The six red-robed Deacons, marching at the head of the straggling procession, had backs as straight as painon trees. Zephy tried to walk straighter and more in time with them, as was expected. As the procession entered the square, the fog shifted so the fog-veiled god seemed to lift, turning; seemed airborne then disappeared behind a heavy wash of mist.
It was strange that the Horses of Eresu were tolerated there with the gods. But what an odd question; why wouldn’t they be? They were the gods’ own consorts. Yet the Horses of Eresu were only mortal, as humans were. They were truly of Ere, and the gods were not. What were the gods, then? Did they become fully visible only at Waytheer as the Covenants taught? Was Eresu a place of two worlds, the heavenly one and the earthly one overlapping? She could never understand how that could be. She felt half-asleep, yet questions were crowding into her head with sudden surprising strength. As if, while she slept, questions had been pulled forth from the very depths of herself, those questions that troubled her most.
The Deacons had knelt before the Temple steps; behind them the procession knelt, too, as the Landmaster, broad under his swirl of red silk, made the entry signs across the door. Zephy bowed her head in quick submission. But she felt as rebellious at the ceremony as she had ever been in her life.
The red robes were bright against the white stone as the Deacons rose and climbed the stair. Four Deacons entered the Temple behind the Landmaster. The two youngest stood beside the entryway, their sheaves of whitebarley raised, and began to say the blessing in monotonous tones as the citizens of Burgdeeth filed by to enter the holy place.
Inside, the women and girls turned to one side, and the men and boys to the other. The six Deacons knelt before the carven stone dais on which the Landmaster stood with his hands crossed over his shoulders to represent his nakedness without wings. The citizens of Burgdeeth bent their heads in holy submission. The candles, placed in niches along the wall, sent long shadows of the Landmaster and Deacons across the heads of the kneeling people. Zephy peered up under her lashes, searching for Meatha, but she could not see her, and became uneasy. Had Meatha gotten home unseen last night?
This Worship of the First Dawn, just as the Worship of the Last Day, laid upon Burgdeeth protection against the wrath of the Luff’Eresi for all the following year. It began the five days of ceremonies that insured good crops and fertility and protected all who were sincere against hunger and against the evils of avarice and pride and curiosity.
The prayers were rising now, “Oh bless us, humble we are. Bless us, weak we are and afraid.” She intoned the words without feeling—yet with a real prayer deep in her heart: Let them be safe, let Thorn and Anchorstar be safe . . . “And we bow our heads in submission, we kneel to the ground before you our gods who are not earthbound”—Let them be safe—”and we worship your sky and your land on which we are suffered to dwell . . .”
The grain and fruit were being offered now, lifted into the flame. Their burning smell began to fill the Temple. Zephy choked with its bitter sweetness, tried not to cough, and knew the eyes of the Deacons were on her. She felt her face go red with humiliation as people glanced sideways.
Across the aisle the men of Burgdeeth, row after row of grown men, were bowing and kneeling submissively, their lips moving in prayer. Zephy could not picture Anchorstar behaving so. And the few times she had seen Thorn and Loke come to Temple their heads had bent very slightly, and their backs, when they knelt, were straight as zayn trees so you could see no hint of submission.
As if something in her head had saved forgotten memories to fling at her now, a dozen scenes came back to Zephy suddenly and sharply. She was standing in the Candler’s watching him pour hot wax into molds all the same shape, the same size. Couldn’t they be different sizes, she asked him. Could you make a square candle? If you put in berry juice would it make the wax red?
“Candles’ve always been made this way; why’d you want any other? When one burns down you just pluck another on top. If you had all different sizes and shapes, how’d they fit the holders? And who ever heard of square candles? Talk like that don’t please the Deacons none.” He had stared down at her coldly from behind his work table.
And the Shoemaker. All Burgdeeth’s shoes were the same. Men’s. Women’s. Children’s. Boots the same only taller. There must be some other way for shoes to look.
“What way would you have ’em? Soles on the top and the lacing underneath?” The Shoemaker had guffawed and Zephy had turned away rigid with anger. Couldn’t anyone see what she meant?
She thought of last night, so the memory of the music caught her up, came into her head more real than the Temple prayers; she closed her eyes and felt the warmth of Thorn’s closeness, felt his hands holding hers.
The offering was flaming to blackness. The Deacons knelt and bent their heads until their foreheads touched the dais. Behind them, the citizens of Burgdeeth knelt as one.
At last the offering was ashes, the flame dead, the Temple gray with smoke. The Deacon’s voices rose in a cry like ferret-dogs as the Seven Prayers of the First Day began. This depressed Zephy, all the Five Days of Worship depressed her—until the Prayers of the Last Night. She could suffer the rest for that.
On the Last Night, after the kneeling, after the terrible shrill whining of the Deacons, the worshippers would rise and march out of the Temple, each carrying a torch lit from the blessed vessel, would march into the town square and around the great statue. Their faces would be turned upward toward the night sky and the stars, toward Waytheer and the full moons. Toward the gods. The Deacons would raise their voices in a gentler litany then, in a song of true prayer. And maybe, in the sky, dark shapes might move, windborne, across the faces of the moons.
Now, the sudden stirring around her brought Zephy back to the present as the worshippers rose. As they turned toward the door, she saw Meatha where she had been sitting behind her; and Burgdeeth’s citizens filed out into the bright morning and headed directly for the fields.
“Do you think the wagon got through all right?” Zephy breathed faintly as she caught up with Meatha.
“They are safe in Dunoon,” Meatha whispered without hesitation. Then she would say no more, nor look at Zephy, as if she were wrapped in some private cocoon of emotion she did not want to share.
The fog had burned away and the sun was coming as they took up their scythes and began to cut the heavy whitebarley stalks, swinging in loose rhythm with the other women and girls who formed a long line on either side of them. Then, as the slower reapers dropped back the line began to waver. Behind them came the wagon pulled by six donkeys and driven by a young girl, accompanied by two loaders: older women with strong backs who could throw the sheaves in such a skilled way that the grain was not disturbed.
The sun was well above the hills before there were changes in the harvest line, a girl dropping out because of illness, three coming late to join them after nursing babies—now two more missing might not be noticed by the patrolling Deacons. After all, three fields were being cut besides the main field where the men were working. As the harvesters cut to the edge of the woods that bordered the river, then turned back upon a new row, straggling, one or two stopping to rest, Zephy and Meatha were there one moment and gone the next, slipping through the underbrush, their hearts pounding.
They lay for a long time in the riverbank, and once a Deacon’s horse passed so close they didn’t dare breathe. But if they were discovered here, it would only be a matter of idling, of cooling off. Chastisement, a beating. At last, when they heard no other sound, no breaking branches, no voice calling out, they rose and started up the river.