“Has that old hag gone away … with her nasty potions?” Meir asked. He broke the sentence in half, taking a breath in the middle. Despite the open shutters, the coming storm made the room dim. Boann, or perhaps one of the servants, had lit candles about the room; they seemed to amplify the darkness rather than alleviate it. Voada could see Meir’s form under the quilt, with Fermac at his side and Meir’s hand scratching his ruff.
“She has,” Voada told him. She forced cheerfulness into her voice. “And you’d better have taken that nasty potion, too.”
Meir gave a laugh that morphed into a barking cough. He spat into a linen cloth and took a long, wheezing inhalation. “I took it. It’s helped. Some.”
“Good,” she told him. “I’ll make sure the kitchen brews another potion for you soon. Archiater Boann said that you need to take it more often.”
“Is that all she said?” Meir asked.
Voada tried not to show anything on her face. “She said you need to rest and get your strength back.”
“Voada …” Another breath. Meir favored her with a lopsided smile. “Pouring honey over thorns still doesn’t make them edible.”
Voada sighed. “I’ve never been able to lie to you.”
“You show everything on your face,” he told her. “It’s why I love you.” His eyes closed. When they opened again, he was staring directly at her. “What did she tell you?”
She went to the bed and sat next to him, taking his hands in her own. Fermac rose, lumbered to the foot of the bed, and lay down there. “She’s worried. She said there’s really nothing she can do. The potion …” Voada sighed. “All it will do is make it easier for you to breathe.”
“How long before … ?” He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.
Voada looked at him, and she had to brush away the tears that threatened. “Soon.” Then she pressed her lips together and sniffed. “She could be wrong, Meir. The archiater doesn’t know. She can’t know. Only Goddess Elia … The fates …” She stopped. She realized she was pressing his fingers too hard and forced her hands to relax.
“The archiater knows,” Meir said into the quiet. Farther back in the house, they heard Hakan calling for Orla. “I know. I’ve known for a while. We always knew it was likely to end this way, Voada, even if neither of us ever said it. I’m so many years older than you. You should have married a younger man.”
“I married the person my heart told me to marry,” she answered. “And I’ve never regretted that.”
“Even now?”
She leaned over and kissed his forehead. “Even now,” she told him.
His hand lifted, and his fingers brushed away the moisture on her cheek. “You’ll show me the sun-path if I can’t find it? Promise me?”
Voada nodded silently, not trusting her voice to speak.
“Good. Don’t worry—you and the children will be fine.” He sucked in a rattling breath, and his hand dropped away. “The Hand’s contract gives the emperor half the value of the estate …” Another breath. Another. She watched his eyes close with the effort. “… when I die,” he finished. “The rest goes to you; it will be enough. You can even stay here …” Two more breaths. “ … if you wish. That will be at the Voice’s discretion, of course. I’m sure the new Hand …”
She put a finger to his lips. “Hush,” she told him. “I don’t want to talk of this now. Rest.”
Meir shook his head. “I’ll have rest soon enough …” He coughed and wiped at his mouth with the linen cloth again. “Now … send our children in. I want to see them. I want to memorize their faces and their voices …”
Voada had no idea what time it was or how soon morning might come. She’d spent the night alternately lying alongside Meir as he slept and sitting in the chair next to his bed. Fermac seemed to sense his master’s illness as well; except for when Voada had Hakan take the dog for a walk, he stayed next to Meir.
Meir hadn’t spoken since late morning. His eyes had closed not long after that and remained closed, though the eyelids fluttered from time to time as if his eyes were moving underneath them. His breathing had gone from simply labored to a slow cycle of a stuttering inhalation, a wheezing exhalation, and a terrifying pause before the next breath, the pauses growing steadily longer throughout the evening and into the night.
Inhale.
Voada had been at his side since dinner. The candle she’d lit on the table next to their bed at nightfall had gone down five stripes since then; dawn was probably only two or three more stripes away.
Exhale.
The servants shuffled in and out of the room quietly, leaving her cups of watered wine and small plates of fruit. Fermac lay on the bed. Hakan and Orla had sat with Voada for most of the night. They were still there, both of them sleeping in chairs just behind her.
Pause.
Voada had nearly dozed off herself a few times. She fought off sleep by talking to Meir, relating tales of her favorite times with him, telling him what they might do when he recovered even though she knew that for the lie it was. She wondered whether he heard her at all, wondered whether her voice was any comfort to him in whatever twilight between life and death he now inhabited.
She wasn’t sure whether she’d drifted off for a time. She realized, with a sudden inrush of terror, that the room was too quiet, that she hadn’t hear Meir take in that next breath. She stared at him in the shifting, uncertain light of the candles, looking at his open mouth and his chest under the linen sheet, trimmed with tiny embroidered roses. She held her own breath, willing him to suck in air once more, for his chest to rise. She waited until she had to let out her own breath, and with it, a word.
“Meir?” she asked, leaning forward, taking his hand in hers. It seemed colder than it had been last time, as if she were grasping an empty sack. “Meir?” Fermac lifted his head, staring at her with great mournful brown eyes. Across the bed, she saw Orla’s eyes flutter open, saw Una slide into the room in the dimness, her hand to her mouth as if to stifle a cry. Voada looked back to the bed; there was a shadow moving in the room, sliding away toward the window. The curtains lifted in a sudden breeze, and the shadow was gone, and with it, the sense of Meir’s presence. There was only an empty shell left on the bed. Fermac’s head dropped down.
“Oh, Meir …”
Voada heard Orla sob, and Hakan woke at the sound, sitting up wide-eyed in his chair. “What—” he began, then stopped. From the doorway, Una began a keening wail. Voada released Meir’s hand and stood. She leaned over the bed, and—as was custom—kissed his mouth to seal it after the passing of his spirit and slid her fingers over his eyelids to shut them completely. Then she gathered her children to her, clutching them as if they were something solid in a world rushing around her like foaming rapids.
Holding them, she closed her eyes and allowed her grief to well out of her in a sharp, throat-tearing cry.
7
The Fruits of a Life
“DID YOU SEE IT, Mother?”
Voada knew what Orla meant. She nodded as she brushed her daughter’s hair. “Yes, I saw it too.”
“And was that … ?”
“Yes, it was your father’s taibhse.”
Orla nodded, which caused Voada to pull the brush away for fear of pulling her hair. Una had dressed Orla for the funeral at the temple and was making sure that Hakan looked presentable while Voada finished with Orla, sending away the servants who had offered to help. Doing this took her mind away from the grief that had overwhelmed her several times during the last day.
She’d washed and anointed Meir’s body, dressed him in his best robes and placed the silver wreath of the Hand about his head, then wrapped the body in a funerary sheet so the servants could carry it to the temple.
But the ceremony and routine had done little to ease the loss. She’d see something of Meir’s, or smell his clothing as she pulled it from the chest at the foot of their bed, or imagine she heard his voice, and her eyes would brim and overflow, and she co
uld do nothing but sob for several breaths. She felt as if a limb had been cut from her body. She’d married him the solstice after her first moon-time; ever since then she’d been with him, and they’d grown together like two trees twined around each other. Now that support was gone. The emptiness was a dark, starless void that surrounded her and through which she struggled to move.
Even now. Even as she pulled Orla back to her chest and hugged her.
Una came back in with Hakan in tow. “Here’s the boy,” she said to Voada. “I’m not quite sure he understands.”
“I do understand,” Hakan insisted. “Father died. Maybe the Voice will make me the new Hand.”
Orla sighed at that, causing Hakan’s face to fall into a scowl, and Voada hurried to counter the argument she saw coming. “I’m afraid you’re too young to be Hand right now,” she told Hakan. “Voice Kadir will have to name someone else as Hand, at least for the time being.”
“Then I’ll be Hand when I’m old enough,” Hakan stated with a glare toward his sister. “Like Father.”
“Perhaps,” Voada told him. “We’ll worry about that later. For now we have to go to the temple, and you’ll need to show the Voice that you are the Hand’s son. Can you be brave and do that?”
Hakan nodded. Voada smiled at him and resumed brushing Orla’s hair. “Then go with Una now, and tell the servants that we’re nearly ready to go to the temple. Una, send someone to tell the Voice that it’s time. I’ll meet you in the courtyard.”
Una nodded and left. Hakan bowed, a mimicking of Meir that made her press her lips together, and ran out of the bedroom. Voada gave Orla’s hair a final brushing, burnishing the already-glossy strands, and patted it into place. “There. That’s done. Let’s go and give your father back to Elia.”
It should have been simple. The ceremony was to be small and private, per Meir’s wishes: just the Voice and Hand’s families as well as a smattering of the more distinguished families of Pencraig, those who had to be invited for the sake of politeness. In Mundoan fashion, the servants had laid the body before the altar with Emperor Pashtuk looking down on him, but a traditional Cateni pyre had also been prepared outside the temple. Since Emperor Pashtuk now worshipped the One-God and had established that as the state religion, the Mundoa preserved and buried their bodies rather than burning them, a custom that Voada found incomprehensible and a waste of space. Still, the Mundoa allowed those Cateni who followed their old customs to continue to burn their dead so long as the ceremony for the deceased invoked the emperor rather than the goddess Elia.
For Meir, as Hand, the appearances were especially important. There had been a flurry of communications between Voada, Voice Kadir, and Voice-wife Dilara regarding the rites that would be observed. The Voice would give the formal panegyric in praise of the deceased, but would a sow or a goat be sacrificed to the One-God and Pashtuk? Had Voada already purchased a funerary urn from the local potter for the ashes? Would she want Orla and Hakan involved in the rite by anointing the body with aromatic oils, and did the children know the proper invocation to Pashtuk?
Voada had answered as well as she could, but her mind was elsewhere. She would get through this ceremony somehow, and then she could allow herself to collapse and grieve fully.
When she walked into the temple holding Orla’s and Hakan’s hands, she knew this would not be a simple, easy ceremony. She saw the expanse of faces gathered around the altar and Meir’s wrapped body, saw their tight-lipped, solemn glances. A soldier in full armor stood near the altar, holding the lead of the sacrificial goat and a ceremonial knife with a bejeweled hilt to slit its throat. Voada had expected to see the strange ghost still pacing the temple, as it had been for days; it was indeed still there, mouthing wordless pleas and gesturing.
But she’d not expected to see another ghost there with it: this one a true taibhse, a spirit of the dead.
Orla saw it too. She dropped Voada’s hand and gasped. “Father?”
The taibhse was standing alongside Meir’s body, staring down at it as if transfixed, ignoring the others gathered in the space, none of whom noticed either ghost at all. The taibhse of Meir lifted its head as Voada, Orla, and Hakan entered the temple.
“We’re so sorry, Hand-wife,” Voice Kadir said as he came up to her.
Voice-wife Dilara was alongside him, wearing the red that was the Mundoan funerary color. “I can’t imagine how you must feel,” the woman said, her voice as dry as her kohl-darkened eyes. “I know Voice Kadir has prepared a fine speech about all that the Hand has done over the years …”
Voada heard almost none of the platitudes. She was vaguely aware that Dilara’s voice had trailed off and that her careful expression had drifted into a frown. Voada was staring instead at Meir’s taibhse, which had come forward. It stood at Dilara’s right side, and it was speaking to Voada, its pleading a sibilance in her ear. A quick glance at Orla told Voada that she heard Meir’s voice as well.
“I will,” Voada told the taibhse. Her voice broke into a sob. “Follow me, my love.” She stepped past Dilara, who gave a huff of exasperation at Voada’s dismissal of her and the strange reply she seemed to have made to Dilara’s comments. Voada could hear a ripple of surprise and shock moving through the rest of the onlookers as well. “Mother?” Hakan called out, obviously not understanding what was happening, but Voada saw Orla shush him, holding him in her arms as Voada moved past the wrapped body of Meir, not looking at the shell he’d once inhabited but at the spirit at her side.
“Hand-wife, what in the emperor’s name are you doing?” she heard Voice Kadir call out. She ignored him, walking to the altar and the paler floor tiles that formed a wide X from the two eastern windows to the matching western ones, the altar set at their intersection: the sun-paths marking the solstice dawns and sunsets, which the windows framed. The Mundoan One-God represented by the Emperor Pashtuk didn’t care about the solstices, though the Cateni religion did. Mundoan souls didn’t have to traverse the sun-path to reach the land beyond—at least, Voada had never seen their taibhsean here. The other Mundoa in attendance were calling out to her along with the Voice now; she ignored them all.
“Follow me, darling,” she told Meir’s taibhse again. It nodded gratefully. The other strange taibhse had stopped its restless pacing. From behind the altar, it seemed to watch Meir’s ghost and Voada, though its many-faced gaze often flicked over toward Orla, which alarmed Voada.
“You aren’t lost now, Meir,” she reassured it. “I can show you the path.”
Sunlight glimmered through the northernmost eastern window—not solstice light, but the beams still plucked out the grains in the tiles, making them sparkle and flare as she stood at the altar. She placed her feet on the sun-path and held her hand out to Meir’s taibhse. “Come here,” she told him. “Come into me, Meir, so I can show you.”
“Disgraceful!” she heard Sub-Commander Bakir spit out. “This is an insult to Emperor Pashtuk and Voice Kadir, and it’s forbidden! Hand-wife, I order you to stop this nonsense! Stop this sihirki foolishness immediately!”
Voada ignored Bakir, ignored Voice Kadir and the Voice-wife, still holding her hand out to Meir’s spirit. She could feel the cold touch of the taibhse, and she drew in her breath harshly through her nose at the chill and the sense of intrusion as the taibhse entered her body. Her vision shifted, the temple around her now overlaid with glaring light and glimpses of a twisted, otherworldly landscape sculpted from fog, sea foam, and ice that threatened her with jagged upthrust spears. A cold, biting wind t
ore at her, plucking at her clothing, and her nose was filled with the odor of rot and corruption, so strong that she nearly gagged. Holding the taibhse inside her was exhausting; she fought to hold on to herself and not to lose herself in Meir’s pain and fear as it filled her mind. No matter how many times she’d seen this afterworld, no matter how many taibhsean she’d guided along to the path, it was always the same. It was no wonder to Voada that the taibhsean often seemed so frightened and confused; she would be terrified to be lost in this inhospitable place between the world of the living and the world of the dead.
And this experience was far worse. Not only was this Meir and not some stranger or acquaintance, but she could see the other taibhse far more clearly now, and its visage was terrifying. A dozen faces seemed to flicker and fade across its features, appearing and being replaced so quickly that Voada couldn’t hold on to their appearance in her mind at all. The grave-clothes it wore were torn and ragged, fluttering in the storm of this world, and it screamed, a wail of despair that nearly made Voada lose her concentration on Meir and the sun-path. She could sense that if she allowed that to happen, she might fall away into madness herself. She tried to shut the sound from her ears, concentrating on the feel of Meir’s taibhse inside her.
(In the world of the living, now muffled and indistinct, she could hear angry shouting and arguments, but that tumult was now distant and easy to ignore.)
Below her feet, in this doubled view, she could see the sun-path arrowing out toward the misty horizon beyond the windows of the temple and into a blaze of brilliant sun. Tirnanog: the Otherworld … She concentrated on that, looking at nothing else. “There. Use my eyes, dear,” she said aloud to Meir. “Do you see the path now?”
Meir’s voice was almost too loud, like hearing herself in her own head.
“And I will miss you as well,” she told him. “Always.”
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