Courtship Rite Read online

  Courtship Rite

  Donald Kingsbury

  A vast alien landscape and a human culture based on our own, yet evolved in strange and wondrous ways by the forces of an inimical nature provide a panoramic backdrop for the romantic adventures of a large cast of memorable and attractive characters.

  Won Compton Crook Award for best first novel in 1983.

  Nominated for Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1983.

  The UK edition was entitled Geta.

  Courtship Rite

  by Donald Kingsbury

  1

  In the deserts of the Swollen Tongue below the Wailing Mountains there lives an insect species which organizes other insects by mimicking their olfactory communication systems. The sense and control organs of the eight-legged kaiel are contained in an intricate design on their backs called honto-kae. Priests of the human clan named Kaiel carve a stylized version of the hontokae into their skins so all will know that they intend to command all.

  Harar ram-Ivieth from his Following God

  PRIME PREDICTOR TAE RAN-KAIEL was long dead but he lived in the bellies of his aggressive progeny. Even the youngest of them had shared his flesh at a Funeral Feast still remembered in clan chant around the rowdy gaming tables of the Kaiel temples.

  An old man, Tae had been skinned and then marinated and stuffed with insect flavored bread before his body was spit-roasted. In the evening of the first high day of the week called Skull in the year of the Mantis, when the coals of the spit fire were as dull as Getasun caught by a sandstorm, he was carved to the monotonous voice of chanting and served in a spiced sauce that had been salted by a spoonful of blood from each of his eighty-three sons and seventy daughters. All night long, the mourning Kaiel had pledged their loyalty in song and in speech and gift-giving and even, at the height of the celebration, with wry jokes about the toughness of his flesh.

  The three brothers Gaet, Hoemei, and Joesai had been among the sons of Tae ran-Kaiel who celebrated his Funeral. Boys then, wild comrades, they had felt more than camaraderie around the dull glow of the spit fire as the chanter, naked in the etched designs of his skin, carved up their father and sang the song of the Silent God of the Sky who waited for men strong enough to unify Geta.

  That night they had been moved to take the vow of husbands, though they were only boys and knew no women they could share as wives. The drunken crowds, the drifting smoke mixed with incense, the emerging skeleton of the Prime Predictor fevered their souls. The three vowed to be husbands in a team that would bring honor to the Kaiel by carrying out the wishes of their father.

  Since the Getan ideal was a balanced team, they decided that Hoemei should partake of his brains, Gaet should partake of his heart, and Joesai of his thighs. Thus they sealed their marriage as God passed overhead in the purpled sky.

  “As God is my witness,” said Gaet, making the sign of loyalty.

  “As God is my witness,” said Hoemei, his eyes on the moving God.

  “As God is my witness,” said Joesai, watching their star-bright God pass among the stars.

  A group of priests ambled through the crowd extolling Tae’s virtues in pithy shouts, throwing their arms to the sky for emphasis. Was not Tae the greatest leader of the Kaiel? Had he not earned for his genes the right to host in many bodies? Who had more kalothi than Tae ran-Kaiel?

  “They are drunk,” said Hoemei, fascinated.

  “Do you think we could get a crack at the whisky barrel?” mused Gaet. Men’s vows were oiled by drink.

  “It is forbidden,” said Hoemei, reminding them that they were children.

  “Wait till Aesoe makes his acceptance speech.” Joesai was grinning.

  Some called Aesoe “the Shadow” because of his continuous proximity to Tae. Now he was sitting on a whisky barrel, laughing with friends. He would be the new Prime Predictor, not because he was Tae’s favorite, but because the predictions he had left in the Archives had proved more accurate than those of any other Kaiel.

  Aesoe moved onto the stage. Even in those days he had loved to grip his audience with his booming oratory and waving arms. Joesai watched him, sometimes listening, sometimes sneaking toward the barrel.

  “Since the epoch when God chose His Silence, priests have been isolating themselves from their people, and having lost contact, have been decimated when the underclans rebelled. New priest clans are legislated and are themselves overthrown. It was Tae who first analyzed the true nature of this falling.”

  Joesai stole an empty mug from a rapt listener who stood smiling at the thousandth retelling of the reason Tae had laid down his law of Voting Weight. Their new clan leader waited serenely, savoring the hush his words created before breaking it. “Tae has decreed the rules by which we live and by which we have become strong.” He paused. “Are we strong?”

  “All power to the Kaiel!” the crowd roared in the deep voices of men and the higher voices of women and the enthusiastic voices of children.

  Joesai sipped the last drop of whisky in the mug, then pretended he was paying attention to the stage. Aesoe blazed now like Getasun in storm. “One: a Kaiel is to be allowed voting rights in the councils only in proportion to the size of his personal constituency.”

  “All power to the Kaiel!” roared the massed clan in ritual.

  “Two: the constituency of any Kaiel may consist only of loyal friends.”

  “All power to the Kaiel!” Joesai was near the whisky now, and planning his tactics. Stealing in a crowd, even when it was dark, required thought.

  “Three: no Kaiel may belong to the constituency of another Kaiel.”

  “All power to the Kaiel!” If he could nudge it, the spigot would drip.

  “Four: no non-Kaiel may belong to more than one constituency.”

  “All power to the Kaiel!”

  “Five: no one shall be forced into a constituency by either fear or place of domicile.”

  “All power to the Kaiel!” The mug was on the ground, filling up drip by drip. Joesai stood nearby, innocently.

  “Six: the councils may challenge any Kaiel at any time to recite the names of the pledge members of his constituency and to describe in detail the concerns of each. Any person he cannot remember is stricken from his list.”

  “All power to the Kaiel!”

  Aesoe gestured a pause. In one bound he was off the stage and whacking Joesai viciously across the mouth. He tipped over the mug, and shut off the dripping spigot. Then he climbed back to the stage, grinning while the commotion died down. He paused for half a dozen heartbeats.

  “Seven: a Kaiel who can summon no friends remains voteless and is required to remain childless or leave the clan.”

  His audience was back in the mood, Joesai forgotten. “All power to the Kaiel!”

  “Your mouth is bleeding,” whispered Gaet.

  “It is the soup pot for you,” whispered a frightened Hoemei.

  Joesai just smiled with blood-stained teeth and produced a small wooden flask, half filled.

  Gaet sniffed the heavy alcoholic fumes and shoved the flask under his coat.

  “You stole it?” worried Hoemei.

  “Couldn’t resist,” grinned Joesai. “The flask was just sitting there.”

  Gaet tried to convince one of his sisters to take the first swig. She only smiled at him as if he were brave and foolish. After more joking the three brothers slipped away to the bushes and emptied the flask, spending the rest of the evening pretending they were sober.

  That mischievous night had been long ago. They had left the creche, they had married twice more, they had made money and achieved a small fame. Though less brilliant than Hoemei who was favored by the high councils, and less terrible than Joesai who was favored by the Order of Hontokae, Gaet became the most
powerful of the brothers in the lower councils with a voting weight of forty-three. He was the most suave, the most travelled, the subtle charmer of ladies; he smiled more than his mates and instantly befriended any human who served him. Now, fresh from an encounter with the aging Aesoe, Gaet felt surly, a scowl deepening the scars of his decorated face.

  The stone mansion, bought by the three brothers with their first fortune, was on the slope of a hill overlooking the sacred catacombs that were called the Graves of the Losers. Beyond that, still only half built, the Kaiel Palace lay against the sky, a group of pink ovoids plumper than they were tall, as if stream-smoothed pebbles had been balanced on and around each other. The Palace glowed like molten iron at dawn while the huge furnace-colored disk of Getasun rose to the east of it. To the left, larger even than the ovoids of the Palace, was the never-moving Scowlmoon, tangent to the mountainous horizon, full in its dark morning redness.

  Gaet ignored it all, ignored his neighbors’ villas. Furious, he even neglected to say hello to a passing Ivieth porter. He pushed through his gate, strode across the courtyard of his home, around the fountain pool, while his surprised two-wife Teenae scampered to follow him.

  “Troubles on your soul! Give me troubles!”

  “Where’s Hoemei?”

  “At the Palace. Joesai is home.”

  “And one-wife?”

  “Noe sleeps. What is it?”

  “Aesoe has forbidden us to marry Kathein.”

  Teenae stopped in shock, then turned away. “I will wake and bring Noe!” She bypassed the stairs and leaped for a pole which extended from the courtyard wall, flipping herself up over the railing out of sight.

  Gaet seated himself by the pool, having foreknowledge that one-wife would make him wait. Noe was not a woman to be hurried. He thought blackly of the orders Aesoe had given him, which were in direct conflict with his own plans. Images of a marriage feast passed before his eyes, the Call of the Bonds, the giving of the Five Gifts.

  It did not suit him to relinquish Kathein in favor of a woman he did not know. It did not suit him, this idea of setting up residence along the coast. It did not suit him to leave the ever-fascinating struggles of the city of Kaiel-hontokae while he was still forging his family’s Place.

  Should he obey Aesoe and go to the coast to meet this heretical stranger and charm her and bring her home merely to gain the favor of Aesoe’s Expansionists? Or should he send Joesai to kill her?

  2

  The God of the Sky gave us a harsh land because we are a rebellious Race. We wandered across the Swollen Tongue and He watched us. Ten Thousand died in the snow of the Wailing Mountains and He did not speak to us. We planted our crops by the Njarae Sea and He ignored us. West and east and south and north, deep were the graves carved into the merciless stone. Here are their names: the Graves of Grief, and the Graves of the Wailing Mountains, and the Graves of the Blind Eye, and the Graves of the Losers.

  It is chanted that a Savior will be born of she who spills her blood deep in the Graves of the Losers. We have founded Our City upon that hallowed catacomb. All power to the Kaiel! The city of Kaiel-hontokae shall give birth to the Savior Who Speaks To God.

  Prime Predictor Njai ben-Kaiel from her Third Speech

  HOEMEI MARAN-KAIEL WALKED across the flagstones that led to the first huge ovoid of the Palace. He stopped to chat with Seipe, an old woman he often dealt with because he was spending large amounts of money and she was Watchman of the Coin and never believed in spending more than the Kaiel could collect in taxes. Even Aesoe could not shake her.

  “I did not give you permission to put the rayvoice tower on Terrible Hill,” she chided.

  Hoemei grinned. “I put my own money into it and I’m charging toll.”

  “I’ll have to find a way to tax you.”

  “I’m making sure that the tower has no profit. It has expenses,” he laughed.

  She changed the subject to do business that would save her a runner. “You are invited to my villa on the fourth high day of the Amorists’ Constellation. Bring Teenae.”

  “Teenae will be pleased,” said Hoemei affectionately.

  “I know; that’s why I want her there to help me. She’s younger and quicker than I am. We will gossip while you haggle with your competitors.”

  “Is someone after my share of the tax money again?”

  “Your money? It’s my money!” said Seipe with a great laugh, using the private possessive form as if the clan’s coin were part of her own bones.

  They held hands, each overlaid upon the other, as Getan friends did before they parted. “God sees you,” he said.

  His careful humoring of the Watchman done, Hoemei returned his feet to the flagstones and his thoughts to Aesoe. Aesoe was getting greedy. The power that the Prime Predictor smelled in the growing rayvoice network was as whisky to the nose of a drunkard. How he drives us with his visions! He’ll have more work for me.

  Hoemei wandered into the Palace maze within the main ovoid, distracted for a moment by the uncommon electric glow that still amazed even he who knew its magic and knew how it was fabricated in the basement workshops of Kaiel-hontokae. Aesoe saw an electrified Geta. That was foolishness. There was no end to the things Aesoe saw. These wild visions were afflicting even Hoemei’s dreams.

  “He’s waiting for you,” said a friend who was passing.

  Hoemei stopped him. “What’s his mood?”

  “I think he just found a way into Seipe’s vaults. Or else the woman of his dreams materialized from the steam of his morning tea.”

  “He’s in good spirits then?”

  “A tug on his hair would lift off his head at the smile line.”

  “Ah, then I’m not up for skinning.” That was a relief.

  He paused at the entrance to Aesoe’s lair, removing his shoes. When Aesoe did not notice him at the high doorway, he walked forward and seated himself upon the pillows, then looked straight at the Prime Predictor, waiting. Nothing would have induced Hoemei to interrupt the overpriest of the Kaiel clan. Old Aesoe sipped a drink, speaking to his scribe and to his personal o’Tghalie mathematician. He sipped again, brought out a map and put away some papers.

  “I have already spoken to your brother Gaet.”

  “One-brother has not yet seen me, sire.”

  Aesoe shrugged. “You know your family has been given the Valley of Ten Thousand Graves down to the sea.”

  “Being the central route to the sea through the Wailing Mountains it will add to our wealth, but also to our burdens. Many have refused this gift.”

  “… and will not rise to power within the Kaiel.”

  “Which is why we accepted the gift, though it is not the Kaiel’s land to give.”

  Aesoe snorted at such pious morality. “Do you know why this valley exists as an unconquered sliver in our side?”

  “All Kaiel who settle there are murdered.”

  “Have you speculated upon the nature of the murderers?”

  “I deal in facts,” said Hoemei.

  “Ah, but we who make policy can lose the game if we wait for facts. Speculate!”

  “My guess would be the Mnankrei.”

  “Why not the Stgal? The Stgal would have more to lose. It is their land.”

  “The Stgal are cowards. They fear us. The Mnankrei covet the lands of the Stgal as we do. These sea priests have been known to advocate violence and their Storm Masters range up and down the Njarae unhindered in their billowing ships.”

  Aesoe cleared his throat. “Our spies tell us that a village called Sorrow was the scene of the murders.” He pointed out Sorrow on the map, a small harbor of the Njarae Sea. “The Stgal have a great temple there. It is also a center of heresy. Heretics, recruited from dozens of the underclans, tolerate their Stgal, finding priestly weakness useful. The Stgal tolerate them because they oppose us and oppose the Mnankrei.”

  “It must be a new heresy.”

  “Very new. But its basis has been latent in the region for some t
ime. Priestly weakness generates heresy.”

  “The heretics were the murderers?”

  “Who will ever know? Perhaps. My spies tell me they are fearless. But so are the Mnankrei. And I would not turn my back on a man who smiles at me as the Stgal do.“

  “You are telling me that we must stab with a three-pronged fork: destroy the heretics, destroy the Mnankrei, and destroy the Stgal.”

  “Not at all. Your father Tae, who was my personal teacher, was a man of great wisdom. We conquer by making friends, not by destroying. If you are feared, you must fear. You maran-Kaiel were chosen for this mission because Gaet has a certain way with people and he never makes an enemy. He forgets though. Out of sight, out of mind. You’re the administrator, the one who remembers to provide continuity.”

  “Gaet never makes an enemy because he doesn’t have to. He uses Joesai for all of his dirty work.”

  “True. The making of friends often requires an open smile and a covert hand.”

  “So the treacherous Stgal teach us,” said Hoemei ironically. “But how do you make friends with a heretic who rejects all your values?”

  Aesoe sipped from his goblet and laughed the great laugh so enjoyed by the Getan population. “Heretics are never as different as they seem. They are like genetic mutants. A mutant shares most of your genes. A heretic shares most of your ideas. Most mutations manufacture the wrong proteins. Most heresies are false. But then — we Kaiel are heretics.” And he laughed again.

  “And how do you make friends with the Mnankrei and the Stgal?”

  “Is that necessary when it is the heretics who control the hearts of the people?”

  Hoemei became pensive. “You are instructing us to weave together the common goals of Kaiel and heretic as the way to take over the Valley of Ten Thousand Graves?”

  Aesoe laughed. “My instructions are much simpler. You are to marry their women. Your family, for instance, is missing a three-wife.”