She felt it, she felt the power, the love, the comradeship, the oneness, and her voice, blending with a thousand voices, rang out across the night.
“IN THE EARTH MOTHER’S NAME, I ASK YOU, ANCESTRAL LADY, TO SHOW YOURSELF TO YOUR CHILDREN!”
The column of darkness, the tornado at the lake’s heart, flickered—and vanished. For a moment the silver mirror of the surface was utterly still; then a slow march of ripples began to flow outward from the center. They lapped at the edge of the lake with a tiny, gentle sound, one after another after another. And at their source, something rose from beneath the water.
The black boat came slowly toward the shore, sculled by the figure who stood in the stern, cowled in mist and darkness. Uluye, kneeling on the sand, watched in breathless silence as it drew closer. Tears still stained her cheeks, but her eyes were like a child’s eyes, wondering and enthralled, and her hands clenched and unclenched spasmodically, as though she longed to reach out to the approaching vision, but didn’t dare.
The boat grounded, and the Ancestral Lady shipped her oar. She didn’t move.
“MADAM.” The voice that had once been Indigo’s voice spoke softly. “WILL YOU NOT COME TO US?”
The Ancestral Lady’s head was bowed, and her reply came small and sad to Indigo’s mind from beneath the shrouding dark hair. To show myself as I truly am? Ah, sister, you are cruel!
Indigo didn’t answer at once, but her shining figure walked forward to the lake’s edge and halted before the boat’s prow. Still the dark form in the stern didn’t move, and at last, silently, Indigo spoke again.
LADY, LOOK AT ME.
Slowly the Ancestral Lady raised her head. Through the cascade of black hair, the face of a tiny, wizened old woman with filmy eyes gazed back at Indigo with intense misery. The sunken mouth trembled, and the Lady said: This is what I am. This is what fear has made me. You showed me the truth, sister, but in doing so, you have made me unworthy of my people’s love.
Indigo felt a warm surge of sympathy, and with it a sudden deep sense of fellowship. At the heart of the greater mind with which her own mind had blended, power moved like a great tide, and she held out a shimmering hand.
NO, she said gently. YOU ARE WORTHY. COME, AND TAKE WHAT IS RIGHTLY YOURS.
The Ancestral Lady took a step toward her and, uncertainly, reached out. In the moment before their fingers touched, she saw another face mirrored in Indigo’s face, other eyes that were black and silver and gold and brown and blue and green, changing and changing, yet always filled with light. Then the contact was made….
Indigo felt the shock, fire and ice together, a shudder like an earthquake that began in the depths of her being and flowed through her and from her to the dark figure in the boat. For a shattering instant, they became one, and suddenly Indigo knew what it was to be mistress of the underworld, Mistress of the Dead, guardian of souls; and a thousand thousand voices rang in her mind: we are her, she is us, we are one, free, free, free—
She gave of herself, gave of the power within her. Light erupted from the Ancestral Lady’s figure: a shining, silver aura that lit the arena, lit the night, with the brilliance of a rising full moon. The Mistress of the Dead raised her head, and her black lips laughed with joy, and her white and beautiful face was the timeless face of a goddess; and her eyes, like dark stars, but filled with life, turned their gaze upon her worshipers, and she cried out, spreading her arms wide as though to embrace them all:
“MY CHILDREN!”
Indigo saw Uluye and her women rising, but even as they gained their feet, even as they rushed forward to meet their beloved Lady, a huge darkness seemed to implode on her. The world spun; vision and sound faded, swelled, faded again, as Indigo’s senses reeled; and the power was leaving her, streaming from her, collapsing—
She heard Grimya’s mental voice in her head—Indigo! Indigo!—and felt the wolf’s presence racing toward her. Her legs wouldn’t support her; she spun, feeling nothing, helpless, her last strength fleeing.
And in the moment before she fell in a dead faint to the ground, she heard Yima’s quavering voice, like a bird’s cry in the imploding dark: “Mother? Oh, Mother!”
•CHAPTER•XXIII•
She had been conscious during that last hour on the sand, but in a remote and separated way, as though she were watching events from a vast distance in time as well as in space. She could still remember the women’s singing; she heard it in her dreams, a silver thread running through the mists of sleep. In her dreams, too, she often relived the moment of the Ancestral Lady’s departure, as the shining figure sculled its boat out into the lake once more while the priestesses chanted a final ecstasy of praise.
At their goddess’s command, they had extinguished the torches and cast aside the amulets in the square of the hushu, and had solemnly lifted up the bodies of Shalune and Inuss and carried them to the boat where it rocked beside the shore. Then they had sung another song that was both a dirge for the dead women and a hymn of thanksgiving that the sins of Shalune and Inuss—that had been no sins at all—were forgiven and that the two were no longer condemned to roam the forests as hungering hushu, but would serve the Ancestral Lady in her realm.
No more retribution; no more hushu; no more ghouls and dark spirits to plague the living. The Ancestral Lady’s boat had sunk down into the lake, into the world below the lake, and she was gone from her worshipers’ sight; but her promise had remained. The demon fear was conquered: the vengeful terrors of the night would be no more.
And Indigo wished bitterly with all her heart that the promise had been kept.
She shifted her position, pushing aside some of the offerings that were heaped inside her cave and turning it into some kind of treasure house. Food and clothing, ornaments, fetishes, carvings, implements … gifts from grateful priestesses and wide-eyed, wonder-struck villagers; gifts that half their donors couldn’t afford but which they must, must make to the light-skinned stranger who had become their oracle and who had had the power to summon the Ancestral Lady from her dark realm to bless her people. Gifts for one who, in their eyes, was little less than a goddess herself; gifts for one they revered. And already the borderline between reverence and fear was beginning to blur.
It hadn’t taken long before the first signs began to show. They had carried her back to her cave, and there she had slept for three days, her mind, body and soul exhausted by the events of that momentous night. She had wakened at last to find that she was a heroine, but more, far more than that. Though they agreed obediently with her when she told them that she was not an oracle, and not the Ancestral Lady’s chosen avatar, she knew that their acquiescence went no deeper than words and gestures intended only to please her. In their hearts it was not so, could never be so, and for Indigo, that had been the first indication that, though they had learned to love her, they also feared her.
Then there was Uluye. Uluye could not change. Oh, she and Yima had been reconciled, and Uluye had given her blessing to Yima and Tiam, the blessing that the Ancestral Lady had sanctioned and sanctified, but already she was seeking out a new candidate to take on her mantle in years to come, another girl to be taken and nurtured and trained to her mold; and she would rule her new protegee’s life as she had ruled the life of her daughter. And the nightly lakeside ritual … that, too, had been at Uluye’s behest. At first it had been her decision to continue the nightly patrolling of the lake, with its torches and chanting and the rattling of sistrums, simply as a mark of reverence to the Lady, an expression of the cult’s gratitude. So they had sung, and they had danced, and they had made the offerings.
But the nature of the offerings was taking on a sinister tinge. Charms against this or that were beginning to be cast to the lake among the simpler gifts of food; and twice in the last seven days, humble delegations had come from nearby villages, and there had been whispered consultations, and on the nights following their visits, new hex amulets had joined the offerings given to the Ancestral Lady. Slowly, insidio
usly, the old ways were beginning to reassert themselves.
Indigo had tried to warn them, but she knew already that her efforts were doomed to failure. They listened to her, oh, they listened to her; but they didn’t truly hear, for to them, she was not quite mortal, not quite human, and therefore not quite real.
She could have changed matters. All she needed to do was don the oracle’s feathered cloak again and take her place on the oracle’s chair in the temple on the ziggurat summit. Then they would have listened, and they would have obeyed her every word. She could have usurped Uluye’s power, set herself above the highest of High Priestesses, ruled. And that, Indigo knew, would have been the worst choice of all.
The curtain over the cave’s door shuddered suddenly, and Grimya came in. Only one small lamp was alight in its wall niche, and in the dim glow, the wolf’s eyes shone like embers.
“I think they are all as-leep now,” she said softly. “The night ritual is over, and there has been no movement below for some time.” She paused. “Are you rrready?”
“Yes.” Indigo climbed to her feet and gathered up the packs that lay close by her side. It felt strange to be wearing her old clothes again instead of the robes that she’d grown accustomed to during her stay here; they felt strange and unfamiliar. She looked around at the cave, at the piled gifts, and felt a painful blend of sadness and bitterness well within her.
Still, she thought, there is so much fear. The demon might have died within me, but for them, it is still alive. I think it always will be … and I’m so sorry that there was no more I could do.
She’d take nothing from among the offerings; not even one small souvenir. In fact, she had something to leave behind, a gift for the Ancestral Lady. What the dark goddess would make of it, she didn’t know, but perhaps it would serve her in her turn. And it was of no use to Indigo now. It had played its part in her life, but its time was done.
She wondered what the women would think when they found her gone. Would they guess at the truth, or would they believe that the oracle and her companion had been spirited away, called perhaps to the greater service of the Ancestral Lady? In a way, she hoped so, for it might ensure that they would forget her all the sooner.
She blew out the lamp. The cave sank into darkness, and Indigo and Grimya stepped out onto the ledge. The night was clear and fine; stars glittered in the velvet sky, and the half-moon was just beginning to rise above the trees’ dark silhouettes. The lake below was still, like a great pewter shield cast down and abandoned in the forest by some careless warrior. The citadel and the arena were silent. Somewhere a bird chattered with a sound like mad human laughter.
Indigo put one hand to her throat and grasped the thong that held the lodestone in its bag around her neck. The old leather was brittle with age; it snapped easily, and she held the bag in her hand. She didn’t want to look at the stone, not even for one last time. She didn’t want to see what it would tell her, for her mind was made up and nothing would sway her now.
She threw stone and bag and thong together out and away in the direction of the lake. They spun, turning, turning, just visible in the moonlight and starlight—and then a tiny glitter broke the lake’s smoothness momentarily as they struck the water far below.
This is my own small offering to you, madam, she thought. Accept it as a token of my gratitude, for you showed me that the thing I feared above all else had no foundation. Fenran is alive, and I believe I can find him. Nothing else matters to me now, and I thank you for setting me on this path.
There was no answering stirring in her mind, as she had known there could not be. The link was broken. Yet, Indigo thought, something of the Ancestral Lady would always live within her from now on, a legacy of the avatar within her own being, the avatar that had awakened here and that had known, briefly, what it was to be a goddess.
She looked down at Grimya and felt the warm, loving surge of the wolf’s mind as she gazed back. Grimya understood what lay behind this last gesture, and wherever Indigo led, she would follow. Indigo couldn’t find the words, or even the thoughts, to express what she felt, but she bent briefly to stroke the top of Grimya’s head.
Then she shouldered her packs, and as quietly as two cloud shadows passing across the face of the moon, they moved together toward the stairs and toward the forest that waited for them beyond the sleeping citadel.
Scanned and proofed against paperback. TK June 2013 (v1.0) (html)
Before you make changes, check the paperback. Some of the word groupings and spellings are that way in the book.
Louise Cooper - Indigo 06 - Avatar Page 31