order. She had made herself smaller—barely one hundred fifty centimeters, as opposed to her normal height of one hundred sixty—with shoulder-length gray-brown hair, and a long, thin, unattractive middle-aged face that may not have been hard to look at but you wouldn’t look twice. She had also smoothed out and raised her normally very deep voice. Nobody had ever penetrated the disguise, which was so complete that there were actually records on “Sister Janise” so complete that, if anyone checked, they would be certain that she was indeed a separate, real person.
Janise was a useful disguise, particularly when visiting Anchor Logh, and it was a guise known only to a precious few who would never betray it—Mervyn, Tamara, the Sister General of the Anchor Logh temple and her closest friend, her father, and her cousin Cloise, who was surrogate mother to her daughter.
Because stringers knew how uncomfortable it might be to have to ride with a bevy of priestesses, the dugger loadmaster had put the six sisters who were passengers in the same coach, and the one other had been at the school in Hope. Thus, to her amusement, even though she expected it, she found herself sharing a ride of several days with the new Sister Marigail and the girl she’d denied ordination, whose name was Mahta. Introductions and pleasantries were made, but conversation was minimal inside the coach, most of the comments being about the discomfort of the ride and the state of transportation even in this new age.
Gorondon wanted to make Anchor Logh in a bit over three days, so he worked his crew in shifts and planned stops only for water and meals and horse rotation. He was behind his schedule, planned out months ago for a half- year trip, and trying to make up as much of that time as possible. If he didn’t make his scheduled stops before another stringer, he might have business stolen out from under him.
At the meal breaks, though, there were small clusters of conversation and socializing. Mahta, in particular, seemed fascinated to talk to Sister Marigail, with whom she’d shared a dormitory these past two years. Thanks to Kasdi’s spell, Mahta was actually fairly attractive, although nothing like Marigail’s beauty.
“I still can’t understand why anybody who looks like you would enter the priesthood,” Mahta said to Marigail. “Still, that’s it now, I guess. Uh—how does it feel?”
Marigail shrugged. “Not really any different. At least, I don’t notice anything different. Oh, well, maybe a little. Things I thought were real important just don’t seem that way anymore. Like this trip home. Even a couple of days ago it seemed the most important thing in my whole life. You know, going home a real priestess, seeing everyone, all that. Now—it’s just something that must be done before I can get to work. What about you? You think you’re going to come back, or is this it for you?”
“I don’t know,” Mahta responded. “I enjoyed it all, and I like the Church, but it just doesn’t seem like my whole life. Who knows? After two years in the mines I’m just going to relax and enjoy myself a bit, just like she said. Who knows? At any rate, if you’ll let me, I’ll come to your public ceremony.”
“I’d like that very much. It’ll be in Tonibar Riding, just north of the capital, the first Holy Day after I’m back. You know you’ll be welcome.”
Kasdi overheard, and smiled a bit to herself. Things would work out for both of them, she was sure. Later, she was amused to overhear a whispered conversation between them that was basically a less than totally complimentary impression of her. Marigail had described Kasdi as old and hard-looking, and seemed a bit disappointed at how ordinary the living patron saint of the Reformed Church seemed. It was far better and more charitable than Mahta’s impression of an egomaniacal old crone. She didn’t mind either impression, though. It kept her in her place and helped combat her greatest fight, the fight against her own blasphemous deification among the masses.
They pressed on through the static energy field that was the void towards Anchor Logh, following energy trails, or strings, that only stringers and wizards could see.
She was a lively, outgoing young woman. She was almost exotically pretty, a bit sexy and erotic, and she knew it. She had long, straight auburn hair almost to the waist, unusual large green eyes, a sensual mouth in an expressive face, and a trim, athletic figure that seemed put together just right. She was quite tall—one hundred eighty centimeters barefoot—but hadn’t an ounce of fat nature didn’t need or require. She was well aware of how attractive she was and liked to flaunt it in a teasing way.
She was also bright, if no genius, with good grades through school and a healthy curiosity about the world around her, but she preferred the outdoors to books and athletics to scholarship. She had always been spoiled as a child, and her beauty and athletic prowess had made her a center of attention as a teen as well. She had, ot course, lived a sheltered and pampered life, but was not really aware that it was so. If she lacked anything, it was a sense of ambition and a sense of direction. She had graduated now, and was working on the communal farm where she’d been raised, doing odd jobs here and there, but every time her future had come up, she’d changed the subject. She didn’t really like to think much of the future; she liked it too much the way it was. There were colleges she might enter, but aside from a love of the outdoors she really had no strong drive towards one field or another. Nothing she really liked excited her, and she was aware that in any given field there were far too many with better aptitude and intelligence for her to rise very far.
Still, if she did not choose more education, she would be expected to apprentice to a trade, and none of those appealed much to her either. Marriage and kids also seemed unattractive. She had lost her virginity at sixteen, a fact that would still horrify her mother and the rest of the family, but she wasn’t very experienced in that department. Three times, that was all, and while she’d found the last two at least pleasurable, they certainly weren’t worth the risk of pregnancy and were, in a way, disappointing when looked back upon. Still, she was fairly inhibited regarding herself. She liked playing, teasing, and, yes,
What she really wanted, she knew, was an unlimited amount of credit to go off and see all of World, doing what she wanted when she wanted, and generally having a good time. Unfortunately, real life had a way of dashing romantic fantasies. Her mom called it her “stringer blood.”
If there was one thing in her life that was empty, it was her parentage. She’d been told that her father had been a stringer killed in the Flux and that her mother had been a cast-out in the days when they used to draw lots to see which young people got sent into slavery in Flux and which got to stay and lead normal lives in Anchor. It was a sweet, romantic story—cast-out girl and stringer fall in love—but it had ended unhappily, with her father dead and her mother returning with the liberators here to Anchor Logh, only to die in an accident when she was very young. Those were mysteries, and mysteries she had found, after all these years, impossible to solve or even discuss with the few who knew anything. Nobody knew the stringer’s name, since her mother hadn’t said, or so they told her. Nobody was even positive that her father had really been a stringer, only that this was the story her mother had told.
As for the mother, there were no records and lots of names on the lists of cast-outs from those days. No pictures seemed to have been taken of her, and the one name they gave, Helaina, appeared on no official record except a formal death certificate. She had gotten the impression that nobody wanted to talk about her mother because she had not been formally married and had used her body to get out of slavery instead of her brains, but she didn’t care about that. Still, she’d always had the urge to go into Flux and at least search for somebody who might have known, might remember and be willing to talk, as unlikely as that might be. But as much as the Flux fascinated her and called to her, it also frightened her. She’d seen it more than once, from the old walls, a glittering wall of nothingness stretching out forever, and it had seemed cold and empty and lonesome.
She munched on an apple and walked out of the apartment and down the dirt road through the fields leading to the main highway. She barely glanced at the Holy Mother above, a great, amorphous light banded in yellows, blues, and oranges—the sight had always been there and would have been unnatural only if absent. It was a warm day, and she wore a pair of denim jeans low on her hips, a sleeveless white shirt that came down to her navel, and little else more, save a pair of high-heeled riding boots, which put an extra wiggle in her walk and added another five centimeters to her height, and a cream-colored ranch hat, side brims starched up.
She knew that, sooner or later, the coach from the west gate would come by, and that Sister Janise was aboard, and that was whom she was there to meet. She was never comfortable with Sister Janise—the woman was like a doting maiden aunt, only she really never understood the relationship the old girl had to her or her real mother. Janise had always been a little boring and made her feel uncomfortable, although she always thought that, if she could ever find a way, she might learn more from the Sister about her own origins.
The coaches were never on time, so she just thanked the Goddess that it was such a nice, warm day and settled down on the grass near the road to wait.
