Talla's Temple Ch. 19

"A lot of pussy out there," Tilgan would say.

Zhair'lo had never heard him say it, but he could easily imagine the man's crude guffaw followed by those exact words. It would sound much the same as when they'd laughed at him the night he'd asked if Talla might someday return to him.

He slid in through his window and landed next to his bed. A girl, a new girl, was going to visit this bed tonight. His heart skipped. That was better. This was how men were supposed to act: eager; excited; care free. A man shouldn't think about any particular woman longer than bragging the next day about what he'd done with her the night before.

Zhair'lo opened his bedroom door and walked toward the stairway and the front of the house.

Every other man he knew, from a guy as young as Plin to the farm hands in their late thirties, had no problem with the world the way it was.

So what was wrong with Zhair'lo?

He'd had Natta and Nadine already. They were fine, weren't they? What was going on inside his head with Talla? It didn't matter. There were other things to catch his attention now.

The stairway was wide enough to accommodate the several men who were leaning against its handrails, patiently and casually waiting to see if their names would be called.

The women had already started. There went Master Harzen, then Tilgan followed by farm hand after farm hand. All men he knew, closely or distantly.

It was eerie, watching it from here, so far back that it felt as if he weren't participating. Unlike his first nervous night, he was much more aware of everyone around him. How casual and unperturbed they were!

Each one, when called, would gently take the woman who had called him by hand and lead her away.

He was a part of this now. He forced himself to that belief. He was, aside from the apparently rare talent of ejaculating in a specific fashion amenable to the transfer of magic, just like these men. He watched how they acted. They had been through this simple ritual -- what - thousands of times?

Would he ever grow so casual?

The women in yellow dwindled and dwindled away, leaving just a girl in white. It was Anzha. He'd done her upgrade three nights before. When she hadn't shown up the night after the upgrade, he'd written her off, assuming that she had chosen some other for her first night.

Apparently she had not.

"Zhair'lo," she called out timidly, looking around the common room.

"Up here," he said.

It wasn't as if any of the farm hands could be confused and think that she had come for him. Most of them had complacently accepted that this wasn't their night when the last woman in yellow had gone. No one was even looking.

She seemed timid anyway. Maybe he had been too loud in answering her call.

"This way," he said as he came down the stairs and held out his hand, softening his voice as best he could.

Anzha replied only with a tight-lipped smile and took his hand in turn.

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Talla had never been through the normal post-ritual examination.

She was led off to a room where a physician waited. It was Iyana, the same physician who had set her on the path to this upgrade.

"Good to see you again," she said in that matter of fact voice all physicians seemed to have. "Let's see what we've done."

Talla nodded and removed her top. She was quite satisfied by the way her breasts held up, instead of falling and pulling at her chest.

"Nice and warm?"

"Yeah, it worked."

"They do look firmer than the last time I saw you."

Iyana kneaded at the muscles in Talla's upper chest.

"Good," she said. "Just one upgrade. There's a bit of swelling, but not near enough to mean even a double."

"You were worried?" Talla asked.

"Weren't you?"

Talla thought about that and let out a deep breath for the first time since the start of the ceremony.

"Yes. Try to relax," the physician advised.

Talla nodded.

"Your shoulders," the doctor reminded her as she placed her hands on either side of Talla's neck. "Relax them."

She forced her muscles to soften. She hadn't realized that she'd tensed up.

"Yeah. I guess I was worried," she admitted.

"Well, you're fine," Iyana told her. "You can get dressed and -"

Talla sucked in a breath as her eyes widened.

"Are you okay?"

She nodded quickly.

"Yeah ... just have to ... um ... pee," she said as she dressed hastily.

"Alright," Iyana said doubtfully.

Talla moved out of the room quickly, stopping only after she got around the corner in to a quiet corridor. Once there, she leaned against the wall and tried to right her senses.

Somewhere very far away, Zhair'lo had meshed with some girl. Some girl - some girl who wasn't Talla -- had been penetrated by him.

She wasn't close enough to take part in it, the way she had the night before. She could only know that it was happening.

Also, she could frown.

That was about it.

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Anzha might have been timid, but she had apparently decided how to deal with her fear. She had chosen the direct approach.

Since greeting each other at the door, not a word passed between them before their lips met. She kissed softly, carefully, in a sensual way that Natta and Talla hadn't. Her kisses, down to the quick, light flitting of her tongue on his lips, reminded him very much of Nadine.

Was this how girls kissed each other, when they were denied men? Was that what he was experiencing?

Her skirt was discarded, then his pants. She pulled him on top of her as she fell on her back on his bed. They bumped heads a bit as they got things sorted out, the passion of kisses erasing any pain or discomfort.

Her eyes managed to narrow and widen all at once, a trick of furrowed eyebrows and fearful eyes that told Zhair'lo all he needed to know about Anzha: eager and afraid; wanting to get through this and hoping it went right.

She nodded to him and gave a brief glance down their thin bodies. Then she bit her lip, waiting for him.

"It'll be okay," he told her, pushing her lips apart with the head of his penis.

"I know," she whispered.

He pushed, sliding just a bit inside. They began to mesh. He felt her fear, the feeling of anxiety bubbling up inside her. He felt her enthusiasm, wanting to push past the fear. He tried to make her feel his calm as he rotated his hips so that his erection could pry at the tightened muscles inside her.

She was wet enough, that part was okay. She was just so tight.

"Just relax," he told her in his quietest voice.

She took a breath and he felt the last of her resistance fade from her mind as she surrendered herself to him. Her legs relaxed, then her vaginal muscles. Ever so slowly, he began to slide himself in to her.

"Oh," she breathed as their mesh completed. "That's ... just right."

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"Show me what you see," the Sorceress of Pussy said.

Fortunately, the scrolls containing the records Maksa had been reviewing were still in a bin marked with her name. How arduous and inconvenient it would have been to search them all out again.

"Here, Mistress," Maksa said. "Look at this girl, Arlia. She was in my dorm a while ago. You can see from the pattern that her ancestors clearly favoured Lips and Within. She chose Lips."

Pussy looked at the tree a moment before turning to look at Maksa.

"I see no such thing," she replied. "Look here and here: Strength and Iron."

"Patrilineal, Mistress," Maksa rebutted. "Matrilineal is much stronger. The line through generations of mothers is where to look."

"Fine," Pussy said before pointing at another point on the document. "What about here? Direct matrilineal descent, four generations back and she has Abundance in her ancestry."

"Yes, Mistress," Maksa said as she pulled out another, much older scroll and carefully unrolled it. "I checked on that. The woman in question was Elga Serenza. There's a notation here on her sheet that says she was injured from a fall while running during her Initiation. She would have finished much sooner had she -"

"And would have had a better choice," the Sorceress concluded, her eyes sharpening.

Maksa nodded.

"Possibly enough to get in to Lips."

Pussy was thoughtful.

"I won't pretend that it's perfect," Maksa said. "It seems to be that, given the choice, women will follow in the footsteps of their mothers. If something odd happens in the Initiation, they might be forced to other choices, but that's rare."

"Have you tested your beliefs?"

"Of course," Maksa said, distractedly forgetting to litter her sentences with honorifics. "I'm not an astrologer."

It was a derisive remark that made the Sorceress smirk. When they taught logic and reason to little girls, they taught them ways to avoid deluding themselves

"With each new group that I get, I examine their parentage and make my best guess at which way they'll go."

"And?"

"I'm a little over 70%."

The Sorceress's eyebrows rose. If that was true, this was significant. She would have to find a way to use Maksa's talents. The woman had a gift, clearly, and belonged with the women of Pussy, not with those of Lips. She was considering ways to convince Maksa to stay in Gern when Maksa, encouraged by the approval she was receiving, continued her eager chatter.

"That's why I find Talla so confusing."

The Sorceress stopped then, and turned to face Maksa. Making her voice as calm as she could, she asked, "Talla?"

"Yes," she said. "Look here."

And she began laying out the mystery of Talla. The Sorceress began to get a sinking feeling in her stomach. None of them had ever thought of this problem, and here was a Keeper -- a Keeper with a genius for genealogy -- laying bare everything they had done.

Pussy listened as Maksa ardently and thoroughly tore through scroll after scroll in what was, if Maksa only realized it, a patent exposure of a centuries long conspiracy.

"So why, given a choice of the Disciplines favoured by her many generations of mothers, would she choose Abundance?" Maksa concluded.

Pussy felt a sledge hammer hitting her in the stomach.

Maksa turned to look at the Sorceress and saw the darkness there in her superior's eyes.

"That's why I wanted to travel to Beshenna," Maksa explained, somewhat wary now. "I want to see Talla's sister."

It suddenly occurred to Maksa that she ought to have remembered how, when Sila and Talla had meshed, her superiors had only asked for Sila's documentation. They hadn't asked for Talla's because, Maksa had figured, they had already looked it up. Talla was already special for some reason.

"Half-sister, actually," Maksa corrected herself, not sure whether or not she should continue talking. "I -- ah - want to find out what she chose."

The Sorceress of Pussy nodded, knowing that such a thing could never be allowed to happen. Maksa could not be permitted to meet Zhina. If she hadn't figured out what was going on yet, seeing Zhina would blow the whole thing down like a house made of the frailest reeds.

There weren't a lot of options for the Sorceress, but there were loose ends.

"Have you discussed this with anyone else?"

Maksa shook her head. Pussy's tone had been firm enough that Maksa was reminded again of their difference in ranks.

"No, Mistress" she said. "I assumed that this was some kind of test, letting me do this and seeing if I noticed."

"It was not a test," Pussy said as she rubbed her chin. "But you passed it, nonetheless."

Maksa wasn't sure what to make of that.

There was a long and pregnant pause. Maksa watched the torchlight flicker across the Sorceress's frozen and inscrutable features.

"I believe that your talents are wasted in Lips," she said finally.

"Pardon, Mistress?"

"Are you aware that transfers are possible?"

Maksa was startled.

"Mistress?"

"I advise you to consider it - immediately. I will honour such a request should you make it."

"I -- I didn't know it was possible."

In fact, it seemed anathema to everything she understood about the Initiation ritual. That ritual was supposed to be the gods' way of assigning every woman to the Discipline best for her. If she changed Disciplines, was she admitting that the gods were wrong? That she had chosen wrong?

"It is possible," the Sorceress confirmed, eyeing Maksa sharply.

"But my choice ..."

"What place did you come at your Initiation?"

"Third," Maksa said.

"And so you chose Lips because Within and Pussy were taken?"

Maksa acknowledged this with a gulp.

"Did you ever look at your own documents?"

Maksa shook her head. It had actually never even occurred to her to do so.

"Your talent is clearly here," the Sorceress said, tapping the scrolls. "No one has seen what you have been able to see. I don't even see it now except that you tell me you can predict these choices with remarkable accuracy."

"Yes, Mistress."

"Codify what you have done, so that others may learn. It may be significant."

"Yes, Mistress."

"Now," the Sorceress added, "do you wish to join my Discipline?"

Just like that? Leave one path and hop to another? Could it be done? It was how the Initiation ritual was done, after all, and with much less of an understanding of what the options really were. The difference was that she knew now what each of the Disciplines meant.

Maksa looked at the Sorceress and made her decision.

"Yes, I do."

"Good," the Sorceress nodded firmly. "I will arrange it. Until then, do not speak of any of this, especially of this girl Talla, until we have spoken again."

"Yes, Mistress."

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Talla passed through Endowment Hall, having no particularly to drink and socialize. She was frustrated in the weirdest way she'd ever felt it. Zhair'lo was out there, having sex with someone in what seemed to be a very gentle, slow fashion. She could feel it, but not enough to really get in to it.

She was left frowning and found herself making the same face at the same ugly drawing that had been sitting on the large table in the middle of Endowment Hall since the afternoon.

Stupid drawing.

The problem with it was the arrangement of the timbers that braced it across its diameter. The tower was slightly conical, probably a necessity of wanting the walls to lean inward instead of out. So wood was used to brace the insides. But the pieces of lumber were just laid out -- so -- wrong.

Talla rubbed her forehead in consternation.

She understood the necessity of the internal stairway that wound its way up the wall. That had to be part of the design. But if they would just arrange the internal braces in 'X' shapes and arrange it so the stairways -

"Something wrong, girl?" someone asked.

She turned to see an Officer looking at her.

"Just looking," she said, trying to find a tone between defiant and defensive.

"It's an interesting piece of work, isn't it?" the Officer said, coming to stand beside -- and towering over -- Talla.

"Yeah," Talla agreed. "Seems like the stairways are causing a problem, though."

The Officer raised an eyebrow.

"Indeed they are."

"Could you move these braces around so they make taller triangles and let the stairways pass through?"

The Officer smiled.

"Perhaps, if wood were stronger than it is. Then we could make beams long enough to make those triangles without breaking in half."

She hadn't thought of that.

Too bad, really. It could have been much more elegant without that limitation.

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"How many days has he been like this?" Tia seethed at the junior physician.

"Three, Mistress."

It was so rare to see an angry doctor. They were used to dealing with injuries, even with deaths. They had to be calm in the worst of situations. To see one of them actually losing her reserve of patience was bad enough. Being the target of that impatience was another order of magnitude worse.

"And you only bring him to me now?"

"I -- I didn't know what it was, Mistress."

"It's Catatonia. Any fool could see that!"

"But he was Served, Mistress, on the very night before he took ill."

"If he had been Served," Tia said with a glare, "he wouldn't be Catatonic, would he?"

The younger woman gulped.

"I saw his bed," she said defensively. "The sheets were clearly soiled. That's why I ruled out Catatonia."

Tia let a breath hiss out between her teeth.

"Let's see about that," she told the younger woman. She cast her voice to an attendant near the door and issued an order. "Find out who Served him three nights ago and bring her here."

The attendant nodded and, prodded by her Mistress's irate tone, promptly darted out of the room.

"Meanwhile," Tia told the other woman, "we have to plan an Awakening."

The attendant popped her head back in to the examination room.

"Mistress?"

"Yes, Initiate?"

"What is his name?"

Tia turned to the junior physician.

"Shen," the younger woman told the girl in white. "Shen M'han."