The Totem-Maker (part forty-eight)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Six

A First Road

(part forty-eight)

A thousand trials…

And would Raven not be turned many times, so surely once, in the First Hour of the Sun? I had twenty-four tiles, I drew twelve for this game. Raven was destined to come by day or night…if I cast for only brighter fortunes, I would soon know.

I thought of the other pouch in my basket, the glass men of the War-Maker’s Game. Of what Stol had told me, its masters dreaming the math of it, trance-walking their lives while each piece was moved to all places, a layer in a stack four hundred high…

No. Four hundred times some number I could not guess.

My own games were not pure. The mechanical intervened; I could finger the impurities of the tiles, the bubbles of glaze, the chipped edges. I could cheat, push off disquietude, disappoint Lotoq. He would take his hand from me, and my enemies would know it.

Who were they, my enemies…?

Jealousy. If I had courage, I would find them in the sixth hour, where fortunes have climbed their highest. Beyond is ebbing, then sleep, until the thousand-years’ rebirth.

“Salo-Lotoq,” I prayed. Forgive me. Make me strong tomorrow.

“Atu. Marei capeddre’yhce.”

Here was another servant, a fleece draped over her arm. I was mildly irritated. I ought to fast, having such unwonted fits…through the general’s meal, take a link of my gold to Lotoq’s temple.

When our prayers are led by priests, we answer the call of Salo-Lotoq: In mercy, accept me before You. She had echoed my words with this. “There is,” I said to her, “a temple nearby, dedicated to the Giver?”

Like many, she took my friendly address, my unsurprise at her, for dispositions of holiness. She made the sign, and knelt. “Only his priests go.”

“I may go.”

Jute arrived with my dinner garment, and set up a scolding of this woman. I caught her name, Dessa Lom. I caught that her place was in the kitchens; she had transgressed to speak to me.

“Dessa Lom, remain. The god wills it, Jute. If truly she were not meant to leave her place, she would be there yet. You may stay or go.”

Jute made a face, and backed from the room.

Dessa crept in, half a crouch that gave way to a burst of motion. She unrolled the fleece on my table. A wonderful crafting of beads, of bright-hued threads, of crested heads of an iridescent lizard, the sahreik, that we dried in the sun to make brilliant, and that were coveted against death on the road…all these, and more my glance would not discover, woven in an old woman’s tapestry. Matriarchs of families too poor to possess gold gathered stones and shells, polished and shaped them, sewed them, along with many things of beauty given our earth by the gods.

52

A First Road

The Totem-Maker (part forty-nine)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)