Wind, sweeping ceaselessly against the mountain on which Sachiin kneeled flapped the heavy layers of silk and figured brocades swathing the women before him, as though giving voice to their impatience. The priestesses struck his eyes as burning shapes that held the same terror in smoking purple negative when he closed them. He bowed his head, wary even of the detail in their pale hands and the repeats and roundels of their robes, their colours shrill in the morning sun. Like a second skin was the white clay painted on their foreheads and down over their wrists, hands, fingers, daubed even over their curving nails. It softened the sound of thick metals and jade as their bangles clashed together, the scolding chime of the tasseled silver pendants fluttering from combs atop their hair and around the repoussé tableaux of their diadems, impressed with warring deer and felines. He was accustomed to their baffling majesty and knew them to be trophies wrested from distant, reviled entities; Yuezhi and Wuhuan, Sogdians and Xiongnu, names he had never heard, their nomads as ruthlessly despoiled as their royal emissaries. It was the great crescent of lapis lazuli strung from the neck of the foremost priestess that instilled dread, its hypnotic colour found nowhere else in their wild domain, not in the two unvarying shades of their eyes, nor in the glaucous, ice-fed lakes, or even in the open sky of violet white; beloved of their fatal goddess, it was a herald of her distant nightmare realm. All this Sachiin had beheld to a greater or lesser degree, so oppressed by their intent upon him that he scarcely comprehended their questioning.
The wind began to shift the flakes of scree around his knees, their skittering passage underscoring the priestess's impatience. He looked up once more, their acid-hued eyes burning away his nerve.
"Are you your mother’s child, Sachiin?"
"I am." he replied.
"I ask again. Where is your brother Kala'amātya?" She spoke the name with violent distaste.
"My brother is by the lake." he murmured finally.
"Go now with our daughter Nyāti."
He fell in behind their acolyte, following her along a shallow, stony cirque cut by a watershed stream. Sachiin stared at the back of her clay-dressed coiffure, the endless black coils of her braids carefully daubed with white, though bare of the ornament worn by the elder members of the Sthali'sātva sisterhood. Formal distance had grown between them since her induction into their junior ranks, curtailing their exchanges. Over his shoulder, the Sthali'sātva disappeared from the ridge in the opposite direction, descending toward the tarn of his description. He tightened the waist of his dark robe, breaking from his companion to leap the stream and lope uphill, working himself into the cloven granite of an outcrop and watching the sacerdotal conclave through a split in the stone as they moved in stately, foreboding unison.
Far deeper than it was wide, the water of the tarn was darkly stained by a seam of nameless ore. As a mirror to the night sky it was reserved as the venue of recondite lunar observances, but his brother transgressed the prohibition with such regularity that the priestesses had finally apprehended him. They gathered on the shore to await his emergence. Sachiin's companion attempted to preserve decorum as she joined him in the narrow fissure. He glanced back into her golden eyes.
"Remember your star, Sachiin, and give thanks that you are not your brother." she whispered.
Two darker figures had accompanied the Sthali'sātva, mute and wreathed in drab black homespun, standing like commanded shadows behind the priestesses while the wind fretted the waters with lines of silky corrugation. Kala'amātya rose from it like something born out of its proscribed depths, his black braid settling on his back and merging with the pattern inscribed over its skin. He took up his robe and tied it about himself.
"Why does he love the water more than us?" Sachiin wondered.
"Ana'siām'ilye warns that we should not look for virtue in those made without it." Nyāti promised.
"Will they not beat him and be satisfied?"
"If you are to meet again, it will be where he is going... you cannot wish that." she told him, deploring the idea. "Say nothing of what you have seen."
By the lake, the dark male figures took up their places on either side of Kala'amātya, walking before the priestesses from the lonely stretch of water. Exile had settled on him as though his shadow had been shorn from his feet and tied about him like a shroud, transformed like the outcasts flanking him and sent toward perdition in the wastes that lapped the mountains. His brother's face, already harder than wind-harrowed stone, was crossed by the scars of punitive strokes, so intrinsic to him that they might have been innate deformity; his eyes saw nothing but what lay before him, ears deaf to admonition. The sullen veterans escorting him did so at a careful distance from his person. Sachiin glanced back at Nyāti.
"If he is not made to abide with us... could it be that he is destined for some other purpose?" he ventured softly, hoping she would support his naive logic with the dharma to which she had been admitted. She could not oblige him.
CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
© céili o'keefe do not reproduce
The wind began to shift the flakes of scree around his knees, their skittering passage underscoring the priestess's impatience. He looked up once more, their acid-hued eyes burning away his nerve.
"Are you your mother’s child, Sachiin?"
"I am." he replied.
"I ask again. Where is your brother Kala'amātya?" She spoke the name with violent distaste.
"My brother is by the lake." he murmured finally.
"Go now with our daughter Nyāti."
He fell in behind their acolyte, following her along a shallow, stony cirque cut by a watershed stream. Sachiin stared at the back of her clay-dressed coiffure, the endless black coils of her braids carefully daubed with white, though bare of the ornament worn by the elder members of the Sthali'sātva sisterhood. Formal distance had grown between them since her induction into their junior ranks, curtailing their exchanges. Over his shoulder, the Sthali'sātva disappeared from the ridge in the opposite direction, descending toward the tarn of his description. He tightened the waist of his dark robe, breaking from his companion to leap the stream and lope uphill, working himself into the cloven granite of an outcrop and watching the sacerdotal conclave through a split in the stone as they moved in stately, foreboding unison.
Far deeper than it was wide, the water of the tarn was darkly stained by a seam of nameless ore. As a mirror to the night sky it was reserved as the venue of recondite lunar observances, but his brother transgressed the prohibition with such regularity that the priestesses had finally apprehended him. They gathered on the shore to await his emergence. Sachiin's companion attempted to preserve decorum as she joined him in the narrow fissure. He glanced back into her golden eyes.
"Remember your star, Sachiin, and give thanks that you are not your brother." she whispered.
Two darker figures had accompanied the Sthali'sātva, mute and wreathed in drab black homespun, standing like commanded shadows behind the priestesses while the wind fretted the waters with lines of silky corrugation. Kala'amātya rose from it like something born out of its proscribed depths, his black braid settling on his back and merging with the pattern inscribed over its skin. He took up his robe and tied it about himself.
"Why does he love the water more than us?" Sachiin wondered.
"Ana'siām'ilye warns that we should not look for virtue in those made without it." Nyāti promised.
"Will they not beat him and be satisfied?"
"If you are to meet again, it will be where he is going... you cannot wish that." she told him, deploring the idea. "Say nothing of what you have seen."
By the lake, the dark male figures took up their places on either side of Kala'amātya, walking before the priestesses from the lonely stretch of water. Exile had settled on him as though his shadow had been shorn from his feet and tied about him like a shroud, transformed like the outcasts flanking him and sent toward perdition in the wastes that lapped the mountains. His brother's face, already harder than wind-harrowed stone, was crossed by the scars of punitive strokes, so intrinsic to him that they might have been innate deformity; his eyes saw nothing but what lay before him, ears deaf to admonition. The sullen veterans escorting him did so at a careful distance from his person. Sachiin glanced back at Nyāti.
"If he is not made to abide with us... could it be that he is destined for some other purpose?" he ventured softly, hoping she would support his naive logic with the dharma to which she had been admitted. She could not oblige him.
CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
© céili o'keefe do not reproduce
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