The cameras at the front of the Bubble sent images dark and bright of the choir, the Gospah and the god-Mimes out to those thousand screens scattered about the crater, showed the pilgrims their shadowforms circling through the ancient dance of the gods.
The back of the Bubble was dark and quiet, the cameras there were turned off until it was time for the Fire; there was no lug-ikes close enough to pick up the screams of the burning Avatars. That would be aesthetically unpleasing.
The ropes were wound round and round Shadith, knees to neck, were jerked so tight they dug grooves in her flesh. She fought against them until her arms and legs were numb and swollen and she couldn't move them anymore.
Finally she rested her head against the pole, closed her eyes.
Out on the crater floor, new trance-nodes were forming about ghost dancers and chanting rebels.
Men were calling for the Avatars, they were calling for the Three to come back, they were cursing Priests, Pliciks, and the Nistam.
Women, children, and grandparents moved into enlarging knots and began pushing toward the edges of the crater.
Rage built across that floor, rage against the Priests and the Pliciks and the Nistam himself, Tanak and Maka blaming him and his followers for the dead, blaming him for the vanishing of the demigods-the pilgrims' demigods, not the priests', not the Pliciks', most of all, not the Nistam's.
It was unifying them again, that rage, pulling them together almost as strongly as Shadith had.
The sticks were heavy on Shadith's feet and the stench of the oils that saturated them crawled up her nose. She wanted to sneeze, but she was too tired.
Her eyes burned with the sweat dripping down her face.
There were Na-priests out among the pilgrims, exhorting them, threatening them. Ayawit had given the orders.
They moved in a fog of rage, untouched by it, arrogant in their reliance on the terror their black vizards produced in everyone who saw them.
The pilgrims moved back from them, muttering inaudibly, not yet worked up enough to overcome their fear and attack these symbols of the sacred AUTHORITY.
A row of Na-priests were crouching across the front of the stage. They weren't watching the captives any more, they were watching the pilgrims.
Like the pilgrims they had dropped out of the celebration; like the pilgrims they paid no attention to the ritual, they no longer felt its compulsion. They were too afraid, too angry.
Serene in his conviction that he was right and would prevail, the Gospah chanted his litanies and moved through a choreography of worship so old it antedated the arrival of the Kiskaids on Kiskai.
Shadith was so tired. So very tired. Maybe it was time to accept the inevitable. She'd lived long, she'd known more worlds than most people knew cities, it was a strange life but a good one-in many ways though not all. She didn't want to die. Not now. But there was no way, no way…
The Pyres were cubic piles of seasoned hardwood, each piece of wood carved and saturated with sacred oils, raised two meters high about the center post. The top of each pile was relatively flat, two meters by two meters square.
Tethered to that center post by short lengths of rope, Miowee and Kayataki lay on the wood by Shadith's feet, more cursorily bound than she was, hands tied behind their backs, Kayataki's ankles also bound. The child was gagged (presumably because the celebrants didn't fancy listening to the screams of a little girl), but they hadn't bothered with the woman.
Miowee had forced her body around until her back was pressed against Kayataki's.
She was cursing and struggling with the rope on her daughter's wrists, her fingers bleeding as she tried to solve knots she couldn't see so her child could wriggle loose.
A SOUND came from the Maka and the Tanak, a low growl, not loud enough yet to overcome the volume of the chant pouring through the speakers, but it was growing, a wordless, shapeless SOUND, as the men began pressing toward the Bubble and the portable Crystal Palace where the Nistam sat.
Shadith heard that SOUND and she savored it; she wouldn't be going into the dark alone-the men who murdered her would be just as dead.
It wasn't much of a comfort, but it was something.
She managed a wry smile as she remembered telling Miowee: if you're set on dying, take him with you (him being Makwahkik)
What with one thing and another, Makwahkik was the one that went, not Miowee, not Shadith.
The Nistam would go this time. Probably. The Gospah. The Na-priests.
She wouldn't see it. Sun was almost down.
For sure, not much comfort.
The Gospah finished his supplication and began turning in stately circles while the choir slid into another litany of praises.
He was pressing on to the end despite all distractions.
A moment ago, when he moved offstage for a change of paraphernalia, the Ni-ot Pipondihek (chief of the Nistam's Personal Guard, ex-liwa to Kati Mola), brought orders to cut the ceremony short and light the fires so they could get the hell out of there before the place exploded.
He nodded politely, acknowledging the command. And ignored it thereafter.
The Nistam's wishes were not important now.
There were things that must be done if the Sacrifice was to be acceptable.
That was more important than the Nistam's life, more important than his own.
Miowee was whining with frustration, an odd little sound, rather like the noise an exhausted and angry puppy might make; her fingers were strong and agile but she couldn't see what she was doing and the knot had been pulled tight by a Na-priest with long experience in the unnatural strength of people pushed beyond their limits.
Shadith blinked the sweat out of her eyes, twisted her neck around so she could look down at the singer.
"Mee." It was more of a groan than a word, but her voice was beginning to come back to her. This body was resilient as hard rubber, recovering with a speed that still managed to astonish her. It was too bad…
She, shrugged off regret, tried again. "Mee! Listen!"
"What?" Miowee didn't look up, just kept on clawing at the knot.
"If you can reach my left boot, there's a knife in it, but be careful, don't get near Kaya with it, you'd cut her in half before you knew what was happening."
"What good is it, then?"
"Cut the tethers. Roll her off the Prye. At least she won't burn."
"Ah." Her eyes closed, her mouth working, Miowee slumped for a moment against Kayataki's back, then she shuddered, collected herself and began working her body back around until she could reach the boot top, listening as she moved to Shadith's explanation of how to get into the sheath.
The Nistam was in a rage almost as great as the pilgrims', a fury he intended to exorcise by ridding himself of that idiot Ayawit after this stupidity was over with and he was back safe behind the Kiceota walls.
Until the ceremony was completed, until the Culmination was enacted, he couldn't leave. He had to perch on this ugly uncomfortable throne and put his neck on the line. His OWN neck.
Elementary precautions were one thing, running from' a gaggle of Maka clods was something else. His legitimacy and the power it conferred on him came from family tradition and the reputation of his ancestors. Running now would destroy that-and him.
There were dozens of other Pliciks and Plicik clans with ambitions to replace him and his, half of them sitting around him now, watching him.
In the cavern behind the portable Palace, the Ni-ot Pipondihek was calling in reinforcements from the city and the countryside, every Plicik capable of bearing arms.
It was a desperate throw, the landlords and their forces might prove more dangerous to him, than the pilgrims, but they were a greedy lot with delusions of competence, feuding with their neighbors, trusting no one and far easier to manipulate than the bloody fanatics out there now.
Divide and buy. His ancestors had done it before and won.