Progress? (a snippet)

Mixed days at the stable. I had a really good canter on Countess yesterday, with a hint of the gallop she's capable of as a former race horse. Would that I could unlearn the memory of injuries that tend to make a coward of me. Jame never was hurt, as far as I know. Her fear of horses seems to relate mostly to her experiences with Iron-Jaw, her father's haunt mount. A week ago, though, I spent some four hours at the barn helping out and the trainer made me feel thoroughly incompetent as a stable-hand. That wasn't pleasant. And it only seems to happen when I'm alone there with him, twice now. Go figure.

Anyway, I'm about half way through the first draft of the next novel and I've come to a place where I deal with the Old Pantheon gods of Kothifir. The following section doesn't satisfy me. Any suggestions would be welcome although, as usual, I can't promise to follow them. A lot will probably depend on where I take the OP gods in the second half of the novel.

Faint music sounded from the back of the cavern and the crowd hushed. It drew nearer, echoing – pipes, flutes, drums, something eldritch that might have been the wind whistling between the worlds. Figures advanced carrying torches. Their shadows preceded them, casting fantastic shapes on the cavern's fissured walls. The crowd drew back as the procession entered the body of the cave.
Jame was reminded of Mother Vedia's approach on her feast day. There, in fact, she was, again tottering like a living statue on an upraised litter, again surrounded by her dancing, snake-wreathed attendants, but this time without bats or followers. Next in line was another woman carrying a sheaf of wheat, then another obviously pregnant, and another elderly and thin, whose attendants all wore black and trod somberly with lowered heads. One stumbled and fell. The others lifted her up to her mistress who enfolded her in gaunt arms. The attendant melted into them, leaving her mistress noticeably plumper.
"The Great Mother in her aspects of healer, nurturer of the crops, helper in child birth, and hungry tomb," said Kroaky, raising his voice over the competing clamor of the attendants.
Jame regarded the four diverse figures and remembered her conversation with Gran Cyd, queen of the Merikit. Showing her a fertility figure and an imu, both representing the Earth Wife, she had said, "These images were ancient long before Mother Ragga was even born."
Jame had wondered at the time if the Earth Wife and the other three of Rathillien's elemental Four, while each a distinct individual, wore different, older aspects in different cultures and were subject to older stories. Here was the answer. They did.
Four men on raised litters followed, the first in armor, the second festooned with tools, and the third a crown. The last was a hunched, almost bestial figure dusted with soot and ash.
"Her consort, the All-Father: warrior, maker, patriarch, and avenger. Believe me, you don't want to get on the wrong side of that one."
If these were other aspects of the Burnt Man, Jame heartily agreed.
Next four young women appeared, one after the other, smeared green with what seemed to be river slime.
"The Fish Girl. The River Amar is very important here, for transportation, for the water that it provides to the fields and, of course, for its fish. That's the river herself, first in line, wearing the head and cape of a catfish. Nice legs. Ouch!"
Fang had jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow.
Jame noted that the last girl had goggle eyes puffy with tears and that the hands which she held up to cover her lower face were webbed. The Great Salt Sea had been fresh water before it had dried up. Jame remembered Gorgo of Tai-tastigon, who had started out as a rain god and then become one of lamentations before switching back after his rebirth. Could some similar transformation have occurred here?
A single man followed in a whirlwind all of his own, his tattered clothes whipping, his followers spinning about him like dust-devils. On-lookers grabbed at their hats and skirts.
"The Old Man," said Kroaky, almost reverently, holding down his ginger hair with both hands. "The Tishooo. The East Wind."
"In the Riverland, we call him the south wind."
"Well, he would come at you from that direction although, in fact, he moves about pretty much as he pleases, the tricky old devil. Some say that he governs the flow of time itself in the Wastes, don't ask me how. Here we most often get him direct from Nekrien to the southeast. He keeps away the south and west winds, from the Barrier across the Wastes and from Urakarn. We don't honor those here."
"What about the north wind?"
"That blows us the Kencyr Host and occasional weirding. Blessing or curse? You tell me. Without the east wind and the mountains, though, Kothifir, Gemma, and the other rim cities would be buried in sand like the other ancient ruins of the Wastes."
The procession wound around the cavern until it reached its center. Here torches were set in holes drilled in the limestone floor. The thirteen avatars of the Four joined hands within the circle and began to rotate slowly sun-wise. Their worshippers formed a withershin ring around them, then another going the opposite way, and so on and on, alternating, to the edges of the cave. Jame grew dizzy watching their gyrations. Everyone was chanting, but not the same thing:
"There was an old woman …"
"There was an old man …"
"There was a maid …"
"There was a young man …."