The Gold Hart held her underwater, forced her to drink, to make the water most intimately a part of her. She gasped and pulled a shield like glass about her. She could endure this, she saw that as soon as the glass closed around her. She could endure and be what Shahntien Shere was, not so bad an outcome. Not really mediocrity. But not majesty either. She stared at the white-gold flames coursing about her, rising in shimmering stabbing tongues to touch the clouds overhead. She felt rather than heard Ailiki hissing with a terror answering her own. “Ahhh..” she said aloud. “Tushzi,” she cried in a voice to match her desires, using an ancient word from the Rukka Nagh ancestors buried deep in her cells, a word that meant fire. “TUSHZI VAGYA. I AM FIRE,” she cried. It was her second WORD. She cast away the shield, she threw Ailiki into a spiraling loop above her head and stretched her arms wide, surrendering body and souls to the fire.
For a moment she was without thought, without perception, she was light itself, heat itself. She flowed with the stream wherever it would take her and it took her on a circle of the layered realities, bursting into one and out between one blink and the next. She was traveling with such speed she took with her only a blurred fragment of each, putting it into memory for the time when she would return though she was not thinking of returning now, she was not thinking at all, she simply WAS. Galaxies turned beneath her, she crossed a universe in the blink of an eye, dived into another and crossed that…
The stream slowed, cooled; she began to draw back into herself, to seek home. A thing called her without words, a fireheart pulsed, drew her to it. She fell like the mist-rain, as slowly and insubstantially and blown about by the sullen wind. She fell into the meadowpit again and landed as she had before so lightly not a blade of grass stirred. Ailiki leaped into her arms and murmured a wordless welcome. She laughed. Her hands were translucent, filled with a light as cool and pale as moonglow. She felt immensely powerful, as if she could walk the mountaintops beside Geidranay and never miss a step. Yet there was more gentleness and love in her than she’d felt before, an outreach to all there was around her, a welcoming in her for all that was, name it good, name it evil, she welcomed all and gave it respect and dignity. She ran her hands over her hair and laughed again. The ends were singed into ashy kinks, as if someone had passed a torch too close to her. She looked around. The ground was charred where her dreampattern blanket had burned. Leave it as you found it, the Old Man said. Yes. Let me think.
Before she was ready, fire leaped to her hand, startling her. She wasn’t afraid now. Without knowing how she knew what she had to do, she shaped the fire and threw it from hand to hand, played with it like a juggler with his props; she squeezed it into a ball, spun it on a finger until it spread like flatcake dough into a wide disc. She dropped the disc on the burnt grass. It soaked into the earth and left behind it crisp new grass, green and springing, smelling like spring. She laughed again and stretched out beside the new patch, weary but immensely content. After a while she slept.
The third day and the third night were done.
6
She woke in cool green morning light.
The Old Man was standing beside her. When she sat up, he held out a battered pewter bowl filled with potato and onion soup. The smell was at first nauseating, then with a shocking jolt, was everything good; she took the bowl and forced herself to eat slowly though she was ravenous. A sip at a time, a chunk of potato or onion, slow and slow, the soup went down. The warmth of it filled her, the earthsoul in it wiped away the haze that blurred her mind. The Old Man sat on the new grass at her left side, watching her, smiling. She snatched quick glances at him, embarrassed at first, but there was nothing of the red-gold lover visible in him so, her uneasiness faded. When the bowl was empty, she sat holding it and smiling at him.
Tungjii came strolling from under the trees. Heesh snapped hisser fingers and Ailiki lolloped over to himmer, her odd high-rumped gait comical but efficient. She climbed himmer like a tree and sat on hisser shoulder, preening herself and murmuring in hisser ear. Male and female, clown and seer, bestower and requirer, the old god stood at Korimenei’s right side and smiled down at her. Heesh pointed at the bowl, snapped hisser fingers again.
Korimenei scrambled to her feet. Bowing, she offered the bowl.
Heesh cupped it in hands of surprising beauty, long-fingered shapely hands that looked as if they belonged with another body. Eyes twinkling, heesh whistled a snatch of song cur-
rently popular in Silifi. A warm yellow glowsphere formed momentarily about hisser hands, dissolved into the pewter. The bowl was changed. It was a deep-bellied bubbleglass filled with a thick golden fluid.
Korimenei took the glass and obeyed the flapping of heesh’s hand; she sank down, sat cross-legged and sipped at the liquid. It was a mixture of fruit juices, sweet and tart, rich and cold; even the Old Man’s soup was not so wonderful. Tungjii plumped down beside her, nodded across her at the Old Man, then sat beaming at her while she continued her sipping. There was no urgency in their waiting, so she took her time finishing the juice. They were enjoying her enjoyment and she was content to share it with them.
Tungjii took the
Amused by the absurd routine, she fished up the bowl, bowed deeply over it and passed it to the Old Man.
His dead-leaf eyes shone at her. He bowed in answer, then took the bowl in both hands, blew into it and held it out. When she took it, he folded both his hands over hers, his touch was warm and releasing. He got to his feet and wandered off, vanishing under the trees.
Korimenei watched him leave, a touch annoyed because he hadn’t bothered to speak to her, to say something cryptic and satisfying as rumor said he did at other times for other questers. Potato soup, she said to herself, suffering gods, potato soup? She frowned at the bowl and wondered what that meant. She turned to Tungjii to ask himmer to explain, but the plump little god had taken hisser self off somewhere. Nothing from himmer either. Potato soup and fruit juice. The school cook could do as much. She laughed aloud. Well, maybe not quite as much, gods and demiurges and tutelary sprites seemed to be better cooks than retired witches. She stretched, yawned. Three days and three nights. I’d say I’ve done my time. She was changed, she knew that, but she didn’t want to think about it now. She wanted the security of the person she’d known for twenty-four years, not this new thing, this battered creature tampered with by crazy gods and whatever took a notion to have a go at her.
Groaning as sore muscles complained, she got to her feet. She put the bowl away in her rucksack, then stretched and twisted, ran her hands through her hair and grimaced at the burnt straw feel. She was tired, but not so tired as she had been. The potato soup and the fruit juices were in there working. Swinging the rucksack onto her back, she pushed her arms through the straps; it pressed wrinkles into her coat and the pullover underneath so she tugged them flat and smoothed the coat around her lips. “Ailiki?”
The mahsar came running across the meadow; she took a flying leap and landed on Korimenei’s shoulder where she crouched, sing’ ng into Kori’s ear.
Korimenei laughed. “So you’ll be riding, eh?” She walked to the stream, found the path that brought her here and started down it.