No. I won’t allow it, Boldirinthe thought.
From her satchel she drew the two great wands of healing and laid them alongside Nialli Apuilana, who barely stirred. She took out her herbs and ointments, and set them in a row on the table. She placed the talisman of Friit the healer at Nialli Apuilana’s head and that of Mueri the comforter at her feet.
To Sipulakinain she said, “Bring me that brazier. We’ll burn the leaves of Friit in it, and see to it you breathe the smoke yourself. It’ll do you some good too.”
“I’m on the mend, Boldirinthe,” said Sipulakinain.
The offering-woman gave the grain-merchant’s mate a skeptical look. “Yissou be praised for that,” she said without conviction.
Together they worked to light the aromatic herb. Taniane watched, silent, motionless. In the far corner the old woman Fashinatanda prayed in a toneless mumble, seeing nothing. Purplish smoke curled upward.
“More,” Boldirinthe said. “Another five sprigs.”
Sipulakinain’s hands trembled. But she fed the herbs to the blaze. Boldirinthe took Nialli Apuilana’s ankles and held them. She felt the congestion in the girl’s lungs, the weariness in her heart. Her soul-center was chilled and enfeebled. Nialli Apuilana was strong, though. These weaknesses could be driven from her.
The smoke grew thick in the room.
Now the gods became visible.
Boldirinthe had long had the skill of seeing the Five Heavenly Ones clearly. It was not something she ever spoke of to others, for she knew that the gods, real though they were, had never appeared to anyone else in actual manifestations, only as powerful abstract presences. It was different with her. They had forms and faces, familiar ones. Mueri the Consoler was much like Torlyri to her, a tall strong handsome woman whose dark fur was marked with white. Dawinno the Destroyer had the look of Harruel, a fierce red-bearded giant. Yissou was wise and remote, sparse of fur, almost like a human. The Provider, Emakkis, was fat and jolly. Friit the Healer was very serious, and frail, a little like Hresh. They stood now by her side. She indicated the sleeping girl, and they nodded, and Friit told her what must be done, and Boldirinthe, though she felt a stab of uneasiness, made ready unhesitatingly to do it.
“You have to leave the room now,” she said to Taniane.
“I—”
“There’s too much strength in you. We want only the sick and the old and the fat in here now.”
Taniane’s mouth opened, and closed again. She gave Boldirinthe a look of astonishment and, perhaps, anger. But she went out without a word.
Boldirinthe applied the ointments of healing now, one to Nialli Apuilana’s lips, another to her breasts, a third to the place between her thighs. Nialli Apuilana stirred and murmured as the heat of these herbal creams began to penetrate her skin.
“Get the old one,” she said to Sipulakinain. “I want her sitting on the bed, with her hands on the girl’s feet. You sit up there, and take her head against your bosom. I’m going to twine with her.”
Sipulakinain nodded. Though she was weak and uncertain on her feet herself, she slipped her arm around the shoulders of the trembling old grandmother and led her to the bedside, and placed her in the position Boldirinthe had requested. She lay down then and cradled Nialli Apuilana’s head.
Ponderously Boldirinthe maneuvered her cumbersome body about until her sensing-organ was within reach of Nialli Apuilana’s. There was no question of her lying down beside the girl on the pallet in the usual twining position, but twining might be accomplished in other ways. She looked up and saw Mueri smiling at her, saw Friit holding his hand high in approval. Yissou himself helped to move her into position.
Now came a moment of uncertainty and unease.
Boldirinthe was too old to feel fear, but she was not beyond apprehensiveness. She had twined with Nialli Apuilana once before, years ago, on the girl’s twining-day — on the very eve, as it had turned out, of her capture by the hjjks — when she had come to Boldirinthe for the traditional instruction in the art. Boldirinthe hadn’t forgotten what that twining had been like.
That other time Boldirinthe had been expecting nothing more than the usual childish chaos of a first twining, the soft unformed vulnerable young soul struggling painfully to focus itself amidst the embarrassment of the new intimacy; but instead Nialli Apuilana, when the union of their two souls had been achieved, had revealed herself to be strong and fierce, as hard and as firm-edged as some machine, a thing of shining metal and driving force. That was frightening, to encounter such strength in one so young. Boldirinthe had been exhausted by their twining. She hadn’t expected ever to repeat that experience. Nor was she eager to.
But the Five had commanded it. Boldirinthe touched her sensing-organ to that of the unconscious girl, and began to enter into communion with her.
The girl’s soul was remote and elusive. There were moments when Boldirinthe felt she would be unable to reach it; there were moments when she felt Nialli Apuilana’s spirit slipping away entirely, separating from the girl’s body. But Fashinatanda and Sipulakinain served as barriers to prevent her soul’s departure. They contained it. And, little by little Boldirinthe was able to surround it and take it into her capacious embrace.
Now Nialli Apuilana’s sleeping self opened gladly to her.
Her soul was infinitely deeper and stranger and richer than it had been that other time, four years earlier. Nialli Apuilana had been a girl, then; now she was a woman, with all that that implied of depths of understanding. She had coupled; she had twined; she had loved.
And she had accepted the Five Heavenly Ones.
What a surprise that was! There hadn’t been a shred of belief in Nialli Apuilana the other time. Not unusual, such godlessness, among the modern young ones. But Nialli Apuilana hadn’t simply been indifferent to the goodness of the gods before: she had sealed herself up against it, she had rejected it outright.
Now, though, to her vast amazement, Boldirinthe felt the essence of the Five within the girl’s soul. There was no doubt of their presence, new and fresh. The auras of all of them were there, Friit and Emakkis, Mueri and Dawinno, and preeminently Yissou the Protector, casting a glow of godliness through the corridors and channels of her soul. Boldirinthe had not remotely expected that. Their holy fire burned in her, and it was all, or almost all, that was keeping her alive. Perhaps they had come to her as she lay close to death in that swamp.
But the Nest was present within her also. The Queen was present within her.
Boldirinthe could feel the great massive alien power of the insect monarch, surrounding and infiltrating every aspect of the girl’s spirit, interpenetrating even the auras of the Five in a manner as blasphemous as it was improbable. Hjjk-light blazed like an angry fire. Hjjk-mists swathed Nialli Apuilana’s soul. Tenacious claws clung everywhere. Surely this was something that had befallen her during her captivity. The offering-woman had to struggle to keep herself from recoiling from these mysteries, or from being drawn down into them.
But she knew what to do. She was here to heal. With the help of the gods she would drive out the evil.
Unhesitatingly she set about her work. She grappled with the dark thing within the chieftain’s daughter. She hacked at it, she speared it, she slashed it to its heart. It seemed to weaken. Its claws flailed and thrashed. The offering-woman pulled one claw free, and another, and another, though they sprang back nearly as quickly as she ripped them away. The thing fought back with cold malevolent fury, lashing her with lattices of force, showering her with torrents of icy flame. She stood her ground against the onslaught. She had spent all her life in preparation for this moment. Again and again the sluggish invincible monster stirred and rose and leaped, and each time Boldirinthe fought it down, and again it leaped and again it was cast down, and the offering-woman forged new weapons and went forward, battling with all her strength.