The Hidden Icon (Book of Icons)

by Jillian Kuhlmann

  “I have a guide already,”I said, gesturing to my heart. I didn’t concern myself with how he might interpret the gesture, for I knew what I meant, and whatever waited for me in the prayer garden would, too.

  I ascended the stairs at a measured pace, using the sleeve of my new gown to mop my face. I knew Paivi was behind me still, but I didn’t feel his attentions. Whether this was because he had withdrawn them completely or because what I approached so dominated my thoughts, I didn’t know.

  The scene at the apex of the stair was like what I had anticipated, but different from the garden at Rhale’s estate. There was little foliage here, and none of the whimsy and wildness of the roof chapel. The mirror was the same, placed purposefully in a group of clustered stones. There was something reflective in their surfaces, as well, chipped and mottled but glittering still. Only one altar stood, knee height, centered before the mirror. Because I wanted it done, and perhaps more because I wanted to know just what it was, exactly, I approached the altar. The mirror was angled so that one could not see themselves in it without kneeling at the altar. Though I’d considered wryly in Rhale’s garden the ironies of worshipping oneself, I knelt as I knew I must.

  Like the mirror in the corridor that had led me here, I saw nothing in the depths of this one save the reflected sky behind me. I wasn’t immediately disappointed, for I had no desire to realize the full potential of Theba embodied there. I didn’t want to see her face, or my own perverted. I threaded my fingers through each other in a penitent style, waiting. I remembered what Gannet had said about closed fists when he’d first explained that I would be tested. I considered that if his experience was anything like mine, his story was figurative, only. But representing what? Obviously the Ambarians kept secrets, as many secrets as we had stories. And from all that I had seen, Aleyn had the stories of the old world, and Ambar the living memory of it.

  Until me.

  Where there had been sky I saw myself, just as I was: my lip burst and bleeding, my chin stained, my nose purpling in a promise as dark as my eyes. How could this young woman be anything but what she seemed to be: human, vulnerable, sensitive of the hearts and minds of those she knew well and loved? If the goddess manifested herself in my anger, where was that anger now? Did she exist when it wasn’t there? I didn’t think so.

  “Can you be sure?”

  I was startled from the prayer bench by an unfamiliar voice, and when I turned I didn’t recognize the face and form of the young woman who stood there. Her appearance was humble but her eyes were keen, her expression curious. She was also very, very pregnant.

  She walked as she continued talking, to and fro a few steps away from me, nearer the stairs I had climbed than the altar. Her presence was commanding for all she could not have been but four or five-and-twenty, and likely not even real.

  “I see many things in the mirror, but I’ve never seen you,” she said. “It seems you can’t see yourself, either.”

  “Perhaps it’s only that I didn’t see what they expected me to see,” I replied carefully, thinking of the purpose Gannet spoke of, the burden of all icons. I watched her. Who was she? Pacing still, her ghost-feet made no mark in the dirt. I stood from the prayer bench slowly, more out of habit than reverence.

  “It doesn’t work that way,” she explained, moving still. Her hand moved now, too, in complimenting patterns on her swollen belly. “You can’t say that you are kind and have it believed of you, you must do kind things, speak kind words. You can’t claim to be a house builder if you don’t build houses, if you don’t beat the dirt and dung from your clothing every night.”

  I stood next to the prayer bench with the mirror at my back, and when she fixed her eyes upon me, I felt the eyes of someone from the mirror on my back, too.

  “If you act as Theba, then you are Theba. If you want to be Eiren, you must act as Eiren.”

  “But what if I’m both?” I struggled, feeling the weight of the judgment, the world, my words. My doubt was real and it terrified me. “What if in my head I’m one and in my heart another, not always the same, or at the same time?”

  Her eyes were liquid, blue as aquamarines, blue as the sea that carried away little pieces of Cascar every day. The hand on her stomach ceased to move, but I knew the child within was dancing still.

  “Then you are not what they expected.”

  I didn’t know if it was she or me that vanished, for I saw nothing in an instant, felt none of the solid certainty of a world beneath my feet. For the space of a breath I didn’t exist, and then I was face down on the rug in front of the fire in my chamber, drained glass in hand.

  Well done, Eiren.

  Somewhere, far away from me but in the real world, Paivi laughed.

  Chapter 21

  I was grateful for the summons to breakfast after a sleepless night, but I wasn’t prepared for the clamor and opulence of the Ambarian court. Servants scuttled with trays and steaming pots of tea between tables that were heavy laden already with food and people, many of whom neglected their plates when I was lead through. Though there were perhaps no more here than fifty, they ate and drank and reveled enough for twice that. These must be the affluent of Jhosch, the councilors, the wealthy, and other family, I supposed, titled if there was land enough in Ambar to allow for it. They looked on me and I felt the press of embroidery on my hood like a brand.

  At the head table I was disappointed not to see Gannet, but settled gratefully in the place that had been prepared for me beside Morainn. Imke hovered behind her mistress’ chair, and I took particular note that no place was prepared for her here. I didn’t think Imke would be happy that I had a seat but she didn’t, for all she might be used to it. Morainn gave me a look that suggested quite strongly, and without my having to employ any of my gifts, that I reserve any serious conversation for elsewhere. In the same instant she gestured to Imke to pour me some tea.

  “I will point everyone out to you and you won’t remember anyone,” Morainn insisted, eyes cutting around the room as though she dissected it, and would soon after its inhabitants. Her parents were deep in discussion with an advisor that sat beside her father. I noted Agathe’s attentions drift to Morainn, and to me. I saw Paivi, too, at a table situated below this one but above many of the others. I could only imagine the significance, though I wondered if the others at his table were icons, as well, the men and women who looked much like the other men and women breakfasting but were set apart. I wanted to ask Morainn if it had been her doing that placed me here instead of there, and to ask, too, how it was that her brother had no place at any table. I didn’t see him, and I was sure I would sense him if he were near. Perhaps because my gifts had grown to fledgling competency under his guidance, perhaps because of other reasons, I felt my senses altogether tied up in him.

  My mind could not quiet my stomach, and I filled my plate eagerly with spiced root vegetables, bread, fruit, and little pies stuffed with sugared cream as Morainn talked and hardly touched her plate.

  “They’ve seven daughters, if you can imagine it, each prettier than the last,” she claimed, gesturing to a couple seated further down the hall, and I grinned, knowing she meant instead that they were more homely, and couldn’t say as much. She continued, inclining her head to a woman whose wrists and neck were heavy with precious stones. “And Beronda and her husband operate the mines on our Northern borders. Quite humble.”

  That Morainn wanted me to laugh made it that much harder to contain myself and keep from exposing her. If I let her go on, I would laugh, or choke trying not to.

  “They don’t live in Jhosch?” I asked, coming to the slow realization that perhaps this was not a typical morning for the royal family after all. Morainn’s vigorous shaking of her head, the dark curls pinned under a modest circlet shifting against her brow, confirmed my suspicions.

  “We have many visitors,” she explained, but she didn’t need to say that they were here for me, and were trouble for everyone. “They will stay for several weeks, until t
he opera. The ones here are finer than anything they have at home.”

  The opera. At the mention of it my gaze shifted unwittingly to Paivi, who looked like he had not taken his eyes from me since I had entered the hall. He didn’t have about him the air that some men do, as a predator might, but there was something in his manner that desired knowledge of Theba and Eiren both. Gannet had given me the impression that all of the icons here were taken when they were young children, but it seemed unthinkable to me, to have no sense of oneself. I was alien and my notions, too.

  “Do you enjoy the opera? Are you meant to?” I asked. In Aleyn we had our fires and our families and stories that grew a little with every telling. Ambar, I thought, would demand more formality.

  A thoughtful crease appeared between Morainn’s brows above the bridge of her nose, her eyes on either side like the pages of a book laid open at the fold.

  “We are meant to, yes, and I do. For every icon there is an opera, and for many other of our histories, as well. The operas tell us what has been and what will be, and these are things we like to know.” When she observed my expression, still somewhat dubious, Morainn only shrugged, as though I would simply have to experience it to understand. “Theba’s opera is among the more popular, and is always performed when the moon is in darkness.”

  I wasn’t sure if I was grateful for a few weeks to consider what she’d said, or if I would rather see the opera and have it over with. Imke poured more tea though neither of us required it, drawing Morainn’s attention.

  “Imke has never cared for Theba’s opera. Dsimah’s is your favorite, isn’t it?”

  Brows lifted, Imke withdrew with the tall, brass teapot, her hand in a quilted cloth to keep from being scalded as she held it. What did she see for herself in Dsimah, plowing and tending only to be herself harvested by livelier gods?

  “There is more to gain for me in Dsimah’s patience than there is in Theba’s fury. I wouldn’t say that I have a preference.” Something flickered in her as she spoke, like a candle shielded by a hand. It was gone as soon as I had seen it, and Imke moved away, refilling the tea of all privileged enough to be seated at the highest table. I knew I could take from her what she kept from me, but I didn’t want to prove myself the monster she so clearly believed me to be.

  I wanted to ask Morainn to be more specific about Theba’s opera, but as I turned to her a herald strode before the table to beg an audience for his lord. He began in a fashion that reminded me of home, speaking of Colaugh’s benevolent spirit, Agathe’s gracious heart, and the joy anticipated and expressed by all at Morainn’s safe return. There was no mention of Gannet, which wasn’t surprising, and nothing of me, either. I was grateful to have been spared. My relief, however, was short lived when Colaugh himself rose and welcomed his people. The first to stand and greet him, a man whose belly underneath of a rich coat was no doubt as round and white as his bald pate, looked right at me before speaking and shifting his attentions to Colaugh.

  “Drech, we have given our lives in service to Ambar, and our victory in Aleyn is a boon indeed,” he drawled, his voice plugged somewhere high in his nose. “As for Theba, has she been tested? Proven true?”

  I saw Paivi and several of the others seated at his table look at each other, and I knew that they would rather this question had been addressed to one of them. Everyone else in the hall, however, was looking at me, and I felt for a moment like a lantern pricked through by so many pins, shedding light.

  Colaugh I didn’t need to read, for so great a personality he had that it seemed to fill the tureens full on the table.

  “She’s alive, isn’t she? That should be all you need. Theba wouldn’t suffer an imposter. If you continue to have doubts, perhaps a demonstration of her power is in order.”

  I wasn’t sure if this was an invitation or a threat, but I didn’t like it, either way. Colaugh’s words were absolutely an endorsement, and an unwelcome one.

  “It isn’t that… I didn’t mean…”

  The bald man stammered, embarrassment losing the war to terror on his features.

  “Sit down,” Colaugh boomed. “Before you’re forced to lie down.”

  Was he talking about me now, or himself? What I would do, or what he’d make me do? There was such a strange balance of power in the room, with Colaugh who seemed to have all of it but still leaned on mentioning me for more. Everyone looked at me, wanted for something, waited for something, and I quaked. I didn’t have Gannet’s hand upon my arm to steady me this time, and I felt a bitterness rising in my throat, as though I had swallowed smoke. The food that I’d eaten threatened to come up again, not as sickness, but as a fire spewed forth and cleansing the room of them all.

  Careful, Eiren.

  I could’ve cleaved my lip in struggle and surprise against the violent thoughts that threatened me and the fools, the innocents, that crowded the hall. Paivi’s interruption encouraged more than it pushed back any swelling tide, and I refused to acknowledge him. It was this place driving me nearer my own destruction. It was Gannet’s conspicuous absence, and the ambiguity I had found in my own heart during my test. Had my doubt confirmed it, allowed her to grow even more near my waking self until all would be obliterated? I would tell no more stories, and any told of me would speak of nothing but death.

  I walled Paivi out and the anger within. Morainn laid her hand on the table, palm up and fingers curled slightly open. I focused on the gesture that was wordless but incredibly powerful. I remembered what Gannet had said in the chapel at Rhale’s estate, and wondered if Morainn acted in knowledge of what he had told me. I believed she did. Did his mother know, too? Was this a table of confidence for a lost man, masked even unto himself? I could pity myself little when mother and sister couldn’t acknowledge him, when the woman he had perhaps chosen recklessly to love was a monster.

  But I couldn’t be certain, not yet, neither of love nor of my own changing nature.

  It was late enough that the servants could have laid out another meal upon the table by the time everyone had spoken. I was glad I had eaten heartily, though, because my nerves couldn’t manage another meal like this. I’d rather never eat again.

  Morainn rose and I was quick to follow, hoping my lot was not so soon to be cast with Paivi’s. Even as the crowd exited he alone drew near the head table, and every person who had been seated with him waited, their eyes cast down but their spirits bent all in our direction. I hadn’t felt their attention when the room was full of the heat and heart of so many bodies, but I felt it now, strangely benign. I wasn’t even sure that they were aware of the depth of their curiosity and stranger still, their devotion. It felt like they’d been waiting their whole lives for me. They hadn’t even known it would be within their lifetimes and still they had waited.

  “Dreshani,” Paivi said, nodding in respect to father, mother, and daughter. “We will take her now.”

  This seemed explanation enough for the royal family, if it felt rather unsatisfactory to me. Morainn’s look was sympathetic but brief, for she, too, had a part to play. To be my friend wasn’t in her power just then. Parents watchful, she left my side to join them. I crossed around the table to Paivi. I was determined not to look as though I were being led, though his smile at my being so agreeable did little to rid me of the feeling that I was.

  The company that waited at the table folded around us as we exited the hall. I noted the guards that lined the corridors, a presence that hadn’t been in place the day before. An extra precaution on my account, no doubt.

  “Where are we going?” I asked. Paivi managed to smile even when talking, and I began to think that perhaps this was not merely a response to me, but simply in keeping with his character. Erutal had hardly any stories about him and didn’t make much trouble, so I supposed cheer could be his province where terror must be mine.

  “Our quarters and our work spaces in Jhosch lay under the city. One of the entrances is here, in the royal palace.”

  I appreciated his candid ans
wer, and couldn’t help but thrill a little at seeing yet another side to this strange place. I decided to press him, to see if he would prove as taciturn as Gannet.

  “Why aren’t I staying with the rest of the icons? Did I need to be tested first?”

  I wanted him to clarify many things about my test, but I wasn’t yet sure if he had truly been present, or how much I wanted him to know if he had not been.

  “We are in the same instant revered and reviled by the people of Ambar,” Paivi explained without a hint of irritation or shame. His voice dipped slightly lower, but didn’t take on the full character of subtlety. “Drech Colaugh wishes you to stay where you are for now. So for now, you will.”

  What he didn’t say was that it was they, the icons, who would ultimately decide my fate.

  And the fate of all in Ambar, I suspected.

  The others nodded their assent at Paivi’s declaration, murmuring here and there. I noted that the icons were in many stages of life, the youngest a boy who had yet to grow in the beard that was so fashionable among his people, and the eldest a woman paper-delicate, supported on the arm of another. My desire to make woefully uninformed guesses about which icon was which was curbed by my attentions drifting to the course we took.

  Paivi lead us out of the palace into what might have been dubbed out of doors a courtyard, though within the mountain it seemed a strange, unnaturally green place. Musky-scented mushrooms sprouted from the rocks, and lichens, herbs, and shade-loving foliage besides. Ferns trembled as we passed, their fronds closing up like hands retreating to pockets. A fountain like the ones I had admired on our arrival bubbled here, too, the stone splashed in a wild pattern and blank of the growth that asserted itself so thoroughly elsewhere. Near the fountain two columns rose, web-delicate, filtering the murky light. A great gulf of shadow opened up between them, and only when we moved closer did I realize we didn’t approach a well, but a stair.