Chapter 2 #2
Despite the mood and the queen’s grimace, I tried to talk to her like I used to.
I had once thought I was a pretty convincing speaker, because I did, after all, convince her to join me in the rebellion that ended Death’s rule over the entire country, but ever since Death fell on the cliffs, she seemed to wish I would disappear.
Well, me too, but I still had people I was responsible for.
Taran was dead, but there was still work that I was required to do.
My proposal tonight was designed to avoid all her previous objections to my plans: I would take the other acolytes with me to the ruins of Ereban, and we’d restore the barracks at the temple of Diopater, which had been the least damaged among all the major structures.
The old royal palace there was charred rubble under six feet of mud, and the rest of the population had fled, so we’d be alone.
The other acolytes and I would only use the blessings of the gods per the strict instructions of the throne, and we would accept no new students.
It was far from the picture Taran had painted of our future.
Once Death relented, he thought all the priests would come back from across the sea, we’d rebuild the ruined temples to the other gods, and we’d be prosperous and peaceful again.
Maybe he could have talked the queen into that: all I’d done was convince people to riot and fight and burn, but Taran could charm anyone he ever met, from the queen down to the lowest pot-boy.
He would have led with a smile and a compliment and got the queen laughing, while I’d come in with a new limp and resentment.
Taran, this should have been you, not me.
The queen told me no.
When I was done speaking, she sat up in her throne, her winged eyebrows lowered, and made her announcement.
“I cannot allow anything in the shape of a temple to be rebuilt. The gods have left the world to us, Night-Singer. We should leave their blessings to them. Let their names and their prayers be forgotten, as they have forgotten us. I want that to be my legacy.”
She wasn’t really speaking to me but to the crowd, because not everyone agreed.
Some of the nobles here had been religious loyalists who’d fought on Death’s side until it looked like we were winning.
Some of them still worshipped in secret.
Some of them had fled abroad at the start of the rebellion to live in gentler lands with gentler gods, and they were unimpressed when they returned to find our country barren and torn.
The queen would only get angrier if I pointed out that I had acolytes who could sing the blessing of rain for our parched fields or blessings over metal to forge tools to rebuild the ruined cities, or that I myself was the last living person who could treat complicated childbirths or infectious illnesses.
But I couldn’t make her look weak in front of her court, so I threw myself on her mercy instead.
“I’m only asking for the sake of people who fought in your army for three years. I’ve sent home everyone who still has family, but that leaves dozens of us who only know temple life. What are we supposed to do?”
My voice wobbled when I spoke. My thoughts rarely marched beyond the next moment anymore, but it finally sunk in as I was standing there that I might truly fail at this too.
The queen might be stubborn enough to see her country starve.
I might be cursed to live long enough to see the people I’d tried to save brought even lower than they’d been under Death’s tyranny.
Taran, you said you’d end this. Why isn’t it over yet?
My question made the queen wince. She was barely into middle age when we met, but the murder of her daughter and three years of war had put streaks of white into her plaited dark hair and deep purple shadows beneath her eyes.
“If any of your people are young enough to still need taking care of, they’re young enough to take up a new trade. They don’t need temples to farm or smith or—can’t they just pick up apprenticeships like anyone else? And you…you know I want the best for you, Iona.”
She paused, pursing her lips in thought, then scanned the crowd of nobles seated at the long plank tables.
Her eyes finally came to rest on her cousin, Lord Fentos.
Unlike most of the court, he wasn’t paying attention to my conversation with the queen, instead looking disconsolately into his goblet of wine.
“Fentos! You were saying last week that one of us would have to remarry soon.”
Her statement made little sense to me, but the crowd got there before I did. They fell quiet as their interest was seized; I didn’t realize I was the target until I saw Hiwa abortively reach out for me.
Why were we talking about royal marriages? I was just here to ask for enough money to take the surviving acolytes somewhere quiet and out of the way.
I wheezed in helpless panic when I understood.
Lord Fentos suppressed a scowl and craned his neck to look me over at the queen’s invitation.
Even though his appraisal was more commercial than lascivious—a horse he wasn’t certain he wanted to buy, not a woman he wasn’t certain he wanted to sleep with—I inhaled with instinctive rejection as his eyes traveled across my unimpressive figure to linger on my straight waist and narrow hips.
I clutched Taran’s ring and twisted it on my finger like it might offer me some protection, but a drunken sot to Fentos’s right took it upon himself to play matchmaker.
“You could do worse for a bride. The hair’s a matter of taste, but she sings, you know—wouldn’t that be nice to hear in your house? And her family was probably peasant trash, but Wesha’s temple would’ve educated her, so your children won’t bark like dogs.”
Fentos rolled his eyes, but he didn’t disagree with this assessment of my marriageability.
“How about it, Iona? I’d give you the dowry I planned for Elantia,” the queen said grandly, and I should have been overcome with gratitude to be treated like a daughter of the royal house, but instead I made a sound like someone had struck me in the stomach.
Nobody seemed to notice that I had started shaking.
How did I stop this? What were the words I could say that would not insult the queen but appropriately convey that I would sooner jump off the highest cliff in the land than marry her cousin? Marry anyone at all? I couldn’t make my mind work, and it only got worse.
“Are you still a maiden, maiden-priest? You never took your vows, did you?” Fentos reluctantly asked, and he made an effort to be quiet with his inquiry, but I still flushed hot and crimson, feeling naked despite wearing more clothing than any other woman in the room.
“Fentos! That question at your age, and you a widower,” the queen responded for me, with the prim outrage I couldn’t muster over the horror of the entire situation. “You remember Taran ab Genna. They were practically married. I’m sure she’s as virtuous as any maiden-priest, but you can’t expect—”
“And I don’t expect otherwise, but weren’t they betrothed almost two years? With no child? If you’re not going to remarry, I need to be sure of an heir.”
“I suppose you’re right,” the queen said after considering it. They both examined me as though my heir-producing potential might be visible through the layers of Wesha’s white wool vestments. “What do you think, Iona?”
I wanted to say the most vicious curses I knew. Instead, I made the mistake of turning to Hiwa for help, but her face was all cautious hope rather than anger on my behalf.
My brain wasn’t so addled that I couldn’t follow her thoughts—she’d been watching me night and day for five months so that I wouldn’t do something terrible to myself, all the time worried we’d starve when the queen’s generosity ran out, and if I married into the royal family, both problems would be solved.
She probably didn’t even think it was a bad match—Fentos might have two decades on me, but he wasn’t hideous, and I’d never heard that his first wife had had any complaints.
Wesha married a worse man to bring peace to the world.
That had to be why Hiwa thought I would do it.
I’d never hesitated to make a single sacrifice for my people, and Hiwa had seen me ready to die for them that day on the beach.
I could marry Fentos and at least provide for my friends, have children, perhaps influence the path of my country if he did inherit the throne someday. It made sense.
Taran was dead, after all, and there was still work that I was required to do.
No. No.
I was going to be sick. I was going to be sick all over myself in front of all these people.
With my focus expended on containing the wave of nausea that threatened to turn out my stomach at the image of Fentos standing in Taran’s place at a betrothal ceremony, I lost track of my breathing, and a loud sob rattled up through my throat.
I gasped for air, and another sob sealed my throat shut.
Someone snickered and was loudly shushed, leaving the ragged noises coming out of my chest as the only sounds in the room.
A few people here would remember the day that I staggered into the old palace in Ereban to tell the queen that Death had butchered her only child on his altar.
I heard the queen had come to Taran’s funeral too, but I’d been even less coherent then and hadn’t noticed.
For the first time, a flicker of uncertainty crossed her face. A little recognition of our overlapping mourning.
“Your Taran was a fine young man, Iona, but you weren’t even married yet, and—”
I didn’t stay to hear the end of that sentence.
I ran. My bad foot twisted under me before I could run ten steps, and my hip caught painfully against the table I lurched into, sending wine tumbling into the laps of two minor officials.
I couldn’t manage an apology, just fled faster, tears blurring my vision.
I managed to lose Hiwa in the turns of the corridors and came out of the former temple not via the petitioners’ courtyard but the kitchen midden, which sloped down toward the rocky ocean shoreline. Nobody was nearby—the herb gardens were long dead, and the sacred trees had been chopped down.
I made my way to the gray basalt shoreline and nearly crawled to reach the water.
Pulled open the neckline of my dress and splashed seawater on my burning neck and chest. It could soothe my flushed skin but couldn’t cool my anger at everyone who expected me to recover from Taran’s death, much less my anger at Taran for expecting me to do this without him.
My impulse, always, was to fix things, no matter how drastic the cure was to the illness. Cut out the tumor. Purge the infection. Take my surgical knife and fight the death-priests who were burning down my country. But there was no curing death, not even for the most talented maiden-priest.
As the salt dried tacky on my chest and cheeks, I slumped onto a larger rock to stare out at the sea.
If I turned my head to look up the coast, I could barely see the peak of Mount Degom, nearly fifty miles away, where the Allmother had given birth to our gods.
Ereban lay in Mount Degom’s shadow, where the maiden-priests who raised me had died.
Somewhere across the sea, there was another mountain. Every day I looked out at the sea, wishing I could see it.
When people died, we built funeral boats and launched them to the east. They passed through the Gates that Wesha’s eternal prison guarded to reach the sacred Mountain.
Our absent gods were up above in the paradise of the Summerlands with their priests, and Taran was down below, in the Underworld.
My patron goddess lay between us, no doubt wondering why nobody prayed to her for mercy anymore.
Against my will, I was still here alone, grieving the lack of vows that would have made me a priest or a widow.
I’d spent most of my life wanting to be Wesha’s priestess and the rest of it wanting to be Taran’s wife, and I’d never get the chance to promise myself to either of them. Both Taran and Wesha were across the sea forever.
For three years, I awoke most nights from the nightmare of Death’s flames and the collapsing temple in Ereban, the queen’s daughter dying on the altar, the riots, and the massacre of the other maiden-priests.
I never expected to recover from it—my entire temple died!
That would have been enough to haunt one mortal life, and somehow I endured.
I was not going to live through this. That realization, as strong as a vow, came as the first moment of relief since Taran died.
I was not going to finish his work. I was not going to live without him, was not going to marry Lord Fentos or take up a trade or convince the queen to seek the blessings of the gods. I would just refuse to do it.
Neither could I serve Wesha, not anymore. I couldn’t be a maiden-priest without my goddess’s guidance or her blessings, and I had no idea what she’d want me to do now that her husband was defeated and her temple destroyed.
But there was still something I could do.
If everyone I loved was across the sea, I could sail there too. The Maiden had shut the Gates between the Summerlands, the Underworld, and the mortal realm, but if she could shut them, surely she could open them.
If she’d do it for anyone, she’d do it for me.
For three hundred years, the Maiden had locked her husband out of the realms of the gods and the dead, and in return he had killed us, stole from us, and tormented us. Maybe she even owed it to me, to give mine back.
I rubbed the dried salt off my face with the sleeve of my white dress and looked to the ocean horizon.
With my decision, my soul was finally calm.