The Totem-Maker (part one hundred thirty-three)

The Totem-Maker

Chapter Twelve

A Land So Perilous

(part one hundred thirty-three)

“Some have seen the dead and most have not. Most believe a plague came from the god, and they have made their altars, and they have refrained from meat and things of animals.”

“Most is a troubling word.”

“Hama, the men of our party had no cause for silence.”

“I will give you cause.” Zetihama rang, and a servant crept in. He gestured, and the servant, not containing his breathing or the small cries he uttered, took a stick and raised a cloth. Under the cloth was a box of lead.

“I had fasted for four days. For four days more I held vigil for Takel’kale. For four days more I held vigil for Allel, and for four days more I held vigil for Mafi. This was when the god spoke to me, and bade me have their bodies given him in sacrifice. Will it defile your holy place, father, my heart asked, if I command you the others? I lay prone before the altar and did not stir until the god had blessed me with the parting of the clouds. The sun struck the Cicerca. I sat then, took nothing to eat or drink, but prayed one hundred times. I fell into a trance. Morning came, and again the god blessed what he had put into my thoughts. The jewels were taken from the room of Rathinihama, and placed in this coffer. I have laid hands on it myself. The god speaks truly; he cannot speak falsely.”

They were mute, and Zetihama said to them: “A fairer vessel must be crafted, to contain this leaden one.”

“You will…” Ilota spoke. He knew himself out of turn. He had looked at his betters of the council, had seen their eyes fixed on the weavings of the mat under their feet. “Make a gift of these to the Emperor.”

These deadly stones, he thought.

“No. We will show them to the Emperor, and he will give us gold for them.”

“The Emperor,” said a man called Takel’kalem, brother of the artisan, “will put us to the torch for this.”

“Who will?”

“I allow,” Takel’kalem answered, after thought, “that we may sow confusion. That the Emperor lives in chambers with his wives and children. That, will of the gods be done, we may have time.”

By this, the council found themselves in the thick of their plot, without the stating of it in words.

A feast would again supply a first excuse, for sickness is regarded the wages of drunkenness and gluttony. They must hold off until the full of the moon, the Rainmaker’s Moon, the casks of winter wines to flow…

The ceremony would give reason for the village to buzz, if spies were curious. The ladies of Toboro must have their robes and headdresses; the men their feathered cloaks, their jeweled sheaths, the circlets for their brows.

137

Lore and Lessons

The Totem-Maker (part one)

(2018, Stephanie Foster)