Black Kath's Daughter

by Richard Parks

  Marta looked blank for a moment, then remembered. She reached down the front of her blouse and pulled out the small golden pendant hanging from its leather thong. The emblem of the Arrow Path. "My mother gave me this."

  "Is this all she gave you? I think so." Lornis said primly.

  Marta kept her tongue with an effort. She was being challenged again, she knew, but she didn't dare respond. Lornis nodded in evident satisfaction and leaned forward. She took the pendant in her hands, examining it carefully. "Novitiate of the Arrow Path, Servant of Amaet," Lornis said. "The price will be high indeed."

  Marta took a deep breath. "Priestess of Astonei, I must tell you truly—I have no money. It was lost on the way."

  Lornis smiled, and try as she might Marta could find little of the sweet old woman that she had met on the trail in that smile. "No matter. For such as you there is a special price, and only the little bit of silver you brought with you."

  "But there is no coin at all. I told you—" Marta stopped. She understood. "My pendant? But I can't..."

  Lornis dropped the pendant and sat back, taking a long sip of the bitter tea. "You can," she said. "The pendant isn't the price; it's merely the token of it."

  Marta took a deep breath. She suspected what Lornis meant, but she hardly dared to form the thought. "Please name your price."

  "You will forswear the Arrow Path. You will allow Astonei to remove your Debt to Amaet and you will bow to her, becoming a Novitiate of her order."

  "Forgive me, but that's not possible." Marta felt foolish saying the word, but yet she said it.

  "You don't know what's possible," Lornis said. "That is why you are here."

  "Mother taught me..."

  Lornis smiled. "What, child? That it was foolish to worship a Power? That your freedom is worth more than all the favor of any Power?"

  "Well...yes," Marta said.

  "And what has your freedom bought you, girl? A life of hard travel and danger? And what of her? She could not have been so very old when she died. You may have thought of her that way but, no older than you are, she could not have been so ancient as you thought. She died young in my view, however her life had aged her, and I'll wager it wasn't something as simple as an accident or murder. Am I right?"

  "Yes," Marta said again. She felt totally out of her depth, subject to powers and abilities she had barely suspected, never mind attained.

  "So. Since there is so much you don't understand, let me explain it to you: Astonei can free you from the Arrow Path, absolve you of your debt. You will be safe, cared for, and your service to her will bring the sort of good and blessed work that this world needs. When has the Arrow Path done as well for you, or brought any peace or joy to those who seek your power?"

  Marta didn't answer her. She couldn't. "May...may I have some time to think of what you offer me?"

  Lornis rose. "Some, but not much. I have some business to attend, and some preparations to make. Finish your tea, and when I return I will require your answer."

  The priestess left the room, leaving Marta and Bone Tapper alone. Marta stared at her mug of tea but she didn't touch it. Bone Tapper kept silent for several long moments, but at least he could no longer contain himself.

  "Mistress, by everything holy in this world, why do you even hesitate??"

  Marta leaned forward and put her head in her hands. "I don't know."

  "I'll tell you truly, though you didn't ask: the Arrow Path has certainly brought no peace or joy to me."

  "It saved your life. That was your choice. I have to make mine."

  "Yes, and thank the Powers you have this chance! The Arrow Path has brought you little but grief, Mistress, and the same for anyone else, just as Lornis said. And now your Power wants your life! How can you remain on the Arrow Path now? Be rid of it."

  Marta thought of those folk she had seen who had something approaching a normal life. She remembered the envy she felt now and then. Even so…. "Amaet’s intentions are not as clear to me as they appear to be to Laras. As for abandoning the path, it's not as simple as all that. At least, I don't think it is."

  "Wiser heads have counseled you otherwise. I'd listen."

  "I am listening," Marta said. It was true. She'd heard a great deal, seen a great deal. She was being offered escape, but not understanding. Safety, but not her own will. Did it matter? Marta felt like seven kinds of fool, but she still wanted to find out. She said nothing until the priestess returned.

  "What is your answer, child?"

  "I am willing to do as you say, but I have a condition of my own. A small one."

  Lornis seemed amused. There was a twinkle in her eye, but she did not smile. "What is it?"

  "Just this: First grant me the Oracle. If it does not tell me what I need to know, then I'll take that as a sign that I was not meant to follow the Arrow Path. I will forswear it and vow to serve Astonei for the rest of my life."

  Lornis barely hesitated. "Granted. You will make a fine Novice."

  *

  Marta followed Lornis down a long tunnel. The priestess wore long black robes that would have made her nearly invisible except for the stars embroidered on the cloth with silver thread. The uneven floor sloped downward about fifteen degrees. Lornis moved with serene confidence while Marta had to concentrate on her footing, which was hard to do with Bone Tapper riding nervously on her shoulder. Even harder when he leaned toward her ear every few minutes to whisper: "Have you taken leave of your mind?"

  Marta bit her lip and kept silent. In a moment Bone Tapper was distracted by the sight of a large bone embedded in the walls of the tunnel. The marks of a chisel were clearly visible around it as someone had clearly worked to expose as much of it as possible.

  "Upper leg bone. And of a very large animal." Since Bone Tapper's ravenhood began, he had become quite the expert on bones, and the sweet bits of carcass still attached to them. A little farther they spied another, then another. Bone Tapper identified each with professional interest. "Lower leg. Right shoulder. Right front paw...ooh, consider the length of that claw." Bone Tapper shuddered delicately.

  "Were these all from the same animal?" Marta asked.

  Bone Tapper shook his head. "At least three...probably more. And before you ask, no. I don't know what sort of creatures they were. Nothing I've seen living, that's for certain, and that includes Yssara."

  The tunnel ended abruptly in a large round room that seemed part cave and part charnel house. The floor was littered with bones. Bones protruded from the walls. Bones were half-sealed in stalagmites or covered with delicate lacework crystals, clear as ice.

  "Oh," Marta managed to say.

  "These were the Companions of the Basilisk," Lornis said. "Like the few in the tunnel, their nature is unknown. So is the basilisk's, for that matter. Truth to tell, it's called a basilisk, but we don't really know that for certain. On this point, Astonei is silent."

  The Powers are silent often when they could be of help, Marta thought and quickly suppressed the thought. It felt a little like blasphemy in this place, even though Marta yet worshiped no Power, Amaet or Astonei alike.

  Still, when the time came to swear her oath to Lornis, Marta had no doubt it would be heard. She could afford no doubt because she was sure Lornis would require her to swear by Astonei. If worse came to worse and Marta failed, there was no way she could break her oath without risking far more than her life.

  Lornis stopped in the center of the chamber, pausing to light two torches mounted on tall stalagmites. "As all things are measured, so are all things given value. The value I give the Oracle is this: Marta, if the Oracle gives you your answer and you have the wisdom to see it, you depart with what you sought. If you do not, you will remain here as my novitiate. You will surrender the Path of the Arrow for the Path of Solitude and take your place in time as Priestess of Astonei. Swear to this now or depart as you came, with neither honor nor blame."

  Marta took a deep breath. "I swear it," she said. Even as she did so, Marta had the
feeling that something was missing from the oath, but her mind was racing ahead to what lay down the far tunnel, and it left mere vague doubts behind quickly.

  Bone Tapper shook his head. "I've said this before—"

  Marta reached up and pressed Bone Tapper's beak firmly shut. "Enough."

  Lornis left Marta and Bone Tapper alone among the Companions of the Basilisk. Marta found a smooth bit of stone and sat down, facing a circle of greater darkness on the far wall. It was the mouth of a tunnel, and the end of it was the basilisk's skull. She looked at it for a moment, then closed her eyes.

  "Are you praying?" Bone Tapper asked.

  "In a way. I'm thinking."

  "About what?"

  "About how to recognize a Law of Power when I see one."

  Bone Tapper shrugged. "You'd be better off praying."

  Marta smiled a grim sort of smile. "You're the one who should be praying, Bone Tapper, and that I'll fail. If I do fail, your debt to me is transferred to the Shrine along with the cart and the gold in it and everything else that is mine. If you harbor the illusion that Lornis would be a gentler mistress than myself, I think you're mistaken."

  "I think you're right. And, since there's nothing I can do about it either way..." Bone Tapper yawned and hopped to the top of another stalagmite. He put his head under his wing.

  "You could come with me, you know," she said. "The price serves for two."

  Bone Tapper untucked his head from his wing, glanced at the tunnel and shuddered. "This is too close to being entombed as it is, so I'll stay here in the relative open if it's all the same with you. I doubt there's anything a basilisk has to tell me that I need to know."

  Marta didn't say anything, and in a moment Marta was certain the raven was asleep. She envied him that skill, often demonstrated, of quick slumber. She didn't even know if she could sleep now, and sleep was the one thing she had to do now.

  Time to hunt the night and basilisk dreams.

  Marta rose and started down the tunnel. She thought of taking one of the torches with her, but the way was too narrow, and a strong draft blowing through the tunnel was likely to push the flames into her face as not. She moved half bent over, feeling her way as she went, using the weak light from the chamber behind her as much as possible. The way grew progressively dimmer until Marta was moving almost completely on feel when she came to the end of the tunnel.

  Or not quite the end.

  Marta's fingers touched smooth stone. The tunnel opened abruptly so that now she could stand to her full height again, such that it was, but her fingers now passed through another opening in the stone. There was a faint light from above; Marta glanced up and saw stars.

  That explains the breeze.

  The tunnel was open to the sky where the shaft ended. The starlight was faint but it was enough to see the pale ghostly outline surrounding the hole in the wall. It wasn't a new tunnel—it was the basilisk's skull, embedded in solid rock. Marta traced out an outline of a horned beak and a crest of bone. The opening was its left eye socket.

  "Now what?" she asked. "Do I meditate on a skull locked in stone?"

  There was no answer but the soft moan of the wind. Marta shuddered, hugging herself against the chill. She certainly couldn't sleep here—she'd freeze. She reached out to the eye again, feeling the bone of the upper rim, hard and rough now as the stone it had become. Lower down, the rough texture smoothed out, became almost glassy. She smiled.

  "Marta, you are a silly bit of fluff, aren't you?" she said ruefully.

  Marta crawled inside the basilisk's eye. There was plenty of room for her to crawl through, and once inside she found herself passing through a smaller hole where the inner bone had fractured. Now Marta was in true darkness, feeling her way through a space that was larger than she had expected but still fairly close. It felt more like being shut in a box than being in an open room. Marta felt the walls closing in on her in a way she had not any time before within the Shrine. She mastered an attack of panic through sheer will, forced herself to breath slowly and deeply until the feeling abated. She stretched out her hands again, taking the true measure of the inside of the basilisk's skull.

  Once outside the short passage leading from the eye socket, the interior measured about seven feet long, almost as much wide, and about four feet high. There was no draft blowing in there; the air was mostly still and slightly warmer than in the fissure outside. The surface where she rested was slightly curved, like the bottom of a bowl. It was almost comfortable.

  Marta nestled down into the curve of the basilisk's skull like someone settling into a hammock. She didn't get to sleep quickly—her mind was too noisy a place to allow that—but she managed it at last.

  CHAPTER 18

  "Judge what I say against what I do. Only then call me dishonest."

  — From the Annals of Dommar the Beast

  "Hurry up! She's waiting!"

  Bone Tapper pecked Marta back to awareness. She was not in the basilisk's skull now. She sat with her back to one of the stalagmites in the Hall of Companions, with Bone Tapper perched on her shoulder and pecking her not so gently in the head. It didn't seem such a strange thing for him to be doing. What was strange was why she was there in the first place.

  "How did I get here?"

  "I assume your mother had carnal relations. It's the usual way. No time for this nonsense!" Bone Tapper left her shoulder as Marta struggled to her feet. "She's waiting for you," he repeated.

  "Who is? Lornis?"

  But Bone Tapper was already gone. Marta heard his croaking call echo from the tunnel leading back to the main hall of the temple. "Hurry!"

  Marta didn't understand what all the rush was about. If she'd returned from the basilisk's skull, she'd done it without any oracle or dream that she could recall, never mind that she couldn't remember returning to the hall either. She had failed, that was what mattered. Marta followed Bone Tapper up the tunnel.

  This time the tunnel opened on Lornis's private quarters.

  This isn't right.

  Marta knew the tunnel from the Hall of Companions didn't lead to Lornis's chambers, but this time it did. Marta was certain it was the same room but now very different, very changed. The chairs Marta remembered from earlier that evening were not present. The crystals on Lornis's mantel had been replaced by dried herbs in bundles. Even the bed covering and fireplace tools were different.

  Bone Tapper perched on a peg by the doorway. "Will you hurry? You have no time to waste!" Then he was gone again, flying out the door and toward the main audience chamber. Marta started to follow because she didn't know what else to do, but she was certainly in no hurry to admit defeat. She paused to glance into a mirror hanging on the near wall, one of the few furnishing that hadn't changed.

  I must look a fright—

  Marta stopped. She didn't look a fright, she looked like someone else. A woman maybe a year or two older than herself, no more than that. A woman with long dark hair and rich clothes, and a face of casual authority. There was something familiar about the face but Marta couldn't place it. She examined the clothes in the mirror, then Marta looked down, saw the same fine robes in place of her own blouse and breeks, soft cloth shoes instead of her own sturdy leather boots.

  "Who are you?" she asked aloud, then she felt talons on her shoulders, impossibly strong. Bone Tapper perched on her shoulder, grinning. Marta knew that a raven couldn't grin, but Bone Tapper was doing it anyway.

  "You will come to audience hall. Now."

  Marta was too stunned and confused to protest, or do much of anything except move as the raven directed her. She went out the door and followed the tunnel to the audience hall. Lornis was already there. Except, of course, it was not Lornis.

  The woman was very old. The ceremonial robes of a Priestess of Astonei hung off her body like clothes on storage pegs with no form beneath to support them. Bone Tapper didn't release his painful grip until Marta marched herself before the dais and bowed to the seated priestess.


  "Have you found what you were searching for?" the woman asked.

  "No, Priestess. I have not." It was true enough, but why did the words feel so empty, as if she were speaking lines from some unknown play. And why did her voice sound so strange? With a little thought, Marta knew the answer to that part, at least.

  Because here, now, I am not Marta. But who am I?

  "Then by your own word and the Goddess' price, you now belong to the Basilisk Oracle. Have you anything to say?"

  "Just that I will serve, as my word has bound me. May it please Astonei."

  "So..."

  Marta shivered, and the words seem to fall away from her like echoes across an impossible gulf.

  "...Be."

  Not impossible. She was there. Had been there...

  "...It."

  Marta shivered again, and the stone against her back felt as if it were set with a thousand needles. In a moment she was fully awake and back in the darkness of the basilisk's skull. The dream was over.

  *

  Marta did not go back to Lornis's quarters this time, but she did find a mirror along one of the tunnels near the baths. She looked into it for a good long time, but all she saw was herself.

  "Vanity doesn't suit you. Where have you been?" Bone Tapper lit on her shoulder. Marta winced instinctively; the raven's grip was no worse than usual.

  "I could ask the same of you. You weren't in the Hall of Companions when I returned."

  "A hole in the ground is no place for a raven. I went out to get some air. Come along, Lornis is waiting for you in the audience chamber."

  "Aren't you going to tell me to hurry?" Marta asked, but the raven just blinked at her, uncomprehending. Marta sighed. "Let's not keep her waiting."

  "What did you find?" Bone Tapper asked, trying to sound unconcerned and not quite managing.

  Marta thought about the question for a moment. "I'm not sure yet," Marta finally said. "But I can't wait to find out."