(Part 2 of a story begun last issue)
I knew Limina as a girl before she turned priestess. We used to play together as children in Atsomouri village on the south coast, and I was even her sweetheart for a year.
When I think of Limina, I remember the last sea-giving celebrated in our village. At the sea-giving in the year when the Orthoni came, Limina chose me late in the evening to take her to the sea. I had already given seed twice by then, but she was my sweetheart and my heart was full for her. But Limina, who had been quarreling with her friends, went to the sea with me alone, as if she were a man, choosing no one else. She stopped in the shallow water, and instead of lying down as was customary, told me to kneel before her and apply my tongue to her sacred parts.
I said what we both knew, that such was not a permitted kind of wave caress, but she tossed her long hair and said the sea-mother would permit it, and she pushed me down. I did what she asked as she stood in the shallows with her legs apart. In spite of my reluctance, I remember how the waves lapping at me behind and the taste and smell of her sacred parts drew me almost at once into a kind of trance where I felt closer to sea-mother even than in my own shining moments.
Of course, a keeper soon approached and told us to leave the water, but Limina said let us be, that sea-mother was making an exception for her pleasure. And indeed, her pleasure was clearly growing. Then another keeper, a big woman with little humor, waded out saying that any who refused to heed the sacred law must leave the celebration.
But as she grabbed the girl in her large hands, Limina lifted out of time and broke free of the keeper's grasp in her ecstasy. Rushing into the water, she swam like a dolphin away from shore. We heard her voice a minute later from far out, calling back that such interference with the sea-mother's pleasure would carry a heavy price for our village. To say such a thing was a bad omen at best, but we had little idea how true her words would be.
When Limina didn't return that night nor the next day, we feared she'd drowned, until in the brilliant morning sunshine of the second day she appeared from the east naked, carrying a long white driftwood staff. Many of us rushed out to greet her and ask what had happened, for in spite of her moods and hot temper, she was loved for her beauty and passionate convictions. Ignoring everyone, she strode through the village to her parents' house without speaking or smiling or meeting our eyes. I remember the pain I felt as I stood before her with my arms outstretched and she walked around me with no more recognition than she would have given a rock in her path.
All that spring and early summer, neither her parents' initial anger nor their growing concern, nor the admonitions and threats of the keepers could induce her to rejoin village life. I myself received a harsh thrashing from my father for my part in the outrage and had to undergo three days of fasting with the keepers, all of which was quickly over, but Limina remained silent and defiant in her parents' house week after week, never coming out, only speaking when her mother or one of the other keepers tried to threaten or cajole her, and then only with bitter, contemptuous words.
At length, as summer began, my father took me aside to tell me in secret that the keepers might banish Limina because they felt her shadow was poisoning the village. Father feared that I might try to interfere or go with her, since I was her sweetheart and there had even been whispers we would marry. I was indeed upset and did consider joining Limina in exile, even knowing that such a decision could easily result in slavery or death, but the fates spun differently.
We had heard of fighting north of the hills, but never guessed it might come to us, so when the Orthoni soldiers marched into our village one morning, we had no idea what their presence might mean. It seemed at first like a grand occasion, and we gathered to watch the grim men with their shining helms and the three priestesses of Acata bedecked in brilliant silk and gold and jewels. Many of us had never seen anything like it.
At first the priestesses seemed friendly enough, but at once they occupied the largest house in the village and began to interview the keepers one by one. Few keepers departed that meeting happy. The priestesses must have learned of Limina, because she too was brought before them and questioned for a long time, then taken away under guard with her hands tied. Who knows what they did with her, but many of us heard screams throughout the night.
The next day at midmorning all were summoned to the village square. I remember looking around as I stood waiting there with my parents, and noticing that people were missing, including Paron, my friend the warrior.
The eldest of the priestesses stepped forward after a time and announced that a wondrous feast would be held that evening to introduce us to Acata's ways. In the meantime, she said, it was time to purify a defiled woman into the goddess' service.
The other two priestesses led Limina out of the large house. She was naked and her body covered with bloody welts, her eyes were sunken, and she wore a haunting expression of despair, but she walked between them with dignity, unbound. They brought her to the elder priestess, who spoke quietly with her for a time. One of the priestesses gave her a cup, and she drank.
As we watched in silence, the soldiers brought out a large table and they tied her onto it facing the sky with her legs spread wide. The elder priestess called on us now to witness the rightful agony that was Acata's pleasure.
At first, this agony did not seem severe. The priestesses walked around Limina chanting in the old language of the North and striking her gently on the breasts, stomach, thighs and sacred parts with flails of soft leather. Although she flinched at some of the blows, in time her moans seemed more from pleasure-passion than from pain. After a long while, the priestesses laid down their flails, and one began to caress Limina's sacred parts, as if to lift her out of time.
But now another priestess took up a stone knife and drew its terrible sharpness down her body in a snake's path from breast to knee, opening a shallow cut from which blood welled. Limina cried out, but the priestess traced another obsidian cut on the other side and then another and another. Meanwhile, the elder priestess carried forward a bowl and lifted from it with tongs what I thought was a linen rag, which she draped over Limina's breast. When the girl shrieked piteously and thrashed, I realized in horror that the pale blob was a stinging jellyfish. The priestess who had been cutting held it in place with a cloth, and then held another over the other nipple as well. Finally, the priestess who had been caressing Limina's sacred parts applied to them a stinging jelly fish as well. The girl's screams tore at our minds as she writhed against the ropes that held her and blood forced from her wounds ran over the table.
After far too long, the elder priestess gave a sign for the jellyfish to be removed, and the priestesses applied some salve that quieted Limina's hoarse cries. The elder priestess then announced that Acata had accepted Limina as her servant, and told us to return to our homes and meditate on what we had seen until the evening's feast.
It was with heavy hearts that we left the square, and with fear that we gathered there again as the sun was leaving the sky. The soldiers lined us up, and after a time conducted us down to the beach in single file.
The soldiers had spent the day tearing down an old house by the shore and piling up the wood on the beach for a bonfire larger than any we had ever made. They had set four great posts in the sand at four corners around the pyre, and we were led in procession past these posts in a spiral towards the center. At three of the posts stood the three priestesses of Acata, and at the fourth, by the edge of the sea, stood Limina, pale but strong, now arrayed like them in silk, gold and jewels.
I could see, looking forward, that as each person passed one of the priestesses, she placed in their hands a short length of rope with a loop at both ends. The next priestess placed the larger of these loops over the person's head, and the third pulled it snug. What game they intended to play with us, I could not imagine. I also noticed that one of the priestesses had drawn a young man out of the line, perhaps for some infraction. As I watched, the soldiers removed his tunic and bound his hands above his head to the wooden post beside which the priestess stood. Next they bound his feet, and finally tied him around his waist. I saw another priestess remove another friend of mine from the line, and in the same way the soldiers stripped him and bound him to the post beside her.
Then I found myself, with a rope round my neck, approaching Limina. She made a gesture to the soldiers standing next to her and I was pulled from the line and the rope removed. I soon found myself bound naked like the others to the post next to Limina. I started to speak, but a soldier cuffed me, and she did not even glance in my direction. Looking at the intense emptiness of her expression, I realized I no longer knew her -- this was a person I'd never met. Then a soldier pushed a cup to my lips and forced me to drink. The liquid had a sickly sweetness and must have been a drug, for soon after that, everything began to become distant, as if it were happening to someone else.
If you've grown up in the ways of the Orthoni, you know the ritual that was soon to begin, but few of us had the slightest idea how Acata is served. When the whole village, perhaps sixty people in all with the children, were gathered in a circle around the great pile of wood, the eldest priestess walked silently before us, looking each person in the face. She broke from the circle to approach Limina. "This is the one?" she asked, pointing at me. Limina nodded yes without speaking. The priestess held her chin and looked in her eyes. "You have made your choice?" Again Limina nodded. "Good." The priestess returned to the circle and continued her round.
When she had come again to the post where she began, she spoke to us in a loud voice, saying how fortunate we were to meet the great goddess for the first time that night. Your excitement, she said, will warm her, and your antics will no doubt amuse her. You should prepare yourselves, she said, for a feast far beyond any you have ever attended.
As she spoke I noticed a line of soldiers had now entered the circle carrying a long anchor line in their hands. Circling on the inside, they seemed to be stringing the line through the loops of the short ropes around people's necks. The priestess continued to praise Acata's beneficence as the soldiers continued round the circle and out the other side. Now a single line joins you, she told us, in a bond symbolic of your interdependence, of your common destiny.
Then all the priestesses chanted in their old language, and several soldiers came forward to light the bonfire. It was then that the elder priestess explained that four men of the village would not be permitted to honor the goddess tonight because they had been chosen to serve her priestesses instead. The ceremony would start, she said, by preparing them for this role.
Limina turned and took from a soldier standing near her a silken cord. She came over to me and I felt her gather my sacred balls in her hand. Standing back, she stretched them away from my body so that all could see them, then stood before me, looking me in the eye for the first time.
"Farewell," I heard her whisper softly. "I leave you what I can." As she spoke, she slipped one of them back into my body before beginning to wind the cord tightly around my sack. I began to understand dimly with a remote horror what was about to happen. Having tied the cord tightly, she reached behind her without releasing me, and the soldier came forward to put an obsidian knife in her hand. Not taking her eyes from mine, she brought her hand down and I felt a searing pain I cannot forget. She held up before me a bloody lump, held it high so all the priestesses could see, then turned and threw it in the sea.
"No," cried the elder priestess, but too late.
"Acata spits in the sea," said Limina in a calm strong voice that carried over the crackling of the growing flames. "My servant is prepared."
The bonfire wood must have been coated with pitch, because the flames were already ten feet high, and even in my drugged pain I could feel the heat.
"Great Lady," I dimly heard the priestess cry, "Accept now our offering! Aid us, bring us victory, and we shall honor you thus a thousand times over!" Her voice, however, was drowned out by screams, and I opened my eyes to see my people being pulled toward the flames. Outside the circle, the soldiers were drawing the great noose they had made with the anchor line tighter, dragging the whole village inexorably closer to the roaring fire.
In panic many were struggling to remove the ropes from their necks, but the knots were tight and the heat so intense that they quickly lost control. One young girl did succeed in slipping her noose, but three soldiers grabbed her and threw her bodily into the fire.
Thus in my pain and loss I saw everyone dear to me die in agony, while the priestesses beside their writhing servants watched with fierce satisfaction. I could not keep looking though I can still see details of that scene today, but Limina never blinked or turned her eyes away, though tears ran down her cheeks. She looked over at me once toward the end, with a fury in her eyes so cold and murderous that I began to understand what the Orthoni had called up. Many learned to regret it over the years.
Mercifully, the spectacle did not go on for hours as at the high temple -- the fire was too hot, and the common soldiers had no stomach for it. When the screaming had ceased and nothing moved in the heat but the flames, the priestesses intoned some further chants, then led Limina away.
A few soldiers were left on guard, while we four ruined youths hung in painful vigil over the embers of our world and a smoke thick with the smell of roasting.
In the small hours of the morning, a hand slipped over my mouth and a familiar voice hissed in my ear. It was Paron, come out of the sea behind me. The ropes binding me parted silently, but I could no longer stand. He caught me easily over his shoulder and slipped back into the waves. I remember little after that except the cold of the water that seemed after a while warmer, and the feeling that my life was dissolving and washing away.
Paron took me to a cave down the coast to which a handful of our villagers had fled the night before. We soon traveled further eastward and then north into the hills to a shepherd's hut. Paron stayed with me for a week or so until I could walk normally, but the other folk soon scattered to seek new lives as best they could. Eventually, I made my way down the coast to Ozakros, and there a friend of Paron put me on a ship to Egypt, where I became a trader and fortune favored me far beyond what I deserve.
Why am I telling you this? Because these memories have given me no peace, though decades have passed and some of my grandchildren now have children. Finally this spring, my dear wife having gone before and my affairs being in order, I returned to Orthoni lands in secret, and last week made my way to the high temple in the guise of a beggar. There, in a loud voice, I demanded to be brought before Limina. Limina, whose very name is used to terrify little children, Limina, exalted high priestess of Acata, scourge of the Orthoni princes for almost fifty years, whose rivals and enemies have died in ways no one will speak of.
At my continued demands, the priestesses grew pale, but like a crazy old man, I would not be put off. At length they bound me and led me deep beneath the temple to a small dark room where a single small lamp smoked and guttered. Shackling me to the wall, they departed.
Hours passed, and I began to think I had consigned myself to rot forgotten in this dungeon, when an old woman in dirty robes appeared. "You seek death, old man?" she wheezed.
"No," I told her, "I have come with a message to the great high priestess Limina from one who passed before her long ago."
"Limina!" she said, "oh, what a foolish errand that is. Limina will not remember, she remembers none who've passed before her in Acata's service. Limina is empty as a desert wind and you shall die in vain."
"Ask her one thing," I said with a shaking voice, "so that at least I die knowing she does not remember. Ask her whether she took half of me to save my life. Ask her if what she took she gave as an offering."
The old woman then held the lamp up and peered at me with rheumy eyes. "So it is you," she said finally, but I still saw nothing in her ravaged face of the Limina I remembered. Then she twisted her mouth, and in that expression I recognized her.
We looked at one another for a long time without speaking, assaying each other with eyes that had long since learned how to see. I think she was looking for hate, bitterness or judgment in me, and I sought madness in her, but I think neither of us found what we expected.
At length, without a word, she set down the lamp and departed. After a time, I heard her slow step returning. She released me from the shackles then and taking my hand pressed into it a rough, cool stone. "This is the diamond of King Tamman," she said. "Acata's armies took it years ago, and the arrogant Prince Aldor recently bartered it to the goddess for the death of his children. It will buy you a kingdom, if you wish." She looked in my eyes again. "It is all I have to offer," she whispered.
I returned her gaze, thinking on our childhoods. "Then I shall give it to sea-mother in your behalf," I told her. Her expression did not change, but there were tears in her eyes for a second, I swear.
She turned and departed once again into the darkness without speaking further, leaving me standing in the little room. Eventually a young priestess came and showed me out.
I crossed the hills in my ragged clothes, tossing the diamond from hand to hand in the sunlight. The air was hot and sweet, flowers were in bloom all over the hills, and in spite of my old joints the journey brought me joy.
In late afternoon on the third day I came to what had been the village of Atsomouri, now deserted but for a few fishing family from the west. I walked down to the beach, long since washed clean of the blackened cinders of our destruction.
After weeping for a while, and giving myself to the mother's arms, I stood in the waves with my heart open and threw the pretty stone as far as I could. I watched it disappear like any other in the glare of the setting sun: a thing given, a thing changed, a thing returned, while moon-daughter's pale womb was perfectly empty in the sky above.