Chapter III
III
The fields, the fields
Will burn away
To smoke and ash
Ere break of day.
And we, and we
Must go away,
But a remnant
Shall remain.
—A CORRINIAN SONG OF EXILE
Everything had narrowed to a still point for Ariana—to her chamber, with its shut door.
To the heat and the sweat and the effort and the pain.
For two days she’d labored to bring another Inver child into the world, and still there was no end in sight.
She’d have kept her pains a secret longer, but toward the end of the first day, Glora, the Invers’ chatelaine, had noticed Ariana wince twice at court supper.
It had all been over then. Orden’s concern was immediate and boundless, and she’d been hurried off to the darkness and flame appropriate for an Inver woman whose time had come.
A trial by fire they called it, and closed off the birthing room entirely so that no natural illumination might enter.
The baby was coming early by almost a month, and caught off guard, Ariana had only just managed to send the latest of her refugees to the Priest before her confinement.
With summer council and Afon’s arrival imminent, the timing of her labor could not be worse.
The queen sat on her capacious four-poster bed, half in shadow, half in ruddy firelight, and the sheets around her were soaked.
They’d been changed twice already—once because she’d sweat so much that the smell grew unbearable, and again because her waters had broken.
Both times, she’d heard Glora tersely instruct one of the court women to take the bedding away and be sure it was burned.
The first time she’d heard the order, it hadn’t bothered Ariana, but when her waters broke there’d been blood as well.
She’d seen the faint pink spread of it as an attendant bundled the soiled linens up and hauled them away.
That had unnerved Ariana. It rankled in her yet, like a thorn.
She’d committed blasphemy after blasphemy in the wake of taking an Inver husband and an Inver crown, yet it still pained her to think that birthing her children without scorning the Beloved Three was a feat beyond her grasp.
Lyria’s enforcement of the blood prohibition required by all the goddesses was absolute—children of the stars could not willingly spill blood for any reason.
Not to hurt, nor to help, nor to heal. And that which they shed naturally was to be treated with high honor.
In Corrin, birthing blood would not just stand for a few days on the altar before being spilled out as a blessing on the fields.
It would be used to paint the stones of the altar itself—the most sacred of offerings, blood that brings life.
It would not be cast aside and burned like refuse.
Everything swam around the queen, all heat and sparks and unsteady, half-familiar faces.
She’d grown dizzier as the hours wore on, the unbearable midsummer temperature leaving her constantly parched.
Her surroundings seemed less a product of reality than ever, and when she dozed, she slipped in and out of the present moment, caught in a tormented realm of memory and constant, nagging pain.
Crimson and gold melted, giving way to starlight as she slipped into an uneasy sleep, and drifted back to the sweetness of a summer evening in the meadows outside Lyria’s cloister.
Before Ariana, the cloister itself rose up, all white spires and sparkling fountains and mullioned windows set with glinting chips of nightglass.
Behind her, the Corrinian countryside lay—that little land of rolling hills and rich grasses, hemmed in by mountains and larger, hungrier nations.
She remembered it as it had been, green and simple and calm, rather than as it had become—a place of poverty and privation, riven by plague and famine and drought.
Yet in spite of the trials that had befallen them, to Ariana, Corrin and Lyria’s cloister were still more than a country and a building—more than her homeland and her inheritance. They were sanctuary. They were safety and peace and the clear silver light of her goddess’s regard.
Who do you choose first? Matria Serafine’s placid voice echoed from out of the past. Name him, and we will ensure the favor of the goddesses goes with you.
The heat of the birthing room drew the queen awake once more.
She found herself panting with effort, her throat raw with thirst. The pitcher on her nightstand was empty, and no one stood within arm’s reach.
Her attendants had withdrawn, seeking the cooler air near the door as they talked and laughed among themselves.
“Could I have another pitcher of water?” Ariana asked, the words coming out strange and hoarse.
Silence fell, punctuated only by the snapping of the prodigious hearth fire and the torches ringing the room. At last Glora the chatelaine moved to Ariana’s bedside and gave her a withering look.
“You can if you ask for it in Honorian,” she said, and only then did Ariana realize she’d slipped into Corrinivar.
“Could I have another pitcher of water?” Ariana repeated contritely.
She did not apologize—Orden was forever after her to stop apologizing, as it went over poorly with the bloody-minded and heavy-handed Invers—but she pleaded for understanding with her eyes.
Glora sniffed and said nothing, but took up the pitcher and swept out of the room.
When Glora went, the court’s Chief Physician, Crispus, appeared, materializing from the dim around Ariana.
He was a broad-faced, heavy-jowled man who’d been cooling himself with a succession of ices run up from the kitchens, and Ariana could smell a waft of citrus juice as he bent and gazed matter-of-factly beneath her nightgown.
She’d been ordered to sit just so—half reclining on pillows, legs bent at the knee and parted, and though the posture was familiar, it still set shame churning in her belly.
But as her labor wore on, she lost the sense of humiliation.
Instead, she felt a sick and futile anger now, at being kept motionless in one place.
It was maddening to sit this way with the pains knotting inside her.
More maddening still to be cooped up on the very eve of her council delegates’ arrivals, knowing that they would not have her to make them welcome with the diplomacy she was known for, and to smooth away any difficulties or wrinkles with her managing hand.
“Hm,” the Chief Physician said disapprovingly. “Still no progress. I’d hoped to be spared a third day in here.”
He made it sound as if Ariana’s failure to birth the babe was a matter of defect or will.
It wasn’t the disapproval that cut her deepest, though—it was knowing she must endure more of this.
That the worst had not yet come. Hot tears burned at the back of Ariana’s eyes and throat, and she choked on a sob.
“I want the Priest,” she said at last, when she could be sure of getting the words out without losing the last of her composure.
She sounded desperate and fractious, even to her own ears, but several of the court women nodded.
If there was one thing the Invers considered admirable in their gentle foreign queen, it was how completely she’d cleaved to their gods, and to their way of worship.
A page was summoned and dispatched to fetch the Priest, and Ariana was left to wait.
She hardly had the strength left in her to sit up on her own, and when Glora returned with the water, did no more than murmur thanks from where she lay.
The chatelaine retreated at once, without any offer to hold the cup or to give the queen assistance, and to Ariana, it was only natural.
Only the end result of seven bitterly unhappy years as an outsider in this incomprehensible court.
Then there came a smell of phelamon and paschalflower, and a firm hand took hers.
“Adda,” Ariana said, her voice fraying on the Corrinivar word as she clung to the Priest’s hand. But it was all she could say before silent weeping made her mute.
The Priest would know what she’d meant by the word and by her summons, though. That she’d come to the edge of herself, and was afraid this might all end in disaster, or in her death. That she was desperate for any help at all. He always knew.
Orden Inver’s bastard half brother turned to the gathered courtiers, and several of them flinched at the sight of his scarred face.
They were afraid of him—of the ferocious will to live that had led him to give up his name and become known only by the office he’d agreed to take up.
That of the Priest Who Dwells in Darkness, spiritual guide of the court, who could behold neither sunlight nor moonlight nor starlight so long as he served the Inver gods.
Though the Priest’s predecessors had all been confined to a life belowground, upon discovering his blindness, this one had grasped for the power the role afforded and the freedom he would have in it, and had held to both ever since.
“How long has she been like this?” the Priest asked furiously as he faced the courtiers, never letting go of Ariana’s hand.
“Did it not occur to you that my brother, the king, will have all of you flayed alive on a street corner if harm comes to his queen or his child while you stand by, croaking like a chorus of useless carrion crows?”
Everyone fell silent.
“I want most of you gone,” the Priest ordered. “Now. The physician can stay, and one witness for each of the gods, but no more.”
“Who’ll stand witness for the hearth goddess?” Glora asked, though Ariana doubted the chatelaine was eager to remain.
“The queen,” the Priest said firmly. “There’s no one at court more devoted to her. But why are you still speaking, did you not hear what I ordered?”