She had taught herself how to read and write — her father being illiterate, mostly because he was stubborn. But he had taught her how to think. He had been a brilliant man, devoted to the study of insects. His special fascination had been the eipa which spent its life in the sea and then metamorphosed into a form that flew inland where a variety of carnivorous plants ate it for its water and, in exchange, hatched its eggs. The infants flew back to the sea and transformed into their sea shape. How he deduced these things was Oelita’s introduction to logic.
Oelita had travelled far on foot with her father and knew the land from the sea to the desert. He had made the learning an adventure. She missed him. Strange that she was a vegetarian and spoke out fiercely against all forms of cannibalism but the moment the tower message came, recounting her father’s death, she had driven herself mercilessly — running much of the way for three dawns and sleeping in the sling of a hired Ivieth the remainder — so that she could be at his Funeral Feast. She had begrudged the others who ate of him, not knowing his strength and kindness and constant humor. She still carried dried and salted strips of his flesh that she only ate when she needed superhuman strength. She wore his hide as her best coat and it was his bone that was the handle of her knife.
Oelita wrote obsessively, never being without paper and ink. She often gave her disciples the task of copying what she had written as a form of burning her words into their minds. The Stgal she did not fear, but she was afraid that someday the Kaiel would come and put her on trial for heresy. She, being she, would not repent or recant. And they, being Kaiel, would eat her. Or if the Kaiel were slow to invade, might not the Mnankrei sea priests descend one week to seize the Priestdom of Stgal? They would cut her tongue out and chop off her hands.
She was afraid that her words would be forgotten. She wanted her letters and small books to be copied and sent everywhere so that it would never be possible for the priests to silence her by destroying them all. In her sleep-creepies she goaded people to copy faster. In her pleasant dreams she owned a printing press.
By sunset she hadn’t reached Nonoep’s farm and she was tired because she had been awake since two dawns past. She built a fire and heated soup and laid out her mat for sleep. The bloody sun died in Ritual Suicide, clotting to a deeper red as the stars, one by one appeared, creating their celestial Temple. Sometimes she was lonely sleeping in the open at night. She missed being traditionally religious. Geta had such a rich mythology about the stars. She still wrote the old heroes into her stories.
Swiftly, the God of the Sky appeared and drifted overhead. In a trance she followed His flowing path until He dropped over the horizon. Ah humans! she sighed. When life was so harsh that a man lost all hope for himself, then he raised his eyes to a shining rock, worshipping it, just to find hope again, rather than looking to his own acts for hope and salvation.
7
To play kolgame is our sacred duty. How else can the Race remember to struggle for the total Union of Geta under the One Sky of God? How else can the Race remember that Union can only be achieved through relentless allegiance to the priest clans? How else can the Race remember that, to win, a man must break the rules, but that to break the rules is the worst risk a man can take?
THE OIL LAMP GASPED to stay alive like an old bee buzzing its wings erratically along the ground. Teenae lay beside Joesai, watching him pass into sleep by this flicker. He looked so peacefully evil. So much she didn’t know about him. He had been a professional provocateur, a veteran of many successful missions into non-Kaiel lands. Was it fair to launch him and fifteen of his chosen against one woman who had no warning of his coming?
Alien rocky slopes had been guiding them to the coast. She smiled her love for this man, feeling protected by his experience and by the agile massiveness of him. No desire to thwart him was in her breast but still, fresh with the warmth of his love in her loins, she began to formulate her own plans.
She was sure she was a better strategist, even given the handicap of no experience. Didn’t she always beat him at kolgame?
And not only could she beat Joesai, she could also beat Aesoe. What did those two know of human emotions? It should be possible to enlist the heretic woman as an ally without marrying her. Then Aesoe would have what he wanted and they could have Kathein, and nobody would have to die. Why couldn’t non-mathematicians ever understand optimization? She kissed Joesai’s nipple just the same.
Sleep did not come as she weighed plan against alternate plan. They were so close to Sorrow that she had little time. Eventually intense thinking made her sweaty and hungry and too nervous to lie still. She sneaked out of the tent, naked, to rummage through the supplies for hard-bread by the light of Scowlmoon, now nearly full because of the lateness of the night.
As they crawled down into the Valley of Ten Thousand Graves, the moon had been swallowed by the mountains, but had suddenly reappeared in the sky again, dominating it, higher than a Kaiel-hontokae. The river in front of them meandered to the coast, long ago eroding away all obstacles between here and the Njarae Sea.
Dull red moonglow shone on the shaved centerline of her skull, dyeing her cascading hair blacker than it really was, etching soft shadows into the carved designs that covered her body so that she seemed almost clothed while she stood there tearing the bread with her teeth. Fierce was her pleasure in the cold mountain breeze. The wind moaned the old song of the Wailing Mountains.
One of the Ivieth porters, as tall as Joesai but heavier and longer of leg, noticed her and rose from his pad. “Is all well?”
Her teeth flashed. “Hunger.”
“Soon we have warm starting broth. See, the eclipse has already begun.” He gestured at the moon. “It is almost dawn. Go back to your man’s flesh.”
She shrugged, smiling. The Ivieth were humble — except when they were being responsible for you on a journey. The roads they built and guarded were safe. “I slept all last night in the palanquin.” That had been high night when it was not the custom to sleep. “You return to your pad. You need the rest.”
“An Ivieth needs no rest.”
It was almost true. The Ivieth clan had been bred, by their own standards, to keep moving no matter what the barriers — mountains or heat or fatigue. It was not uncommon for an Ivieth to pull his wagon seven days and nights without sleep.
“A kolgame then, by the dark of the eclipse!” she challenged.
The rules of this game are known by every child, every clan. A kolgame begins with the creation of the board out of wooden pieces that fit together like a jig-saw puzzle with many solutions, the particular form being determined by the tossing of dice.
Then the territory is peopled by tenants and their Sacred Eight crops. The bees are distributed by chance and swarm when the crops are good. Each tenant belongs to a clan. The clan has its own moves and breeding ritual. Each move costs a vegetation piece which must be regrown.
The game leads to frequent impasse conditions which can only be broken if a tenant violates the rules of his clan. To do so he loses kalothi. At the onset of each Culling Condition the tenant with the lowest kalothi is removed from the territory. A player must violate rules, but he must not do so often, and he must be careful about which rules he chooses to violate.
Strategically any clan may achieve domination over another clan or free itself from domination. A clan which is not the subject of control by any other clan is called a priest clan. The object of the game is to unite the board under the command of one priest clan.