept Inuss and sanction her. D’you think I’d let Inuss face the test if I weren’t certain of that?”
Indigo allowed herself the faintest of smiles. “No. Knowing you, I don’t think you would.”
“Well, then.” For a moment Shalune seemed embarrassed; then her expression cleared. “I’m not much of a one for sentiment—if you know me as you say, you’ll be aware of that, too—but I felt sorry for Yima. I know what it’s like to want something so greatly that nothing else in the entire world matters. I felt like that about my own ambitions to serve the Lady. Yima wants Tiam. I don’t know how she was able to meet him in the first place, or what manner of disobediences she contrived to go on meeting him; she’s never told me and I’e never asked. But she loves him, Indigo. Why shouldn’t she have her chance, as I had mine?” She paused, watching Indigo carefully, then added: “I suspect that if you’d been in my place; you’d have done just the same.”
She would have, Indigo admitted to herself. She had no illusions now about Shalune’s motives, for she was well aware that with the priestess’s own niece confirmed as the next High Priestess, Shalune would gain enough ches—the cult’s term for status and respect—to give her a great deal of influence. But would that be a bad thing? Indigo thought not; and in the matter of Uluye’s successor, the fact that self-interest had taken precedence over philanthropy surely didn’t make Shalune’s judgment any less valid. Uluye had been too blind to see that she was forcing Yima along a road down which the girl was fundamentally unwilling to travel. If that wrong could be righted now, and a better candidate presented, who was she, Indigo asked herself, to quarrel with the wisdom of it?
Again she smiled the ghost of a smile. “Uluye won’t be pleased when we return.”
“Uluye may rant and rave to her heart’s content; it’ll be too late,” Shalune rejoined. “Once Inuss has the Ancestral Lady’s blessing, even Uluye won’t dare to object.”
“And Yima? What will become of her?”
Shalune’s expression softened a little. “By now, I trust, she and Tiam are on their way to a new life together. I don’t know where they’ll go and I don’t want to know, for what I haven’t heard, I can’t tell. I just hope that they have the sense to hide themselves far away from here while Uluye continues to live.”
“Surely Uluye isn’t so vengeful?”
Shalune snorted. “If you think that, you don’t know her. Once she knows of this, there’ll be a price on the heads of both Yima and Tiam—yes, I know Yima’s her own daughter, but that won’t make one whit of difference.”
“But what crimes have they committed?” Indigo was appalled.
Shalune shrugged. “Blasphemy. Flouting the will of the Ancestral Lady—Uluye’s will, in other words. That’s what she’ll say, anyway. So we must pray for their sake that she doesn’t find out the truth until they’ve been gone long enough to make a search pointless.”
The thought that Uluye would take vengeance on her own daughter for the sake of wounded pride was monstrous. Somewhere, Indigo thought, at the heart of the web it had woven about the citadel and its inhabitants, the thing that called itself the Ancestral Lady must be chuckling richly at such a joke. A small, dark part of her mind turned cold and black. She would dearly like to see the demon pay a hard price for what it had done.
“Well,” Shalune said at length, “there’s just one more question to be asked. The Anc
estral Lady awaits us, and it won’t do to test her patience any further. Will you come with us, Indigo? Will you help me to sponsor Inuss before the Lady?”
Indigo was surprised. “Do I have a choice?”
“Yes, of course. I can’t force you against your will, and I wouldn’t try to.”
Indigo looked at the shimmering trap door, at the dark gap, at the staircase. For a moment she wondered if in all conscience she should be as honest with Shalune as Shalune had been with her; but then harsh reason took over, and she acknowledged that that was impossible. The idea of telling Shalune that the goddess she and her peers worshiped was a demon, and that she and Grimya had set out to destroy it, would have been a monstrous joke even under the easiest of circumstances. Here and now, it was nothing short of insanity. She couldn’t do it; conscience simply wasn’t part of the equation. But although Shalune didn’t know it—and Indigo prayed she never would—her motive for going on was far stronger and more personal than the priestess’s could ever be.
“Yes,” she said, “I’ll come with you.”
Shalune smiled, vindicated, then turned to Inuss. “Are you ready, child?”
Inuss hesitated, but only for a moment, before nodding. “Yes, Shalune. I’m ready.”
With an uncharacteristically gentle gesture, Shalune closed the two halves of Inuss’s mask once more and fastened the catches. Then she lifted her own veil back over her face.
“My conscience is clear,” she said. “It’s in the Lady’s hands now.”
She turned toward the stairs.
Torchlight blazed across the arena, lighting the ziggurat’s towering face and throwing livid reflections on the lake’s surface. The buzz of agitated voices blotted out the more normal sounds of the night as the last stragglers hurried down from the ledges and ran to join the crowd of women gathered on the sand.
Uluye stalked among her priestesses, barking out instructions in a voice to which fury had added an extra, ugly dimension. It was mere minutes since she had come storming from Yima’s quarters, but in that short time she had, with fearsome efficiency, mustered every one of her women and told them the news.
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