Page 49 of Something Human

It was during the worst of this period that he had the dream about the Pseuchaian woman. He had odd dreams whenever he managed to sleep, but he only remembered them in bits and pieces. This one was different. He woke up with every detail still clear in his mind, with a confused feeling as though it had really happened.

He felt a little better than usual that morning, and thought he might attempt eating something. It was very early, but Unumus and the votive boys were up, sitting by the hearth, where something was steaming in a pot on the fire. Rus pulled on his trousers under the covers, wrapped himself in the warm robe he had borrowed from Kuth, and shuffled down off the sleeping platform to join the others at the hearth.

“I had a strange dream,” he said, folding himself down onto a seat and tucking his feet under the edge of the robe. He felt creaky, like an old man, and stupid for having led with this remark instead of bidding them good morning like a sane person.

“Ah, yes?” Unumus looked up from the pot, which he had been stirring, looking interested. Rus remembered that he was fond of interpreting dreams, and was doubly annoyed with himself for mentioning it. But it was too late now.

He settled for trying to make the whole thing as boring as possible. “Well, it was nothing much. I dreamt about a woman painting the pattern on the kahar hall. It seemed strange to me because she was a Pseuchaian woman.”

“Interesting,” said Unumus. “A Kosoth woman, he means,” he added for the benefit of the boys, who were still learning Firhat Kosoth and wouldn’t know the word “Pseuchaian.” Rus hadn’t known it himself before that fall.

“I don’t know if she was Kossian,” Rus said. “She wore a blue gown, and gold in her hair.”

“Was she beautiful?” one of the boys asked. The other one elbowed him, and they both blushed and snickered.

“Like a goddess,” Rus said solemnly. “Actually, she looked a little like the statue of Anaxe in the temple outside Tios. I saw it when I was there in the fall.”

“Ah!” Unumus’s eyes lit up. “That is most interesting. Anaxe is what the Kossians call Kahait,” he reminded the boys, who nodded earnestly. “And she was painting the new pattern on our walls, you say?”

“That was what it looked like. A strange thing to dream, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps not. Did you know that the Kossians believe Anaxe is a chaste goddess?”

Rus didn’t see what that had to do with anything. “Yes, actually. I did know that.”

“Ah.” Unumus looked surprised, which Rus found insulting. He knew Unumus thought the bull-fighters were all muscle and no brains—and that Rus, as the best of them, was also the worst of them, so to speak. He stuck to that opinion no matter how many examples he might see to the contrary. It was one of the reasons Rus disliked him.

“Is that porridge?” Rus asked, to change the subject.

“I’ll serve you some, kahar,” said one of the votive boys, bobbing up eagerly.

“I believe I know what your dream signified,” said Unumus, ignoring the diversion. “You saw a vision of the goddess, the pure Anaxe, painting the great pattern of Heva on the Hall of the Heavens. It is a great blessing to have seen such a thing. We can only think that it is a message for us—and I believe I know what that message is.” He turned to the two boys. “Can you tell?”

“No, kahar,” said one. The other opened his mouth, closed it again, and shook his head.

Rus slurped his porridge quietly.

“Why should the goddess appear to him in that form? Why not as Kahait, as our ancestors have always known her? Surely it is because of Anaxe’s reputation for chastity—this is what sets her apart to Kossian eyes. And so it should be for us as well! It is as I have always said—we, the kahar of the Luth, have been set apart not only from begetting sons to continue our line but from the corruption of bodily lust. We must shun it as we would shun rotten food. That is why, Rusanarath, you saw the chaste goddess performing our work, the painting of the shadow of Heva on our walls—work which is not properly undertaken by any mortal woman, but may be performed in the Heavens by the pure Anaxe because, being both divine and chaste, she is free from the taint of womankind.”

There was more, but Rus couldn’t have stayed to listen to it if he’d wanted to—which he very much didn’t—because the few mouthfuls of porridge he’d swallowed were already threatening to come back up. He mumbled some excuse and crawled back onto the sleeping platform to curl up, fighting the wave of nausea that had come over him.

It was the usual thing, the after-effect of too much theraka, nothing to do with what Unumus had been saying. He’d heard Unumus say much the same thing plenty of times before, and he didn’t believe it. Nobody but Unumus really believed it, much; that was why he was always boring the votive boys with it, because they were the only ones who would listen to him. Or because he hoped to convince the next generation of his way of thinking while they were still young and impressionable.

There had been a little more to the dream that Rus had not related. He had, in the dream, thought that the woman painting the hall was the Pseuchaian instance of the goddess. She had looked a little like Adares, and he remembered, in the dream, feeling glad because he knew she would take a message to his lover for him.

Now that he thought about it, if she had been Anaxe, she should have been wearing his kilt pin. He thought if it had really been a vision from the gods, he would have seen that.

He spent the rest of that day in bed, too sick to eat, too restless to sleep. Genet came to keep him company, but he did not mention the dream to her. He forgot about it, or at least forgot about Unumus’s interpretation of it, until the visit of Gunthanaruth’s bard more than two weeks later.

The bards earned their keep in the winter travelling from one camp to another with news, and Gunthanaruth always had his bard travel to his summer village to visit the kahar who were wintering there. Officially he came to hear about any important omens that might have been observed, or if the kahar were running short of food. But really it was a courtesy, and the visits were welcome in the dreary months of cold, so they would always try to have some news for the bard when he came, even if it was trivial. Rus might have known, if he had thought about it, what Unumus would seize on this time.

By now, the grip of the theraka on his body and mind had relaxed considerably, and day by day he felt better. He was able to eat and drink again, had started to sleep more soundly at night, and had even gone for a short ride a couple of times without needing to slide down off his horse to be sick. He followed Kuth and Genet’s younger daughter around as she learned to walk, holding onto one of her tiny hands as she stumped through the dead grass in her first pair of soft leather boots. He was sitting at the hearth in the kahar hall with the other winter residents of the village, a dozen of them in all, while the bard entertained them with a new song.

When the song was finished, the bard set aside his lyre and turned to Unumus, as the highest-ranking member of the party.

“Well, kahar. And what is the news?”

“Great and propitious news,” said Unumus sententiously. “One of our number has been granted a true vision of the great goddess.”