by Lesley Smith
Rand guided him through the unfamiliar streets of what was more like a hamlet, a collection of houses, shops, and a small temple dedicated to Aia. He could smell the ocean on the air and hear waves slamming against granite cliffs which had defied the ocean for more aeons than his species could count.
There was no temple, no sacred complex, just streets and houses built into or from the rock. Some were no more than little alcoves or natural walls on which traders hung their wares, from chimes to pieces of coloured or mirror glass which sent Thaeos’ light dancing.
The boy beckoned him into a doorway. “Come, follow me. Father Balus wishes to see you.”
“Balus? You mean the attendant of Iasei the Just?” Caspa’s voice betrayed his surprise, and Rand just laughed quietly even as he mumbled an explanation. “I thought him dead years ago. She’s on her deathpallet…”
“He is old, but Jaisenthia has not taken him yet. I think they want to step into her boat together.”
Caspa understood, and they stepped from the streets into a small cave with steps that descended down in a gentle spiral. Incense and the smell of moss-damp stone met them, and Caspa felt fear knot in his belly. Was there a reason no one knew of the Varaiah, something more than just so-called retirement?
Rand turned his head. “Are you well? You look like Jaisenthia just breathed on your neck.”
“I’m fine, I’m just…You’re not going to kill me, are you?”
The other man cackled, actually stopping to laugh out loud until his sides hurt, then he calmed and shook his head, his tone turning darker. “No, Casparias. We’re not going to kill you, though you might think death faster and more preferable than this place.”
“Rand, is that you, boy?” The voice came from deeper in, below them, far away and half blurred by the noise of rushing water.
Ears twitching anxiously, Rand indicated the bottom of the steps. “Come on.”
The steps tightened, sconces on the wall offering flames to light their way. At the bottom he led them into a hollowed-out chamber. Candles with flickering flames sat on hewed out shelves. There were six shelves and each had the carefully drawn portrait of one of the oracles who had been alive when Jashri took her place as High Oracle.
It was a memorial, a way for the cast-off attendants to remember their mistresses. The images and the eternally burning incense candles resonated with him, and grief suddenly threatened to swallow him. This was a place made holy, made sacred, by collective loss, and Caspa suddenly burned with the need to know why their loyal partners had been banished to this place, and why he had joined them when his charge, his priestess, should have taken Jashri’s place and title.
He wasn’t bitter but he was afraid.
“Are you all right?”
Caspa stammered: “Which oracle was yours?”
“Shaari,” Rand said, his voice raw with grief.
“And the Sisters? What about them?”
Caspa knew there were sometimes female attendants. They were rarer but still occurred. There were no females here, not that he could see, and it was unheard of to segregate the genders even in monastic life. The temple was usually a place of women called to Ishvei and Aia, with men summoned to Uryen’s service or as attendants. Where were the loyal maidens?
“They don’t reside here, they live in a nunnery in Baaren,” Rand answered. “We were punished, not them.”
“Punished?”
“Come on.”
Old Balus was lying on a pallet, his eyes clouded like a smudged mirror. His head was shaved, the stubble catching in the candlelight, and he wore robes that were almost as old as he was.
“Father, this is our new Brother: Casparias, attendant of the oracle Saiara.”
“Ah yes, welcome boy.” Balus sat up, his joints creaking. “That son of a baelish turd, High Chamberlain Darus sent a bird. Sit, boy, sit.”
The old man indicated a hewn stone bench, and Caspa sat.
“Now look, boy,” Balus said, his voice surprisingly kind, but oddly sad. “I know you don’t want to be here. I know you wish you were with your beloved, but we must make the best of what fate has dealt us. We are forbidden from returning to Aiaea, but Danshu is ours, and the people are kind and welcoming.”
“But why?”
“Jashri panicked, and rather than just castrating her idiot attendant, she punished all of us,” Balus said. “And now I wait for Jaisenthia to reunite me with my beloved.”
“Iasei…” Caspa said slowly. “She’s in a coma, dying. I don’t think it will be too long, Father.”
He agreed. “I know. Now, Rand, will you show our new brother around?”
“As you wish, Father,” he said, and motioned to Caspa. “Come on.”
Rand led him deeper into the cavern. The light pouring from the circular hole in the rock refracted onto crystals embedded into the walls, acting as mirrors in a massive heliotrope which spanned a space larger than the temple. All of it seemed to serve to illuminate one thing and one thing only: a great tree which took up much of the chamber.
“Aia’s grace…” Caspa said, stunned.
Below him, the tree waited as it had done for millennia, branches arching out to touch the rock walls. Its trunk and branches were silver and gnarled from immense age, twisting into knots, and the large leaves filtered the light, casting colour on the floor.
It rested in the centre of a shallow pool, huge roots digging deep into the rock and earth. Leaves and lily-flowers filled the air with the smell of photosynthesis, that heady scent his brain translated simply as ‘life’.
“Exactly,” Rand said, still awed himself. “That tree was a sapling, brought back by Jadias from Ishvei’s Rest. It was part of the reason we ended up here. Each attendant to an oracle is charged with keeping the tree healthy, because it’s a link to our past and the people we once were.”
“But we’re underground,” he marvelled. “Is that sea water in the pool?”
“No, there’s a spring here from the Suiashveram. It’s fresh and keeps us in drinking water.” Rand pointed. “But if you go through that tunnel, you’ll find the sea. That’s how we get the lilies, they wash up here, and we offer them to Aia.”
In the pool, lilies floated gently, each containing a cupful of oil and a wick. Aia had no form, and yet this tree, with its great age and wisdom, served in an effigy’s stead. The leaves were bigger than both Caspa’s hands combined, and seemed to glow with their own inner light.
“Can you show me?” He asked.
Rand pointed. “Follow me and try not to fall in or get lost, all right?”
“I will try,” Caspa said softly, following the older man into the dark.
In the days to come, Caspa realised that despite his banishment, Danshu was kind. Each dawn, the townsfolk brought offerings to the entrance of the sacred caves. They never entered, but instead left them at the always-open doorway: bread and wine, fruits and legs of meat that could be roasted and would feed the venerated monks.
When Caspa, Rand, and the others walked the streets, the people would bow reverently, and crowds would part as rocks appear on the shore when the tide recedes twice each day. The town was more a suburb than a city, and most of the inhabitants seemed to be male. After a day or so of not seeing a single solitary female walking the streets, he asked where they were.
Rand tried to laugh but it was hollow. “Jashri did not want us forgetting why we were here, so she refused women the right to live in the town. They can pass through, but aren’t allowed to linger overnight or seek sanctuary with us.”
“So you forget with your brothers instead?”
“Yes. It dulls the pain a little and she has no problem with attendants lying with each other, just the oracles doing it. We are not the visionaries in this tale,” Rand said. “Though my heart lies only with Shaari, my body…”
“I understand.” Caspa agreed, the ache reigniting in his soul as he thought of Saia. “It’s all right.”
“The others tell me they were
as you and I in their earliest years, chaste and accepting of the misery Her Grace imposed upon us. She is our High Oracle, after all, she is the Voice of the Disembodied Goddess…” he trailed off, not convinced Jashri spoke for anyone but herself. “Time eats away at the memory and there comes a point—so they tell me—when anyone, even a brother or one of the townsmen, is better than no one at all. The nights are long and our pallets cold, and it helps us heal and live another day. It’s been known for brothers to walk into the Underside and never be seen again.”
The thought chilled him. Rand had shown him the caverns and they were a maze of damp and dark fear. Would he ever get to a point where it would be too much and he would willingly seek Jaisenthia in the moist darkness of the Underside?
Each morning, Caspa helped carry the offerings left on their doorsteps by townsfolk and by the tide of pilgrims on their way to the sacred city. They were generous and the brothers seldom wanted: there was bread and fresh or salted meat, fruits and fresh vegetables, and casks of wine and lamp oil. They had a whole cavern that served as a store, complete with ice and salt to preserve the food. They could last years and not fear starvation.
But the nagging claustrophobia remained. In the main cave, the tree calmed him and he would sit, deep in thought and lost in happier memories for hours. When Rand sent him to run errands in the town, Caspa was eager to see the sky, even if only for a half hour or so. He purposefully tarried, watching the sea beat the rocks and the birds wheeling above them.
Rand tried to help him, tried to show him how to navigate without his eyes, but the darkness was enough to devour his soul. More than anything, he missed the feel of day and night, the changing of the hours, and even the noise of the tolling of the temple bells. If he stood just so, he could hear the bells from Aiaea ringing.
The other brothers were nice enough; they busied themselves with whatever numbed their individual agonies. Haas, for example, made beautiful stained glass images depicting stories from the Sacred Scrolls. Rand was a fine calligrapher and a poet of some accomplishment. Caspa found some solace in carving wood into shapes, including a staff to help him walk in the darkness; carving as Jadias had once done for Kaiene.
Yet even as the others quietly accepted the harshness of reality, he remained hopeful that he would be summoned home.
It was a summons which would never come.
Book II: Denial
One night, I sat with Ishvei and Jadias in one of Aiaea’s great parks to celebrate a minor festival that saw me released for the night to do as I wished; a rarity in a life of bondage. We had food and a blanket to sit on but, surrounded by an ocean of people, all that mattered was a night of freedom and good friends to share it with. It was there Ishvei told me of her sister, whom we call Jaisenthia, the Lady of the River.
“I had a sister once,” she said. “You give her a particular name on this world.”
“The Lady of the River,” Jadias said, respect clear in his voice, though he refrained from using her name.
“Aye,” Ishvei said. “What she does, my sister, it’s not so far away from how you think of her. She helps people walk from this world to the other realms, the ones you can’t feel or see, releasing souls from their physical bonds.”
“Why?”
“Can you imagine a world where people cannot die? Where the sun moves across the sky and moons rise and fall but no one dies?”
I shook my head. “I thought the gods were immortal.”
“Nothing is. Only energy, and even that changes shape. Bending, twisting, and melding into other forms,” Ishvei said. “That world was an imperfect creation, dreamed into existence by minds who did not understand the power they possessed. In that place, you could mould the universe to your liking. No one was hungry, no one was cold, but no one could die, and eventually, that became the greatest of torments. My sister ended that place.
“Her most beloved, the father of her only son, was savaged by a creature. I suppose you might call it a demon or a wraith of shadow. It was made from the darkness which exists in all beings, fear and pain, and sorrow personified. He screamed as the poison ate into his veins, but he could not die when the wound should have killed him. Our healers could do nothing but force him into a nightmare-ridden slumber and my sister wept.”
“What happened?”
“She prayed for salvation. She made a selfless wish, and together, all of us echoed her prayer. Our desire, selfless and pure, created something beautiful. She looked like us, spoke our words, and looked like all those we had ever loved. You call her Aia, but her name doesn’t matter. She bargained with my sister, offering to end her husband’s suffering if she would act as a guide for all those souls who would come after. Once death, once the cessation of life was unleashed, it couldn’t very well be dragged back into a stoppered bottle.”
“She agreed?”
“Yes. Her husband offered to share her burden, and together those two have been guiding everyone from this plane to what comes next. On some worlds they are hated and reviled, yet they greet all their charges like long-lost friends reunited by chance and circumstance.”
Jadias considered that. “So we should meet her joyfully?”
“All things should be done that way, but yes. For hers is the greatest burden anyone can shoulder.”
The Tale of the Two Sisters
extracted from the Sacred Scrolls.
A Gilded Cage
To be a seer is to serve, to stand and speak, to listen no matter what.
The writings of Kaiene the Blessed, first Oracle of Aia.
Sarivashi found herself wondering if Jashri was intentionally giving her things to do to keep her from descending to the bowels of the Oracles’ Tower or disappearing into the city.
As the sun set and darkness embraced the city, she helped Jashri bathe and served her a simple meal in her rooms. The window was open to allow the last of the day’s heat to linger. The rush of the Suiashveram Falls was making music against the symphony of bird song, and Vashi was glad she had eyes. The view was wasted, sadly, on the women who got to reside here.
The High Oracle didn’t speak more than the odd perfunctory word, her mind obviously elsewhere. The Parliament had troubled her, and even Vashi knew things should have turned out differently. The entire temple whispered of it, and soon word would leak into the city, even if it would not come from her.
Jashri was not usually unkind, but even she would have Darus beaten if Vashi broke her oath of secrecy, especially if it was to do with a new High Oracle’s Ascension.
With his unfortunate sadistic traits, the High Chamberlain was skilled in making others suffer, particularly with a callow-branch whip. Since becoming Jashri’s handmaid, Vashi had only heard of one person being beaten and she did not want to taste his mastery of the art. She wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
Finally, as Kaiene began her nightly ascent, Jashri dismissed her. “You may retire, Sarivashi.”
“Thank you, Your Grace,” she said respectfully. “May you dream well, and call for me if you need me.”
Jashri never wished her good night, and Vashi could understand why. She was consciously trying not to emulate her predecessor; to maintain a distance. She was the Voice of Aia, more divine than mortal. Jashri demanded a void between mistress and slave; Vashi needed to know her place, and her place in the hierarchy of the temple was rigid and almost reassuring.
In contrast, Eirian did not treat her as a servant but a friend. Vashi had heard the older servants, the ones who came during Eirian’s tenure and stayed out of love for their former High Oracle, speak of her kindness. They genuinely appreciated that Eirian took time to learn the names of those who lived within the temple and talked to them as equals, not as minions to be ordered about.
Vashi slipped into her small room and pulled her hakashari from its place hanging on the wall. The night was closing in and turning a few degrees too cool for her liking. The traditional Edoi cloak reminded her of her childhood, of her mother and her li
ttle sister.
As she pulled it around her shoulders, she wondered what Meresia would be doing. She would probably be in the tavern with Taras eating supper, wondering where her daughter was. Would Meresia think Vashi didn’t want to see her?
No, Meresia would have heard by now. Half the city knew about Saiara, even if they didn’t yet know her name. She would understand that Vashi’s duties kept her in the temple during this time of transition, but Vashi wished she could send word. Why hadn’t she thought to scribble a note, to ask Senna or one of the Edoi traders who sold wares in the marketplace to pass on a message?
Descending the steps, torch in hand, Vashi found herself thinking of the day she had come to the temple. She had no idea when the offer had been put in front of her that the woman who’d asked had been Jashri herself. She still had no idea why her mother allowed it, but she remembered the look of guilt in her mother’s face, almost as if she owed a debt that even her status as an Edoi clanmother could never repay.
Vashi realised she was the payment, but the debt itself was unknown to her, and her mother never spoke of it. Every child knows that when a High Oracle asks, all the star-kissed Kashinai would move heaven to comply.
Eirian was waiting for her in the main hall, her staff in hand, and Vashi knew she had foreseen her coming.
“Mother, my apologies.”
“Never apologise for serving your mistress, Vashi,” Eirian said. “I simply wished a quick word before you meet Saiara.”
“As you ask, Mother,” Vashi replied, the sentence falling from her lips by habit.
“I do not ask, not in that way, Vashi,” Eirian said. “But you are a dutiful daughter. Your mother would be so proud of you, just as I am.”
Vashi bit her lip to stop herself from welling up. Eirian was a mother of the Edoi. Had things been different, she might have been a Clanmother or even ruler of the entire Edoi, as her own mother was. It was hard for Vashi not to give the respect Eirian deserved, not just because the old oracle was from her own people, but also because Eirian was the closest thing she had had to a parent since coming to the temple.