“It’s a tackle,” said Trompe.
So much was obvious. We used similar gear to get water from the deepest wells. The loose end of the rope lay stretched along the ground to the north, and it was now being tugged at by a few dozen songfathers. They managed to pull the east end of the semicircular floor a hand span closer, rotating it on its diametric center, then nodded in satisfaction at one another as they dropped the rope and departed.
“Those golden rings around the pillars are metal sheaves,” remarked Leelson, who was looking at them through the glass. “What are they moving the floor for? And what’s it made of?”
“It is made of one great block of stone,” I told them. “It was brought from the cliffs by the Gracious One, who, having created the great gate, then opened it unto us. The stone covers the navel of the world. The sacred sipapu. The gate through which we came. Now it will be uncovered and the beautiful people, those who carry the spirits of our beloved dead, will depart through this gateway to heaven.”
Leelson threw Lutha a startled glance, and she gave him a look that meant “don’t ask.” He glared, but he clamped his lips shut. I had just revealed the holiest secrets of our religion. It didn’t matter now. There would be no secrets soon. He would see, as I would.
More songfathers arrived. There were other brief episodes of rope tugging with nobody trying very hard. Groups came and went, rehearsing separately, accustoming themselves to the feel of the rope. It was as Leelson had said at one point during our journey: every participant was here for the first time. They knew what was to be done, but not precisely how to do it. They had to practice.
By midafternoon there were tens of thousands of wains filling a shallow valley south and west of the temple, a good distance away. The ordinary men and women who had accompanied the songfathers fringed every slight rise of ground, none of them close enough to get a good view and none of them equipped with glasses. Evidently these laymen were to view Tahs-uppi only from a distance.
During the afternoon, groups of songfathers came up the hill to the pen to take a look at us. Late in the afternoon, one came who was well-known to me. Hah-Hallach, songfather of Cochim-Mahn. He summoned me to the fence.
“Foolish woman, what have you done?” he demanded in a soft voice full of suppressed rage.
“I have come to say good-bye to my mother,” I replied.
“You have led strangers here! You have blasphemed the Gracious One. You have risked our immortality!”
“So, let the Gracious One deal with me,” I said. “He can cause me little more pain than he has already done.”
“Because you doubted,” he said, cursing. “Because you doubted!”
I shook my head. “The sisterhood knows better than that.”
“All heretics. All doubters. Why you?” he shouted.
I turned my face away, not answering, sobs welling up inside me. Lutha came to me, put her arms around me, and said across my head:
“If you’re asking her why she came here, it’s because she believes what we have told her. Your people and your world are in danger. She does not care for herself, but she is going to have a child. She wants that child to have a future!”
He turned his glaring eyes upon Lutha and spoke from a mouth contorted by wrath. “There is neither future for blasphemers nor children for those who doubt,” he said. Then he turned on his heel and went back down the hill. Lutha’s arms held me while I wiped my eyes.
“Thank you for trying to help me,” I said. “But there is no help against … them.”
“Them?” she whispered.
“Old men who enslave us, then rebuke us when we rebel, calling us disobedient daughters, doubters, even heretics. I told him the sisterhood knows better. He did not like it much.”
We had no time for discussion. The crowd of songfathers and spirit people around the temple had grown larger and noisier, and now it erupted with shouts and waved fists as the Great Flag of the Alliance came bobbing and wavering toward us through the mob. The kneeling circles of spirit people opened up with some difficulty to let the flag come through, and I saw that each man had attached himself to a metal eye set into the ground. Now, what was that about? I scanned the temple, finding more such metal eyes set into the semicircular stone inside the temple.
The flag jounced up the hill, carried by a youngish, long-faced man who walked beside the Procurator, he all aglitter like a fish just out of water. With them was a huge red-faced woman driving a chariot, and behind that a stolid Dinadhi driving a cart loaded down with heavy packs. Leelson opened the gate for them.
The Procurator greeted us with a nod, then said to the woman, “Madam Luv, this is Leelson Famber.”
“Who has much to answer for,” said the big woman, in a disapproving tone.
Leelson took no notice of their disapproval. Fastigats, Lutha was to say, often don’t take notice of others’ disapproval, even that of other Fastigats. While the bearers stacked their burdens in a pile near the pen gate, Leelson made introductions as though we were at tea. The long-faced man was the ex-King of Kamir, who seemed embarrassed at seeing Leelson, though I could not imagine why. The large woman was Poracious Luv, an Alliance council-woman, flamboyant, but with good sense, so Lutha said. I gathered she had been visiting the king when both of them had been dragged into this business more or less accidentally. Or, if not accidentally, for some reason they did not, at the moment, choose to explain.
As
