Courtship Rite

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PRIME PREDICTOR TAE RAN-KAIEL was long dead but he lived in the bellies of his aggressive progeny. Even the youngest of them had shared his flesh at a Funeral Feast still remembered in clan chant around the rowdy gaming tables of the Kaiel temples.

An old man, Tae had been skinned and then marinated and stuffed with insect flavored bread before his body was spit-roasted. In the evening of the first high day of the week called Skull in the year of the Mantis, when the coals of the spit fire were as dull as Getasun caught by a sandstorm, he was carved to the monotonous voice of chanting and served in a spiced sauce that had been salted by a spoonful of blood from each of his eighty-three sons and seventy daughters. All night long, the mourning Kaiel had pledged their loyalty in song and in speech and gift-giving and even, at the height of the celebration, with wry jokes about the toughness of his flesh.

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