Chapter 31 #2
‘What’s the price?’ Alawani asked ìyá-Idán. ‘Old magic always comes at a price – so what is it?’
The woman eyed him, her mouth set in a tight line, then turned to L’?r?.
‘Time cannot be cheated. This is only a loophole. If you use this, your physical body will get you where you need to be. But your dream self will walk that entire journey. Every time you close your eyes to sleep, you will walk back all the steps you stole from time, and you won’t rest until all the steps are accounted for in the spirit realm.
You can go about your day as you wish, but until your steps are collected, every sleeping moment is where you repay the debt you owe time.
You will wake with the exhaustion from covering back your distance, so whatever you do, best not to use this when going to battle because you will wake even more tired than before you lay down to sleep – until your debt to time is repaid.
’ She added quickly, ‘This will only work for one person at a time.’
‘That’s terrible magic,’ Alawani replied.
L’?r? watched as the two of them glared at each other. Alawani was wary of old magic. She’d have felt the same way if it wasn’t the only thing that had kept her alive her entire life.
‘There’s more you need to know,’ ìyá-Idán said as L’?r? studied the words on the scroll.
‘When I was young, I was betrothed to my life’s greatest love – your Baba-ìtàn.
And just like your prince here, when the gods came calling, he welcomed them with open arms. It was his duty, he would say then.
It broke my heart. I lost the will to live.
This man I had built my whole world around chose death over me.
And even if he didn’t die, you know the responsibilities of the priest. He would be forbidden to marry anyone.
And if by some grace he survived and was chosen as High Priest, he would be duty-bound to his maiden.
Inseparably joined in body and spirit.’ She darted a glance at Alawani.
‘He would also have to go through the marriage ceremonies. He would marry a wife from each state, bed them and sire the next heir of our kingdom. It was all too much for me. The thought of all those women being with the man I loved – I could not handle it. Even after his duties, even if he had become regent and then handed the crown over to his child, even then, the gods would never let him go. He would never again be mine.’
L’?r? felt her heart pounding, the tightness constricting her chest with each beat.
As she listened to ìyá-Idán, it was like hearing someone speak her worst fears.
This was a glimpse of what her future would be like – or would have been like if she’d not saved Alawani from the Sun Temple.
The woman’s reddened eyes made L’?r?’s heart ache.
Of all the people in her life, even Alawani, only ìyá-Idán seemed to know what L’?r? felt on the inside.
What she’d felt since the moment she saw Alawani bowing before the fire, praying to the gods and accepting their call.
‘So I ran away from home. I ran here, and this is where I met your mother for the first time. We lived together in that room for six blood moons.’ She pointed to L’?r?’s room.
‘This is where we learned the magic of the old gods. Then one day, she volunteered to be one of the handmaidens who lived in the temple and taught the priests the magic of ìlú-Idán. At the time, all we knew was that she desperately wanted to get close to the priests of the Order. My ìyá-Idán was furious and forbade it, but your mother was relentless. You have the same look in your eyes that she did the day she left. By then, ?niìtàn was already a priest in the temple, so I sent her to him. I wrote to him, asking him to protect her and keep her safe.’ She laughed wickedly. ‘That was my greatest mistake.’
‘What happened?’ L’?r? asked slowly when ìyá-Idán’s silence stretched.
‘So many things happened in this kingdom the night the king died. Some are still a mystery to me. The king died at sunset, and by midnight a new High Priest was chosen. In the few light beads between the death and the announcement, the state leaders cast their lots and pitched their daughters to be the wives of whoever would be chosen. There’s no moment more chaotic in our land than when a king dies.
Those moments before a leader is crowned are as sensitive as the moment a child’s head crowns in labour.
I received a message from my father that evening to say I’d been chosen as the bride to represent ìlú-ìm, the second ring, where I was born.
’ ìyá-Idán paused, then explained, ‘My father was a high-ranking member of the scholar’s guild in ìlú-ìm.
My mother was from here in ìlú-Idán. My father’s order was easy to follow because I hoped that if the gods willed it and the odds fell in my favour, ?niìtàn, who was already an àlùfáà representing the second ring, would be chosen as High Priest, and we’d get to be together.
I knew I would have to share him, but I didn’t care anymore.
I just wanted him. But when morning came, the night after the king’s death, àlùfáà Babátúndé was announced as the High Priest, and ?niìtàn was nowhere to be found. ’
ìyá-Idán paused again, and stared blankly at the box before her, lost in thought. Of all the stories Baba-ìtàn had told L’?r? in her lifetime – hundreds of stories and tales, old and new – this was the one she’d have killed to hear.
‘ìyá-Idán,’ L’?r? probed quietly, reaching for the woman’s hands.
That shocked her back to life, and she let out a deep breath. ‘Hmnn … I never thought I would tell this story again.’
‘Please, I need to know,’ L’?r? replied.
ìyá-Idán nodded silently, and continued.
‘Sometime between the king’s death and my wedding to the new High Priest, I learned ?niìtàn had broken his oath and returned home.
Whatever heartbreak I thought I felt when he accepted the call was nothing compared to the shattering feeling of betrayal when he left.
Something made him leave the Order, and it wasn’t for me that he left.
It couldn’t have been; he didn’t even tell me before he did.
He just left, and I was trapped. I had no choice but to marry the chosen High Priest.’
‘You married the Lord Regent?’ L’?r? blurted out.
‘I did not get the chance. For two first suns, they had lived in the Sun Temple together and on my first night there, I knew the moment I saw ?niìtàn with Mremí that she had filled the space I once had in his heart. There was no denying what they felt for each other. At first, I thought he had left the Order for Mremí. That he did for her what he could not for me, and believe me when I tell you, it nearly killed me. But that wasn’t it – at least not for Mremí.
Because on my wedding day, your mother gave me sleeping herbs and took my place, marrying the High Priest and taking my place in our bed. ’
L’?r? gasped. Even Alawani looked like his eyes would bulge out of their sockets.
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing about her mother.
Not the version of the woman who was murdered for being different, but the woman who lied and stole and cheated her way through the kingdom.
And for what? Why could her mother have possibly wanted to destroy the lives of so many people? People who offered her sanctuary.
ìyá-Idán ignored their expressions. ‘When I woke up, it was already too late. The Lord Regent Babátúndé did not know any of his brides nor had he ever seen them. In the days after the king’s death, the mourning queen had been the one to oversee the brides and prepare us for the wedding.
We were to be veiled for the entirety of the ceremony, ordered to unveil our faces to the High Priest only when we got to his bed.
I was so angry I could barely understand it, but I knew I had to remain silent.
Of course, Mremí’s trickery was discovered by the Holy Order the very next morning, but it was too late.
She had bedded the High Priest and there was no way to break that bond, nor would he have wanted to.
Babátúndé realized his unrequited love was now his bride before the gods and the entire kingdom, and he could not have been more pleased.
He and ?niìtàn were like brothers, bound by their trials as survivors where many before them had fallen, and that meant he couldn’t interfere with whatever ?niìtàn had going on with Mremí.
Maybe he felt none of them would have her in the end because if all had gone according to plan, one of them would have become the High Priest, married and bound to their wives and priestess, while the other would have been a regular àlùfáà bound only to their maiden.
But with Mremí’s intervention, risking her life to be his wife like that, I just know he took that to be a sign from the gods themselves.
Like all before him, he had fallen hopelessly in love with her.
My family barely survived the aftermath of Mremí’s deceit.
I don’t know how she managed to, but she produced documents and a witness that proved she had been born in the second ring, which was all the High Priest needed to shut down the council’s call to remove her.
She married the most powerful man in the kingdom and, within a month, was pregnant with his heir.
She was untouchable. My family, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with me.
The stench of my shame was too much for them.
I was forced to return here and this has been my home ever since.
’ ìyá-Idán scoffed, ‘I had fallen in love with my best friend, and he in turn fell in love with Mremí, who claimed to love him only to drop him the moment he turned down the chance to become High Priest, and married his best friend instead. To have loved Mremí was to destroy your life with your own hands.’
L’?r? was still stuck on the part where her mother married the Lord Regent. ‘My mother married Lord Regent Babátúndé?’
‘Yes, she did,’ ìyá-Idán sighed, ‘and you are the fruit of their union. The Lord Regent is your true father.’
‘That’s not possible,’ L’?r? said, standing from her chair. ‘It’s not true. My birth father is dead. He was a royal guard killed before I was born. That’s what my fa— Baba-ìtàn told me.’
‘No word I have said here today is a lie.’
‘That means,’ Alawani said quietly. ‘That means she is one of the high council.’
‘No.’ ìyá-Idán rose to her feet. ‘It means that you are the firstborn of High Priest Babátúndé and Mremí of òtútù. You are the firstborn of the sun.’
Once again, L’?r? was speechless. Then she laughed.
ìyá-Idán looked at her, then curtsied low to the ground. ‘L’?r?, you are the true heir to the kingdom of Oru. You are our queen.’
L’?r? wanted to launch herself at the woman to stop her from bowing to her.
No one should bow to her, much less this older woman who’d given her refuge in her time of need.
She didn’t know why ìyá-Idán wanted this story to be true, but it simply couldn’t be.
Baba-ìtàn would never have told her that her true father was dead when he lived in the palace, just one ring over from them. Would he?
The look on Alawani’s face reflected precisely how she felt about everything she had heard this morning. His face was contorted with confusion, and he, too, was speechless.
‘àlùfáà-àgbà wants you dead not only because you have this agbára òtútù but because you are the heir to this kingdom, and the Holy Order has made it their mission to rid the world of your people. To them, someone with agbára òtútù could never rule Oru.’
‘He killed my mother for this? Because she gave birth to me?’
‘You are a glitch formed within a loophole. When parents with agbára oru and agbára òtútù sire a child, that child has no agbára. The hidden texts written in the blood of the children born that way and slaughtered say as much. But when your mother chose to bed the High Priest, she did so with one born of the sun but also void of agbára oru because of his stripping. If he hadn’t been stripped, you would have had no agbára at all, but because of that, you were born not just of your parents but of the Red Stone as well.
The whole reason the priests strip themselves of power and bear children afterwards is so their first child will have direct access to the gods, making them the most powerful in the kingdom.
So you, L’?r?, whether you understand it or not, are the most powerful person in this land.
And that is what Mremí died for. She made a mockery of the Order.
Her mere presence was a threat to the kingdom.
Her powers were skilfully hidden and just like you, she used old magic to conceal the truth.
Very few people in this kingdom know about your people in the north.
That secret is worth more than any life to them.
’ ìyá-Idán lifted the scroll. ‘I think she was coming back here for this. She wanted to get you home. I saw her get killed outside this house and dragged away by the priests, and I mourned for you both. But then, one day, you called my name, and there you were, the child of the north, the queen of Oru.’
‘You can’t go back,’ Alawani said quickly. ‘If this is true, àlùfáà-àgbà will kill you and anyone who protects you, no matter what he has promised. I know he will.’
L’?r? could feel her world tilt on its head.
Her vision grew blurry, and her breaths came in short bursts.
How could Baba-ìtàn have kept this from her?
She closed her eyes to ground herself, and in her mind’s eye, the pillar for Baba-ìtàn, the one that had protected her all her life, cracked in half, the top of it slipping and sinking into the sand beneath. Her world wouldn’t recover from this.
ìyá-Idán’s voice cut through the haze in her mind.
‘I’ve told you all this so you can know your true enemy.
There is one more determined than the Holy Order.
One who will fight you even until death.
The one whose seat your presence threatens, the one whose crown you will wear.
Your brother, Crown Heir Tofaratì. As long as you draw breath, he will come for you. ’