“Any other questions? Good. We will discuss this further on future occasions. You are excused.”
13—At the Mercy of the Mountain
A short walk from House Genevois, the Panhagion stood on a low mound a few streets west of the river, just outside the main business district but accessible from the broad, straight length of the boulevard that connected the north and south gates of the city. A fraction of every dowry paid for a wife went to support the Panhagion. A fraction of every Consort’s pay went to support the Panhagion. Every Hag, every Hagger, every Temple worker or young married woman doing her matron’s stint of Temple duty was jealous of the honor of the Panhagion, for it was the center of religious life not only in Sendoph but in all of settled Newholme.
Most women chose to deliver their babies in the birthing center in the vaults below the Temple, where birth was considered sacramental and where the most skilled midwives were found. If some could not deliver at the Temple, at least they tried to have Temple midwives. The viral invasion of the X chromosome that killed half of all female infants on Newholme while allowing virtually all of the boy children to live was best understood by the Temple midwives.
The domed hall of the fortress became the Panhagion Sanctuary, a place for the adoration of the Hagions, the female deities. The lower levels surrounding this space and accessible from the forecourt were given over to the offices that conducted public business. In the vaults below, the Hags Observant, each of whom could count over forty years service to the Hagions, supervised the birthing suites and the secret rituals. Their lengthy lives of service were rewarded by the provision of luxurious living quarters in the towers at the back of the Temple.
Among the Hags Observant were two cousins, D’Jevier and Onsofruct Passenger, who had been born in the Temple and had, at the Hags’ order, been reared there. D’Jevier was tall and extremely slender, with tightly drawn nut-brown skin that gleamed slightly in the lamplight. Onsofruct was a year or so older, shorter, darker, and rounder. Except when bathing or sleeping, they wore what all the Hags wore: soft, long-sleeved, high-necked gowns with close-fitting wimples that hid their necks and heads and served as an anchor for the complicated folds and twists of the bright headscarves that marked their rank. The colors of their gowns betokened their lengths of service. Novices wore yellow; young women, green; middle-aged women, blue; and crones, shades of red that increased in vividness with their years. D’Jevier and Onsofruct had passed into cronehood some time since; they wore gowns and figured kerchiefs the bright crimson of fresh blood or burning coals.
The garments were so vivid that someone looking upward at the balcony where the cousins stood, high on the east side of the residence tower, might have thought the tower was on fire, a conflagration echoing that on the eastern scarp. There a crimson gash had recently appeared below a billowing eruption of ash, and this great gray cloud had opened a gaping sleeve of angry flame to stretch a cinereous arm toward Sendoph.
D’Jevier’s voice quavered as she remarked, “It’s worse than it’s ever been!” She sipped from her wineglass as she watched the smoky fist sail toward her, closer and closer, the fat, billowy fingers extending. So huge, so incorporeal, so deadly, nonetheless. Her fancied confrontation with this monster was aborted by a gust of wind that swept down the valley of the Giles, breaking the ashen cloud into scattered shreds of gray.
She murmured, “I wish we could ask the Council of Worlds for help.”
“Help to do what?” Onsofruct asked. “We can’t ask for evacuation. There are too many of us.”
“I read something about HoTA devising some new method of controlling earthquakes … “
“Can they do it from off-planet?”
“No. I’m sure not. It involved burning deep wells along the fault lines and pumping in some kind of shock-absorbing liquid. It doesn’t stop the earth moving, but it does make the movement smooth instead of shuddering. It’s the shaking does the worst damage … “