Idol of Bone

by Jane Kindred

  Ahr burst out laughing and then pressed his hand to his side with a groan.

  Jak fell into bed after the sun was well up over Rhyman. There had been no time to think of Ra’s disappearance since the chaos had broken out. She must have started the fire at Temple Alya, but had she perished in it? She’d told Ahr she thought it would take losing her life to take the prelate down. Worry yanked Jak from the brink of sleep a dozen times before sheer exhaustion won.

  Waking to pale, bluish light beyond the open window, Jak was uncertain whether it was the pallor of dusk or another dawn until remembering the sun rose over the Anamnesis. It was low now on the other side of the temple.

  Jak wandered down to find something to eat, amazed at how quickly the staff had once again cleared out all evidence of the violence. Merit sat at the table with his head in his hands. He looked up at Jak’s entrance, his creased forehead and look of morbid preoccupation erased as if they’d never been, replaced by an amiable smile.

  “Vetta, Jak. Menédatsausch tené reza.”

  Jak nodded, feeling awkward at the language barrier. Before the silence became too uncomfortable, a servant delivered some news to Merit, and he rose and went out, looking puzzled and slightly annoyed. Jak poured a cup of tea from the pot, and then paused as a joyous exclamation carried from the atrium. “Meneut!” It was the address Merit used for Ra: my liege.

  Jak abandoned the tea. At the entrance to the temple, Merit was kneeling on one knee before a cloaked figure. The hood fell back and Ra’s dark braid swung forward as she touched him on the shoulder and spoke softly to him. Jak took a step forward and then stopped, conflicting emotions warring with one another. Ra looked in Jak’s direction as Merit rose. Her smile erased any hesitation.

  Jak ran to her, pulling her slight body into a tight embrace. “Dammit, Ra. You have to stop doing that!”

  “I’m sorry.” Ra kissed Jak’s cheek almost chastely, but there was warmth in her eyes. “It was unexpected. I had to get Pearl.”

  “Pearl?” Jak let go and noticed for the first time the child standing behind her.

  “It’s all right, Pearl. They’re our friends.” Ra nudged back the child’s hood, revealing wide, frightened eyes of crystal blue in a face that looked as though it had never seen sunlight. “He came to me in a vision.” The boy clung to her hand, trying to hide behind her. “He is the son of MeerAlya of Soth In’La.” Pearl looked up at her as if hearing these words for the first time as she repeated it in Deltan for Merit.

  “MeerAlya?” Merit shook his head in wonder. “Kehma?” Ra gave a small shake of her head as if there was something she didn’t want to say in front of the boy. Merit’s brow knit with concern, but he gave Pearl a formal bow. “Ischvetseh, Pearl. Maisch Merit.”

  Ra bent down to Pearl. “And this is mene midtlif, Jak.” She blended the languages, but Pearl seemed to understand them both.

  Jak smiled and held out a hand. “Hello, Pearl.”

  The boy backed away, and Ra spoke quietly with him for a moment. She gave Jak an apologetic smile. “He’s not comfortable with touch from strangers. Pearl doesn’t mean to be rude.”

  Jak tucked the hand in a pocket. “That’s all right.”

  Ra persuaded Pearl to remove his cloak, and a length of white-blonde hair, braided like Ra’s, fell down his back. A servant appeared out of nowhere to take the cloaks as Ra peeled out of hers as well.

  She spoke quietly to the servant, but Pearl grabbed her hand again and shook his head. Ra lifted his chin with a gentle hand. “No one will hurt you here.” The blue eyes blinked at her, sharing some silent communication. It was unnerving how they seemed to understand one another so thoroughly, regardless of language.

  “I’ll take him to get something to eat.” Ahr had appeared quietly on the stairs, and he came down to meet them, giving Pearl a hesitant smile. Jak had never seen an expression quite like it on his face before.

  Pearl made a soft, gasping sound, and it was a moment before Jak realized he’d said Ahr’s name.

  Jak looked at Ahr. “Do you know him?” He shook his head, looking just as puzzled.

  “Pearl has drawn us,” Ra said to Ahr. “He sees the continuous stream of Meeric history, and he draws it.”

  Ahr’s ears went pink. Pearl seemed awestruck by him, however, and went to him without prompting. Ahr recovered his composure and took the boy’s hand, leading him to the dining nook.

  “It’s cold in here.” Ra rubbed her palms together. “Can we sit by the fire?” Merit looked blank at the foreign tongue, but Ra proceeded to the receiving room on the other side of the atrium and left them to follow.

  Jak frowned from the doorway as Ra sat cross-legged on the carpet before the hearth. “Do you even have any idea what’s been happening here?”

  “Oh yes.” She held her hands to the fire, and Jak couldn’t help but feel a bit alarmed after what had occurred at In’La. “Pearl has been drawing for me. Merit’s done very well, don’t you think?”

  Merit sat across from her in the leather chair beside the fire, looking from Jak to Ra. She merely smiled at him. She spoke in Mole, explaining to Jak how Pearl had brought her into his vision and what Nesre had done to him.

  “Pearl is very special,” she said. “He may be the only Meer of his kind there has ever been.”

  “But it took cruelty to make him.” Jak choked back horror at what Ra had explained.

  “Yet he survives, and with the heart of a pearl.”

  “Pearl—it’s the same in Deltan?”

  Ra smiled. “Yes, I guess it is. I hadn’t thought about it. I suppose Mole has borrowed many Deltan words and forgotten it.” She switched to her own tongue then, speaking with Merit for several minutes while Jak wandered about the room looking at the odd shapes of the Deltan letters on the spines of books shelved along the walls.

  “And so I thought we could take him home with us,” Ra continued suddenly as if she’d never stopped speaking Mole.

  Jak turned. “To Haethfalt?” Despite surprise at the suggestion of bringing Pearl, it was a relief to hear she was still planning to go. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Ra’s face fell. “But why not?”

  “Can you imagine him there? You were strange enough to them, if you want the truth. And there are still Meerhunters in Mole Downs.”

  Ra nodded slowly, reluctantly. “But it’s not safe for him here either.” She spoke to Merit again for a moment and then sighed. “You’re right, of course, Merit.” She seemed unaware she was no longer speaking Deltan. “Merit says they can hide a child here more easily than they could hide me. They’ll have to cut his hair.” She looked sad at that.

  “It’s beautiful hair,” Jak admitted. “But do you think it matters to him?”

  “Matters?” She fingered her own braid as if pondering it. “It’s the symbol of the Meeric creative power, but I suppose it holds no power of its own. I’ve just never known of any Meer to cut it.” Ra sighed again, looking through the arch in the direction of the dining nook. “But he trusts me. He doesn’t know anyone here.”

  Even as she spoke, Ahr’s laughter carried across the atrium, an uncommon sound of late.

  Jak smiled. “I think he’ll be just fine here.”

  Pearl seemed perfectly at home in Ludtaht Ra with Ahr beside him, and Ahr was clearly fond of him already. Ra recognized the expression in his eyes when he looked at Pearl. He saw what she did: a way to heal from the loss of RaNa. Pearl continued to communicate in pictures, not all from the Meeric flow, but as an expression of his thoughts, and presented some as gifts to each of them. He drew with astounding skill. He shyly presented a portrait he’d drawn of Jak wielding a three-tiered candelabrum as a weapon. Jak and Ahr both laughed at the sight of it. As fond as she was of Pearl herself, Ra conceded he would indeed be fine at Ludtaht Ra.

  There was nothing left now but to s
ay good-bye to him. And to Merit. They’d lingered nearly a week, and though the unrest had settled into an uneasy peace and Merit had begun to take to his new role with confidence, it was only tempting fate for Ra to stay in Rhyman any longer. Ra had promised Jak, and it was time to go home. The highland moors of Haethfalt were waiting for them.

  They would leave by the servants’ portal to avoid attention. Merit stood before it when Ra was at last ready to depart, shoulders stiff and head facing forward, dressed in the ceremonial costume of the Meer’s attendant. As Ra approached, he struck his chest with his fist in salute, eyes straight ahead. Ra put down the satchel she was holding and answered his salute with both fists crossed over her own chest, then breached the sacred space between them. She took his face in her hands and kissed him on the mouth and forehead, and then wrapped her hand about his still-saluting fist and bowed to him on one knee.

  “My liege.” He tried to pull her up from the ground, but she held fast.

  “No, Merit,” she said. “You are the lord of Rhyman now.”

  “Please, meneut.” His voice was pained, and she allowed him to draw her to her feet.

  Ra wrapped her arms around him then and pressed his cheek to hers. “Mené midt, you have never failed me,” she said softly, and Merit shook with the threat of tears. She released him and bent down to Pearl, who stood beside him looking a bit forlorn. She cupped Pearl’s chin and smiled at him, sharing an image with him of how proud she was of all he’d done. A red tear slid down Pearl’s cheek, and she stopped it with a kiss before covering her head with her hood and taking up her satchel once more, descending by the servants’ steps. Ahr hadn’t come to see them off.

  Jak shook Merit’s hand in a friendly clasp and rumpled Pearl’s shorn hair, earning a shy smile, and Geffn thanked Merit in awkward Deltan. Pearl seemed to frighten him, and Geffn only gave him a quick smile and turned away.

  Jak pushed away the sting of Ahr’s absence. They’d said their good-byes once already. He’d promised to come when he could, and things felt right between them finally. The rift in their friendship had healed. Jak would see him again. For now, it was enough that Ra was coming home.

  Moving with a strength and confidence she hadn’t possessed since Haethfalt, Ra looked back over her shoulder and smiled, and it was more than enough. Jak grew warm at the memory of her unexpected touch on the night before she’d slipped away to In’La. There hadn’t been another opportunity for them to be alone, but there would be time now to explore what was between them at their leisure. They’d weathered the worst they might face together. Ra’s name was in the moundhold, and Geffn and Jak had spoken privately. Geffn had given his blessing, and it meant more than Jak could express. Despite everything, he was Jak’s oldest and dearest friend, and it would have hurt to lose him or to cause him further pain.

  Ra hung back and took Jak’s hand as they reached the bank of the river that would lead them to the Filial and home—the Anamnesis: the river of remembering. Ra had plumbed the depths of her own dark river of memory, restoring all she’d hidden away from her own mind and dredging up the pain she’d tried to forget. What she’d recovered was worse than anything Jak had feared or imagined, more terrible than anyone ought to be able to endure, even a Meer. She’d suffered something cataclysmic in the remembering of it, yet she was whole. There was nothing else that waited unknown in the darkness to separate them. There were no longer any secrets between them.

  There was nothing more to fear from remembering.

  Ahr watched from an upstairs window as the travelers departed, his heart too full of warring emotions to bear a personal good-bye. It was a tremendous relief to know Ra was gone, and he breathed out as if breathing her away, the tension and pain of her presence draining out of him as though he’d held that breath forever. There was no longer any debt between them, she’d said, and Ahr believed it. Ra had spoken.

  But Jak was gone with her, the only soul with whom he’d ever truly communed. He’d promised to return to Haethfalt once Merit’s rule was secure, but he couldn’t face that now. Was there a way he could coexist with Ra in the place that had been his refuge? Could he bear to see Jak with her? His heart ached at the thought. He pushed away the cruel voice in his head that wondered whether it was on Jak’s account or Ra’s that his heart hurt so. It didn’t matter. They were gone and he was here with Merit. It was as it should be. It was the only way it could be.

  And there was Pearl. He smiled, despite himself.

  As Jak and Ra receded with Geffn into the distance, he went downstairs at last. Merit still stood on the steps, his stance stiff and formal, his fist tight against his breast in salute as the figures disappeared into the rushes along the river’s edge. Ahr took Pearl’s hand and rested his other on Merit’s shoulder. There was no need to commune with words. He waited with Merit until they were long out of sight and then turned him gently toward the temple. Pearl edged up against Ahr into the hollow of his arm as if he’d always belonged there.

  “I love him as I love you,” said Merit, desolate.

  “I know,” said Ahr, not correcting his slip, and led him in.

  Epilogue

  There was no reason to stay in Soth In’La and every reason not to, but it hurt to leave it behind, knowing what they’d lost. Cree and Ume returned to the Northern Lake to wait—for what, Cree wasn’t sure. Would the Hidden Folk seek them out? Did they already know? It seemed the right thing to do, regardless. It was almost spring by the time they arrived, but Cree barely noticed the crocuses and narcissus poking up along the road between patches of thaw.

  Despite the ache inside her, Cree went on as she had before, finding work washing dishes in a little town off the lake while Ume took orders for dresses when the locals learned she’d sewn her own. They’d been settled a week and had seen nothing of the Hidden Folk. Cree wondered if they gave a damn. They’d only wanted their property kept from the hands of a mortal, after all. With both mortal and child dead, she supposed they must be satisfied.

  She hadn’t cried—not then, when the pregnancy had been forced upon her or when she’d lost the child as she supposed, and not now that she knew the truth and had lost the child twice over. But feeling Ume’s sorrow as she lay beside her at night was like having the blood leeched slowly out of her. Ume had wanted to tell her of the boy, how he seemed in the brief look she’d gotten of him, but Cree had asked her not to. It was a comfort, at least, that the boy had no name to haunt her memory. She didn’t need a face.

  “We should go out to the woods,” Ume murmured from the verge of sleep beside her as Cree spooned against her in bed. “They aren’t called the Hidden Folk for nothing.”

  What would they say? That they’d tried and failed to rescue the child? And, oh, by the way, thanks for telling us he was mine.

  The tears demanded an outlet at last, and Cree hugged Ume to her tightly while she wept for hours, grateful that Ume simply let Cree hold her without words, without trying to soothe or comfort. There was no comfort to be had other than Ume’s love and Ume’s warmth.

  In the morning, she agreed to take a walk with Ume to the wooded side of the lake, and they went hand in hand, neither speaking. Cree felt as if she were marching to her own funeral. They sat on the rocky shore among the trees, bundled up and shivering together as they waited. After an hour, Cree was ready to call it quits, feeling a mixture of relief and bitterness at the absence of the Hidden Folk, but as she rose, she saw the Caretaker standing still as one of the trees.

  The woman beckoned, and Cree approached with Ume at her side, clinging tight to her hand. She’d meant to start out with the passionless facts, that they’d been unable to save the child, but instead the ache inside her impelled her to an outburst of pain and anger.

  “That was my child!” she shouted. “You sent us to fetch my own child for you! What kind of monsters are you? Meer, Hidden Folk, Men! You’re all the same!”

  The
Caretaker remained unruffled. “There are many things in the pool of knowledge, some bright and clear, others murky. We knew you were the mother of Pearl. We also knew it would make your task harder if the waters of this knowledge were transparent.”

  In the midst of more anger at the cryptic speech, Cree paused. “Pearl?”

  “The boy chose a name. He spoke, and it became so.”

  Ume was crying. “I tried to save him. I failed you all. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Cree.”

  Cree pulled Ume close to her side and kissed her hair. “Don’t, love. It isn’t your fault. Please don’t. If they weren’t so damned set on not interfering in the affairs of mortals, they could have saved him themselves, years ago.”

  “You misunderstand,” said the Caretaker calmly. “We do not travel beyond the hill. It was not until you came near that we were able to engage you. It seemed the right solution, but we do not have foreknowledge, only knowledge.”

  “I didn’t come near,” Cree grumbled. “You came into the middle of Mole Downs and interfered in my affairs. You ought to have left me there.”

  “Cree.” Ume’s gasp was sharp with surprise and hurt, and Cree felt like an ass for wishing to be dead rather than here with Ume. And she didn’t. Of course she didn’t. But dammit, she wished that just for a little while she couldn’t feel.

  The Caretaker, for once, seemed to have an expression of sympathy instead of the cool, emotionless mask. “You came near, Cree Silva, because you died and came under the hill. And you were not in the middle of the town of Mole Downs. The men who attacked you had driven your body out into the wasteland and left you to bleed. That is where I found you, and I knew you for the mother of Alya’s lost child. We do not often change the course of mortal events, but we had been neglectful of our own, and so I chose to act.”