CHAPTER 8

There was silence. It must be night. Should he get up now and pray or wait till morning? He sat up, letting the blanket fall. The bedbugs would sleep. He meditated, drifting in and out of dreams.

Behind a dark lattice of green needles shone a bright layer of snow and where that broke, a silver sky tinged rose. Akiva stared and stared. Each shape and color fairly screamed with glory. He left the tree's shelter and came out into the snow to look at the trees, the stones, the sky, the mountainside and valley and the snow. A gust of wind came shrieking up the pass, over Akiva's body and his upraised hands and off the fingertips in bright streams of cold splendor. Snowflakes whirled around him, unendurably bright. When the gleaming clouds parted to reveal the sun, he fainted. Waking, he huddled miserably by his smoky fire. Snow danced in the eddies by moonlight. He chafed his hands and thought of Fea Listening, Fea who harkens to women in childbirth. She rose from the snow. She smiled. He reached toward her. She vanished. Yearning to live, he left his fire and descended to the valley to seek food.

He lay on the floor of a hut, far from the fire. A woman's calloused hand lighted on his shoulder and began to caress it so strongly that the wind-blistered skin broke, abraded, bled. He shifted slightly. Seeing that he was awake, she moved closer. One big thigh pinned his hips to the floor and heavy breasts pressed on his ribs until he longed to struggle free from the choking humid odor of her flesh. At this moment, he always felt as though he were drowning in warm water. Did she whisper something? He would not allow himself to hear. The only way to do what they required was to empty his mind as in meditation, so his hands would make the right gestures and his mouth the right sounds and he could cast his seed into the stranger without hesitation, and then she might give her first-born's father some token of thanks--a cupful of meal, a few eggs, a tattered stocking. When she had hefted herself from his side and gone and his skin, so used to the cold mountain air, stung from her sweat, he wondered to what home he had abandoned a child of his. Sometimes he slept with half a dozen in a village before he fled again to the empty mountains. Would his sons and daughters marry one another? Few would live so long. Why do you weep, they asked him sometimes when he paused in speaking of the godling Fey and Hath the father, and then he could only sob, "My children, my children."

He entered a temple early on a summer evening. Warm air rich with many odors wafted through the open door and window, but as he came deeper into the hall, a cold stench of blood and sweat and cloying incense overpowered the summer smells. Had he eaten recently, he would have vomited, but as it was he heard his mouth fly open and the voice of an ill-tempered demon shout, "This is no temple, you lazy carrion beasts! Bring in the swine and let them wallow here! Take yourselves up into the mountains to find the homeless gods." People ran toward him. He saw on their faces the alarm he felt, but he could not stop his ranting. "What do you think? Do you think the gods who made the air and the sun and winds could stand a place like this? No god would live here." A red-haired woman caught his eye. Calm again, he whispered, "Forgive me. Hunger and loneliness have made me mad."

The woman was not Berthe. The woman was never Berthe. There was always another; he lost count of them. Sometimes she was the one who crept into Akiva's bed and then it took all his skill not to offend her.

In a dream, he and Berthe walked hand in hand at the bottom of the Lir, surrounded by fishes and shining water. Akiva realized that they must both have drowned, and he shouted. Suddenly he was choking in earnest. He had to fight to free himself from the woman beside him, or she would have killed him in her dread of being overheard by the family.

He lay under a field of stars, fingers laced over the infant who slept on his stomach. The baby fussed and Akiva turned him over without waking. The greater moon rose. Akiva drew up his cloak to shade his eyes. His arm was wet. He felt for the baby's thick cloth, found it trailing around his waist, and pulled it off him. Pitch-black urine stained his fingers. The baby was a devilspawn. Akiva set it away from him, meaning to let it die, but when it began to cry he picked it up automatically. The next morning he tied Neshar in a sling across his chest and carried him that way for a year.

* * *

A line of reapers walked across a field into a red sky, swinging their scythes as they went. Each stroke felled a heavy rush of grain. When they turned and came back toward him, it was day and they could see the gathering clouds. The reapers worked faster. Their children followed with rakes to gather what had been cut. Someone shouted at the eldest child. She dropped her rake to begin binding the bundles up and a tiny girl took her place. The reapers turned again. Hunger made the swish of dew-laden wheat a charming music to Akiva. He stood watching the everyday scene as closely as though like Shis, the hand of fate, he could read the past and future in it.

One of the reapers carried a baby in a sling across her where it could nurse without blocking the movement of her arm. Akiva had a sling and child of his own. He strode into the field. Neshar mewed weakly and went back to sleep. Akiva took the rake from the least child, who was buried to the waist in chaff. It was the first time he had worked since the baby was given to him, and he wondered whether strangers would be kept out of his bed now or be drawn there more than ever. The sun came out between heavy clouds, and the moist air seemed to glisten. The dew shone. The reapers turned to face him. A flock of birds rising from the windbreak wheeled overhead. Akiva realized with sudden joy that he had ceased to care what the women did. That night and all succeeding nights he slept alone. The child had freed him as Fey would free Verloring. Now Akiva understood why the Wanderer was depicted as happy in the temples.

* * *

A woman sat in a roadway, holding out the body of her dead child. "Here, taxman. What's he worth?" she asked in a harsh unsteady voice. "Here, take him. Sell 'im for fresh meat. Carve him up yourself. Go on, he's nice and--fat!" She leaned her forehead against Akiva's wrist.

He took the bundle from her hands. "What was his name?"

She shook her head.

"What did you call him to yourself?" Akiva persisted. What would she call the child? He stared at her, imagining the conditions of its birth, the dry fields, the longing. His mind relaxed and he knew. "You called him Vogeling," he said. It meant, Little Bird.

"Yes."

"His soul is dancing in Ayekar."

"Yes, it is."

He buried the infant by the side of the road, chanting and clapping his hands for lack of bells to ring while the woman hacked out a grave in the unyeilding ground. She led him to her house. Her family, who had given her up for mad, proclaimed him to the neighborhood as a prophet of Verloring.

The woman's husband, a wiry man with small hard eyes, washed Akiva's feet, saying, "It's all right. I don't care how you did it."

"I heard the speech of her silence," Akiva said dreamily, his feet warm, stomach full and head floating from wine.

"I don't care," the man repeated.

"Don't be jealous of me. No man ever comes closer to a woman's heart than Fea, nor any woman to a man's. Our love for the divine is strongest. Isn't it holiness you envy? But you are holy, I tell you, as holy as the highest priest in the capital and as near the gods, if you would be, as this child--" He indicated Neshar--"is to my hand."

The man's little eyes darted from side to side. He seemed so like a frightened mouse that Akiva put out his hand and smoothed the husband's hair. "What is it?"

"I'm not a holy man."

"You are. If you see even for an instant how far you have gone from that state, holiness is yours. You see, only in striving for it does one experience it..."

The husband was caressing Akiva's feet. "Tell me what to do," he said.

Akiva shuddered. How many thousands and thousands there must be, awaiting a command. These are the children of Hath, and woe to the false priest who steals them, he thought. "I will teach you a prayer. Hath, father of the world--"

"Father of the world."

"--of the summer and winter--"

"Summer and winter."

"--Mother Fea protectoress--"

"This harvest, conceived of the sun and rain, delivered by our loving toil, comes from the earth into our mouths, lights the fire of our living bodies and in that fire returns to its father the sun. Zatoye, child of the sun, golden brother, here is your portion." An old woman dropped a tiny pinch of grain into a fire. She and the old man ate a few spoonfuls of porridge each, then passed the bowl to their sons and daughters and then the grandchildren and finally Akiva. All kept silent, even the babies. A woman leaned against the doorpost, great tears on her cheeks. Voices shouted outside. Akiva heard the creaking approach of the tax wagons.

"They're here," someone said.

A child climbed into his mother's lap. She patted his stomach mechanically. A girl folded her arms. "I'm not going to let them take anything," she announced.

The adults chuckled. "You going to fight them, honey? You'll make those bad tax men go away?" her mother teased, caressing her.

The old woman said, "I guess I'll go meet them. Not the first, not the last."

As she got to her feet, two priests entered. A woman sobbed.

Akiva stood up. "Where are you coming from?" he asked in the priestly dialect.

"Genshiye Temple. Who are you?"

"I'm from Lir Temple. This household is designated to provision road menders on the way to Nichayu," Akiva said.

The name of Lir Temple, the church in the capital, was too much for them. Nodding like idiots, the priests retreated. The mats in the doorway dropped behind them, the wagons creaked and moved on. Neshar began to cry. One of the mothers took him to her breast.

Akiva wondered for many days why he had deceived the priests. When he thought of that moment, he imagined a battlegound suddenly revealed by lightening. On one side stood the priests, the temple and its archives, justice and civilization, on the other side mercy, compassion, the weeping peasants and the hard life of the earth. He had chosen the latter, and his first impulse was to say, "So be it," but he knew that to believe wholly in such sudden moments was to believe many terrible things, to review all the sudden misdeeds of his life, accepting one by one the evils in him that they represented, not as flaws but as his true nature underlying an appearance of good that was only the result of habit.

Thus, his eighteen years' devotion to Shurat who raised him were obliterated by the moment of the old man's death, because at that moment Akiva might have saved his life but had not--no, these instants could not be the only consideration. Had he not assured the man who washed his feet that a life of unremarkable patient striving was a holy one? Yet this sudden sign pulled too strong to be ignored.

* * *

Dust obscured the sun. Grass whithered, the earth cracked and trees dropped their leaves in midsummer. People sat all day in their doorways, watching every cloud from horizon to horizon, debating whether to pack their seed grain and leave the farms. Each time he stopped, Akiva gained a few followers. At crossroads there was always a family or two sitting atop their possessions, utterly lost, too tired and thirsty to decide which way to go, and when Akiva chose a direction they followed. At first he was afraid to speak to them, but as Neshar grew old enough to understand a few words he occasionally sang or told stories to the boy while they walked and at evening by the fires. The other children came to listen. Soon he was preaching nightly to the whole unhappy company.

They gave him very little encouragement, not even looking at him, but if he stopped the children would call out the names of gods or heroes or the first lines of songs. In a few days, the group was joining him in hymns and chants. They held nightlong prayers, and Akiva saw that by giving up their sleep those who had nothing gained a sense of wealth.

He spoke often about the divine retribution thieves and brigands could expect because he feared that when their seed-grain was eaten his followers would take to robbery, but to his surprise the nearly destitute peasants among whom they traveled proved generous. The begging troupe were regarded as Verloringers, seekers after the missing god.

Many times Akiva found himself staring at the local people as at strange paintings, thinking, who is there who would not answer? He called them again and again, sometimes in the wrong words, but when he knew he called them truly, they answered. When he came to a village at the head of his rag-tag contingent with Neshar on his shoulders, people left off talking about whoever had just died and looked at him as though he were a droughtbreak rain. It seemed there was no one who could not be moved by assurances that holiness lay within him, the grimy father or the doughey-faced boy, within her, the bullying mother or crosseyed daughter-in-law.

Akiva no longer looked much like a priest. His hair had grown long and wispy, a beard had started and fallen out, his hands and feet were scarred and calloused. Once when they came to a crossroads they found a delegation of priests from the Lir temple, surrounded by attendants. Abashed by their clothing and retinue, Akiva said nothing to them, but one turned to him to ask in the peasants' language, "Which way to the city?"

Akiva replied, in the same tongue, that either way would bring them there, one more quickly but through wilder country.

An attendant said in the holy language, "Let's take it. We'd better be there when the rain starts."

"Wild country, though," another said.

Akiva moved away as though he didn't understand, and rejoined the Verloringers. "Rain is coming!" he told them.

They followed the longer route, through the villages. At each one, he shouted, "Rain is coming! Day breaks! Prepare to harrow, to sow, to cut and to bind!"

People threw stones and rock-hard clods of dirt at him. His followers pretended not to believe. He heard one say, "He's possessed. Very wise, but a little crazy. Who knows, though. Maybe it will rain."

"Maybe," was the answer.

It did rain, not long after they reached the city of Itscrid Genshiye, capital of Itscriye province. People stood in the streets, craning their necks and listening to the cool breeze that rustled in their clothing. At the thunder they held up their hands to wait for the first drops. With the citizens, the refugees and the Verloringers there were hundreds, silent, holding up their hands. When the heavy rain struck their faces, they turned to one another to watch the masks of grime dissolve and run down to their feet and the earth. They embraced, they danced and drank. Those who could still remember the way returned to their homes.

The Lir Temple priests never arrived. Akiva supposed they had died in the wilderness, and he chanted over them as best he could, but without much enthusiasm. Had they not had the power to bring rain and failed so long to use it?

In the city, where Verloring's legends carried less weight, his name was linked to that of Fatayad, god of agriculture. The god warned him in nightmares and, when Akiva could not stop the rumors, began to stalk him. Retribution came. The rain that had saved them in August returned in February and threatened to linger through March. Since the flooding began, he had been distracted with fear and unable to meditate. Thoughts nagged him. He would listen to the rain on the roof, sometimes going up there himself to be nearer to it, but instead of becoming tranquil in its strength his mind lost itself in its chatter. Even in the dark of his unwindowed room, he sat watching.

The door creaked. A child grunted in the hallway. It must be morning. Akiva lay back and pulled up the blanket. He wished there were a window here so he would know when the night ended instead of waiting for someone to tell him. If no one came, he thought, there might be no day. He smiled. Fatayad would certainly catch him then.

What would happen? Would the god tear off his limbs, or would it only seem so? Whatever happened in the dream world, he had always returned safe at morning to this one. If morning did not come, he might not.

The door creaked again and weak yellow light from the hallway advanced into a corner of the room. Neshar stepped in.

The boy came and stood by Akiva's head. Akiva lay still, watching out of the corner of his eye as the top of Neshar's head bobbed up and down. Neshar tugged at the blanket, calling out "Day! Day!" on the downstroke like a bell.

"I'm awake," Akiva said.

"Can I come up?" Neshar was too small to climb onto the bed.

"No. I'm coming down." He sat up. "Is it still raining?"

Neshar nodded. "It's running where the plow goes." He went ahead of Akiva to the doorway.

Rain fell evenly from the toneless sky to shimmering puddles as wide as Akiva's height. His followers stood in the mud, waiting. They had all been living so long in the rain that they scarcely noticed it. One of the fathers beckoned him. Akiva set Neshar down and slogged out to them.

"They won't let us in the temple. That knock-kneed folkpriest just threw us right out. Now we've got no place to pray. We might as well be back at home as here. Just as much mud in one place as the other. What are we going to do?" the man asked.

"Pray out here." Akiva spread his arms. The others began coming toward him, and he was about to begin his lecture when he noticed that Neshar was surrounded by a group of children. He dropped his arms and went to fetch him.

A boy of about ten squatted in front of Neshar, taunting, "Babyface, babyface, make us cry. Your papa set you free and your mama let you die."

"Leave him alone," Akiva said.

They stared at him. "He's the rain-bringer," a girl said. "Get him, Karlie. He killed Ma."

Several of them jumped on Akiva, punching him and pulling his hair. A girl kicked the backs of his knees and knocked him down. The fight was insanely difficult. Akiva threw them off, head downward into the mud like dogs. It was only because they forgot him that Neshar remained unharmed.

"Hey, let our kids be!" a voice yelled.

Adults were running out of the temple. Akiva saw stones and hoehandles among them. The children fled. He picked up Neshar and held him to his chest. The boy clung tight. Rocks were flying around them, most well wide of the mark. One struck Akiva's hip. He picked it up and faced the mob. Although he made no move to throw, they halted. His group edged toward him. "He'll call down fire on you!" one shouted. The mob turned to her, than back to Akiva.

"What have we done to you?" one of them called.

Others took up the cry.

"What have we done?"

"Let us be!"

"Go someplace else with your rain!"

"I paid my taxes!"

Taxes? Akiva thought. That was a lie--the world knew Itscriye province had fought the tax collectors after the last good harvest--but the lie showed that the people were in the dangerous mood of attributing all their torubles to him. He held out the stone. "This is what you paid me. I will bring your tribute to the capital."

That was worse than the threat of fire. The mob yelled. Stones flew. Akiva's followers began to run. He ran after them. The mob pursued him. Both sides ran slowly, sinking knee-deep into the mud at every step.

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Chapter 9

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