Darkness Risen (The Ava'Lonan Herstories Book 4) (14 page)

the light
turned...

The little Priest shuffled through the large
gold-inlaid Temple doors, pulling them shut behind him. The left door stopped
half a span ajar, and would not move, given any amount of tugging. Irritated,
the Priest looked down to see if something were in the path of the door, obstructing
it, then over toward the hinges - and something caught his eye. At first, he
took it for an oddly-shaped bar of beaten bronze, until he saw a palm and five
strong fingers pressing firmly against the door, keeping it from closing. He
followed the arm back, turned quickly when he saw five grim, menacing faces
staring impassively down at him.

“Who are you?” he demanded, pressing back against
the other door that had already been bolted, as if it could shore up his
courage. “Why do you bar my closing of the Temple of Ya’kano? Don’t you know
that I am Ashmelan, High Priest here? This is sacrilege!”

The lead warru, whose strong arm had prevented the
Temple door from sealing, pulled something from a pouch and tossed it at the
Priest. “If you want sacrilege,” the taller man growled, “there it is!”

“What?” the Priest opened the tiny box, reached
inside - then began shrieking as his fingers came in contact with the corrupt
pearl. He dropped the heavy little metal box, dancing around. He turned grey,
as if he had been lightly dipped in ash, and his fingers looked black and
swollen.

The five watched him, unmoved.

“This was a Dio’gin pearl that came through this
Temple,” the leader growled, catching the Priest’s robes before he completely
collapsed and pinning him against the secured door. “It and a thousand like it
were supposed to be denatured here, before going out for distribution and
sale!”

“Don’t - don’t know what you’re talking ab...”

The warru man slapped the Priest, letting him
crumple to the ground. He pulled out a document and unrolled it before the
Priest’s face.

“A document signed by
you
, Ashmelan, stating
that all Dio’gin pearls leaving this Temple are certified denatured. But that
isn’t so, is it?”

“A - abomination,” the Priest gasped, struggling to
get to his feet. “You will pay...”

“So if we go in and inspect the storage lains,” the
leader continued, pulling out the j’tali of his rank, “we will only find
denatured Dio’gin, correct?”

The Priest stared at the j’tali, then began
scrabbling at the door, as if trying to claw his way through. The leader
grabbed him by the scruff and hauled him up, tossed him casually into the
strong hands of his compatriots.

“Bind him. Let us see what lies within.”

The others bound the hysterical Priest. The leader
pushed open the heavy door and slipped inside, followed by the others. The
inside of the Temple was dark, as if the architect had forgotten to include
windows in the design. The place should have been filled with warm white light.

One of the other warru produced an av’light globe
from a fold of wrap and tossed it into the air. It came alive, but did little
to illuminate much of the space, as if it were old and failing, something
drawing the essence of light from it. But there was just enough light to see
by. The Temple was filled with Dio’gin pearls, in huge piles all over the
floor. They pulsed weakly, as if crying out for the light. They had not yet
been corrupted.

A sharp sound, as of glassine breaking, admitted
late afterzen light to supplement the av’globe. Another darkened window
shattered, and the pearls drank in the light greedily, glowing in their own
right. The small warru methodically broke them all with a tiny sling that
wielded round pebbles, and light blazed in the Temple.

“Capture all this,” the tall warru said, “and summon
a real Priestess of Ya’kano. Several, in fact. We will let them deal with this
one.”

“No, no, no!” the ex-Priest moaned, falling to his
knees to grovel. “Leniency! I will tell all I know, for leniency and
protection!”

“You will tell all you know in any case,” the
shorter male warru said, the flatness of his voice showing his disdain.

“Please - you must protect me! Protect me from
them!”

“From whom?” The leader came up to the quivering
Priest, staring down into his bugging eyes, menace palpable in every line of
the warru’s body.

“The ones - the ones who hired me!” the cowering man
screeched as the other warru shook him.

“So you are not a real Priest of Ya’kano.”

“No,” the man in Priest’s robes groveled, as much as
he could, for being held upright.

“Who hired you?”

“I - never saw their faces, no names. I just know -
I was hired in Indal’lon, and they blind-folded me and took me to a place where
- I think they had creatures in cages. I could smell them, and they stank. Felt
like spikes of darkness and hot points of light behind my eyes. Then they took
me to a lain and took off the blind, and told me what they wanted me to do. I
refused, and they - they threatened me, my family! I had no choice! No choice.”
His voice petered out, as if the telling had drained him.

“The real Priestesses?”

The small man’s face became terrible, as if he had
witnessed horrors that could not be named.

“K - killed. Right in front of me. With those,” his
eyes turned with terror to the box with the corrupt pearl. “Said if I ever
told, they would kill my entire family the same way.” His voice was flat,
defeated.

The leader nodded to the smallest warru, who went
out of the Temple doors without a word. Then he nodded to the warru

 holding the false Priest, and he let the man slip
to the ground, and put an av’rita tether on him.

The glow of an av’tun heralded the small warru’s
task - a dozen Priestesses came flowing into the Temple, their eyes hard and
their mouths compressed tight. They converged on the mounds of pearls, casting
rites and murmuring to each other. The warru watched silently as they worked.
Finally a young Priestess came over to them.

“Thank you for alerting us,” she said, casting a
disgusted look at the imposter.

“Are they damaged?” the leader asked.

“We - we are not sure. They have been deprived of
the light of Av for a long time. And some sort of - of rite of darkness has
been cast on them. It is almost - almost as if they suffer from a form of lor’den.”
There was the hint of frightened puzzlement in her voice.

“We will immediately send others to investigate all
Temples that handle the Dio’gin pearls. We must...” her voice trailed off,
leaving the obvious unsaid.

“We have heard of reports - rumors - of perverted
pearls,” another, more senior Priestess put in, coming to face the warru. “I
never thought it could be true, and in such great numbers. We will end this
misuse at once.”

“You will have a difficult time,” he said, giving
her the outline of the Trade Agreement. “Any Temple may be chosen to house them
within the Weste Territory. They may even build false Temples, just as they had
a false Priest.

The Priestess’s eyes widened as the full impact of
his words came clear.

“They - they could be shipping them anywhere!” she
breathed, awful wonder glazing her eyes. Then she focused and hardened, looking
back at him. “But we have one advantage. They only come from one place. We will
head them off there.”

“I cannot contravene you,” he said quietly, “but,
with respect, Priestess, if you must take action, is there anyway to be -
circumspect? If we alert them now, we may never find all the corrupted pearls.”

An idea seemed to spark a light in her eyes.
“Perhaps we could ‘tag’ a shipment,” she mused darkly, clearly concurring. “See
how far they are dispersed. Yes, you are right, Du’jidi. We will act in a
covert fashion, and we will keep you apprised. For now we will set up things
here,” the Priestess said, staring hard at the man on the ground. “And we will
take this - imposter into custody. Your punishment will be to become a
true
Priest of Ya’kano, little man, and help us hunt them down!”

“First, I need to know something from him,” the
leader, named Du’jidi, turning once more to the sagging faux-Priest. “You said
that they took you to a place with strange animals.” It was not a question -
none of them had been.

Ashmelan nodded.

“Show us.”

The smaller man covered his face. “I told you, I don’t
know where it is! All I know is that it was beyond my range of av’tunning.
Please - my family! If you go there, they will know!”

“They will be protected,” Du’jidi promised, “now
show us!”

Ashmelan looked up. “How? How do I show you?”

N’mbu’yi came forward and crouched before him.
“Picture the place where you were clearly,” she said, her voice cool. Ashmelan
closed his eyes, as did N’mbu’yi. She framed his head with her hands, drumming
out her rite. The ajadine came over to sit on either side of Ashmelan. After half
a san’chron of rite-casting she stood, and went to the younger woman, holding
out a sphere of diffuse, crystal-refracted light.

“See what you can do, Han’vonda.”

The younger woman, named Han’vonda, glanced at the
leader, gave a single nod, and moved outside, a little ways away from the doors
of the Temple. She put down her pack, removed her outer de’siki, and spread a small
meditation desi on a bare patch of ground. There she sat, legs folded, in only
a thin silk under de’siki and kwats. The do’grine graa curled up in her lap,
and the abarine graa formed a loose triangle around her with their bodies. They
all seemed to pass into open-eyed sleep.

the light
turned...

She immersed herself in her own special rite, as N’mbu’yi
had, her heart beat and that of her cats acting as the pay’ta for it. She was
one of a few wumans who was supremely sensitive to av’rita. This sensitivity,
trained and refined since she was a baby, gave her a special ability - the
ability to sense av’tuns, of the present, the deep and immediate past, and even
a touch of the future. And she could trace their origins and terminations, and
even, in some cases, discern who the opener of the of the av’tun was. She could
also, with the help of her feline compatriots, tie into any of these av’tuns -
though it was difficult, especially with the deep past and future av’tuns, and
extremely dangerous. But most important of all, she could hear the echoes of
the thoughts of the av’tun’s maker at the time of creation and annihilation,
and the interval in between.

She sat at the center of a complex hemispherical web
of glowing tubes of light, some brilliant yellow with the taste of the present,
others reddish with the taint of the past, and a very few bluish with the touch
of the future. They slowly came into focus around her as if she tuned her
vision to some higher plane. She marveled at the beauty of the molten gold network
around her, marveled at how they formed such a precise geometric pattern. All
the tubes, no matter where they began or ended in the material world, were
exactly the same length, from where she sat. They all existed simultaneously,
the passage of time and the changing of course only apparent in the shifting
from bluish to reddish. The distances they covered was represented by intensity
- short distances were dim tubes, large distances almost incandescent. She
pondered again that the locations connected by an av’tun had no significance in
which of the strands of the web around her was highlighted - the glittering
tubes always brightened in a precise, descending order, as if no two adjacent
ones could be used at the same time. She listened to the ringing tones that the
passage of life made in the tunnels, like bells of pearl, ringing out an
endless melody that she almost recognized and understood.

She turned her gaze to the dim other-half of the
sphere, where the tunnels of light rarely lit or rang at all, and were dull
with disuse. Were these the av’tun paths through the Lora’Lons? Had they used
those paths at one time, as the ones surrounding her were used? Had the secrets
of the av’tun been lost to them?

Then, as she bent her concentration to her task, she
found something disturbing. At regular intervals in the network there were
tunnels with a strange, pinkish cast, dim and withered, as if something
inimical to their very nature had passed through them. They held many of the
echoes she was listening for, so she pursued these. They were slimy-dry to the
touch of her mind, unlike the warm velveteen of the regular tunnels. The
thought-impressions in them were distorted too, though they resonated with the
kinds of malicious thoughts that she sought. What could not be hidden, and was
even so clear that it made her wary, were where they originated. Yes, too clear
- so she looked at them even more closely - and saw -

Shock almost threw her out of the rited state.
The
tunnels deviated from the pattern.

She flinched away from the deformed av’tuns. She
would not be connecting to these! They would have to be tracked in the normal
world. Swallowing in a purely mental throat gone dry, she turned to the task at
hand. Holding the image of the av’tun lattice firmly in her mind’s eye, her
mind’s hand drew forth a hemispherical map of Ava’Lona. It showed the land
following the curve of the world, and arching slightly above the surface was
the network of av’tun potentialities that she wanted to track. She imaged the
deviant av’tuns and highlighted the associated normal av’tuns. And the brightest
was the av’tun that had brought the faux Priest to her present location.
Setting the map, she began her exit-rite.