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 unnamed. Though I trusted Jidd to maintain the secrecy of the draining, I saw no spiritual gain for myself in revealing to anyone the name of my companion in sin.) My taking of the drug at the lodge. My sensations as the drug took hold. My exploration of Schweiz’s soul. His entry into mine. The kindling of deep affection between us as our union of spirit developed. My feeling of alienation from the Covenant while under the drug’s influence. That sudden conviction of mine that the denial of self which we practice is a catastrophic cultural error. The intuitive realization that we should deny our solitude instead, and seek to bridge the gulfs between ourselves and others, rather than glorying in isolation. Also I confessed that I had dabbled in the drug for the sake of eventually reaching the soul of Halum; hearing from me this admission of yearning for my bondsister was old stuff to Jidd by now. And then I spoke of the dislocations I had experienced since coming out of my drug-trance: the guilt, the shame, the doubt. At last I fell silent. There before me, like a pale globe glowing in the dimness, hung the facts of my misdeeds, tangible and exposed, and already I felt cleaner for having revealed them. I was willing now to be brought back into the Covenant. I wanted to be purged of my aberration of selfbaring. I hungered to do penance and resume my upright life. I was eager to be healed, I was begging for absolution and restoration to my community. But I could not feel the presence of the god. Staring into the mirror, I saw only my own face, drawn and sallow, the beard in need of combing. When Jidd began to recite the formulas of absolution, they were merely words to me, nor did my soul lift. I was cut off from all faith. The irony of that distracted me: Schweiz, envying me for my beliefs, seeking through the drug to understand the mystery of submission to the supernatural, had stripped me of my access to the gods. There I knelt, stone knees on stone floor, making hollow phrases, while wishing that Jidd and I could have taken the drug together, so there might have been true communion between us. And I knew that I was lost.

“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.

38

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 Mannerangi craft, for I did not care to be recognized when we sailed, but rather a ship of the western province of Velis that had been tied down in Manneran Harbor for the better part of a year by a lawsuit. It seemed there was some dispute over title to the ship going on in its home port, and the thicket of injunctions and counterinjunctions had succeeded in making it impossible for the vessel to leave Manneran after its last voyage there. The captain and crew were bitter over this enforced idleness and had already filed a protest with the Justiciary; but the High Justice had no jurisdiction over a lawsuit that was being fought entirely in the courts of Velis, and we therefore had had to continue the stay on the vessel’s departure until word came from Velis that title was clear. Knowing all this, I issued a decree in the High Justice’s name that would permit the unfortunate craft temporarily to accept charters for voyages to points “between the River Woyn and the eastern shore of the Gulf of Sumar.” That usually was taken to mean any point along the coast of the province of Manneran, but I specified also that the captain might hire himself out for trips to the northern coast of Sumara Borthan. Doubtless that clause left the poor man puzzled, and it must have puzzled him even more when, a few days later, he was approached by my agents and asked to make a voyage to that very place.

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 Manneran on the Gulf of Sumar. This is a medium-sized place that depends mainly on the fishing trade, but which serves also as a halfway stop for ships traveling between the city of Manneran and the western provinces. I arranged to meet our chartered captain in Hilminor; he then set out for that town by sea, while Schweiz and I made for it in a groundcar.