Alana and her sister hadn’t had beautiful clothes or expensive mirrors where they grew up in the Narrows, but they had spent many hours, mainly before the death of their parents, brushing each other’s hair and pretending they were princesses. Though Jill might not have realized it, her presence was giving Alana comfort at a time when she was feeling incredibly lonely. Not to mention scared.
Meeting the Saint? She could hardly imagine what her mother and father would have said about what their little girl was going to do that day. They had been devout believers in Arloth, and so had Alana. Until she had realized that her god had abandoned her.
The church preached that Arloth was the manifestation of rebirth for all of humanity. Scripture said that Arloth came to the people of Ioth in death, no-one knowing who he was before the body was found by the First Saint, to show the people the error of their ways and give them a second chance. They said Ioth was chosen because it was the center of trade, their focus only on money and material wealth and that had to change.
But from what Alana had seen of Ioth over the past few days, it didn’t seem like there had really been much of a lasting effect. She remembered sitting in one of the pauper’s churches that dotted The Spear, the main thoroughfare that bordered the Narrows, and how the old man lectured them on the importance of being good. “Be not tempted by material wealth; and Arloth will protect”. Comforting words for people who are living on the narrow line between desperation and a meal on the table, but it wasn’t like it was a choice for the congregation.
Her parents, though, had believed those words to be true. They had been good people. Good neighbors, always willing to lend a hand to others. When they had both fallen ill, and she had to wipe away the blood that erupted from the lesions on their skin, looking into their eyes while she whispered prayers to Arloth that they would be alright, her mother had told her that this was the way it was meant to be. That Arloth had a plan.
When they had died, something died within her.
Her parents weren’t the only people to be afflicted with the bleeding sickness. Hundreds of people died over the course of a few months, most of them sailors, or their partners. The brothels of Kingshold were hit too. The day after her parents had died, when the wounds were still raw like vinegar in a knife cut, the very preacher they used to listen to as a family at their pauper’s church had walked down their narrow street. He called out that all sinners and non-believers would be taken; that the time to repent was now. Alana couldn’t believe what she was hearing and she remembered the tears falling at the preacher’s curse on her parent’s memory.
She had not noticed that Petra had disappeared until she heard the raised voices outside. Alana had rushed to the doorway to see her sister in the face of the preacher, giving voice to her own feelings of disgust. And the worst thing was that the preacher wouldn’t even look her in the eye. He turned and looked in another direction as she tried her best to confront him, the two of them going around and around like a dog chasing its tail. Eventually Alana took her sister by the arm and brought her back inside where their sobs had mingled as they held each other.
From that moment on she had decided she wanted nothing to do with the church, though she hadn’t really confronted whether she believed or not anymore. Now she was going to meet the personification of god. Anxiety and anger warred inside her.
Jill at last took notice of Alana’s silence and blank stare, “Are you alright?”
Alana considered her maid. She was younger than Alana, but only by a year or two. Her brown hair hung down to her shoulders, her dress slightly more modest with a cuffed neckline, long sleeves, and one or two petticoats less, but Alana could tell that strength hid underneath the green silk. She had walked in on Jill once unthinking, in the same way she would do with her sister, and found her dressed in her underwear doing some sort of stretches. Her trunk was open, and when she saw Alana she had screamed and so Alana had ducked back outside again to wait until she was clothed. Jill had called her back in, her trunk closed once more, and apologized profusely for her outburst of surprise. Alana hadn’t asked about the exercises that she had seen Jill doing, still slightly embarrassed at the whole situation, but she did wonder if they helped her have so much confidence. Her unflappable demeanor was frankly quite annoying.
“Yes, I’m fine. A few caterpillars in here is all,” she said, patting her stomach.
“My mother once told me that when you’re scared of something, the other person probably is too.”
“You think the Saint is going to be nervous about meeting me?”
“Well… I guess that advice might not be relevant in this situation.” Jill laughed. “But it took your mind off for it a bit, didn’t it?”
Alana smiled as Jill finished with her hair.
It had been a short journey down the grand canal to the Isle of the Sanctum. Crews and Jill were part of her delegation, the Admiral looking handsome in his finest red coat; and Sergeant Morris along with Midnight, Forest and Joe had come along as an escort. Katterick had remained at the residence in a sulk. He had been the Ambassador to Ioth for four years and never once received an invitation to meet with the Saint, and now he was removing it from his memory with some early morning drinking. “Nothing wrong with it,” he had said. “It is Wintertide, after all.”
They crossed the piazza in front of the Sanctum on foot, and it was the first time that Alana had the opportunity to absorb the scale of it. She’d seen it a few days ago when she’d had a tour of the city from one of the long narrow boats; but there was nothing like standing up close to something, craning your neck to see the top, to truly get a feeling of size. The golden doors alone were immense, probably as tall as six men stood on each other’s shoulders (which she had seen once before when a traveling circus had set up shop in the market square), and while from the other side of the piazza they looked they were only open a crack, up close there was room for three of them to walk abreast. Sergeant Morris had announced them to the guards at the door and a priest, of the scurrying variety, met them at the threshold. Unsurprisingly, Morris and the Ravens were asked to wait outside.
The priest led them into the Sanctum, Alana walking at his side while Jill and Crews followed behind. Never had she felt so small, even more so than just yesterday at the Palazzo Confluens. Inside, the octagonal room was open under a vast arched ceiling, a shimmering glass dome as its center. Columns reached up from the ground to thankfully support the ceiling, but they still seemed to be so sparse in number that it made Alana foolishly worry about how the ceiling was staying up.
Silly girl, she told herself, it’s been this way for hundreds of years.
It made her think about Mareth’s descriptions of Unedar Halt, the thought of the weight of a mountain being up above your head in such an open space making him a little wary. And while there wasn’t a mountain above her head, the arching stone and glass-paneled ceiling still appeared to be too fragile.
Around the outside of the open space were gold statues of the various saints: there was a lot of them as the mantle passed on before the Saint reached adulthood. In the center was row upon row of long wooden pews that looked to the opposite end of the Sanctum, facing two tall golden objects. The first she knew was the statue of the First Saint; the peaceful looking girl child, reproduced many times for churches across the Jeweled Continent. But she wasn’t sure what the tall construct was on the left. What looked like a tower of golden cages with a gilded platform on top, covered with a triangular pointed roof made of glass. By her eye it looked like that construct was situated directly under the Finger of Arloth.
“What is that?” asked Alana of the man who had been a very poor guide, apparently living in the Sanctum made you take it for granted.
The scurrier stopped and raised an eyebrow, like a teacher who thought you were deliberately playing dumb. “That is the reliquary. The body of Arloth shrouded in gold.”
Alana’s eyes widened. “I… I didn't know it still existed.” They r
esumed their walk but Alana found she couldn't take her eyes off the golden tower. He really existed? Well, once at least.
Their shoes clicked and clacked as they progressed across the stone floor to a door set off to the side of the main alter, the sound echoing around the quiet chamber that was only sparsely populated by a few figures silently and solitarily praying. The door led to a hallway, grand but modest in comparison to the main chamber of the Sanctum. Through leaded windows she saw enclosed square gardens that grew tall with fruits and flowers and vegetables. Maybe not uncommon earlier in the year, but in this season, nature was usually busy having a well-earned nap.
Eventually they reached a door that led out to one such garden and their guide bade them to wait on a stone bench.
“I will see if the Saint is ready to see you,” he said as he left. Alana exchanged a nervous smile with Crews, too nervous to talk. Jill sat quietly, turning her head to inspect their surroundings. A few minutes later he returned hand in hand with a boy, probably not much older than twelve winters by Alana's estimation. “This is Ambassador Narring your Holiness. And this is…” he faltered as he turned to look at Crews.
Alana could see frustration creeping into Crews’ features so she leapt in to help. “This is Admiral Crews. And this is Jill, my…er, assistant. Your Holiness.”
The boy nodded to them both before he turned to look at her. “You are Alana,” he said, his voice piping and not yet broken. She had always imagined the voice of god would be deeper somehow. “I have heard of you.” Alana was unable to hide the look of shock that betrayed her surprise. He had heard of her? The boy looked back toward her companions, “May I borrow her? You may sit and enjoy the gardens. I am sure Enrici will keep you company.”
Crews grunted his acquiescence and Alana suppressed a laugh at his expression. Was it his wounded pride at being left out again, or the thought of having to spend more time with Enrici, who had hardly proved to be good company thus far?
“Thank you,” said the Saint, and he took Alana's hand and guided her through the flowers that grew wild and untamed, their colors mingling like a haphazard rainbow. She felt a small shock at his initial touch—she almost pulled her hand away—a tingling emanated up into her arm, dissipating into a steady warmness.
“I know what you’re thinking; I’m so young to be the Saint,” said the boy. Alana tried to deny it but he would hear nothing of it. “I literally know what you are thinking. It’s a perfectly normal reaction if you haven’t seen me or my predecessors in services at the Sanctum. Are you a believer?”
Alana thought back to the sight of the golden bier back in the sanctum, but also the loss that she felt from her parent’s death and the church’s reaction to it. “I believe that Arloth existed,” she finally answered.
“You threaded the needle nicely there.” He squeezed Alana’s hand. “I am sorry for your loss. Sorry for the priests who took advantage of the situation to bolster their parishioners. Arloth had very little to do with any of it.”
“Can you stop reading my mind?” asked Alana, as they brushed through a rosebush twice as tall as her.
“No. Sorry. It’s always on. Anyone I am around, I can tell what they are thinking at that moment of time. Don’t worry, I can’t read all of your memories. Some of the priests take to counting in their heads when they are around me. But that’s why I like to be in the gardens; there is less to hear. Do you want to know why I wanted to see you?”
Alana nodded, though she knew the Saint already knew the answer. She also realized that there was probably no worse conversation than having one with a precocious pre-pubescent boy with telepathy. She’d thought that, now he knew it too. Alana! she scolded herself.
“It’s fine. I’ve heard worse, believe me,” said the Saint. He had momentarily become a little morose, but before Alana could attempt to soothe him, he snapped out of it. “There are people here in Ioth, probably the ones who are more politically orientated, who have heard that you are the one behind the whole thing. That you organized the common people of Kingshold. You came up with the idea! You sold it to the neighborhoods and the guilds. You found the candidate, this Bollingsmead person. You saved his life from an assassin, and even though you were wounded you don’t bear any scars. Your story bears many similarities to one from this ancient city.” The Saint gazed deeply into her eyes for a moment as he walked. “Quite frankly, Alana Narring, I was wondering if you were like me.”
She stopped dead in her tracks as she tried to make sense of his words. He turned to look at her as she stood there open mouthed. “Like you?”
“Yes. Another Saint. Or maybe the true Saint? This is what I thought and when I finally found out that you were here, I couldn’t wait to meet you. I would not have known if you hadn’t met with the Speaker yesterday. The Archimandrite was thinking about the report that he gets on the daily comings and goings with all the members of the Assembly. No one tells me anything you see, pure luck that I picked up on it. Usually he’s much more careful of what he thinks around me.” The boy smiled sweetly up at her. “I am so glad to meet you.”
She was still in shock, but did not mean to let go of this thread even as her world slipped away from her. “So, am I? Like you?”
“Oh no, not at all. I don’t sense anything of Arloth in you. You don’t need to worry about your own agency, everything you’ve done has been because of your own merit. I think you’re very special Alana. In fact, I have a crush on you. And…” The Saint leaned forward and tapped the side of his nose. “I’m not the only one, if you know what I mean. Oh, you don’t. Well, I think it’s best to let you discover that out for yourself.”
Alana’s mouth moved but nothing came out. She did not know what to say to these revelations. What seemed preposterous a moment ago, that she was some chosen of Arloth, had actually started to make sense before it was pulled away again. And her brain had decided it wanted nothing to do with any of the comments about crushes.
“I must go, Alana. It is the Blessing of the Sea Ceremony this afternoon and I have to prepare. But I have already informed the Archimandrite that I would like him to escort you to the ceremony. I don’t really get to tell him what to do, but there are some requests that he really can’t refuse.” He flashed a mischievous smile. “And you must come to the Wintertide ball tonight at the Palazzo Confluens. I shall have someone arrange invitations.” He threw his arms wide in exultation. “This will be fun!”
Alana had found her own way back to Admiral Crews and Jill, the Saint having left the garden through a different doorway from which they had entered. It gave her a few moments to think on what he had said and try to make sense of it.
But she couldn’t at all.
Did he babble away like a twelve-year-old boy all the time or did he have moments of peace when he was filled with the spirit of Arloth? Maybe she would find out this afternoon at the ceremony.
When she returned back to the seating area, she found her companions sitting in silence. Jill was sitting perfectly still, her eyes closed, only her chest moving as she breathed; once more Alana was struck by, and also a little envious of, Jill’s aura of calm. Crews was hunched forward looking at a tablet of ornamental stone sunk into the garden floor. Wise words from some long-ago Saint, though after the meeting with the current Saint she wondered just how much of the scripture had been the stream of consciousness of a teenager.
Enrici looked up from his perch on a stone bench, his gray clothes blending in with the wall and making her jump when he suddenly reappeared. “Excellent. I trust you enjoyed your audience with the Saint. I will now take you all to the Archimandrite. Please follow me.”
Without waiting for an answer, Enrici scurried away once more and the three Edlanders hurried afterwards. Enrici led them further into the back passages of the Sanctum before depositing them in a sitting room that looked like it had been especially laid out just for them. Three cushioned seats were stationed around a small circular table, with space left for one other chair, fac
ing the window. They sat while the priest disappeared, and Alana took the opportunity to share some of the details of her conversation with the Admiral and Jill, though she was still refusing to process the topic of crushes.
Eventually, the door to the sitting room opened and in walked an older gentleman followed by four armored knights. To describe him as an older gentleman was probably understating it somewhat. She’d seen some old folks in her life, typically old ladies that had become universal constants by way of the magical mix of whiskey and tea they imbibed each day, but while he looked strong and straight, walking without help, he had more wrinkles than a washer-woman’s hands. They all stood as he entered; he must be the Archimandrite by the magnificently embroidered robes he wore. He was either ready for the festivities that afternoon, or he had a much nicer housecoat than she would have expected. An attendant entered carrying a chair, much like the ones they were sitting on, and he set it down in the empty space. The Archimandrite slowly lowered himself into the chair. He waved at Alana, “Sit.” He flicked his hand in a shooing motion at the attendant, “Lunch. Go.”
Alana leant forward to introduce herself, but the Archimandrite raised his hand stopping her, his eyebrows raising in unison. “Lunch.”
What felt like a few seconds later three servants brought in plates of bread, cheeses, honey and some delightful looking tiny pockets of stuffed pastry. “No need to wait on ceremony. Help yourself.” He instantly went for the tiny pie-like things, so Alana followed suit.
Ioth, City of Lights Page 31
