“Each year three villages send a thirteen year old girl. One conceived and raised for no other purpose than to serve Lord Sun. When those three girls are twenty years old, Lord Sun chooses one to be his beloved.”
That would explain the twenty or so adolescents. But what about the older women? The house held far fewer than it should. “What happens to the ones who aren’t chosen?”
“Some stay at the house. Some live in the villages and only visit the house occasionally. Some kill themselves.”
“It’s a wonder there haven’t been more murders.”
“I keep order,” said Essferend.
Poor Essferend, whispered Ant. Far too competent to be wasted in the fire.
“Hondjetat is very kind-hearted,” I said.
“She’s silly, and weak-minded. But Lord Sun has chosen her.”
“He chose you to run the house. Someone silly and weak-minded couldn’t do it.”
“So he told me.” But her frown didn’t lessen. “If I had done my job right, Eritiri would never have done what she did.”
Suddenly I was sorry for Essferend. Her position of authority was, in her mind, a poor second place. She was too proud to accept less than perfection from herself, even so. And she had failed in that perfection. “What would have happened if someone silly or weak-minded had been in charge?”
Essferend gave a bitter half-laugh. “You’d be at each other’s throats. And you’d run out of barley halfway through winter, and waste half the milk.”
I didn’t see any reason to comment on that. “Why was everyone so afraid of that girl’s cloak? What was that in her basket?”
“It was nothing.” She made a dismissive gesture.
“If Lord Sun is the creator of everything, the most powerful god of all, why is he afraid of....”
“Lord Sun is afraid of nothing,” said Essferend firmly.
Lord Sun is afraid of nothing, echoed Ant happily.
“But if....”
“Hush! You’ve lost your memory or you’d know better. This is the sort of thing foreigners ask. They don’t know Lord Sun, they’ve been told all sorts of lies.”
“Why hasn’t it rained all Spring?” I asked.
“It will rain when Lord Sun wishes it. In the meantime,” she gestured around. “You see the plants all growing.”
No rain over his territory for months, remarked Ant. If he failed to promise harvests, if he failed to deliver prosperity, his fraud would be exposed. And this year all his attempts to make it rain have come to nothing.
“You must be right,” I said to Essferend. “I know so little.”
“It isn’t your fault,” she said, as though she didn’t actually believe it, and rose and walked back downstream.
When she was out of sight, the fish broke the water nearby. “Tell Ant to tell her that he asked me to flood,” said the Schael, whiskered and wet. “But it would mean flooding upstream and downstream from the bird’s territory, and I have agreements.”
“I thought no one mattered but you?” I thought of Ant telling me the Schael made agreements only reluctantly. “I thought you didn’t like obligations.”
“Some obligations are unavoidable,” said the Schael. “Besides, the bird annoys me.” And it was gone under the water.
Daily, Ant said, hourly, he loses strength that the sunrise and sunset prayers of the people are not sufficient to replace. He needs Hondjetat.
“Why?” I asked. “Why is it so draining?”
It can be very simple to make weather if circumstances favor you, if you know what you’re about. Given an amenable climate. But to make crops thrive without water—this is contrary to nature, this is not merely pushing clouds or changing breezes. All life requires water to survive, and so he must achieve a near impossibility at every moment, each stalk of barley, each radish and lettuce in each household garden must be made to thrive despite its lack. And though the barley will be in soon, the berries must also be fruitful, and the orchards, all summer.
“But nothing causes this.”
I have said so, answered Ant, and have lost nothing in the saying. It is therefore true. And I will say another true thing—it will rain before the first day of summer.
Two days before Hondjetat was to die, it rained—no thunder, no wind, just solid, pounding rain. I couldn’t go down to the river, and Hondjetat couldn’t even go across the plaza to bring Lord Sun his bread.
It stopped the next morning. Puddles of water silvered the plaza, irregular patches of gravel showing through here and there. Clouds of steam rose from the first terrace of Lord Sun’s mound. “Lord Sun is drying the wood out for the fire,” Hondjetat reported.
We woke the next morning before sunrise to make Hondjetat ready. One of the girls went out for water and immediately came back in the door. “Essferend,” she said in a tiny, panicked voice. Essferend went out. I followed her.
At first I thought the plaza below had flooded. The sky was just beginning to light, and where I had seen puddles of water yesterday now I saw a dark, slowly heaving mass. Now and then it would splash up in places like spume, hover, and then flutter down again. Essferend turned, took my arm and pulled me back inside.
Everyone was motionless and silent, watching us. “Get back to work!” Essferend snapped.
“What is it?” asked the girl who had ventured outside.
“Lord Sun will deal with it.”
Not ten minutes later one of the junior priests knocked on our door. When we admitted him he was holding his short cloak close around his shoulders. He trembled and jumped, brushing his arms and legs convulsively, and told Essferend that Lord Sun wanted to see me.
“Work!” commanded Essferend, and the women looked away from her, away from the priest, and bent to their work again. But Hondjetat stared at me, eyes wide.
I went without saying anything to anyone. The light had increased, and as I set foot on the plaza I saw that it was one huge mass of butterflies. A cloud of them flew up where I stepped. One brushed against my cheek, and I started, setting more aflutter.
I had seen the image in the Zuxugo girl’s cloak, in the basketful of butterflies she had brought, but those had been stylized and lifeless. These were alive, brown, with one wide, staring eye on each upper wing. They didn’t fly straight as the hawk would have, but bobbed and circled, haphazard. The river Schael had called them bugs, and they were that, six-legged, with large, black eyes and antennae. Their wings were far more delicate than any gold or stone image could depict.
I was afraid. “Ant.” No answer. “Ant?”
I took another step. And another, and another, all the way across the plaza, butterflies billowing up each time I set my foot down. When I reached Lord Sun’s mound and began to climb, they dropped away from me.
The clay gods lay shattered, fragments strewn all over the floor of the house, even in the fire. So, I thought, Ant and the others must be freed, or destroyed. That must be why Ant hadn’t answered me.
The man lay dead, the bird perched on his motionless chest. “He meant to betray me,” it screamed. “Take this knife....” The hawk pulled a stone blade from the man’s belt with its beak. “And kill Hondjetat.”
For a moment I couldn’t think how to answer that. Then I found my voice. “Lord, you’ve dried the wood out, I saw it when I came up. Why not bring her here?” I was only delaying. I didn’t want to kill anyone, least of all sweet-tempered Hondjetat.
“She will attempt to prevent it if she sees. You can go stealthily, and work inside the house where she will not see you.”