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The people, too, now accepted her as an acolyte of the temple and loyal member
of the clan, an orphan foundling who had been taken in and raised as one of
them, with the Most Ancient God as father and the
High Priestess as mother, and the other priestesses, adepts, and acolytes her
sisters.
Like them, she had no doubts about their primacy among all the clans of
Ambora, nor that their faith was the true one. She saw and felt the gods and
spirits in all things, and acknowledged and accepted their power and primacy
over all of them. They were to a one the willing servants of all the gods, and
dependent upon them for all that was good. The prayers were always simple
ones, for those the gods appreci-ated. For enough food so that all of the clan
might eat and be in strength, for enough skill and faith so that no enemy
might overcome them, for forgiveness from all sins, for health so that they
could serve their gods and their clan, and for shelter against the night.
Everything had a prayer of its own, everything had a power and a purpose.
Although the men could not fly, they did have some gifts from the gods that
were uniquely theirs, including the music. Women could chant and intone tunes
for the rituals, but the men composed and played music on harps of their own
de-signs, and on flutes carved from the same reeds that, carved a different
way, could be used as blowguns by the warriors.
She liked some of the men and particularly liked to listen to their music, but
she'd felt no urge to mate.
Some of the acolytes had done so and borne children, and it had been most
wonderful and fascinating, but the more pleasurable it appeared to mate and to
bear and raise children, the higher the value of the sacrifice. She had seen
the gifts the Grand Falcon bestowed on the High Priestess, and felt that her
calling and destiny lay in that direction.
This in fact disappointed the High Priestess, who didn't want to face the
possibility of training Jaysu in the higher levels. It involved a great deal
of prayer and fasting, ordeals and rituals that could drive one to the brink
of madness and exhaustion, and it also involved drugs that did terrible things
to the mind. Many died in that kind of training; the others went mad. Only one
would do it.
The High Priestess knew that Jaysu could make it; her abilities and devotion
were so absolute, it was a thing of awe. But what, if anything, was still in
Jaysu's mind, buried so deep down that it could not be reached by normal
meth-ods? The High Priestess concurred with the Grand High Priestess in Zone
and those with whom the Most Holy had spoken to there. She was told that Jaysu
was probably one of the two women, subsequently identified by interviews with
the others as Angel Kobe, a onetime acolyte of some other alien religion. It
fit nicely with her personality and devotion to assume this.
But might that old faith emerge and conflict with the new and destroy her?
Worse, what if they were wrong and she wasn't this Angel Kobe? And what sort
of monster might the process create in either case?
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The High Priestess would have liked to put off the deci-sion, but knew she
could not. The gods of the volcanoes were restless; many troubles were coming
for the clan from that score. Worse, all that she took to attain and maintain
herself in this high position for so long had taken a grave toll. The pain was
now there more often than not, and it was getting harder to find anything
strong enough to deal with it. The Most High had sent her special drugs from
other hexes that helped a great deal, and upon which she was now absolutely
dependent, but even they had less effect as the days and weeks and months went
by.
She was dying. And the pain would rise to levels she couldn't control at some
point. When that happened, she would go to the cliffs, pray to the setting sun
to receive her spirit, and jump.
Flying was one of the things you had to sacrifice to become a High Priestess,
and while fishing was part of the lifestyle, none of the Amborans swam very
well.
Now she sat in the Inner Chamber, where none other could come, inside the
Circle of Fire, facing the
Grand Falcon herself, as only a High Priestess could do. After days of prayer
and fasting and little sleep, and ingesting special drugs and potions, she was
ready to take even more years off her life by diving the patterns. She
understood that these were not preordained, but mere possibilities, but they
tended to prove out more often than not. They could answer ques-tions no other
could answer, and give keys to the future that might well save her people.
The High Priestess swayed to a rhythm only she could hear, surrounded by the
steam vents and sulfuric gases of the Inner Chamber, her sight failing as she
took the last and strongest of the potions, which would almost certainly kill
anyone not prepared for it. She screamed as it burned its way down and seemed
to consume her body and even her very soul in a white-hot fire.
But out of that fire and out of the mists came visions. Visions formed inside
and with the mists and gases, but pri-marily within her own mind.
What she saw in those visions were monsters.
Monsters of the sea, rising up, engulfing all that their giant tentacles could
grasp. She saw two long, sticky
ten-tacles shoot out like a tree frog's tongue and snare low-flying birds and
Amborans and other flying races as well.
Monsters of the land; huge translucent, sluglike creatures without even mouths
to eat, moving slowly, ponderously, over land and through forests and up and
down rocks, leav-ing slime as they went, absorbing any animal and most plant
life they contacted, then slowly dissolving them inside themselves while the
prey was still alive but helpless. Draw-ing larger prey to them by saucerlike
eyes that seemed to swirl in patterns and radiate an eerie dance for the eyes
of others that you could not avoid, drawing you in, making you walk directly
into them without even knowing until you were inside that jellylike flesh . .
.
She watched them come out of a boiling dark sea and hor-rible black skies
filled with storms and violence, coming out of the west and covering nation
after nation, hex after hex, un-til the Overdark was not merely a name but a
description.
And at the heart of that darkness, something totally evil, something that
looked like the tentacled ones but was not; something alien and awful, the
enemy of light and the source of all madness. An entity so awful that it was
willing, even eager, to take on and massacre even the gods themselves.
Bodies
. . .
all over, the blood and the screams of the dying everywhere, and even the
volcanoes
obeyed the darkness . . .
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Surely this was not the future! Surely this was not the end of all things! The
apocalyptic vision was so horrible that she refused to accept it. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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