188 - The shulpiteh

“Now I can whisper in your ear,” I asked Niku, as the council broke to prepare for shulpiteh, “what are they going to do to me?”

“Don’t worry, love, you can handle it,” she said. “It’s easier than fifty chains in the Mezem.”

“Easier than fifty chains in the Mezem! That’s reassuring.”

She laughed. “Come, omores. We have to go to Wasteega Ensal—the island of the Oracle. Well, we’re caught in the crowd, and the wait will be long anyway.” I understood what that meant when we got to the cliff-edge. There are several stretched wires, with the seat-harnesses on them that convey you across the strait, but so many people wanted to go that there was a crowd around the end of each one. “We could windboard instead—or swim, if I get someone else to take the baby.” Some others were doing that; looking down I saw distant human silhouettes outlined in the green glow of the sea, cutting across in the easy way A-niah swim, and the faint shapes of windboard sails.

“I want to try this,” I said. “It’s not as if it can start without me anyway.” It was a little like flying, except that you sit instead of hang prone, and the seat would fit three and a baby. They got me to sit in the middle with Vriah slung, and Niku and Baska, who knew how to do this, took hold of the mechanism on either side, ran for all they were worth to get it started, and leapt on, on either side of me, just as it left the cliff. “You A-niah, with your modes of transportation,” I said. “That’s three I would never have conceived.”

We gathered on the beach, by a cave—not the same as the Oracle’s cave, Niku told me, but just as sacred. The fire was burning high by the time we got there. From the great stone entranceway, I could hear a weird hiss and moan of air and water. Several A-niah wearing only loincloths were taking positions before it, at least half of them men, including one who was a good head taller than me and built like a boar. Know more than one of us carnally… I had eventually had success with Lakrisi, but not easily, and only once.

“What do I have to do?” I asked Niku, trying to tell myself I was not afraid.

“They will test you. You need only to trade perhaps a dozen blows with each, to reach the door to the Gods.”

“Bare-handed, you must mean,” I said. None of them were armed. “That’s all? Just sparring?”

“You must stay on the path. They will try to throw you off the way to the Gods.”

“And then?”

“The Oracle will tell you what to do.” They had carried her here; she threw the powder on the flames, making them hiss and turn blue again, and the people went silent. The testers waited in a line, firelight glinting off their muscle-ridged bodies. “Niku, you said carnally—” She hissed me quiet. There was no ceremonial; the Oracle just looked at me, raised her gnarled stick, and pointed to the mouth of the cave.

I stripped down to my loin-cloth, Niku kissed me for luck, and I faced the first, who was a man.

Exchange a dozen blows, I thought as I came within striking distance of him. Does that mean if I get in ten and he gets in two, we’re done? I guess I will find out.

A few times, when we’d had time, Niku and I had sparred, both with and without weapons, so the on-the-toes Niah fighting style, with its high leaps and spins, was not entirely strange to me. It is not natural to me to go in cautious, but here I had to, since no one had told me all the rules. I wasn’t even sure how many people I would face.

The way he fought was snakelike, somehow, curving and devious. He was light on me, aiming only to touch, so I did likewise with him, waiting for him to step it up before I did, and we had swapped and blocked about a dozen when he stepped back and bowed his head. I did likewise.

Stepping further down the path, I was further from the fire and so in greater darkness. I caught a whiff of a smell so strange it was almost taste more than smell. The woman who waited somehow brought another creature to mind: a dolphin. I went lower in my stance. I’d guessed right. She went at me harder, smooth and slippery, trying to push me off by getting under my weight, and I made her slide around me. Did it matter if I threw them off the path? Perhaps; she stepped back and we bowed.

I went further, and the smell struck me again, stronger; this time it made me a touch light-headed. I fought it, shaking my head hard. People were following, walking along with me; as I shook, there was a laugh. They were expecting that… I looked ahead, and shark-skin armour was suddenly in my mind, then the sense of shark in general. He will fight that style, I thought, as the man before me came in, as aggressively as I usually did myself. He was not pulling his blows at all.

Then I should not pull mine? Would it not be a problem if I hurt one of them badly—or they did me, for that matter? Thinking too much, I evaded a kick that was like a bite, aimed for my guts, by a hair. I would make rules for myself at least, I decided, and pulled the knife hand I got on his temple so that it just staggered him instead of laying him out. He straightened and shook it off, but stepped back and bowed.

But if my head doesn’t clear, if whatever I’m feeling gets worse, will I be able to pull well enough? No matter with the next one—I got a flash of a huge creature with tentacles, an octopus or a squid, and felt a woman bigger than me, trying to seize me in her arms, which were very strong, the moment we closed. Is it not affecting them? She had me around the shoulders, but too high; I got my hands on her thigh—a woman does not have sucker-cups on her leg, like on a tentacle, I am imagining them—lifted her up by it as well as her own hold on me, and flung her off the path into the sand.

I’d broken a sweat now. I shook it off, and the world spun from the motion of my head. I wanted her, I realized; I wanted the shark-man, too. I took a deep breath and tightened my thoughts with will, as I would do after taking a head-blow. It was the big man now. Boar; he does not just look like one; he is one in spirit. He charged me, very low for one so large, letting out an unearthly squealing war-cry.

Sheer strength. I didn’t doubt for a moment he could get me up onto his shoulder with one arm, throw me with ease with two. The moment he got under me, it was over; even if I got a grip on him, he need only walk off the path carrying me, and I was off it. I spun aside from his charge; if I tried to take it straight on I’d be knocked flying. He charged again, this time with his arms wide, so I dropped to my hands and toes under him, then came up hard under thighs, so he was flung feet over head. He sprang up and came right at me again, too low for that so I dived over his back and rolled back up onto my feet, still on the path, making several people cry out in amazement; Boar himself laughed. Now he hesitated, bristling and snarling again, but not sure what to do, so coming in slow. Not the right spirit; I did a two-step charge and stunned him with a temple-blow before he could get his hands on me, and he made his concession.

My body’s mind is clear, I thought; it’s my thoughts that aren’t. My head was filled with that smell, now; it was stronger the closer to the cave I got. What is coming at me—did I take a wrong turn and end up in the sea? It was like a dream; I tried to shake my eyes clear. There was a standing sea-wave in the path, deep blue at its base, pale at its top, just beginning to curl over. I saw no person in it, to fight like a person. I closed my eyes, and it was no different.

Take it as if it is indeed a wave. I had learned how to maintain my balance even with big ones on Haiu Menshir, one hand forward, one hand back, a little jump and don’t let feeling the immensity of its force scare me, don’t lose my feet or it will wash me under and grind me rolling against the sand all the way up the beach…

I would swear water, warm and salty, crashed over me, pulling at my body all over, an undertow dragging the other way at my legs so I had to root them to the earth in my mind. But then it was past, and I was dry except for sweat, and I was aware, though I did not seem him or her, of someone bowing to me. I bowed back.

How many more? I was not tired, but I felt as if I could be still I would have visions; they were poking me from the back of my mind already, Niah things, of salt and sea and wind, of bright flowers and flashing fish. I was only a few steps from the cave door, now, the sounds somehow deafening. I took a long deep breath, down to the pit of my lungs. One more, I sensed. The A-niah crowd went very quiet.

A breeze touched my face; then it grew to a fair wind, then a stiff one, then it was thundering in my ears and whipping my hair as if I were in a storm. It will knock me over if it keeps strengthening; I dropped very low and wide. No… be a wing. As the sun had set again and so Niku had known it was time to come down, she had put us into a dive like a hawk’s spotting prey, making the wind scream through the wires and rip at our faces and hair; I’d had to close my eyes. But it did not throw us back or tear us apart because we were cutting through it. I leaned forward and flung out my arms, hardening my hands flat like wingtips, stretching my fingers. By angling them down, as Niku had angled the wing, I could use the wind to help keep me on the path instead of blowing me off.

Now, distantly, I heard the A-niah cheering. The gale was suddenly gone, almost pitching me forward, and I saw who was there. It was the Oracle, sitting on the ground beside the mouth of the cave. She bowed her head, I returned it, and she beckoned me with her hand to go in.

“Omores!” Niku ran up behind me. “You have to leave your loincloth here… go in, lie down and talk to the Gods. If They speak to you, come to the door again—there are two hand-holds, worn from people doing this, where you put your hands—and tell us what They said.”

I went in.

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