Ganne


16 - Does The Goddess Conspire?


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Angela, for once completely unaware that she was under scrutiny, stood at
the ship's rail watching the dolphins riding the bow wave of the Sea
Rover.  Her pale eyes shone with an inner light, her normally vacant
expression rapt.  The wind streamed her fine black hair, showing Guara the
snake patterned lines of Angela's profile.  Her lips were slightly parted
as though caught in a moment of unexpected rapture; but of course, Guara
knew deep down, it was nothing of the sort.

Angela was Viper.  There was nothing even approaching a human emotion
inside her alien mind.  She was a mirror only, reflecting what was in the
hearts of those around her.  Just now, the pleasure mirrored in Angela's
face was nothing but the joy of the sea creatures, brought from old earth
in the long ago time, as they revelled in their element and in the sheer
joy of being in life.

Emotional Vampire, some said, the ignorant and the fearful - and all those
Strong in the Ganne.

The sight of Angela sent a surge of maternal feelings through Guara.  Her
old heart fluttered at the intensity of the emotion, still as strong after
all these years.

Had it been coincidence?  Guara thought fondly.  Or does the Goddess
conspire with us?  A thin smile touched her old lips at the thought that
one so grounded in the sordid necessities of the governing of a nation
could give credence to such a fanciful notion; and yet, was it so
fanciful?  Had the gentle hand of the Goddess truly been shaping events on
that dreadful long ago morning?

The moment the baby boy was birthed, all three Healers knew; it was
confirmation only, they had known for weeks.  Guara's new baby boy would
not live.

"Six, perhaps seven days at most," Phaedra had told the anxious mother.

In a taunt, grieving silence, two Healers cleaned her up whilst Phaedra
swaddled up the baby.  Guara held out hands to her, a gesture of profound
beseeching that ripped into Phaedra's tender soul.  She had passed down
the doomed bundle of new life, and signed silently for them all to leave.

Alone with the mite, Guara cradled her sorrow in her arms.  She rocked it
gently to and fro, studying the red, puckered face.  She wept no tears -
not then.  Inside her riven soul, deep down, the first glimmers of the
bright, bright insanity had begun.

She remembered little of the next days, only the whispering women who
would not acknowledge the desperation in her gaze, and the heavy silence
hanging in the gloomy halls.  In the end, she could stand the chilly
desolation of the Winter Palace no longer.

On the evening of the sixth day, Guara carried her new baby out to the
stables, lost in the dazzling maze of her insanity.  Taking a horse, she
rode up into the hills above Shining Lake, not knowing where she wandered
nor why, knowing only that she needed the solitude of the Ancient Forest.

With grave solemnity, Guara showed the baby to the trees, explaining to
the patient plants about her son.  In ringing tones, the grieving mother
spoke of the child's glittering life and deeds, making up grand and
thrilling tales of the exploits of what would be her only born son.  The
trees listened gravely to the tale.  Creaking and sighing in the chill
wind, the winter stark trees waved their branches stiffly in
acknowledgement; and for a while Guara knew a kind of forlorn peace.

Delusion, it was all delusion.

Through the shimmering halo of the bright insanity, she came to know this
- and turned from the winter stark forest.  She remembered only the
powerful conviction that the frozen landscape seemed grieving along with
her - a reflection of her soul.  Finally, she tired of that cold
companionship of the sleeping trees, and knew it false.  For the winter
stricken forest, there was always the hope of spring.  For Guara, there
was no hope.  For Guara, there could be no more babies.

Or was it that she grew convinced in her madness that if she could gain
the Shennon - then the world would be different?  The trees down there
were already greening for the new season's growth.  If only she could gain
the Shennon Vale before her son died?...

She did not know the truth of anything any longer, suspected that she had
never known.

But certainly, yes, it was then that the insanity turned a new and
brighter facet to dazzle her despair darkened soul.  So Guara turned the
horse for Shennon...  And came to the little village.

The blacksmith's wife found her wandering aimlessly in the dark, took her
to sit by the warmth of her husband's forge.

The child had died in her arms an hour before dawn.

In that grey, sleet dripping dawn, she buried her son of seven days.  With
her own hands, she had laid the wasted little body in the cold earth.  The
blacksmith's wife had chanted a lament.  There was no Priestess of the
Shining Source.  The village was too small to have a temple, or any name
that Guara ever knew.

Afterwards, against the protestations of the good people, she had ridden
away from the village sunk in grief, sorrow and despair.

Had not her loss sharpened her sensitivity to a baby's desolation, she
might well have thought it only the cry of an animal, and passed on to
Shennon Vale.

But the heart demanded.

Guara had reined in to listen.  Some quality of that thin sound went deep.
Her breasts, heavy with milk, ached in response to that call that spoke in
the deep places of a mother's being.  Her nipples had tingled and
stiffened, begun to leak milk, answering to that ages old imperative.

Had none of this been so, then she, Guara, would not now still be Chair of
the Ganne Council.  Did the Goddess truly conspire?

Casting about with the Ganne, she located the tiny bundle of betrayed
life, desolate of a mother's loving arms.  It lay, naked and chill, on a
flat rock a few yards from the road.  Someone had set out a small offering
of a silver piece to appease the Goddess.  The tiny coin shone against the
olive green of a Vellas leaf.  The pathetic arrangement lay upon the rock
beside the infant.  As Guara approached she saw the reason why.  The
sudden and terrible understanding brought her to a dead stop, her Bayonne
coming to her hand by an instinct of fear and loathing almost as powerful
as her frustrated maternal need.

Even from where she stood, the diamond scaling patterning of the skin was
plain.

It was a Viper child!

Guara was Strong in the Ganne.  Guara knew her Duty.

A thrusting fear, and the letters of the law, thundered in her whirling
mind, hedged about with attendant shrieking golden images of horror and
disaster out of a long ago past, full of power and savagery.

"Viper kind are abominations in the sight of the Goddess.  A Viper shall
not be suffered to live among us.  Exterminate the vermin without mercy,
wheresoever they be discovered.  This be the Edict of the High Council.
This grievous duty is laid upon the people for the protection of all."

Guara approached the rock.

She raised the Bayonne.

Guara knew her duty?

Her heart and her full breasts knew another Duty, an older and stronger
Duty, but...  Oh so much gentler.

The war within was brief and savage, but the outcome inevitable.

Deceiving herself, Guara made compromise with the Ganne Dragon.  She would
do her duty, of course she would, but not just yet?  A little comfort to
ease the infant's distress?  A few moments of happiness for the tiny mite?
Just a few seconds, the law could wait that long surely?  Then the duty...
The poor doomed mite should know one happiness at least before it's brief
life was done.  One happiness at least, it was only fair.  After all, it
could hardly be held responsible for the now all but forgotten madness and
horror of the distant past.

Yes, of course the duty; but she could ensure that it would know at least
one happiness before the close of its doomed existence.

With fumbling fingers, which fell over themselves in their haste, Guara
unlaced her shirt and brought out one of her breasts, swollen with a
surfeit of milk her dead son would no longer need.  The viper latched on
to the nipple, began to suckle greedily.

Just a few seconds, the little mite deserved that at least.  It could not
be responsible for what it was.  Just a few seconds, and then....  She
lifted her Bayonne.

Just a few more seconds, she kept telling herself.  Just a few more
seconds...

Through a veil of tears, she watched the naked thing cradled against her.
It drew on her copious supply of life by force of its helplessness and
need.  It had no other right in the whole wide world - and needed none.
All the while the Bayonne drooped lower and lower, until its point was
grounded in the rocky earth.

Just a few more seconds...  Then she would put the little monster from the
world?

Just a few more seconds?...

Not once had Guara regretted her dereliction of duty on that road in all
the twenty years since.  Even through all the dark times and the
repudiations and hatred - not once.

Her odious husband, of course, had swiftly and publicly disowned their
marriage.  It was a formality only, for they had not spoken a word to each
other in the last five years, not even laid eyes upon each other in three.
Her husband, a greedy and ambitious man, suffered her getting of a bastard
without complaint because he was loath to put aside the advantages
accruing to the Consort of the Matriarch.

But a Viper child?...

Unscrupulous as he was, even he would not stomach that.

When the little mite had finished with her, Guara had laced it up inside
her shirt against her breasts.  She had sought for, and in a few moments
found, the one who had laid out the pathetic offering to appease the
Goddess.

Using her Bayonne, Guara cut the girl's body down from the tree.  For this
common country girl, who had birthed the monster, there had been no way
save the Duty of the Law; and then perhaps a long climb back to the
suspicious and grudging acceptance of her peers, and all the while weighed
down with a burden of guilt and regret.  No wonder this nameless girl had
chosen to seek the Goddess's Mercy.  Guara had buried the body by the road
side, and scratched the sign of the Goddess upon a nearby boulder.  It was
all she could do.

"They bring joy to the heart, just to see them play."

Guara started violently, so lost in her reverie that Captain Jerren's
approach had gone entirely unnoticed.  It was inattention like this which
was going to kill her some day soon; but that was not now.

Smiling, she said to Jerren, "I wonder if that was why the ancients
brought the beasts with them when they came here?"

"That would seem likely, Madam.  But who can say why the ancients did
anything?  I've seen some of the books of the ancients; and they seemed to
think in very strange ways."

"Indeed, Captain.  Was there something?"

"Ay, Madam.  We'll be coming abreast of the out-fall of the Great River in
four hours.  If we're to put in at South Point, I'll have to come to the
leeward of the Sentinel Isles or be carried a good fifteen leagues east.
We'll never be able to beat back against the flow this time of year.  Are
we to put in at South Point?"

"No, Captain.  There will be no need to risk the leeward channel."

Jerren looked relieved.  He never liked trying to make South Point at this
season.  "So it'll be Corvenne Bay and the Gynarchy that we'll be making
for?" he inquired.

"No."

"Madam?"

"We are not making for the Gynarchy, Captain Jerren."

"But there's nowhere else along this coast," Jerren protested.

Guara arched an eyebrow at him.  "Really Captain?  Is there not a whole
two hundred miles of coastline of the Ballan Tah?"

Jerren swallowed.  "The cursed lands?  But no ships have put in there for
thirty years."

"Then you will have the distinction of being the first, Captain.  You will
make for the bay under the cliffs at North Point, and put me and my party
ashore there."


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