"He seems stronger. He's eating."
"The Goddess is merciful."
Holding Mira in her arms, Diana paused at the back of the wagon. "Doctor, why did you stay? With us, I mean? I thought you would go with M. Soerensen."
"Very romantic of you, I'm sure, my dear, but remember that Charles and I are used to spending more time apart than together. Such is the nature of our work. Now get. We're leaving."
The next day they passed some kind of threshold. Suddenly the streams along the roadbed ran a different way-along with them, and not back the way they came. They had reached the summit. That night at dusk they creaked down onto a plateau, a miraculous place of flat ground and real vegetation. From the height, coming down, Diana saw thousands of fires burning all the way to the horizon, echoing the stars above. At the farthest edge of the horizon, a greater fire burned, spilling smoke and light into the lowering night.
In the morning, they traveled only until mid-morning and then set up camp near a river. An order came down the line to slaughter a tenth of the herd animals. That night Owen decided to give the first performance of the folktale, followed by the Brecht, as an interlude during the feasting.
The mood in the camp was triumphant and yet anticipatory. Diana could tell some event had happened that was gratifying to the jaran, but she was not sure what it was, and it had been days since anyone in the Company had had any contact with Tess Soerensen or any of the handful of jaran who spoke Rhuian. But Owen sent them along to the feasting ground to assemble the platform, and no one stopped them or even commented particularly on their industry.
"We're part of the army," said Diana to Hyacinth and Hal as they lifted one segment of the floor up onto the base and secured it with pegs. "They've accepted us."
"The court jesters," said Hal. He sniffed hard and then wiped his nose on his sleeve. "This air is wreaking havoc with my sinuses. I think the doctor has forgotten us."
"Go home then," said Hyacinth haughtily.
"As if I could. I don't want to anyway. Do you?"
"What? I haven't even slept through a tenth of the camp yet. I've decided that when we get back to Earth I'm going to get a grant to produce an interactive holie called, Thrust In Among The Savages or Discretion is the Better Part of Amour."
"You're disgusting," said Hal, laughing.
Diana snorted. "Sure to go down in the annals of literature with that awful holie Quinn acted in two years ago, that historical romance about the early computer industry-"
"What?" asked Hyacinth. "Access To Love? That wasn't so bad. At least they researched it accurately. Hal, could you stop laughing and come help me?"
"Hyacinth, how can you say so?" Diana helped them hoist the last segment of floor. "The dialogue was atrocious, and the acting was worse. Quinn was the only decent actor in the piece, except for that man who played her secretary." They dropped the floor into place and slid the pegs in.
Yomi jogged up. "Curtain in two hours. Owen wants as much of the light as possible. Eat your dinner first. Wait, first slide that screen one meter to the right…"
When all was settled to Yomi's satisfaction, they returned to their encampment. Diana ate sparingly and then layered her clothing for her double role: a skirt and blouse for the sister of the heroine of the folktale-Anahita took the role of the heroine Mekhala, of course-and a shift underneath for Grusha in The Caucasian Chalk Circle. She paced out her entrances and exits and some of her scenes on the ground, walking her stage directions, pausing to murmur the lines under her breath, and walking on. After a bit, Owen gathered up the Company and led them over together.
Somehow Owen had arranged on such short notice to give a command performance. The house was huge, seated in precise disorder out from the platform. People stood farther back, too far, really, to hear anything, and the open air would in any case suck the volume from the actors' voices, although Joseph had cunningly constructed the screens with chambered skeins that deflected the sound out into the audience.
Owen did not introduce them. Phillippe came out in stiff red and gold robes and struck first a bell, then a pattern on his drums, and then the bell again. The tone rang loudly and held long-but Diana knew it was augmented by a few tricky electronics built into a strip wound around the inside lip of the cup. The house stilled. Seshat led the women in-all but Quinn, who played one of the wind demons-mourning for their servitude to the khaja. This was the story of the girl Mekhala, who brought freedom to the jaran by trading her own freedom for the gift of horses.
The house talked all the way through it. Buzzed, more like, an intent, aggravating buzz that niggled at Diana's concentration through the entire piece. Anahita once dropped out of character and directed an angry glare toward the wings, as if expecting Owen to fix the problem. At last they finished.
Phillippe rang the bell again and retreated. As soon as he came through the screens he pulled a face. "What a disaster!''
"I said it would be." Anahita tossed her hair back over her shoulder. All the actors turned and listened: the buzz had increased to a dull roar. "But Owen wouldn't listen to me."
Owen appeared. He had a strange expression on his face. "Listen up. They want us to do it again."
"Again! And put up with that! You must be-"
"Anahita, shut up. Phillippe, on your cue." Owen retreated. They shrugged at each other and began again.
This time the house was dead silent. It took Diana two scenes into the pastiche to understand: This time they understood what was being told to them. Last time they had been busy figuring it out. The audience absorbed the piece, like a sponge sucking moisture, and the longer it went on, the more exhausted Diana felt, even though her part was only a secondary one. Gwyn sweated buckets again. His wind spirit clothes were damp with it. When they finished, the house gave them silence, as they had that very first time, but this had reverence in it that was above the simple respect for their craft.
Owen was delirious with satisfaction. "We reached them! We reached them!" he said over and over as if all other words had been erased from his memory.
"Go on," said Yomi. "We're canceling the Brecht for tonight. Get back to camp and get clean."
"No. No." Owen intervened before any of the actors could straggle away. "En masse. We go as a troupe. Let no one see us as who we really are. Let them think we have brought the tale to life, that who they saw were the real participants and we only the channel through which they manifested. Let them think there is magic in our craft."
"He's crazy," muttered Hal to Diana as they cut out behind the platform with Owen and Ginny and Yomi and Joseph as escorts. "I think it's dangerous to play with people's superstitions.''
Most of the jaran who had watched the performance remained in the area in front of the stage, and because they were well within the camp, no troops of horsemen impeded their progress, although the children raced to see them, providing an additional escort. Soon it would be twilight. A thick plume of smoke rose up on the western horizon, obscuring the sun, reddening the sky.
"We're under Soerensen's protection, Hal," said Diana. "Don't forget that. What do you think that smoke is?"
Hal shook his head, making a wry face. "What do you think it is, Diana? Or are you really that naive?"
But the answer was obvious, if ugly. Something burned, something large, like a town or a city. And the jaran camp celebrated. What else would they be celebrating but a victory? She shuddered. How easily they walked and feasted and watched the strange khaja art called theater. There three young men, two blond, one dark, walked along parallel to the actors, and they laughed and made jokes and recounted stories among themselves. She could imagine it: and how about those ten soldiers I killed? What, only ten? I killed twenty.