Louise Cooper - Indigo 06 - Avatar (40 page)

Indigo reached out to the angry, mocking, terrified image in her mind, and she took control of it. Her eyes snapped open, and they were eyes like coals, wreathed in silver flame, glaring with ice and fire. She looked across the arena to where Uluye stood alone.

The knife blade hung above the High Priestess’s heart. Uluye gazed on the world for what she believed was the last time; then her eyes closed and her words echoed to the citadel and the forest as she cried out, proudly and strongly: “For my Lady’s sake, I am glad to die!”

And from the place where Indigo had stood, a new voice spoke.

“CEASE.” It was as gentle, yet as powerful, as a calm sea, and it filled the arena, filled the minds of all who heard it, like liquid light. Above the lake, the black column shuddered as though a gale had struck it. On the arena, a host of dark, frightened eyes turned....

The figure that stood on the sand was not Indigo—or if it was, then Indigo was no longer wholly human, but something far, far greater. A golden aura burned around her, as if the sun had just risen from darkness at her back. A cloak of sky and earth and water and fire flowed from her shoulders, and her hair was a shimmering cascade of all those colors and more, flowing, merging,
living
. Only her face was unchanged. And her eyes—

Her eyes were the black eyes of the Ancestral Lady, and the milky golden eyes of the emissary who had set her on her quest, and the silver eyes of Nemesis, and the amber eyes of a wolf, and the blue-violet eyes of a woman who had known love and seen death, and who, after half a century of wandering, still strove to understand. Uluye’s knife fell from her fingers. The priestesses, as one, sank to their knees.

And from the misty tower of darkness that hung over the heart of the lake came a thin, fearful wailing, like the cry of a child waking in the night and finding itself alone.

The being that was Indigo turned. Behind her, in the ritual square, three torches still guttered, though now their light was a pale reflection of the light that blazed around her. Beyond them, the
hushu
waited. Indigo felt their ruined minds, their pain, their misery, the hope that still clung like smoke lingering when all else had burned away; and she pitied them.

She raised her hands. “GO,” she said. “YOU CAN BE AT PEACE NOW.”

In her head, a voice, pleading, despairing:
no, no, no, they are mine, you cannot
—

WHAT NEED DO YOU HAVE OF SUCH PITIFUL SLAVES? RELEASE THEM, LET THEM COME TO YOU AT LAST, AND WELCOME THEM.

There was a sigh, as soft as a summer breeze across the great southern tundra. One by one, as the power, as the freedom, flowed to them from Indigo and from the dark goddess whose will she held within her own, the
hushu
dropped to the ground. Indigo felt the bittersweet moment as their hunger and their thirst were finally slaked and their broken minds departed from the mortal shell, and she smiled for them and wanted to laugh for them as she felt them merge with something that perhaps might be named
eternity
. Then, as the aura about her blazed anew, she turned and looked back at Uluye and her women.

The High Priestess was weeping. She didn’t truly understand; Indigo knew that even as she began to walk toward Uluye’s sobbing figure. What she saw before her was what she had longed, had
ached
to see: the pivot of her life, the touchstone of her existence. Indigo drew closer, and Uluye, as her women had done before her, sank to her knees in the sand.

“Sweet Lady ...” Her voice cracked with emotion. “You have shown mercy to the damned. Will you not show mercy to us, who love you more than life? We are yours, Lady, and we want nothing more than to serve you.”

In Indigo’s mind there came an agonized cry:
They are leaving me! I am lost, I am lost!

NO
. Indigo turned toward the lake and saw that the great column of darkness was breaking apart. The surface of the water boiled, the silver mirror shattering, and she felt a surge of pain and fear as, like her High Priestess, the Ancestral Lady wept.

NO, MADAM
. And suddenly the water was still again.
I HAVE NO WISH TO STEAL FROM YOU YOUR RIGHTFUL PLACE IN THIS WORLD. MY ONLY DESIRE IS TO DESTROY THE DEMON THAT HAS BOUND YOU
.

The lake shimmered; Indigo felt a great shudder run through her, and a piteous voice echoed in her mind.
If that were only true
....

IT IS TRUE
, she said.
THEY LOVE YOU. LOOK INTO ULUYE’S HEART AND ACCEPT WHAT YOU FIND THERE. DON’T FEAR HER, LADY. DON’T FEAR THAT SHE AND HER KINDRED WILL TURN AWAY AND FORGET YOU. THEY ARE YOURS. DO THEY NOT DESERVE TO HAVE YOUR LOVE, AS YOU HAVE THEIRS?

A chill breeze danced across the lake and set tiny ripples in motion.
I love them. Yes, I love them. But how can a mother hope to hold her children?

The being that was Indigo, human and animal and goddess, smiled with ineffable sadness.
OH, LADY, A MOTHER DOES NOT NEED TO HOLD HER CHILDREN, FOR THEY WILL ALWAYS COME BACK, AND THEY WILL ALWAYS TURN TO HER AT LAST. YOU ARE THE GUARDIAN AND KEEPER OF THEIR SOULS, AND YOUR PLACE IS AN HONORED PLACE AMONG THE AVATARS OF SHE WHO IS MOTHER OF US ALL. BREAK THE SHACKLES THAT YOUR FEAR HAS CREATED; CAST THEM OFF, AND COME TO THOSE WHO LOVE YOU. COME TO THEM, MISTRESS OF THE DEAD. GRANT THEM THEIR HEART’S DESIRE, AND SHOW THEM WHAT YOU TRULY ARE!

She felt it, she felt the power, the love, the comradeship, the
oneness
, and her voice, blending with a thousand voices, rang out across the night.

“IN THE EARTH MOTHER’S NAME, I ASK YOU, ANCESTRAL LADY, TO SHOW YOURSELF TO YOUR CHILDREN!”

The column of darkness, the tornado at the lake’s heart, flickered—and vanished. For a moment the silver mirror of the surface was utterly still; then a slow march of ripples began to flow outward from the center. They lapped at the edge of the lake with a tiny, gentle sound, one after another after another. And at their source, something rose from beneath the water.

The black boat came slowly toward the shore, sculled by the figure who stood in the stern, cowled in mist and darkness. Uluye, kneeling on the sand, watched in breathless silence as it drew closer. Tears still stained her cheeks, but her eyes were like a child’s eyes, wondering and enthralled, and her hands clenched and unclenched spasmodically, as though she longed to reach out to the approaching vision, but didn’t dare.

The boat grounded, and the Ancestral Lady shipped her oar. She didn’t move.

“MADAM.” The voice that had once been Indigo’s voice spoke softly. “WILL YOU NOT COME TO US?”

The Ancestral Lady’s head was bowed, and her reply came small and sad to Indigo’s mind from beneath the shrouding dark hair.
To show myself as I truly am? Ah, sister, you are cruel!

Indigo didn’t answer at once, but her shining figure walked forward to the lake’s edge and halted before the boat’s prow. Still the dark form in the stern didn’t move, and at last, silently, Indigo spoke again.

LADY, LOOK AT ME.

Slowly the Ancestral Lady raised her head. Through the cascade of black hair, the face of a tiny, wizened old woman with filmy eyes gazed back at Indigo with intense misery. The sunken mouth trembled, and the Lady said:
This is what I am. This is what fear has made me. You showed me the truth, sister, but in doing so, you have made me unworthy of my people’s love
.

Indigo felt a warm surge of sympathy, and with it a sudden deep sense of fellowship. At the heart of the greater mind with which her own mind had blended, power moved like a great tide, and she held out a shimmering hand.

NO
, she said gently.
YOU ARE WORTHY. COME, AND TAKE WHAT IS RIGHTLY YOURS
.

The Ancestral Lady took a step toward her and, uncertainly, reached out. In the moment before their fingers touched, she saw another face mirrored in Indigo’s face, other eyes that were black and silver and gold and brown and blue and green, changing and changing, yet always filled with light. Then the contact was made....

Indigo felt the shock, fire and ice together, a shudder like an earthquake that began in the depths of her being and flowed through her and from her to the dark figure in the boat. For a shattering instant, they became one, and suddenly Indigo knew what it was to be mistress of the underworld, Mistress of the Dead, guardian of souls; and a thousand thousand voices rang in her mind:
we are her, she is us, we are one, free, free, free—

She gave of herself, gave of the power within her. Light erupted from the Ancestral Lady’s figure: a shining, silver aura that lit the arena, lit the night, with the brilliance of a rising full moon. The Mistress of the Dead raised her head, and her black lips laughed with joy, and her white and beautiful face was the timeless face of a goddess; and her eyes, like dark stars, but filled with life, turned their gaze upon her worshipers, and she cried out, spreading her arms wide as though to embrace them all:

“MY CHILDREN!”

Indigo saw Uluye and her women rising, but even as they gained their feet, even as they rushed forward to meet their beloved Lady, a huge darkness seemed to implode on her. The world spun; vision and sound faded, swelled, faded again, as Indigo’s senses reeled; and the power was leaving her, streaming from her, collapsing—

She heard Grimya’s mental voice in her head—
Indigo! Indigo!
—and felt the wolf’s presence racing toward her. Her legs wouldn’t support her; she spun, feeling nothing, helpless, her last strength fleeing.

And in the moment before she fell in a dead faint to the ground, she heard Yima’s quavering voice, like a bird’s cry in the imploding dark: “Mother? Oh, Mother!”

She had been conscious during that last hour on the sand, but in a remote and separated way, as though she were watching events from a vast distance in time as well as in space. She could still remember the women’s singing; she heard it in her dreams, a silver thread running through the mists of sleep. In her dreams, too, she often relived the moment of the Ancestral Lady’s departure, as the shining figure sculled its boat out into the lake once more while the priestesses chanted a final ecstasy of praise.

At their goddess’s command, they had extinguished the torches and cast aside the amulets in the square of the
hushu
, and had solemnly lifted up the bodies of Shalune and Inuss and carried them to the boat where it rocked beside the shore. Then they had sung another song that was both a dirge for the dead women and a hymn of thanksgiving that the sins of Shalune and Inuss—that had been no sins at all—were forgiven and that the two were no longer condemned to roam the forests as hungering
hushu
, but would serve the Ancestral Lady in her realm.

No more retribution; no more
hushu;
no more ghouls and dark spirits to plague the living. The Ancestral Lady’s boat had sunk down into the lake, into the world below the lake, and she was gone from her worshipers’ sight; but her promise had remained. The demon fear was conquered: the vengeful terrors of the night would be no more.

And Indigo wished bitterly with all her heart that the promise had been kept.

She shifted her position, pushing aside some of the offerings that were heaped inside her cave and turning it into some kind of treasure house. Food and clothing, ornaments, fetishes, carvings, implements ... gifts from grateful priestesses and wide-eyed, wonder-struck villagers; gifts that half their donors couldn’t afford but which they must,
must
make to the light-skinned stranger who had become their oracle and who had had the power to summon the Ancestral Lady from her dark realm to bless her people. Gifts for one who, in their eyes, was little less than a goddess herself; gifts for one they revered. And already the borderline between reverence and fear was beginning to blur.

It hadn’t taken long before the first signs began to show. They had carried her back to her cave, and there she had slept for three days, her mind, body and soul exhausted by the events of that momentous night. She had wakened at last to find that she was a heroine, but more,
far
more than that. Though they agreed obediently with her when she told them that she was not an oracle, and not the Ancestral Lady’s chosen avatar, she knew that their acquiescence went no deeper than words and gestures intended only to please her. In their hearts it was not so, could never be so, and for Indigo, that had been the first indication that, though they had learned to love her, they also feared her.

Then there was Uluye. Uluye could not change. Oh, she and Yima had been reconciled, and Uluye had given her blessing to Yima and Tiam, the blessing that the Ancestral Lady had sanctioned and sanctified, but already she was seeking out a new candidate to take on her mantle in years to come, another girl to be taken and nurtured and trained to her mold; and she would rule her new protegee’s life as she had ruled the life of her daughter. And the nightly lakeside ritual ... that, too, had been at Uluye’s behest. At first it had been her decision to continue the nightly patrolling of the lake, with its torches and chanting and the rattling of sistrums, simply as a mark of reverence to the Lady, an expression of the cult’s gratitude. So they had sung, and they had danced, and they had made the offerings.

But the nature of the offerings was taking on a sinister tinge. Charms against this or that were beginning to be cast to the lake among the simpler gifts of food; and twice in the last seven days, humble delegations had come from nearby villages, and there had been whispered consultations, and on the nights following their visits, new hex amulets had joined the offerings given to the Ancestral Lady. Slowly, insidiously, the old ways were beginning to reassert themselves.

Indigo had tried to warn them, but she knew already that her efforts were doomed to failure. They listened to her, oh, they
listened
to her; but they didn’t truly
hear
, for to them, she was not quite mortal, not quite human, and therefore not quite real.

She could have changed matters. All she needed to do was don the oracle’s feathered cloak again and take her place on the oracle’s chair in the temple on the ziggurat summit. Then they would have listened, and they would have obeyed her every word. She could have usurped Uluye’s power, set herself above the highest of High Priestesses,
ruled
. And that, Indigo knew, would have been the worst choice of all.