The Spirit Stone - Katharine Kerr [159]
Once the shirt was as clean as she could get it, Sidro hung it to dry with the others. She sat on the ground and watched Pir strip branches of their needles against the edge of the axe.
‘Been meaning to ask you,’ Pir said. ‘Could you do the coming of age ceremony for Vek? His hair sprouted months ago, but we didn’t have a woman with us to work the rite.’
‘I don’t see why not. Do you believe in the old gods, Pir?’
‘No, nor in the new one, either.’
‘Yet you want the ceremony done?’
‘I don’t. Vek does. He was brought up to expect it.’
‘So he was. Very well, then. Do you remember much from your own ceremony?
‘Yes, most of it, if you want me to be the sponsor.’
‘If you would. You know that Laz won’t do it. He’ll only mock and sneer.’
Pir smiled, just a twitch of his mouth, but for him it amounted to a smile. For a few moments he concentrated on his work.
‘There’s something else Vek asked me,’ Pir said, looking up. ‘He told me that he wants to become a true prophet of the old gods. I pointed out that no one wants to listen to his kind of prophecies any more, but he insisted it doesn’t matter. Do you know how to perform the prophet’s rite?’
‘No, I certainly don’t! It would be too dangerous anyway, out here with no healer for miles and miles. What if something went wrong?’
‘I did ask him that. He said he was willing to risk it.’
‘Does he know how much it’s going to hurt?’
‘Oh yes. He told me all about it.’ Pir’s mouth twisted in distaste. ‘Having a slit cut into your—well, imph—manhood, and then a stone put into the cut, and all the rest of it. It makes me sick to think about it. But Vek told me that he has to become both male and female or the goddesses won’t accept him.’
‘Well, luckily for him, I can’t help him do it.’
‘I suppose it’s lucky. Sometimes I envy Vek. He’s lost his mach-fala, his home, his city—everything he ever had in life. But it doesn’t matter to him. He has his gods, and he’s determined to serve them. And he says that it’s enough.’
‘I used to feel that way. Once.’
‘But now you know the truth about your Alshandra.’
‘Yes. It’s a very bitter thing, that truth. I suppose I was happier with the lies, but truth is always better than falsehood.’
‘Is it?’ Pir frowned at the basket of needles. ‘I begin to wonder. Consider our rakzanir. Will they ever become Gel da’ Thae, true Gel da’ Thae, I mean, without Alshandra or someone like her to believe in? All they did before was fight among themselves. Now at least they’re fighting someone else.’
‘Oh yes. They’re planning on slaughtering the Ancients and taking their land. I don’t see where this is a step away from savagery.’
‘Ah. You’re quite right, now that I think of it. Um, well. Yes. Um.’ With a sigh Pir stood up. ‘Here’s the first basketful. I’ll cut more if you’ll take these back.’
That night Pir lit a bonfire in the ashy pit where Movrae had died. The men who’d stayed in camp gathered around, spears in hand, to welcome Vek into their ranks when the moment came. The ceremony itself was simple and short. Pir brought the boy forward and told him to kneel before the priestess. Sidro combed Vek’s hair with her fingers, found a bit long enough to braid, and tied into it one of Laz’s old charms that she’d discovered in the detritus on the cabin floor.
‘You have left the arms of your mother,’ she said. ‘Where will you stand in the ranks of men?’ She whispered under her breath. ‘Turn and look at Pir now.’
When Vek followed her order, Pir stepped forward. For the ceremony he’d washed himself to match his clean shirt and combed and re-braided his mane as well. It hung in a splendid cascade over one side of his head, revealing the close-cropped hair on the rest of it. In the leaping firelight