The Changing of the Sun

by Lesley Smith

  “Everyone knows you, Codexmaster,” she said. “I’m sure you’re actually just a part of the library, given form as Kashinai.”

  “You flatter me, Vashi, but no. I was your age once, young and imperious and given a unique chance to do something great.”

  “What?”

  “You honestly didn’t know I was once the Companion? I thought all did, even if no one speaks of it.”

  Companions were the children—sons and daughters both—of Kaiene and Jadias’ line. They joined the Temple as part of a secret sect of record keepers, of scribes who transcribed the oracles’ prophecies. No one knew which of the librarians were Companions, only the oracles ever met them and it was they who administered the mysterious tests. They were the ones who confirmed that a seer was more than just an oracle but Aia’s chosen vessel.

  “You were?”

  “I am of the line, yes, though I do not hold the title, not now.”

  Vashi didn’t know if he had any children but there must have been someone to take the position. She suddenly felt like this was the first time they’d met and a whole new side to the old Codexmaster had been revealed.

  “I had no idea.”

  The old man was amused. “That’s the point, Vashi-child. I, like you, swore oaths that I can only break now because I am old and no longer keeper of the title.”

  “Of course, Father, I’m sorry.”

  “Tell me something, Vashi-child, do you love your mistress?”

  “She is not unkind to me but she resents me all the same. Like I remind her of someone, of a bad memory,” Vashi said. “Had I known then what I know now, I don’t think I would have left my clan.”

  “You were a pawn, daughter, in a stratagem which ultimately failed.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I heard this tale from the Edoi who brought the woman who now calls herself High Oracle. Well, she was a girl then, about the same age you are now, with a different name. I met her the first day she arrived here, broken and bruised on more than just a physical level. She had been tortured, blinded, and then she’d been tied to a rock in the middle of the desert by a misogynist of an old, banned religion. He left her to cook, to burn and die in the worst way possible. Someone had blinded her, crushing her eyes into mush, and the Edoi had found her on the edge of death. She had been screaming about water and they thought it was simply thirst-madness.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  Beren shook his head. “Later, as the caravan wound through an inhospitable land of salt and sand, she recovered enough to explain. The dream had haunted her since her eyes were taken at the hands of the son of the man who had sentenced her to death. She was not the first to be left to die in that way: your greatmother had that dubious honour.”

  Vashi stared but suddenly it became clear. “That’s why she changed my name. I was Adria as a child and she refused to call me that.”

  “Your mother’s mother’s name,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Jashri was born Cavari, a Sandchild, and she, like the rest of her clan felt a sense of responsibility for your greatmother’s death. Not one of them stood up for Adria when the Sons of Thaeos tied her to that rock, they were too afraid. The young woman who we know as Jashri had a hint of something, she told Siriha, your greatmother’s sister, to flee to safety before the cult struck. Adria remained, but most of the Ifunareki fled and they took Meresia to safety with them. Until they met again, your mother thought Jashri dead.”

  “Why does she hate my mother?”

  “Because Meresia was a thread to her past life. Only she remembers Jashri’s birth name now and the link between you. Meresia is Jashri’s sister, though the High Oracle would never admit it.”

  “What?”

  “She is your aunt, your mother’s sister. The only link to a life the High Oracle would rather forget. That’s why she changed your name,” he said gently. “She couldn’t stand to see Adria’s eyes in yours, to address you by the name of a woman she had not yet come to terms with as the other half of her creation. Admitting that would mean addressing the past and she won’t do it, she’s scared of the change which has to come.”

  “Saiara…” Vashi said, and suddenly knew on whose side she belonged. “She is the High Oracle.”

  “Yes.” Beren poured her more tea. “You’re not the first person to realise this, Vashi.”

  Darus’ voice echoed through the halls. “There she is.”

  Sarivashi looked up and saw two guardians stomping towards her.

  “Sarivashi, come with us.” They grabbed her by the arms before she even had time to rise, their fingers pinching her flesh, and Vashi realised she had not been as careful as she should have been. Something had gone very, very wrong.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Beren snapped. “You come into my hall and take a bondservant who comes here on sacred errands?”

  “Her mistress summons her,” Darus said, a smirk on his face as he turned and followed the two guardians out of the great library.

  The Lovers

  Each has an opposite, a piece missing. We spend our eternities searching for them. We find them, we might lose them, but the pull remains, inexorable and beautiful.

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

  Jeiana was sitting outside the tavern at the appointed time, enjoying a glass of iced wine. She was watching the stars when Senna joined her, seeming different to how she had been that morning in the Hall of Healing, more confident, more sure of herself, and it gave Jeiana hope.

  The healer was dressed in long skirts which left much of her chest and ieshiya exposed, her hair falling around her like red-gold rain in the style favoured by the unjoined. Jeiana knew she’d dressed like this intentionally, it was totally different to her healer’s clothing, and it was also for her to advertise her attraction, and that was the moment Jeiana realised she was in love.

  Some worlds would call it a sickness, a common malady known as the Cascade. Love mimicked the symptoms and euphoria of illness, but it was more enduring and more painful than anything she had yet experienced in this fragile form. Jeiana feared it but she also craved it like an addict does the focus of their addiction.

  Senna sat down, watching as Jeiana poured half the carafe into the glass in front of her. “Iced wine?”

  “Consider it a thank you.”

  The healer raised her glass. “Then to your continued good health, Ana.”

  Jeiana found herself munching on the small bowl of sweet berries and salted nuts the tavern keeper had placed on their table. She quickly realised she wasn’t doing so out of genuine hunger but nervousness and Senna looked at her, concerned.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, albeit a tad of out my depth.”

  “Why?”

  “I wasn’t quite sure if you would come. I had hoped you would but…”

  Senna was amused. “You look like all the others who have tried to court me: terrified.”

  She blinked. “What?”

  “Though theirs was for a different reason, I think. You don’t know my clan history do you?”

  Jeiana shook her head. “No.”

  “I’m Evastas, a direct descendant of Jadias the Inspired,” she said. “Most who court me do so not because of me, but because of my bloodline. To wed a child of Evastas is to know inspiration, so the tales say.”

  “I had no idea,” Jeiana said, being honest. The stars in her head were fuzzier by the day and she was no longer sure what was real and remembered.

  “I know,” Senara said, and leant forward. “That’s why I came. That, and some friends reminded me of what’s important.”

  Sitting opposite one another across the table, it seemed like a barrier as thick as a wall. Senna’s hand was on hers, the touch of skin and heat felt so alien but so familiar. Her skin flushed, heat burning in her cheeks and Jeiana shivered. Senna leant forward and their bodies met. For a moment time stilled and the world around t
hem seemed to fall silent, as if marking this moment for all eternity.

  Something inside Jeiana threatened to burst as her mushy mind told her this was right, every fibre of her soul told her this was how it must be. She had no connection to this world before, she was just the walking form of a dead woman whose name would never be remembered in a sea of the dead, but now she was a part of it, cemented in and doomed to share in all the sorrows and the pleasures Ishvei’s children would experience.

  Even if she had wanted to unmesh herself from this corporeal form, she couldn’t, not now, and the bonds which bound her suddenly felt too tight, too constricting. Her breath caught and her knuckles turned white, golden trails becoming silver as the feeling of claustrophobia swamped her senses. Jeiana suddenly felt exposed and bitterly vulnerable; what if this was a mistake, what if this was just a muddled alcoholic fumble that might put the fate of a planet in jeopardy?

  “Shhh.” Senna was sitting next to her now, one hand resting on the back of Jeiana’s neck, cradling the back of her skull. “Breathe, it will pass.”

  “I don’t even know why I’m so scared.”

  “Because this is new, because your life mate died,” Senna said. “It’s all right, I understand.”

  “But I don’t,” Jeiana said. “That’s the problem, it’s like he was just a name in a book, my son too. I can’t grieve because I feel I never knew them.”

  Senna must have had some knowledge of illnesses of the mind but this pained admission didn’t seem to faze her. She called to a waiter. “Can you bring some iced water? My friend has come over ill.”

  “Of course,” he replied, and hurried off into the tavern, returning a moment later with a tankard of clear water, ice floating on its surface.

  Jeiana drank it greedily, the cold burning her teeth and her brain. The bonds tying her down into this form faded as her panic subsided, turning from binding chains into delicate woven threads which were hardly noticeable as long as she focused on something else and that, for now, wasn’t going to be a problem.

  Senna was gently stroking the back of her neck, fingers moving deftly from Jeiana’s hairline to the first nodules of her ieshiya. The movements were slow, measured, and designed to calm.

  Jeiana shuddered as nerves she hadn’t realised were there began to spark, creating links between her spine and the pleasure centres of her brain. She had no idea that such a simple touch could make her insides want to melt in a puddle of bliss, and she felt the warm heat surfacing in her back, below where her tendrils had once been.

  Her body was preparing itself for the act, running on a biological imperative that she hadn’t been aware of before. She ached and tears budded in her eyes, ones of grief and guilt as much as lust and unexpected pleasure.

  Senna gently took her hand, and said simply, “Come.”

  Evening offices were taking place at the temple, and most went, ever dutiful. Holding her hand, Senara led her down one of the backstreets moving with the intention that signalled she had a place in mind for them. Jeiana was a tiny bit surprised when that place turned out to be a pleasure house, a temple to the Sweet Lady, Kodia. A mural was painted on the wall indicating precisely what to expect, in beautiful art, and sweeping calligraphy proclaimed the names of the men and women who served as clergy in this house of passion.

  “What…?”

  “It’s all right.”

  Senna stepped over the threshold without a moment’s hesitation. The healer took note of the other woman’s reticence and pulled her gently through the lounge area where a man and a woman were casually advertising their grace and physical attractiveness to a young woman who was obviously just on this side of the Age of Maturity and looking to do things the right way. Jeiana wondered how much both would cost the girl and hoped the experience would be worth it. This was the fashion in the cities, she knew, to have tutors in the arts of pleasure and for a moment, she envied the girl.

  The healer led her up some steps through a hallway marked ‘PRIVATE’ and into a medium sized room with a balcony which looked out over the inner courtyard. Jeiana could smell passion and incense on the breeze and hear cries of blissful agony from the rooms below them. The sound made her all the more eager to feel Senna’s touch again, but she stifled the urge.

  “You live in a pleasure house?”

  The question came out as it was intended, one of simple curiosity. Senara was lighting incense in front of Kodia in her incarnation as the Lady of Pleasure, and she answered honestly.

  “I told you. I was a daughter of Kodia before I ever learned the healing arts. An uncle of mine offered me to this house when he could no longer feed me and my cousin, and I used the things I learned here to understand the body and soul. Living here reminds me that life should be joyous,” she said, and winked. “Plus the rent is cheap and we’re only a few minutes from the Halls of Healing so I’m close in case of emergencies.”

  The incense was musky, tinted with the perfume of aphrodisiacs, sea lilies, and sweet flowers, and quickly drifted out of the open window, leaving a trace behind clinging to their skins. Jeiana sat on the edge of Senara’s pallet, the sheets freshly laid and two pillows resting at one end. Yes, Senna had been planning this and that very knowledge reassured Jeiana more than she thought it would.

  “Ana. You were joined. Did you help your mate bear a son?” Jeiana nodded slowly at this and Senna continued. “Yet you act like a child who isn’t even aware of their ieshiya, much less Ishvei’s blessings.”

  “I’m not who I was,” she admitted, dancing between the truth and her lie of an existence. “The wave, it changed me in many ways. I am Jeiana no longer.”

  “Then let me help you, Ana,” Senna said. “And, I think I love you.”

  Fingers and hands, touch and sensation. Jeiana’s mind threatened to fracture at the prospect and yet she wanted it. Her flesh burned for it as Senna planted a gentle kiss on her cheek and then gently began to remove her clothes. Jeiana felt like a block of stone before an artist as Senna let the her clothing fall into a pile on the cool wooden floor.

  “Embarrassment is for small children, not for adults,” she chided gently, a careful hand moving the hair out of Jeiana’s eyes as she guided her in front of a long piece of reflective glass hanging on the wall. “Look at how beautiful you are.”

  Jeiana looked and saw a face that was as unfamiliar as her voice had been on that first day. Her skin was pale but still sun-kissed, the gold veins dancing along her skin. They weren’t actual veins, of course, those went deeper, but a quirk of biology that their species blamed on a creation myth.

  Those glittering veins turned paler and more silver the closer they got to her middle, and more obvious as they moved up her neck to the sides of her face. They suited her strange grey eyes that belonged to a different species, and her death-darkened hair. Her tail had curled around her leg, a nervous gesture that was seen almost universally in children, and Senna noticed immediately.

  “Why are you nervous, Ana?”

  “I’ve not done this before,” she said. “Not as a Kashinai.”

  “What else have you been if not a child of Ishvei’s World?”

  Jeiana concentrated, trying to catch memories which darted like silverfish. A few hours ago she might have remembered at least some of them. She remembered the man and a boy, she remembered blue-white stars and ocean currents.

  “I can’t remember. What I am…I’m not just Jeiana, and sometimes this life feels so alien to me. Like a dream half-remembered on waking.”

  Senna’s fingers were on her skin again, gently tracing her ieshiya and turning that network of nerves and nodules into a net of sensation and sparks of pleasure. “This is real. Nothing that feels this good can be a dream.”

  Jeiana’s lips parted as Senna’s lips gently kissed her trineal node and the orgasm swept her into an ocean of pleasure. “Oh…”

  Senna embraced Jeiana as she shuddered. “The first time is always the hardest.”

  Jeiana, suddenly not
concerned by the weaving of the universe, turned around and let the healer kiss her.

  He was there again, in her dreams, the nameless stranger who walked in such a familiar guise that she couldn’t remember. This time they walked through Baaren in the daytime, the city terrifyingly empty, as if all its inhabitants had simply vanished. Even the birds were silent and the lapping of the waves seemed impossibly loud.

  “Are you stalking me?”

  The man—whom she had and would name Ash—was genuinely amused by the idea. “No, why would I want to do that? What makes you think I’m even here? I could just be a figment of your subconscious.”

  “You know things I don’t.”

  “Well,” he agreed. “There is that. But then, you used to know a lot more than you think you did. You know the names of every soul like they were your best friend, you knew the paths between the various planes and could walk them blindfolded.”

  “Must you always talk in riddles?”

  “I believe it is a requirement, yes,” he said. “Dreams are never simple, even the ones which feel more real than the waking world.”

  She groaned. “I hate you.”

  He smiled, showing white teeth, and his eyes reflected his silent laughter better than any mirror. “No, you don’t.”

  “How much of me did I lose in the transition?”

  His face darkened. “A lot. If you make it to Canhei with your memory, then it will be a miracle.”

  “So what are we?” Jeiana asked him. “An old joined couple? Aia knows we bicker like one.”

  “The oldest.”

  She paled. “But Senna and I…”

  “Doesn’t bother me. Everyone needs someone to love, especially when you’ve chosen…what was the term the Kashinai prefer? ‘Indwelling’?” She agreed and he continued. “Love is never something to be punished for and I will never hold it against you. After all, if I did, would I stalk you as you claim?”

  “I’m indwelt?”