Krinata was sure Jindigar's tremors were increasing, his whole nervous system in chaos. She pled with one of those still kneeling beside him. "Can't you do something?"
"He's had all the medication we dare use. At least it stopped the convulsions."
Zannesu came across to Darllanyu, saying, "And I'll grieve with them."
That started a general movement as one and then another rose and came 4o Darllanyu, saying things like, "I don't approve of him, but I can't desert him for bad judgment."
And, "He's our only priest after all." Or, "I'll never balance him, but we can't allow him to die."
Finally eight people stood with Darllanyu, including those who'd knelt beside Jindigar, trying to help him.
Then her heart sank as the leader confronted them. "Ten of you? It's much too dangerous. This community can't afford to lose so many. I can't permit it."
Krinata loosed Jindigar's knotted fingers and stood up, indignation welling up as she drew breath. A silence fell that let them hear every shovel of dirt pitched by the gardeners, every echoing hammer blow from far outside the stockade, and every cry of the half-tamed beasts of burden.
"It says there"—Krinata pointed to the portal where the artisan had ceased carving—"Fidelity is a Law of Nature. That's carved over the lightning symbol of Aliom. The carving's not even finished yet, and you're all acting as if familiarity had blinded you to the real meaning!
"Jindigar opened my eyes to the Me force connecting all living things, and I learned that as created beings we're much safer using created implements, rather than daring to manipulate the force represented by the lightning. But twice Jindigar has Inverted to save lives, seeing how the life force running in him belonged to all. Twice he survived it because he was right. If you reward his fidelity with your cowardly betrayal, then by your own law—by the very Law of Nature you believe is destroying the Squadron as it fights this planet—it is you who will suffer, not nun!"
She hadn't known she'd ever had such thoughts, but just for that instant she'd understood their alien viewpoint and framed the thought easily in their own language. When she finished, a breathless silence fell.
The old woman said, from her seat, "Jindigar's always been eccentric, but he fears Inversion as much as any of us. I think Lady Zavaronne represents one of his more resounding coups. At least, / will grieve with her." She came to Krinata. "If she will permit?"
"If numbers help, I'd welcome anyone."
There was a silent shuffle as more came to Darllanyu. Finally only a handful clustered around the leader, who said, "This is irresponsible. Come, at least some of us must survive to transmit Aliom." He turned to the door, taking his musical instrument with him. A man and a woman deserted his group for Jindigar's, and only five left the building.
Darllanyu knelt beside Jindigar, putting one hand to his forehead. Krinata said, "Do you all know he's never considered violating his priesthood to become a Historian? He fought Grisnilter until it would have been a violation not to take the Archive." And then she noticed that Threntisn had remained, standing a little apart, listening.
The Historian came to look down at the trembling form amid the blankets. "I thought to remain to Archive the end of this matter, but—" He scanned the group, weighing them each, and Krinata saw the lines of tension around his eyes. "May I join you? I need to grieve my son."
"Grieving is not a private matter," answered Darllanyu.
"But I won't touch Jindigar—or what's left of Grisnilter’s Archive."
"Your choice," agreed Darllanyu. "Now let's get Jindigar over to the fire, and somebody get his whule." There was a general shuffling as several of them moved Jindigar, then placed Krinata beside him, his whule on her other side. She grasped his trembling hands again.
In moments they were all settled in the circle around the fire, Darllanyu poking it up to a blaze while Zannesu stacked on more logs and kindling, muttering how the open roof was going to make this cold work.
The late afternoon sun had abandoned the angle into the building, so they sat in shadow. Darllanyu took the place near the door, opposite Jindigar, and put a pipe to her lips, producing a high, bittersweet note. Krinata heard a general wail rise up outside, and the sounds of work ceased.
Darllanyu piped a simple melody, ending in that same poignant note, and Krinata sensed that those outside had moved away. Other instruments joined now, and the music began to fill the room, a tangible substance.
It wasn't the same as Jindigar had played in the small canyon that night near the river. But it opened vistas and brought instant tears to her eyes with the solemn finality of the dirge reserved for the Emperor, and Kings, representing an irrevocable turning of the times and seasons. There was no going back, no second chance. The clarion voice of Darllanyu’s pipe called out over the strings, good-bye to the souls departed, a day and a life ended, a season and a generation turning.
She'd never heard the melody before, yet instantly it drew to mind all the deaths that had ever touched her life, all the people gone forever. Her eyes and nose were running as the last note died away to a silence that seemed now to grip the entire community around them.
Halfway around the circle, Threntisn sat tailor-fashion, eyeing Krinata as if surrendering to an inevitable fate. On Jindigar's other side Zannesu knelt, hands on his knees, eyes lowered. As the silence stretched he glanced expectantly at Krinata. She blinked, sniffed, and queried with an eyebrow. He leaned over and hissed, "Duad!"
"I can't!" Sudden fear lanced through her. They expected something she couldn't do. "Jindigar always did it! I don't know how I did it when—" But even so, I couldn't! It felt as if she'd been asked to thrust a recently burned hand into an open flame.
He took her hands and placed them on Jindigar's face. "Lean into his inner vision. Follow aliom in. What a triad has lost, the duad must grieve. Must, Krinata. We can't do it without you."
She remembered how the river gorge had intimidated her, but she'd whipped it. What was the Archive but another kind of void? Oh, Takora, where are you when I need you? "I don't know how!"
Zannesu appealed to Darllanyu, who replied by sounding another note on her pipe. A murmur rippled around the circle, then Threntisn nodded and moved closer to the fire, the circle closing behind him. The music picked up, filling the dusky shadows with eerie life. Threntisn took two long-handled paddles of some reflective material and thrust then-flat ends into the fire, flipping them over rhythmically, causing a whirling pattern of lights to dance above the fire.
To Krinata's heightened senses it seemed that the sparks of light coalesced into a form, wavering in the heat shimmer above the fire—Prey's face!
No! She'd felt him dissolve. He was dead. He couldn't be here—completing the triad. But he was there, tangible to her mind. The Jindigar-Frey axis called to her—and suddenly she was in triad again.
NINE
Grieving Is Not a Private Thing
Frey screamed, voice and mind echoing hollowly. This is what it's like to be raped. This is what drove Desdinda beyond help, he thought as his awareness constricted, chipped away by the monstrous, alien mind that forced him into contact with Desdinda. Her searing hatred raced through his nerves like burning oil, etching channels of fire that consumed more of him. He felt himself wrapped around himself, squeezed to a point of nothingness, / can't! he begged, Let me go! I can't!
But the monstrous, ancient multimind was unmoved. He was a specimen, exotic, fascinating, but his individual pain and fate meant nothing to them. His zunre's frantic pleas meant nothing to them. All Jindigar's might was nothing; all Krinata's passionate pleas were nothing. Death meant little to them, for they weren't truly individuals.