Kate Elliott - Jaran

"What does that have to do with it?" Tess asked, annoyed because there was some long-standing enmity here that she did not understand. Kirill and Bakhtiian were only five years apart in age, yet Kirill was clearly included with the youngest men of the jahar.

"On holy ground," said Niko, "the slightest misstep or misconduct, even accidental, may bring the wrath of the gods upon you. Even the khaja know this to be true. It is desecration."

"The priests scared me enough when I was little. I'm not going near such places," Kirill said, and he grinned when Niko chuckled. "Yes, I know, and you'd advise me not to, for my own safety."

"But what would happen?" asked Tess.

"It would be sacrilege," said Niko.

Tess did not reply. The big fire burned down to coals, a dull red speckled with black.

"Kirill! Ho!" Konstans strolled up. "Think to escape from your watch, do you? Nikita sent me. You're to relieve him."

Kirill gave Tess a long-suffering look as if in apology and left.

"I thought so," muttered Yuri.

"Niko." Tess lifted her hands to blow on them and then lowered them to her lap. "It isn't only misconduct at a holy place, is it?"

His hair seemed cast of starlight, a finer light than the coarse red of flames. "Sacrilege away from holy places is limited to those few actions that are repulsive to the gods and which flout without shame their few direct prohibitions. But at a holy place, many things we do gladly in normal life are offensive to the gods."

"At all holy places?"

"Not all. Only those the gods have left quiet. The shrine of Morava, for instance, is not quiet at all, and priests live there."

"What do you mean by quiet?"

"Left to the birds and the animals."

"The birds. Niko, what happened to the three men who tried to kill Bakhtiian at Sakhalin's tribe?"

"They were left for the birds."

"Ah." Tess decided she didn't really want to know. "So some things, like the man in your tribe who killed a bird, those things are always sacrilege?"

Niko considered her. "That shocks you." He nodded. "We have a story, Tess, of a hawk that warned the first tribe of jaran, who were camped against the mountains, of an avalanche, and saved them, and so saved the people."

"That's in the tale Fedya sang about the first dyan."

"Yes. Because of that hawk, all birds, who fly above and can therefore see farther, are sacred to the gods."

"Do you believe that story?"

"My child." Someone stirred the fire, covering most of the coals, killing their light. "If the people did not believe in one way, then there would be no jaran."

Tess could find nothing to say to that. The three of them sat in silence for a time. Tess finally rose and excused herself.

Her path led her near a small fire removed from the rest of the camp. She paused in the dark beyond it. Fedya and Bakhtiian sat there together, the light on their faces, Fedya bent over his lute. As she stood silently, watching, she heard Fedya sing a line and Bakhtiian sing it back to him. And she wondered, for there was something in this music not quite like the usual songs the jaran sang by the fire at night or with their tasks during the day. And she wondered at Bakhtiian, for his bearing as he sat beside Fedya gave to the younger man the status of an elder; she had seen Bakhtiian command the respectful attention of women and men twice his age. She stood for a long time, listening to the two voices, one a high, sweet tenor, one rich and full, but she did not approach them. It was late when she went to bed.

Twelve days later they reached another holy place, the site of a crumbling temple called zhastoynaya. Tess and Bakhtiian reached it first.

"It's beautiful," said Tess.

The temple lay at the base of an escarpment. The cliffs had crumbled away here and there to obliterate much of the back half of the ruins. Behind them lay a river, shallow, sluggish, and muddy, which they had forded to reach the temple grounds. The water somehow signaled the limit of the plain, separating that mortal place from this retreat of the gods, which seemed greener, richer, quieter than the lands humans haunted. A spring bubbled from the ground in the center of the ruins and coursed down, a fluid line shot through with sunlight, to stream silver into the river and then, a meter out, mingle and lose itself in the brown waters.

They let the horses stand and wandered up through the temple. In this land where a tent was the largest shelter, the ruins-no more than three fallen buildings-seemed enormous. Most of the central columns still stood like two lines of soldiers at attention, fluted, wider at the base and top and chipped all along their length, worn away by the wind and the rain. There was no roof. Two buildings flanked the first, one a low line of stone, the other an outline of waist-high walls and stone lintels without doors.

Bakhtiian led her up to the spring and knelt beside it. The water gushed up from an invisible source, filled a stone basin to the rim, and sluiced down between parallel columns half in and half out of a stone trough that had been sunk into the ground to guide it down to the river.

"It is said that a person who drinks from this spring will gain courage and wit and the respect of those worth being respected by." He looked up at her. "Will you drink?"

She gazed at the spring: clear water, without a doubt cold and satisfying. "Who says that?"

"It is an old legend, left here by the gods."

"Then I will drink."

"Drink your fill."

The water was so cold it made her gasp; it took only a little to satisfy her. "Don't you drink, Bakhtiian?"

"Drinking once gives you the favor of the gods. Drinking twice… only a greedy man drinks twice."

They wandered down the avenue of columns and, at Tess's insistence, explored a bit more. He drew the line at climbing the cliff, so Tess climbed one of the taller walls-chest-height-and sat on it, letting her heels drum the stone as she gazed out beyond the river, watching for the arrival of the jahar. Bakhtiian leaned against the wall beside her. He took out his knife and his hands played with it absently as he, too, studied the distant swell of golden plain. A wind bent the grass tips down, sending fluid patterns of light across the land. Tess would have known this place was a temple even without being told. The touch of the gods lay on it, deep, heavy, eternal. A few birds whistled above. Insects droned dreamlike in the grass. The sun beat warmly on her face, and she sighed and closed her eyes.

And thought of the Chapalii.

"Does this temple belong to one of your gods?" she asked.

The knife lay still in his hands. "The jaran have no temples. Our gods are as restless as we are, although there is One you can petition in the dark, in the night, if you are in desperate need. But the gods have touched this place, so we honor it."

"You don't know who it was built for? Who built it?"

"Does it matter? Winds blow from all directions."

"What if it's important what direction it blows from?"

The corners of his lips twitched up. "Ah, yes. Will it be a cold wind or a warm one? Fierce or gentle?" He lapsed into Rhuian. "One that will guide a ship into port or break it on the rocks? That, of course, would be a Jedan analogy.

No. I don't know who built this place. Perhaps the khepelli do."

"That's what I'm afraid of," Tess muttered under her breath. But this place was so old, ruined-and the transmitting station was functional. She could not link the two.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I just-I would have thought that the jaran would be more-more jealous of their own gods."

He considered this a moment. "But they aren't jealous of us. When I was in Jeds, I read of a land across the seas where they worship five underground pools and think their Lady resides within. At the zhapolaya, the khepelli worshiped the stone as if their god lived there. And you spoke of a people who abstain from pleasure and fill themselves instead with their god's passion. They are all gods. That they are different, and so many, does not lessen them. I would never presume to say that my particular gods are worthy of a temple, and not any others."