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I stammered. My tongue turned upon itself and was knotted. I gagged; I choked; I pulled my head down and pressed it to the cold floor. Jidd touched my shoulder and murmured formulas of comfort until my fit softened. We began the rite a second time. Now I traveled more smoothly through the preliminaries, and when he asked me to speak, I said, as though reciting lines that had been written for me by someone else, “These days past one went to a secret place with another, and we shared a certain drug of Sumara Borthan that unseals the soul, and we engaged in selfbaring together, and now one feels remorse for his sin and would have forgiveness for it.”
Jidd gasped, and it is no little task to astonish a drainer. That gasp nearly punctured my will to confess; but Jidd artfully recovered control, coaxing me onward with bland priestly phrases, until in a few moments the stiffness left my jaws and I was spilling everything out. My early discussions of the drug with Schweiz. (I left him u
“The peace of the gods be with you now,” said Jidd.
“The peace of the gods is upon one.”
“Seek no more for false succor, and keep your self to yourself, for other paths lead only to shame and corruption.”
“One will seek no other paths.”
“You have bondsister and bondbrother, you have a drainer, you have the mercies of the gods. You need no more.”
“One needs no more.”
“Go in peace, then.”
I went, but not in his kind of peace, for the draining had been a leaden thing, meaningless and trifling. Jidd had not reconciled me to the Covenant: he had simply demonstrated the degree of my separation from it. Unmoved though I had been by the draining, however, I emerged from the Stone Chapel somehow purged of guilt. I no longer repented my selfbaring. Perhaps this was some residual effect of the draining, this inversion of my purpose in going to Jidd, but I did not try deeply to analyze it. I was content to be myself and to be thinking these thoughts. My conversion at that instant was complete. Schweiz had taken my faith from me, but he had given me another in its place.
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That afternoon a problem came to me concerning a ship from Threish and some false cargo manifests, and I went to a pier to verify the facts. There by chance I encountered Schweiz. Since parting from him a few days before, I had dreaded meeting him again; it would be intolerable, I thought, to look into the eyes of this man who had beheld my entire self. Only by keeping apart from him could I eventually persuade myself that I had not, in fact, done with him what I had done. But then I saw him near me on the pier. He clutched a thick sheaf of invoices in one hand and was shaking the other furiously at some watery-eyed merchant in Glinish dress. To my amazement I felt none of the embarrassment I had anticipated, but only warmth and pleasure at the sight of him. I went to him. He clapped my shoulder; I clapped his. “You look more cheerful now,” he said.
“Much.”
“Let me finish with this scoundrel and we’ll share a flask of golden, eh?”
“By all means,” I said.
An hour later, as we sat together in a dockside tavern, I said, “How soon can we leave for Sumara Borthan?”
39
The voyage to the southern continent was conducted as though in a dream. Not once did I question the wisdom of undertaking the journey, nor did I pause to ask myself why it was necessary for me to take part in person, rather than let Schweiz make the trip alone, or send some hireling to gather the drug on our behalf. I simply set about the task of arranging for our passage.
No commercial shipping goes regularly between Velada Borthan and Sumara Borthan. Those who would travel to the southern continent must charter a vessel. This I did, through the instrumentality of the High Justiciary, using intermediaries and dummy signatories. The vessel I chose was no Ma
Neither Loimel nor Halum nor Noim nor anyone else did I tell of my destination. I said only that the Justiciary required me to go abroad for a short while. At the Justiciary I was even less specific, applying to myself for a leave of absence, granting it at once, and informing the High Justice at the last possible moment that I was not going to be available for the immediate future.
To avoid complications with the collectors of customs, among other things, I picked as our port of departure the town of Hilminor, in southwestern Ma