Chapter 16 The Sun Temple, Royal Island, Kingdom of Oru
The Sun Temple, Royal Island, Kingdom of Oru
MILúà
Milúà stood before àlùfáà-àgbà as he rained curses on her and her entire lineage.
It wasn’t like she had any family anyway, she thought grimly as his voice reverberated through the room.
She kept her eyes fixed on her feet. The Elder Priest’s age and station meant he was so far above her in the pecking order that it was her duty to remain still as a statue until he was done berating her and probably even thank him for taking the time to do so.
‘Your foolishness could cost us everything,’ àlùfáà-àgbà barked.
Milúà bent her head even lower to hide her grimace as his spit landed on her forehead.
She dared not wipe it. Instead, she allowed her mind to think of answers to the question she hoped he wouldn’t ask.
Where was she when her àlùfáà ran away from the Sun Temple?
Many thoughts crossed her mind, but the truth kept barging in.
She couldn’t well say she’d stolen the High Priestess’s key to the secret library beneath the temple to search for records of her mother, could she?
Maidens were supposed to be fully devoted to the mother who trained them.
But Milúà had overheard one of her sisters of the Order talking about how her birth mother was a maiden, and like an itch that drove one mad if not scratched, she had to know if it was true.
And the records in that library, the record of all temple maidens since the day of the First Sun, would tell her the truth.
She couldn’t miss the chance to find out.
She’d been deep beneath the ground, searching through rows of books, unaware of the chaos unfurling over her head.
And the truth she’d found was too heavy to speak of.
‘The kingdom our forefathers built is on the edge of ruin! For nothing,’ àlùfáà-àgbà raged on. ‘Because you couldn’t keep hold of a boy! Never, never in our history has a chosen one run away or been killed on our very own land!’ He was brimming over with so much fury, she thought he might pass out.
First, that was not true. Chosen ones died all the time.
Sure, not by arrows, but death is death.
She wondered if it was the fact that a chosen one was taken that enraged him so much or that it was his grandson.
Whichever way, it was ridiculous that she was getting the brunt of his anger when the maidens at the entrance couldn’t capture the boys.
Although, losing the chance ever to be a high-ranking maiden was punishment enough.
Maiden Bùnmi, whose àlùfáà died, went mad with rage.
As soon as she had seen Máywá injured on the ground after the intruders had escaped, Bùnmi had run out of the temple, screaming at the top of her lungs, ‘Máywá!’ Her brown eyes had turned golden, her hands had shone the sun’s light, and she’d run towards the maiden who’d shot the arrow.
The maiden had held her hands up – it was an accident, Máywá hadn’t been the intended target – but Bùnmi’s rage couldn’t be tempered.
Milúà had watched as Bùnmi shot sparks of light that blasted on impact until the girl fell to her knees.
The girl was only a white maiden, still in training, still learning.
In the moments before she died, the girl begged her sister for mercy, begged to speak her à?írí.
Bùnmi’s anger contorted her face into an ugly scowl.
She inhaled a deep breath and screamed out a river of ash from her mouth into the girl’s face – choking her to death.
The sight of the girl’s dead body only seemed to agitate Bùnmi even more.
She cried as she placed her hands on the lifeless body and burned it to ash, leaving charred bones where the girl once lay.
No one had stopped Bùnmi as she raged on, screaming and throwing herself to the ground like an injured animal.
Afterwards, Bùnmi had cried over Máywá as though she was his mother, but Milúà knew she wept not for him, but for the life that she could now never attain.
Milúà knew she’d have done the same to anyone who killed her àlùfáà.
But she wasn’t sure she’d have risked dying from the burn just for revenge as Bùnmi had now done.
She’d grown up with her and knew the limits of her sister’s agbára.
Creating all that ash from within her core was bound to ignite the burn within her; the disease that would blacken the girl’s insides until she was nothing but a charred corpse.
Bùnmi simply wasn’t powerful enough for the kind of power she’d channelled tonight.
Milúà cringed at the thought – nothing was worth risking that kind of death. Not even vengeance.
Milúà fell to her knees and bowed before the old man.
‘Forgive me, àlùfáà-àgbà, may the gods have mercy on me. May the sun burn away my sins. Give the word, and I’ll chase after the prince and bring him to you before the next stripping ceremony.
’ There was nowhere in the kingdom Alawani could hide from her. Of this, she was certain.
Her words only seemed to enrage the old man. ‘You’ll do nothing until I tell you. Get out of my sight!’
Milúà gathered her skirt, hurried off the floor, and turned to leave. ‘Stop,’ àlùfáà-àgbà said without looking back at her. ‘Get rid of that thing in the courtyard.’
Milúà spun on her heel. ‘Me? àlùfáà-àgbà, I’ve never seen such a thing in my life. How would I –’
‘Figure it out! You have only a few hours until the first light. It mustn’t remain when the sun rises.
Let the eyes of our gods not look upon that abomination.
’ The light from the flickering flames cast shadows that made his heavily bearded face more threatening.
‘It must be gone, or you will meet your gods today!’ àlùfáà-àgbà said as he stormed out of the room.
The maidens in the maze courtyard stood back from the abomination, keeping their distance lest they offend their gods.
The gods of the sun and sands favoured light; this thing seeped out a strange mist as dark as night.
None of them could believe that this atrocity came out of a person, but it had; they’d all witnessed it.
Milúà tried to understand what exactly it was she was looking at.
It couldn’t have been formed with agbára oru because a dozen maidens had failed to destroy it when they shot at it with blasts of agbára.
Nor could it have been formed with old magic because àlùfáà-àgbà couldn’t destroy it either.
What was this thing? Fear gripped her every step, and a chill seeped into her bones the closer she got to it, cold rolling off the wall in waves.
Her chest grew so tight it was hard for her to breathe.
All eyes were on her, and even though she could not see him, she knew àlùfáà-àgbà watched too from behind the temple walls.
When she finally got close enough to touch it, she poked it as though it were a wild animal that could turn on her and chase her through the courtyard.
The previously clear crystals had turned so black that parts of it had merged with the night, turning it nearly invisible.
Milúà tuned out the whispers around her and raised her hands, calling forth her agbára.
Her palms got brighter and brighter, and when she thought it was just hot enough to melt even herself, she thrust them against its surface.
The maidens gasped. At first, nothing happened, and then slowly, the ice beneath her palms turned to water dripping to her feet. Black and wet.
Emboldened, she let out a loud cry and pushed both palms deeper into the melting tower.
A loud crack sliced through the air. Ice splinters rained down as the top half exploded in a loud bang.
Her breath grew thin and ragged. Using all the agbára oru she could summon, her hands burned brighter than she’d ever seen before, her agbára now raging through the ice.
Black liquid poured out, soaking the ground.
By the time she was done, the liquid had drenched her clothes from head to toe.
Exhausted, Milúà turned back to the building behind her.
She had no idea how she’d been able to do what her sisters and the other priests could not, but she didn’t care to know how, as long as àlùfáà-àgbà saw her succeed where he’d failed.
Her eyes were full of pride and defiance even as her knees weakened and the agbára slowly faded from her hands, allowing the darkness of night to hide her.
She fell to the ground, and the light faded from her eyes, and she was sure the gods had decided that her punishment for losing her àlùfáà was death.
Milúà woke to find àlùfáà-àgbà at the foot of her bed. She fell to her knees and bowed to him. The silence in the room was masked only by the crackling of the flames in the torch lamps that surrounded them.
‘Do you know what this room is?’ àlùfáà-àgbà asked.
‘No, àlùfáà,’ Milúà replied, looking around the room. It wasn’t too different from many other rooms in the temple. It had the same stone walls, designed with gold ornaments and curtains made of embroidered fabric.
‘You wouldn’t. This was where the Chosen of the Chosen were kept long before your time. This was where I received the gift of the gods to be the channel for agbára oru.’ He paused. ‘Tell me everything that happened yesterday from the moment you opened your eyes.’