“Listen, what do you know about the Reliquary?” said Csorwe.
“I know the myth,” said Shuthmili. “It seems awfully convenient that it’s resurfaced now. It doesn’t make sense that the actual Reliquary of the actual Pentravesse would have survived.”
“And if it was real?”
“If it were real it would be one of the greatest discoveries this century, in historical significance alone. And if any of the myth is true—if it’s not broken, or empty—if the texts weren’t exaggerating—it would be unimaginable. Unimaginably valuable, unimaginably powerful, unimaginably desirable—” Shuthmili trailed off, realising Csorwe was grinning at her. “What?”
“No, no, go on,” said Csorwe.
“Pentravesse was certainly a real person who really lived, but you have to admit it sounds a bit unlikely that he really stored up this impossible knowledge in a special box.”
“Sethennai thinks it’s real,” said Csorwe, and paused to let this sink in. “If we got it back for him, he’d take me back, and you too. There’d be work for you. He could help you, teach you, whatever. If anyone can hide you from your aunt and Tsaldu, Sethennai can. He helped me and he’d help you too.”
“Do you actually think it’s possible?” Shuthmili looked out at the dark landscape, trailing her hand in the breeze.
“Sure,” said Csorwe. “I do this kind of thing all the time.” She hadn’t meant it to sound impressive, but found herself hoping that Shuthmili would be impressed all the same.
“Inspiring,” said Shuthmili, hiding a sliver of a smile behind her hand. “And Belthandros Sethennai would really take me in?”
“He doesn’t do charity,” said Csorwe. “But he took me in when I was little, and he doesn’t let go of anything useful. He misses having other wizards around. There are some in Tlaanthothe but none of them are any good, or something. He’d like you, I bet. And it’s got to be better than Archer.”
“No,” said Shuthmili. “I can’t.”
“All right. So tell me to turn the barge around. Tell me to take you back. You’re right. If we turn back now, they won’t even notice you’ve been gone. It can all start up again.”
Shuthmili closed her eyes. “So—but—how can I? How can I possibly…”
“Betray your Church? Leave your people? You can, I promise. You miss it for a bit. It’s hard for a bit. But if it’s stay and die or leave and live, Shuthmili—”
“I can’t do it,” said Shuthmili. “I won’t survive for five minutes.”
“I get it. It’s hard to run alone,” said Csorwe. “But you won’t be on your own.”
All around them, the Echo Maze resounded with the voices of wind and water. Csorwe didn’t meet Shuthmili’s eyes. She didn’t want to influence her decision, or maybe she just couldn’t face her. Then she felt Shuthmili’s hand on her wrist, very light, like a breath.
“All right,” Shuthmili said. “Let’s go.”
Under the overhang, they drifted in a pocket of stillness. Mist folded and faded in the canyon.
“I was worried you’d say that,” said Csorwe, after a minute.
“What? Why?”
“Because I know how we’ll find Oranna, and I don’t like it.”
16
Handmaid of Desolation
IT WAS EARLY SPRING in northern Oshaar. Snow still covered the little town in great heaps, as though the sky had decided a mercy killing was the only thing for it, and was trying to smother the place with a pillow.
“What is this place?” said Shuthmili, pulling down the hood of her coat.
“This is my hometown.” The streets were glossy with ice, and a sharp wind was blowing down from the mountain. It was three o’clock in the afternoon and already starting to get dark. The two moons of Oshaar loomed toward each other across the sky. “You ever heard of the Followers of the Unspoken One?” she said.
“The Unspoken is a god of prophecy, I think,” said Shuthmili. “It’s one of the major cults of northern Oshaar. The Church classifies it as a low-priority threat. We don’t approve of their sacrificial practices but they’re relatively stable and content to stay in their own little— Csorwe, do you mean they’re here? And you grew up here?”
“Yes.”
“So you were—you subscribed to the heresy?” Shuthmili’s hands were buried in her coat, but Csorwe suspected she was twisting them together anxiously.
“Wouldn’t say I actually sent off for anything,” said Csorwe. “I was a child. Don’t worry. It was a long time ago. I don’t worship anything these days.”
“I’m in no position to judge anyone,” said Shuthmili. “I’m just trying to work out whether—whether Dr. Lagri and the Warden would be more upset to learn I’d run away with a heretic or an atheist. It’s sort of funny. Poor Aritsa. Poor Malkhaya.”
“They would have got on just fine in the cult of the Unspoken,” said Csorwe. “We had a lot of sticklers.”
“Oh no,” said Shuthmili. She could have been laughing or crying or just breathless in the cold. “Oh, no, those poor men. Both of them. They didn’t deserve it.”
They trudged on up the glassy streets and out onto the high road. Csorwe told Shuthmili about the House of Silence and the rites of the Unspoken, leaving out anything that pertained to Csorwe’s own actual history. She liked Shuthmili. She hoped Shuthmili might like her, as long as she believed Csorwe was competent and successful. All that old stuff, everything about being the Bride of the Unspoken, it was both too private and—because Sethennai and Talasseres both knew—too public. It was nice to talk to someone who didn’t automatically know about Csorwe’s first and worst betrayal.
From the House of Silence, they came on to the subject of Oranna. “I think she must have broken with the Followers of the Unspoken Name,” said Csorwe. “The ritual of oblation—everything we saw in the Hollow Monument—it’s too extreme. They would never have given her authorisation to leave Oshaar and chase the Reliquary.”
“But you think she might come back here now that she has it?” said Shuthmili.
Csorwe had done her best not to think too hard about it, but it was only fair for Shuthmili to know what she was getting into. Reluctantly, she explained what Sethennai had told them about Oranna’s aspirations to union with the Unspoken.
“That’s deeply blasphemous,” said Shuthmili, sounding almost impressed. “Qarsazhi mages have spent hundreds of years learning to limit the connection between practitioner and divinity—to make it safer—the idea of opening up like that…” She shivered, no longer sounding impressed at all. “But I don’t think it can be done. It would take too much power. It would shred you from the inside out. But if she thinks there’s some secret technique in the Reliquary…”
“Yeah. I just hope she hasn’t managed to open it,” said Csorwe. “If she was really asking Tal, she must be desperate.”
Csorwe looked up ahead, above the trees. It was too dark to see the sacred mountain, but by day the steps to the Shrine would be dimly visible from here.
“This is where her power is. She may have come back here. And if not … there is another way to find her.” Csorwe disliked the idea so much that she’d delayed explaining it to Shuthmili, but it was time. “If we have to, we can claim the pilgrim’s boon of prophecy. We can ask the Chosen Bride.”
* * *
The great doors of the House of Silence were always shut, and these words were inscribed above the lintel:
Hail the Commander of Legions! Hail the Knight of Abyss! Hail the Overseer of the Eaten Worlds! Hail the Unspoken Name!
The breaking of all worlds is foretold, and the ending of time. May we bear witness, for desolation is its watchword.
A young lay-sister was waiting at the side gate with a lantern. She was surprised to see Csorwe and Shuthmili, and then delighted when she learned that they were pilgrims. “The Lady Prioress will want to meet with you,” she said, ushering them inside.
The House of Silence was just as it had always been. This shou
ldn’t have been a surprise. It had been exactly the same for a thousand years or more. Incense and ashes of lotus, beeswax and woodsmoke. A bone-deep chill, rising up from the crypt. Soft footsteps on the stairs, and at every corner of every hallway, the flutter of yellow hems disappearing.
Csorwe’s throat tightened as they waited to be shown into the Prioress’ study. She had hoped it would feel smaller and easier to understand. Your childhood fears were supposed to shrink away and become laughable. The House of Silence was still as dark, still as grand, still a spreading, intricate void of mystery and doubt.
She steeled herself. She had nothing to fear from the Unspoken anymore. Her gold tusk, her scarred face, and all the training and tempering of the past eight years had marked her beyond recognition, and in any case none would remember the child she had been. The Prioress’ study was an enormous vaulted room that the small fire could never warm. It seemed to take an eternity to cross the expanse of cold flagstones to the desk. When they reached it, Csorwe didn’t recognise the Prioress, and it took her a second to realise that this wasn’t just the effect of time. She was looking at a completely different woman.
The new Prioress raised an eyebrow, marking Csorwe’s surprise.
“I—ah—I hadn’t heard that Prioress Sangrai had retired,” said Csorwe, trying to cover it.
“Prioress Sangrai lies among the eminent dead,” she said. “I am Prioress Cweren.”
Now Csorwe remembered her. Cweren had been the choir-mistress in Csorwe’s day—a small, plump, pale woman, now a touch greyer and a touch thinner. It was the way of the House of Silence that things became greyer and thinner over time.
“I was hoping to meet with Oranna,” said Csorwe, feeling out what Cweren might or might not know about what Oranna was up to. “She was the librarian in Prioress Sangrai’s time, or—or so I’ve heard.”
“I know who she is,” said Cweren, after a moment. “Oranna left us. I am sorry to disappoint, but she is not here.”
Csorwe probably ought to have been disappointed, and did her best to look like it, but she could only feel relieved. At least when she did have to face Oranna, it wouldn’t be here, in the heart of her power.
“When Sangrai announced her retirement, there were those who felt Oranna should succeed,” said Cweren. “Sangrai announced her selection—that is to say, me—and Oranna was terribly angry, I think. She had never expressed overt interest, but she had amassed a little following of acolytes, some of the younger priestesses, who made her case for her … for a time I thought she might challenge me.”
“To a duel?” said Csorwe.
“It would have been an honourable death for me, but a certain one. Oranna is an outstanding practitioner. On a good day, I can convince a handful of knucklebones to dance. She would have cut me down on the mountainside and made a martial sacrifice of me.” Cweren reached carefully for her cup of wine and took a long sip. “I could have enforced her loyalty. I could have demanded that she pledge oaths in blood. I did not. I let her go. Alas, she did not go empty-handed. She took several lay-brothers and -sisters. Most of the promising acolytes. All the best young priestesses. Every important book from the library, and an entire case of silver candlesticks. We have not seen her since.”
“I see,” said Csorwe.
It was just as she’d expected, then. Oranna had gone, and convinced her favourites to go with her, and—
The realisation hit Csorwe like a handful of ice down the back of her neck. By now, most of those who had gone with her were dead.
They had died in the Hollow Monument, bleeding into the sacrificial pool on Oranna’s orders. If Csorwe had looked at their faces, she would have recognised some of them, could have put names and histories to those anonymous bodies.
There was a knock at the door, and Cweren got up to answer it, conducting an inaudible conversation with whoever had arrived.
Csorwe stood there, numb, staring out of the window. It was utterly dark outside. Beneath the windows of the House were lakes of illumination, in which you could see the snow falling again, the flakes scattering with frantic urgency.
Shuthmili nudged Csorwe’s elbow and whispered. “They don’t know where Oranna went?”
“Don’t seem to,” said Csorwe.
“Are they lying?”
Did Cweren know what had become of her promising acolytes? Better for her to imagine that they were off rampaging with Oranna, not mangled corpses under the ruins of the Monument.
“No,” said Csorwe. She ran a hand back through her hair, trying to clear her thoughts as they spiralled. This whole place is withering on the vine, she thought. They’re halfway slid into the grave already. “No, I—”
We ought to go, she wanted to say. I’ve seen enough, I want to leave. In that moment it seemed that nothing could be worth staying in the House of Silence a second longer.
Before she could say anything, Cweren returned, accompanied by a round-faced child in a novice’s habit.
Cweren took her seat again behind her desk, and the child stood behind her, shifting her weight restlessly from one foot to the other and clearly waiting for some kind of cue. The girl was young enough to stare openly at Csorwe’s scars, but too old to say anything about it. Csorwe wondered whether this could be Cweren’s own child; it would be unusual but not impossible.
“So,” said Cweren. “If we are finished with the preamble, I take it you are here to ask the boon of prophecy.”
Cweren said it so plainly that Csorwe was blindsided. She swallowed, then nodded. “I’d hoped Oranna might be able to help us. But since she’s not here, then, yes, I suppose so.”
“Very well,” said Cweren. “I see no reason to delay. Evening prayers take place in one hour. Will it suit you to pose your questions to the Unspoken then?”
Csorwe nodded again. They couldn’t avoid it, so it did seem best to get it over with.
“Good. Tsurai, dear, have you had your dinner?”
“Yes, miss,” said the girl. Csorwe noticed she had a gap in her front teeth.
Cweren smiled. “Tsurai is our Chosen Bride. She’s been prophesying for two years now. We all value her guidance.”
Csorwe felt colder still. Of course. Just as there was another Prioress, here was another Chosen Bride, hunting alone round the House of Silence, just as Csorwe had done. She’d known it, on some level. It had been at the edge of her mind as soon as she’d contemplated asking the boon of prophecy. But she hadn’t thought far enough to remember that the Chosen Bride these days would be a child.
“How old are you, Tsurai?” she said.
“I’m eight, miss,” said Tsurai.
Eight years since Csorwe had left. Of course. The wheel turned slower and slower but it still drove them down into the Shrine.
Csorwe took a deep breath, conscious of all the eyes on her—not least Shuthmili’s—and forced herself to be calm. She was still going to ask for the prophecy, even though it meant demanding that this child channel the Unspoken for her benefit. Csorwe had prophesied so many times—she could almost believe it was not so bad. It was survivable, at least. She herself was the proof of that.
Either way, it was no good having scruples now. They could find Oranna, and recover the Reliquary before she could work out how to open it, and win back Sethennai’s trust—or they could give up, and let her inflict the will of the Unspoken on a world that had not yet learned to fear it.
“We’ll be glad of your help,” she said to Tsurai. “Thank you.”
Tsurai just stared at her, and Csorwe remembered with a bitter pang how she had felt when Sethennai had thanked her for the prophecy, all those years ago.
“Excellent,” said Cweren. “We will convene in the great hall in an hour, then. Is there anything else you wished to ask, before we go to ready ourselves for the prophecy?”
She had been all too ready to leave, but there was one last thing she owed to the past. “My, er, cousin is a lay-sister here. I’d like to speak to her if I can. Angwennad.”<
br />
“Oh, dear,” said Cweren. “Yes, I knew Angwennad. I’m afraid to say that she died last year. She is interred in the crypt if you wish to pay your respects.”
Long ago, Csorwe had entertained a dark fantasy that if she ever saw Angwennad again, Angwennad would know her, and forgive her. She had never seriously believed in the daydream, never actually fed it and given it room to sleep, but it was nice to imagine that Angwennad had hoped in secret for Csorwe’s survival, even knowing that if Angwennad had actually recognised her, she would have been horrified and then outraged. Anyway, now she would never know, and Csorwe would never know, and that was that.
* * *
Candlelight banked and subsided in the great hall of the House of Silence, like a gleaming at the crest of a wave. The smell of lotus was thick in the air, dizzying, choking. Even once Csorwe steadied herself she could feel it softening up her senses. She had been gone so long now, it was hitting her twice as hard as she remembered.
“Chosen Bride, I most humbly ask a boon of the Unspoken One,” said Csorwe. Even half drunk on the fumes of black lotus, there were some formulae you never forgot.
The Chosen Bride sat on her throne in the robes of yellow brocade that had once belonged to Csorwe, and looked out at the assembly through the swirling clouds.
“What is it that you desire?” she said. It was the voice of an eight-year-old in pitch and timbre, but cold as the grave and about as welcoming.
The Unspoken One had not changed. It was not in its nature to do so.
“Knowledge,” said Csorwe.
“Knowledge of that which has passed away, or that which is to come?” said the Unspoken One.
The moment stretched itself out dizzily as Csorwe tried to convince herself this was going to work.
“Knowledge of that which lives in the present moment,” said Csorwe.
There was a sharp intake of breath from the crowd. Every eye in the room was fixed upon her. It had been eight years since Sethennai’s visit to the House of Silence. She had hoped they might have forgotten him.
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