Quest

QUEST Shannah Jay 1

Quest

Shannah Jay

At fourteen, Katia is
chosen
to serve at the Sisterhood's temple in Tenebrak. But violent
Discord
engulfs the planet threatening the 20,000-year-old Sisterhood's existence. In a satellite far above Tenebrak, Davred, brilliant xeno-anthropologist, studies the Sisterhood, and risks everything by deciding to help them. But neither Davred nor the Sisters know all the secrets of this mysterious planet.

Published by Shannah Jay

Copyright 2010 Shannah Jay

Cover Copyright 2010 David Jacobs

Shannah Jay Edition, License Notes

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QUEST Shannah Jay 2

The girl crashed blindly through the wildwoods, her breath coming in agonised gasps, her heart thudding with fear of pursuit. Once she tripped over a tree root and rolled winded on the ground, but she clamped her teeth against a moan and was up again running within seconds. When she could push herself no further, she leaned against a tree, listening carefully. She could hear nothing but the faint noises made by the animals she had disturbed in her wild headlong flight and the rustling of foliage in the evening breeze.

She’d done it! She’d got away!

‘Brother, don’t let him notice I’m gone till after dark,’ she prayed. ‘Don’t let him notice!’ And it was ironic that she called upon the Brother of the World, for she was fleeing from her god, as well as from Kensin.

Dusk was gathering round her, but fear drove her to walk on again. She tried to leave no sign of her passing, but knew Kensin too well to think that he wouldn’t be able to read her footprints.

By the time the first two moons had risen, she’d left the tangled growth of the wildwoods behind and was up among the sparse, spindly trees that clung to every crevice in the high rocky country. It would be difficult even for Kensin to track her across such terrain. Here, surely, she would be able to find a refuge until the Choosings had ended. After that, it wouldn’t matter. She’d be disgraced, but safe.

She wished it were a three-moon night, for then she’d be able to continue, but the second moon lingered in the sky for a bare hour before sinking rapidly in the west, leaving her in the near darkness of a single pale crescent. She shivered. Always, the Choosings were held at the time of the Spring Darks. The day before she’d climbed a tree and seen the great temple wagon carrying the Sisters moving across the valley below her home towards the town of Danak, seen it and known a fear that crawled along every bone in her body. It was then that she’d decided to flee.

She didn’t dare not offer herself to their Brother the God.

It was a long time before she slept in the windy crevice that was too small to be called a cave, and even then her sleep was restless and unsatisfying. She woke and slept, woke briefly again, fear churning within her at every noise.

* * *

Just before dawn Katia woke to an unnatural stillness. Even before she opened her eyes, she guessed he was there. There were no animal sounds and besides, she could sense his presence. A groan choked to nothing in her throat as her eyelids fluttered open. There, outlined against the brightening sky, was a figure she knew all too well.

‘So. You’re awake.’ His voice was as chill as an icicle breaking in winter sunlight.

It was a moment before she could form a word. ‘How did you find me?’

‘I’ve lived in the High Alder for sixty years. Were I blind, I could still track you, Katia. This is my land.’

‘Mine, too.’ But even to her own ears, her voice sounded childish and sulky.

‘Not until after the Choosing. You can own nothing, be nothing, until after the Choosing.’

‘Grandfather, please don’t make me go! I know something terrible will happen to me if I go down into Danak. I just know it!’

‘Then something terrible must happen to you, Katia, for you
will
go to Danak, even if I have to carry you there myself, trussed like a fowl for the market.’

Before she could move, he had clipped the chain he normally used to restrain injured animals round one of her wrists. She stared at it in horror, then raised her eyes pleadingly to a face whose lines seemed no less hard than the rocks around them.

‘Grandfather, please! Not that!’

He tugged her to her feet. ‘Come. We have a long walk before us if we’re to reach Danak today.’

QUEST Shannah Jay 3

‘Please - don’t chain me!’

‘If you behave like a wild animal, you shall be treated like one. Maybe it will remind you of your duty.’

With that he refused to speak to her further, so she could only stumble along in misery at the other end of the chain. When Kensin the Verderer set his mind to something, there was no moving him away from that path.

Outside the town, he stopped and stared at her coldly. ‘Can I trust you to wash and change from your forest leathers, or must I give you to the Elders chained and filthy?’

‘I’ll w-wash.’

‘No running away!’

‘No, Grandfather.’

He rummaged in his pack and pulled out a long blue gown and embroidered headdress. ‘Today, you must wear this. My sister’s second daughter sent it specially.’

She stood staring at it.

When she didn’t move, he added softly, ‘Your mother wore this very gown, once. Wear it for her sake.’

‘I hate gowns. And I hate the town!’

He lost patience again. ‘Hate this, hate that! If you wish to live with hatred inside you, then get you to Kelandrak and join Those of the Serpent! We do not follow that path of pain and darkness in the High Alder.’

She gulped back a sob and he laid a hand on her thin shoulder. ‘Would you really shame me before our kinfolk, child? Prove that they were right, that I was unfit to rear you when your parents were killed?’

She burst into tears then and turned to burrow into his chest, snuffling wetly into the sharp smell of the leather she had helped him cure. The robe fell unheeded to the ground.

His voice echoed above her head. ‘Well, Katia?’

‘I w-wont shame you. I won’t! But oh, Grandfather, I feel so afraid.’

‘You’ve been to Festivals of Choosing before, child. What is there to fear about them? The Sisters are good women. It’s always a joyful occasion.’

‘I wasn’t an offrant before.’

‘We must all offer ourselves to the God before we can take up our adult lives.’

‘But boys don’t get
chosen
! They can only be named as town Elders. Girls who are
chosen
are taken away. I couldn’t bear to leave the High Alder!’

‘Most girls think it a great honour to be called to serve our Brother the God.’

‘I’d die if I had to live in a city.’

He shook his head and his voice was stern again. ‘I doubt our Brother would
choose
someone as unwilling to do her duty as you, Katia. I’ve failed him somehow in the way I raised you.’

She could only hang her head, her throat too full of tears for speech.

‘Well,’ he pushed her away from him, ‘go and wash yourself now, child, and then put on your festival robe. We mustn’t be late for your night’s vigil.’

Sighing she picked up the soft blue material and went over to the stream. She shivered as she washed herself, but not from the coldness of the mountain water, for she was used to that. Something was wrong; she knew it.

Something was threatening her peaceful life.

When she was ready, she presented herself to her grandfather for inspection and he checked her over carefully.

His Katia took little interest in her appearance, and had been known to wear a tunic back to front before this. Thin
QUEST Shannah Jay 4

and leggy, like all young animals, he thought, but she’ll be a beauty one day. His dead daughter had had the same cloud of dark hair, but her eyes had been grey, not green. The resemblance always twisted his heart. He didn’t tell Katia that, of course; he merely nodded, put the chain and her leathers away, and picked up his pack.

Just before they reached the first houses in Danak, he stopped and looked at Katia sternly. ‘You’ll not shame me tomorrow, child? You’ll do your duty?’

She threw herself into his arms and hugged him convulsively. ‘No. I w-won’t shame you, Grandfather. I promise.’

* * *

Long before the sun rose the next morning, the townsfolk began to filter into Danak’s only square, gathering in groups on the paved pathways around the green. Not a word was spoken, not a child cried out, yet the excitement was as tangible as the stone walls of the houses. Music and laughter would fill the later stages of the celebrations, but the Festivals of Choosing always began in solemn silence.

Slowly the darkness lightened and faces turned expectantly towards the east. A brightness crept across the sky until finally, rosy fingers of light touched the rooftops and gilded the garlands on the walls.

There was a drum roll, then the doors of the Meeting House were thrown open and two Sisters of the God emerged, dressed in long full robes of glittering blue and silver, with tall, elaborate headdresses covering their hair.

Even their faces were hidden behind jewelled masks. At this ceremony the Sisters had no individual identities, serving only as channels of communication with the God their Brother. When the fourteen-year-olds were offered to him every year, he would speak through his Sisters to call the chosen girls to his Sisterhood, or to name any young person as Elder-Elect.

Kensin stood motionless, not part of any group. He leaned against an angle of the wall and waited with a hunter’s patience, his eyes on the sacred enclosure where the young folk from the district would be offered to the God. He had slipped out of town once he had delivered Katia to the Elders the previous day, and had spent the night beneath the stars, for he could not abide the crowded houses of his kinfolk. But he had slept little. The child’s anxiety seemed to have communicated itself to him, and his dreams had been troubled. Well, he sighed now, the God’s will be done, whatever it is.

‘
Brother, look down upon us!
’ The taller Sister’s voice rang out clearly, signalling the start of the ceremonies.

Her call was echoed by the crowd. ‘Look down upon us all!’

When the last murmurs had died away, the second Sister clapped her hands sharply together and the two women moved to stand on either side of the doorway of the Meeting House. The drum began to beat out an insistent throbbing rhythm, then one of the town’s Elders appeared in the doorway, resplendent in his red robes of office and moving in time to the pulsing sounds. A sigh rippled through the crowd. The Choosing had begun.

The Elder was followed by a single file of solemn-faced young people. All were fourteen years old and all were clad in richly-embroidered garments, gowns or tunics of ceremonial blue, most of which had been handed down in their families for generations. They showed the nervousness natural to those facing a turning point in their lives, but most also betrayed their pleasure at being there, at being almost an adult, at last.

Last night the youngsters had sat vigil in the Meeting House, and today, long before dawn, they’d prepared themselves for the ceremony. They hadn’t broken their fast, except to drink a full measure of festival wine. The secret of this dark, sweet concoction, drunk but once in a lifetime, was known only to the Sisters, for it was blended with special drugs which heightened consciousness.

Katia had deliberately placed herself last in the line of offrants. Her head was spinning from the effects of the wine and everything had taken on a nightmare quality - sounds echoing, actions slowing down, colours beating at her eyelids, dawnlight tearing at her skin. Her urge to flee grew stronger, but her limbs were strangely lethargic and she stumbled once or twice as she moved across to the centre of the green.

The townsfolk lining the square swayed like reeds in a breeze and without prompting the adults began humming the introduction to the festival song, while young children strewed white festival flowers and scented fern leaves in front of the offrants. The crushed petals filled the air with a perfume like no other for these flowers only bloomed in
QUEST Shannah Jay 5

the Spring Darks.

Katia seemed unaware of the stares of disapproval from the crowd as she broke tradition by pausing at the entrance to the enclosure. She threw a terrified glance back towards the Sisters, who were still standing like glittering statues in front of the Meeting House, then her eyes raked the crowd in a desperate search for a tall, silver-haired old man.

When her eyes caught his, Kensin frowned, shaking his head in disapproval, so she took a deep, sobbing breath and tried to pull herself together. She must not shame her grandfather before the townsfolk. She must not.