by Lesley Smith
Despite this, she had been well liked and a hard worker. Yet her status as a bond servant meant she had to do the jobs even her peers disliked, and she never complained, she never argued, and her humility was eventually rewarded.
As a child Jashri had often wondered what it must have been like to live in the city when Ishvei walked through the gates. No one else could tell she was anything more than a woman, albeit one from some far flung village which even the Edoi could not identify. Jashri had been convinced that, had she lived during that blessed age, that she would have seen the Goddess for what she was, but as she aged, she had realised this assumption was false. The gods showed themselves, and only the truly saintly could see them for what they were.
Kaiene had been just past the Age of Maturity when Ishvei came. Ishvei lived with Jadias’ family and found employment in their bakery. Her ability to bake, her love for it, made the bakers’ establishment the most sought after in the city, until even the temple was buying their bread. Jashri found that, of all things, ironic; the goddess baking the bread for her table.
The blind servant girl had been sent to collect bread when she first met Ishvei. The woman was using another name, but the saint had seen through her mortal disguise, sensing the halo of divinity which surrounded the Lady of Words. She had fallen to her knees and wept, much to Ishvei’s horror. The goddess had pulled the girl to her feet gently, but Kaiene would not be dissuaded from her belief that this Kashinai woman was divinity incarnate. That alone was more infectious than a rumour, and it didn’t take long before the queen herself and the highest of priests called.
That had been when Arvan had come for his mate. He had entered the city wearing a Kashinai form and come directly to the bakers, where his dearest one was covered in flour and kneading loaves. She had persuaded him to stay, using her body to seduce him and conceive her daughter, the blessed Nyssa. Two days after his descent, they had walked to the gates of the city, and Kaiene had run after them.
“Darus, wait, what was that? Read the passage again, all of it.”
“Erm.” Darus stumbled and she heard the flipping of pages as he scanned the codex. “And I ran to the gates of the city only to stumble and fall. I felt fingers on my skin and looked up to see a glow which—had I been able to see—would have surely blinded me. It was Arvan. He helped me to my feet, and then I heard him speak:
“‘Are you all right, Kaiene?’
“‘Yes, Lord,’ I answered, and bowed my head even as his glow, his otherworldliness, faded. ‘Please don’t go, please.’
“‘Ah, Kaiene. We must, I’m afraid.’ He spoke to me kindly, as a parent might a child. ‘I know you don’t remember me, no one does, but I’m glad to see you’ve risen above your physical disability. I would, if you will allow it, like to leave something with you which I think will help you.’
“I must have looked concerned, and for a moment I thought he was going to take away my blindness. Arvan read my mind then and reassured me.
“‘Even if I could, I wouldn’t,’ Arvan said. “But I can give you a different kind of sight, the ability to see what—from your perspective—might be considered the future.’
“I had to ask a question then, it burned through me and resonated with my soul: ‘But my Lord, are you not bound by things as we are? By the River?’
‘Where we are from, time is not a river but a great pool with its own eddies and currents. For me and mine, the past and present and future, they’re almost simultaneous. I can see two moons in your sky where now there is one, and planets reduced to dust that will cradle this tiny world. I see the cataclysm of your sun’s anger, and a time a hundred generations from this day when your people will stand on alien soil and dive through the ocean of the stars in siblings you don’t yet know you have.’”
Jashri felt like someone had just thrown her a branch as she drowned. The miasma of fear had been sucking the marrow from her bones since her meditation. She had never been good at facing her fears and was getting too old, too stuck in her ways to start now. She was looking for reasons, for justification, to cling on to the only safety she knew.
“There!” Jashri cried in triumph. “Arvan himself spoke of a past where there was two moons.”
Darus pursed his lips, suddenly glad she couldn’t see his confusion. “Are you sure? Kaiene recorded this in tenses which suggest he was speaking not of the past but of things to come.”
Jashri knew her expression was as dark as Thaeos on the day of a solar eclipse. “You dare argue with me? With your High Oracle?”
Unlike many of the religious leaders of worlds across the galaxy, High Oracles were not infallible, yet few would—or could—argue with one as strong willed as Jashri. It was the reason that some called her ‘the Stubborn’, the reason the other oracles would not stand up against her.
Her sheer force of will, her conviction that her way was the only way, had kept the city stable, the land whole. She had ruled the oracles with an iron will which had saved lives and cemented her place, so that when Saiara appeared, they had waited for her confirmation rather than proclaim the girl as the next High Oracle, as Aia demanded.
Aia spoke gently in the High Oracle’s mind. Would you truly do this, child? Most beloved of my heart? Would you put off your well-earned rest as a daughter of my service?
Jashri nearly spat a response, the whispers of the Disembodied Goddess hitting her hard in parts of her soul she had not plumbed in years. It forced her to re-erect walls that she hadn’t used since coming to the city; to bury Aia with the same force she had the memories of her blinding.
“Your Grace?” Eirian’s voice rang clear across the library, stopping Jashri’s fury in mid-step. “Might I have a moment?”
Jashri inwardly groaned. Among oracles it was custom that when the group wished to speak as one, they would send the person the current High Oracle had succeeded. The reasoning for this was relatively simple; Eirian had been the mother Jashri had wished for. Someone to trust, who helped her through the dark days after her blinding, when she had arrived half dead and terrified. Of all those under her, Eirian was the one she would most likely heed.
Listen to her, daughter, and let your burdens go.
“Be silent!” Jashri hissed, no doubt startling Darus, and then turned to face her predecessor. “Of course, Mother Eirian, please come and be seated.”
Eirian’s staff tapped against the floor as she followed the sound of the High Oracle’s voice. She walked with a confidence which came of years of sightlessness and the knowledge that there were no obstacles to trip her, not in here. She felt for the back of the high reading chairs and carefully sat down, the tension easing out of her as she let the chair shift beneath her and accept her weight.
“You may go, High Chamberlain,” Eirian said, head turning in Darus’ direction. “This is a conversation for oracles.”
Darus sounded shocked; Eirian did not order anyone, and he hadn’t expected to be dismissed like some common servant. “Your Grace?”
“Go Darus, take the book and read. I will join you once my conversation with Eirian is concluded.”
“As you wish.”
The two women waited until his footsteps receded and the heavy library door had shut.
Jashri sighed. “What do you wish to speak to me about, Mother Eirian?”
“Your elder and younger sisters asked me to speak to you. In this matter we speak as one and implore you to see reason.” Eirian spoke calmly in a tone which suggested she had rehearsed this in her head many times. “They worry that you are letting your position cloud your judgement in the matter of young Saiara.”
“And?”
“They request a formal vote on the matter of succession.”
“I have the casting ballot, though.”
“True, but would you do that? Would you go against Aia’s wish?” Eirian asked. “The morning you entered the city in the caravan of the Feium Asun, I saw you in my dreams. I saw your suffering at the hands of those cultists and I k
now your true name—the one you’ve never spoken aloud to anyone. Aia whispered to me that my successor had arrived and that my days were done. Did she not do so with you?”
Jashri didn’t meet her predecessor’s gaze, her shame was too great. “Yes.”
“Then do the right thing. Let Saiara take her place, let her lead us into the future,” Eirian said. “She has done all demanded of her and she doesn’t want this mantle. All she wanted was a life with her attendant serving Ishvei.”
“Then she can have her solitude,” Jashri snapped.
“You and I both know that’s not how it works. She will rise to the mantle, she will learn strength and compassion. We must have a new Voice. You can’t hold onto this, Jashri, it’s not Aia’s will. Saiara passed the test and saw something coming. I’ve heard the terror in her voice, and you can’t escape the future. Either we acknowledge the warning given or we burn.”
“And what would become of me?”
“I will take you in as I have all your sisters. We could make the Oracles’ Tower a place of comfort and inspiration again. I know what Darus tried to do to you; after what you went through it left you scarred. Would you not like to see if you can heal finally, after all these years? You would not be Jashri the Found anymore, you could be Kia again.”
At the sound of her name, Jashri flinched. That proved it; no one knew her true name, the one her mother had given her, no one alive anyhow. It also hardened her resolve; she would never be that potter’s daughter again. She would never be anything other than Jashri the Found.
“Kia is dead.”
“Then know that I will follow Saiara regardless,” Eirian said. “There’s still time. I hope you make the right decision.”
Then Eirian left Jashri in silence because that was all that was left between them.
Darus stalked through the temple halls. In another age he would have been an honoured attendant. He had schooled himself in all the arts needed for an oracle’s rock and made it known—Eirian had apparently seen it in a vision—that he would be attendant to Aia’s next vessel. He hadn’t been quite convinced of this, of course, rather, he knew it had been a matter of numbers. He had been the odd one out, but it had been the chance to serve an Oracle rather than go to one of the houses of Kodia.
No one had guessed that Jashri would be so traumatised, so broken by her experience that she would cast out every man in the Temple, barring those she didn’t walk into on a day to day basis. The oracles, powerless, had watched as their men and womenfolk were cast out.
But Jashri had not stopped there. Oh no, she banished the female attendants as well, citing an outdated institution that no longer had any relevance in today’s society. The men were banished to Danshu, where they had long retired to meditate, and the women were sent north to Baaren. Jashri had been cruel in her machinations, refusing to even let the the retired brothers and sisters seek solace together in their misery.
Darus wondered how he had escaped this fate. How had he remained when so many had been banished? The answer was simple: someone had to run the Oracles’ Tower. Someone had to ensure they had food and water, that there were servants to clean, and handmaids to read, and to do errands for the High Oracle herself.
Jashri had tolerated him. She made no secret that she hated the ground he stepped on, and it was a good few years before her guard started to slip, before she started to even use his name and speak directly to him. That hadn’t stopped her getting her own handmaid, selecting an Edoi girl for reasons that she never cared to share with him.
Sarivashi had been too genuine, too kind to hate. He had, at first, thought her a cunning manipulator and a threat, but as the weeks had turned to months he realised it was a genuine desire to help. She went beyond what a handmaid should do, assisting her mistress, but also going out of her way to help the other seers who lived in the great stone tower. Vashi had gotten up hours too early in order to go into the city with a list of needed supplies and the petty cash to pay for them.
He had pulled her up on this, she served the High Oracle, not the entire order, but she had continued to do it, knowing he had no power to revoke her status, and Jashri never seemed to care as long as her breakfast arrived promptly and Vashi came when summoned.
Shortly after, another bondservant came to the temple; Hsia, a beautiful young woman born in the one of the eastern cities. She had neither influence nor protection, and that was when Darus, charged to ensure all the temple staff knew the rules and what they were required to do, found his scapegoat.
Hsia had been willing to do anything to keep herself in square meals and have a pallet at night. She was not a willing bondservant, but was determined to do the best she could in a bad situation. Her bruises and bloody robes went unnoticed by all but Vashi, who tried to do what she could even as Hsia’s soul blackened. Darus didn’t care; she was expendable, and he figured she would eventually take her own life, either by stealing poison or drowning herself in one of the tributaries that fed Aiaea, and he was quietly glad.
Yet now, even he knew that Jashri was slowly being consumed by her fear of change, by her desire to remain in the only life she known since entering the temple. Darus wondered where it would lead them, because where she went, he was sure to follow.
Family Ties
Blood is not the only thing that ties souls together as family, sometimes it’s respect and sometimes love. Other times it is a bond deeper than any of the flesh, a bond that defies description. The best families and clans are not the ones you’re born into, but those you choose.
The writings of Kaiene the Blessed, first Oracle of Aia.
The Resting Baelish was packed. The clans were still in residence because the Ifunareki refused to move on without their matriarch, and Meresia could be stubborn. Jashri had broken their sacred bond; her daughter had promised service in return for the three holy days at New Year. The holy days had come and gone and Adria—Mere couldn’t think of her as anyone else—had not been allowed her visitation.
The Edoi were talking, and a rumour had gripped the city: Something is coming, foreseen by a High Oracle as yet unanointed. Go north to Canhei while you can.
The city was hot and as short tempered as the weather. Jashri had issued no proclamation, the other oracles had been silent and everyone knew something had happened, but no one knew if the time of Jashri the Misandrist was over. Taras—who had seen both Eirian and Jashri take on the mantle—had said that both events had been joyful, but this time it felt like the whole of Aiaea was holding its collective breath, waiting.
Wait too much longer and asphyxiation would occur.
The Edoi were the first to begin ‘causing trouble’ as the High Chamberlain would describe it in his statements, posted in the marketplace at dawn. The group of them had met in the inn to talk over ataani juice, and Meresia had made a point to include the pregnant Geholan woman Chelle and the Seaborn Jeiana in everything. They might not have been born Edoi, but the Seaborn were extended relations, and Meresia was keen to show both women the kindness they needed in a time of strife.
The old mothers clucked and fussed over Chelle from the moment they saw her. Her daughter Kei’a was plied with sweets, and all her wants and more were met by a host of elder brothers and sisters who taught her everything the little girl needed to know about playing. Meresia enjoyed them as she and the others sat in the small inner courtyard, shielded from Thaeos’ heat by Edoi canvas. Chelle sat opposite her, her pouch of jewellers’ tools unrolled while she fixed a broken necklace belonging to one of the younger Edoi women.
Chelle was glad of the distractions offered by the Edoi as her pregnancy began to tire her out. She could sleep as long as she wished without fear of neglecting Kei’a. Meresia realised quickly that Jeiana was glad too, the long periods of rest meant that the strange, pale Seaborn woman was free to slip into the city, to sort supplies and talk with merchants.
Dreams brought Chelle no relief. Instead, images drifted through her sleeping mind and caught, re
fusing to let her go. She had no idea if the dreams were hers or if they belonged to her daughter. Was there a seer in her belly or were these, as Ana had hinted, memories of a life lived and forgotten? Was she like the folk of old, the seers who saw regardless of whether they were embraced by the temple or not?
Chelle’s latest pieces were odd ones, more function than form. The work gave her something to do while Ana was securing supplies, and in her advanced state of pregnancy, she wasn’t exactly much use to her indwelt sister.
The Edoi marvelled over her pieces, and she was able to ensure their rooms and board were paid for. In the evening, after dinner was eaten and the plates cleared away, the mothers of the clan hovered around her, asking after her child. They held Kei’a and offered gentle advice on how to best prepare for labour, the best teas to drink and foods to eat. The women bound her hair in the Edoi style denoting a matriarch, carefully brushing out each strand before curling it and pinning it back to cushion her head whilst leaving her neck and back clear for her birthing partner.
“I don’t have one,” she said softly, when Meresia had asked on that first night.
“But what about your sister?”
“Ana…she’s not my sister.”
“I thought you said…” Meresia was surprised.
“Ana is…” Chelle struggled to answer. “She’s indwelt.”
There was much clucking from the mothers, but Meresia shushed them all and then asked. “By whom?”
Chelle lowered her voice. “The Lady of the River.”
“She confirmed this to you?” Meresia asked, suddenly serious.
“No, but she isn’t my sister. She was once, but now her hair is darker, her eyes are grey, and her manner is definitely not that of my brother’s lifemate.”
“What makes you think she is indwelt by Jaisenthia? Aside from physical changes?”
“She speaks of things only I know, and she named Saiara as Oracle before the New Year. Jeiana, my sister, had never been further than Gehol and spent her whole life in one of the villages of the Seaborn.”