Profane rites, p.11
Profane Rites, page 11
She was too focused on trying to figure out what motivated the ghoul. Plainly the beast was not a complete savage. While it lived the life of a feral animal and was driven by base desires, there was an intelligence about it as well. The way it fought, careful and tactical, not disciplined by any stretch of the imagination, but far more capable than just an animal. And the items that she had found in the hut added another layer of complexity. She had assumed that the monster was simply a thing of pure evil, a corrupt aberration of twisted humanity. But why would such an evil creature covet items of faith? These were the types of things that she would expect to find in the abbey of Rampura, not some derelict shack in the middle of the jungle. And certainly not the type of thing she would expect a monster to possess.
There was something larger at play, but the answer eluded her. Yonas offered no insight. When she probed him for his thoughts, showing him the items that she had collected, he had offered not much more than a shrug. He did not seem concerned about the nature of the ghoul, just with how to fight it. And he had demonstrated that he was more than a match for the thing, although neither had had any real success with causing lasting damage to the other. Honorata worried that Yonas was the more fragile of the two. He was a far tougher fighter than she would have guessed, but the ghoul seemed unbothered by the injuries it wore. The wounds of the fight in the market square, gone in just a couple of days. Even with her blessing any of Yonas’s wounds, he could never recover that fast.
Yonas and Honorata walked towards the headman’s manor on the promise of a room under Mihir’s roof. As they approached, Rani came towards them, tears streaming down her face.
“Sister Honorata, something terrible has happened.” The cracked urgency of her voice made it clear that something indeed was horribly wrong.
“What is it, my child? Is there someone who needs me help?”
“It’s too late for that. It’s Yadhana.”
* * *
Honorata entered that dark room, alone. This time the girl did not stir at the sound. She carried a candle; the covered window did not let in enough moonlight for Honorata to see. The form of the girl lay almost exactly where she had last seen her. Lying on her side, facing the wall, covered in a coarse cloth.
Honorata took three quiet steps across the room and knelt before the girl. She placed the candle on the floor before her. Taking her holy symbol from her cincture, she arranged it on the ground before removing incense and a small incense holder from her robe. The ceramic holder was rectangular in shape, with a series of small holes on the top. She placed the holder on the group and arranged the incense into place before lighting each stick in turn with the flame from the candle.
She closed her eyes as she let the scent of the incense fill her senses, the smoke swirling around her as she meditated. This poor girl. Confined to this room for months on end. Suffering without end, shunned by all. Even the girl’s own family feared contracting her ailment. Honorata had been the first person to enter this room in months.
With her eyes still closed, she reached forward and rested her hands upon the girl’s corpse. Devi had not saved this child. Honorata held back her tears, the pang of grief overwhelming. Why not save this child? What was the use of the Song if it could not help the truly innocent? The helpless and desperate like Yadhana. It was one thing to bless the wounds of soldiers, injuries won by choice in the heat of battle. She could understand why Devi may not intervene to save the impure, the violent or the undeserving. But a child like this? There could not be a more pure soul.
“Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei.” Her tears flowed now. She no longer cared about trying to hold them back.
“Requiescat in pace.”
Chapter Eleven
Honorata and Yonas broke their fast together the morning after Yadhana died. Mihir did not join them but had arranged for a simple meal of curried vegetables and dhal. Yonas was already eating by the time that Honorata arrived to the small dining room in Mihir’s manor. He nodded to her as she took her seat. She did not feel like eating, but conscious of the rigours of the day ahead, she forced herself to spoon the food into her mouth.
Yonas watched her warily. “It’s a real shame about that girl. What a terrible way to go,” he ventured in between mouthfuls of food. Honorata did not respond, in part because she agreed and had nothing further to add.
Not put off by her silence, Yonas tried again. “So, we follow this lead that Shankar gave us today? I still reckon we can’t trust the man, but what else can we do? No one else has any idea where Mother Severa has hidden herself.”
“Yes, Yonas. That is indeed what we need to do.” She felt bad replying bluntly to her bodyguard, but she found it difficult to speak at all this morning. It certainly was not Yonas’s fault, and in fact, the man had proven himself the most worthwhile of companions. She needed to break out of this mood, as it was not worthy of a priestess of Devi, she thought. And if that was what she wanted to become, well, she had better start behaving like it.
“Well, I’ll have a chat with Mihir about supplies. We’ll need enough food for a week. What did the heretic say? A two-day walk down river to where the river forks, and then north to the temple. So two days there, two days back, with a bit of extra food just in case.”
“Hmm, yes, that sounds sensible, Yonas. Please forgive me if I seem distracted. There has been much on my mind.”
Yonas offered a wide smile. “Sister, I understand more than you could realise. You do what you have to do to get by and I’ll worry about how to get us to that temple.”
“Thank you, Yonas.” She finished her bowl of food, finding herself enjoying the heady mix of aromatic spices despite her despondent mood. “I wish to attend to some matters this morning but will be ready to leave before long.”
Leaving Mihir’s manor, she walked into the gentle dawn sunlight. It was a much more comfortable time of day for someone wearing heavy, dark robes like hers, and she relished every moment that the heat was not torturing her. A blue sky tinged with thin streaks of clouds hung over the jungle, the call and reply of the morning birds a reminder of their excursion into the jungle the night before. The villagers she recognised from that expedition seemed sheepish and reluctant to meet her gaze this morning. Something unusual was definitely at play, she thought. She was not sure that she had sensed that awful tainted aura, but that hint of foulness, an insubstantial wisp of discomfort, suggested to her that something subtle but profane had been at work. The influence of an evil force on the minds of Mihir and the others certainly would explain the vigour with which they hunted the ghoul. If it was not that, then Mihir was far stupider than she had given him credit. The ghoul had shown that it was more than a match for the people of Aluia in the market square during Shankar’s near-execution.
Yadhana’s grave had already been dug. The village’s cemetery was along the outside of the northern part of the wall. Simple graves, most marked with small stone markers with short inscriptions. Bundles of wilted flowers and burnt sticks of incense marked those graves where the deceased’s families still paid their respects. Those graves, which had received recent attention, were in the minority. Most seemed ancient to Honorata’s observation as she passed. A mound of wet, brown dirt marked the spot where Honorata knew that she would find Yadhana. Her body had been placed in a small coffin put together quickly by the village carpenter. That box rested in the grave, the young girl’s final resting place.
Honorata knew that she would need to leave before the girl’s family gathered to say goodbye. That was not her place in any event; she was bound to offer Devi’s blessing wherever she could, but there was little that she could do to console grieving family members. The family would be dealing with the awful realisation that the death of their loved one in a situation like this was also the lifting of the terrible burden of being bound to care for her as her body failed her. She had seen it before. That combination of guilt and grief competing with relief and heartbreak. She did not need to deal with that additional hurt this day.
She knelt by the grave and stared at the wooden box resting at the bottom of the freshly dug hole. It was a simple thing, plain wood, unsanded and hastily nailed together. It held one of the most precious examples of Devi’s creation, the body of an innocent, taken from the world too soon.
She began murmuring her prayer, her fingers moving through her prayer beads methodically. There was comfort in this routine, comfort in letting her mind focus on the repetitive verse, her fingers working almost without thought. She had done this so many times before that it was second nature to her. It was a different type of meditative calm than what was brought by channeling the Song. This was a simpler thing. Not a denial of her emotions, not a way to force them down so that they may as well not have existed anymore. Rather, it was a way in which she dwelled on those feelings, processed them and contemplated them. Contemplated her grief and the ending of a young girl’s life.
That was where Yonas found her. It was mid-morning by that time and Honorata’s knees ached from holding that position.
“Sister, I don’t mean to interrupt, but I’m ready to go. I’ve got a sack full of rations and a couple of clean bed rolls. Once you’re done here, we can get moving.”
Honorata opened her eyes and smiled to Yonas. She nodded her head before standing. With one final blessing, she turned from the grave and walked with Yonas towards the gate of the village.
* * *
They chatted idly as they walked from the village into the gloom of the jungle, along a trail that pierced the undergrowth and loosely followed the path of the river. They had been warned about crocodiles lurking on the water’s edge, that warning illustrated by a gory tale of a villager’s dog being stolen from the banks of the river, and whenever their path flirted with the edge of the river Honorata became nervous. Dealing with heretics and ghouls was one thing. She did not need the additional problem of having to fend off bloodthirsty wildlife.
By and large, the walk was uneventful. At one point Honorata saw a pod of river dolphins. About six of the animals lazily frolicked in the centre of the river, oblivious and uncaring as to their passing. She could not recall seeing dolphins in her childhood and they were never seen close to Rampura, so it was a sight that excited Honorata. Yonas did not seem particularly interested, but he did not say anything to take away from Honorata’s fun.
They rested around midday on the fallen trunk of a tree overlooking a bend in the river. The bundle of food, which Yonas had acquired, contained portions wrapped in banana leaves. There was no time for a fire to heat their meal, but the curried mutton and rajma—a mixture made from red beans—was delicious to Honorata’s taste despite it being cold.
As they collected their belongings to leave, Yonas raised a topic which had been troubling Honorata. “So, do you think this is a trap?” He asked the question casually, almost as if the answer did not matter to the swordsman.
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. I have trouble assessing Shankar’s true intentions,” she replied.
“Yeah, agreed. I’ve never met his type before, a sorcerer with real power. He is not just some charlatan pretending at power. But he could have done some mischief that night he came upon us sleeping and he didn’t do anything but talk. It seems to me that there’s a bit more going on here,” he said.
“I agree, Yonas. There is no question that the man is an abomination and a heretic, but he is not driven by a desire to commit profane acts. Well, that is not his only desire,” she said.
“I haven’t forgotten what he did to us in Aluia. I don’t think I ever will. Like nothing else I’ve ever felt before.” Honorata could hear the pain in his voice as Yonas remembered that awful encounter, his dark eyes flashing with anger at the heretic.
“And nor should you forget that, Yonas. But what is done is done and we have no choice but to follow Shankar’s information to its end. Whether there is a trap laid for us or not, we will deal with that as best we can.”
Yonas was silent for long enough that Honorata thought that the conversation had ended and that they were returning to the comfortable silence of the road, but the man spoke up again.
“I’ll kill him if I get the chance.” There was a cold certainty about the words. This was not an idle threat. “I’m not asking for your blessing to do so—I know you can’t, in fact I know you’ll try and talk me out of it—but I can’t let the man live. He’s caused too much damage and he’s too much of a threat. Next chance I get, I will strike,” he said.
Now it was Honorata’s turn to let the silence drag on as they walked. Eventually she decided that there was nothing to say to that. She let the topic drop and focused on the path ahead, weaving in and out of thick groves of jungle trees, stepping over the reaching undergrowth, which crowded the path, and making her way towards an uncertain destiny.
* * *
The first glimpse of the ancient temple came as Honorata was dripping with sweat, short of breath, having laboured up a steep incline, the footing treacherous with loose dirt and slippery mud. Trees loomed overhead, this path rarely used for what looked like many years. Roots and vines conspired to trip her, and she found herself having to concentrate on the precise placement of every step just to make sure that she did not trip and fall. So distracted, she was taken by surprise when the stone pyramid appeared before them.
The path led sharply down to a ravine before rising again to meet the base of the pyramid. Two gentle streams poured into the ravine from the temple side, their source was a large pool, which gathered near the stone foundations. The temple itself rose dramatically from the thick wilderness. All manner of vines and other plants grasped at its sides with about the bottom third dominated by greenery, which became less obvious the higher one looked. Honorata could see that the walls of the great structure were carved and decorated with murals and statues, although she could not quite identify their shapes from this distance.
They walked down the path towards the ravine. It became so steep that she struggled to control her descent, at one stage falling onto her back and sliding a few feet before catching on to an exposed root. Shaken from that fall, she took extra care and they travelled at a crawl as a result. Passing into the ravine proper, the sun was momentarily hidden from them, the cool that the shade brought a welcome change. She could see now that the streams pouring from the temple’s pool ran down the edge, creating slick and treacherous rocks, to gather in a pond, before flowing to Honorata’s right and towards the river they had left behind. The ground at the bottom was a loose sandy surface, moist from the water but thankfully firm enough under foot. They rested here for a moment.
Yonas knelt by the pond, inspecting the water within. After a moment he nodded to Honorata and filled his mashk. He shared the water with Honorata, the cool fluid refreshing and a wonderful answer to the heavy humidity of the day. Yonas drank deeply as well, before he refilled the waterskin once more and they began their climb up the steep path towards the temple.
The climb upwards felt less dangerous given Honorata could use her hands to find purchase along with her feet. Yonas seemed to have no trouble at all, alternating between lifting himself up with his long reach and powerful arms and easily finding solid footing. The fact that he was about a head taller than Honorata did not help, she silently complained to herself. But before long, she found herself scrambling up the far side and onto the flat ground before the wide pool that fed the streams over which the ancient, stone pyramid loomed. She knelt in the thick grass, not in prayer or out of submission to the great temple before her, but simply to rest.
She could see the carvings now. Wild, demonic figures, their faces grotesque, hinting at violence and savagery, their limbs entwined amongst themselves and the other carvings. It was hard to see where one figure began and another ended. Bizarre depictions of animals, twisted and perverted from their natural form. A crocodile with the shape of a man, wielding a wicked dagger. Half-tigers shown tearing their enemies apart but with their lower limbs replaced by the twisting tail of a snake. A terrible woman, muscled and powerful, armed with a spear and holding a severed head, the tusks of an elephant protruding from her mouth. Honorata had never seen anything like this. She had heard tales of demon worship, whispered amongst the students in the abbey, but they were matters of passing fascination, not something seriously discussed in their history lessons. Those stories were certainly never discussed as something that still existed in the world. Perhaps this temple was a monument to those old beliefs, she thought. A monument to a time before the word of Devi became known, before the Bhagava taught the people of Pala the way of hearing Devi’s voice.
“Have you ever seen anything like this, Yonas?” she asked.
Yonas approached the nearest statue; a grotesque deformity twisting the form of a woman and that of a rhinoceros. “Never, Sister. In Abyssinia, there was never worship like this. I don’t know what to make of this place.”
“I do not know either, Yonas. Plainly this temple has been here for hundreds, if not thousands of years. It truly is ancient.”
“And long abandoned as well. There’s no sign of anyone having come through here that I can see. No tracks apart from what looks like animals. No smell of fire. Nothing left lying around. There is no one here, Sister.”
Honorata looked about, thinking on Yonas’s opinion. She could not see anything that would make her disagree. She caught sight of a troop of monkeys, brown with tufts of orange, playfully bounding through the undergrowth and into the trees. Some were eating fruit, which grew at that end of the clearing. They ignored the people that had stumbled into their midst.
“I fear that you are correct, Yonas. Shankar must have lied to us. I cannot say that I am disappointed, as we both knew that he was more snake than man, but I had hoped that there would be something worthwhile at the end of this journey.”
“Well, I suppose that you’ve seen something that you’ve never seen before,” Yonas said gesturing at the half-woman, half-rhinoceros. “Might not be worth two days walking through the jungle but seems that’s about all that we’ll find here.”
