“But I don’t want them hurt! I forbid that!”
Suddenly she decided she couldn’t rely on any of them. There was that stupid incident of the stabbing of Teenae. Would they never learn! “I’ll go with you.” She brought out a blow dart, a weapon not known in Sorrow but given to her when everyone thought she needed protection. Oelita had liked the weapon because it was effective and harmless. The darts carried distillate from the fur of the dreaded ei-cactus. Actually the ei-cactus was harmless — if its fur penetrated through the skin a man was knocked down within four heartbeats but the paralysis was only temporary. The danger was in being alone and falling into a clump with one’s skin exposed to the fur and dying of starvation or exposure, conscious but too helpless to move a muscle.
They set up an ambush and nobody came. Oelita was ready to give up. Her temper had subsided and she was becoming more aware of her own danger and her own necessity to leave Sorrow when suddenly the three of them appeared, feeling quite safe. She felled the youth with the broken ribs immediately. One of her men grabbed Joesai and she took out both him and her own man. The third man she pricked while he was being held by the iron-reed dredger and the ironsmith.
She recovered the crystal and had the three Kaiel tied up before they revived. They remained conscious. It amused her to bind them with a puzzle knot that could only be undone by the victim who had time, patience, and perception. She ordered their boat repaired. The storm had damaged it extensively and the sail was ripped. When she saw Joesai painfully flexing his fingers, she sat down beside him, unmindful of the gravel beach that cut into her knees.
“That’s Trial Four of the Death Rite! Do you understand?”
He muttered an unintelligible reply through a reluctant tongue.
“If I attack men who are as dangerous as you, I risk my life. That counts! That’s Trial Four!”
She cried. She was afraid of death. She was afraid for her people. For a while she walked along the beach in despair. How could she go to her friend Nonoep, who had run from responsibility? She thought of her beloved followers. Was there one among them who could lead? No. They were not priests. They weren’t bred to lead. Why was it that if one sought to escape the tyranny of the priests one had only the priests to turn to?
Wisdom matured in crisis. She felt ignorant. She had made it a policy not to deal with the priests. She had scorned the Kaiel and loathed the Mnankrei, but were they not part of humankind with their own special skills? I should have preached to them. I should have won them over. Now it was too late. I have been afraid of them. She wove visions of heretical trial. She remembered the slaughter of the Arant and the new clan of Kaiel sitting in Judgment Feast. It was a horrible vision.
Oelita ran along the beach and then became afraid that she had gone too far from her friends and turned back. She cut across the sea to make the trip shorter. Ah, water and tradition had much in common. If you fought it, stamped it to death with your feet, as she stamped and slapped it now in her hurry, the brine/tradition merely splashed aside and when you were gone, flowed back as if you never were.
Her people up ahead were dutifully repairing Joesai’s sail.
Like the squall that brings the rain, sudden hope lashed over her desert despair. Joesai had made her less afraid of trial. I’ll be brave. She trembled as she had when the men closed in on her at Gold Creek and as she had when she actually made the decision to crawl down the outside of that tower wall. I’ll go to Kaiel-hontokae. She could use the crystal as hostage for her safety.
26
A Liethe is beautiful, for the clan propagates only beautiful bodies. That is not enough to captivate a priest. A body needs grace. Grace can only be achieved by discipline. Discipline can only be found in an ascetic place.
A Liethe is clever, for the clan only propagates clever bodies. That is not enough to bewitch a priest. Cleverness needs form. Form can only be achieved by discipline. Discipline can only be found in an ascetic place.
She who comes from an ascetic place can relish pleasure, for what can give more contrast to pleasure than denial? She who comes from an ascetic place can wield power, for discipline has made her the master of those pleasures sought by power.
IN A BARE ROOM, the se-Tufi who was recognized by the way she cocked her ear, stood in the role of teacher, facing her sister se-Tufi. Both had assumed the erect Resting Power Position. They were interacting through the catalyst called the Nine Tier Matrix of Understanding to transfer to Humility the essential knowledge of Aesoe’s previous concubines.
Many se-Tufi had served Aesoe but he was aware of only three Liethe — Honey, Cairnem, and Sieen — personae created, unknown to him, out of his deepest woman fantasies by the Kaiel-hontokae hive. It amused the crones that he was blissfully proud to be able to distinguish between three identical women just by the way they thought and moved.
Humility was learning, first, the persona of Honey.
Action Mode:
Cocked Ear uttered some warbling sounds, then broke the Resting Power Position to set her body into a pensive stance. With her left hand she pulled and slightly twisted a strand of hair. She returned to The Position and gave Humility the Go signal. Humility had been listening and watching. She broke Position and exactly duplicated Cocked Ear’s motions. Only Honey, of the three, played with her hair when she was pensive.
Thought Mode:
Humility recited, one by one, the cues from the mnemonic list called the Attributes of the Male, while Cocked Ear answered from her store of knowledge about Aesoe. Humility paused briefly while she memorized the answer before producing the next cue. It was more important to know Aesoe’s mind than Honey’s since Honey was only a figment of Aesoe’s erotic imagination.
“Vanity,” said Humility.
“He believes that he knows all. Thus everything he does not know can be used as a mask. We hide behind the image of the woman he expects to see,” replied Cocked Ear.
Humility attached a mask image to the cue. She cleared her mind. “Vanity; consequences.”
“Since he is the only one who knows all, he must tolerate mistakes from others. Making a mistake with him transforms him into a teacher.”
Humility recorded a mental picture of an all-knowing teacher impaled upon a (mi)stake. “Vanity; control handle.”
“Since he knows all, he must be teaching Truth, therefore he cannot tolerate disobedience which is deviation from the Truth. He can be controlled by the subliminal threat of disobedience which freezes him in his Teacher Aspect.”
The drills of the Nine Tier Matrix went on for sun-heights, alternating between Action Mode and Thought Mode. Other se-Tufi who had been with Aesoe took over when Cocked Ear tired, but Humility was not allowed to show fatigue. It was like learning an intricately choreographed dance so that, should a dancer be replaced, the audience would never notice. The grueling workout exhausted her, a sacrifice to Liethe perfectionism.
Action Mode:
The gestures and behaviors that clued Aesoe to the Honey persona were words and sentences constructed out of a lexicon of behavior that the Liethe had invented to facilitate mimicry and role change. The lexicon was complex enough to allow rich combinations, yet simple enough to learn quickly. Each motion of the lexicon had a verbal symbol so that an accurate mimic could be communicated through the haunting song of a warbling language.
The se-Tufis who drilled Humility sang at her, sang their corrections, and she sang back at them. At higher levels of the Action Mode one sister would mimic Aesoe in exaggerations of dance, and Humility would reply, with comic abandon, in a whole sentence of Honey’s body talk. Exaggeration quickened learning. Behaviors as cues were only as effective as they were different from other behaviors.