Donald Kingsbury - Courtship Rite

The game leads to frequent impasse conditions which can only be broken if a tenant violates the rules of his clan. To do so he loses kalothi. At the onset of each Culling Condition the tenant with the lowest kalothi is removed from the territory. A player must violate rules, but he must not do so often, and he must be careful about which rules he chooses to violate.

Strategically any clan may achieve domination over another clan or free itself from domination. A clan which is not the subject of control by any other clan is called a priest clan. The object of the game is to unite the board under the command of one priest clan.

Legend attributed the origin of kol to the need for an intelligence test to select those worthy enough to feed their brethren. In starvation times, where temple kalothi records were unavailable, kolgame tournaments were still held, losers donating their bodies for the survival of the others.

The dawn found Teenae crouched with her chin on one knee, in the shadow of the naked Ivieth, playing with such intensity that she scarcely noticed the waking of the camp, or the fires that heated the broth, or Joesai when he came up behind her, soaping the centerline of her scalp and shaving it so that she would be presentable for their entrance into Sorrow that day.

Teenae won. Yelping, she hugged the Ivieth warmly. If you wanted Teenae to hug you, you had to lose to her at kolgame. She was a sore loser. Joesai had her robes out and patiently dressed her, trying this and that for effect, aided by the good-hearted comments of the company. And so the expedition, which had been waiting, got under way.

The salty sea wind was breathtaking as it blew in from the ocean below the hills. She was awed. She had never seen the sea before. The village clustered small about one crooked inlet. Its magnificent temple seemed to be a she-magician who had shrunk the village spires and buildings into a dull city about herself. Teenae was pleased to ride into town beautifully robed in a decorated palanquin carried across the shoulders of a superbly muscled Ivieth couple, Joesai on foot beside her.

“Stay by me,” she whispered. She glanced around curiously for danger but found none, only seamen and merchants and Ivieth pulling wagons of farm produce.

The “goldsmith” and his wife were elaborately welcomed at an inn overlooking the pier and provided rooms with a view of the village. The stone walls of their apartment were hung with old tapestries of men laughing at family Funeral Feasts. Once their belongings were hung away, the innkeeper personally bathed them in the scented waters of his public bath and insisted on serving them their first meal in his kitchen. They ate well, for it was not a famine year — breads and brown sea rice and okra croquettes flavored with profane spices. He brought them the most delicious honeyed bee crisps Teenae had ever tasted.

Fifteen of Joesai’s band trickled in, one this day, two the next, some by land, some by sea, busying themselves learning about the village of Sorrow. A “tailor” talked with tailors. A young “Clei” woman took on writing contracts. A “stone mason” asked after the new road work. A “merchant” hurried through town looking for a house to rent. A “sailor” gossiped among the import-export traders. The “goldsmith” and his woman studied pencrafted copies of books by the Gentle Heretic, seeking contradictions in her reasoning by which she might be trapped. He sold gold and brought the gossip back to his wife.

Unobtrusive, but everywhere, was the Scar of the Heresy — a stem with its four wheat kernels each ending in a long fiber. A woman would have it tattooed between her breasts or it would be formed into the margin of a tailor’s sign or be embroidered upon a tattered coat. Once Teenae saw a child carving it slowly into another child’s arm, his lip tight in concentration. Its message was constant: do not eat those weaker than yourself, do not eat the malformed child, the noseless criminal, the cripple, the feeble minded, the wandering madman, the blind, the incompetent.

“It’s always been that way,” Joesai grumbled. “We’re a generous people. We’ve always been willing to fatten the feeble minded — when the harvest is good.” He quoted a cynical proverb, “A prosperous Getan will fill you with joy; in hard times, he will suck the joy from your marrow.”

“Why are we so harsh?” asked Teenae, moved by some of the things Oelita had written.

“It’s a harsh world.”

“It’s our duty to make it a less harsh world. We’re Kaiel !”

“Yes, my little o’Tghalie imp!” He roared with laughter. And then added as an afterthought, thinking of his childhood, “Only the harsh survive.”

“This Oelita is not harsh. She is strong. She believes that teams working together can make harshness unnecessary through the power of cooperation.”

Joesai strode across the room to the tankard in dismissal. Ferment refilled his blown-glass cup. For a while he stared at the feasting mourners on the tapestry. A child, crouched in a corner, was gnawing the meat off his grandfather’s ribs. A son had his hand on the buttocks of a red-cheeked young flirt. Two men in animated conversation were stuffing themselves with bread pie and sausage, discussing… philosophy? the price of bricks? Joesai peered through the liquid to the bottom of the green cup. “God has gone to great lengths to tell us that there is no escape from harshness.” He turned to Teenae, almost savagely. “Why did He bring us here if not to teach us that?”

“Maybe to teach us that no matter where we are, there is hope!”

“Hope. Ah, yes. Hope is the irrepressible heresy.”

“This woman will bring hope; even to you, Joesai.”

“Soon, then. My boy Eiemeni has found her.”

Teenae’s breath froze. “Is she dead?”

He laughed. “Ho. The Death Rite does not start with death. And it does not always end with death. If it always ended with death, the Rite would be pointless.”

“What have you done to her?”

He shrugged. “Nothing. We have not yet set the trap.”

OELITA WATCHED THE GLASSBLOWER. Lazily the glass flowed and grew on the end of his pipe. Suddenly he would attack it and pull or whack the slick mass to the shape he wanted. He peered into the blazing kiln and readjusted the band around his wet forehead. In three days he had nearly replenished Nonoep’s store of glassware and was ready to move on.

She was pumping him for gossip about the local temples so while he worked he told her of the young boy who had been carried in an iron-reed basket to Remiss to have his nose cut off. He recounted the tribulations of the wives of one Mirandie who supplied the lead oxide for his clear glass. “But the Stgal!” she insisted. “You must have timely stories of the Stgal! You work for them!”

The man laughed as sweat rolled down the valleys of his scars. “The Stgal do not talk to glassblowers! They plot behind brass doors. Now if I heard a tale, it would be a lie put out to titillate the masses.”