by Cass Morris
Latona noticed that Aula was grinning a bit madly. “What?”
“You’re blushing,” Aula said. “Stars and sun, my honey, you’re in a world of trouble.”
Latona cast her eyes up at the ceiling, painted to resemble the starry firmament. “Funny, Rubellia said almost the same thing.”
“Well, she would have the right sort of wisdom and insight to—Wait.” Aula folded her arms in front of her chest. “You told Ama Rubellia and not me?”
Latona winced, remembering the circumstances under which her friend, the High Priestess of Venus, had learned about her tryst. “I didn’t so much tell her as she walked in on me with my gown pulled down halfway to my navel—”
“She what?”
“Shh!” Latona cast her eyes toward the door. “This is a private room, Aula, but that doesn’t mean no one could overhear—”
Grinning impishly, Aula gave Latona a nudge with her foot. “Then I suppose you’d best hurry up and tell me the rest of the story before anyone wanders by.”
“It’s not funny,” Latona insisted. “I committed—if Herennius were to find out—”
“Are you sorry for it?” Aula asked, leaning forward. “Put aside Father and your ill-matched husband and everything else. Are you sorry for what you did?”
Latona bit her lip. Wrong though it had been, by the strictures she was meant to live by, it had also been right in a way that made her soul sing. Never before had she found such use for Venus’s blessings on her. She could not be sorry for having taken that pleasure.
She shook her head.
“Well, then, I’m certainly not going to shame you for it. So tell me.”
Leaning in and voice hushed, she did. Latona told her sister of her Saturnalian transgression, the ivy in the Autroniae’s garden, the chill in the air, the heat in the little guest room Rubellia had pointed them toward. Aula, as was her wont, allowed her no dignity in the retelling, pressing for the prurient details. “It’s only fair,” she pouted. “I told you everything when I first discovered pleasure.” And so, blushing, Latona yielded.
“Oh, my darling,” Aula said, when she had finished. “Well, I’m still cross as anything with you for not telling me, but I’m so . . . so glad.” Her pretty lips turned in a small smile. “You deserve happiness. You always have.”
Latona shrugged that assertion off. “It was a madness that took over me. I don’t know what comes of it. Even if he returns from Iberia, which is by no means certain, there’s still Herennius . . .” Aula gave a snort: her usual way of imparting to Latona that marriage was by no means an inescapable conundrum. “But I do . . . I miss him, Aula,” Latona went on to confess.
“He’s well worth missing, I should think!” Aula laughed, kicking her legs beneath the water. “Sweet Venus, I’ve missed the sight of him, and all the other handsome men out on campaign, and I haven’t your reason for it.”
Latona smiled, thinking of her lover. He wasn’t the most handsome man in Aven, in truth, whatever Aula said. He was well formed, but not particularly notable for his looks. Average of height, with sable hair and deep brown eyes, it was Sempronius’s presence that impressed, the aura of certainty with which he walked through life. “It isn’t only that. Talking to him feels . . . different.” She fidgeted, drawing circles in the surface of the water with one finger. “He has such grand dreams. Such immense, impossible dreams, but he approaches every day as though he cannot fail to bring them out of Morpheus’s realm and into the light of reality. He knows what he’s capable of, and he sees something in me that . . . that I confess, I had quite forgotten might be there. I feel stronger around him. I feel like . . .” Unexpected, the impulse to weep tickled at the back of her throat. “Like I matter.”
Aula swam over to her side, putting an arm around her sister. “You have always mattered. And you’ve always been strong. Don’t think that I ever forget, for a moment, that your strength and sacrifice saved me and Lucia from Ocella.” A sideways smile. “But if Sempronius has helped you to remember that you have that fortitude in you, then I’m afraid I must come down even more firmly on the side of your adulterous behavior.”
Latona snorted and leaned her head against Aula’s, temple to temple. “It’s just so much to deal with. Father married me to Herennius to keep me out of trouble, and he wasn’t entirely wrong.” She remembered all the words that had passed between her father and herself when last she had questioned the arrangement. “Using my power attracts danger. Ocella, Rabirus . . . and Sempronius has many enemies. If I throw my lot in with him . . .” Her voice trailed off. Would it be worth it? Could she keep her family safe? Or would it be inexcusably selfish, to endanger them for the sake of her own pleasure?
Haunting questions, all.
IV
Tagus River, Central Iberia
The storms came too early that year.
Strange heat baked the spring, crisping flower blossoms and green leaves before they could flourish, and vicious sandstorms whipped across the plateaus without warning. And when the dust cleared, as often as not, thunder and lightning followed in its wake.
‘Ill omens,’ Neitin thought, clutching her child to her chest. ‘I cannot be the only one who sees that. How, how can they not see it?’
Neitin, wife of the erregerra of the Lusetani, beloved of the war-king blessed by divine Bandue, felt the hot wind drying her tears as soon as they left her eyes. Any moment now, one of her sisters would come out and chide her for exposing herself and the babe to the elements. But she could not stay in her tent, not so near to where her husband and his cursed, cursing uncle were playing at summoning demons.
Oh, Bailar the magic-man swore they were no such thing, but Neitin knew in her bones that they had crossed a line—or were, at least, trying to. Though the gods themselves were screaming their displeasure, Neitin would not stay inside, not when it meant staying so near Bailar’s abominable efforts. So she had wrapped herself in a light cloak, her babe swaddled close to her chest, and stood with her back to the wind, gazing toward the west, toward where home should be.
‘If you can hear me, Nabia, if we have not wandered too far from you, if you know this river like the rivers of home, then I beg you, intervene. Come between my husband and the war-god, come between him and this dread purpose, Nabia, please.’ Prayers, she had to hope, would be heard even above Bailar’s magic.
It was not the reassuring voice of the river goddess, protector of women, that reached her next, but the continued eldritch keening. It started out low and thrumming, then rose in pitch to a whistle higher than the wind, and far more chilling. No wolf, this, no natural creature at all, but an akdraugo, a fiend, a dark and hungry spirit eager to break through from its world to theirs, howling its frustration at impediments. Fresh tears broke out from Neitin’s eyes, dewing her cheeks only for a moment before evaporating and leaving their tracks behind. ‘Why, Ekialde, why do you do this?’
But she knew. She did not understand the compulsion, but she knew his reason. He thought the akdraugi would be a boon to him in battle, spirits to sap the strength of the enemy, to dishearten them, to poison their minds. ‘But at what price, husband?’
Neitin stood for a moment, transfixed, looking back at her husband’s tent. Strange shadows danced on the walls, lit by the fires within. Faster and faster they moved until, in a sickly orange flash, the light brightened, obliterating the shadows—and then failed entirely. The wind carried the sound of Bailar swearing to Neitin’s ears, reassuringly mundane.
It hadn’t worked.
Neitin’s momentary relief was quickly dashed away by the horror of knowing that they would keep trying. She did not know what would be worse: that they fail, and Ekialde sicken or even perish in the attempt, or that they succeed, loosing monstrosities upon the earth. Every time Bailar failed to bring the akdraugi through from the nether realms, he read in it a message that he and Ekialde had simply not don
e enough—not spilled enough blood, not sacrificed enough of their enemies. No matter how Neitin pleaded that it was, instead, a sign of denial from Endovelicos, king of the gods, who held dominion over life or death, Bailar insisted that she, a woman with no magic, could not possibly make such a judgment. And Ekialde let himself be persuaded by Bailar again and again. In Bandue the war-god’s name, he opened his veins and he breathed in smoke and he let the magic take him to the very threshold of that dark world.
He would die of it, Neitin was certain. She did not know how or when, but she was sure this would kill him, someday, this bartering his soul for unholy powers. When he drank Bailar’s blood-potions, he would be strong, so strong, for a day—and then as weak as a kitten for a night, his energy thinned out in sacrifice to Bandue.
It was an erregerra’s duty, Ekialde insisted, to suffer thusly on behalf of his people, on behalf of his cause. Who else but their war-king should bear the burden?
Neitin did not understand why the burden needed bearing at all. There was still time. Their warriors were fierce and skilled, but no match for the iron-clad Aventan legions, if they came in force. If the Lusetani disappeared back into the wilderness, if they retreated to their own villages and orchards and riverbanks, surely the Aventans would not bother to pursue them.
The child stirred, squawking objection to being out in the harsh elements. Neitin wrapped her cloak more securely around him, protecting him from the buffeting winds. As she rocked the boy, she gave thanks to Nabia and Trebarunu that their child had been conceived before Ekialde had started indulging in these dark magics. She could not bear to think of what kind of monster might have come forth, had it been conceived with such horrors abounding.
“Sister!” Ditalce, rushing out from a nearby tent, with Reilin close behind her. Neitin ignored her, staring forlornly at the horizon. “What are you doing?”
Still she answered only with silence. Neitin knew her sisters too well; they were all under Bailar’s spell, as sure as Ekialde was. They all believed. She tried not to despise them for it, prayed to Nabia to make her heart compassionate and forgiving. Some days, it worked better than others.
“Sister,” Reilin said, “you must go back to your tent. To have brought your child out into this wind, this is dangerous—”
“Better the wind and sand,” Neitin said, “than what’s in there.” Reilin tried to take her by the arm, but Neitin shrugged her off as strongly as she could without jostling the babe too much. She would not be led docilely back to a comfortless bed, and when Ditalce added her strength to Reilin’s, Neitin dug her heels into the hardened earth. “No. I will not go back. Not while Bailar is there.”
Her sisters exchanged nervous glances. They were for Ekialde, heart and soul, and her reticence troubled them. Reilin and Ditalce would have laid down their own lives, if Ekialde asked. They believed, as Ekialde did, as his warriors did, that the Lusetani were on a sacred quest, a charge from Bandue himself, to eliminate the Aventan threat from all of Iberia—even if that meant turning on tribes that had long been allied with them, even if it meant destroying groves and orchards that fed their own people, even if it meant straying so very far from home. Ekialde was god-touched, the reasoning went. Whatever he decided, it must be so.
Neitin was his wife. She been at his side long before Bailar had proclaimed him erregerra. She knew his fears, knew he had questioned, once, the path before him. ‘And now he has been swallowed up . . .’
The winds picked up, carrying even more stinging sand with them, with such a roar that Reilin struggled to be heard above it. “Neitin! Come to our tent, if you do not wish to return to your own! Ditalce and I will keep you and the babe safe.”
It was offered with an indulgent tone—the sort one used with an unreasonable child. The sort Neitin had used herself, on these younger siblings of hers, in other times. Now she was the one to be treated cautiously. Now she was the one who had to be delicately reasoned with. Her sisters would write it off as maternal stress, no doubt, or the result of traveling in such hard weather. They would fabricate excuses and treat her as though she were the youngest, not the eldest of them, to be coddled and corralled in equal measure. They would do this so that they did not have to think her disloyal.
‘I am,’ Neitin thought. ‘I am disloyal, and I can not even bring myself to be sorry for it.’
The lights in Ekialde’s tent flickered, and Neitin’s heart sank. “Do they think to try again? So soon?” Neither Reilin nor Ditalce answered, and as her sisters bundled her away, Neitin discovered that she was too tired even to weep.
* * *
Every muscle in his body burned. The sensation was familiar, in a distant way. When Ekialde had first learned to shoot a bow, his father had made him draw over and over again, until the muscles in his arms felt like they had come apart from his bones.
This was worse.
Blood dripped from his biceps and his thighs. Bailar had not cut deep, but he had made thirteen cuts, one for each month of the year. Ekialde’s blood, the blood of the erregerra, mixed with that of their fallen foes and scattered upon the earth. It should open the way between the worlds. It would open the way. Bailar had sworn it. The blood of life together with the blood of death, to show the akdraugi the path from the netherworlds.
“We can try no more tonight,” Bailar said.
“We must.”
Bailar fixed him with a stern look. “We mean to bring the akdraugi into our world, not send you into theirs. That uncle of your wife’s is a decent healer. Have him bind your wounds. You will rest for three days before we try again.”
Though dizziness threatened him, Ekialde set his jaw. “I am the erregerra. I decide when we are done and when we try again.”
Folding his arms over his chest, Bailar arched an eyebrow expressively. Then he stepped forward, extended one arm, and gave Ekialde a gentle prod on the shoulder.
It was hardly more than a nudge, but in Ekialde’s depleted state, it was enough to throw him off-balance. He slid a foot back, trying to steady himself, but his head swam heavily and black spots pattered over his vision.
Carefully, slowly, Ekialde seated himself on the nearest bench.
“I have decided we are done for tonight,” Ekialde said. “I will tell you when I feel strong enough to try again.” Two nights, at most, he would allow himself. An ordinary man might need three to recover, but Ekialde knew he was not ordinary.
Bailar snorted, likely knowing his young king’s mind. But he made no further mention of the necessity of rest. Instead, he sopped a rag in a waiting basin of water and began sponging the blood off of his own arms. “It will not always take so much effort,” he said. “Once we have opened the way for the akdraugi, they will know how to follow it again. Very little of your blood will be necessary, after that.” He bobbed his head, considering, as a cook might contemplate the balance of ingredients in a delicate dish. “More of your enemies’ blood will always be beneficial, though. Your blood opens the way, but theirs is what the akdraugi will feed upon.”
“That is all very well,” Ekialde said, “but first we must open the way.”
“We will. And that will only be the beginning, blessed erregerra. And there may be a way to strengthen you for future endeavors.” Bailar tossed the rag aside and plucked at his long beard thoughtfully. There was more white in it now than there had been when they began this war.
‘He likes all our men to think him impervious,’ Ekialde realized, ‘a conduit for the gods’ power who does not suffer for bearing that burden. He likes me to think that. But he is still just a man. It costs him, as it costs me.’
“I will need to consult the stars,” Bailar went on. “Find the right time, when you can take the strength of your enemies into yourself.”
“I thought I was doing that already.” For a year now, he had been drinking Bailar’s tinctures, thick wines with drops of his enemies’ blood in
them.
An acknowledging nod from Bailar. “True. But I think . . . I think there is a way we can do better.” Another thoughtful tug on his beard. “Akdraugi first. Then we will see what other gates we can open.”
V
Stabiae, Crater Bay
One by one, Alhena of the Vitelliae plucked the seeds from the core of the pomegranate, placing them gently in the offering bowl in front of her. Her mind was meant to be on matters sacred and devout, but by the time her fingers were stained as red as her hair, her thoughts had wandered. It was easy to let them, here at the Temple of Proserpina, with azure sky at her back and the goddess’s serene eyes looking down on her from the painted wooden statue. Here she could be calm enough for contemplation, a mage of Time sheltered beneath the gaze of her patron deity.
Only in the bucolic surroundings of seaside Stabiae did Alhena realize just how much the size and bustle of Aven intimidated her. ‘It’s not as though I hate the city . . . but I do not have my sisters’ affection for it.’ She had never been able to get a handle on how the thing worked. So many people, all vying for their own sorts of power, all jostling and negotiating and elbowing each other—often as literally as metaphorically. Alhena did not think she would ever have Aula’s affinity for political maneuvering, nor her social graces, nor did she feel Latona’s joy in the chaos of the city, her pleasure in going among the markets and forums and meeting new people.
‘Somehow Latona managed to learn the proper things, even though she spent her early years at a temple . . .’ Latona had gone to Juno’s keeping at the tender age of four. Not all priestesses and acolytes lived in the apartments that stood behind the temple, of course, but Gaia Claudia, the High Priestess of Juno who had seen Latona’s potential, had done so, and she chose to keep Latona with her. Latona might have stayed there her entire life, had not Claudia been taken away by the fever that ravaged the city seven years later.