Louise Cooper - Indigo 06 - Avatar (37 page)

And you, Uluye, what are you afraid of...?
Suddenly her heart lurched so hard that she nearly choked as, unbidden, her memory conjured the image of her daughter as she was led down from the citadel and past the rock where her mother, her judge and executioner, stood watching.
My only child ... she didn ‘t look up as she went by; she didn’t once look at me....

A surge of violent fury erupted in her mind and crushed the momentary emotion out of existence. She would not be swayed; she would
not
doubt! The Lady had exacted her just vengeance on Shalune and Inuss for their crimes, and now Yima and her lover must pay the same penalty. Anything else was unthinkable.
I am the High Priestess
, Uluye thought ferociously.
I cannot be mistaken—I cannot!

Her voice rang out over the heads of the crowd. “Hear me! I, Uluye, the chosen servant of the Ancestral Lady, speak to you in her sacred name, and I denounce this false oracle who stands before me. The Lady’s will is clear, and her will is paramount! Hear me now, and be warned that I shall call the Lady’s wrath upon any who
dare
to defy her!”

She dropped to a crouch and snatched a spear from the hand of one of her acolytes below, then jerked upright once more. The light of the dying sun made the spear tip glitter like fire as Uluye raised it high above her head.

“I am the Lady’s chosen!” she shouted, and the crowd cried out in response, though their cries were nervous and uncertain. “I am the High Priestess, and spiritual daughter of the Mistress of the Dead! And I curse this demon who prowls among us as the
hushu
prowl in the night. She seeks to turn you from the Lady’s service, and one faithless heart is all she craves; just one heart in which to sow her poisoned seed!” Her voice rose to a venomous scream. “
Is there one such heart among you?
”

“No!” the watchers cried. “No, Uluye, no!”

“Be sure of that!” Uluye exhorted them in a threatening and murderous hiss. “Be sure of it; for if there is anyone among you, man, woman or child, who does not keep faith, I shall curse that one, and I shall devour that one’s soul, and I shall name that one
hushu
even as I name this vile demon!
Do you hear me
?”

“We hear, Uluye! We hear!”

Fired by their leader’s wild tirade, three of the priestesses nearest to Uluye had snatched up drum and sistrums, and now they began to rattle out a harsh, staccato rhythm. Their voices rose shrilly in a chant that others swiftly took up, and they formed a line to either side of the rock where Uluye stood, their bodies swaying and their feet stamping. Quivering with the knowledge of her ascendancy, Uluye turned about. With the spear still gripped in her hand, she sprang down from the rock and, beckoning to two of her women to follow, stalked slowly and menacingly toward Indigo, who still stood alone and defiant on the sand.

“Now,” she said, savagely but so softly that only her quarry and the two attendants could hear, “I shall show you the meaning of fear, oracle!” She snapped her fingers at the women. “Take her!”

As the two started forward, Indigo could see from their eyes that they were afraid of her; but their terror of Uluye was greater still, and they dared not disobey the order. She didn’t resist as they caught hold of her arms—that, too, disconcerted them—but as they pinned her, a voice sounded silently in her mind.

Indigo
! It was Grimya. The moment Indigo had made her presence known to the crowd, the wolf had left the temple and streaked down from the ziggurat to wait and watch at the foot of the stairs.
Indigo, be careful! She is dangerous
—

No, Grimya, wait
! Indigo sent back the swift message as she sensed that the wolf was about to come running to her aid.
Stay where you are
! It was vital that Grimya shouldn’t intervene now. She must cope with this alone.

Uluye was advancing, the spear how poised to strike directly at Indigo’s heart. She was only seven paces away; six; five.... Indigo felt her muscles tensing, but she forced herself to show no outward sign of the tension, and her gaze stayed fixed unwaveringly, calmly, on Uluye’s face.

This is what you wanted, isn ‘t it, madam ?
Contempt gave the unspoken words extra emphasis as she thought of the Ancestral Lady hiding in her dark realm.
A confrontation with your High Priestess, a trial to see whose will is the stronger. How far will you go in testing Uluye’s faith and my courage? How far, before I prove to you that your worshipers’ fear of you can be overcome?
Still the Mistress of the Dead refused to answer her, but Indigo thought she felt the faintest of stirrings somewhere deep down in her consciousness, the sense of something listening, waiting....

Uluye took another pace forward, then stopped. The spear was only inches from Indigo’s heart now, but Indigo didn’t so much as glance at it. Strange ... she didn’t know what would happen if Uluye did strike. She had no doubt that the spear would pierce her, but what then? What if her heart was split, or if she bled and the bleeding couldn’t be stanched? She couldn’t answer those questions; all she knew was that no matter what might befall her, she would not die. She wasn’t
willing
to die—and besides, she felt certain that it wouldn’t come to that.

Uluye was looking into her eyes, and a cold smile curved the High Priestess’s lips. “Are you afraid now, oracle; now that the moment approaches when your soul is to be consigned to destruction?”

Indigo said: “No.”

“Then you are a greater fool than I believed.” But Uluye’s eyes suddenly belied the smile; that was the sign that Indigo had been waiting for, the first brief flicker of wavering confidence. “Do you not know what it is to be
hushu
?” Uluye continued. ”Can you not imagine what life in death will be like for you, when you walk the forest each night, howling with a hunger and a thirst that can never be assuaged? Do you know what it is to lose your soul, yet to know that you will never truly die?“

The spear in her hand trembled suddenly, briefly; and Indigo knew then that Uluye was desperate.

“Oh, yes.” She spoke softly. “I can imagine that, for I have seen far worse, and I have faced far worse. The
hushu
hold no terrors for me. I feel only pity for them. Don’t you, Uluye? Don’t you pity Shalune and Inuss?” She paused, just long enough to see and be sure of the sudden, fearful tensing of the muscles in the High Priestess’s face, then added with terrible gentleness, “Don’t you pity Yima?”

For a moment she thought it would be as she’d prayed it might, for Uluye’s eyes grew wide with shock as, perhaps for the first time, true understanding of what she had done to her daughter broke through the barriers she had created in her mind and hit her like a hammer blow. Desperately, the High Priestess’s roiling consciousness reached out for help, for guidance:
Lady, could it be true? Have I been wrong?

And before Indigo’s inner vision, a silver corona flared about eyes blacker than the deeps of space, and in her skull she heard the Ancestral Lady’s laughter.

Uluye shrieked. She flung her head back so that the great feathered headdress fell awry, and raised the spear high in both hands.

“
Demon
!” Her eyes were mad with terror and loathing. “Demon! I send you to the
hushu
, I curse you, I damn you to eternity!”

The spear came flashing down, a searing death strike to Indigo’s heart—and Grimya burst from behind the line of chanting women, a gray streak hurtling across the sand, leaping, flinging herself with a maniacal snarl at Uluye’s throat. The spear flew spinning from the High Priestess’s hand as she went down under the wolf’s onslaught, and Grimya’s fury crashed into Indigo’s head like a breaking wave:
kill, I will kill, I will kill—

“Grimya,
no
!” Wrenching her arms free from her captors’ grasp, Indigo rushed at the wolf and tried to grab the scruff of her neck. “Don’t do it,
don’t kill her
!” Somehow she managed to batter the command through the red rage that was Grimya’s consciousness, and they fell rolling together onto the sand, with Uluye sprawled three feet away.

As she struggled shakily to her knees, one hand still gripping Grimya’s fur, Indigo had the impression that she and the wolf and Uluye had suddenly become the only protagonists in a bizarre ritual whose rules none of them truly comprehended. Or, perhaps more apposite, actors in a play that hadn’t yet been written. She had expected that the other priestesses would come to the aid of their leader, but they had not; instead, they had shrunk back, forming a tight, frightened semicircle at a prudent distance. However afraid they might be of their High Priestess, they were now more terrified by far of the oracle and her companion.

Uluye began to move. Grimya bared her fangs and snarled again, but Indigo shook her. “No, Grimya! Leave her.” And to Uluye: “You know she has the power of human speech and understanding. She will obey me.”

Uluye got to her feet. Grimya had torn the towering headdress to shreds in her efforts to find the Priestess’s throat, and with an unsteady hand, Uluye pushed the remnants to the back of her skull, where they clung amid the oiled tangles of her hair. Her right ear, arm and shoulder were bleeding, but she either didn’t know or didn’t care.

Indigo, too, stood upright, watching her adversary intently. She had miscalculated, and that was a mistake she couldn’t afford to repeat. The next few minutes, she thought, would be vital.

“Uluye,” she said, “I am not your enemy.” Uluye made a choked, vicious sound at the back of her throat, and Indigo shook her head. “You must believe it; you have the evidence.” She indicated the wolf. Grimya was calmer now, though the moment Indigo released her, she had placed herself like a sentinel between the two women, her stance tense and protective.

“Grimya could have killed you just now. She would have, had I not called her off. But I
did
call her off. Would an enemy have spared you, Uluye?” She smiled thinly, ironically. “Would you have spared me if our positions had been reversed?”

She saw the answer to that in Uluye’s eyes, the glitter of angry and bitter resentment. But the deadly moment had passed. She must speak now, Indigo thought, before Uluye’s pride regained the upper hand and the advantage was lost.

“Madam.” She used the formal mode with which she had addressed the Ancestral Lady, at the same time making the ritualized gesture that was a sign of deep respect between equals. She saw Uluye’s eyes narrow in wary surprise. “I am not your oracle. I never have been. The Ancestral Lady attempted to take control of my mind and use me, just as she controls and uses you and your priestesses, and all of the people who pay her fealty. She didn’t succeed, because she couldn’t compel me to fear her. She tried ...” Her eyes grew suddenly introverted, and she stared down at the sand beneath her feet. “Sweet Earth Mother, she tried ... but she failed, because I discovered that I had no good reason to be afraid of her.”

Indigo looked up again. “That, Uluye, is your greatest mistake, and your greatest burden. You love your goddess; I know that, I’ve seen it. But your love has become warped and distorted by your terror of her—terror that drives you to sacrifice your own daughter’s life in a desperate bid to prove your faith. What manner of evil must infect a deity who could exact such a price? The Ancestral Lady isn’t evil—you are her priestess; you must know that better than I do. So how can you think, how can you believe even for a moment, that the true test of your love for her demands that you should kill Yima?”

There was a sudden, violent shifting deep down in her mind. Something was stirring, something alien, something that emanated from beyond her consciousness ... and overlaid on it she heard Grimya’s soft and troubled mental voice:
Indigo ... the sun is setting....

Indigo turned her head. Behind her, above the lake, above the trees that crowded to the water’s edge, all that remained of the sun was a thin arc of furious fire. The entire sky was turning to gold and orange and scarlet; shafts of light radiated across the firmament, and when she looked back, she saw that a huge, soft wing of darkness was moving in from the east.

“Uluye,” she said, her voice urgent now, “I ask you again, and I beg you to search your heart before you answer. Do you truly believe that only your daughter’s death will satisfy your goddess now?”

Uluye looked at the sky. Then she looked toward the lakeshore and the two frames, and again her tongue touched her lips. Lastly her gaze moved to the torchlit square and the two forlorn bodies that lay together between the protecting rows of amulets and offerings. There was a long, long pause. Behind them, the priestesses were still leading their rhythmic chant, but the singing and the thump and rattle of their instruments had taken on a note of hollow desperation. The chanting had lost its meaning and had become nothing more than a device to boost confidence and pacify their congregation. But they didn’t stop. They dared not.

Suddenly, shockingly, Uluye’s voice cracked through the chant, echoing harshly across the arena. “I will listen to no more!” She made a savage, negating gesture, “
I
know the Lady’s will! I am her High Priestess; I have looked upon her face and received her blessing from her own hand. You will not usurp my power from me, Indigo; nor will you sway me from the duty with which the Lady has charged me!”

“I don’t want to usurp your power, Uluye,” Indigo argued desperately. “I’m not your rival or your enemy; I’m trying to
help
you!”

“No.” Uluye’s tone was contemptuous. “I want none of your help. I
need
none of your help. You are not one of the Ancestral Lady’s own; you understand nothing.
I
understand. I love her—I am
hers
, heart and body and soul. And what she demands of me, I shall give, for there is no price too great to pay in her sacred service.”

They stared at each other, and Indigo knew then that there was nothing more she could say. No words, no reason, would convince Uluye. The priestess’s conviction was too strong, her fear too great.

Indigo felt again the stirring deep in her mind, and a sense of shadowy amusement, and on its heels came bitter anger.
Very well
, she thought.
You believe that you have won. We shall see, Lady—we shall see!