by Lori Martin
“I am not permitted to send or receive letters. I speak only with my servant, my guards... and my gods.”
“That is a lie.”
The queen said, “If you’d tell me –” she paused for breath. Her lips had whitened. “If you’d tell me what it is I am accused of, we may get a little further.”
“Are you pretending you don’t know what happened this afternoon at the Assemblage House?”
“This afternoon? My good woman, do you think I receive state messages? I won’t know anything if you yourself do not tell me.”
“You knew before it even happened,” the chilhi said accusingly. Scayna felt a moment’s small dizziness. Knowing something – before it happened? This woman...
“Do you deny directing their actions?”
“I do,” the queen said briskly. “Nor do I know who ‘they’ are or what they’ve done.”
“I warn you, an incitement to murder is considered –”
“Murder?”
“Yes, murder! Four Assembly members dead now, all through your loathsome Defiers!”
The queen rubbed the center of her forehead, as if an ache had settled there. “Defiers. I see. One of the guards hinted – well, it doesn’t matter.” She looked up. “I have no contact with Defiers. I certainly do not direct them. I’ve been unaware of these actions until this moment. Tell me, how do they strike?”
“Knives in the back. Cowards!”
“They strike at people who persecute Lindahnes,” Scayna said, giving voice for the first time to answer the woman’s real question. “The four they’ve killed were all in support of severe Oversettle controls, and they called for death for all lin crimi –”
“Keep silent!” the chilhi ordered. “Who told you to meddle?”
“I can’t help you,” Ayenna said.
“Will you denounce them?”
There was a sudden silence. The cat slid behind a chair. Finally, the queen’s answer came, as a cold echo. “... denounce them?”
Bhanay pressed in eagerly. “The Assembly will allow you to speak, publicly, in MenDas. You will denounce the actions of these murderers. You will demand that your so-called subjects stop this foolish –”
The queen stood up and flung the embroidery from her with startling strength. The hard hoop, draped with color, crashed into the writing desk. The chilhi gaped. Ayenna’s spine, arrow-straight, seemed made of marble. “Mendale,” she spat, “your kind has bled my country for a full generation. Does it so astonish you if the seeds you have planted have brought you a harvest of death? The goddess has not yet abandoned us, not when she has set our children against your tyranny. How dare you insult me with such a request!”
“The Assembly orders –”`
“Sanlin take your Assembly!”
“On pain of death,” Bhanay hissed.
“Yes.” The queen’s lids lifted, her eyes enlarging with amusement overlaid on anger. “The Assembly may do so, if they wish. But they will have my people to answer to for it. And they know it.”
“Are you threatening –”
“Leave me,” she said, with a sovereign’s sure command. “Leave me at once.”
The chilhi, enraged – who was this old woman to order her about? – was baffled by her regal confidence. “Come,” she barked at Scayna. “We’ll get nothing more.”
Reluctance held her. She backed up unwillingly to the door. The grey cat rubbed by her legs.
“Child,” Ayenna said softly.
The chilhi was already in the hallway, shouting for one of the guards. Scayna’s hand fluttered to her cheek, almost as a shield across her face. Then she clenched her fist.
“Your hair,” the queen murmured. “Almost – firedust...”
As Ayenna stood, in her pale robe which had seen too many careful washings, Scayna knew her: knew her in a different land, on a Hill beneath the stars. A vision came of a younger woman, secure in power. Vibrant blues, and a strange pink flower. My queen –
She blinked. Fear flooded her. Had she spoken?
Ayenna took a step towards her.
“Good even’,” she blurted, and ran from the room.
The former queen of Lindahne stood and listened to the sounds of their departure. The hall guard glanced in, nodded, and shut the door.
Ayenna put a hand to her breast, breathing harshly. When the pain had subsided she moved to the desk. Clear of the taint of mortal business, as she kept it, it was perhaps worthy of its real purpose. She used an ember from the fire to light the sweet incense, which burned in a gold bowl: one of the few luxuries she had been permitted to keep, because her captors did not understand it, or recognize the face of the goddess, traced in the gold relief.
With care for her aged joints, Ayenna went down on her knees. “Nialia protect them,” she whispered. “Protect the children of your people, who cry out to you, who long to know your will. Protect the one who should lead them. Restore him, Mother, to our home and ruling Chair.” Her eyes filled slowly, but she would not weep. “Protect the child of my beloved child...”
In the heart of the Mendale capital, within the sturdy walls of the Assemblage House, Pillyn stared into darkness, listening to her husband’s dreaming breath.
She had been sixteen when she left Lindahne, newly married to a man she hardly knew. The goddess had given her that one boon, of Nichos and his love, at a time when everything else was taken from her. Her father. Dalleena-relas. Even Lilli. The little girl-child, murdered and forever missing. And Rendell.
Even now the loss of her eldest brother could hurt at her heart. He had walked willingly into his death, with the love and strength he had always held in himself. She wondered again if Paither had his surety, the Strength of divine Armas: Rendell had been a devout priest of the god. Paither was steadfast; he had been given personal courage; but would he be sure enough of himself? Would he also be able to give himself –?
Her fingers clutched at the bed sheets. Her skin tightened in, pulling her minutely away from her husband.
They had to protect him. And that had always meant secrecy.
Throughout Lindahne’s timeless history, before the War had changed them, their law had come from a king and queen, man and woman ruling together. The king would be in Chair and sole sovereign for the time of his Hold, then the queen for the time of her Hold, and so power would be passed back and forth between them. King Raynii had been the last, the last blood heir. (We have lost our royals, the Defier had said.) And of all that long history, of all the ancient royal blood, now only Paither remained. Only Paither remained – and the Mendales themselves, who ruled in name, in actuality, in all power. In everything, in fact, but righteousness.
On the day she left Lindahne, Pillyn had been secure of one thought: that someday Paither would return as a man, and be named king. But it was one thing to hold to, when he was an infant. Another matter now that he was a young man and she could still not bring herself to tell him the truth, the truth proclaimed by the blue seal of the goddess on his shoulder.
Nichos, Temhas, even Baili – the only ones who knew the truth, except for the lonely queen – had all urged her to tell him. And after the Defiers had come, Temhas had asked her again.
“I told her I wouldn’t lie to Nichos –”
“Oh?” she had snarled. “But you expect me to?”
It will only come by the sword, his words repeated. By fighting. But I’ve had enough of death!
That was the essence of her reluctance, the stumbling point of fear she couldn’t master. She had lost too many of those she loved, at too young an age. It had scorched and scarred her.
Perhaps it’s the reason I can’t truly love any more.
Guilt had weighed on her for years, like a part of her flesh. Nichos had rescued her from searing upheaval. He had ardently loved her, remained faithful to all his promises but one (“I’ll leave the Assembly,” he had said in the early days). She respected every good quality in him, admired him, was tenderly amused at his small vanit
ies, and enjoyed his company. But she had never been able to return his passion. Worse, for all her striving to conceal it, she believed that he knew.
Her love all centered on Paither. No use, she thought in familiar despair, no use to deny it. Baili she could feel for, yes, and even Temhas, but those affections were from her childhood, from the time before disaster. Since the rain of death, no life, no new love, had grown from the barren soil of her soul.
Days and nights long, she gave everything else to Nichos, to try somehow to atone: she gave her concerns, her attention, her loyalty, her laughter. She had tried, too, to give him children of his own body. The first few miscarryings had caused the healer little concern, and the fourth one should have lived. But when she rushed out that night and saw the stable in flames, saw Paither unconscious, his boy’s body crumpled on the dirt, his face of ruin, the unborn child within her had suddenly leapt, clenched in her agony. Within hours she had lost it.
Finally, finally, Calli had come, a beautiful, healthy girl. Nichos was almost too grateful. And Pillyn, enraged with herself, knew only a doubling of her guilt, because Paither still came first in her heart.
The will of Nialia, perhaps, she consoled herself. I’m the one he was given to, after all. I’m the one who has to protect him, help him fulfill his fate... And I can’t do it.
The goddess had given him to her. But in some divine cruelty, the gift of courage had been withheld. She was afraid.
She closed her eyelids, but the tears leaked from the corners, slipping down her skin. Nichos, dreaming, stirred restlessly, and then was quiet.
In her old life she had been an open, smiling girl, without guile. Once it had seemed against her nature to deceive; now she did every day, feigning a love she did not feel, to protect her husband’s happiness. In the same way, though the gods had not made her naturally morbid, for most of her adult life images of grief had haunted her. Many nights, before sleeping, her mind considered and counted the losses she could someday suffer: her daughter, her husband, her brother, her friend. She was grateful anew, every morning, to have been spared, to have these people still with her. It made her inability to love them enough truly a sin.
Paither’s death...
Were the Defiers really the way appointed, to return him to the place that was his? (A body flung out, skull cracking on marble.) Could they be the start of a new army, one that, this time, could overcome Mendale strength? (Handle protruding from the bloodied skin.) Or were they the path by which the Mendales would finally destroy all that was left of their hopes?
Paither’s death...
The loss of all her kin, she could imagine in agonizing detail. The accidents that could befall, the illnesses that could strike, the sorrowing days that would flow monotonously, sadly by.
But Paither’s death...
There would be no living beyond that for her. She sent a wordless prayer of protection to whichever god would hear it.
Nichos rolled closer to her. With a movement that startled him to a brief half-consciousness, she threw her arm across him, and buried her nose and mouth in his neck. She listened as his breathing slowed again, and he returned to a deeper dream. It was a steady, calm sound.
Eventually, still measuring that sure proof of life, she fell asleep.
Chapter 7
– from the Lindahne Book of the Gods
Nialia awoke one day, and found her royal husband looking down upon the Hills; and his face was grave unto sadness, for in his Wisdom he gazed long on all things. And she said
to him, “Husband, your face is grave unto sadness, and still you gaze long. What now do you see?” “I gaze upon the world and all things mortal,” answered the Wise One, “and I see in all things a flaw. For the world itself is flawed, and cannot be remade in perfection.”
And Nialia said, “Do not look to mortals for that which is perfect, for all that they touch, even the bountiful earth, is corrupted beneath their hands. Let us seek here among our own, and find that which is without flaw.”
So Proseras called the gods to him, and they gathered in the great halls. And the royal couple of the heavens, Nialia of Fate and Proseras of Wisdom, were seated before them, and Proseras spoke. Said he, “I would have before me that which is without flaw. Go each of you and seek, and you will be rewarded.”
Thus began a great contest among the gods, to win the favor of the divine royals. Each went seeking, and each returned with a beautiful offering, and each proclaimed the offering to be without flaw.
Heila of the harvest laid out her bounty, the grains of barley, oat, and wheat, and the grasses to support all creatures upon the earth; and they shone gold and green; but there was rot among the stalks. Then came Dymas, god of Wine and spirit, carrying the vines’ fruit that brings laughter and forgetfulness; but the final taste was bitter. Then came Tain, great craftsman, who shapes all things of the hand, and his works were beautiful; but every fine material grows weak, and every jointing would give way.
Next came Rena, goddess of Love, to offer the joy and comfort of her gift; and truly Proseras gazed long, for nothing else brings such delight. But love is the shelter and support of mortals, and may die as they do; and thus Proseras refused the offering. Then Mihia god of every Honor came, and laid out a life without stain or blemish; but in its wake, ever following, came secret sins and sorrow, to tarnish its golden glow.
Finally Armas of Strength and Power stood before the divine royals, and his great hands were empty. Nialia said unto him, “Lord of Power, have you no offering to bring before us?”
And Armas answered, “Queen of all, know you that my gift is not the Strength to destroy or to oppress, or the Power to bring pain or suffering. Such things are governed by Nilsor of Anger and War, and the gods of Jealousy and Fear, and dark Sanlin.
“But look you, that my Strength is here in all the offerings you have received. For strong hands must work to till the bountiful earth. Strong hands must bring in the grapes and strong legs trample the fruit, and a powerful will must be brought to bear on wood and stone, to fashion every craft. And truly no soul can grow in bright honor, no heart can stay steadfast in its love, without the Strength to try, and to endure, even in blackness and suffering.”
The Wise One answered, “That is the life-strength, never-ending in our immortal veins. And this, in their short lives, we also give the people of the earth. It is in all the world, and yet the world itself is flawed, and cannot be remade in perfection. Have you no other offering to give?”
Now Armas said, “Truly that is my offering.” And he raised up his great hands, reaching to his mighty chest. Then the gods cried aloud in amazement, for he reached within himself, and drew out his thundering immortal heart, which beat like the fury of the Sea in his hands. Soon it stilled, and glowed with color, glowing the green of the grass of the valley and the trees of the Hills, for green is the color of life.
“Wise One, and divine Nialia of Fate,” said Armas, “I offer you the life-strength itself, which is perfect and without flaw.” And he held it out to them, and they saw that the heart had become a great jewel, glowing with power. It was brilliant with light, and could not be shattered, nor cut, nor be worn away, not even by the hand of a god. For the Armasii stone is the strongest of all things.
Now the divine royals accepted the gift of Armas, for truly it was perfect and without flaw. Then was Armas rewarded, for the Mother gave unto him the Third Hill, that he might make its people his own. And there was his temple raised, to receive his worship. And the heavens and the Hills were glad of him.
Chapter 8
“F
ather, is it true? This has to be stopped.” Paither charged down the winding staircase at his heels. “What can we –” In his hurry, he careened into his father, who had paused at the
bottom. He took a handful of Nichos’s flaming red robe to fix him to the spot.
“Son, please. I’ve only been at this for a week. Tribune Haol says we –”
“Don’t quote
him to me. We have to act on our own.”
The Assemblage House sentry at the passage door nodded respectfully. “Good day, Tribune.”
“Good day to you. I understand we’ve got a little gathering?”
“More than that, Tribune. They’re spilling out of the welcome-yard. I could hear them yelling a little while ago.”
“Has Tribune Haol come through this way?”
“No, sir. I believe he’s already out there. Shall I come with you, Tribune? You shouldn’t be without protection.”
“Thank you, no, I –” Nichos glanced at Paither. “Yes, very well. Perhaps you’ll stay with my son here.”
“Father, I don’t need a nursemaid.”
“These are dangerous days, Master Paither,” the guard said, not saying, and you’re a halfer. “You can enter from the side if you come this way, Tribune.”
The crowd was packed in, from the entry steps of the Assemblage House back to the Main Gates. Outside the wall, women hoisted on husbands’ shoulders peered over. Young men hung from the protruding arms and legs of the yard’s fountain, a statue group of the Trio who had overseen the first successful efforts to draw river water into the farmlands, ten generations ago. Each of the giant Tribunes held out huge water carriers, from which the fountain’s real water sprayed, even now in winter. The shifting wind carried the mists across the unheeding crowd. Guards ringed the perimeters, but the audience was firmly fixed, captivated by the speaker on the Assemblage steps: a living Tribune, Second Tribune Rhonna, raised above them on a makeshift platform, dazzling in a stark white robe, her chain of office shooting out sun streaks as she moved and gestured. Other senior Assembly members were grouped behind her. First Tribune Haol spotted Nichos and waved him over.
“Hard work she’s got today,” Haol said, jutting his chin at the Second Tribune. “Ah. Good day to you, uh –”
“Paither,” Nichos prompted.
“Yes, of course. Paither.”
“How did she get them out here so fast?” Nichos wondered. “I thought after yesterday –”
