Chapter 17
Chapter seventeen
Ashara
The Offering
The first time I’d ever struck someone, it’d been Demetri.
I doubt he’d remembered, both of us no older than five or six winters, but it was something I’d thought about often—the sharp slap of my hand meeting his cheek.
Though he’d deserved it, smearing my new dress with apricot jam, the feeling that came after was enough to make sure I never succumbed to wrath again.
The dip of my stomach, a pulling in my chest, a press on my shoulders that followed me into my cot once the sun had set.
Guilt, I’d later realised. From that day on, violence and I were acquaintances, never friends.
It was something I watched from a distance, stomach squirming, eyes hidden behind my fingers or my mother’s skirts.
An ugly thing. I had never had to grapple with the urge to hurt, or harm, or bite, unless it was teasing.
Isn’t it peculiar how much a person can change in a day?
Now, I craved it. The release that came with inflicting agony upon another. Oh, I wished to be glutted with it. To grow teeth and claws and rip, rip, rip until there was nothing left of the druid before me but tattered robes and strings of sinew.
I ascended the dais, slippers crunching on the powdered bloodstone dusting the roots, gaze honed on that mask of mesh.
Falstaff had seemed taller from afar, but as I drew close enough to choke on the cloying incense sticking to his robes, I realised he was but a frail old man, husked by cycles upon cycles of rendering dues.
To the pits with guilt, sorrow, regret. I was a woman consumed, and I’d burn till the end.
I twisted the buttons as if I might milk some strength from them for what would come next.
“With this hand, I—”
“Your Holiness,” I interrupted, stilling my fingers and flattening my palms to my thighs. “Before my due is rendered, I wish to make lighter my soul.”
The dual points of his helm tilted, his fingers twirling the needle so it rolled between them. “No need, laurel. My blessing shalt be enough to—”
“Nay, Druid.” I stepped closer, nostrils flaring with the iron of blood and the bitterness of myrrh. “I must insist.” My voice was steady, clear.
He set the needle back down, gloved fingers flourishing before curling over my shoulders, his grip hard enough to bruise. His tremoring was enough to shake my bones, too.
“What burden could be so great that thou profane sanctification?” His helm dipped towards me, metal kissing my cheek.
I was surprised it did not sear, for how hot I ran.
His chain veil, draped across my back, was colder than frost. “Speak, child,” he whispered, his breath like a butcher’s slab, “and know it is a mercy to absolve thee at all after such insolence.”
My heart may have already stopped beating for how still it remained, the calmest it had been since I climbed the templum’s steps.
Inside, the roaring fire had dulled to a gentle crackle, a pleasant sort of warmth honeying through me.
“I pray for the end of all things,” I breathed, lips rustling the side of his veil.
“That He will indeed come with fire, and anguish, and blood, and render with fury until nothing remains. Even you.” Every word was for him, for them: the druids, the acolytes, the monks.
“When your time comes, and it will come, Druid, I hope it is a torment. Worse than all we have endured this day, and the days before it.” My hands cupped his elbows, bones jutting like pickaxes from under the wool.
“Prick me, Druid, and bring forth my blood, and see what a good, faithful servant you have been.” I released my hold, peeling my skin from his iron, indeed feeling lighter, heady, even.
I was ready. “Take me to the Blood God.”
Two conical shoulders rose in a silent, slow chuckle.
He kept those craggy hands upon me. “Ah, laurel…” There was a bend to every syllable, his mouth no doubt stretched as wide as it would go.
“Quite the sermon. Fit for a pulpit, indeed.” His voice was low, a secret only for me.
“Thoust inspires me to also lighten my soul.” He dragged me closer.
The chain veil swallowed my face, cold links pressing against my lips, scraping my brow.
But I was far too warm to feel its chill.
“The Blood God cares not for your offering, little lamb.” His fingers tightened.
“I shall never face the torment thou promised, nor ever know death’s wilting touch.
” He leaned further, until there was nowhere left for me to recoil.
“This is but another day. Another Rite. Another tally of souls cast aside.” His body trembled as he laughed, the sound brittle and dry.
“Thou art nothing,” he whispered. “Thou art dust.” He inhaled deeply through the gaps in his chain, expelling his breath in one rancid gust, disturbing the motes floating around us.
I reared back, and just like that old, uncontrollable urge I’d once had to strike Demetri, something sizzled inside me until I spat, the glob on it landing on his sacred veil.
“Enough!” Falstaff called out to the acolytes closing ranks around me, ignoring the saliva wetting his chain. “This one needs to be letted. Such a foul, filthy little heathen, undeserving of absolution and sanctification both.”
“A plague upon you,” I demanded, matching the weight of his voice. “A plague upon you all! To the fucking pits with you…the Blood God as well.”
He swiped the needle. “Blood Demands Blood, laurel.”
The pain of its point scoring through flesh barely registered, blood oozing from the wound to join the mire at my feet, to join with Demetri’s, the acorn-laurel’s, Adelaide’s, my mother’s, my father’s.
All of them. I closed my eyes, head tipped towards the distant sun, and waited.
There was nothing left to do but wait. Wait, letting the heat that coursed through me melt away until I could breathe again.
It cooled, not to ice, but into something tempered, more gentle.
I smiled at the sensation of it, like the comfort of my mother’s barley pottage fresh off the stove.
It filled my belly, ladling every crevice until the tip of my nose, the lobes of my ears, the soles of my feet were bursting with its wondrous warmth.
It felt familiar, similar to the kindness of the twentieth lash all those cycles ago.
Perhaps the gods had mercy not in life, but in death, and to end would be kinder than to begin.
The world faded to nothing: the tree, Falstaff, the acolytes, nothing.
It was but me, the sunbeam, and eternity. And I was ready.
I stayed like that for a while, warm in the sun.
Perhaps the plague was already crawling over me.
I did feel the kiss of something under my slippers, a low vibration that made me want to giggle, like someone was tickling my feet.
Something grabbed my hand, their touch not nearly as playful as the one feathering up through my toes. It let go.
“Bring me a blade! One sharp enough for the throat. The Blood God demands that she ble—”
A crack.
Then a tremor.
I eased open an eye, a small smile tugging at my lips, the pleasant warmth building and building until I hummed with it.
It was a curious thing; how the Blood Tree had split like pastry, its reddened bark cleaved in two.
A pulse of energy thrummed through the air, a tempting beat that made me want to tap my toes to its rhythm, to lift my skirts and dance, dance, dance.
From the chasm at its heart, the bark peeled away, curling and blackening.
One by one, the pieces lifted on the wind: bark, leaves, the strange red fruit, and blood, all dissolving to grey, to ash.
Then went the roots, each limb catching like wildfire, smoking until nothing remained but scorched earth.
I sniffed, mouth watering, the smell of baked bread wafting through the air.
“The Blood Tree! Its roots! Flee!” Falstaff croaked, lifting his robes to creak down the root-wrought stairs, his legs little wider than toothpicks. The acolytes scrambled behind him, but his steps were too slow, too stilted, and most were not fast enough.
Chunks of stone—some the size of figs, others as large as cattle—plummeted from above, flattening the acolytes as they scattered.
I held my palm to the sky, catching small splatters of stone in its centre, and gazed down at the scene at my feet.
Limbs, teeth, and shards of bone burst from under the boulders, bodies reduced to jam.
I licked my lips, stomach rumbling alongside the ground.
The pinprick of light bloomed, flooding the chamber with the full force of the morning sun as the sky rained down upon us.
I closed my eyes, a pink-tinged red bleeding through my lids.
Oh, how I longed to bottle it, sunlight—to drink from it always and fill me from top to toe with its golden heat.
I opened my mouth, ready to swallow it down.
Even the screams were laced with it. Such beautiful screams.
It was impossible not to laugh at how they flinched beneath the falling stones. There was no need to run or hide. It would be over soon.
As the trembling ceased and dust settled, I padded forward, admiring the blackened roots holding me aloft, no longer swollen and weeping with blood.
My own still trickled from my hand, drip, drip, dripping onto what remained below.
I lifted it, inspecting the welting red slash beneath the thick coating of ash.
The ash was everywhere, clumps clinging to my eyelashes, my dress, my hair.
It settled over the rest of the chamber, shrouding the debris and bodies in a blanket of grey.
Under it, limbs jutted at impossible angles, brains leaking across the floor.
I had the thought to ask someone to capture it in a painting. It was a masterpiece, fit for a fresco.
Movement caught my eye. Pressed to an acolyte, next to a lump of rock the size of a horse, quivered two horns.
Falstaff quaked, one side of his mesh veil hanging loose, a hand clutched to his face like a maiden would grasp at her bodice, keeping it in place.
I beamed at them both, and the druid may have beamed back, I could not be sure, but the acolyte…
I pouted at his countenance, his stare, lips downcast and cheeks hollow, jaw slack. Pity.
I opened my lips, ready to advise him to smile, but then, I saw them. Not acolytes. Not druids. Not paxiams or monks.
The white of their dresses and shirts peeked through the ash. One, two, three, four, five. Five. Five laurels. But I was last… I was last.
My gaze locked on the one nearest the dais, to his bundle of dishevelled, curly hair, and I shivered, unsure why, for I was so, so warm.
The thaw was small at first, a breath of a chill that crept from my toes, crawling like pins up my legs, through my navel, and into my chest. Then it swelled, the warmth dissolving away just like the Blood Tree, vein by vein by vein.
Falling behind a cloud, the sunlight overhead shuttered to grey, turning everything dull, save for the blood…
the blood and the hickory eyes burning into my own, glowing like honey amidst the ruin and death.
Impossible.
Feet moving before I could understand why, I clambered down the petrified roots, two at a time, hands reaching, trembling, desperate to touch him, desperate to confirm he was real.
He outstretched his hand, amber eyes wide. Our fingertips brushed, so close, so cl—
A punishing strike smashed into the back of my skull, sending a wave of pain rippling from its base.
“Demetri,” I breathed before the shadows came to claim me.