by Vela Roth
“The return trip will be even easier,” he added, “as you acclimate to my magic.”
“Very well. What do I need to do?”
Nothing, he almost said. He could step with her while they stood apart. But that was not the most secure, comfortable or elegant way to involve her in his magic.
And this was too precious an opportunity to waste.
“Come a little nearer,” he invited.
Her steps brought her once more into the moonlight that spilled down into the Ritual Sanctuary.
“In blood magic,” he said, “the divine and the natural are inseparable. Magic and the senses empower one another.”
“So your magic will work on me better if…”
Lio held out his hand to her.
Her gaze fell on his fingers, but she hesitated only an instant. Once she had made up her mind, Cassia would not be stopped. In the name of achieving her ends, she would do anything. Even touch him.
The first sensation of her skin on his, the mere brush of a bird’s wing, swept through Lio’s entire body. She perched her fingers on the tips of his, barely touching.
“Touch strengthens the spell.” He wrapped his hand around hers.
Her hand was so small in his, but he could feel the calluses on her palm and the strength of her grip. He could smell the sap and soil under her fingernails. For a moment they stood like that, both their hearts growing loud in the silence. Perhaps loud enough even for her to hear them.
He let his magic drift out around them, into the darkness and the light. Then he pulled his power close. Her lips parted, and she took a breath. He wrapped her up in his magic, layer upon layer, but ever so gently. Her eyelids drooped, even as her heart pounded louder.
The herbs over his shoulder and the temple of a different goddess waited. He had made a promise.
Lio called to mind the imprint of Kyrian spells he always sensed on Cassia whenever she had been at the temple. That power and the directions she had given him formed a map in his mind both magical and mundane. He went forward first with his Gift, then with his feet.
Stepping through the Prisma’s ward was neither unpleasant nor difficult, only a little strange. Lio slipped between tendrils of magic that felt like the vines of some plant species he almost recognized. They clung to him as if they were unwilling to let him go.
But they never touched Cassia. He cradled her in his power and carried her through. For an instant, they slipped through the world together, free of everyone, wrapped up in his magic.
Then they were standing in a small room awash in candlelight. She dropped his hand as if it were a hot iron. He resigned himself. When she took a deep breath and teetered stiffly away from him, he resisted the urge to steady her.
The magic that surrounded them inundated his senses. A great deal of that power, potent but not malevolent, emanated from the person who stood before them in a white hood and robes of office. Of about Cassia’s height, she was a small woman, but her magical stature was greater than that of any mortal Lio had encountered in Tenebra. He rested the herb basket on the ground at his feet and bowed deeply to the Prisma.
Cassia hastened to place herself between him and the mage. “Prisma, allow me to present Deukalion Komnenos, Initiate Ambassador to Tenebra in service to the Queens of Orthros. Initiate Ambassador, this is the Prisma of the Temple of Kyria at Solorum, Daughter of the Harvest Goddess and Mother to her Handmaidens.”
The Prisma inclined her head. Lio would not have expected or wanted any further greeting. She was a woman who should bow to no one.
She said nothing, and he was quite aware the burden of speech was on him. It was he who entered her temple on her benevolence.
“Prisma, please accept my heartfelt thanks for your forbearance in allowing one such as I to set foot here. It is a great honor to be a guest in Kyria’s domain.”
Silence fell and stretched on, and Lio could feel the Prisma scrutinizing him with her magic. He stood still under her examination, doing his best to emanate goodwill. He did not need to investigate to sense the power that guarded her. The ward she cultivated around her person declared loud and clear she had no intention of his unholy Blood Union sinking thorns into her. Lio had no intention of dishonoring her wishes.
The Prisma’s ward was a tangle of magic within countless others that protected Kyria’s house, just like the temple’s stone walls that Cassia had described. Within those defenses, spells grew blithely everywhere, untrained to the trellis of intensive study. Generations of workings as fleeting as annual blooms and as enduring as oaks had come and gone, and countless thrived now. Lio could also feel the gardeners who tended the spells. The temple housed dozens of mages with auras both shallow and deep, but all were bright, living mortal women who drank and breathed magic.
Lio hardly knew how to express his awe. When was the last time a worshiper of Hespera had set foot in a temple of Kyria? When had any Hesperine been privy to such a glimpse down this path into magic?
Lio snatched careful glances at the votive statue of Kyria that stood, life size for a Tenebran woman, on the altar behind the Prisma. He sensed no disgruntlement from the mage and hoped it was permissible to look at her goddess. Lio did not find Kyria anywhere near as beautiful as Hespera. There were some of his own prejudices he did not try to overcome. The harvest goddess stood with perfect posture, wearing a distant smile. The sheaf of wheat she held in one hand made Lio think of a switch, and she brandished a shuttle in the other. There was little doubt as to the destiny this austere mother ordained for the unborn child she carried in her heavily pregnant belly.
But there was nothing austere about the auras of her mages, whose spells were almost enough to drown out the suffering that lurked somewhere in the temple. Almost. But pain was a beacon to any Hesperine, and the temple’s infirmary was filled with it. Lio tried to ignore the ache and waited for the Prisma to choose to reveal her thoughts.
Cassia bridged the silence. “I find the gift the initiate ambassador has brought to be great indeed, Prisma, although you will be a much better judge of that than I.”
“Let me see,” the Prisma replied.
Lio stayed where he was and let Cassia open the basket. What a time for him to be so aware of how near she came to him as she took the next step in their joint endeavor. How close her hands were to his knee as she withdrew one bundle of rimelace from the basket.
Cassia carried the herbs to the Prisma. From the voluminous sleeves of the mage’s robes, two wizened hands emerged and hovered over the bushel of rimelace. The Prisma’s power spilled out, steady and cool, and again it struck Lio how strange and familiar Kyrian magic felt at the same time. Like some lost cousin of the power he felt Javed and other Hesperines work in Queen Soteira’s Healing Sanctuary.
When the Prisma stumbled, Lio startled. It was hard for him to stand on the other side of the room and watch her distress without lifting a finger. But Cassia already had an arm under the Prisma’s. Leaning on Cassia, the mage lifted her head and looked right at Lio. For the first time he caught a glimpse under her hood.
Her lined, weathered face far surpassed Kyria’s beauty. “I suppose you know what you’ve brought me.”
He bowed again. “Forgive me. I should have predicted how forcefully the rimelace’s natural magic might respond to power as great as yours.”
Cassia glanced between them with the expression she wore when she was studying, trying to draw out meanings.
“Like calls to like,” Lio explained to her. “The Prisma’s power, directed at a plant, is a mother calling her own child.”
“And these particular children answered as if Mother promised them sweets,” the Prisma said.
The remark surprised Lio, and he felt he might have gotten another real glimpse of the Prisma.
She let out a breath, and her strongest emotions escaped the shelter of her magic. Her relief and bitterness were ice and fire in the Blood Union. “So many lives in this single basket, Hesperine.”
“
I rejoice it is within our power to help. The suffering and death the frost fever brings are specters we all dread.”
“Why seek to stop it? Is it not harvest time for you?”
“No. It is the season when the crops wither in the fields faster than we can gather them, and we can do nothing but weep for the waste.”
“What do you know of wasted lives?”
“I? Nothing. I’ve enjoyed an idyllic life in Orthros and never suffered a moment in my life. But the seven babes my mother lost before me were not so fortunate. I’ve seen the look in her eye when she remembers. Those miscarriages and stillbirths happened because all she had to eat was the meager crop she scraped out of the dirt on her knees, while her husband and kin wouldn’t lift a finger to help her. But it has taken her a Hesperine lifetime to realize it was not her fault I was the only child she could save.”
The lines in the Prisma’s face deepened. Lio needed no Blood Union to sense her compassion. It was woven into the very fabric of the ward that hid her from him.
“She ought to be proud of you.”
Lio was so taken aback, he found himself at a complete loss for a reply. Unable to find the right words, he bowed to the Prisma still more deeply.
“Look at what else he has brought you, Prisma.” Cassia pressed the satchel into the mage’s hands.
When the Prisma saw what was inside, she gasped aloud, just as Cassia had.
An unmistakable breath of excitement wafted from Cassia. “Seeds from the hardy Hesperine crop. Just imagine how they will thrive with the aid of your magic.”
The two women bent their heads over the seeds, discussing their plans in rapid murmurs. Lio listened in appreciation and relief to their talk of row arrangements and soil composition, dilution ratios and solvents. It appeared his offering had been accepted.
As they conferred, he tried to make the most of the extraordinary privilege of visiting the temple. He opened his senses to the Kyrian magic, which washed over him and pushed back against him. He was an interloper, a heretic and a male. He was not about to squander such a chance to educate himself about the magic the women worked here.
Without disrupting Kyria’s power with his own Gift, he let her odd and alluring magic imprint its shapes and layers, flavors and scents on his awareness. Only the impressions of distress from the infirmary disturbed his observations. Once again the patients drew his Hesperine heart to them, and the Union honed in on them in spite of him. Well, his study would be incomplete if he did not get a sense of what illnesses and injuries the mages treated and their healing methods. Careful to maintain his control, Lio examined the auras of the ill.
A shiver moved over his skin. So cold. Always shivering. Couldn’t ever get warm. If only the cold didn’t hurt so. It had started in his fingers and toes, but it was moving upward now. When it reached his chest…
Lio flared his nostrils, and he could smell their fear and loneliness. He felt as if he could reach out and gather each sweating, shaking little body into his arms.
Hespera’s Solace, how he wanted to.
“What is it?”
Cassia’s voice drew him back. She and the Prisma were staring at him, the older woman wary once more.
Lio blinked hard and cleared his throat. He gave Cassia a long look. Did she know?
He met the mage’s gaze. “Twenty-four, Prisma. That is no small number.”
Her face paled within her hood. She gripped Cassia’s shoulder. “What one does not know is no danger.”
“Understood.” Lio drew a finger over his cheek, tracing a line from his ear to his chin to indicate the boy who had a cut on his face. “First,” he said firmly.
The Prisma nodded. She too must sense how far gone that boy was and that he must be treated before the others. She put a finger to her lips, and Lio bent his head in acquiescence.
Cassia looked between them, her gaze keen. All she said was, “How will you explain the rimelace to the others? What should I say if I am asked?”
“A miracle from the goddess that appeared in the temple in answer to our devoted prayers, a reward for Tenebra’s piety.” The mage studied Lio. “No one should question the mysterious ways she delivers such blessings.”
Cassia turned to rejoin him, but the Prisma caught her hand. “Kyria bless you, Cassia Basilis. Take care.”
“We all want the same thing, Prisma. That makes tonight safe.”
“I can see that.” She gripped Cassia’s hand for an instant, then let her go.
Cassia came to Lio’s side. Although the Prisma watched, he offered her his hand.
She did not hesitate to take it.
Most likely all it meant was that she was in haste to escape the scene of their indiscretion. But it warmed him nonetheless.
In a moment they were back in the shrine, and the echoes of his own Goddess’s power welcomed them.
Joyous barks erupted outside. Lio had never actually heard well-behaved Knight bark, despite the hound’s highly developed vocabulary of growls, whines and menacing stares. Perhaps this was the real secret weapon of liegehounds: deep, roaring bays loud enough to split a Hesperine’s ears. Lio tried not to grimace as Cassia withdrew her hand. She hurried under the pillar and out of the Sanctuary.
Lio hung back and gave her and Knight time to reunite before he followed her outside. As he departed the Goddess’s shrine, he ran his fingers over her glyph one more time. Then he approached Cassia where she sat in the underbrush with Knight’s head on her lap.
“How do you feel?” Lio asked her.
She ran her hand over her hound. “No ill effects. The first step was disorienting, I admit, but not difficult. You must have used a great deal of magic indeed.”
“I gave you my word I would do my part.”
Cassia looked up at him. “Lio, I must thank you for all you’ve done tonight.”
He knelt among the ferns across from her. He wished he could tell her what those words meant to him. Perhaps it was time he did, regardless of how she reacted. “Your thanks are precious to me.”
She did not look away this time. “As is your honesty to me.”
Hespera’s Grace. He would risk trespassing in any foreign temple to hear her say such a thing. “I will always protect the Oath of honesty between us, Cassia.”
“Will you tell me what you and the Prisma know?”
“I’m not sure I ought to thwart her considerable effort to protect you. She would not wish to repay your kindness with danger. Yet I think it should be your choice whether you wish to take on the risk.”
“Would it be so dangerous for me?”
“The Prisma certainly thinks so, which makes me wonder. I do not know everything, so I am uncertain as to the true degree of risk involved.”
“It has to do with the rimelace?” Cassia guessed.
“Yes.”
“Then if the secret became known, I might fall under suspicion in any case, for I spend so much time there and have advocated for the king and Council to accept the medicine.” She paused, silent in consideration. “If I did not know, I might not be prepared if something were to happen. I might not see it coming. What you don’t know is often a greater danger than what you do know.”
Lio waited, unwilling to sway her decision.
“Tell me,” she finally said. “I would rather know the secret and decide what to do about it than let it catch me unawares later.”
“Very well. Have you been to the infirmary lately?”
“Yes, I help the healers prepare medicinal plants from time to time.”
“Are they treating any children?”
“A couple. One of the orphans twisted an ankle in the fields, and a farmer’s child is recovering from an affliction of the skin.”
Lio shook his head. “The temple is treating twenty-four children who are seriously ill.”
Cassia frowned. “Not in the infirmary.”
“The Prisma must have them in quarantine, then. Good. Are any of the mages absent?”
�
��The Prisma sent out a party to aid the villages sickened with frost fever, but…”
“Most likely, they never left and they’re caring for the children in hiding. I’m not sure who else knows.”
“Deutera is stewardess of nearly all the Prisma’s confidences. But why keep this a secret?”
“Because the children have frost fever. The epidemic is here, and it’s contained within the walls of the temple.”
Cassia sat frozen for a long moment. Then she slid out from under Knight and surged to her feet. “What would possess the Prisma to do such a thing? If the illness were to spread from within, we would lose our healers first.”
“She seems a woman who would take all the lives in Tenebra upon herself.”
“Yes. That is just the sort of foolish thing she would try to do.” But it was not ridicule or disapproval that drove Cassia to pace back and forth between the thorn thickets. Lio could feel the worry she disguised with harsh words. “They must have diagnosed the children and taken them into hiding before the nature of their illness became widely known. That would prevent people from panicking and even casting out the children. But their families must know.”
Lio got to his feet. “Could they be temple orphans?”
“No, none of them are unaccounted for. These are someone’s children whom the mages smuggled into the temple.”
“Now we understand the motivation for the Prisma’s pretense about illness in the east. She needed an excuse for her desperation to procure the medicine. So the question is, where did the illness really begin? Where are the children from and whose are they?”
Cassia pressed her lips together. “If there is a secret within a secret, it is probably wise to stop at one.”
Lio wasn’t sure he could. Not when he had experienced those fragile young humans’ misery and terror. They felt so alone in their hiding place, torn from everything familiar with no one to help them feel safe. Did families wait in fear of losing them? Or were the little ones truly alone, with no one to worry if they ever made it out of the temple alive?
But it wasn’t his secret, although tonight’s events had made it known to him. Those children were by rights under the Prisma’s care, thus by the Oath, he as a Hesperine had no claim on them except his compassion.