Keeper of the Dawn

by Dianna Gunn

  The Keeper of the Dawn cleared her throat. Heat rushed to Lai’s cheeks as she turned her gaze to the mahogany desk where the Elder sat. She wasn’t as old as Ellanora, her wrinkles lighter and her hair darker, but her eyes sparkled with the wisdom of many lifetimes.

  “Sit.” The woman’s voice was stern, as if she spent so much time giving commands she had forgotten how to be gentle.

  Lai hurried to obey. The chair across from the high priestess looked comfortable, but it was quite stiff. She shifted her weight three times before she gave up on being comfortable.

  “My name is Amber,” the Elder said. “What brings you here?”

  Lai knew she shouldn’t start by making demands, but the words fell out of her mouth before she could stop them. “I want to become a Keeper of the Dawn.” She cringed, half expecting Amber to throw her out.

  But her expression didn’t even change. “Do you know what it means to be a Keeper of the Dawn?”

  “To serve the goddesses I have worshiped my entire life. To smith weapons of legendary quality and use them in rituals to celebrate Taelanna’s glory.” She believed in the other gods, but Taelanna had always been her goddess, the one she planned to devote her life to as priestess.

  Amber laughed. “Only a few Keepers of the Dawn become smiths.” Her face grew serious and she leaned forward. “Now tell me, where else do they worship our goddesses?” Her tone was heavy with doubt.

  Lai told Amber about her people, how they had moved south centuries ago but still returned to their homeland once a year. She told her about the trials, about her failure, the dream when Taelanna tested her, the nightmares she had until she started traveling towards Taurim. Amber remained expressionless through the entire thing, making Lai more nervous with every sentence.

  When Lai finished Amber crossed her arms over her chest. “I do not know how you learned that our people and the southern nomads were sister tribes, but they are long dead.”

  Sister tribe? If they really were sister tribes, why didn’t any of the histories Lai knew mention them?

  She needed to find out, but first she needed to earn this woman’s trust.

  “My people are not dead,” Lai said. “And we have no stories of a sister tribe, yet here you are. Clearly both our peoples have lost knowledge over the centuries.”

  “Even if what you tell me is true, I have no way to prove it, and outsiders may not become Keepers of the Dawn.”

  Tears welled up in her eyes. She held them open as wide as she could, trying to dry them with the smoky air so she wouldn’t actually cry in front of this woman. She had never thought the mountain people might turn her away, not for an instant.

  Only because I didn’t let myself think it. Her own people would do the same if someone from the mountains came and tried to become a priestess. If she had thought about it, really thought about it—but she wanted so much to serve the goddesses. She had never really wanted anything else. Maybe there’s still a chance.

  “I cannot go home,” she said.

  Amber folded her hands together on her desk. “I didn’t say you have to leave. The temple can always use more servants; we’re currently short a stable hand.”

  The suggestion stung. Lai hadn’t come all this way to clean up after other people’s horses. Still, it was a chance to earn Amber’s trust and maybe change her mind about outsiders.

  “I’m happy to earn my place,” she said.

  “Wonderful,” Amber said. “And I’ll give you a roommate who can teach you what being a Keeper of the Dawn means.”

  She led Lai out of the room. Lai could barely keep up with the older woman, let alone understand the maze of corridors leading to her room. They stopped outside a door painted such a bright red it hurt her eyes.

  Amber didn’t even have the chance to knock twice before a tall woman with curly red hair hanging down to her stomach answered the door. Lai’s heart skipped a beat. She had never seen a woman so beautiful outside of paintings.

  “To what do I owe the honor?” the woman asked. She had a rich, musical voice.

  “Tara, this is Lai,” Amber said. “She wishes to learn our ways.”

  Tara stared at Lai, looking her up and down as if trying to sort her into some kind of category. “Is she going to be my new roommate?”

  Amber nodded. “I want you to teach her.”

  When Tara smiled her whole face lit up, her green eyes sparkling like a river in the sun. “I’d love to. Come on in.” She stepped back, out of the way.

  Lai smiled back, oddly nervous. She had known many amazing women, but something about Tara was different. Lai wanted to get to know her, to listen to all her stories of the mountain and tell her stories of the southern lands, the desert, the city Lai came from, all those miles south of here.

  She turned to thank Amber, but the older woman was already gone.

  Chapter Nine

  “Taelanna brought Est-ella to her castle to stu-dy her ways,” Lai said, carefully repeating the words Tara had read her from The Twins’ Tale, Taurim’s holy book. She had wanted to start at the beginning, but Tara insisted she start with this story instead. The story of the first Keeper of the Dawn.

  “You’ll learn to recite them one by one,” she had said, “it’ll be good practice for becoming a Keeper of the Dawn too.”

  Lai had told Tara about the visions that led her here, and her conversation with Amber the night she arrived. Tara had convinced Lai she could become a Keeper of the Dawn, telling her about the one outsider who became a Keeper of the Dawn almost three hundred years earlier.

  “If it happened once it can happen again,” she said over and over, every time Lai wanted to give up.

  Lai had stumbled through this story a dozen times now, and she almost had it memorized. She understood the words, could even read them, but they never came out of her mouth right. Speaking Tauril felt like trying to speak with her mouth full.

  “She taught Est-ella the art of swords,” she said. “How to forge her own, how to wield them.”

  Tara cleared her throat impatiently. “You sound like you arrived yesterday. You need to practice outside of this room, talk to people.”

  “I-I talk to the stable boys.” Talking to anyone else meant leaving herself open to humiliation. At least the stable boys didn’t mind when she accidentally used the wrong word.

  Tara rolled her eyes. “That’s why you can say ‘stable’ properly.” She straightened up, her usual light expression replaced by one of grim determination. “Tomorrow you’ll sit with me at dinner. I’ll introduce you to the other initiates and we’ll talk. About anything you like—other than horses.”

  “But the ini-iti-ates sit at their own table.” She sat with the servants, usually between the two stable boys she worked with. Everyone else still stared when she spoke, shocked by her accent.

  “And we’re allowed to invite friends to our table,” Tara said.

  Lai smiled. Tara had helped her from the night she arrived, but she had never actually called her a friend before. It felt nice to have a friend again.

  “All right,” she said. “I’ll sit with you at dinner tomor-row.”

  Tara’s face lit up. “Wonderful. Now, we should return to Estella’s story.”

  Lai arrived as the servants were filling the last of the ale tankards. She hurried over to the table where Tara sat. There was only one spot left at the table, right beside her friend. As Lai came around the corner she saw Tara had marked the spot with her copy of The Twins’ Tale. She grinned.

  She picked up the familiar book and sat down, lowering it reverently onto her lap. Lai loved this book more than anything else in Taurim. Each day she grew more amazed at how similar and yet how different it was from the holy texts she had memorized back home. Back home they believed Ravina created the world with the help of the other gods and goddesses; here they believed Ravina cre
ated the world on her own and Taelanna created the sun and stars to help life grow. Taelanna ruled over warriors in both kingdoms, but here she did so without Kalmar’s help and with a kinder hand. She didn’t even require new Keepers of the Dawn in Taurim to fight to the death, although the actual trials were only known to members of the order.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” Tara said, bringing Lai back into the moment. “I was just telling Katharine—” she gestured at the woman across from her, “about you.”

  Katharine, who had been watching her with obvious interest, raised her glass. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “You as well.” She raised her glass and they drank together.

  Katharine leaned forward, her curly black hair almost falling into her tankard. “Tara says you came from the south to serve our goddesses. Are there really other people who worship them?”

  “I come from a land beyond Alanum. We didn’t believe anyone worshiped our goddesses ei-ther.”

  Katharine took a long swig from her tankard before she spoke again. “Great story. Except nobody’s lived south of Alanum in centuries. Even plants don’t live in the Scarred Lands.”

  Lai’s grip tightened instinctively around her cup. Why did everyone here know about these Scarred Lands except her? “My people live beyond the Scarred Lands.”

  Katharine raised a single eyebrow. “All right, if they do exist, why come here?”

  “I can become a Keeper of the Dawn here.”

  Katharine laughed, a deep belly laugh. She laughed so hard she doubled over, her hair knocking over her tankard. Everyone at the table turned to stare as she straightened up, wiping tears away from her eyes.

  Lai’s whole body burned, a torrent of emotions filling her, tearing her apart the way they had when she failed the second trial. She wanted to leap over the table and attack the wretched woman, run out of the room, leave the temple and throw herself from the mountain, all at the same time. Yet she could only sit there, stunned into silence.

  “You’re an outsider,” she said. “Our priestesses have let many outsiders live here, but only one outsider was ever permitted to join the order.”

  Lai didn’t know how she managed to keep her tone steady as she responded. “If it happened once it can happen again.” The phrase had become a mantra, repeated to herself every night before bed. She believed it almost as much as she believed in the goddesses now.

  Katharine shook her head. “That Keeper of the Dawn stole Burning Dawn.”

  All the emotions drained out of her, leaving only shock. She had learned about Burning Dawn a couple weeks ago, at the end of the story she couldn’t perfect. Taelanna gave Burning Dawn to Estella so she could defend the mountain. As long as she held the sword, she was untouchable. It cut through her enemies like butter. It was the original Dawnsinger Steel sword.

  Tara told her it had been stolen, but clearly she had skipped the most important detail. And now she was watching Lai with big, frightened eyes, her mouth half open as if she couldn’t decide what to say.

  A servant set plates of meat sitting on piles of mashed turnips in front of them. Lai stared at her food. All her appetite had disappeared, gone with her embarrassment and her anger. All she wanted to do was retreat. Retreat and cry.

  She forced herself to eat anyway. She would not be deterred so easily. She ate slowly, methodically, ignoring the growing emptiness in her chest. Katharine said nothing more, clearly out of terrible truths.

  “Burning Dawn was stolen centuries ago,” Tara said, her voice quiet so only Lai could hear. “You can do this.”

  Lai didn’t respond. She wanted so desperately to believe it, but after all these weeks she had only the tiniest shred of hope that she could build a life here at all, let alone become a Keeper of the Dawn.

  She excused herself halfway through dinner, filled with more sorrow than food.

  Lai doubled her efforts after the incident. When Tara went to bed, Lai went to the library. The lights were always on there. She often found temple servants studying in the vast room. They smiled at her as she passed them on her way to the furthest corner. She sat there so her reading out loud wouldn’t disturb them, but sometimes they came to listen. A couple even helped her with difficult words—and many were difficult for her.

  Still, Tara helped her most of all, often listening right up until she passed out.

  “Don’t you ever want to take a break?” she asked Lai one night.

  “Taking breaks won’t impress Amber,” Lai said.

  “Amber wants you to understand us.” She leaned over and closed the Book of Twins. “We are more than scripture. Follow me.”

  She hurried to the door before Lai could respond. Lai jumped out of her seat as the door closed behind Tara, leaving The Twins’ Tale on her bed. She couldn’t remember the last time she did something other than try to recite stories from the book after dinner.

  Tara led her to the basement, increasing her speed every few feet so Lai had to sprint to keep up.

  “What’s so interesting down here?” Lai asked between breaths.

  “The art vault,” Tara said, rounding a corner.

  Tara stopped so abruptly that Lai almost ran into her. She raised her head to see what Tara was staring at.

  The wall in front of them was covered from top to bottom with paintings, mostly of the town or the goddesses. Portraits of beautiful women lined the wall on their left. A few more hung on the right wall, these ones smaller and newer, as if recent painters feared they would run out of space.

  “The women are Keepers of the Dawn from past generations,” Tara said. “Some date back almost a thousand years. I’ve always loved coming here when I couldn’t sleep.”

  Lai moved forward to inspect the rows of women. “Does every Keeper of the Dawn get a portrait?” Only the high priestesses had gotten portraits back home.

  “Yes. Most are given to their families when they die. These are the ones who didn’t have families.”

  She shivered. “If I ever become a Keeper of the Dawn, mine will end up here.” Even if someone was brave enough to take the journey, her family wouldn’t want it.

  “Mine too,” Tara said. She cleared her throat and pointed at a portrait of a woman with curly red hair and piercing green eyes. “There’s Estella. In The Twins’ Tale she says her only family is the temple. Apparently it was true.”

  Tara went on to tell the stories of the women on the wall until her voice grew hoarse.

  “We can return tomorrow night if you want to know more,” she whispered on the way back to their room.

  “I’d love that.”

  Chapter Ten

  By midwinter Taurim was so cold that Lai could barely work in the stables despite the fur coat and gloves Amber gave her. Maia was even worse off. She barely ate now. The stables had a warmth enchantment, but it was only enough to keep the strange goat-like horses bred in Taurim healthy. Lai didn’t think Maia would live to spring.

  She stroked Maia’s mane and pulled the saddle blanket tighter around her. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she whispered, her breath frosting.

  Lai turned and hurried into the temple.

  Tara was already in their room when Lai arrived, yanking a brush through her red cloud of hair. She frowned when Lai came in. Lai stopped dead, one hand still on the doorknob. Tara had never frowned at her.

  “You look terrible,” Tara said. “This winter is killing you, isn’t it?”

  Lai stiffly removed her coat. “I’m just not used to it.”

  “Why not go home if it’s so hard to be here?”

  Why not? Her life wasn’t much better here. Other than Tara and the stable boys, nobody even spoke to her. Lai peeled her gloves off and stared at her swollen hands. Back home it got cold, sure, but never cold enough to snow. It had snowed every other day for weeks now.

  Tara crossed the room
and knelt beside her, wrapping her hands around Lai’s fingers and pushing them together. Her hands were so warm it almost hurt, but her touch was gentle. She started moving Lai’s hands so the palms rubbed together.

  “Rub your hands together like this to warm them up.” She started moving Lai’s hands faster.

  Lai watched for a long time, letting Tara move her hands but not helping. She was stuck in her childhood home, thinking about summer, about winter without snow, the many brilliant colored flowers that grew from every unclaimed patch of earth. How much she’d love to go back home.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  Tara’s hands dropped to her sides. “Can’t what?”

  “Go back.” And then the words came pouring out, the whole story in her half-broken Tauril. The years she spent training to be like her mother, the dream in the temple, the trials, the day she fled. The hopeless time spent traveling with Calvin, watching him fill his sick appetites, seeing the godlessness of Alanum. She told her about the nightmares, the growing despair in her heart.

  And then she told her about the night she discovered that other people worshiped her gods, the day she left Calvin behind and how the nightmares stopped.

  Tara sat on the floor and listened the whole time, her face filled with wonder as if Lai’s story was the most interesting thing she had ever heard.

  “There’s nowhere else for me,” Lai finished. She met Tara’s eyes for the first time since she started talking.

  Tara reached out and gently squeezed one of Lai’s hands. “Well then we’ll build you a future here. And we’ll start by telling Amber you can’t work the stables in the winter.”

  Lai shook her head. “I’ll do what it takes to earn her trust.”

  Tara crossed her arms over her chest. “You won’t earn anything by dying. We’re going to Amber tomorrow if I have to drag you.”