“One. If all terms of the bargain are not fully complete, the bargain is nullified. Two. Reyna is to be healed of his body wounds and the addiction that is destroying him, and you will see that he does not remember these past three days, that he does not remember any pain or betrayal. Three. You will do your best to protect him from further harm. Four. I know this leaves large holes in the bargain, but I will trust your honor to see it is done. Five. On my side, I will surrender my will to you and do whatever you wish to the extent of my intelligence, my strength and my’Talent, I will do your bidding even unto death.” She thought a moment. “Unto MY death.”
Abeyhamal in Pal laughed. “MY HONOR,” she cried out, “YOU THINK TO TRUST MY HONOR.”
“Diyo.”
“LET IT BE DONE, FLEA. TAKE MY HAND.”
“When I see Reyna whole and strong, then I will take your hand.”
“YOUR TRUST IS ODDLY LIMITED, FLEA.”
“It is my need that speaks, Bee Mother, not my distrust.”
“SO BE IT. BEHOLD.”
The stained sheet melted away. Reyna’s limbs were straight, his body clean, his face had its usual austere beauty. He slept sweetly, deeply.
WILD MAGIC 15 7
Faan sucked in a breath. It was hard, terribly hard to reach out to the god in the woman, to tak6 the cool honey hand and surrender her will, to summon the god to enter and be one with her, but she’d made the bargain with open eyes and had the Riverman’s warning in her ears. What the god had given, the god could reclaim. She let the air trickle through her lips and waited.
Abeyhamal was at once cool and hot, light and heavy, coming into her like honey mead; one moment she felt as if she’d burn to ash, another as if she’d turn to ice. Then she was washed out of herself, was prisoned in a cyst somewhere behind her eyes, while the god wore her body like a glove.
The Kassian Tai Wanameh crumpled to her knees, glazed eyes fixed on the tiles, the god-shape gone from her body. Areia Moha One-eye let the drumming fade. She went on her knees beside Tai and lifted her shoulders, murmuring soft encouragements into her ear.
Faan’s body walked across to Reyna, took the Salagaum’s hand and raised him from the litter. Reyna came up with healthy ease, his eyes still closed, his breathing slow and steady.
The god-in-Faan led Reyna down the stairs to his room on the sleeping floor, helped him into bed, and pulled the quilts up around him. She/SHE touched his brow gently, affectionately, then left him to sleep till he was ready to wake.
› › ‹ ‹
The god-in-Faan deposited Faan’s body on her bed. “BE READY,” SHE said, the voice reverberating inside Faan’s head. “WHEN I ASK, GIVE. WITHOUT HESITATION AND WITHOUT STINT.”
The cyst about Faan dissolved and she was herself again, the god was gone.
She got to her feet, poured a cupful of water into the basin, and washed her face over and over until most of the water was gone. “It’s done,” she said aloud. “For better or worse, it’s done.”
She stripped, climbed into bed, and slept without dreaming for the first time in days.
Chapter 10. The Prophet Comes From The Hills To Disturb The Land
Faharmoy woke with Chumavayal’s Touch on his brow and knew it was time. His CALL had come.
‘No years ago he walked into the stony wilderness of the Konduni piedmont, leaving everything behind, renouncing his father and his family, renouncing power and personal glory.
He went hungry, froze at night, burned with thirst and was tormented by his own filth, by the assaults of insects-and by memories he couldn’t forget and couldn’t bear to remember.
He walked blindly, following the wind.
Eventually he found a boulder-strewn wadi with a tiny spring that produced less than two cups of water a day. It was enough. He settled to pray, to meditate, to die-if that was what he was called on to do.
He slowed day by day to the unhurried flow of life around him, lost the urgencies of his regimented existence though he kept the rigidity of the framework-it was ground so deeply into him that he would never recognize how unchanging a pattern he laid over his hours.
He rose before dawn, drank three swallows of water, then three more; he walked to the sandy hole he used as a latrine and let his body act as it would. He scrubbed with sand, then washed with meticulous care and half a cup of water, then knelt naked in the morning light, his arms out, his eyes on the rising sun.
When it was directly overhead, he rose from his prayers and meditations, pulled on a coarse robe and sought food for his single meal of the day-a furry bukie or a fat lizard, a kizzai tuber or a tungah root, the fiddle curls from the tender tips of a jiji weed or whatever else came to him. He never knew exactly what he was going to find and that was good. Some days he found nothing and that, too, was good.
His beard grew. And his hair. He combed them with a scratchcone from a tiny, twisted wiba tree, cleaned his teeth with a twig he cut from that tree.
He grew calm at last. Out here the grains of sand blew across the cracks and undulations of the stone without reference to him, out here the web of life let him be.
He was happy.
› › ‹ ‹
Chumavayal came to him, huge and powerful, strong and male, no ambiguities about him, everything clear and pure and true.
Chumavayal came and touched him, gently, lovingly, and told him: YOU ARE MINE. YOU ARE MY HERO, MY CHAMPION.
HEAR ME: WHAT IS, IS RIGHT. CHANGE IS BETRAYAL. THOSE THAT TRY TO CHANGE THINGS HAVE BROUGHT UPON THEMSELVES THE DESTRUCTION OF THE LAND. THEY WILL DIE OF HUNGER AND THIRST UNLESS THEY COME BACK TO ME-UNLESS THEY FOLLOW ME WITHOUT FALTERING OR QUESTIONING.
MY HERO, MY CHAMPION, MY WORD, MY PROPHET, FOLLOW ME WITHOUT FALTERING AND I WILL FILL YOU WITH THE HOT
IRON OF MY FORGE THAT YOU MAY BRAND MY PEOPLE WITH MY WORDS.
YOUR VOICE WILL BE MY VOICE.
YOU WILL SCOURGE THE PEOPLE, TURN THEM AWAY FROM THEIR SINS, BRING THEM BACK TO ME.
YOU WILL ERASE FROM THE LAND ALL THAT IS PERVERTED, ALL THAT IS BORN MONSTROUS.
I WILL TAKE THOSE POOR CRIPPLED SOULS TO MYSELF AND HOLD THEM UNTIL THEY ARE HEALED THAT THEY MAY BE BORN ANEW.
I AM NOT A CRUEL FATHER, BUT I DO WHAT I MUST FOR THE HEALTH OF MY PEOPLE.
DISCIPLINE IS NECESSARY. YOU KNOW THAT, HERO.
PAIN IS GIVEN TO MAN TO TEACH HIM THE RIGHT WAY-OTHERWISE, HOW IS HE MORE THAN ANIMAL?
Chumavayal said these things to him, reached down again and drew warm black fingers along the thorns Faharmoy had woven into a scull cap to purge himself of thoughts he should resist. THERE IS NO MORE NEED OF THIS. YOU HAVE CAST OUT YOUR DEMONS. THEY WILL ATTACK AGAIN, BUT THEY HAVE NO MORE POWER OVER YOU. YOU HAVE CAST THEM OUT AND YOU ARE WHOLE.
GO NOW AND SPEAK THE TRUTH TO MY PEOPLE, THAT I MAY BE MOVED AND TURN AWAY THEIR SUFFERING.
DEMAND THAT THEY CAST OUT THE MISSHAPEN AND MISBORN AMONG THEM. DEMAND THAT THEY SEND THE FOREIGN-
ERS AWAY, RID THEMSELVES OF THAT POLLUTION.
› › ‹ ‹
Faharmoy ate a tuber he’d buried beneath the fire to cook during the night, then walked out of the camp taking with him only the coarse brown robe he’d worn there, the old leather sandals that were near to falling apart, the crooked hardwood staff he’d found one day, sandpolished and as tall as he was. Food he left to the “whims of his god, but he took the water skin, pushing his arm through the fraying strap, settling the damp weight against the small of his back.