The Priory of the Orange Tree

by Samantha Shannon

  “Thank you,” he said, and bowed. “All-honored captain.”

  “Eternal life awaits,” she said, “but if you still wish to see the dragon, and to claim any part of it, you may go now. Perhaps it can tell us something else about the jewel in The Tale of Komoridu, or the island,” she said. “Yidagé, take him.”

  They left the cabin. The moment the door had closed behind them, Laya seized Niclays about the neck and embraced him. His nose smashed into her shoulder, and her beads dug into his chest, but suddenly he was laughing as hard as she was, laughing until he wheezed.

  Tears seeped down his face. He was drunk on relief, but also the exhilaration of solving a puzzle. In all his years in Orisima, he had never found the key to the elixir, and now he had unearthed the path to it. He had finished what Jannart had started.

  His heart was swelling in his chest. Laya took his head between her hands and grinned in a way that lifted his spirit.

  “You,” she said, “are a genius, Sea-Moon. Brilliant, just brilliant!”

  The pirates were all over the decks. Padar roared his orders at them in Lacustrine. The stars shone bright in a clear sky, beckoning them toward the horizon.

  “Not a genius,” Niclays admitted, weak-kneed. “Just mad. And lucky.” He patted her arm. “Thank you, Laya. For your help, and your belief. Perhaps we will both be supping on the fruit of immortality.”

  Caution stole into her eyes.

  “Perhaps.” Hitching up her smile, she placed a hand between his shoulders and guided him through the confusion of pirates. “Come. It is time you claimed your reward.”

  In the deepest part of the Pursuit, a Lacustrine dragon was chained from its snout to the end of its tail. Niclays had thought it magnificent when he first saw it on the beach. Now it looked almost feeble.

  Laya waited in the shadows with him. “I must go back,” she said. “Will you be all right?”

  He leaned on his new staff. “Of course. The beast is bound.” His mouth was dry. “You go.”

  She gave the dragon a last glance before reaching into her coat. From inside, she drew a knife, sheathed in leather.

  “My gift.” She held it out by the blade. “Just in case.”

  Niclays took it. He had owned a sword in Mentendon, but the only time he had used a weapon had been in his fencing lessons with Edvart, who had always disarmed him in seconds. Before he could thank her, Laya was making her way back up the steps.

  The dragon seemed asleep. A tangled mane flowed around its horns. Its face was wider than the serpentine heads of wyrms, and gaudier, with decorative frills.

  Nayimathun, Laya had called it. A name with no clear origin.

  Niclays walked toward the beast, staying away from its head. Its lower jaw was loose in sleep, showing teeth the length of a forearm.

  The dome on its head was dormant. Panaya had told him about it, the night he had first seen a dragon. When it illuminated, that dome was calling to the celestial plane, lifting the dragon toward the stars. Unlike wyrms, dragons needed no wings to fly.

  He had tried to rationalize it for weeks. Months. Perhaps the dome was a kind of lodestone, attracted to particles in the air or the cores of far-off worlds. Perhaps dragons had hollow bones, letting them ride the wind. That was the alchemist in him, theorizing. Yet he had known in his gut that unless he could split a dragon open, to see it through the lens of an anatomist, it would remain inexplicable. Magic, for all intents and purposes.

  Even as he studied the beast, its eye snapped open and, in spite of himself, Niclays backed away. In the eye of this creature was a cosmos of knowledge: ice and void and constellation—and nothing close to human. Its pupil was as big as a shield, ringed with a blue glow.

  For a long while, they stared at each other. A man of the West and a dragon of the East. Niclays found himself overwhelmed by the urge to fall to his knees, but he only gripped his cane.

  “You.”

  The voice was cool and susurrating. The billow of a sail.

  “You are the one who bartered for my scale and blood.” A dark blue tongue flickered behind its teeth. “You are Roos.”

  It spoke in Seiikinese. Each word was drawn out like a shadow at sunrise.

  “I am,” Niclays confirmed. “And you are the great Nayimathun. Or perhaps,” he added, “not so great.”

  Nayimathun watched his mouth as he spoke. On land, Panaya had told him, dragons heard as humans heard underwater.

  “The one who wears the chains is a thousand times greater than the one who wields them,” Nayimathun said. “Chains are cowardice.” A rumble filled the cavernous hull. “Where is Tané?”

  “Seiiki, I assume. I hardly know the girl.”

  “You knew her enough to threaten her. To try to manipulate her for your own gain.”

  “This is a cutthroat world, beast. I merely negotiated,” Niclays said. “I needed your blood and scale to carry out my work, to unlock the secret of your immortality. I wanted humans to have a chance of surviving in a world ruled by giants.”

  “We tried to defend you in the Great Sorrow.” The eye closed for a moment, darkening their surroundings. “Many of you perished. But we tried.”

  “Perhaps your kind are not as violent as the Draconic Army,” Niclays said, “but you still see to it that humans worship your image and beg you for the rain that swells the crops. As if man is not also enough of a marvel to be adulated.”

  The dragon huffed cloud through its nostrils.

  Niclays decided then. That even if his alchemical tools were lost, and even if he was on his way to a font of eternal life, he would take what he had long been denied.

  He laid down his staff and bared the knife Laya had given him. Its handle was lacquer, its blade was serrated down one side. He ran his gaze along the wealth of scale. When he had found an unmarred patch of scale, he placed a hand on it.

  The dragon was smooth and cold as a fish. Niclays used the knife to pry the scale up, exposing the sheen of silvery flesh beneath.

  “You are not meant to live for eternity.”

  Niclays flung a withering glance at its head. “As an alchemist, I must disagree,” he said. “I believe in possibility, you see. Even if I cannot find the elixir of life in your body, the Golden Empress is on her way to the island of Komoridu. There we will find the mulberry tree, and the jewel that lies beneath it.”

  The eye flared wide.

  “Jewel.” A rattle stemmed from the dragon. “You speak of the celestial jewels.”

  “Jewels,” Niclays echoed. “Yes. The rising jewel.” He softened his voice. “What do you know of it?”

  Nayimathun remained silent. Niclays wrenched the blade upward, biting into scale, and the dragon twitched in its chains.

  “I will say nothing to you,” it said. “Only that they must not fall into the hands of pirates, son of Mentendon.”

  According to her journal, my aunt received it from a man who told her to carry it far from the East and never bring it back. Jannart’s words kept returning to him, circling in his head like a whipping top. Never bring it back.

  “I do not expect you to stop your pursuit. It is too late for that,” the dragon said, “but do not let the jewel fall into the hands of those who would use it to destroy what little of the world is left. The water in you has grown stagnant, Roos, but it is not beyond cleansing.”

  Niclays kept his grip on the knife, quaking.

  Stagnant.

  The dragon spoke true. Everything around him had stilled. His life had stopped, like a clock in water, when Sabran Berethnet had sent him to Orisima. He had failed to solve one mystery since. Not the mystery of eternal life. Not why Jannart had died.

  He was an alchemist, the unmaker of mystery. And he would not be stagnant again.

  “Enough of this,” he hissed, and carved.

  43

  South

  The armorer furnished Ead with a monbone bow, an iron sword, an axe etched with Selinyi prayers, and a slim wood-handled dagger. Instead of
the olive cloak of her childhood, she now wore the white of a postulant, a sign of her blossoming into a woman. Chassar, who had come with Sarsun to see her off, set his hands on her shoulders.

  “Zāla would be so proud to see you,” he said. “Soon the red cloak will be yours.”

  “If I come back alive.”

  “You will. Kalyba is a dread creature, but not as strong as she was. She has not eaten of the orange tree, for twenty years, and so will have no siden left.”

  “She has other magic.”

  “I trust you to conquer it, beloved. Or to turn back if the risk becomes too great.” He patted the ichneumon beside her. “Be sure to return her to me in one piece, Aralaq.”

  “I am no stupid bird,” Aralaq said. “Ichneumons do not lead little sisters into danger.”

  Sarsun cawed in indignation.

  When she had been banished, Kalyba had fled to a part of the forest she had named the Bower of Eternity. It was said that she had put an enchantment on it that tricked the eyes. Nobody knew how she created her illusions.

  It was sundown when Ead set out with Aralaq from the Vale of Blood, back into the forest. Ichneumons could run faster than horses, faster even than the hunting leopards that had once lived in Lasia. Ead kept her head low as he crashed through lianas, slithered under roots, and sprang over the many creeks that branched off the Minara.

  He tired just before dawn, and they made camp in a cavern behind a waterfall. Aralaq disappeared to hunt, while Ead refreshed herself in the pool below. As she climbed back to the cavern, she recalled the time when Kalyba had been at the Priory.

  Ead remembered Kalyba as a redhead with bottomless dark eyes. She had arrived at the Priory when Ead was two years old, claiming to have visited several times before in her many centuries of existence—for she also maintained that she was immortal. Her siden had been granted to her not by the orange tree, but by a hawthorn tree that had once stood on the Inysh island of Nurtha.

  The Prioress had welcomed her. Sisters had referred to her as the Hawthorn Sister or Rattletongue, depending on whether they believed her story. Most had kept their distance, for Kalyba had unsettling gifts. Gifts not granted to her by any tree.

  Once, Kalyba had come across Ead and Jondu while they played under the sun, and she had smiled at them in a way that had made Ead trust her utterly. What would you become, little sisters, she had asked them, if you could become anything?

  A bird, Jondu had answered, so I could go anywhere.

  Me, too, Ead had said, because she had always done as Jondu did. I could strike the wyrms down for the Mother, even as they flew.

  Watch, Kalyba had said.

  That was where memory clouded, but Ead was sure that Kalyba had elongated her own fingers into feathers. Certainly she had done something that had charmed Ead and Jondu, enough for them to believe that Kalyba must be the most sacred of handmaidens.

  The reasons for her banishment had never been clear, but it was rumored that it was she who had poisoned Zāla as she slept. Perhaps it was when the Prioress had realized that she was the Lady of the Woods, the terror of Inysh legend, famous for her bloodlust.

  As Ead dried her sword, Aralaq came through the waterfall. He gave her a sour look.

  “You are a fool to make this journey. The Witch of Inysca will make meat of you.”

  “From what I hear, Kalyba likes to toy with her prey.” She polished the blade on her cloak. “Besides, the witch is nothing if not inquisitive. She’ll want to know why I’ve come to her.”

  “She will tell you lies.”

  “Or she will vaunt her knowledge. She has enough of it.” With a long-suffering sigh, she reached for her bow. “I suppose I must hunt myself some dinner.”

  Aralaq growled before he went back through the waterfall, and Ead smiled. He would get her something. Ichneumons had a loyal streak, surly though they were.

  She collected what little kindling she could find in the undergrowth and built a fire in the cavern. When Aralaq returned a second time, he threw down a speckled fish.

  “This is only because you fed me as a pup,” he said, and curled up in the darkness.

  “Thank you, Aralaq.”

  He let out a disgruntled sound.

  Ead wrapped the fish in plantain leaf and set it over the fire. As it cooked, her thoughts were drawn back to Inys, carried there as if by the south wind.

  Sabran would be sleeping now, with Roslain or Katryen beside her. Fevered, perhaps. Or perhaps she had recovered. She might have already chosen another Lady of the Bedchamber—or rather, had one chosen for her. Now the Dukes Spiritual were circling the throne, it would almost certainly be another woman from one of their families, the better to spy on her.

  What had they told the Queen of Inys about Ead? That she was a sorceress and a traitor, no doubt. Whether Sabran had believed it, in her heart, was a different matter. She would not want to accept it—but how could she challenge the Dukes Spiritual when they knew her secret; when they could destroy her with a word?

  Did Sabran still trust her? She hardly deserved it. They had shared a bed, shared their bodies, but Ead had never told her the truth of who she was. Sabran had never even known her true name.

  Aralaq would wake soon. She lay beside him, close enough to the waterfall that the spray cooled her skin, and tried to get some rest. Facing Kalyba would take all her wits. When Aralaq stirred, she gathered her weapons and hauled herself onto his back again.

  They traveled through the forest until noon. When they came to the trunk of the Minara, Ead shielded her eyes against the sun. It was an unforgiving river, swift-flowing and deep. Aralaq bounded between rocks in the shallows, and when there was nothing else for it, he swam, Ead clinging to his fur.

  Warm rain began to fall as they reached the other side of the river, plastering her curls to her face and neck. She ate some persimmon as Aralaq moved deeper into the forest. Only when the sun was beginning to sink again did he stop.

  “The Bower is close.” He sniffed. “If you do not return after an hour, I will come after you.”

  “Very well.”

  Ead slid from his back.

  “Remember, Eadaz,” Aralaq said, “whatever you see in this place is an illusion.”

  “I know.” She sheathed her arm in a bracer. “See you soon.”

  Aralaq growled his displeasure. Axe in hand, Ead stepped into the mist.

  An archway twisted out of boughs, laced with flowers, formed the door. Flowers the color of stormclouds.

  I dream of a shaded bower in a forest, where sunlight dapples the grass. The entrance is a gateway of purple flowers—sabra flowers, I think.

  Ead raised a hand, and for the first time in years, she conjured magefire. It danced from her fingers and torched the flowers, revealing the thorns beneath the illusion.

  She closed her hands. The blue flame of magefire would unknit an enchantment if it burned for long enough, but she would have to use it in moderation if she meant to conserve enough strength to defend herself. With a last glance at Aralaq, she hacked her way through the thorns with her axe and emerged unscathed in the clearing beyond.

  She was in the Orchard of Divinities. As she took a step forward, a scent breathed from the greensward, so thick and cloying she could almost roll it on her tongue. Golden light speckled grass deep enough for her to sink to her ankles.

  The trees pressed close together here. Voices echoed beyond them—near and far away at once, dancing to the purl of water.

  Were they even there, or was this part of the enchantment?

  “Min mayde of strore, I knut thu smal,

  as lutil as mus in gul mede.

  With thu in soyle, corn grewath tal.

  In thu I hafde blowende sede.”

  A great spring-fed pool came into view. Ead found herself walking toward it. With every step, the voices in the trees swelled and her head whirled like a round-wind. The language they sang in was steeped in the unfamiliar, but some of the words were unquestionably
an old form of Inysh. Older than old. As ancient as the haithwood.

  “In soyle I soweth mayde of strore

  boute in belga bearn wil nat slepe.

  Min wer is ut in wuda frore—

  he huntath dama, nat for me.”

  Her hand was slick on the axe. The voices spoke of ritual from the dawn of a long-dead age. While she took in the crisscross of branches above her, Ead forced herself to imagine them drenched in blood, and the voices luring her into a trap.

  At the end of the path, I find a great rock, and I reach out to touch it with a hand I do not think is mine. Ead turned. There it was, a slab of stone almost as tall as she was, guarding the mouth of a cave. The rock breaks in two, and inside—

  “Hello.”

  Ead looked up. A small boy was sitting on a branch above her.

  “Hello,” he said again in Selinyi. His voice was high and sweet. “Are you here to play with me?”

  “I am here to see the Lady of the Woods,” Ead said. “Will you fetch her for me, child?”

  The boy let out a musical laugh. One blink, and he was there. The next, he was nowhere.

  Something made Ead look toward the pool. Sweat prickled on her nape as she watched for any ripple on its surface.

  She drew in a breath when the water birthed a head. A woman emerged, sloe-eyed and naked.

  “Eadaz du Zāla uq-Nāra.” Kalyba stepped into the clearing. “It has been a long time.”

  The Witch of Inysca. The Lady of the Woods. Her voice was as deep and clear as her pool, with a strange inflection. Northern Inysh, but not quite.

  “Kalyba,” Ead said.

  “Last I saw you, you were no more than six. Now you are a woman,” Kalyba observed. “How the years pass. One forgets, when the years leave no indent on the flesh.”

  Ead remembered her face well now, with its lofty cheekbones and full upper lip. Her skin was tanned, her limbs long and well turned. Auburn hair rolled in waves over her breasts. Anyone who looked at her would swear she was not a day past five and twenty. Beautiful, but clipped by the same hollowness that Ead had seen in her own reflection.

  “My last visitor was one of your sisters, come to take my head to Mita Yedanya in punishment for a crime I never committed. I suppose you are here to do the same,” Kalyba ruminated. “I would warn you against trying, but the sisters of the Priory have grown arrogant in the years I have been away.”