Under Ashi's navigation, they sped toward the Temple; as the sun lowered the next day, the women took themselves away from the camp, out of Jack's sight, and changed to their Temple garb of masks, headpieces, and in their mother's case, robes.
"You have an idol," Adi did not ask. Her mother nodded, and produced it. It was a simple stone carving of Aku: no bowl, no candles, no paints, not even a base. "We have an altar," Adi said, and produced the base and their image, with the candles, the fire bowl, painted in black and red and green and white.
The Priestess examined it. "You… you blooded the paint?"
Adi nodded. "We had to get every detail right. For days, we practised sunrise and sunset devotions before this. Even forewent our meditations upon the Eedyk."
She nodded her understanding. "And it was worth the effort. Your deception was excellent," she told them, tone gentle and pleased. "And now, mine must be even better. Let us begin with devotions, then practice with our new power. Aku might be able to strip us of that, but he might not."
The girls nodded, and their mother led them in the evening prayer. As she bowed low before the altar, with its three flickering flames, their prayer a droning half-wordless chant, her stomach clenched, and she shuddered convulsively. She sat up quickly. "I… I cannot do this! It… it hurts too much."
The girls looked to each other. "I have an idea," Aji said. "We'll teach you a secular play. Just a short one, but it should be enough to start on. Once you understand performances, you should be able to lead prayers. That was how we were able to perform our devotions at Night's Ebb, we thought of them as performances."
The High Priestess frowned in confused puzzlement. "I do not understand at all. But I will try; this is too important not to make every effort. Let us begin." And so the girls began their mother's introduction to the art of performance, using the one play they had that could be put on without need of staging: Aku's Solstice. Even with night vision gear, they had to stop after the first two scenes to let their mother digest her first lesson. Adi vanished their altar, and the women returned to the yurt, where Adi, Ami and Ari piled with their mother, hoping the warmth and closeness would help to ease her troubled heart as it had helped them.
When the girls settled into place around and over her, the High Priestess tensed up. What were they doing? And why? It couldn't be aggressive, they'd moved so slowly. And yet, strange as it felt, it was not entirely unpleasant. Though she had no idea how to respond, so simply lay still. The girls eventually went to sleep, but the Priestess took longer. Much longer, and as she drifted from deep sleep up to the shallows of dream,
"TRAITOR!" her former god boomed out, having taken the place of the great idol in the Temple, and she pressed her masked face firmly against the stone floor.
"Please forgive me, Great Lord Aku!" she pleaded, voice thick and shaking.
"For your betrayal, there will be punishment!" he yelled as he stretched out an arm, tapped her on the back of the neck, and she was completely paralyzed but fully conscious and aware. "Faithful Daughters of Aku, punish this traitor! Do as you will, so long as you do not mar her beauty with more than bruises, or end her life." And with that, he became again carven stone, and the women off the Temple pulled off her robe and mask, and started scrubbing her with stones to strip away her darksuit. Then the punishments began. The Daughters of Aku were not a merciful congregation.
The next morning, the girls chose not to ask what she had experienced the night before. They knew. Not exactly, but in general. They'd all been there. Jack too chose to respect her privacy, and after a simple breakfast of sausages and potato patties and tea, the women departed the campsite. Again, Adi set out the altar, and again the High Priestess tried and failed to lead the Daughters through their devotions. The eight returned to the camp downcast.
"Let's try the play again," Ari suggested. "We can spend the day here, and we don't need much staging. Mother can take the role of Aku, and we'll be the minions, parents, all of that. Unless… Jack, would you like to take Aku's part? Mother can take a minion's part."
Jack considered that, then recalling the play, smiled. "It seems entirely inappropriate, yet entirely fitting. I will accept the role."
The High Priestess just watched in confusion. "So… which parts do I read?" And Ashi told her, and they began.
By the time the sun was down, the High Priestess was exhausted, not physically, but mentally; plays were not new to her, but this style was so different it was effectively a different art form. To show Aku so… it seemed blasphemous if not heretical. And that itself made her head hurt.
Before she went into her tent, the Samurai approached her. "Do you wish to talk?" and to her own astonishment, she said yes.
"This," she said slowly, "is harder than I could have imagined. My faith, our faith, is strict, and deep-rooted. It has been the centre of my life for as far back as I can remember. To simply abandon all of it, I doubt I can. I need to, I know that, but it is so hard."
He nodded. "Your daughters did it."
She held still, her only reaction a slight flick of the eye toward their yurt. "My daughters are only a third my age, and they are seven, and their lives were always centred on mastering the arts of combat, with their faith in Aku secondary. My life has always been centred on Aku, on his worship and praise, first and foremost, the mastery of combat secondary. To change what I have done, what I have been, all my life, is hard, Samurai, so very hard. I have always believed in Aku, in his goodness, his benevolence, and though the tales I heard in my travels made me doubt your wickedness, they never made me doubt His goodness. Even now… Samurai, I stood naked before my god and he raped me! The one he himself called only moments before his most good and faithful servant! Yet, I still want to believe he is good and benevolent. I touched his heart, felt the searingly cold cruelty that lies at the core of Aku, and even so, I still want to believe and cannot believe. I am no stranger to pain, of the flesh or the spirit. Yet is there for me no balm upon the hill?"
Jack did not answer at first, amazed that she had chosen to open herself so to him. Then he spoke, his words slow and measured. "You have great strength, High Priestess, and continuing with this play will likely help, for the surest way to weaken faith in something is to mock it. It will be hard for you, but I will help as I can, and your daughters as well. Happily, their inherited only their sire's power, not his evil."
Or mine, she thought but did not say. "I will do all I can, Samurai. I would pray for strength, but what god would hear me?" He had no answer, and she withdrew to the yurt, and he to his tent. She would not pray for strength, so he prayed for her.
