The musicians took their position, cross-legged, on the floor of the hall, before the dais, but to its left side, as one would look out, toward the hall.
Huta, standing in the center of the hall, before the great upright spear, to which she had rendered zealously the ministrations of a slave, shook her head wildly, negatively.
There was a testing skirl of the pipes, the abrupt sound of a stroke on the small drum. The men with the pipes licked their lips. The fellow with the drum adjusted the tension of the head, and struck it twice more. He then seemed satisfied.
Huta moaned, audibly.
She had recognized the robes of the musicians, or the style and color, of their robes. She knew them for the sort of robes worn within the sloping, many-poled, lamp-hung tents on worlds such as Beyira II. Outside the tents, for most of the year, the robes tended to be white, to reflect sunlight, but, in the winter, in the prime traveling months for caravans, they tended, as the tents always were, to be mottled, with the result that they blended in with the background. The mottled robes, too, were usually worn away from the camps, even in the summer, when the men rode forth on various businesses, whatever might be the nature of those businesses, leaving boys behind, to supervise the flocks, and slaves.
The men looked to Abrogastes, ready to play.
Huta threw herself to her knees and, weeping, held out her hands to Abrogastes.
“Please, no, Master!” she begged. “No!”
Abrogastes looked about the tables. “How many of you,” he asked, “have ever seen a priestess dance?”
The men looked at one another. One or another said, “I have, milord, a priestess of the rites of the Libanian Grain Cult.”
Abrogastes laughed.
Dance figured in the rites of many cults, for dance can be a language of the emotions, of feelings, even exalted feelings and emotions, and, too, like song, speech, and gesture, can have its religious applications, but in many of these cults, the dances were performed in sacred caves or grottoes by stately priestesses, sedate, dignified and grave, veiled, and fully clad, often elderly women, in purest white, who had for years ascended the hierarchies in their cult, earning their right to dance before the high, mysterious candlelit altars of their vegetation gods.
“I have seen a priestess of the rites of Asharee dance!” said a man.
“Better!” said Abrogastes, slapping his knee.
A ripple of interest took its way about the tables.
“Now that is a dance!” said a man.
Asharee was a fertility goddess of Issia VI. Her priestesses were sacred prostitutes.
Their dances, and subsequent embraces, brought many coins rattling into the golden bowls of Asharee’s shrines. Only noble, freeborn women were accepted into the cult, sometimes even matrons. For a coin their husbands might find what a marvel they were married to, but then, so, too, might any others, visiting the shrine.
“What of the rites of Lale?” called another man.
“And those of Cytele!” cried a man.
“Aleila!” called another.
“Lanis,” said another.
“Seborah!” cried another.
“Yes, yes!” said men.
Many of these cults were now, for most practical purposes, secret cults.
In most the priestesses were, in effect, temple dancers, whose caresses, for a suitable donation, might be bestowed upon the faithful. The services in many of these cults tended to begin, sometimes following certain days set aside for fastings and abstinences, and after a lengthy wait in a darkened temple, with the appearance of a small light, and readings, readings celebrating the wonders and joys of life, which readings were then followed as often or not, with a reenactment of a mythic drama, in which men, alone and without women, pathetic, lonely and miserable, besought mercy of the goddess in question, who, seeing their sorrow and pain, and taking pity upon them, created women in her own image, that his prayers might be answered, and that he might be granted a companion. At the conclusion of this drama, or, one supposes, rather as a culminating portion of it, the women appear, first one seen, and then another, so illuminated, and seem as if awakening, and finding themselves to be, begin to dance their joy in life, but soon, as the men before them, each seems apart and alone, and grieving, for, though they are created in the image of the goddess, they are not the goddess, but are finite, and thus incomplete. These women are, of course, the temple dancers. They are clothed, by intent, much as might be slaves, for example, they are barefoot, and bangled and silked. This, as well as the subdued light, and such, has its inevitable effect on the congregation, and, doubtless, too, on the officiants. They dance their loneliness to the men, whom they need as much as they are needed, for that was the intent of the goddess. Soon the dance becomes more enticing, more piteous, and more erotic until a final clash of cymbals occurs and the women and men rush to clasp one another, and the women are lifted, and carried, each to her alcove, or cell, in the temple. In their joyous union, as it is consummated in rapture, it is supposed that worship is offered up to the goddess, who is pleased with her work. There are many ways to worship gods, and this is one of the ways with certain cults, in the union of man and woman, joyously, gratefully, in mutual ecstasy. The gift of produce, or of coins, or whatever it might be, is left afterward in the alcove. The servants of the goddess, and the high priestess, and others associated with the temple, its keepers, and accountants, and such, require, of course, such things, for the satisfaction of their material needs.