by CS Hale
WE SAT IN the surf, Daria with her arm around me, and didn’t speak. The task was monumental. I couldn’t leave, and my place on Crenfor was uncertain. Our hands and feet had pruned by the time Daria lifted me out of the surf.
“Time to wash the salt off and dress you for dinner,” she said. My face betrayed my anxiety for Daria added, “Start at the beginning.”
I nodded. I was a surprise bride. Reina had surely known Valemar’s plans, but none of them knew what he was actually getting. My daughter. Reina had accepted me.
I gave myself a shake. No time for Astrid Carr. She was currently a mess. Eleanor. How would Eleanor have met her mother-in-law?
I thought about that during the long climb back up the stairs to the High, thought about it while Daria bathed me and washed the salt from my hair with perfumed soap.
I was a supplicant and she was my queen. I was her son’s wife. The next move was not mine to make but hers.
I could do that. I could sit back and wait and make my counter-move.
In Vanerife, Reina didn’t dine in the banqueting room. Dinner was to be just the two of us. She usually dined alone. A small round table had been arranged with platters of roasted meats, dishes of salads and fruits, and a tray of sweets. Reina smiled when I entered and gestured for me to take the seat across from her.
“How was the water?” she asked, and poured me a glass of wine.
“Refreshing,” I said.
“That is one of the blessings of living in Vanerife. We are connected to Father Sea and his breath renews us.” Reina picked up her glass and sat back, scrutinizing me. “I’ve been in counsel all day about you.”
I bowed my head. “And what advice have you been given?”
“Raislos would love an excuse to get his hands on you.”
I shivered at the thought of being turned over to the Cordair leader. “I see.”
“Neither of us wants that,” Reina said.
“Not if the tales Valemar told me are true.”
“He means to retake Bánalfar, and your Hormani traders have given him the courage to dream.”
Raislos could dream but the Hormani knew where to draw the line. “They’d never truly arm the Cordair.”
“And risk drawing attention to themselves.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“But they’ve made themselves invaluable.”
“They have,” I agreed.
“And you make the Hormani nervous,” Reina said.
I swallowed. “Yes. Valemar had me learn to protect myself.”
“So you can’t afford to appear weak.”
The full implication of my actions slammed home. I’d been nothing but weak since I’d left Gladama.
“You mourn the loss of the child you carried. I, too, struggled to conceive and so Valemar has sent you here to receive my sympathy and my guidance.” Reina’s eyes pinned me, making sure I understood the importance of the story she was spinning to explain my sudden departure from Glábac. “You will rest. You will pray. And, when the time is right, you will be reunited with your husband.”
I started to open my mouth, to ask what would happen when nothing came of the fertility treatments, but Reina silenced me with a look. Her eyebrows rose as if to say, No other thoughts are permitted, and brought to mind rule number nine — Have nothing but confidence in your meetings.
“Did you ever wonder if you were barren?” I asked.
Reina stared into her wineglass and sagged against the hard wood of her chair. “No.” Her voice was low, hardly more than a whisper. “I’d had a moon child. A son.” A ghost of a smile twitched on her lips. “Part of the reason Enartin chose me. That and the ten Capalian darana that were part of my dowry.”
I filed away the fact that Valemar had a half-brother. “How many generations?” I asked, trying to remember everything I’d read in Valemar’s genealogy.
“Four,” Reina said. “Four generations of a single son. That’s partly why Enartin gave Fairfada to the Cordair. He wanted peace. He wanted his only son to avoid the peril and burden of war.”
And yet it loomed. “Were there any moon children?”
Reina gave her head a shake. “More than three thousand years of kings. Two thousand since they took the title of Carbrev — Tree Guardian. And it could all end with my son.”
Will end, I thought. With me as his wife. “I assume I will be on a steady diet of the Mödatal’s tea.”
“Iced, in this climate,” Reina said. “Daily bathing. You will offer gifts to the Father and the Mother. Be pampered.” She pushed the tray of sweets toward me. “Daria said the lian tarts were your favorite.”
I pasted a smile in place as I tried to think when Daria could have shared that information. “They remind me of the lemons at home. The flavor anyway.”
“Any other comforts you desire?” I shook my head. “You are not what I would have chosen for my son. But I have been reminded today that our paths are not always clear. Sometimes it is veiled in mist and you must trust that the way will be shown.”
“How long?” I asked. “How long did you wait for a child?”
“Five years,” Reina said. “Five years before we were blessed with Valemar. We’d hoped …” A grim smile flashed across her face before it fell. Reina picked up her wine and drowned the unspoken words. Her tongue ran across her teeth as she set the glass back down.
I don’t have five years. I wondered how many days or months I would.
“We have … I have Valemar. He is everything his father and I hoped he’d be.” The eyes Reina turned upon me were sad. An attempt to smile merely twitched her lips. “Do what you can. Do what you can to make him happy.”
Thus began my “transformation” in Vanerife. I was bathed in and drank copious amounts of braghar milk (and peed a lot due to my tea intake as well). I offered blood to Mother Moon and braided flowers interwoven with my own hair to Father Sea. Twice a day I walked the stairs to the beach, clothed only in a dark blue tunic that came to my knees, and sat in the surf, letting the waves wash over my lady parts. I left Daria home after the first session for we’d spent the entire time giggling. The hope was that Father Sea indeed would get me pregnant.
The Blood Moon came and I barred myself in my room. The treatments had worked in that my breasts and genitals swelled, eager for the caress of a lover. I buried my head under my pillow to block out the sounds of sex that drifted in through my open windows and increased the ache of unmet desire between my legs.
Had Valemar taken the draught? Or had he found comfort elsewhere? It would make sense if he had — trying to father a moon child while his wife underwent treatment for her barren womb.
I nearly sat up when I realized that his partner wouldn’t be Zhanet. She, too, had not been able to give him a child. If she had, I would have heard about it.
I changed my prayers the next day. I’d always believed in God. I’d seen too many unexplainable things not to. I changed my empty, roll-playing prayer from Give me a child to Give him a child.
Something had gone wrong genetically for the Carbrev men. It broke my heart to think that this line of warriors who had protected the trees and watched over their people for two thousand years would end. Their world would never be the same. War would come when the old regime fell and alliances shifted. I’d read about it. I’d seen it too many times all over the galaxy.
“You are wise.” Shale’s voice startled me.
“Why do you say that?” I asked, still on my knees in front of the side chapel’s altar.
“Because you, too, can look into the future.”
“I am no seer,” I said.
“You may not have the gift of second sight, but you do have the gift of foresight. You recognize patterns when you see them. You know that Bánalfar is on the brink of being forever changed.”
“All things change,” I said. “Change is the one true constant in the universe.”
“True,” Shale said. “But how long has our star burned? How long h
as it bathed Crenfor in its warming light?”
“Millions of years.”
Shale smirked. “An eternity, unchanging. The sun rises in the east —”
“And sets in the west,” I finished.
“The greatest truth we have. Should we focus on its end?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Should we let Crenfor descend into chaos?”
“There is a whole planet,” I said. “We’re only in one small part.”
Shale rolled her head and her eyes. “Should we allow chaos to reign in any part of it?”
“No,” I answered glumly.
She reached down, took my hand, and raised me to my feet. “Come.”
Though she was dressed in her red robes and we were in the Cair, she was Shale today, to me, and not the Mödatal. I followed her through the open sanctuary, past the people knelt in prayer, to the door at its side. My guard left his place along the wall and followed us.
Shale’s rooms in Vanerife were nearly identical to those in Aedenfal — dark, windowless. There was even an empty fireplace, which surprised me given the warm climate. A pile of ashes said that she actually used it.
“The flames allow my mind to drift and my inner eye to see,” she said in response to my scrutiny of it.
I turned. “Even desert cultures appreciate a good fire.” I joined Shale at the dark, wooden table. “There was something you wanted to show me?”
Shale set a bowl in the center. “You are familiar with many kinds of magic?”
I eyed her warily. “Yes.”
“And you believe you cannot bear Valemar a child because of this magic.”
“It’s called DNA — deoxyribonucleic acid. It’s the recipe that exists inside every … bit of every living thing. It determines species and sex and hair color and height. It tells your body to give you five fingers and five toes and whether your eyes will be blue or green or gray. It’s not magic. It’s science.”
“Oh, we have philosophers of our own that ask questions of the universe. Seek to find answers to the ‘why’ and the ‘how.’ And then there are things that defy explanation. Like how I can see that which is to come.” She shrugged. “Science may one day answer that question but, until then, it is magic.” She stepped around me, whispering as she passed. “Just like it is magic to travel the stars.” Her head came close, her lips nearly brushing my ear. “Do you believe in magic, Astrid?”
The little hairs on the back of my neck stood up. “No, not really.” My eyes followed her as she stepped away.
Shale brought over a stoppered bottle of green glass. “Father Sea,” she said and uncorked it. I bent my head and sniffed. The briny scent of the ocean filled my nose. Shale poured it into the basin. The hairs on my arms lifted.
From a pouch at her waist, Shale withdrew a small vial. She held it up between her forefinger and her thumb. “A gift to the Mother. From a man desperate for children.” She closed it in her hand.
My perception of her wavered. No longer Shale, not even the Mödatal, the woman before me took on the presence of a witch. “If I pour the blood into the water, what should happen, my queen?”
I wet my lips. “It will drop and swirl, blossoming like a flower before it colors the water red.”
“And if I add your blood?”
My heart gave a giant leap toward the door. I stood my ground even as it continued to thrash against my ribs. “The same.”
“And if it didn’t?”
“I’d say that you doctored the water or the supposed blood.”
She grinned. “Wise answer. Wise, but wrong.” She held the vial up again. “Curious?”
I was, despite myself. Despite the smoke and mirrors and elaborate stagecraft. “You’ll only show me what you want me to see. You’ve some conclusion you want me to reach, and you’re hoping this elaborate charade will make the point.”
“Charade?”
I rolled my eyes. “Game.”
She smiled. “A bit of a game. But an illustration of the truth.”
I crossed my arms. “What truth is that?”
“That you’re here for a reason.”
“Fine. I’m here for a reason. What’s your point?” I held up a hand. “And don’t say I’m the Moon Princess because you and I both know I didn’t come from the moon.”
“Not Crenfor’s moon,” Shale said. “But you did come from our orbit.” Every hair on my body stood up. “Do you want to see my point, Astrid?”
I slowly uncrossed my arms. Rule twenty-six — Find out what they truly want. I thought I knew what that was — to convince me that I was the prophesized savior. That had always been her goal as she’d circled me like a predator, looking for a weakness. But she’d never been malevolent. Only unwelcome. Had she been a true threat, I would have felt it. My gut was never wrong, which was why it was rule thirteen. Right now, it was saying I wouldn’t like what I saw if I gave her my blood and let her pour it into the bowl with what she claimed was Valemar’s.
“It’s a trick,” I said. “Something to make me moldable.”
“It could be. But it’s not.”
At that moment, I wanted the lie-detecting eye sensor more than anything I’d ever wanted — more than my crew alive, more than me home, more than my own life. None of those things mattered because I knew what she would show me would change my world. If only I could be certain that what it revealed would be true.
“Reina survived your telling,” Shale said. “You talked of magic and she believed you without proof. So why are you afraid of this?”
Of course, Reina would have turned to her after my bombshell. My story had irrevocably altered her, brought danger and uncertainty into her world. This was the least I deserved. I held out my hand. “Fine.”
I’d offered blood on five occasions as part of my treatment. My hand was almost used to the light sting of the blade. A vial pressed against my thumb and then Shale pinched the wound closed and elevated my hand. After a minute, she released it and nodded once to remind me to continue the pressure.
“What does the blood do?” she asked again.
“What blood does. It matters not the species, it will begin to mix with the water.”
Watch, she said with her eyes. Shale removed the stopper from the first vial with her thumb. My eyes followed the cork to the floor before the movement of Shale’s hand drew my gaze back to her. The contents flowed darkly into the bowl and then swirled. Moments later my blood was added.
A strange thing began to happen. The swirls of Valemar’s blood reversed direction, retreating from its journey around the bowl and began to inch toward my blood.
“It’s a trick,” I said, unable to tear my eyes away from the sight of the blood reaching for mine, blending together until they were one.
“No trick,” Shale said.
“I …” But words failed me. The blood pooled together, forming a mass that undulated in the water. “It’s a clot,” I said. Blood clotted, especially blood exposed to an incompatible type. There was the proof that Valemar and I, too, were incompatible.
“Touch it.” Shale’s face held a hint of smugness. I huffed, reached out a finger, and brought it down into the middle of the blob.
Only it was no blob. My finger moved through it as easily as if it had been cream. The motion stirred the water, pushing at the mass, straining its bonds. But the connection held.
“It’s a trick,” I said again. “It didn’t do that at our wedding.”
“Did you love him then?” Shale asked. The question was like an arrow to my heart.
“No.”
“And he wanted you, but he didn’t love you.”
“He doesn’t love me now,” I said, and pushed at the pain the words brought. But my eyes were captured by the sight of Valemar’s blood swirling around mine, refusing to be parted.
“He mourns,” Shale said. “You have wounded him and he mourns.”
I blinked and looked away from the bowl. “Why show this to me?”
<
br /> “Because the time is coming when you will need to know that you are loved. Because you pray for him and not yourself. Dark forces are gathering, my queen, and you are lost. This is a reminder that things we don’t understand can still be the truth. And it’s one you needed to hear.”
I recoiled as the words hit me. I needed to hear? A tidal wave of anger surged. I had needed to hear I was some savior in order to keep my place? I had needed to pretend to pray for a child to cover up Valemar’s actions? Where was “the truth” in any of that?
I turned on my heel and marched across the room. I threw the door open, startling the guard both with my sudden appearance and my thunderous expression. I stomped down the hall and flung open the door that led to the sanctuary. Men and women jumped, rising from their prayers. I tromped across the floor inlaid with the mosaic of a red-haired woman reaching for a white-haired man, and shoved the outer door, coming to a standstill as the bright sunlight temporarily blinded me after the dark of the Mödatal’s rooms.
I was done. I was done with the fertility charade. I was done with the Mödatal. Damn them all to hell. Even Reina. Goosebumps rose on my arms as I thought about facing down Reina’s potential wrath, then I set my jaw and pounded down the stairs.
I was done, and there wasn’t anything they could do about it.
DESPITE THE FACT I knew that Daria would be the one to clean up the mess, I returned to my room and hurled piece after piece of fruit against the wall. Their weight filled my hand then splattered across the plaster with a gush I found immensely satisfying. Almost like smashing the heads of my enemies, I thought with a savage glee. The Viking blood in me flamed to life.
Daria rushed in through the door just in time to see another fruit smear its pulp across my wall and get caught in the back splatter. “What!?”
I hefted another fruit like a baseball. “Fucking charlatan!” I wound up and hurled the fruit. Daria closed the door behind her. I picked up another. She edged her way toward me along the wall. “Thinks she can trick me!” There was another resounding splat as I aimed for where the Mödatal’s head would have been if she’d been standing there.