by Vela Roth
Lio found it difficult to hear her commentary out. “I have read the mages of Anthros tolerate the temples of Hedon as a means of promoting order.”
“Yes, they like everyone to keep their vices under the temple roof, where the mages can oversee them. Hedon has plenty of servants to assist in the endeavor. Once forsaken, if you wish to eat, you must earn your bread on your belly or your back.”
And humans thought his people were perverse? “I am no stranger to the concept of sacred union, to be sure. Before the Order of Anthros enforced celibacy among all mages, pleasure was a part of worship in many cults. But to turn that ritual into a punishment…to force it on anyone…” Lio’s hand tightened on the fallen pillar. “The mages of Anthros impose their cult on everyone else, their ‘order’ on everyone’s lives, and use all other cults as a means to that end. They march over the many sacred practices and beliefs that once thrived, as if they wish to grind that wondrous variety to sand of a single color beneath their heels. They have no respect for anyone’s Will but their god’s, and as to what it is, we have only their word.”
Spell light cast a sharp gleam in Cassia’s gaze. “Oh, but the forsaken did have a choice, of course. They could have chosen to obey Anthros. It is perfectly honorable for a man to throw away his life on the end of a real sword in battle or for a woman to earn her bread on her back as a wife.”
Lio found himself pulling away from the Union for the first time that night. If Cassia spoke any more bluntly, she would bruise him. But he should not shy away. He must listen. This was the reality she lived in, one his own Trial brothers might have endured as well, had they not been Hesperines. “Surely there are people here who find happiness and comfort in one another, despite the odds. Not all the people I encountered at the palace feast were unhappy in their partners.”
“The Cult of Hedon is more predominant in Cordium than in Tenebra, I’ll grant you. You won’t find many pleasure temples here. Most often, a Tenebran warrior in need of a man to sharpen his sword keeps a favored retainer close at hand. Others prefer their concubines. Much to their wives’ relief. Lady Elana encourages her husband to see his concubine as much as possible, so she and her handmaiden Lady Fidela may enjoy themselves without the man of the house around to interfere. Then there is Lady Caro, who uses her position as a widow to attract the very best liegemen to her service. Lady Caro is very smart and effective.”
“It seems as if your rules are designed only to make you all miserable.”
“They are not my rules. I was born in violation of them. My father’s god has no use for a whore’s bastard, so why should I have any use for him? When Anthros marches all of us who displease him to the pyre, I rejoice that I shall be among that company with you and your Trial brothers.”
Lio stared at her. “I wish you could meet Mak and Lyros. They would appreciate you.”
Her cheeks were flushed again. She pushed away from the ruin, and Lio rejoined her on the path. Knight moved with her, his stick left behind and tail still.
“Your turn,” Lio said. “Do our midnight walks take you away from someone whose company is infinitely preferable to mine?”
“You did not pay attention during my lesson on what is forbidden in Tenebra. Conversing with a heretic is the extent of my secret life. Anything more would be imprudent in my position.”
“As adept as you are with secrets? You are very smart and effective, Lady Cassia.”
“I am not Lady Caro. I am Cassia Basilis.”
Her name said it all. Why the strictures were different for her and ever more binding. But even as the king’s daughter spoke of prudence, he had heard the concubine’s daughter speak in anger, out of bitter experience. “Yet you have no use for Anthros’s rules.”
“I certainly don’t. Nor do I have any use for activities that are not worth the risk.”
Lio felt suddenly he was treading on dangerous ground indeed, not least because it would be presumptuous of him to question her choices on such a personal matter. But also because he felt furious.
He angered anew at the cult of Anthros, which robbed Cassia of such a vital part of who she was. It was sickening. Unnatural. For Cassia, one of the best parts of being alive was not worth the risk. Her own nature was too dangerous for her to experience. As if she would be punished for using her ears or her eyes or her voice.
She did fear punishment for using her voice. She dared not say the wrong word, look the wrong way, or put her foot down on the wrong flagstone in her father’s presence.
Lio’s head told him he ought to watch what he was saying, but his heart demanded something else. For once, he didn’t think about the consequences of his words. He just said them. “Everywhere you turn, you are told to do away with your desires. That they do not matter—nay, that they are an abomination. It is wrong.”
Cassia came to a halt on the path and rounded on him, her blood rushing with anger. Because he had spoken out of turn?
Because he had spoken the truth?
Cassia wore her stone face. “The king’s daughter has no desires.”
“He is not powerful enough to banish them, Cassia. Nothing he says or does can kill them. Shame upon him for trying to chain them so they wear away at you, a curse rather than a blessing. It is immoral to deny such a vital part of anyone.”
She let out an artful laugh, just like the night they met, but he knew her better now. He could hear the strain in her voice. He felt as if he could reach out and touch the cord inside her that she held so taut it might snap at any moment.
“To quell desire is immoral?” She arched a brow at him, her chin high. “Now that I have never heard. Trust a heretic to say such a thing.”
Lio wanted to move closer to her. He dare not. “We understand that desires are sacred. They make us who and what we are. They prove to us we live, that we are thinking, feeling beings with a consciousness separate from others.”
“I am no philosopher, as I must often remind you. But it does seem to me you are speaking of the soul. Desire is a foible of the flesh.”
“Both body and soul experience desire. Both are part of the Will. Behind every act of Will, there is a desire.”
“Well, since we are on the subject, perhaps you may now give me the promised explanation of Hesperine mating rituals.”
Lio could not laugh. Not when she was so flippant about something so sacred.
He wanted to tell her just what Grace was and shake all her bitter notions of marriage. But he must stop and think of how much he could say without violating his people’s unequivocal rule: Hesperines did not reveal the meaning of Grace to any Tenebran, unless of course that Tenebran was a Hesperine’s Grace.
If only Lio could explain why Grace was such an astonishing blessing. In her generosity, Hespera made her people immortal and freed them from the need to consume slain creatures, providing mortal blood as nourishment instead. But when she Graced two Hesperines, her generosity overflowed. She gave them a way to thrive on each other, without the need for any mortal’s blood. To be Graced was to know not only sustenance, but abundance.
The great cost at which such a blessing came was, in truth, a kind of blessing in itself. Once you tasted your Grace, no other blood would ever be enough again. The need, the addiction that set in, was irreversible and irresistible—and always mutual. Time and again, Hesperine experience had proved that once the Craving claimed one of you, it claimed the other as well. Even when a Hesperine developed the Craving for a mortal, that human would experience the same hunger in return upon receiving the Gift.
To be Graced was to be truly free, and yet utterly dependent on another. Graces could not live without each other. Well, it was possible for them to survive. Other blood might be sufficient to keep them alive. But Hesperines who lost their Graces seldom lasted long. Everyone regarded the agony of withdrawal as a death sentence. Who could endure eternal Craving without hope of relief? Who would want to?
That was a truth Orthros’s enemies must never discover. If the war mages in the
Order of Anthros learned of the Craving, they would target Graced pairs, knowing if they slew one, the other’s life would already be forfeit.
How was Lio to walk the fine line between his Oath of honesty with Cassia and the centuries of tradition and law that bound him to secrecy? How to describe his people’s greatest strength without revealing it was also their greatest weakness?
“Well,” he said, “we often refer to avowal as the Hesperine equivalent of marriage, to help make it understandable to mortals. But in truth, avowal bears little resemblance to your legal institution designed to secure a man’s right to get a woman with child and ensure his heirs are his own offspring. Avowal has nothing to do with property.”
Cassia lifted her eyebrows. “I have yet to hear a mage define marriage as such in the temple on a wedding day.”
“How do you define it?”
“As a way for the king to get what he wants in exchange for me or the promise of me. But I do not deny your definition is also true, from the standpoint of the prospective groom who wishes to ensure his heirs have a trace of royal blood, however ill-gotten. Is your people’s preoccupation with blood so very different?”
“As different as the moons are from the sun. We do not regard blood as something we can own or to which we have a right. It is a gift. That is the foundation of all Hesperine bonds, but especially Grace. Avowal is the acknowledgment before our people of that bond, which is of the body and the soul, of desire and love, of oath and magic.”
“It sounds like a romantic minstrel ballad.”
“The minstrels didn’t invent love, you know. It has been known to happen to real people.”
“Of course they made it up, so we would have songs to quote for reference, when we pretend we are in love.”
“Of course. Poetry and pretense have kept the Queens of Orthros together for over fifteen centuries.”
Cassia leaned back on her heels. “People tell all sorts of insulting stories about your Queens.”
“If you are referring to the tale that they are lovers, that is neither a lie nor an insult. As for the rumors that amount to slander, I suspect mortals spread them out of jealousy.”
“An insightful observation on the human mind, Sir Diplomat. Your Queens are two females who hold their throne without the aid of men or gods. Tenebrans cannot fathom it, and so they must decry it.” There was no mistaking the curiosity in Cassia’s aura. “How is it to serve them? As one of their diplomats, you have surely been presented to them at some point.”
Lio almost chuckled. “There is no Hesperine in Orthros who has not spent time with them. They are happiest surrounded by their people.”
“What are they like?”
“Kind.” An ache of homesickness overtook Lio. “They are our light and our darkness, and we can always look to them to guide and shelter us. Queen Alea began her service to the Goddess as a Tenebran mage of Hespera. She is the only Prisma of our cult who survived the Ordering. Queen Soteira is one of the greatest healers ever born in the Empire. But she too once lost everything to her enemies—the husband she loved, her students…her entire people. Together she and Queen Alea overcame their suffering to give life to a new land. They will celebrate their sixteen hundredth jubilee five years from now.”
“They need neither pretense nor poetry.” Cassia’s voice held a rare undertone of admiration. “Not when they have power.”
She would say that. If he regaled her with tales of eternal love the night long, would she see anything in them but goals and motivations, personal gain and power? Lio had lived his whole life surrounded by examples of how Graces loved one another and their children. He was not sure any of that would get through to Cassia.
Was there nothing and no one in her life that proved to her love was real?
“Our Queens have been in love longer than they have been on the throne. They have raised eight children together and bounced every other Hesperine suckling in our long history on their laps. Power? Yes, so much that they could sit on their terrace in Orthros and shake the Hagion of Anthros in Cordium to its foundation. Ask yourself why they have not.”
Cassia’s face was utterly devoid of expression, but she spoke with absolute conviction. “Because they cannot bear for even one unknown child to feel afraid.”
Before Lio could voice his surprise at her declaration, Cassia turned on her heel and walked back the way they had come.
Frost Fever
Lio was convinced of Cassia’s hidden depths, but he could not fathom whence her heartfelt statement had arisen.
He followed her, throwing open the currents of the Blood Union. They buffeted him headfirst against an array of inner defenses that would give any mind mage pause.
No one had ever felt like this to him inside, as if she had turned herself to stone. That momentary, intimate connection that had awakened between their minds at the feast truly defied explanation.
Lio should not be surprised Cassia guarded herself so thoroughly, despite her lack of training in resistance techniques. Strength of Will was the one recourse the untaught mind had against magical intrusion.
Whatever had prompted her confident assertion about the nature of his Queens just now, she was burying all traces of it within her. Lio knew right then he had come too close to something Cassia never shared with anyone. Something that made her feel vulnerable.
“Hesperines care about children,” she stated. “That is what I wished to speak to you about tonight. Specifically, a question of medicine.”
The revelation jolted Lio back from the ramparts of Cassia’s mind and heart. Dare he think he was about to find out the reason for her interest in his people? Could she have been asking him questions on a child’s behalf all along?
He had speculated endlessly as to why she had approached him that first night, but he still had no theory that satisfied him. He could only wonder, for he knew if he attempted to press Cassia for what she kept to herself, he would only risk driving her secrets deeper—or driving her away.
At one point, he had hazarded a guess she had a friend or loved one whose suffering had inspired her to ask whether his people might provide the Mercy. He had finally deemed that unlikely, for it seemed she held no one dear except Knight. Now Lio wondered if he had been wrong to dismiss the idea after all.
“I will provide whatever answers I can,” he promised. “I regret I have limited expertise in healing.”
“I don’t need the assistance of a healer, but rather, a diplomat.”
If she was trying to approach a difficult matter, he had best do what he could to put her at ease. He smiled. “Then you are certainly in luck. I am at your service, although I am but an—”
“Initiate ambassador. Even better, for a full ambassador’s price would be higher.”
“I haven’t heard the favor yet,” he said lightly. “I may raise my price.”
“No…for this I think you will offer me yet another boon, out of the goodness of your heart.”
“What is the matter, Cassia?” he asked gently. “For whom are you so concerned?”
“My question regards the concerns of another. The Prisma at the Temple of Kyria has just informed me in the strictest confidence about an outbreak of frost fever.”
Not the reason she had first sought him out, then, nor a personal crisis. An impending crisis that might affect them all. “Hespera’s Mercy.”
“You must understand, Tenebrans live in fear of this illness.”
“It’s infamous to us, as well. It is dangerous enough to adult humans, but if a child catches it…”
Cassia searched his gaze. “I have seen less concern on the faces of fathers told they’ve lost a new babe to the fever.”
“I saw a father die on the temple steps trying to protect his children from me. I do not claim to know how he felt. But any time frost fever strikes, it is a grievous time for Hesperines. That illness casts suffering children into the world like nothing else, and there are so many we cannot save.”
; “Take heart, for it is far away yet, in villages to the east.”
“The eastern Tenebrae?” Lio asked urgently.
“Word from there does not travel swiftly or reliably. I only give the rumor credence because the mages of Kyria take the threat seriously.”
“Then we certainly ought to, as well.”
“No one else must know there is genuine cause for fear. The mages are not to breathe a word about it outside the temple walls. However, the Prisma told me in order to ask a favor.” Now Cassia waved a seemingly dismissive hand. “One I am hardly in a position to grant, as she should know.”
“There is some way I can help?”
“You can tell me if there are any healing herbs among the gifts your embassy has offered the king and whether he intends to accept them.”
“We did offer a great many medicinal plants, including rimelace, the only effective treatment for the fever.” Lio swallowed. “The king refused.”
“Of course. He will refuse anything that might be imbued with malign magic.”
Lio shook his head. “Lucis may not have faith in our good intentions, but he knows we are not so foolish or obvious as to attempt to do harm through a gift we offer him before the entire Council.”
“But he cannot afford the terror that would spread among those ignorant enough to believe so. His subjects’ fear of Hesperine magic has already caused him enough trouble.”
“I am so sorry.”
“Why are you apologizing?” She huffed a sigh. “It cannot be helped. I will tell the mages of Kyria they must make what preparations they can with whatever they have.”
“Don’t they cultivate rimelace in the temple?”
“For all the magic they plied to get it to grow, the last crop failed. The weather here is traitorous.” Cassia gazed down the deer path that slowly but surely led them back toward Solorum. “I have heard tell that in the Magelands, the Order of Kyria knows spells that can make well-nigh anything grow inside their wards. And they say the goddess’s fourteen children by Anthros, the Twice-Seven Scions, empower their mages to cage the wind and make rain fall upward. But such stories don’t make rimelace grow in Tenebra.”