Chapter 3 #2
You can’t get married. Won’t you be too busy leading thrice-daily lamentations at one of my impressive funerary monuments?
For another thing, it was obvious Taran hadn’t thought very hard about what I was going to do without him, which was why I was here in the harbor, ready to sail the Sea of Dreams.
My real objection was that I never planned to get married.
I was going to be a priestess in a celibate order and dedicate my life to spreading the Maiden’s mercy.
I didn’t change my mind—I fell in love with Taran.
Those were two different things, and I was determined that I would have one life or the other.
“I’m not going to mourn him at all anymore.” That had been completely unsustainable, like trying to breathe underwater. “I’m going to Wesha, and he’s going home, with or without me.”
I was confident, but Drutalos was not convinced.
“Iona, it feels like this is…this is a very complicated way of killing yourself,” he said, struggling for words. His voice was getting higher pitched and tighter. “I didn’t think you’d go tonight. It’s my turn to watch you, and—”
“If I were just going to kill myself, why would I ask you to bring me Wesha’s relics?”
“I don’t know! But why would you think Wesha would do anything for you?”
I snorted in grim amusement and tossed his words back at him. “Haven’t you heard? I’m the best singer alive, the last one of Wesha’s temple.”
The other acolyte pulled back, stung. He didn’t want to fight with me, but his eyes were starting to well up.
I didn’t want to spend the time to convince him. Everything in me was yearning to cross the sea, a relentless tug in my chest that pulled at me waking and sleeping. The only relief was in deciding to go.
I firmed my jaw and took Drutalos by the arm.
“The rebellion is over. You can do whatever you want to, but this is all I want. I want Taran back. And you don’t need me anymore—”
“Of course we do. Not just the acolytes—the queen does too, even if she doesn’t know it yet.
Look around! It’s winter, but it hasn’t rained in months.
There was no crop this year, and I heard someone say last week that hardly any children have been born since the rebellion started… Iona, you have to do something.”
“You do it this time. Build them an irrigation system or something, acolyte of Smenos,” I said, steeling myself against the guilt for leaving him.
I’d given everything I had to the rebellion, and I’d never asked for anything in return.
No title, no reward, not a single comfort in three years of war.
Taran had promised me a stone house with a plum tree by the front window, but I hadn’t even stopped long enough to marry him.
I would have given my life for the other acolytes, but Drutalos didn’t have the right to ask me for Taran’s.
“Couldn’t you just…just wait? See if you feel better in a few more months. You know Taran wouldn’t approve of you sailing off alone,” Drutalos sniffled.
I frowned at the darkening horizon. “If Taran wanted to make my decisions for me, he shouldn’t have died.”
“But he is dead. Maybe all the priests who left are dead too. Maybe the gods really are gone.” He got a mulish expression on his face, the same one the queen got when I had this argument with her.
In response, I sighed and wiped my palms together. I sang six short, harsh syllables.
Hail Death, who kindles flame.
The trick was in the intonation, but it wasn’t hard.
Fire dripped from between my fingers, falling safely on the packed stone of the harbor and sputtering out for lack of fuel.
Drutalos still screeched and jumped back.
“What the hell?” he keened, his breathing turning to panic.
I was immediately sorry—I could have chosen a different demonstration.
Memories of the war hit all of us differently, and Drutalos was afraid of fire now.
For the sake of his dignity, I held back my urge to rub his back as he raggedly pulled himself together, hands over his eyes.
“What if someone saw you?” he demanded when he had himself under control.
“Did you see?”
“I saw,” he said sullenly. “And so?”
“The gods still answer prayers. Even Death does, and Taran killed him.”
Drutalos fell silent, unable to argue that point with Iona Night-Singer.
Wesha was waiting across the sea, I knew it.
The sworn priests of every god but Death had boarded ships in the first weeks of the war, called through their vows to flee across the Sea of Dreams. I would be going without an invitation, but I was certain I could find Wesha, and the goddess of mercy might still grant her last priestess one final blessing.
Nobody came to stop us when I boarded the boat I’d decided to steal.
“Do you know how to sail?” Drutalos pointed out when I gingerly situated myself between the oars. The square sail was in a heap at the bottom of the single mast, and I poked at the ropes that might allow me to raise it.
“I’ll make the wind blow in the direction I’m going,” I said confidently.
“I think there’s more to it than that,” he said with some doubt, and since his former patron god invented ships, he might be onto something, but I wasn’t about to stop and take a few weeks to study sailing.
It wasn’t like I was going to a real place, anyway. Wesha’s prison wasn’t on maps. It wasn’t in the mortal world. She would either let me find it or she wouldn’t.
“Are you coming back?” Drutalos asked, hands gripping the prow of the boat.
I wouldn’t lie to him.
“I don’t know. I’ll try.”
He looked very young as he silently begged me to reconsider; he was trying to grow a beard, and that project might be more successful if delayed a year or two. I hoped I’d be back to see it.
When he realized that I would not make more of a promise than I had, he nodded and untied the boat from the dock.
The tide was going out, so I was pulled out to sea before I could even get comfortable with the oars or the tiller. But nonetheless I waved at my friend, who stood on the dock and morosely watched me go.
I drifted out of the harbor, far enough that nobody was likely to notice that I didn’t own the boat. An hour’s worth of tugging on ropes got the sail into what looked to be the correct configuration. I found a mechanism to lock the oars and set a course east, toward the rising sun.
I whispered a blessing for a small wind and called a breeze to push my tiny boat forward more quickly. The sail filled, and a rush of hope swept through my chest with the sea air. There were several songs about making this voyage, which I sang for good luck.
There had been no storms since the day Skyfather’s priests left on this same voyage, and the surface of the water was like glass as the night slipped toward dawn.
Sailing was easy, it turned out, if the storm god’s arm no longer stretched out to touch the waters.
I spent the night looking up at the stars.
For the first time since Taran died, it was easy to fall asleep.
I didn’t have to figure out how to live in a world without him, which was what everyone else had wanted. I just had to make this one voyage.
This serenity persisted through the second night, and the third.
On the fourth night, I started to worry.
I saw the fins of sea creatures on the horizon and the occasional distant sail, so I knew that I hadn’t crossed out of the mortal realm.
I was following the sun precisely, but there was no way to tell how far I’d gone.
I hadn’t thought it would take more than a day.
None of the songs made it sound like the Gates were very far away.
On the fifth night, I ran out of food. I hadn’t brought a fishing line, and when I tried calling for rain to refill my water jugs, I nearly swamped the boat.
I squeezed some water out of my dress to drink, but it was as foul as the ocean from all the dried salt in the fabric.
Always, I prayed to the Maiden, who was as silent as ever.
On the tenth night, I ran out of water.
By the next morning, I was comforting myself with the thought that I’d soon see Taran again whether Wesha answered my prayers or not.