Four Years Ago #2
“Taran! I hope you don’t come back.”
It sounded so much like a curse that I spun around, incredulous. She ignored me for the first ten years of my life, nearly got me killed, spent the intervening three centuries driving the Summerlands into decline, and now she wished me into exile like my father?
She’d stepped out of the tower onto the beach, bare feet on the rocks, her deceptively young face intent.
“I should have taken you across the sea when I had the chance. I should have—well, you know everything else I should have done for you. You’re right about that.
But even if you’re right about the other Stoneborn too, you’re not like them.
You’re better off away from them, before you become just as selfish and cruel as they are.
So even if it means I don’t see you again… I hope you don’t come back.”
If I didn’t have holes in my soul where my vows to Genna had once lived, it probably would have stung quite a bit to hear my mother say she didn’t care if we ever met again, but as it was, I shoved my boat into the sea with my mind fully occupied by the tile borders I intended to install around the fountains in my new villa, and the very pressing need to choose between marble and terra-cotta flooring.
I’d build walls so high I couldn’t even see the Mountain beyond them.
I’d never given much thought to what the mortal world was like.
Unlike the other Stoneborn, I’d been born in the Summerlands, and I only knew the mortal world through their increasingly distant memories of it.
So, if I pictured it, I thought about it only as the source of the priests who served the gods and of the sacrifices that filled our storerooms and palaces.
Vast fields of grain to be milled into flour for our bread, expansive vineyards cultivating grapes to ferment for our wine.
Herds of fat cattle, flocks of birds, looms and forges and workshops.
And mortals, of course, dutifully offering the sacrifices and prayers that crossed the Sea of Dreams in exchange for the largesse of the gods’ blessings that created all their wealth.
Before I landed in the shadow of sacred Mount Degom, my top concern had been how big of a boat I’d need for the return trip—I’d planned to acquire the furnishings for my villa while I was here, perhaps my first few priests while I was at it.
But as soon as I set foot in the capital city of Ereban, my most pervasive thought was how bad everything stank.
The mortal world smelled, quite frequently, like literal shit.
I had no idea where all the rich sacrifices were coming from, except not here.
There was nothing here I wanted. Nothing even worth stealing.
Parts of Ereban smelled like ashes: the high temple was rubble and cinders, and so too were the temples of Death and the Maiden.
The royal palace was still smoldering, as were a few neighborhoods where the riots had not quite died down yet.
But there were other stinks too: unwashed mortals too afraid to venture out to the public baths, rotting food that had nobody to distribute it, uncollected garbage in the streets, sizzling in the midsummer sun.
Nobody seemed to be in charge: the temples were empty, all the surviving priests having fled to the Summerlands, and the mortal queen had marched on the more religious southern cities, where Death’s followers were massing in opposition.
Everyone knew who was responsible though: as soon as I arrived, I heard stories of an Iona Night-Singer.
Iona Night-Singer had fought Death in single combat at the high temple in revenge for his sacrifice of the queen’s young daughter.
Iona Night-Singer had personally slaughtered dozens of Death’s priests and Fallen in revenge for their massacre of the maiden-priests.
Iona Night-Singer had set fire to the keeps of loyalist nobles when they refused to join the queen’s war against the temples, and she was headed south to destroy the rest.
Once I recovered from my shock at how bad the mortal world smelled, the solution to the chaos I’d discovered seemed to be simple.
I wouldn’t need to argue with my father or put out any fires or raise any armies—I just had to dispatch one apparently terrifying woman with a grudge against Death, and then the mortals could go back to growing our food and worshipping us.
I didn’t like killing people, but I didn’t like doing many of the things Genna had caused me to do, and killing was at least quick and impersonal.
I stole a horse, stole some clothes, stole a reasonably sized knife, and went looking for Iona Night-Singer. That part wasn’t hard either—I just followed the smoke.
I wasn’t challenged as I rode into the shambolic rebel camp two days later.
The sentries seemed to expect all opposition to be wearing a death-priest’s red robes and bronze lion mask, and my engaging smile dealt with any suspicion of my motives, just as it did back in the Summerlands.
Even without Genna’s will animating me, I retained the habits of a long lifetime, ones that allowed me to lie, steal, and infiltrate without guilt or discovery.
Go bat your big green eyes at them and bring them back in line, won’t you, sweet boy?
After poking through rows of hastily assembled tents full more of farmers armed with scythes and pitchforks than soldiers armed with pikes and swords, I was informed that I should go to the priests’ camp if I was looking for Iona Night-Singer.
As the gods had called all their priests across the sea, I was confused by this description until I located an even shoddier group of tents filled entirely by children.
I’d never met any children before. I was the youngest immortal in the Summerlands, and all the mortal priests there were adults who’d taken their final vows to the gods.
These children must have been acolytes who’d been in training to become priests.
None of them were any older than my apparent age, and many of them were much younger: mortals who barely reached my chest, with big cheeks, bigger eyes, and awkward knobby limbs.
I halted in consternation to look around for who was taking care of them.
The Stoneborn might have forgotten that their priests had been responsible for these children, but didn’t they have…
parents? Families? Somewhere else to go?
They were sure to get crushed or incinerated if left around underfoot when Death caught up with the rebels.
The only person acting with any sense of authority was an adolescent boy wearing the leather tool belt of the Shipwright over his unbleached acolyte’s tunic.
He had brown skin, the scanty beginnings of a mustache, and rangy muscles he’d not finished growing into, and he was distributing small sacks of dried peas to a crowd of other acolytes.
“Excuse me,” I approached to ask with my most non-threatening smile. “Who’s in charge here?”
“Me. Drutalos ab Smenos,” the boy said, not pausing in his task. “Assuming you need lunch. If you need something to do, grab a shovel and help Dousonna dig the trench latrines.”
I tried to keep my skepticism off my face. “I’m looking for Iona Night-Singer. Could you point me in her direction?”
“Iona told me to keep anyone from bothering her.”
“I’m afraid it’s very important,” I said, turning up the charm, which was less effective on men than women, and apparently useless on this adolescent boy.
“And who are you?” Drutalos asked suspiciously, eyes raking over my farmer’s clothes and then, with more concern, the breadth of my shoulders and looming height.
“Taran ab Genna,” I said, not seeing a reason to lie.
“Ab Genna? Oh! I’m so sorry, you’re right, she’ll want to see you right away. She’s in that field hospital over there with the other acolyte of the Peace-Queen.”
Amused to have been mistaken for an acolyte of my grandmother, I followed the boy’s pointed finger to a large, tunnel-shaped tent, where linen sheets had been draped over the entrances in a failed effort to keep the flies away from a collection of groaning, wounded mortal soldiers on rag pallets.
Inside, it was dim and hot and home to the worst smells I had yet encountered: old sweat and dried blood, musty urine and the sickly-sweet smell of rot.
I initially assumed I’d gotten bad directions, because all the wounded soldiers were men, and the only ones treating them were two young girls, both bent over an unconscious patient whose left leg terminated just below the knee with a discolored, oozing stump.
The first girl wore the short, saffron-trimmed dress of the Peace-Queen’s cult, and her round, doll-like face was blotchy and tear-streaked as she attempted to sing the blessing to close incisions.
It was the wrong blessing in the first place, because infection had obviously set into the soldier’s wound, and the girl had also pitched her voice in the wrong register.
With her throat swollen from crying, she couldn’t hit the low notes in the bridge, so Genna’s power wasn’t flowing. No chance this was Iona Night-Singer.
The second girl had her back to me. All I could make out in the dim light was a thick mass of dark red hair pinned at her neck and a stone blade clutched in her fist, which she was wielding to gingerly cut dead flesh away from the solider’s amputation.
Recognizing the knives I’d stolen for Wesha all those years ago being put to an altogether unexpected purpose, I belatedly took in the little surgeon’s long white dress and linen apron—a maiden-priest? Weren’t they all supposed to be dead?
The rebel torching temples and battling gods couldn’t be a maiden-priest, let alone a slender girl whose voice shook as she apologized to the unconscious patient for her incompetence. But she inhaled and visibly steeled herself when the acolyte of Genna gave a loud sob of disagreement.