Homecoming - Christie Golden [74]
A door was flung open and waves of heat rolled out. Logt shoved and B’Elanna stumbled forward, still clutching the last shreds of clothing and dignity.
Three Klingon women stood before her, as naked as she would be had she not literally held her clothes to her body. They were not, however, in the least bit vulnerable in their nudity. Rather, they were intimidating. One of them threw back her head and screamed a wordless cry. The other two dove forward and snatched the strips that were all that remained of B’Elanna’s gown and tossed them into the bubbling pit of lava in the center of the room.
Automatically B’Elanna covered herself, but the two women who had stripped her now clutched her hands and pulled them down to her sides.
“You are to be reborn, B’Elanna Torres,” the woman who was clearly the highest-ranking priestess said, walking to her slowly, proudly. In her hands, she held a pot of some vile-smelling ointment.
“You will go naked into the world, as you came [220] naked into it. You entered the world covered only with the blood and fluids from your mother’s womb. Fire births you here.”
She stepped forward and smeared B’Elanna’s face, hair, and body with the putrid goop. B’Elanna recognized the smell of blood among other scents that made her want to vomit. The heat and the stench were getting to her and the room began to spin. She held on to consciousness with grim determination. Now the woman was smearing soot all over her.
Her mind flashed back to her years as a child in the monastery. She’d never encountered anything like this. The rituals she’d participated in were flamboyant and showy, with lots of talk and pretty costumes. This was in dark, deadly earnest.
They threw her hard to the ground. B’Elanna grunted as her body slammed into the warm stone. Something was smeared over her hands.
“Now bathe your hands in the blood of the earth, in the fire that consumes and destroys.”
She stared up at the priestess in horror. The lava was nothing less than rock so hot it was liquid. To immerse her hands in it would be to char them right off. The priestess smirked.
“The mongrel hesitates.”
The derogatory term spurred B’Elanna on. Some part of her reasoned that they would not ask it of her unless she had some chance of succeeding. And if she burned her hands off, well, the Doctor would no doubt come up with something suitable to replace them.
She was too woozy to rise, so she crawled along the [221] stone floor to the pit. The heat blasting off it was almost unbearable. For you, Mother.
Uttering a cry, she shoved her hands into the lava.
And felt nothing.
Part of her screamed that it was a miracle, that she had passed the test. The other part of her calmly reasoned that whatever they had smeared on her hands was protecting her from the heat. Idly, she wondered what the stuff was.
But then strong hands were grabbing her and pulling her back from the pit, even as she realized that if she had lingered much longer, her face would have begun to blister.
Dazed, sick, every muscle quivering, she did not protest as they hauled her to her feet. The priestess held her face firmly between her strong hands. B’Elanna stared up into her fierce, sharp-toothed, painted face, and found her beautiful.
“You have been accepted. You may undertake the Challenge. Go forth, and wrest honor from the wilderness.”
B’Elanna was spun around and almost fell. There came a loud boom as a door was opened in front of her. Cool air rushed in and she gulped it deeply. So engrossed was she in simply breathing in the pure night air, so sweet after the sickly toxins of the lava, that it took a moment for the priestess’s words to register.
She was about to step into Boreth