Chapter 9 #3
Taran waved a hand in front of my face, drawing me back to the present.
“You’re not in any danger. If Napeth was reborn on the Mountain six months ago, he’ll be just as powerless and empty-headed as Marit. Stymied by the knots in his trouser laces and the names of his ugly children.”
“You don’t remember him either,” I pushed back, my fingernails cutting into my palms. “Everything he did. In the war. In either war!”
“What should I remember?” Taran asked, lifting an eyebrow.
“He murdered every last maiden-priest. Burned down the high temple. Set fires that scorched half the country. And—and didn’t he nearly destroy the Summerlands too, three hundred years ago?
” I looked around for evidence of the destruction, but there was no indication that this place had ever known a moment of imperfection.
Was this City so beautiful that nobody could ever imagine it broken again?
“He’s here, somewhere, with a temple full of Fallen, and—”
Taran exhaled, jaw shifting to the side at my obvious distress. “Look, I’m not going to let anyone hurt you,” he said. His tone was low and casual, but he ducked his head to meet my eyes on the same level.
I was touched by this unexpected gallantry, but before I could revise my opinion of him, he broke eye contact and amended his statement: “If you behave yourself.”
My grimace seemed to seal that point for him, because he took my arm and insistently led me up a paved ramp into the highest tier of the arena.
I only had a moment to take in its vast size before Taran jauntily stepped onto the outer ring of risers and tugged me into a large group of mortals: the missing priests.
Hundreds of them, properly attired in a rainbow of hues and milling around with attitudes ranging from boredom to celebration—every priest who’d taken a vow of obedience to a patron god.
The wise adults I’d obeyed and respected for my entire life, before the survivors of Ereban abandoned us and fled across the sea after the first riots.
They had a refreshment table with juice and glazed cakes, where they were enjoying a leisurely breakfast.
I recognized several faces. Before I could think of how I’d explain myself, I saw one that recognized me: the elegant high priestess of Genna who’d advised the queen until the rebellion began. Taran knew her too.
“Teuta ter Genna,” he addressed the buxom woman with a cap of iron-gray curls, whose lovely dark eyes flew wide when they landed on me. Taran put a hand on the small of my back. “Have you met my new priestess before? Of course you have. I’d be very grateful if you’d show her around, then.”
Teuta’s gaze darted back and forth between me and Taran, but she swallowed and rallied when I couldn’t think of anything to say.
Here they were. The priests who should have been singing green crops into our fields and life into our starving people.
The ones who’d left dozens of half-trained children behind to fight and die in their absence, enjoying eternal life and a pleasant morning at Genna’s party.
“Oh…welcome, Iona ter Taran,” Teuta said hesitantly.
I choked on my own saliva then, so I didn’t have the opportunity to protest when Taran gave me a satisfied pat and propelled me toward the high priestess of Genna.
He straightened his tunic and strode down toward the pavilion at the center of the arena, pausing only to wink at my dismay at being dropped with the other mortals like a lamb in the communal pasture.
Teuta edged toward me when I didn’t move.
“You just got here?” she asked in a voice that didn’t carry. “You sailed across the Sea of Dreams?”
“Yesterday,” I said flatly. Perhaps they had no choice about leaving us or about not coming back, but they did not look very concerned for the fate of everyone they’d left behind. Smiling and laughing, most of them. Nibbling on spiced orange cake.
Teuta exhaled, considering my stony face. “Is it very bad?”
“As bad as you might have expected after Ereban burned.”
“Are there others?”
“A few of us survived, if that’s what you mean. Hiwa ter Genna. Some other acolytes. I’m the only one who’s here.”
Teuta would have already heard what happened to the maiden-priests when she fled.
Ignoring my hard stare, she put what she probably intended to be a comforting hand on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry to hear that. We all worried that—well. That it was as bad as it seemed.”
“Why are you still here?” I whispered angrily. “The fighting’s been over for six months. The queen thinks you’re never coming back.”
At my undertone of accusation, Teuta stiffened. “We’re still here because a week after the riots started, someone burned down Death’s temple with all his priests inside. The other Stoneborn were afraid their people might be next. Did the rebellion spare any temples at all?”
Her gaze was forthright, and I froze as I surmised she had a good idea of who had been responsible for the first reprisal attack. She looked away when I didn’t admit to it.
“The Stoneborn know very little of the mortal world now. You’re safe.”
I shrugged her hand off. I already knew that wasn’t true, if Death was alive and in the Summerlands. Even if it had been, safe was not what my temple had considered the most important thing to be.
I stalked away to look down at the center of the arena to see where Taran had gone.
It was mostly empty, with rows upon rows of unfilled risers.
The priests were in the farthest ring, and the inner rings were filled with lesser immortals: little garden spirits and river nymphs, mountain gods and hearth gnomes.
The Stoneborn were in a silk-covered pavilion at the center, but only four of them.
I recognized the golden semicircle of thrones from the epics, and the seats carved with the sigils of their domains.
Most were empty—Wesha’s sunrise throne and thankfully the flame-topped chair beside hers, where Death was meant to sit.
I felt a little of my fear dissolve at the sight of his empty chair, even though the other side of the semicircle held two shining gods whose glow hurt my eyes.
I was familiar with this trick—Death had used it too, during the midsummer sacrifices—but I couldn’t quite suppress my awe at being in the distant presence of Diopater and Genna.
I couldn’t make out their features or clothing on the two luminous beings, just the suggestion of a thick, gray beard on one and long, golden hair on the other.
Their power still buzzed against my skin in the tempo of the lightning that casually arced between Skyfather’s massive hands.
The Stoneborn were far enough away that their conversation didn’t carry, but Marit was speaking with Genna, wine goblet in hand and a puddle of seawater at his feet. Drunk again, with a large cask of wine abandoned on his wave-capped throne.
None of them looked like Taran, who’d looked like a person, not a power.
He had been a person who told bad jokes, a person who hated onions so much that he picked them out of his food—a person who used to rub my temples with his thumbs when I got a headache.
The man who claimed to be one of the Stoneborn stood behind Genna’s throne, his arms folded behind his back and his posture wary.
Her part-mortal bastard didn’t get a throne, I supposed.
A priestess in Skyfather’s purple cloak stepped out in front of the assembly and lifted her arms to voice the universal call to prayer.
Down in the pavilion, the Stoneborn were still idle, and there was some dissent among the priests.
Shouldn’t we keep waiting? Is anyone else coming?
But the other priests began to shuffle into rows, and Teuta followed me to the highest row in the rear.
“Does he know?” she whispered to me once the voices of the other priests gave her cover.
“You mean, does he know that I…” My voice trailed off when Teuta lifted a cautioning finger to her lips and shot her eyes into the crowd. At the very edge, up in front, one wore a red robe and bronze lion mask. A death-priest.
I held Teuta’s gaze and shook my head minutely. No, Taran did not know I’d led the mortal rebellion he’d been sent to put down.
“He knows Wesha sent me here. That’s all.”
Teuta smiled in relief. “Good. I don’t think anyone else will recognize you, dressed like that. Taran won’t…well, I’ve never heard of him harming a mortal. Unless they somehow crossed the Peace-Queen, that is.”
That was a pretty large unless. Genna had, after all, forced her youngest daughter into marriage with Death and sent her son to wipe out the mortal rebels. I considered myself and the Peace-Queen at cross-purposes.
“But he still might murder me the next time I object to one of the Stoneborn slitting a child’s throat?” I asked, my whisper growing heated.
“No. The Allmother forbids human sacrifice,” Teuta said firmly.
The Allmother was not here. The largest throne in the center of the pavilion was crowned with the symbol of the Mountain, and it sat empty, as it had been for centuries.
In the epics, we’d learned that she slept, still recovering from her labors in giving birth to the Stoneborn.
She awoke only to erupt in anger when her laws were transgressed.
But she hadn’t saved us in the long years that Death terrorized the mortal world.
“I’m so glad to hear that,” I said bitterly. “Has anyone told Death yet?”
“This is not the place for blasphemy, Iona! And Taran ab Genna is not going to condone human sacrifice. He’s the one who saved the rest of Marit’s priests, after all.
” Teuta nodded at the god who was cracking the tiles of the pavilion with every step, seawater flowing in his wake.
Genna leaned back to say something to Taran, pointing at the sea god, and Taran waded out from behind the throne.
“What happened to Marit’s priests?”
“You see how Marit is…like that? After Taran had been gone for a year, trying to stop…trying to restore the rule of the temples. When he didn’t come back and didn’t send word, Skyfather ran out of patience and wanted to send a wave to destroy the rebel cities.
Marit wouldn’t do it—he was afraid Taran would be drowned too. ”
“Interesting priorities,” I muttered, glaring at the sea god as he reeled drunkenly around the stage, Taran in careful pursuit.
“You have to understand, they can’t see the mortal world from here.
Wesha won’t let them close to the shore.
All they knew is that the mortals had turned against their priests and withdrawn their worship.
It made them furious, even Marit. But anyway, Skyfather was so angry at Marit for refusing to wipe out the rebels that he tossed him into a well. ”
I grimaced, thinking of all the ships that had docked with empty nets. The storms that preceded the mudslides that had finally destroyed Ereban. The high priestess stoically continued the story when I remained silent.
“Marit’s Stoneborn, so he didn’t die, but since it was fresh water, he couldn’t escape either.
He stayed down there, screaming day and night, until Taran came back and fished his friend out.
But Marit had gone as mad as a hornet in a jar after two years in the well.
Once he was free, he was beyond reason. He cracked the foundations of his own palace, flooded half the City.
When his priests tried to flee…most of them drowned. ”
Down on the stage, Taran had failed to pry the wine goblet away from Marit, and the sea god was drunkenly gesticulating as the water at his feet began to flow faster.
Genna and Diopater rose to their feet as the waves lapped at their ankles.
Even cloaked by the golden illusion that wrapped their bodies, they appeared unhappy with the situation.
Teuta nodded when Taran put an arm around Marit’s shoulders and said something into the sea god’s ear.
“That’s how Taran killed him. He gave Marit a glass of poisoned wine, then put a stone dagger in his heart. And once the Allmother brought Marit back, he was better. A little. Taran stopped him.”
My stomach dropped at the conclusion of Teuta’s story, but something in me, not the nicest part, perhaps, but the part that had watched Death’s temples burn, said well, good.
Taran was still there. Some kernel of the person who’d gone to war against a god who’d become a tyrant. I just had to find him.
Satisfied that I was reconciled to my new role when I didn’t say anything more, Teuta knelt down with the rest of the priests and began to sing along with the prayers that continued unimpeded by the wet drama below.
But I would not be singing any more praises of the Stoneborn who’d wanted to drown us.
The ones who’d listened to Marit drowning for two years.
I slipped away as soon as Taran finally lured Marit out of the arena, off to start looking for my way home.