And Mikhail was completely unaware of all of this…
"Here," Zhila slipped a fresh vat of beer under his nose. "Try this one. I made it especially for you."
One thing a disciple of Ninkasi learned was that food and alcohol, when combined with a sympathetic ear, tended to loosen the tongue of even the most reticent man. They waited until Mikhail began to slur before they began their interrogation.
"What do you remember about the night you woke up?" Yalda asked.
"Nothing," Mikhail mumbled. "I woke up and Ninsianna was gone."
His eyelids were heavy, his demeanor sleepy, and at any moment, she knew he would fall asleep. It was the perfect time to ferret things out of his subconscious. Zhila patted his wings in a soporific rhythm while Yalda continued her questioning. She hadn't earned her place as the lead-juror on the Tribunal simply because of her age.
"Do you remember our coming to visit you?"
"No."
"Do you remember the attack by the Uruk tribe?"
"No."
"Do you remember anything at all?"
Yalda took his hand the exact same way she had seen Gita do. Mikhail looked up, his unearthly blue eyes far away as he stared not at her, but into a past which Yalda needed to know.
"Each day she held my hand, and as she did, I dreamed of her."
"Dreamed of who?" Yalda asked. She glanced at Zhila. The last time they had tried this line of questioning, the moment they had mentioned the girl's name, Mikhail had become agitated, though he couldn't say why. They'd been forced to abort their questioning.
"The other one," Mikhail said at last. "That last night, she came to me in a dream."
"Ninsianna?"
"No," Mikhail said. His wings drooped. "Amhrán. She was my bhean chéile spiorad."
"We can't understand you if you speak in the language of heaven, son," Yalda said gently. "What is an bhean chéile spiorad."
Mikhail's cheek twitched. Yalda nodded to her sister. Zhila pushed the vat of beer towards him and they waited until he'd taken several sips before they resumed their questioning.
"A bhean chéile spiorad is the woman who is meant to be your mate," Mikhail said. "I don't remember much about my childhood, but I do remember her."
"Amhrán?" Yalda asked.
"Yes," Mikhail said. "We were married."
Zhila began to cough. "M-married?"
Yalda gave her a dirty look to signal her to shut up.
"We had gone through the ceremony of an chéad phósadh," Mikhail said. "First marriage. It's similar to what you would call a betrothal ceremony, only to the Seraphim, it means much more. My people ... we were expected to find our mate while we were still very young, but I didn't find mine until I was nine years old."
"So you were betrothed to marry someone?" Yalda asked. "And then, for some reason, you didn't follow through with it?"
Mikhail's black-brown wings drooped all the way to the floor. When he met her gaze, his unearthly blue eyes were filled with tears.
"She died," he whispered. "Someone came and killed every last Seraphim except for me."
Zhila gasped. Yalda signaled her to shush. Even when Mikhail could remember an event from his past, he was always reluctant to discuss it, as though it brought him terrible pain. This information was interesting, but it was not the subject of the accusation Merariy had made against him, the one which could destroy what little unity this village still possessed.
"The night before you woke up," Yalda said. "We held a funeral. And yet, come dawn, we found you risen from the dead. What happened?"
"She came for me," Mikhail whispered.
"Who? Ninsianna?" Yalda asked.
"Amhrán," Mikhail said.
Trills of energy tingled down Yalda's spine the way the song of a nightengale might excite one when heard in the darkest night.
"What about Ninsianna?" Zhila interrupted.
Yalda glared at her.
Zhila glared back.
Mikhail's head nodded forward, the effects of too much alcohol and the soporific effects of bread. Past experience said the big Angelic was about to nod off, and once he did, nothing short of a lizard demon bashing down the door would rouse him from his sleep.
"It wasn't Ninsianna who met me at the threshold of the dreamtime," Mikhail said at last. "But Amhrán. Just as she'd sworn she would do the day we were betrothed."
His head tipped forward and his breath became heavier, causing his wings to rise and fall. Their questions were at an end, but they knew what they needed to know.
"Help me ease him over to the sleeping pallet," Yalda said.
She and Zhila coaxed the big Angelic up and helped him stumble over to the cot, and then covered him up to let him sleep it off.
Zhila kissed him on the forehead like a little boy.
"Sweet dreams," Yalda said.
Mikhail rolled towards the wall, and then gathered up the blankets until they were shaped like someone sleeping in his arms. Who did he dream of, Yalda wondered? Ninsianna? Or the woman who had come to him in his dream? His lips curved up into a content smile, giving him the appearance of a child.
"What do you dream of, little angel?" Yalda patted his wing.
"Song," Mikhail mumbled. "Her name means song."
Song? As in singing a song? Or as in an ancient word for song, so ancient that only a few elders still knew the meaning of the word. Still trembling, Yalda finished covering him, and then dragged her sister into the brewing room and shut the door behind her.
"You know what this means, don't you?" Yalda whispered so her voice would not carry.
"Yes," Zhila said.
Her sister's eyes were haunted. They had been forced to make many terrible choices in their lifetime, but this ... this had to be the hardest.
"We can't do this," Yalda said. "We have to do the right thing. We have to help him remember the truth."
"Ninsianna carries his child," Zhila hissed. "And the other one is dead. What use would it be to shame him over something he cannot change?"
"He would want to know," Yalda said.
"He already blames himself for her death," Zhila said. "How do you think he'll react if he believes she was this bhean chéile spiorad?"
"He would want to know," Yalda said. "And he will never forgive us for not telling him once we figured it out."
"There is nothing he can do to change the way things are," Zhila said. "According to that lizard doctor, Lucifer wanted Ninsianna alive. This village is lost without her. Everything is falling down around our ears. The other one ... she is dead. Hasn't the man suffered enough without adding something he cannot change to his misery?"
Yalda sighed.
"You are right," she said. "The girl is dead. That means we shall have to deal with that other problem."
"We shall deal with it first thing in the morning," Zhila said.
Zhila began rummaging through the supplies she used to brew her beers, and then frowned, her wrinkled lips pursed in concentration, as she measured out some herbs she kept carefully segregated into a small, covered jar.
Yalda moved out to flag down one of the villagers to go tell Needa that Mikhail wouldn't make it home tonight. There were always children or grown men lingering near their door, eager to run an errand in exchange for a bit of bread or beer.
Her mind whirring, she took the spent grains from Zhila's fermented beer and kneaded it into a large, wooden bowl filled with ground barley, einkorn, and emmer, added a pinch of salt, some water, and then kneaded it to the tune of a song she had made up to honor Ninkasi so it would be rise with the dawn. Covering it with a damp cloth so the precious yeast would not dry out, she went to bed and had fitful dreams about the terrible choice they had made.
*****
Come morning, Mikhail was gone as soon as the sun peeked over the horizon. It was Zhila who woke Yalda up, urging her to hurry.
"We must get there before he rouses himself from his slumber," Zhila said.
Yalda groaned as she
forced limbs seized with arthritis and age to move far faster than they wanted to go, especially on a cold winter morning. She stoked up the embers in her beehive oven, still warm from last night, until it grew hot enough for her to bake the bread. While it baked, she dressed in her finest outfit, lay her best linen cloth out into a woven basket, and then filled it with a tiny urn filled with roasted acorns, some dates, some figs, and a bit of precious nut-oil. At last the bread was cooked and she wrapped them in a second napkin, and covered the entire basket with a thick, quilted cloth to keep it warm.
Zhila came out of her brewing-room, cradling a vat of beer.
"Are you ready?" Zhila asked.
"No," Yalda said. "But it must be done."
They made their way to the lowest levels of the village, avoiding the lower well so as few people as possible would see. Still, they had made this journey every day since just after Mikhail had awoken, and it had cost them dearly, procuring Merariy's silence.
They knocked upon the delapidated door, so rotted it was a wonder the ropes which bound it kept it on its hinges. As usual, he did not greet them, and they had to make their own way into the hovel where Gita had been raised. Merariy was passed out on the kitchen table, face down in a bowl of pumice. The entire house stank of unemptied chamberpots, stale alcohol, and unwashed body. Merariy himself had not changed in days, a state of dishevelment they had encouraged by keeping the man too drunk to bother causing trouble.
Yalda placed the basket down in front of him and pulled up a rickety wooden stool.
Zhila placed down her vat of beer, and then pulled over a crate sturdy enough to support her weight.
They waited for Merariy to raise his head. The shaman's brother opened his eyes, jet-black like his daughter's, but other than the jaundice to his skin he was the spitting image of Immanu. The man grimaced, and then pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Are you early?" Merariy asked. "Or did I oversleep?"
"We are right on time," Zhila cut him off curtly. "And we have brought you the things you wanted."
Merariy's expression brightened considerably. He tore into the basket, his hands trembling already from alcohol withdrawal, and began to shove torn-off chunks of hot bread into his mouth, pausing only long enough to dip the pieces in the precious oil.
"I'm glad you came to your senses, Yalda," Merariy said. "So? When will the trial be? I want to nail the bastard for adultery." He rubbed his hands together in anticipation.
"We shall make the announcement at suppertime," Yalda said, "when most villagers gather at the central well to draw their water. He will be tired after laboring in the training field with his warriors, and they will easily be able to take him into custody."
"Are you certain he won't resist?" Merariy gloated.
Zhila looked like she wanted to pick up the nearest stick and spear the man through the heart. Yalda shot her a stern look. Zhila cast her cataract-riddled eyes downward to avoid meeting Merariy's gaze.
"Mikhail values the workings of the law," Yalda said. "He will obey the Tribunal, whether or not he remembers what happened."
"Are you certain you can bribe the other Tribunal members to order he pay me the damages?" Merariy asked.
Yalda leaned back, appraising him with a serpent's gaze.
"I bribe no man," Yalda said. "If you wish to convince the tribunal that the reason Mikhail rose from the dead was because your daughter inherited a gift from her mother, and used that gift to heal him, then you must give me evidence which is convincing. Tell me, Merariy? If her mother was as you claim, how did she end up giving you a child?"
"It was the duty of every Ghassulian woman to travel to the Temple at least once in their lifetime and have sex in the name of the goddess with the first man they met there who would offer them money," Merariy said. "The proceeds were then turned over for the running of the temple. If any child was born of that union, they were to be given over to the temple to be reared as future priests and priestesses of Ki."
"And this is where you met Gita's mother?" Yalda asked.
"There were many women there," Merariy said, "but I was the eldest son of an important shaman, and my father had told me how to entrap a woman who was something more. Gita's mother was not in the courtyard where the sacred prostitutes usually plied their trade, but inside, praying at a statue of the goddess."
"She-who-is?" Zhila cut in.
"Ki," Merariy said. "Mother-of-prostitutes. Mother of She-who-is."
"What happened next?" Yalda asked.
I startled her, but when I looked into her eyes, I knew she was the one my father had foreseen. He told me I must get her any way I could, for the priestesses has prophesized that one day a priestess would give birth to a child who would be a warrior-shaman far more powerful than even my father. Lugalbanda wanted that son to be of our bloodline, for he had foreseen that child would come to live in our village."
"So you raped her?" Zhila looked at the man with disgust.
"Rape?" Merariy laughed. "No! I simply dragged her out into the courtyard, and then offered her the money my father had given me to buy her in front of all the women who had come to sell their bodies. It was a ridiculous sum, far more money than all the other men offered combined. Once there, Zanubiya had no choice but to consent."
He stared down into the vat of beer he sipped.
"I didn't anticipate she would be a virgin," he whispered. "Or that she would weep when I took her. Or run away after I was done." He took another sip of beer, his expression thoughtful. "She cursed me, you know? She said that from that day forward, people would see me the way I truly am. And after that day, no woman would have me unless I paid them money for the pleasure."
Yalda noted the way Zhila's mouth tightened in anger. It was a good thing they weren't at home, within easy reach of Zhila's spear, or she suspected her younger sister would have used it to impale the man.
"And so Gita was born?" Yalda prompted.
Merariy snorted. "Yes. After all that, the woman couldn't even produce the prophesized-for son."
"What did you do?"
"My father accused me of gambling away his money," Merariy shrugged. "So I hired out myself as a mercenary amongst the Amorites. A great chief rose to stand against us, and he prevented us from seizing the valley which the Temple oversaw."
He took another sip of beer. "That valley was the crossroads to all trade in the region. Without it, we were forced to take to the hills. Eventually we ambused him and he almost died, but then we heard rumors he had been resurrected from the dead by one of the priestesses of Ki."
That sensation of something tickling down her spine made Yalda shiver. This was all familiar. It was all so familiar to what had happened here.
"Why was the temple of Ki destroyed?"
"The Temple stood against the Amorites," Merariy said. "Especially Gita's mother. Once I left there, Zanubiya rose in power. The common people, they had silly superstitions about a distant god and winged beings who would one day return to embrace them. So the Amorites raided the temple, and that was when I found out why they really wanted her dead."
"Why?"
"Zanubiya was heavy with child," Merariy said. "Whenever a priestess of Ki brings back an injured from the dead, she does so through a ritual of sacred union. She offers her life for her beloved, and if the goddess feels their love is worthy, she will heal them and bless them with a child. If, on the other hand, they are not worthy, both the priestess and the injured will die." Merariy sighed. "Zanubiya ... she refused to go with me because she had foreseen that one day she would heal a king."
"Why did the Amorites want her dead?"
"My father sent me to take her because he believed her gift would grant me immortality," Merariy said. "He didn't understand that there was more to bonding with a high priestess than mere consent to copulate. But when Gita's mother made love to the king, she wanted to be bonded to him, and so she was. She was bonded to him unto death."
"Those stories are nothing but fair
y tales," Zhila cut in.
"That's what I thought," Merariy said. "But my Amorite employers? They paid me to claim that she and I had been lawfully married; and then she had left me and taken as a lover somebody else. They held a mock trial, and then they declared she was an adulteress and instituted the penalty for adultery, which is death by stoning."
"You stoned to death a pregnant woman?" Yalda said.
"This wasn't about adultery," Merariy said. His words were slurred, his eyes bloodshot. He grasped clumsily at the straw, and then resumed his drinking.
"What was it about, then?" Yalda asked. "And what does all this have to do with Mikhail?"
"They buried Gita's mother in the ground," Merariy said. "And then, under the law, the aggrieved, that was me, had to cast the first stone."
"So you killed her?"
"The Amorites wanted to draw out her death as long as possible," Merariy said. "They wanted her to feel it. They wanted her to beg, and plead, and feel every stone, and suffer for it, and anticipate it, to make her death as long and painful as possible."
"Why?"
"Because once you form the bond of Ki with another human being," Merariy said, "if they are sick, you feel it. If they are injured, you can heal their wounds. But if they are killed, the person who is bonded has no choice. They will feel the injury which killed their beloved as surely as if it happened in their own body, and when their beloved dies, they will usually die as well."
Yalda and Zhila looked at each other in horror.
"But Gita is dead!"
"I have told you all along," Merariy's head nodded forward. "Gita is still alive."
"How can you be certain," Yalda asked.
"So long as Mikhail lives, I know that she lives too."
Merariy tried to move his arm, and then realized he couldn't.
"This is good beer," he mumbled.
"Yes, it is," Zhila said. "It is a special brew I made just for you."
Yalda pressed the straw into Merariy's mouth and urged him to take another sip.
Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 85
