The Changing of the Sun

by Lesley Smith

  “Saia-child, it’s mid-morning. The noon-bell will ring before the hour is out.”

  “What?”

  Saiara felt herself pale, waves of nausea washing over her. She felt the blood draining from her face and the eerie cold of shock eating her alive. She opened her eyes wider, and in the darkness saw nothing but hints of vague light and grey shadow. Matriarch Rie herself was nothing but a black fog in front of her.

  “Saiara, breathe.” Rie gripped Saiara’s hand.

  “I’m scared, Mother.”

  “I know.” Rie tried to calm her and failed. There was only one thing to do now and she called out, “Tell High Oracle Jashri that Saiara has awoken, and tell her to send the Companion!”

  The Test

  All oracles are called, some for days, others for years, but all must be surpassed by the next generation.

  The writings of Kaiene the Blessed, first Oracle of Aia.

  The Companion arrived after the noon-bell rang. He was a young man, only a few years older than Caspa, and did not give his name. He was simply the Companion, a son of Jadias and Kaiene’s line who held a special place as tester of the Oracles. Rumours said the Companions had some powers of their own, that they would know an Oracle just from looking into the depths of the broken eyes of those they tested.

  After helping Saiara bathe and dressing her in a clean robe, Rie cleared the room, then left them alone. The test was always done in private. Saiara was wrapped in thick quilts. She sipped broth thick with chopped weed, tiny clams¸ and rich from baelish stock to give her some much-needed strength. Rie had produced one of the draughts they kept in stock to dull the pain in her head. Saiara continued to ask for her cousin and for Caspa. Both requests were denied so she took the bitter draught and tried not to throw it up.

  “Don’t fret, Saiara. The test is painless.” The Companion sounded kindly but also proud, as if this was his moment, the thing he had been waiting for all his life. “Now, tell me of your vision.”

  “As you wish, Companion,” she said. “I found myself drifting in the cold darkness. Space loomed vast and silent, lit by the twinkling of stars and the glory of Thaeos. I saw Kaiene, spinning lazily around our world. Far off, twin-ringed Henam turned, liquid and gas burning purple-blue, while the dead worlds Eien and Shadra burned, too close to Thaeos to support Ishvei’s creations.

  “I felt myself being pulled away from our home. Space loomed, and for a moment I perceived my place in the universe as a tiny, frail mortal being. I, and other sentient souls like me, would live, love, die and be reborn. Through my reverie, Thaeos shone, but I had the distinct impression the Sun Lord’s focus was not on Ishvei’s World. Then I remembered the words of Kaiene:

  “‘The universe, though vast, did not betray Ishvei, and Thaeos could not find his beloved Lady. For the Goddess had returned to birth her child in realms higher than mortals and star-gods know. So it was but a matter of time before he turned his gaze back upon her favoured world. And raged.’

  “Thaeos turned on his own axis, flooding my body with warmth and sickly heat. I sensed the star-god within, but terror struck me as I realised a single giant eye, the shape of my own but with a red-gold pupil, had turned to look at Ishvei’s World. The god was staring at my homeland, his anger smouldering. The ice at the top of the world, in the Frozen Wastes to the north, melted and the sea rose up in anger. Lush plains became a great desert, rivers boiled and animals died, cooked alive in their skins. Finally the great Temple itself flooded, the statue of the Goddess submerged beneath the water, never to be seen again.

  “Then the eye blinked and Thaeos’ attention shifted, his anger bubbling anew as he sensed me. His voice echoed, fury burning in my mind, "You!"

  “His rage threatened to send me spinning into infinity and I tried to protect myself. Thaeos was so large, like a furious parent towering over a disobedient child. He was focused on me, only on me. No mortal could survive such attention. He was so huge, it was impossible to not see light. There was no darkness, not anymore, and as the heat of his gaze struck me, I heard myself screaming in terror and pain, and my eyes burned in their sockets. It was, it seems, the last image I would ever see.”

  The Companion had been scribbling her account. She could hear the scratching of his nib against the pages which smelled of pana leaf paper. A minute after she stopped speaking, his pen fell still.

  “Thank you, Saiara,” he said. “Might I look in your eyes for a moment?”

  “If you wish.” She opened her eyes and the world spun in a grey blur around her. The Companion tilted her head upwards, made a noise as he looked through her cracked irises. “What can you see?”

  “It’s all blurred. Grey, like the half-light before dawn. I can’t make anything out.”

  “All right. You can close your eyes now, Saiara.”

  She winced. “Thank you.”

  “Now, do you think you can walk?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Would you try for me?” his voice was gentle.

  “Yes.”

  For the first few steps, Saiara was unsteady on her feet, but soon her balance returned and her steps became more confident. The Companion offered his arm and guided her through the temple grounds. As they walked he told her a story.

  “Kaiene was the first Oracle of Aia. She was Ishvei’s dearest friend and blind from birth. When the Goddess left us to have her daughter, Kaiene despaired and followed them to the city gates where she fell. Arvan saw her and took pity because his Lady had spoken much of Kaiene’s intelligence and desire to be more than just a blind girl. He could not restore her vision—and she did not wish him to—so he gave her the ability to read his records and see the past and future.”

  “His records?”

  “Arvan is the gods’ record keeper. Their time passes differently to ours and they see what we might call the past and future,” The young man said. “The tomb is in front of you. We need to go beneath the earth to Kaiene’s resting place.”

  It took a good five minutes for companion and potential oracle to navigate the twists and turns of the tomb. This was where oracles and High Oracles alike were laid to rest, their attendants beside them. Saiara’s senses were flooded by the smell of the earth and the dank taste of moss, and she was glad when they finally came to a stop.

  “Kaiene’s effigy is in front of you.”

  Saiara stepped forward, her hand raised to touch the stone, and then she remembered herself. “May I?”

  He answered kindly, “Of course.”

  The stone was smooth, Kaiene’s face hewn for eternity, cold and unchanging. “This was sculpted by Jadias?”

  “Kaiene’s own lifemate, yes,”

  Saiara’s fingers traced the ornate calligraphy on the side of the tomb, reading the carved words as if her eyes still worked. The words were ancient and the maxim the one adopted by the oracles as their mantra: “The blind can see better than those with eyes if they listen to Aia’s whispers and follow her words.”

  The statue had been created from starstone. She could feel the veins of it running through the stone. This was something only done in holy buildings and effigies. Though she couldn’t see it now, Saiara had seen the image in the Sacred Scrolls many times. Kaiene lay as if asleep, as if her mortal body had been transformed into stone where she died. Ishvei had mourned her friend’s passing and placed her soul in the sky as their moon, so Kaiene was assured a kind of immortality, and her name lingered on, spoken with reverence.

  “Saiara.” the Companion’s voice snapped her back to reality. “Reach out your hand. Do you feel the walking staves in front of you?”

  Her fingers brushed each one. “Five, yes?”

  “You have to choose one,” he explained. “Go with whichever one you feel calls to you,”

  Ahh, so this was the test, to listen to Aia. Saiara thought.

  Saiara reached out. The first staff was taller than she was and topped with a sphere. The wood had been carved so it seemed to spiral from tip
to toe and it smelled of years of polish and use.

  No. Not that one. Aia—who spoke as always in Saiara’s own voice—whispered.

  The next staff was more stones than wood. Cut and faceted they seemed to grow out of the staff. Saiara didn’t need the Disembodied Goddess to tell her this was not the staff for her.

  The third staff finished at her shoulder. It was an ancient branch that had been lovingly carved. All its nooks were smooth and the top-most part of the staff fit into her hand like a glove. It was the perfect length to scan the ground in front of her but also serve as a more traditional walking staff, it practically sang out to her; so simple and much-loved.

  Yes, this one. It was yours once before, and it belonged to others, also.

  “This is the one,” she said.

  “You don’t want to touch the others?”

  Saiara was suddenly confident. “I don’t need to.”

  “Very well.” The Companion collected the staves. “We need to head back now.”

  “Oh.” Saiara turned to face the Companion. “Erm, did I do it wrong?”

  “No.” The word came gently, but the Companion wasn’t going to let her in on the secret just yet.

  When they got back, Saiara curled up on her pallet and cried. She wept for her lost vision and she wept for Casparias.

  Caspa watched the man—the Companion—enter the room where Saiara was convalescing. Rie had tried to keep him away, to send him on minor errands around the complex. Tradition said the Companion’s identity must be kept secret but most people knew one of the Codexmaster’s line held the title. It didn’t take much to figure out which one it was. Beren had no sons or daughters, only nieces and a single nephew. All of the women worked outside of Aiaea, scattered across Reskha, only his nephew lived within the city and that itself was a requirement of the position.

  Caspa ambushed the him as he walked across the gardens towards the Sacred Library, still carrying his satchel and the staves wrapped in blue silk. He was only a few seasons Caspa’s senior and did not want to talk. In fact he looked distinctly uncomfortable walking in the open air, the blue material announcing his identity to all and sundry.

  “Librarian, a word if I might?” The young man stopped. Caspa realised he couldn’t remember his name but it was clear each knew who the other was. He walked in a particular way, back straight, his librarian’s robes pressed, and he carried himself with purpose. So the brush off, when it came, wasn’t unexpected.

  “Forgive me, attendant, I have pressing business.”

  “I know,” Caspa said. “But you’ve seen my priestess. I just want to know she’s all right.”

  The young Companion lowered his voice. “I cannot speak of this. You know that, Caspa. It’s sacred statute.”

  “And the worst kept secret in the temple,” Caspa begged. “Please.”

  “Jashri would have my flesh rendered from my bones for this,” he replied. “But given the results, I suppose the point is moot.”

  “She passed the Test?” His head spun. The last oracle to do that had been Jashri, and the last few years a slow flow of lesser oracles. But none had passed, they simply possessed the ability to listen and had lost vision.

  The Companion didn’t answer, he didn’t have to. Instead his tone darkened and there was a sense of fear in his voice. “Caspa, there’s something you need to know. Jashri says she was the last High Oracle to be tested and pass. It’s not true, there was another.”

  “What?”

  “My predecessor told me.” The Companion would not speak the name of his uncle, even if Caspa knew that’s who he was referring to. “You remember the Year of the Eclipse?”

  “Yes, it was the year after I decided to become an attendant.”

  The Companion glanced around. “There was a young woman up in Baaren, a girl named Lyse, born without her eyes some years ago. Word came with the Edoi that the girl had fallen in love and when she shared herself with her lover, she experienced visions. She predicted a fire which could have gutted the town. With her warning, it took just six kerash, and that was enough for the elders to realise she was not some minor seer.”

  “Born blind?” Caspa asked.

  Of course, people were born missing a sense all the time, and he thought of a pretty young girl with long curling hair whom he had known in while training as an attendant. The girl, he thought, had been born without hearing, and yet they could still communicate easily enough if she saw the movement of lips.

  “Lyse’s mother took ill and the womb-fever burned out the girl’s eyes. She never suffered for it, and was treated as anyone else, even if she was drawn to a monastic life. Both she and her beloved were priestesses in Kodia’s Order.”

  “What happened?” Caspa asked, not sure he wanted to hear the answer. The pretense was gone now and the Companion spoke.

  “Beren went and tested her. As I have tested your beloved. He saw true knowledge in Lyse and returned here to report his findings to Jashri, but he also came with a caveat. Lyse refused to leave Baaren to join the sisterhood, as tradition demanded. She did not want the mantle and was terrified of leaving everything she knew for a far off city in the south.”

  “Jashri didn’t take well to this?”

  “First she demanded the girl’s presence, invoking temple law. Lyse replied it was tradition that oracles live in Aiaea but not a requirement, it simply became that way because Kaiene’s successors based themselves here,” he hesitated. “In retaliation, Jashri refused to acknowledge her. She refused to step down for some northern girl who wouldn’t leave her hometown.”

  “Then surely the problem should have just gone away?”

  “No, Lyse still had visions and they came quickly, reliably. She predicted the summer rains, the failure of the Edoi crops and a minor sickness which could have turned into something much worse for the residents of Abbia. The Edoi listened, they passed word around and it made our High Oracle nervous. The Edoi have always been drawn to follow the Oracle and they still love Eirian, years after Jashri’s ascension.”

  “Jashri acted?”

  The Companion lowered his voice. “She sent Darus north in secret. He was tasked to speak with her, to make her see reason or to be silent, to never speak of her visions. Darus went one better, he took a knife and cut Lyse’s ieshiya from her back.”

  Caspa went white and the world spun around him. “He what?”

  “He mutilated her, reasoning that if she could no longer feel pleasure, the visions would desert her. Jashri did not sanction it but she did not punish him either,” the Companion said. “She survived. Though how is a miracle in itself…and she can’t leave Baaren even if she wanted to, she can barely walk more than a few steps without help.”

  “That’s barbaric.” Caspa felt sick and he leant on a tree to steady himself. It was like cutting the tendons in someone’s feet to hobble them.

  “And that’s why I’m telling you this. Jashri made it clear she did not wish to pass on the mantle. Lyse’s name was expunged from all records barring The Codex of the River and Jashri refers to her, when she must, simply as ‘the Heretic’.”

  “Did the visions stop?”

  “Beren visited her last season, on the pretense of visiting friends in the north,” he said. “She lives still. She walks like a puppet whose strings have been cut, but the visions never stopped. She told Beren that when Darus mutilated her, she saw the future and it tallied with the last vision he recorded, spoken by Eirian the night Jashri succeeded her.”

  “Wait, Eirian continued to have major visions?”

  “Some are too minor to be made public, others too important. That’s why my office has always been so secret,” the Companion said. “Eirian saw two futures, both dark and revolving around the anger of the Starchild. Thaeos’ gaze will fall upon us and we will burn; how Jashri reacts to your beloved will determine if we live or if we die.”

  “She won’t Descend…” Caspa was agonised. “What will she do?”

  “If Eir
ian can’t talk some sense into her, Jashri will banish you from the city and condemn Saiara to imprisonment with the other oracles in the Tower. Do you know how high the suicide rate is in the Order? It’s down to just a handful of members now. Most of them lost hope, and Jaisenthia’s mercy became a much more attractive option.”

  “How many are there now?” Caspa asked. “We didn’t see the procession.”

  “Aside from Jashri and Eirian?” The Companion asked. “There was a young girl who joined the sisterhood a few years ago, Shaari. Keiue and Geetha live still, though it’s only their deep love for each other which sustains them. Iasei is on her deathpallet and isn’t long for this shore.”

  “Six…” Caspa was stunned. “But there were nearly twenty in the Year of the Quake.”

  “As I said, compared to the life there, death is a blessing,” the Companion said. “Caspa, I’ve seen the bodies. Some jumped from the viewing window, others consumed poison or Uryen’s Mercy…one girl slit her veins in the bath.”

  “Saia,” Caspa’s eyes widened. “Jashri would drive her to that?”

  “Without love, without their attendants, they lose hope,” he answered. “The coming days will cause you pain, Caspa, but I would rather you know what is ahead. If she lasts two seasons the despair won’t take her, but most don’t. Jaisenthia has been a regular visitor to the Tower in recent years, and Jashri makes sure no one talks of it,” he said. “I have to go, I’m sorry. The Parliament of Oracles meets later to decide Saiara’s fate and I’ve got to get ready.”

  “Thank you,” Caspa said, unsure whether he meant it. What else was he to say for someone who risked life, limb, and soul to break his word to Aia's Voice?

  “It’s all I can do, attendant. That and pray Her Grace listens to Aia. I don’t think she does, not any more.”

  Aiaea was a sprawling city whose skyline sparkled at dawn and dusk. The temple bells rang, reverberating through the city as they summoned the cityfolk to morning and evening worship. Yet this evening, as the warm summer wind blew away the previous night’s storm, rumours were already beginning to travel, to flourish and take on a life of their own.