by Megan Bannen
“They believe a demon’s temptations permeate the world, but I believe it is the Mother’s life. Here. Let’s say this light is the Mother.” He slides the Shakki board to the side and sets the candle down closer to the table’s center. Then he retrieves a basket from the corner and places it over the flame. “The basket contains the candle, but it cannot contain the light. The room is darker now, but the fire still shines between the splints. So the Mother may be imprisoned, but Her life finds a way out, even if the way seems quite dim to us. Now, I’d better take away the basket before I set the whole house on fire.”
He grins and places the basket on the floor beside his chair, and I mull over his theory as he contemplates his next move. If I believed Elath was the goddess of life and not a demon, Ambrus’s basket analogy would make sense. Rosvania is the most powerful country of the Ovinist Church, its lands rich and productive. Could that be a result of Elath’s presence in the heart of the country? Merely asking myself this question feels as dangerous as playing with fire, yet how can asking a question be a sin?
Ambrus interrupts my spiraling thoughts as I eviscerate his northern army. “What’s that chain you wear around your neck? It looks fine, not the sort of thing a Daughter usually wears, is it?”
I doubt Ambrus could connect me to the Goodson, yet tension seeps into my spine. “It was a gift.”
“May I see it?”
What can I say to that without drawing Ambrus’s suspicion? I pull up the triptych and hold it out to him, unopened. He studies the floral engraving on the outside. “Lovely. Such craftsmanship. Will you open it? If the interior is anything like the exterior, I’m sure it must be exquisite.”
I can’t stand to look at Saint Vinnica right now, a reminder that my fate is tied to hers, that my only choice may be to sacrifice myself as she sacrificed her own life. I snatch back the triptych and stuff it down the neck of my dress, wishing I could hide from Ambrus’s shrewd gaze. “It’s very personal to me.”
“I see.” He shores up that inexplicable naval force, and I get the sense that I’m not winning this game as handily as I thought. “Are you our spy at the convent, then?”
I give him a nervous smile, but I don’t correct him.
“You’re not a Vessel, though,” he says as if it’s a statement when, really, it’s a question.
“No.” It’s my first bald-faced lie to him, and I’m ashamed to admit the deceit trips off my tongue with ease.
“There aren’t many Vessels left, are there? Just as there aren’t many Two-Swords.” He rolls the dice. “Is it true? Did the boy kill the Grace Tree of Saint Vinnica?”
The memory is fresh and painful, but there is no point in hiding it. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” Another lie, just as easy as the first.
Ambrus nods sadly as he contemplates my last move. “It was already dying, and now it’s gone. And the Grace Tree of Kantar is dying as well. The drought stretches beyond the borders of Kantar, and the long cold winters reach down on us from the north. It’s all happening so fast now.”
“What is?”
“The end.”
“The end of what?”
He looks up at me, his eyes somber, his face grave. “The end of life.”
Until two days ago, the end of the world has always been distant and theoretical. Now it’s immediate and imminent. Because I am the end. If what I was taught to believe is right, and I release the demon inside me, the earth will become a wasteland and eternal life beside the Father in heaven will disappear forever. But on the off chance that my faith is wrong, I could end the world simply by holding this spirit inside me.
These thoughts are so dark that I’m almost grateful to Ambrus for pushing his navy upriver, a move I didn’t see coming. Suddenly it is very clear to me that this man is a far better player than I gave him credit for.
“We must do all we can to stop it,” he says as he obliterates my army and wins the game. “I’m sure you wouldn’t stand in the way of that, would you?”
I don’t give him an answer, but he doesn’t seem to require one. He rises and says, “I’m afraid I can’t stay for a second round. The shop opens in an hour, and I have much to do. I’ll bring up a tea tray later.”
With that, he leaves me to sit alone at the rickety table, my head spinning with questions and worries. I wait a couple of minutes to make sure he’s not going to pop back in before I finally take Zofia’s notes from my pocket.
Seventeen
I unfold the page to find not one but two pieces of parchment in my hands. The first is a rubbing of an unfamiliar Sanctus text, but the second I recognize with a slithering dismay. It’s the rubbing I took in the courtyard. Could Zofia have died for this, for something I did simply because I was curious? But what could I have discovered in the convent garden that led to a war, and to Tavik’s mission, and to my becoming the Vessel of a thing that is either a demon or a goddess?
“Is that a bedtime story?”
I look up with a start. Tavik sprawls across the mattress, his eyes opened to slits, his hair mussed. His physical presence, the very maleness of him, takes up an astonishing amount of room. A blush oozes over my skin, which is exasperating. How can I be distracted by—what do I even call this? attraction? allure?—when I’m facing the literal end of the world?
“Have you had many bedtime stories in your life?” I ask cuttingly, annoyed with myself and taking it out on him.
He stretches like a cat. “I’ve had loads of bedtime stories, as a matter of fact. Have you?”
The question stings. Zofia’s stories are one more thing I have to grieve.
“So what are those?” Tavik asks when I don’t rise to his bait.
“I don’t know. Zofia gave them to me before . . .” My voice trails off as grief sinks in.
“Zofia? The other Daughter at the summit?”
I nod.
“I’m sorry for your loss. May your friend be reborn in the Mother’s breath.”
It’s the most heretical thing anyone has ever said to me, but he’s being kind, and I could use a little kindness right now. “Thank you.”
“Was she the one who wrote to my Prima?”
“I think so.”
He sits up, alert and attentive. “And you think those papers might be important?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, let’s read them.”
I clamp my lips, unsure what exactly I should share with him.
He leans toward me. “Oh, spit it out, Gelya. We’re partners here.”
“Yes, but I am your unwilling partner.”
“You want to get the Mother out of you. I want to get the Mother out of you. We both want the same thing.”
“That’s not true. I don’t know what I want.”
He’s all theatrical arms and hands as he speaks—overwhelming when I have lived such a quiet life before now. “Well, I want the Mother’s soul to return to Her immortal body so She can walk the earth again and breathe life back into the deserts of Kantar. I want the souls of the underworld to be reborn again. I want to save the world. If that’s not good enough for you, what is?”
I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. Because I have no answer.
What would the Goodson think if he could see me now, full of questions and doubt? But then I also have to question what exactly I think of the Goodson. I hate this uncertainty, this growing suspicion that the world is not what I thought it was, that I’ve never truly known or understood anyone in my life.
“I just want the truth,” I tell Tavik at last.
“I’m telling you the—” He stops himself and drops his gaze. “I haven’t lied to you.”
“That is very reassuring, but I am more than capable of finding my own answers.” I give up on keeping secrets from Tavik—what’s the point?—and spread the first page on the table, pulling it at the corners so my fingers don’t touch the text until I’m ready. “It’s written in Sanctus, so I will have to sing it.”
&n
bsp; “Can’t you just read it?” Tavik’s face betrays his misgivings. I’m sure he recalls with perfect clarity how he felt the fires of Nogarra when I sang to him at the convent.
“Sanctus must be sung, and only a Vessel has the ability to do so,” I explain. “The language is not learned. We simply know how to sing it. There are subtleties that shift and change depending on the reader and the listener, so understanding a song’s true meaning is a bit like catching a fish in a river with your bare hands.”
“I would love to see you catch a fish with your bare hands. Can that be arranged?”
I bat away the joke as I look over the unfamiliar rubbing. “I haven’t sung since Elath entered me. I’m not certain how to fill myself with the Father’s Word when this thing already resides inside me.”
“Let’s not call the Mother a ‘thing,’” Tavik suggests. I glance up to find him sitting cross-legged, his elbows on his knees, as comfortable as you please, when I am anything but.
“I’ll just sing a bit at random,” I tell him. “Will you stop me if it gets too loud?”
“You got it. But, just to be clear, there’s nothing in there about fires and sinners and burning cities, right?” His tone is light, but I see the fear in his eyes. I should probably be grateful that he fears me, but instead, it makes me feel lonely.
“I don’t think so.”
“Good. I’m listening.”
I’m worried about what is going to come out once I touch the text, but honestly, there’s only one way to find out. I imagine myself pressing down on the lid that covers that burning cauldron inside me before I brush my fingertips to the Sanctus symbols. The words enter, pouring inside me, filling me up, but they refuse to come back out. It’s a different sensation than I’m used to, hot when it’s usually frigid. The pressure builds. The buzzing soars up from my core to my ears, deafening.
“Gelya? Are you all right?” Tavik’s voice sounds muffled, but I can’t answer. I lift the lid the barest crack to let out the steam, and the text vibrates through my body like a long, low note on a violin, richer and more resonant than ever before. My voice becomes a living spirit that pours from my lips into Tavik’s being, from my breath into his lungs, from my flesh into his body. My song dances along his skin, trembles in the muscle beneath the surface, grips the bones within.
Water of my thirst, blood of my body.
I sink deeper into the song, gliding into the words. For the first time in my life, it’s a pleasure. I want to read it. I want to sing.
“Gelya,” comes Tavik’s strangled voice, and I force myself to rip my hand from the page. Outside the song, I shake with fatigue and grip the table to stay upright. And yet I want to dive back in to take pleasure in this gift that has never felt good before.
And then I remember poor Tavik. I look up to find him staring back at me with glassy eyes, his pupils large and black. He’s breathing so hard his chest rises and falls. You’d think I’d be used to the fact that my gift has this visceral effect on people, but Tavik’s expression is one I’ve never seen before, and the intensity of his gaze makes my skin inexplicably hot. His eyes go wide, and he grabs a pillow from the bed to plop into his lap, which seems strange. “Whew” is all he says.
“Sorry. That was stronger than usual. Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” he gasps.
I frown down at the Sanctus symbols. “I think it’s a love story. Can that be right?”
“Definitely a love story,” he concurs, his voice deep and throaty. What on earth did the song do to him?
“Sometimes the listener experiences the song more clearly than the singer. What did you hear? How did it feel to you?”
He folds his hands over the pillow and considers his answer carefully, a quizzical expression playing across his face. “Familiar, actually. That’s weird. Could you translate it into Kantari?”
“I think so.” I brush the Sanctus text as lightly as I can, doing my best to hold back the power inside me as I attempt to re-create the verse in Tavik’s language.
Come to me, my beloved,
My wellspring, liquid and lovely,
Water of my thirst, blood of my body,
What the Mother joins in life
Cannot be separated in death.
I feel like a cup, and the text is wine. I’m growing drunk on it. Again, I tear my hand away, as troubled as I am pleased by the power of the verse. “I think that’s as far as I ought to go.”
Tavik crosses the room, tucks a piece of leftover sausage from the tray into his mouth and chews ruminatively. “I’d swear that’s from The Ludoïd. I thought you said this was some kind of religious heresy or something.”
“I don’t know what it is. But you do?”
“Yeah. It sounds like the wedding of Ludo and Vinnica from The Ludoïd.”
He pulls up a chair and begins to shovel what’s left of the food into his mouth. I gape at him until the words he uttered fully sink in. “The what?”
He speaks with a mouth full of cheese. “The wedding of Ludo and Vinnica from—”
“I heard what you said!”
He swallows. “Then why did you ask?”
“Vinnica as in Saint Vinnica?”
“We don’t have saints.”
“But we are referring to the same person?”
“Well, yeah. What happened to those contractions?”
“So you believe Saint Vinnica, the purest of all Vessels, was married to . . .”
“Ludo.”
“First of all, that is ridiculous,” I inform him, on the verge of apoplexy. “Second of all, who is Ludo?”
Now it’s Tavik’s turn to be apoplectic. “You’ve never heard of Ludo? Or The Ludoïd? Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of Kantari expert?”
“I translate The Songs of the Saints into Kantari. I don’t read heathen texts.”
“Oh, for the love of the Mother, The Ludoïd is one of the greatest works of Kantari literature.”
“So you know what this is?” I ask, holding up the rubbing.
Tavik gapes at the parchment, and then he leaps to his feet to snatch it from my hand, knocking over his chair in the process and making a horrible racket.
“Tavik!” I protest, but he ignores me and spreads Zofia’s rubbing out on his side of the table, his hands splayed across the page. He releases a shuddering breath as if on the verge of tears.
“What’s wrong?” I ask uncertainly.
“Where did your friend get this?” he chokes without looking up, echoing Zofia’s words the night she returned to the convent: Where did you get it?
“The Monastery of Saint Helios, I think. She was sent there to do translation work.” I stare at him as he remains bent over the page.
“This stone was in my mother’s library in Grama. I asked her to read it to me once, but she said only a Vessel of Saint Vinnica could read it.”
“You’ve seen the original?”
“I just told you. My mother was the librarian of Grama.”
That man who killed your friend tonight—Brother Miklos—do you know what we call him in Kantar? The Butcher of Grama. Tavik’s mother is dead because Brother Miklos led the attack that killed her. I keep hoping things will get clearer and easier. Instead, they keep getting muddier and more complicated. When Tavik finally looks up, his eyes are wet and bloodshot, making my own well up in sympathy.
“May the Father lift her spirit up,” I whisper. He offered me a Kantari platitude for my loss. I can at least offer him this.
He steps away from the table, turns his back to me, and holds his hair out of his face with both hands. “So for some reason, an ancient epic Kantari poem led your friend to figure out where the Mother was hidden. How?”
“I can’t answer that unless I know what The Ludoïd is about,” I tell his back.
He lets his hands fall and turns to me wearing a sad, crooked grin. His curls fan up and out like a halo around his handsome face. “Then it looks like I’m the one telling the bedtime stories
today.”
Eighteen
“‘Call down the Mother’s voice, the song of the lark, to sing the tale of Ludo, Breaker and Broken,’” Tavik intones.
Impressed, I ask, “Have you memorized the entire poem?”
“No, I’ve been a little busy—fighting Ovinists, surviving, feeding a hungry nation, that sort of thing. But it’s a great first line, isn’t it?”
I purse my lips in annoyance, which makes him grin, which annoys me even more. “Please, continue.”
“Here’s the gist: Once there was an orphan named Ludo, and because he had no mother, Elath took him as Her own son. This was in the days before men killed men. But then the Northmen decided that a man could take a life more easily than a woman could give it. They came to believe that one was better than the other, that life taking was more powerful than life giving. Clear so far?”
“I suppose so?”
“Good. Ovin was the best hunter in Kantar. He—”
“What?”
“I’m two seconds in, and you’re interrupting me? Really?”
“This is very shocking. I was taught that Ovin was from the area around southwest Rosvania. How could Saint Ovin have been a Kantari? I had no idea this is what Elathians believe.”
“Well, it’s high time you learned, so less talking and more listening. Ovin was a great hunter, so when the Northmen crossed the Koz Mountains to conquer the south, it fell to Ovin to teach men how to use the gift of the Father—death—to hunt their fellow men like animals.
“The Mother saw this and took pity on the Kantari. She sent Her son, Ludo, to help them. ‘You were born with the Sword of Wrath, as all men are,’ she told him, ‘but you must also carry the Sword of Mercy so that you will always remember to balance death with life.’ That’s why we carry two swords—the Father’s Wrath and the Mother’s Mercy—so that death alone will never rule the world. Tuck that away, because it’s really important later on.
“So Ovin and Ludo fight all these epic battles together and fend off the Northmen, and eventually, Ludo ends up falling in love with Ovin’s daughter, Vinnica. Actually, Ovin has two daughters. The other one is Lanya, but she’s not really important here.”