Better that than be a dutiful wife to the Shepherd, like Swill-Conception and Nightsoil, now known as Assumpta. Wives of the Shepherd, though they were no older than children, were given adult names, usually related to the Teaching.
Assumpta, once a rosy-cheeked, titian-haired angel of a girl, full of childish agility and grace, was now old at thirteen. She had lost four children to a bleeding disease and had been beaten after losing each one. She no longer walked very well.
Conception, on the other hand, was still barren at fifteen, and she was beaten for that, as well. Their own mother, Ascencion, was another of the wives, and supervised the beatings herself.
Goat-dung’s mother had also been the Shepherd’s wife, although Goat-dung was not one of his own lambs. One reason she was so wicked, the others told her, was that her parents had been outsiders. She had been too small when her mother died to realize it, but it was said that her mother had been an extremely unrepentant outsider who had not wanted to be the Shepherd’s wife and had been prevailed upon to accept the blessings of union with him only through the firm kindliness of the flock. No one among them had met Goat-dung’s father, who had died in ignorance and error and slavery to the Great Monster.
Goat-dung ran and ran, splashing through slush, hot with her effort as long as light remained in the sky, then ran to keep from freezing as the night swallowed the planet. The moons came up and she stumbled on by their light. She ran on and on, down and down, as if into another Vale. Looking back, by the moonlight, she saw the peaks of the mountains behind and above her: the monster’s back, its snout, its teeth.
She dragged herself farther. Down here the slush gave way to mud in places, and a stream ribboning down the mountain steamed just as the water in the valley floor did. As she drew near it, it gave forth warmth, and when she touched it, it was as hot as if it had been heated in a pan and only cooled slightly.
She eased her way into it. It was deeper than it looked and had quite a current. It buffeted her along, lapping her with warmth, until it ran into a kind of tunnel, carrying her with it.
She was too tired, too full of lassitude from the water, to avoid being swept into the side of the mountain, and remembered, just before she hit her head on a rock and all became blackness, that the Shepherd taught that this was the very sort of place never to be caught.
Chapter 2
“Well?” Bunny Rourke asked breathlessly as the elders and the company friends of the Petaybeans filed out of the building. She handed the reins of the curlies to each rider. “How’d it go?”
Clodagh shrugged. “Like usual. They pretended we weren’t there, and if we were, that we’d nothin’ sensible to say. They’re sendin’ down more investigators.”
Yana sighed. She’d known it wouldn’t be easy, but something else was disturbing her. As they rode back through the woods to Kilcoole, she asked, “I don’t get it. Torkel was with us. He felt the planet, too. He knows about it. If he had really rejected it, he’d be like Frank Metaxos was.”
“Denial,” Diego said, drawing on his own counseling experience. “He knows, okay, he just can’t stand to admit it. He’s not a complete creep, after all. You and he used to be friends, didn’t you, Yana?”
“Friendly, at least,” Yana said. “Or I thought so. But he’s been so unreasonable …”
“Maybe irrational’s a better word,” Sean said. “He might not have had the reaction Frank did, but it strikes me that Fiske isn’t sledding on both runners anymore, if he ever was. Maybe his unwilling contact with the planet has done him more harm than shows on the surface.”
“At least it’s that lady coming to investigate,” Moira Rourke said with some relief.
“Yes, but I don’t like the look of that bald fella,” Clodagh said.
“Nor do I,” Yana agreed. “At the risk of sounding like the conspirator Torkel thinks me to be, I suggest that all of you avoid any direct contact with Luzon and save your explanations strictly for Madame Marmion. He is known to … twist … anything he’s told.”