Chapter 6
Chapter six
Ashara
The Last Rite
I entwined my fingers around those of the First, palms sweating, heart sputtering uselessly in the depths of my stomach.
My lungs, useless things, had sunk to the soles of my feet, where they could stay, for all the good they were doing.
I forced a shallow breath, willing my hands to still. They wouldn’t listen—they never did.
She was nothing like I’d expected.
Her replica outside the chappellum shone glassy and smooth.
On a clear day, it sparkled like a polished gem, glinting red in the sun.
But the real Her, the one whose hands I now cradled in my own, was rough, like sandstone, her palms unsmoothed despite the thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, who had grasped them before.
But it was not the feel of her hands that robbed me of breath, but her face.
Gone was the smile of her marbled double.
In its place, a mouth twisted and agape.
Gone were her upturned eyes, creased in a smile.
Instead, they were wide, round as buttons, ridged with small beadings of unshed tears.
Gone was that wrinkled nose, scrunched in delight as she reached for the Blood God behind her, carved into the same slab of stone as she.
The real First was alone, with no mimicry of the Blood God looming over her shoulder.
No, she was nothing like the statue outside our chappellum. I stared into the true face of the First, and a terrified little girl stared back.
“Thrift, thrift!” I gripped her tighter at the bark of a paxiam. “We haven’t all day, laurel; say your dues.”
His spear lowered to my face, a tutor’s pointer rather than a weapon. They were everywhere here, the holy guards of Grand Templum. Their red-tinted armour outnumbered the crimson-robed acolytes and brown-tuniced monks, ten to one.
“There be a long line of laurels this day, and the sun is near set.” He thrust its tip skyward, a sneer peeking through the cutout of his helm. Beating viciously, my heart returned to my chest, unsettled despite its sojourn to the stomach. What was it Demetri used to say?
“A paxiam’s as useful as a taper in a storm, and half as bright.”
Returning to the First, and unpinching my face, I readied to make the Pledge of the Dendralis.
I knew my dues, the words as familiar on my tongue as my mother’s name—or Demetri’s—but only a choked, gargled sound bubbled from me, the sentences lodged in my throat like the core of an apple.
Her wide eyes peered up, spilling with frozen tears as I sputtered and coughed.
It was like gazing into a looking glass, but one that reflected the soul, not the body. For just like the First, I was afraid.
The blunt end of a spear nudged my shoulder, hard enough to bruise, to hurt. “Now, laurel.”
I was to die tomorrow.
I had always known the date of my offering—every Thromarrian knows, each babe prescribed a date by their enclave’s druid within a turn of their birth.
To pass in one’s bed, granted the gift of old age and tired hearts, was a privilege awarded to few.
Yes, I had always known, but now I stood on its ledge, holding on to the First, I found myself not willing to jump.
Willing or no, the Dendralis would push, and from the sheer number of gormless paxiams lining the dais, they were prepared to use force.
No one clings quite so ardently to life as the dying.
Through damp eyelashes, I blinked back tears, refusing to let them break.
Drawing a steadying breath, I leant forward and recited my lines, gently, close to her ear, should she be able to hear me.
Though it had long since passed—hundreds of cycles between then and now—when the first blood plague had turned Her to stone.
“With my hands, I hold yours, the First, that you may take mine and guide me to the beyond.” I had the sudden urge to embrace her, to hold her close.
But she was rock, and I flesh, and there were vows to make.
“That you may be with me and I with you. For Blood Demands Blood, and though He demanded yours first, we all must render our—”
“To the atrium, laurel. Make way for the next,” the sneering paxiam all but breathed down my neck, interrupting my pledge so he’d be home for supper.
A tear dripped from my face, the pearl of it splashing upon her eye, turning the iris a dark, deep crimson.
It welled at her lid before trailing the tracks of her own, carved into the curves of her cheek.
I didn’t want to let her go, not yet. I was no mother, but the part of me that might have borne a child—had the Dendralis allowed it—longed to gather her into my arms and flee.
Run and run until we were far, far away, where the Blood God and His plagues could not touch us.
But it was too late for all that. There was no escaping Him and His thirst. It came for Adelaide. It came for my mother, and now, it was coming for me.
Pledge left unfinished, I released Her with a squeeze, dodging another strike from his spear. As my hand lifted from hers, just for a moment, I could’ve sworn she squeezed back.
Retreating down the dais, knees trembling, shoulder aching, rubbing at my watery eyes, I joined the thrall of the others.
We were like ghosts, us laurels, gliding aimlessly over the mosaiced floor, garbed in white as was custom.
The dress I wore had hung for cycles in the back of my closet; my mother having sewn it for me before I’d even learned to walk.
It was a little long, the hem snagging every second step or so.
She hadn’t altered it before her offering five cycles past—perhaps she’d forgotten I’d grown shorter than predicted.
The buttons, though… I fiddled with one on my sleeve, feeling its smooth, scalloped edges. The buttons I’d added myself.
Eyes cast down, I avoided every face in the atrium. If I looked too long, too closely, I’d find his.
It was inevitable.
We were to leave this world as we entered it: together. But it would hurt. Gods, it would hurt to say one more hello before our final goodbye.
Wiggling my toes, they writhed in my slippers, the silk browned at the edges from the streets of Dendra’s filth. Against the red of the tiles, they morphed into maggots, crawling over a bloodied corpse, the white stark against the small crimson stones.
Better to shut them, to not see at all.
“Don’t look, darling girl, don’t look.”
But I had no chest to bury my face in, no mother’s skirts to cower behind, no Demetri to tell me to cover my eyes. So I opened them instead, to the sky, the templum’s atrium more courtyard than hall, open-roofed and bare to the elements.
It was mild for spring, despite the wind.
Fluffy clouds raced through the blue, their whipped edges catching the sun.
A fine, if not blustery, afternoon for my last. I hoped it would happen like this—in the open, where I could smell the blossom, feel the wind, and see the sunrise, if it deigned to shine come the morn.
Feeling braver, I traced the pillars boxing us in.
The dark, almost black stone seemed all wrong here, up high, near the clouds.
All of Dendra’s Grand Templum, from its lower reach to the tallest spires, was carved from the volcanic rock of Ovidus, the dormant volcano upon whose ledge it perched.
Brutal, but beautiful in its own way. A fitting place for the First; so much better than under the ground with the mud and the worms and the rot.
Look…just look, Ashara. Look.
I heaved a great breath, ribs protesting their lacings, and let my eyes fall.
Mercifully, the first laurel I glanced was a stranger.
A mountain of a man, towering next to a reedy fellow, all long arms and legs.
Skin as dark as Ovidus, the other pale as moonlight, his face scarred from a bout of the pox.
Apparently, the Blood God was yet to pick a type.
The tall, muscular one met my gaze, his smile small, sad. I turned away.
Look.
There were hundreds of us, but he was not there. Auburn, hay bale, black, but no curled crop of chestnut. Green, blue, brown, but no amber eyes, or that swaggering, rakish walk of his. Just ghosts, so many of them swarming around me. My hips struck the base of a column.
“Ye have nipples fer’ eyes? Watch yerself.
” I swivelled to face not rock, but a man, his thinning hair slicked with some sort of sap, failing to disguise the sheen of ruddy skin beneath.
Eyes the colour of mulch dipped to my lacings, roving to track the curve of my hip, waist, and breast. A slanted mouth opened, his tongue, yellowed and crinkled, swiping over his lips.
“Well met, fellow laurel.” He hedged closer, and I took a step back, conscious of the way his breath reeked of stale ale and cheese.
“Have ye a companion for this last eve, m’lady?
I be Iagor, mason of Dendra.” He extended a calloused hand towards me, the other pawing at his crotch, rearranging whatever vile slug flapped about behind the crumpled linen.
“Us laurels get but one chance to rut. What say it be you that samples the first of me’ fruits whilst we wait for the axe? ”
I blanched, words evading me.
“I don’t know what woman would ever dare behold your withered prunes, but it’s certainly not she,” a deep voice warned from behind.
My eyes slammed shut, pulse thundering.
“Look to thy own belly, laurel,” spat Iagor, his southern accent thickening like gruel. “For it be gutted in the morn. Who be you to—”
An arm locked round my shoulders, drawing me back. Someone grunted before the slap of flesh upon stone.
I opened my eyes to find Iagor doubled on the tiles, wheezing, his face crimson, clutching his groin.
“Ashara?” That voice again. The sound of it as familiar to me as the creak of a loom or the crackle of hearth fire.
I twisted, and so did the world, turned upside down in an instant.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost, darling girl.”