Sandstone walls, bare of decoration or adornment, climbed to a golden ceiling so high above that at its crest she saw only blackness, the midday sun not daring to touch it there.
She’d stared at the entrance chamber. Her mouth agape, eyes turned back with horror, the walls closing in on her even though they soared so high overhead.
Being shooed from the same was a boon.
The woman who hustled her along not wanted any who entered the temple to look at one of the witches and wonder what purpose Havence served in the citadel.
It was a mercy, but Ven said nothing of the same.
The halls to the residential wings were no less impressive, or uninviting. They served their purpose, and nothing more, though she suspected that the royal wing would be different.
The only thing of note in the citadel were the mosaics which covered the floors.
Sand strewn and roughshod, they must have been magnificent when they were freshly laid. Beautiful blues and reds and oranges, every color of a sunset and sunrise. Greens that Ven imagined must have matched the color of grasses and leaves before the sun burnt them to brown and the dry heat bleached them of their vibrancy, made hills and valleys across the floor.
And all led to the images of an aquamarine behemoth rising on opal wings over the landscape to cast the world in darkness.
She’d stopped at that patch of black that billowed out from the dragon’s mouth.
There was no way to avoid it, the floors leached of their color to the first doors of those who would someday serve as priests and aides to the citadel, the memory keepers of the Khanastani.
But these were not memories she was to share.
In the corner of the mural, bound in as many black threads and swirls of darkness, was a mad woman dripping red tiles into the night.
Blood magic.
Spilled to cage the beast.
Only the cage was as deadly as leaving the monster left free, and the darkness was as much a result of the beast’s capture as it was its magic.
“We do not have time for you to linger. The khan has demanded your investiture and will not receive you without you undergoing purification.”
It was the only time the priest deigned to touch her, grabbing her arm to drag her forward when her eyes lingered on the dragon rising into the rain clouds at her feet.
Ven didn’t know when her mother had been separated from her.
All she knew was that she was alone and forced into a small room, barely big enough for the cot in its corner and the peg on its wall which held a solitary robe of dark grey.
Not that she was a paragon of color herself, but the dark grey would soak up the heat of the city whereas her white dress was more practical to their climate.
“Strip. You will go with the other initiates to the Qhoal and then be taken before the king.”
“I’m not—”
He pointed at the robe.
Her fingers shook as she turned towards the peg and its waiting cassock. The white cambric of her dress slithered to the ground and she snatched up the cloak and flung it about her shoulders as quickly as she could. She cinched the robe tight to her body, ignoring its heat, already warm to the touch despite the lack of direct sunlight upon it.
The priest’s lips shifted when she turned back to him; he snarled, and backed away, snapped his fingers in unspoken command to follow and retreated down the hall.
Havence closed her eyes, drew in a cleansing breath full of musty air and dry earth.
“Remember, child, that whatever happens, this is your life now. There is no going back to what you were or the freedoms you enjoyed growing up.”
Her mother’s words, spoken as they entered the city, as their cart was stopped, guards angrily hounding them to step down, to make way, to get moving.
She shook her head, raised the hem of her cloak above her feet, soles bare where her shoes had been stripped from her upon entrance to the temple, and rushed to catch the train of the priest’s robe as it turned a corner ahead of her and she followed him into the darkness.
She had never seen so much water in her life.
Well, she had, in the ocean, but so much water bounded by carved walls, set into the deep pool before her, clear as crystal with no hint of color but that of the white stones set in the bottom of the tarn.
Women were seated around the edge of the tub, some splashing at its center, others lounging half-submerged by the poolside. All of them were naked; all of them were young and beautiful, ebony and bronze skinned, rich golds and dusky topazes tanned deep and dark by the desert sun. She felt pale in comparison, her skin a different shade of gold than theirs, more like her father who had been redder in coloring than her mother’s kin.
She had his black hair that fell straight when unbound, not tightly curled and thick like the women around her; eyes of palest blue, not the rich chocolate and obsidian like them.
They spoke in easy banter with each other. Their words echoed in the cavernous space until Ven could not distinguish one voice from another, could only listen to the cacophony, praying it would stop and wondering what it would be like to speak in such comfort with so many other people.
Only her mother and herself in their lonely cottage by the sea.
And the birds and the fishes that washed ashore.
The myth of a dragon sleeping beneath the tides.
She blinked at the sudden silence, raised her gaze from where it had fallen to a spout gushing liquid salvation into the pool.
They all stared at her, and she drew her robe closer still, not knowing what else to do, how else to respond, here in this unbelievable place of bounded water that women lounged in like they’d never known a day of thirst.
The priest spoke: “Behold the next Amece.”
Her head jerked to him, lips parting to ask what he meant in calling her her ancestor’s name, but her tongue stilled at the hissing that filled the chamber.
Every woman, unaware or uncaring of her nudity, rose to stand on land or in water, and drew a snake over their hearts, lips pulled back in disgust as they stared at Ven, cursed her with the sound of their goddess.
How many times had Shara warned that Ven would never be accepted among the peoples of the city?
Ven had not thought it would be this bad, or their hate this blatant.
Or the dislike and exclusion seemingly encouraged…
Shouldn’t the priest have been more objective, willing to bring her closer to his fold than pushing her away?
But he worshipped a serpent goddess.
Snakes ate their young in their eggs, or so she’d heard.
“She is to be initiated. See that she is purified. The khan Roaca is awaiting her presence.”
What were his words meant to do? See the women to Ven’s aid?
To aid in some ritual upon a woman they clearly believed was cursed? A demon sent to…what?
The priest snapped his fingers.
No one moved to obey him, and Ven didn’t know what he wanted from her, so she too stood still.
He growled. “Bathe, girl. They’ll stop staring once you prove you are like them.”
But she wasn’t, was she?
She was djinn.
“Your wish is my command.”
She was a servant of the sea, as bound to its waters as the dragon to its depths, alienated from the sands because she was a descendent of one who had called upon the ocean for its power and not slithered deep into the golden shadows of the desert.
No one would dare the wrath of Selish to befriend the witch who belonged to the waves, even as they splashed around in the same like there was no shortage and no suffering at the lack of water in the harsh climbs of their world.
Ven swallowed.
With hands that she pretended were not trembling, she dropped the robe from her shoulders, stood naked before them.
The women’s hisses and sigils grew quieter. Their gazes riveted upon the differences of her appearance as opposed to theirs.
Most of the women present were rounded at breast and hip, fed well on whatever it was that served as food here in the desert city.
Ven had never been so lucky as to have much meat on her plate or bread to sate her belly. The mana she and her mother made was filling but without flavor or true substance.
She was small, and slim, emaciated, by comparison, though her muscles were strong where theirs were loose and weak.
Havence stepped forward and one woman sucked in a harsh breath.
There was an exodus from the bathing pool, those still in the water scrambling to raise themselves on unsteady arms over the side of the basin, flee from her presence as she stepped to the side of the tub and looked into the depths.
The white of the tiles was brighter this close to the bath.
It was deeper as well.
She was as tall, if not taller, than most of the women who had fled her presence.
They had all managed to stand in the pool and not drown beneath the tide within its bounds.
But still, to see so much water in one place, wasted in such a way…
“Get in. Bathe. Surely you understand the concept, even from as far away as you’ve come?”
Ven looked over her shoulder, glowered at the priest.
Yes, she understood what it meant to bathe. She’d also heard the stories of men who drowned in the waters raised in a storm, thrown from the decks of ships into the waves of the ocean. A healthy respect for the water. A desire to touch the same and feel it against her unlike she’d ever felt before.
Her mother kept a cask of oil, used to clean their bodies of the sand and sweat after days in the sun, their supply of water too much to waste in simple bathing out in the dunes…at the edge of the ocean.
The water beckoned, and with it, the unknown.
“See she has soaps for her body and hair. She stinks of the sea and the foul things that live in its depths.”
She smelled of freedom, not the sand riddled waste that was the city. If she smelled of the same, it was only to her benefit.
How often had she longed to float in the waters? Learn to swim its great currents? Move through its waves like the fish washed up on shore?
Likely as uncoordinated and doomed as those same fish forced from their home.
Ven sucked in a breath between her teeth, hoping no one was watching her closely enough to see her hesitation, her fear.
It was a simple thing to step to the edge and sink to her heels, heels to her buttock, feet inching in front of her slowly, so slowly that they hovered over the drink without touching, unsure in that moment before contact what to do, how to proceed, to let fear win and back away, reach with a hand instead of submerging fully…
Her feet fell forward, and she scooted to the side of the tub, her legs in the water up to her knees, arms strong enough to keep her on the sill as she slipped into the pool up to her torso, her breasts.
Weightless.
The tiles rubbed against the soles of her feet, smooth and supple with the water coating them.
She stepped forward, arms moving across the surface of the liquid all around her.
Buoyed, and she smiled.
Her chest expanded on an inhale. The water caressed her in a way the sand and the sun never had on land. It was a type of freedom, this pool, caged within the dank shell of the citadel, locked away from the world, floating there.
It was a type of freedom, and she wondered what swimming in the ocean would be like in turn.
A plate clattered at her back.
She turned, crouching low in the waves stirred by her movements, unsure what to expect.
The woman backed quickly away, hand clenched over her breast, eyes on Havence’s face.
Ven was not the dedicant of the striking viper…yet the girl looked on as though it was Havence’s attack soon to come.
Her fingers clenched beneath the water.
“Soap. For your hair and body.”
She made her movements soft and fluid, as fluid as the water she waded through, the extension of her arm a supple reach that was meant to calm the woman.
Her fingers closed around the soap, and she looked for a cloth to rub it against, to bring to bear against her body, but none had been provided and that too she knew better than to ask after.
Her gaze snaked around the room, spied out the other women, some still clenching bars in their hands much like Ven now clenched in hers.
There were bubbles lingering from the lather at the corners of the pool unmolested by her movements within its depths.
So much water polluted for what purpose when she’d barely had enough to wet her tongue?
Without option, she dunked the bar into the depths, and slid it over her skin, scrubbing at the grime and the dirt of three days of travel in unrelenting sunshine, of years of the barest cloth washes with the meagerest amounts of water available.
The priest was not wrong in saying she was covered in dirt.
But this…
“Wash your hair with the bar as well.”
The woman was still hesitant, her hands still clenched before her, words barely more than a whisper as she offered the command…suggestion?
Ven frowned.
The brunette mimed dunking her head under the water, wetting the length of her hair.
For all that Ven was in the pool, submerging fully had not entirely crossed her mind.
To wet her hair?
Most people she’d seen kept theirs short or in tight curls to their heads.
Ven did not.
Her hair did not curl as tightly into heavy strands. Even without washing, it still blew softly in the lightest of breezes.
But she would do as she was told.
This is your life now.
It took more courage than she thought it should, to take a breath and slip beneath the surface of the water, to dunk her head and close her eyes and lose sight of the sandstone and tiles she knew, to slip into a world she’d never imagined, not even when staring out over the ocean at home.
The bar of soap slipped from her hands.
She reached to unpin the clips holding her hair to the base of her skull.
Her fingers caught on the edges of something sharp and she jerked out of the water, gasping as the same tried to fill her lungs and she choked on too much of the drink.
The teal scale gleamed against the white tiles of the pool.
She’d not noticed that the inside of the scale was a paler color than its shell.
A drop of red, so bright in the clear waters, slid from her sliced hand and floated in the water to be caught in the cup of the remnants of the fish’s body.
It settled on the bottom of the shard.
Ruby fire flashed before her eyes and she fell back, fell away from the giant maw that opened and threatened to consume her, back into the water that closed around her body and flowed down her open mouth and drowned her in its embrace.
Chapter Six
He woke to the touch of a soft hand against his hide, so very unfamiliar and impossible these past nine hundred years.
His eyes opened, and he stared at the woman whose impression he remembered from the beach nearly a week ago.
She’d taken his scale.
He’d felt that, knew that.
But he’d not expected to see her, feel her, now, so far away.
He leaned close and she backed away, screamed, fell into a water that was not his water, far from where he could reach her, maul her, save her.
Her eyes…
Blue eyes, as blue as the membrane of his wings, as vibrant as the first strike of the sun upon the sea – he watched panic fill them, her arms flailing as she swallowed and choked and the weight of the water in her lungs pulled her down.
She had touched him.
He’d felt her touch him.
Had woken to her touch against his chest…
His scale lingered on the bottom of the pool she inhabited, the drop of her red blood, undisturbed despite her thrashi
ng, resting in the cup of the plate-metal.
Ouros reached for her, nearly jerked away when his hands…
Not his hands.
He could feel the deep water of his prison, of the chains on his wrists, pulling him down, holding him tight, even as he reached out and grabbed her to him, pulled her into his chest, which was not his chest, and raised her from the water, which was not his own.
“Breathe.”
He growled the word, his tongue unused to making sounds, so long silent but for a roar beneath the waves.
Whether she responded because she understood him, or it was just her body’s natural reaction, he couldn’t say, but she gasped in a breath, and he let his grip on her release, allowed her to slip to her feet in the water, no longer held at its surface in his arms.
Her eyes blinked open and she gazed up at him.
She did not scream this time.
He forced himself to step back, the glint of his scale lingering in the water between them.
“How did you call me, little human?”
She reached out for him, no comprehension on her face, no understanding that he’d said anything to her, curiosity, awe, all that was in her gaze.
Ouros tipped his head behind her to where the other denizens of the pool stood gawking, hands clasped at their lips, their cries and pleadings and noises curiously silent from where he stood in opposition to them.
She turned, looked behind her, crossed her arms over her chest and slunk deeper into the pool, doing her best to hide from the raised hands pointing towards her, the shrieks and open-mouthed calls he saw but could not hear.
A male pushed his way through the crowd.
The hate and contempt, the fear, in his eyes was the same as the men who had driven spears through Ouros wings, bound his wrists in iron gauntlets, cast him into the sea as Amece wove her blood spell to bind him to the depths.
One of the priests who had sentenced him to imprisonment.
She was an heir of the witch’s line.
Humans had changed nothing in the time he’d been bound at their mercy.
The priest jumped into the water.
The girl turned fully to Ouros, stepped towards him, hands upraised to push him, so it seemed.
The Dragon's Storm Page 3