“War!”
“The Gracious One has promised them a very fierce, unstoppable animal to assist them in their battles. This animal will be born from the women of Asenagi and nurtured by the Asenagi themselves. The animal will fight beside the warriors and will carry the souls of warriors killed in battle directly to … well, one assumes Valhalla.” She stared out again at the sea. I saw her eyes were wet. “A tempting tale, tailor-made for the Asenagi culture.”
“As Lutha once said, it is disgusted with us. I wonder if any of us will manage to choose aright.”
“We will try,” she replied. “We will do our best.”
She kissed me and left me then, alone as I had been before the outlanders came. Later, I saw both her and Leelson being lifted up into the ship that would take them back to Central. He was very pale and focused looking, very set upon his task, his duty, his enormous and quite terrible responsibility. Being a Fastigat, he assumed it was not beyond his capabilities.
And I? I gritted my teeth and set my feet upon the path of righteousness.
Thus was the loom rethreaded.
Thus was the pattern determined.
Thus the shuttle wove.
Dawn on Dinadh.
Deep in the canyonlands shadow lies thickly layered as fruit-tree leaves in autumn. High on the walls the sun paints stripes of copper and gold, ruby and amber, the stones glowing as though from a forge, hammered here and there into mighty arches above our caves. Beneath those arches, the hives spread fragrant smoke, speak a tumult of little drums, breathe the sound of bone flutes. Above all, well schooled, the voice of Shalumn, songmother, soars like a crying bird:
“The Daylight Woman, see how she advances, she of the flowing garments, she of the golden skin and shining eye … ”
Years have come and gone since Perdur Alas. I speak often now with Daylight Woman, the Revealer, and with her companion, Behemoth, guardian of all-living. I revere them as I do Weaving Woman and Brother and Sister Rain and the Sisters of Soil. Each morning as my friend Shalumn sings the welcome to day, I pray: Oh, Great and Gracious Ones, see the choice we have made; do not destroy us but keep us in righteousness. Dinadh shall become as a paradise; and we will share it and treasure it as is your will.
Each morning before first light, songmother comes to the lip of our cave, raising her voice when the sun touches the rimrock above. Each morning I stand behind her among the sisterhood, they with their faces exposed that all may see the ugliness that comes from seeking more and longer human life at the expense of life itself. Behind us are the other inhabitants of the hive, all joining the song, all hearing the great warp and woof of sound that follows Daylight Woman’s eternal march westward. Dawnsong still circles our world endlessly, like the belt that runs from the treadle to the wheel. So much is as before.
Other things are changed. Both Mother Darkness and Father Endless are with us again. They are welcomed with dancing each evening when Daylight Woman departs. Though it is the nature of children to fear the darkness, adults know there can be no light without it. Hah-Hallach and his brethren have been deposed, not for listening to the tempter—for any creature might do that—but for lying to their people after they knew the truth. We have songparents now, mothers and fathers both, as we did on beloved Breadh.
This morning, when the dawnsong is over, Shalumn and I will go to the House Without a Name. In our hive an old woman named H’Nhan died some time ago, leaving an empty place in the pattern. Now a new H’Nhan may be born, to fill that place, and a certain woman has been given the privilege of bearing that child. Today she will lie upon the table, imagining the terror of those who once lay there. There are no Kachis now. The songparents teach that the Kachis were our punishment, but thinking creatures may choose repentance and restitution instead. Now, instead of Kachis we have the reanimated ones from the files on Central: fish and otter; eagle and squirrel; fox and mouse; all manner of creatures to be woven together with us.