Somehow it sounded like a thing Amen Specklebird might say.
The moon had almost set when a dark shadow filled the doorway. Not his mother again! Oxsho was snoring. But it was Holy Madness who called softly to him: “Dress quickly, m’Lord. I want to show you the pit.”
Brownpony obeyed, but when they were outside, he asked, “Couldn’t we see it better by day?”
“No. If you must face the test, you must face it at night. Even full moonlight obscures the glow of the poison.”
They mounted the two horses Høngan had brought and rode quietly out of camp. The orange moon was just touching the horizon and there was little light, but the horses knew the terrain. The rim of the crater was a half hour’s ride from the camp. A sentry gave them a sleepy challenge as they passed the outskirts, but he recognized a grunt from his sharf and sat down.
When they came near the edge of the pit, the moon was down and there was scarcely a hint of morning twilight in the east. The pit was a lake of blackness, and they approached cautiously on foot. Holy Madness grasped the cardinal’s arm.
“Damn!” he said after a moment.
“What’s wrong?”
“The fire comes and goes. Tonight I can’t even see it.”
“I don’t even know where to look.”
“Look at the sky. Find the brightest star in the Thief and then bring your eyes straight down. There should be a tiny red spot near the center.”
“The Thief is a Nomad constellation.”
Høngan pointed. Brownpony sighted along his arm. “I think we call that Perseus. Yes, and that star must be Mirfak.”
They both sat at the rim of the crater and watched in silence. The only sound was the wind and the distant howling of the wilddogs. Occasionally Chür Høngan swore under his breath.
“Does it really matter?” the cardinal asked. “Can’t you show me by daylight?” He glanced east. The sky was brightening.
“It does matter. You should see it glow. You must take note of the wind, and stay out of its lee. Some nights you can see a trail of vapor, as well as the hole it comes from.”
“Isn’t it better if the fire is inactive?”
“Yes, but the whole pit is somewhat contaminated. The only vegetation in it is on the weather side of the average wind here. You should stay where the weeds grow, except when the wind is wrong. You can see what I mean in a few minutes.”
Their vigil lasted until the sun cleared the hill. The pit did seem lifeless, except for a little vegetation at the foot of a cliff. At the moment, the breeze was blowing away from it.
On the following day, the leaders of the Bear Spirit and Weejus met to consider Brownpony’s wish to pay court to the Høngin Fujæ Vurn in the Navel of the World and face the hidden fires of Meldown. The cardinal himself was excluded, but twice Chür Høngan emerged from the council lodge to ask a question.
The first question: “Will you treat the Great Mare with the same reverence as the Holy Virgin?”
“Yes, if I may say my usual prayers to her.”
An hour later came the second question: “You realize that if she rejects you, you will not be accepted as having any authority over Christian Nomads of any horde. Will you resign the office the Pope gave you?”
“If I live long enough to resign, yes.”
Høngan gave him a hard look and returned to the meeting. When it was over, the Wilddog sharf announced that the cardinal would spend Thursday night in the pit. Friday the Wilddog sharf Holy Madness would pay court to the Wild Horse Woman, and the Saturday’s vigil was for the Grasshopper sharf Kindly Light. The Grasshopper’s complaint was that of the three of them, only Høngan would have a full moon from dusk to dawn, but Holy Madness explained to him privately: “If you are familiar with the pit, so that you do not stumble into trouble in the dark, the moon is not your friend. You cannot see the hellfire by bright moonlight, and as you know, sometimes not even by dark. Clouds may cover the moon. Spend the day studying her breeding pit from every angle. When the wind changes, you will have to move.”
The following night he spent in the pit. Oxsho led him to the place of descent. The moon, nearly full, was in the east at sundown. He carried a blanket but no bedroll. Sleep would be dangerous, but a chill would settle over the area after midnight.
“My teacher wishes me to spend the night on the clifftop and keep a fire burning,” the young warrior told him. “I’ll hold up a torch when the wind is changing. Watch for the torch. Sometimes a light breeze may be hard to feel down there.”
“Is this permitted?”
Oxsho paused. “I won’t start it until everyone’s asleep, and behind this rock nobody’ll see it. And only Sharf Bråm might object. God and the Mare keep you, m’Lord.”
A wind that swooped down from the lip of the crater carried wisps of dust that dimmed the stars, but it was the dust of the prairie, not the pit. He chose aresting place in the sparse clump of vegetation where the dust of the devil’s hole would blow away from him. He was still very sad because of the encounter with the bitter woman whose womb had borne him against her will. He had been a son of violence and hate before his adoption by the Sisters, but his memory of the Sisters was tinged with resentment, except for Sister Magdalen (“Cries-a-River”), a former Jackrabbit Nomad who told him stories and made his education her special concern. Seruna, when he married, had reminded him of Magdalen. Now both were dead. When he passed through Jackrabbit territory to visit some of his Churches, would he visit the orphanage? And was it nostalgia or resentment that made him think of it? Better not, he decided. Neither emotion would benefit his ecclesiastical and political project.
After a while the cardinal began to pray, saying his rosary at first, and letting his eyes linger around the patch of darkness that marked the cave entrance under the moonlit ledge of rock. He spoke softly to the patch of darkness, but he still felt the sting of his real mother’s spit like acid in his face. He spoke now to that other mother of myriad names: Regina Mundi, Domina Rerum, Mater Dei, Høngin Fujæ Vurn, even the War Buzzard. Her manifestations were always associated with a place: Bethlehem, Lourdes, Guadalupe, and here at the Navel of the World.
“I was born in the south end of your realm, Mother, and I know your paths. Even there, where the People are servants of those who took your land, I have seen your ways. Miriam, mother of Jesus, pray for me.”
Oxsho held up his torch when a cloud covered the moon near the zenith. He could at last see a kind of luminosity above and about the hole at the center of the pit, and he moved a hundred paces away from the direction pointed out by the flame.
“Lord, have mercy. Kyrie eleison.”
Fortunately, the wind was at his back again.
“My mother was a woman of the Wilddog tribes, Mother; my father did evil to her, and to your people. Let him be dead, as she is now dead for me. Let me not find him, lest I kill him. Long ago, before I knew she was dead to me, her spirit told me to come here. I have not done as she wished. I have left the People. I have taken the religion the Sisters taught me. But at last I am before you, Mother.”