Golden Daughter

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  And found he stood face-to-face with Cé Imral.

  The unicorn stared over his head. Its horn, like a sword raised for battle, sliced the mist of the Dream around it. Its ears cupped forward, and its nostrils flared. It gazed upon the golden gong, and Jovann saw the gold reflected in the star’s eyes.

  For hours, it seemed, they stood just so, neither moving, neither breathing.

  Then Cé Imral uttered a scream such as only stars can make. And its whole body and being rippled over in red flame.

  Jovann screamed as well, his voice lost in the sound of the unicorn’s agony. He fell to his knees, expecting to be destroyed. But there was a flash of light, and the unicorn vanished. And Jovann found he still lived, shuddering upon the flagstones of the temple yard.

  The gong shivered behind him, and its hum increased.

  At the sound, the chanters, though their voices never ceased, turned suddenly and saw the intruder in their midst. Jovann could not see them, not clearly, but he felt them all around him. With a strangled cry, he forced himself to his feet. How he longed to curl up into a small ball of nothingness and vanish! For the scream of Cé Imral still resounded in his ears, and it was like death itself.

  But Umeer’s daughter needed him. He must not die. Not yet.

  So he forced himself up and began to run. He did not know the way to the gate, but ran even so. The phantoms were all around him, their voices full of fury. They reached out, but their shadowy hands did not lay hold of him, and Jovann passed through their numbers untouched.

  The black pillars of the gate in the insubstantial wall appeared before him. He staggered at the sight, then drove himself forward. Had he been in his physical body, he would never have been able to make it, but in this world beyond mortal limits, he could run and run and run.

  He reached the gate. And he met Lady Hariawan standing beneath the arch.

  “My lady!” he cried.

  She turned to him, such a figure of beauty here in this evil place. She wore white, and her skin was whiter still, and her hair black as the night. But her lips were as blood-red as the crossbeam overhead.

  “I must find her,” she said.

  Then she reached out with both her hands and touched the uncarved post of the gate. Her hands trembled, and the stone seemed to burn her. She gasped with pain.

  Jovann, feeling the chanters close on his heels, did not slow his pace. He grabbed hold of Lady Hariawan, dragging her from the pillar out into the wasteland. She screamed in his grasp and struck him. “No! No!” she cried, hitting his face, clawing at his cheek. “I must find her! I must! I must!”

  She went for his eyes. Were he in his physical body, she would have dug them out. But while his form was only imagined, the pain he felt was real. Horrified, Jovann dropped his hold upon Lady Hariawan, and she fell hard upon the ground.

  “My lady!” He whirled about, seeking her in the cloud of dust. But no sooner had he spotted her then the phantom chanters fell upon them.

  They were black as shadows, without solid form or substance, for almost all of their concentration efforts went into creating and sustaining the temple. Even now, every one of them gave voice to the chant, and they were none of them strong.

  But they were many, and they converged in a swarm upon Jovann and Lady Hariawan. Jovann saw her face, white as death, gazing up at him with a look of pure hatred. Then she vanished behind the shadows of the chanters pressing between them.

  “No! My lady!” Jovann cried out and tried to plunge after her.

  A solid hand fell upon his shoulder. Jovann gasped at the touch, for this was no phantom. He felt living flesh and living blood. The next moment, he was spun around.

  He stared into the face of his own father.

  “You should not be here!” Juong-Khla roared, and spittle fell from his teeth. “Get out!”

  The walls of the infirmary shook with the force of his spirit hitting his body.

  Jovann stared up into the dark as though he could somehow still discern his father’s face. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t feel his own heartbeat or the pain of his back. He couldn’t feel anything.

  And then he snatched a great breath into his lungs and sprang up from his pallet, stumbling and struggling as he relearned how to work his physical form in this physical world. By the time he reached the infirmary door, he was running. He sprinted down the path, blood roaring in his ears. Though he had never walked it himself, he knew the way to find Lady Hariawan; he had watched Sairu coming and going enough times to be certain. He came to her building and burst through the door. All was dreadfully still inside, the household deep in sleep, deep in dreams . . . .

  He did not know where her rooms were, but he ran to them as though guided by some instinct of the heart. He came to the door and knew it was hers, and he yanked it back in its grooves with a force that rattled the whole frame of the wall.

  Sairu, in the innermost sleep chamber, hovered over her mistress’s sleeping form. Her head came up with a snap when she heard the outer door bang open. “No,” she breathed, and the next moment heard the shout of the first of the temple slaves.

  A tumult of commotion filled the night as, one by one, all six of Lady Hariawan’s slaves woke and set upon the intruder in their midst. The three dogs exploded with barking and rushed to the sleep-chamber door, scraping and snarling as they listened to the activity without.

  Then the door flew open, and Jovann, eluding the hands of the slaves, staggered into the room. Sairu saw his face for a flashing instant, illuminated by moonlight through the window. It was a mask of utter terror, such terror as must communicate itself to all who witness it. Sairu’s heart shuddered in her breast.

  Jovann’s eyes fixed upon Lady Hariawan, lying so still upon her pillows. “My lady!” he cried and fell across the room.

  Sairu felt her training rush through her limbs. She saw herself take Jovann by the arm, twist him, bring him crashing down upon the floor, writhing in the pain she knew she could cause. But she didn’t move. Even as the temple slaves crowded to the door, Jovann fell across Lady Hariawan’s bed, taking her face between his hands and crying out, “Umeer’s daughter! Wake! Wake, I beg you!”

  Lady Hariawan opened her eyes. She stared without recognition up at Jovann.

  She screamed.

  The temple slaves, galvanized, sprang upon Jovann. Tu Syed took him by the hair on the back of his head and yanked him painfully backwards. A strangled cry gurgled in Jovann’s throat, and he flung up his hands, trying to dislodge Tu Syed’s grasp. But Tu Domchu and another slave grabbed hold of him, one by each arm, and they hauled him back across the room.

  Someone struck a light. For a moment all were blinded in the glare, and the world and all its terror and noise froze in place.

  Then, blinking and wincing, all turned to find Brother Tenuk standing in their midst. His quivering old hand held a rush with which he lit one of the hanging paper lanterns.

  Lady Hariawan screamed again and fought against her own trembling limbs to sit upright, dislodging pillows. The dogs yipped and ran to her but did not reach her so quickly as Sairu, who flung her arms about her mistress. “Hush! Hush! You are safe!” she whispered, cooing as though to calm a frightened child.

  Lady Hariawan buried her face in Sairu’s shoulder, her body convulsing with shudders.

  Brother Tenuk, the lantern shining above him like a small red sun, his face highlighted and shadowed in strange crevices, blew out the light on the end of the rush, dropped it, and ground it beneath his heel. He leaned heavily upon his cane, turning slowly to survey all crowded into that room. He spared little more than a glance for Lady Hariawan or her handmaiden, but fixed his watery gaze upon Jovann, held in the clutches of Tu Syed and the other slaves.

  “What is the meaning of this uproar?” he demanded, his old voice quivering like the flame in the lantern above.

  Tu Syed responded swiftly, “We caught this slave assaulting our mistress. He burst into her chambers and fell upon her whi
le she lay sleeping.” His posh, gentleman’s voice was laced with cruelty.

  Brother Tenuk opened his mouth to respond, but Sairu cut in first. “He did not hurt her! He meant her no harm!”

  Brother Tenuk glanced sharply at the handmaiden, who sat on the bed with her arms tenderly around Lady Hariawan, but whose eyes, bright in the lantern light, were full of fighting fire. He wondered, momentarily, if she knew what the slave boy was. He wondered if she knew why her mistress commanded her to tend him so carefully. He suspected that she did. They all knew, he thought, and they all believed they could deceive him. But it was they who were deceived.

  He turned to Jovann, who knelt in the painful grasp of the temple slaves. “I should hang you at once,” he said.

  “No!” Sairu sprang from the bed, leaving her mistress to curl into a ball, her head buried in her arms. Once on her feet, Sairu seemed to recover herself, and she folded her hands and bowed, though her voice was as tense and sharp as before. “Honored Brother, you cannot pass judgment on this slave. He belongs to Lady Hariawan.”

  “He belongs to the Crown of the Moon,” Brother Tenuk replied smoothly. “Even as does your mistress.”

  Sairu, still bowing, hesitated. Then, controlling her voice and forcing it into subservient tones appropriate for a handmaiden, she said, “Then it is the Besur, and not you, Honored Brother, who may decide his fate.”

  Now Brother Tenuk smiled. He smiled a smile as knowing as ever the handmaiden’s had been, as full of power. He saw her blench, and this added to the strength of his smile. He said, “I couldn’t agree more.”

  He motioned with the end of his cane to the slaves, commanding, “Take him away.”

  Jovann uttered one agonized gasp as he was hauled to his feet and dragged from the chambers. He cast a last look over his shoulder, not at Sairu, who stared in horror at his going, but at Lady Hariawan, who lay inert, curled into herself. His heart lurched at the sight then plunged into his stomach. It was the last glimpse he had of her before they dragged him into darkness.

  Dumpling and his companions ran at the heels of the slaves, snarling and snuffling all the way to the outer chamber door. There they stood in the doorway, barking after the retreating forms of the slaves and Brother Tenuk until all had disappeared down the passage and out of the building. Then the trio turned and raced back to the inner sleeping chamber and their mistress.

  Sairu stood still as a statue, her hands neatly folded, her face quickly assuming a stoic mask. But her heart raced in her throat, and her mind roared like a hurricane in her head. She felt her dogs nosing her ankles and pawing at her skirts, but she could not respond to them.

  Suddenly she whirled and grabbed Lady Hariawan by the shoulders, pulling her upright on the bed. Her mistress’s eyes rolled, unable to focus. Sairu shook her and patted her cheek, gently, though she wished to be rough.

  “My mistress,” she said, her voice fighting against the heartbeat in her throat. “My mistress, you must collect yourself. You must intercede for him!”

  Lady Hariawan moaned, her chin dropping to her chest, her hair falling to cover her face. Sairu brushed the hair aside and cupped her mistress’s cheek. The scar of her burn seemed so much uglier suddenly. Sairu trembled with an unprecedented desire to hit her, but she restrained herself.

  “Mistress, you know he is a friend! You know he seeks only to help you, even as you once helped him! Can you not remember? Can you not recall his face? Did you not see him in the Dream?”

  A shock of energy, like a lightning bolt, shot through Lady Hariawan. She drew herself up, and her eyes focused. She became the woman Sairu had glimpsed only a few times in the months of her service; she became the mistress, the strong director of lives and fates.

  She said nothing. She did not need to speak. The force of her gaze sent Sairu reeling, withdrawing her hands and sliding from the bed, stepping several paces back into the room.

  “My—my mistress?” Sairu breathed, then swallowed with difficulty. “Please. For Jovann.”

  Lady Hariawan raised a hand; one long finger pointed at Sairu’s heart. She said: “Get out.”

  For a heartbeat, Sairu resisted. All the urges of her training told her to obey, but something deep inside told her to fight, to strive.

  But she could not.

  She fled the room, Dumpling and Rice Cake hurrying behind her. Only Sticky Bun remained, whining softly as he hid behind one of Lady Hariawan’s fallen pillows, his sad brown eyes fixed upon the lady’s face. Someone must remain to guard her. So, though he trembled from the end of his pushed-in nose to the tip of his curly tail, Sticky Bun remained.

  Lady Hariawan, unaware of her small guardian, fell back upon her bed, breathing heavily. Her eyes fluttered, then closed, and her brow constricted into a frown of pain. She did not sleep but fell into an uneasy trance.

  The room was still as a grave.

  A whiskered face, its sniffing nose pink in the lantern light, lifted up from a hiding place near the ceiling. The cat, who had tucked himself away at the top of the ebony-inlaid wardrobe at the onset of all the noise and uproar, peered down into the room, his ears back and his tail twitching. Then, taking care not to attract the dog’s notice, he slipped down from the wardrobe, flowed silkily across the floor, leaped up into the open window, and vanished into the night.

  From a quiet, out-of-the-way place where no one would notice him, Tu Domchu watched the goings-on of that morning. His face was singularly apathetic, but this was no surprise to any who knew him. Tu Domchu never took interest in anything. He simply existed, a fixture of repellent sameness no matter where he went.

  He chewed thoughtfully, spitting into a grassy patch nearby as he leaned against a wall from a vantage giving him clear view of the first courtyard. Dawn came, but without the sun, for the sky was heavy with foreboding clouds and all Daramuti was shrouded in tense gloom, waiting for the break of a storm.

  And that little handmaiden—so confident, so arrogant—stood in the first courtyard, wringing her hands with frustration.

  Tu Domchu chewed slowly as he watched her. His eye was lazy, dull, but it never shifted from her face. He watched her even as she watched the acolytes making ready a caravan for a long journey. Priests armed themselves with what weapons they had stored away in Daramuti, preparing for the dangerous Khir Road and whatever other perils lay between them and Lunthea Maly. For the abbot had given his command. At midday a party would set forth to take the slave Jovann to the Crown of the Moon and the Besur’s justice.

  It was a lot of bother for one slave, but Tu Domchu did not wonder at that. He didn’t wonder much at anything, merely watched. Merely waited for the answer to his question.

  Today the girl would make a choice. And her choice would determine everything.

  Jovann, bound once more as he had been found, with a bar under his arms, and a chain attached from his neck to his ankles, emerged from confinement, pushed along by two large, nervous acolytes. Imprisonment and guardsman’s duties were not part of the normal routine in this remote temple. Jovann, not yet strong after his sickness, could put up little to no fight, however. Once the chain had clamped down upon his neck, it seemed as though it clamped down upon his very spirit, and he sagged, broken beneath it.

  Tu Domchu watched the girl’s face as Jovann was brought forth. She was pale, and she was not smiling. But she wore clever masks, and he did not yet have his answer.

  Brother Tenuk appeared in the front doorway of the Seat of Prayer, standing above the steps beneath the carved awning set with stone stars. He shivered, his aged frame almost unable to cope with the delight of his success. He barked a command, and several priests of lower orders raced to bow before him.

  “Take this,” said Brother Tenuk, handing a large scroll into their keeping. “It explains all to the Besur so that he, in his wisdom, may pass judgment on this dog.”

  All was now made ready. The donkeys were loaded, the priests and acolytes and a few stout slaves were prepared. Even as thunder
growled overhead and several of the younger acolytes stared up at the threatening sky and offered prayers, Jovann was dragged to a place behind the largest donkey and secured to its harness. He would walk, enchained, like a prisoner of war.

  Like the Chhayan dog he was.

  Tu Domchu’s gaze never shifted from Sairu, who stood in the center of the courtyard, watching all. And he saw her turn suddenly and approach the abbot, bowing at the foot of the steps.

  “Please, Honored Brother,” he heard her say. “Do not do this. He is not strong. He will not survive the long journey. You kill him by sending him, and so you give sentence not yours to give. At least let him recover first.”

  Brother Tenuk looked down at her through the heavy folds of his eyelids. “And who are you, my child, to question me?”

  Though the words were gentle, the tone was a knife.

  Tu Domchu waited. Would she declare herself? Would she give herself away for the sake of protecting this slave?

  But no. Though a shiver passed through her body, and her face betrayed the illness she felt in her stomach, she said nothing more. She stepped back into the shadows of the Seat of Prayer. And she did not move again to intercede, even as the caravan set into motion. Even as the slave was dragged through the gates and on down the mountain road. Still, Tu Domchu waited. He felt the answer to his question so close, so near. But he was not a man to be hurried.

  Sairu, moving as though in a dream, slowly crossed the courtyard to the gates and looked out after the caravan. Two acolytes spoke to her, motioning for her to step back, but she ignored them until they had almost slammed the heavy gates in her face. Only then did she retreat a pace, her face only a few inches from the heavy, age-darkened wood.

  Then she bowed her head and turned back to face Daramuti. Turned back to return to her mistress.

  And so Tu Domchu was answered. He knew now, with absolute certainty, whom she had been sent to guard.