Jinian Footseer by Sheri S. Tepper

Author:Sheri S. Tepper [Tepper, Sheri S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, General
ISBN: 9780575116115
Google: jzNpK209EsgC
Amazon: 0812556100
Barnesnoble: 0812556100
Publisher: Orion
Published: 1985-08-24T00:00:00+00:00

'Do you think you told her something new? Something that will earn you initiation? As a Wize-ard?'

I had no idea. There was that tiny shiver, and when I told them about that, they seemed almost excited. About that time, a bell rang, and they all went off to hear something new about the Eesties, or maybe about the Shadowpeople, I'm not sure which. I curled up again and went to sleep and didn't wake up until they roused me for evening porridge. By that time, my name had been posted as approved for initiation, which pleased them, and me.

'What would you have done if I'd not passed?' I asked, half-teasing, certainly not expecting the answer I got.

'There are Forgetters here,' said Margaret. 'You would not have remembered anything at all about the place. And we would have sought another seventh. That's all.'

That was quite enough.

-13-

The Forgetter I was introduced to at my initiation took my hand and said, 'I hope you will never be brought before me, Jinian Footseer. Hold your tongue and keep your memories - for now -

dedicating them to the wize-art.' The threat was explicit.

Which was neither here nor there. My initiation was quiet, almost private. There was one Dervish present,

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the one who ... or some other one. There was the Forgetter, and the dams as witnesses. And there was the tall, frightening presence of a male Wizard in full regalia, a friend of Murzy's, who administered the oaths. Then we walked in still procession down endless ramps and stairs to a place hidden in the secret heart of a cavern lit by a thousand candles. At the center of these lights was a circular pool with a raised, star-shaped curbing. Very still, that pool, like some forest ponds I have seen when there is no wind, full of milky, silvery stuff. We knelt around it, all of us, staring at it. At first I thought nothing was there, but then I saw the bits of shadow, coalescing, separating, coiling. And bits of light. Shaping, unshaping. In endless motion. Within the pool. Still ... so still. I know my head fell forward, because Murzy reached out and touched me to bring me to myself.

'The shadow grows,' whispered the tall Wizard, his voice twisting off into the cavern to raise a flock of sibilant echoes, like restless birds in the dark.

Those assembled said, 'And yet there is light,' in firm, comforting unison.

The Wizard took a pair of long, curving tongs into his hand. The Dervish held out a shallow bowl.

Everyone breathed in, a quiet kind of gasp.

He took a grayish flat fragment of something from the bowl, holding it up in the tongs so everyone could see before dipping it in the pool, carefully not touching the pool with his hands.

There was a thin, high singing when it touched the pool. Then he drew the fragment out and laid it on the curb before me.

'Take it,' whispered Cat.

I picked it up, feeling it slip into my fingers like

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