by C. Greenwood
Whatever inner turmoil she was going through, the server reached her decision quickly. “There may be a way to accomplish what you desire,” she told Eydis.
Moving with sudden determination, she crossed the chamber and rapped sharply at the thick granite door. Geveral couldn’t hear what instructions she gave to the guards waiting outside. But soon Eydis’s plan was put into motion. White-robed attendants appeared and carefully bore the unconscious oracle away. Other attendants appeared and filled the great caldrons with burning coals. There was a grinding sound underfoot, and white puffs of steam began to rise up from grates in the floor that Geveral had not noticed until now.
The temperature in the chamber rose rapidly. It wasn’t long before Geveral’s clothes were clinging to him and drops of sweat were trickling down his collar. Eydis appeared flushed as well, her face shining with perspiration beneath the orange light cast by the braziers and the wall torches. But she didn’t seem as uneasy as Geveral felt. She seemed determined. Excited, even.
Server Parthenia had briefly gone away, but now she reappeared, carrying in her hands a carved wooden box about the size of a jewel case. She ordered away the remaining attendants, commanding that she and Eydis not be disturbed under any circumstances.
Feeling he stood outside the mood of excitement that clearly gripped the two women, Geveral would have followed the attendants exiting the room. Certainly, the gaze Server Parthenia swept him with indicated he was an unwelcome intruder on whatever scene was about to play out.
But Eydis’s voice stopped his leaving. “Stay please, Geveral,” she requested. “I would like you to be a witness to what follows.”
Geveral cast a last look at the closing door and the bright and cool corridor visible beyond it. But he stayed.
The door shut with an echoing groan, leaving only the three of them remaining. In the ensuing silence, Eydis ascended the oracle’s dais and sat on the top step, surrounded by the glowing caldrons and puffs of swirling steam. Geveral took a place nearby, not entirely trusting Server Parthenia and whatever she concealed within that box in her hands.
The server came to stand over Eydis, managing to look collected despite the smothering heat enveloping the room.
Parthenia said, “There are times when the oracle requires extra assistance in entering the state that allows her to reach out to the First Mother. For such occasions, she employs a variety of methods. But for the sake of time, I have chosen one of the quickest and most powerful. This ritual, however, is not without risks. The price of failure is high.”
“Then it is lucky I have no intention of failing,” Eydis said firmly, perhaps suspecting an attempt to unnerve her. “I am ready.”
“As you wish.”
The server flipped open the lid of the carved wooden box in her hands and held it out to Eydis. Inside lay a shining coiled bracelet the color of blood. The bracelet seemed almost to move beneath the flickering light of the fires.
“Put it on,” Parthenia instructed.
If Eydis had any doubts, she didn’t show it. With seeming confidence, she picked up the bracelet and slipped it onto her wrist. Instantly, the bracelet constricted, closing itself so tight around Eydis’s wrist she couldn’t have removed it if she had tried. Then, slowly, the bracelet began to writhe and transform before Geveral’s eyes. No longer a piece of jewelry, it took on the form of a living snake with glittering red scales and glowing golden eyes. Uncoiling from her wrist, it worked its way lazily up Eydis’s arm, its head weaving and its forked tongue darting.
Although Eydis remained quiet and unflinching, Geveral’s stomach lurched in horror, as he watched the wicked-looking viper twine itself around Eydis’s elbow.
“Is this supposed to happen?” he demanded tensely. “Is the thing poisonous?”
“Quiet deadly,” Server Parthenia answered expressionlessly. Despite her controlled tone, there was a spark of eagerness in her eyes. As though she waited for something.
“Isn’t there any way we can stop it? Put the viper back in its box?” Geveral persisted.
“Not without provoking it to bite,” answered the server. “And a bite, delivered to one not favored by the Mother, is followed by agonizing pain and death.”
Geveral was at once enraged and panic-stricken. He had never been so helpless. “You tricked us into this!” he accused her as the snake traveled higher up Eydis’s arm.
“I did nothing that was not requested,” murmured Parthenia. But she wasn’t really paying attention to him anymore. Her eyes, like his, were fastened on the event playing out before them.
Eydis appeared unaware of the argument or even of the danger, sitting motionless and unblinking as the viper slithered up her shoulder. There it drew its head back, tongue flicking out inquisitively. For the space of a breath, Eydis and the snake regarded one another with mutual interest. Then, without warning, the snake’s head darted downward and it sank its fangs into her shoulder.
Geveral flinched.
Eydis gasped but didn’t cry out.
The snake released its hold quickly and, its work done, dropped from Eydis’s shoulder down to the floor.
Geveral sprang forward instantly. He would have stomped on the snake if he hadn’t remembered at the last second he was no longer wearing his thick-soled boots but the parchment-thin slippers the attendants had given him. Instead, he snatched the carved wooden box from Server Parthenia’s hands and smashed it down over the snake, crushing its small head.
The server gave an offended shout but Geveral hardly heard her protest. He knelt before Eydis, who was staring with a look of confusion at the site of the snake bite.
“Do you feel anything? Is there pain?” Geveral asked anxiously.
He peeled the neck of her tunic back from the skin to expose a pair of tiny puncture wounds in the pale flesh between shoulder and neck.
“It burns a little.” Eydis’s voice sounded faint, and her eyes were beginning to glaze.
“What should we do?” Geveral asked Server Parthenia, although he didn’t really expect an answer.
“Nothing,” Parthenia said. “There is no controlling her reaction. The First Mother alone determines whether the bite will prove fatal.”
The words had barely left her mouth before Eydis collapsed over backward.
Geveral hurried to lift her, propping her head on his knee, but she showed no awareness of his presence. Her eyes were still open but gazed fixedly toward the ceiling. She made no response as Geveral repeated her name. But at least her chest continued to rise and fall in steady, if shallow, breaths.
Geveral took little comfort from that, knowing it could stop at any time. “Run and fetch a healer,” he commanded Parthenia. “There must be someone in this temple who can do something for her.”
“There is no one,” the server persisted.
Glancing up, Geveral was angered by the coldness of her expression. She had been more disturbed by the destruction of her snake than by what was happening to Eydis.
“We made a mistake in trusting you,” he declared. “I thought I saw in your face some doubts against the oracle. A desire for truth that I hoped would work in our favor. But now I see you are loyal to no one and nothing. You wanted Eydis to fail.”
There was no time for her to answer that because Eydis suddenly screamed and arched her back as if in agony.
* * *
Geveral lost count of the number of hours he sat at Eydis’s side, helpless to do anything but wait for improvement or something worse. Eventually, his friend had stopped writhing in pain and had fallen utterly silent.
Parthenia, as if suffering unspoken remorse, brought a pillow to slip beneath Eydis’s head. And at Geveral’s insistence, the caldron fires had been dampened, the steam grates closed, and the thick granite door to the chamber propped open to allow the suffocating heat to escape the room.
Still Eydis didn’t wake.
Attendants offered him food, but Geveral had no appetite. He thought of Kalandhia waiting alone
in the grove near the sacred pool and knew he ought to go and check on the dragon. But he didn’t dare leave Eydis’s side. Her condition could change at any moment.
“Once I had faith in the oracle.”
Geveral had nearly forgotten about Parthenia hovering behind him.
The server continued without encouragement, as if speaking more to herself than to him. “At first I believed, like everyone else, that the First Mother had chosen this freakish child as her messenger. The oracle unlocked truths none could fathom. She foretold the future, and always all occurred as she predicted. But then I began to notice the little signs something was not right. Her powers of foresight weakened. Often, she could see nothing at all without the aid of extreme rituals. She became secretive and jealous of her dwindling powers. And then the guardians of the sacred pool rejected her, forbidding her entrance to the waters. Why should they do that unless she had lost the Mother’s favor? If ever she was truly worthy, it became clear to me that she had ceased to be so. Since then, I have waited, serving her with half my heart and looking for a new, more-gifted oracle to arise.”
Geveral frowned. “And you tested Eydis in this way to see if she might be that gifted one?”
The server’s voice held distain. “Clearly, my effort was wasted. If she were the one, the venom would not have affected her so severely.”
“Are you saying she has no hope of recovery?”
As soon as Geveral spoke the words, he heard a quick intake of breath. He turned back to find that Eydis’s eyes had flown open. Gasping as if waking from a terrible dream, she looked around wildly.
“Eydis, it’s all right,” Geveral rushed to assured her. “You probably don’t remember where you are. But you’re in the temple at Silverwood Grove and perfectly safe.”
She calmed as her eyes lit on his face and recognition crossed her features.
“Geveral?” Her voice was bewildered but surprisingly strong, as though she had not just been through a painful ordeal. As if she had only left the room for a moment and was returning to find things not quite as she had left them.
“I’m here,” he answered quickly. “And so is Server Parthenia. You were bitten by a snake and unconscious for a few hours, but you’re recovering now.”
He wasn’t as sure of that last part as he sounded.
When she wanted to sit up, he tried to persuade her to lie still. But when she couldn’t be dissuaded, he gave her his arm and helped pull her upright. The color was coming back to her face with surprising speed and her breathing was returning to normal.
“I saw such strange things,” she said, looking around with a distracted air. “My visions were so vivid I hardly know where they ended and where reality returned.”
“Well, you’re back with us now,” he soothed. “Maybe it’s best to forget the dreams and take a moment to clear your head.”
“Forgetting is the last thing she should do,” Server Parthenia cut in. “She must tell us while it is still fresh in her thoughts exactly what she discovered.”
Eydis stared at the server, as though only just noticing her presence.
“I saw something…” Her voice trailed off, and she looked like she was struggling to recall. Then her eyes widened in remembrance. “I saw that there is no First Mother or First Father. That all we have believed is a lie.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Eydis
“The viper’s venom has addled her wits,” Eydis heard Server Parthenia saying. “She speaks like a madwoman.”
Ignoring the remark, Eydis rose clumsily to her feet. She needed to get out of this dark enclosed space, needed fresh air and solitude to make sense of the disjointed thoughts racing through her head. Her legs felt slightly shaky, but they soon regained their strength as she set off.
“Where’s she going? She shouldn’t be on her feet yet,” she heard Geveral protest.
But she didn’t slow her steps or turn back at the concern in the dryad’s voice.
She must escape. She must think.
With only those two ideas pounding in her head, she hurried out of the room as quickly as her dazed condition allowed.
Geveral said something to Parthenia about keeping an eye on her, and she was vaguely aware of him following at a distance as she passed through the granite door.
Out in the corridor, her senses were assaulted. The fingers of daylight reaching through the high slit-like windows were nearly blinding after the shadowed interior of the oracle’s chamber as were the pale shades of the walls and floor. Her footsteps seemed to echo with unnatural loudness down the empty hall. A tapestry hanging from the ceiling swayed gently back and forth, catching her eye with its subtle movements.
She knew the viper’s venom was still in her veins. The mild throbbing in her temples, combined with her heightened senses, made that clear. But she couldn’t stop. There was an energy building up inside her that wouldn’t allow her to stand still.
In the entrance chamber, white-robed attendants silently watched her pass but did nothing to delay her progress as she made her way to the dragon-carved double doors exiting the temple.
Shoving through the doors and out onto the porch, she found the world outside even brighter and more vivid than that within. One breath of fresh air and much of the confusion in her mind was blown away. The pulsing in her temples abruptly stopped.
She descended the steps leading down into the garden and followed the path that wound away from the temple. Beneath the shade of the flowering trees lining her way, she could think at last, could order her thoughts logically.
Exactly what had she seen in her venom induced state? What had it meant? The vision had come in two distinctly different parts, she decided. The first was a thing entirely new to her, an ability she had never before experienced, except perhaps with the raven in the swamp. She had viewed the thoughts, the intentions, of another. And not just any other. These were the thoughts of Varian Nakul. Or maybe not his thoughts so much as the plans of his dark master. Rathnakar was communicating knowledge to his servant, filling his mind with ideas that Eydis had intercepted, like a message gone astray.
In that glimpse, she had seen what the Raven King wanted, his purpose in sending Varian Nakul, his undead soldiers, and his enspelled villagers marching to Endguard. He meant to unite his fighters with the monstrous creatures of the Lostlands already manning the border fortress. He meant to merge them into one large army, an unstoppable force possessing the human intelligence of Varian Nakul and all the beastly powers of the Lostland creatures. He would use the strength and ferocity of the minohides and the aviads’ ability to attack from the air. Once these forces had been joined under his command through his instrument, Varian Nakul, Rathnakar would take the kingdom of Lythnia by surprise. Unprepared for such a war, indeed, ignorant of the threat that had been quietly growing within its borders, Lythnia would fall almost overnight.
Then the Raven King would turn his attention to the conquering of Kroad, doubtless after first enslaving the Lythnians to his will. The war against Kroad would not be won so quickly. The people of that country were a race of barbarous warriors who would not be easily beaten. But against all the powers Rathnakar could summon, Kroad too must eventually bow to the Raven King, submitting or suffering total destruction.
This was only the beginning of Rathnakar’s war on Earth Realm. It would not be over until all the earthly realm was covered by his shadow. Only then could he create the new world he craved, one of chaos and darkness.
Eydis left behind the pebbled path with its graceful trees and its suspended wind chimes tinkling in the breeze. She had reached the grove now. The angle of the sunlight slanting through the ancient treetops ahead told her the hour was early. She must have spent all the previous day and night in her trance, emerging shortly after the dawn of the new day. It seemed a fitting time to find herself passing between the vine-covered pillars to approach the sacred pool’s edge.
There were no attendants at the pool this early. There was on
ly Eydis and the last of the morning mist slowly burning away from the waters. Eydis imagined she could feel the hidden eyes of the scaly pool guardians, rarely visible but always on the watch.
She didn’t hurry to enter the water but sat at the side of the pool, peering into its depths and reflecting on the second part of her vision. This part didn’t involve Rathnakar’s plans but contained revelations still more deeply troubling, truths that shook her to the core, unraveling her oldest beliefs.
In her vision, she had been visited by ancient eternal beings, their voices like the voice she had encountered among the rune stones in the Arxus Mountains. Probably the same voices that used to speak to Keir and that had reached out to her on her first visit to the sacred pool.
Some of these eternals were visible. They were in human form or took the shape of iridescent ghosts, much like the White Lady. Still others were only disembodied voices, with no physical form. The eternals informed her they were the true powers of Earth Realm. That all she had once taken to be the whispers of a First Mother were, in fact, the promptings of eternals and of her own instincts.
There was no First Mother. No First Father. If ever such ancestors had been real, they had long ago lost any meaningful influence over the world. Now their names existed purely for the uses of the unscrupulous, for the deceiving of folk weak-minded enough to be manipulated by those claiming special influence or contact with the First Couple.
It was an overwhelming piece of knowledge and one Eydis wished she could unlearn. She wanted to reject everything these mysterious eternals told her. But something inside her recognized their words as truth.
Still deep in thought, Eydis rose and undressed. She took up a silver urn waiting on a nearby pedestal and, after scooping it full of water from the pool, rinsed her feet clean. Lacking the usual attendants to aid her with the cleansing ritual, she performed it for herself even as she wondered whether such practices mattered anymore after what she had learned.
