The Blood-Rage (39) The four of them followed, and Darkcian noticed that Patra walked as though her legs had turned to wood. When they reached the council, the members in front of the Kalts moved aside to let them proceed to the center of the circle. There they stopped, facing Shara, and the circle of warriors closed in behind them. The council was formed again. Darkcian saw that Patra was terrified. Her shoulders were pulled in as if someone was beating her on the back. "We have decided," Shara stated without preamble. "But it was not an easy verdict. Yet, except for one warrior, it was unanimous." Darkcian turned quickly and looked into Sulamith's deep blue eyes. He knew then. He turned back slowly, hearing Shara say, "We find the warrior, Darkcian, guilty of having a genetically transmissible weakness. But that's secondary to the fact that he's an alien and must be destroyed. He is doubly damned. However, we feel that his alien-ness is of a greater danger to Agon than finding out what took his memory. We reasoned thus because most of us have agreed that his memory was probably taken off world; and, therefore, how it happened isn't important and presents no real danger to Agon. We are isolated from the rest of the galaxy. Further, we reject all of his suggestions, particularly the one pertaining to the blood-rage problem, and hereby put an order-of-silence on all who even heard his words on the subject. By penalty of death, no one will speak of it again. We of the council have spoken." She raised her left fist and droned, "May those of Agon live long and grow in strength." Gravestone and Patra stood stunned. Darkcian kept his face expressionless and noticed that Erendria did also. "Who'll kill him," Erendria asked. "You have the honor," Shara replied. She pointed anti- poleward. "There, near the cliff, is a large mound of dirt almost black with the blood of those who have in the past bowed their heads to the earth. We call this place the Black Hill. There, upon the morrow, he'll kneel before you and give his blood to Agon." Erendria bowed to the older woman and said, "The wish of Agon is my wish. It shall be done." But Darkcian noticed that her face did not reflect the joy he thought it would. "There's one more stipulation that the council puts upon his execution," Shara pointed out. "His teachers of the last sixty turns must also stab their weapons into his body as a coup de grace. By this symbolic gesture, they'll prove to us that they approve and abide by our decision." Gravestone's face turned ashen. "I'm appalled at your rejection of fairness. You ask too much of me. He's my adopted son." Patra concurred. "I won't do it. Justice hasn't been served here. Only a cover-up of ignorance fueled by fear has been accomplished this sad day. For the first time in my life, I'm ashamed to be an Agonian." Shara scolded, "You forget yourselves. You both swore to abide by our decision. When you swear to others, honor demands that you agree to do what you promised. I'm well aware that you, Gravestone, were a past hero of one of Agon's hunts. You must live up to that. Honor follows one; it cannot be discarded." Gravestone was becoming visibly excited. He blurted, "After that hunt, I also swore to never again kill against my own wishes. I've now decided to honor that pledge first." "Against your own wish?" Shara questioned. "The last hunt of the Wist," he snarled without seeming to think. "The female prime forced me to kill her. Never again!" "Careful," Patra warned. "Get a hold on your anger." Shara pounced. "Forced you to kill? Are you telling me you didn't leap at the honor of killing one of those demons?" "No. She was too beautiful to kill. I couldn't do it on my own. She made me do it." Some inner pain had contorted his face. "YOU!" shouted a voice behind Gravestone. Sulamith leaped for the pain-torn warrior, her hands outstretched to tear like an animal, dagger somehow forgotten. Darkcian moved quickly to intercept her about half way across the circle. He scooped her up by the waist then hugged her to him, her back to his chest, pinning her arms to her side. "YOU . . .Y-Y-YOU!" she screamed without control at the now- startled Gravestone. "It was you all along who killed my mother!" She then thrashed against her imprisonment, squirming with all her strength to break free, as if with the certainty that this would be her last struggle. And all the while, she yelled incoherently. "Mother?" Shara exclaimed, stepping forward. If ever Darkcian had seen the look of a predator before, this woman's demeanor now showed it. Patra was now looking at Sulamith also, her own trembling hand over her open mouth. "MOTHER?" Shouted Shara. Suddenly Darkcian saw the import of what had been said reach the others around the circle. Almost as one, they backed slowly away from him and the struggling Sulamith. "NO! It cannot be possible," whispered Gravestone, his face a mask of agony. "You're supposed to be dead!" Patra screamed, a long wail of anguish, and fell to her knees. "She couldn't have survived." Her voice was hardly audible. "I remember now. I left her in the sands of the great Desert-of-Grief. She was a baby, only one day old. I killed her, I killed her!" "No," Gravestone said in a whisper. His terror seemed to drain him of energy. "You left her there to die; you left her for Agon to kill." Even as he spoke, he was still looking at the struggling Sulamith, his eyes full of horror. Shara reached for the stricken Gravestone and spun him around to face her. "How could the Wist demon have a baby? She was only on Agon for a few turns. There was no report about her being large with child when we hunted her." "NO! I don't want to speak of it!" he howled suddenly. Shara gripped him with both hands and, even though he was three times her weight, shook him like a child. "You WILL speak! You will obey the leadership of Agon. Talk!" Gravestone then talked rapidly, as if to purge him of a burden too great to contain. "The Wist was on Agon for a little over nine months. I hid her near the rock monolith in the desert." He moaned in anguish. "I couldn't help it. She ruled my mind like a master to a slave. I tried to resist but couldn't. Her will burned my resolve away. She was so powerful, so powerful. And beautiful, God, she was beautiful." "All of it," Shara ordered. "She found Patra and me during the hunt. From the moment I saw her, I wasn't my own master anymore. She flooded me with a desire so great I almost died. She struck Patra with some kind of a mental command that put her in a stupor for days. In my brain she implanted commands that I couldn't disobey. I can still remember her words, cold and demanding. 'You will give me a child,' she said. 'You will love me for one moment of ecstasy and then guard my body until I give birth. If the child favors me, kill it. If it favors you, nurture it as your own. Thus, I've half a chance of defeating you Agonian bastards. I can live on through my child.' "I couldn't resist those commands. I impregnated her as ordered and lied that I'd killed her at that time and had thrown her body into the depths of one of Agon's rivers. The shame of it has haunted Patra and I since, although I think the Wist put some kind of memory block in Patra's mind, because my weapon's- complement, from then till now, never remembered putting the baby that favored the Wist on the sand to die. Instead she believed an illusion put there by that demon, an illusion that made Patra love the other product of my union with the Wist, the one that favored me, as if it was her own. From then on, Patra was confused as to the true relationship among Erendria, our first borne, and the Wist. And I couldn't bring myself to tell Patra the truth and thus add to her misery." "What do you mean by the other product?" He pressed his lips together and became silent. "The Wist demon," Shara pressed on, "did she brain-die during the coupling?" "Yes. She spoke not another word from then till her total death nine months later. She was like a dead body, except she was warm and her womb grew; and she swallowed the food that I put into her mouth. But, somehow, during the entire pregnancy, her commands given to me earlier echoed over and over in my mind, forcing me to carry out her plan." Shara frowned, obviously thinking. Suddenly she released Gravestone and turned quickly to Erendria. "You!" she bit out. "You're their daughter of twenty-one orbits. That means--" "That means they are sisters," Gravestone interrupted. His voice had an overtone of surrender in it. "The Wist female gave birth to twins, though not identical. One favored me, the other the Wist." "Oh, my God," Patra moaned. "I've lived a lie." Erendria stood looking down at her stepmother, her own face white as bleached bone. To Darkcian, the near silence that followed that revelation lasted a long time. As if dragged by a will stronger than their own, all eyes slowly turned to rivet on the diode-clothed woman locked in violent struggle. Darkcian had lifted her body off the ground, and her free legs were kicking frantically at his shins, her head whipping from side to side. "No, no, No-o-o-o!" she cried, and the lonely pain in the sound made Darkcian's mouth go dry. Suddenly she stopped her struggle. A loud sigh escaped, and she went limp, head hanging forward. "Strip that diode-cloth from her," Shara ordered sharply. Sulamith's head came up and she moaned, "Don't let them see me, touch me . . . please, p-l-e-a-s-e. Kill me but don't dishonor me this way. Hack off my head, cut my body in two, but don't expose my body to your damnable eyes. Let me go and I'll kill myself." "No," Shara said with a grimace, as if she had just discovered a bad taste in her mouth. The diode-cloth felt hot to Darkcian as it brushed his cheek. For the second time in his short life, he felt a surge of rebellion. It was like acid in his throat. Two large, muscular warriors detached themselves from the circle and cautiously approached the now still forms of Darkcian and Sulamith. Darkcian relaxed his arms, holding her against him gently. She slid downwards slowly until her feet touched the ground again. He slipped her dagger from its sheath, and broke the lanyard from it. "Step away from her," Shara commanded him in a tense voice. He did as ordered, while watching Sulamith closely. He kept all expression from his face, making it into a mask. Each option he now considered offered only death to him and his friend. It was a paralyzing dilemma, like standing on the edge of a sword over a black precipice. No place to leap; no place to stay. The two warriors then grabbed Sulamith and quickly unzipped the front of her diode-cloth. The garment slid from her body and fell at her feet. The circle of observers then gasped, and the two warriors backed away almost in panic. They fear the unknown like children, Darkcian realized. Sulamith stood with her back to him, her lustrous space- black hair hiding her from head to mid-back. The hair was so black no light escaped from it. But he could see below this black mass. And, along with her bare arms and legs, all were beautifully shaped; none was scarred. He wasn't surprised. She turned quickly to face him and quietly and calmly said, "Kill me, Dark. If our friendship means anything to you, kill me." To Darkcian, she was so beautiful that at first he just stopped breathing. Even in his wildest fantasies, he hadn't come close to dreaming of beauty as this Wist now defined it. Her skin was golden and satin-smooth. She had an intense, sensuous perfection so great that at first he just gasped, then was shocked silent in wonder. But in seconds, the continued sight of her seemed to draw hot lust from his blood, and the impact was staggering. He was suddenly trembling, inflamed with wild, crazy desire. Gods! How can anything be that beautiful? he thought. "Speak to me, my would-be-lover. Your mind is stronger than theirs. You can overcome the insanity I breed in other males." He blinked his eyes and shook his head, thinking: One dark night I kissed this incredible thing. I actually touched those lips of perfect beauty. THINK, YOU FOOL, came the inner thought of Night Mist. He let out his pent-up breath in a long sigh. "Ah, Sulamith, I didn't dream--" "Dark," she called sharply. "I need to die. They'll torture me. I want to die as a woman not as a whimpering, mindless, pain-filled animal." "Ah, Sulamith. I can't hurt you. Even to save you from a greater hurt, I cannot hurt you. I love you too much." She winched. "No, don't say the word love now, not when the end of our lives is here. Please do it. It won't hurt. One quick jab through my eye will do it. No pain, just death. Use the dagger in your hand." "I can't," he moaned. I'd sooner kill myself. He then turned toward Shara and those around her. The sight of the Wist mesmerized them all. Like him, most had never seen such overwhelming beauty. "I'll make a bargain with you, council leader." Shara snapped closed her surprised-opened mouth and glanced at him. "Bargain?" she asked. "What foolishness is this? Tomorrow you'll be a dead man. What have you to bargain with?" "How I am going to die. Kill this Wist quickly, and I'll bow my head to the earth willingly. If not, I'll make you kill me by force, and I'll take others with me, many others." "How dare you bargain with me that way? Have you no honor?" "You've declared me an alien. Why should I now honor anything Agonian?" She glared at him, her nostrils flared in anger. "You form a paradox, unclean-one. In one breath you try to bargain, in the next you deny that you will exercise honor. One depends on the other." "I honor a word given, not a custom of going into the void unresisting." Suddenly she smiled. "I agreed to your terms. We wouldn't have tortured her anyway. That's for the plains warriors who are bored and young and still trying to prove their fanaticism to the Second Law. We're more civilized here." His mouth hung open in surprise. He cursed himself and snapped it shut. "You tricked me," he accused. She scoffed. "That wasn't hard. You're a child in a man's body." "No, merely ignorant. But I'm learning fast." "When it comes time for you to die, we'll see for sure which is true. Will you die without a struggle, as you promised in ignorance? Or will you be an alien without honor, as a child of Agon is sometimes?" "As you said, we shall see." "Enough. You, you, and you," she pointed at three daggers. "Take this Wist to the other side of the city and out of the sight of the males. Tie her to a stake and post two female guards. If this Wist were a prime, we'd all be in trouble. As it is, she's still a profound danger. Look at the stupid looks on the faces of our males. They want to mate with her. Soon they may kill each other to have her. Like all Wists, her present strength lies in that insane desire she inspires in others. We must get her out of their sight. Tomorrow I'll end her life and the danger will pass." She waved her hand. "Now go." A short struggle then ensued that Sulamith lost; there were too many daggers against her. Darkcian almost lost his cool at the cruel way they tied her, but Night Mist helped him maintain his mask of neutrality. COMPUTE THE ODDS, the voice whispered into his mind. FORTY-THREE WARRIORS SURROUND YOU. WAIT, WAIT UNTIL THE ODDS BECOME REASONABLE. WAIT. Shara switched her attention to Erendria. "My orders to you stand. Tomorrow, after you kill the memory-lost one, I'll expect you to do the honorable thing with yourself. Do you understand?" Erendria nodded. To Darkcian, she looked as though she had just swallowed poison. Shara directed her attention to Gravestone and said, "Warrior, take your family and await the morrow. You've sinned against Agon beyond what anyone else has ever done. Your mate and you owe blood, the blood of your shame, the blood of your crimes. Agon has become soiled by your mere existence. May Agon give you strength to atone for it all with your lives. Tomorrow, tomorrow it will all end. Tomorrow will be a day of cleansing."
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Copyright © 1992 L Clayton Bennett |