by Lesley Smith
The Edoi could see home on the horizon and it buoyed them but the cityfolk, the Seaborn, and the last members of the temple Orders were just tired and footsore. They could hear the call across the Grasslands, see the flaming torches that marked out the temporary boundaries of the moving city, Jhritian, on the shores of the winding river close to the perfectly still waters of the lake known in the Edoi tongue as Ishvei’s Mirror.
Their legends said this was where, when the Lady of Words left Canhei with Kodia, cloaked in Kashinai form, she had first seen her reflection. They had not known her name then; that had only come later with Kaiene, but after the moon rose in the heavens, Ishvei had become a common name for their tutelary deity. Vashi remembered the last part of the story, when the two deities had walked the world, had moved with the clans as they began to move south and claim the land as theirs.
Jhritian welcomed them, but it was nothing more than a pit-stop. The Edoi Assembly had been summoned to Abbia, the clans would all meet and those who chose to come north would do so. Those who wished to stay, if any, would fortify the City of Tents as they could, and pray. Vashi hoped that with her mother’s testimony, most would go north. Indeed, this would be the point where the caravans split. Taras, Meresia, Jeiana and Saiara, along with the odd other souls, would go to Abbia to sit before the Council, and everyone else would go north to Baaren and Canhei.
Vashi wondered how many souls the sacred caverns could hold. Would it be enough to save a species?
“Kadi? Will you go north with Eirian?”
“As far as Baaren, yes,” he said. “I’ll wait for you there. It’s going to take a day to evacuate the town, and hopefully Lyse, if she is truly a seer as Mother Eirian says, will be expecting us.”
“Could I ask you something?” Vashi asked.
“You can ask, I don’t know if I’ll be able to answer.”
“Does the name ‘Ishran’ mean anything to you?”
Kadian stopped. “He was my brother, born and dead before I was. How did you know about him?”
“Eirian mentioned him to me,” Vashi said, knowing that Taras would join his beloved Garrin, and that their reunion would mean the news of Jio’s demise finally reached his other parent. “Your fathers don’t speak of him.”
“Once or twice, and mostly the happier days before his death,” Kadian said. “I still wonder if Jio’s dead, Vashi. Jeiana didn’t know in Danshu…”
“Eirian believes Caspa and the others are still alive. The grotto is protected, not as much as at Canhei but…she says people have been living there since before Kaiene. If they can survive, I’m sure they will find a way.”
“My fathers have never been ones for false hope,” Kadian said soberly. “Even if I wish Jio was still with us.”
Vashi said, “Go north, we’ll come as quickly as we can. Until Baaren, Kadi.”
He pressed his lips to hers as if eternity were about to separate them. “Until Baaren then. Be safe, Vashi.”
Jeiana hadn’t been sure what to expect when they reached the rope bridge. She could smell the sea, the salt of it, and it made her remember Caerim. She remembered her joining day, one foot sucked by the tide into wet sand and the other immersed in the sea.
The face of the man she had wed was a blur, he was a nameless figment now. She knew there would be a day when she remembered him, his name, and it would be the day Jeiana’s mirage reasserted itself. She, the consciousness who had taken over the dead woman’s form, would be extinguished by memory. That day was fast approaching and she couldn’t stop it coming, nothing could.
The sea lapped against the rocks, the surface of the water covered in floating flowers. There were thousands of blooms, the white petals blurring into the foam and the smell hanging on the air.
“Flowers?” She asked.
Vashi had joined them. “This is the Bay of Lilies.”
“Where do they come from?”
“The Sea of Reeds, they always appear in during Harvest.”
“But it’s only just Summer.”
“The seas have been rough lately, high waves and winds,” Taras said. “You all right, Jeiana?”
“No,” she she said, shaken. The noise of the waves had forced her back to the day she died, the day when Caerim was wiped out by the wave. The smells and sound dragged her back there, the cloying scent of the lilies. “I died in the sea. It’s hard to forget that.”
“Are you going to be all right to cross the bridge?” the Clanfather asked.
“Bridge?”
Vashi explained. “Abbia is an island. There’s a rope bridge that connects it to the mainland.”
It was Jeiana’s worst nightmare, but she knew she had to appear in front of the Edoi clanparents if their case was going to be heard. “It looks like I’m going to have to. Is it safe?”
“The bridge is sturdier than it looks, Jeiana-girl,” Taras said. “I’ll go first to guide the Oracle, you come next, and Vashi will be behind you if you get into trouble or need to stop.”
“All right.”
The rope bridge was a marvel and obviously centuries old. In ages past it could be withdrawn to make the island inaccessible, but now it was left permanently in place. Each length of rope was thicker than a strong man’s arm, knotted and braided together so it stretched across the small bay. There were no wooden slats and it looked like the most dangerous thing ever conceived, a mad man’s design tested on fools. A child could fall though, an adult too, and yet everyone who crossed this bridge had been doing so since they were younglings. They could do so in their sleep, and Jeiana was envious of that as she tottered across, inch by painful inch.
Below them the water was clear but for the drifting flowers that floated on the surface. They were white and smelled like the incense Senna had offered to the gods in Aiaea. Some spark in her brain went off: those flowers were important, there was something about them, they weren’t just flowers but a link to something else.
“Are you all right?” Vashi asked. “Do you not like heights?”
“No, heights don’t bother me.” Jeiana realised what it was. Her body remembered the ocean, remembered dying, and it wasn’t happy about going near seawater. “Vashi, I need you to keep me walking, if I stop mid-way I’ll never cross.”
“I’ll be behind you, it’ll be all right. Keep your head up and look at the temple. Fix your eyes there and keep hold of the rope. You won’t fall.”
She quietly cursed the memories that weren’t hers. This was a physiological reaction and she would be damned if she was going to let it rule her. Taking hold of the ropes, she put her full weight on the next rung.
“Let’s get this over with.”
The crossing didn’t take as long as she had feared. Abbia was further off shore than a man could jump with cliffs higher than even the strongest and most nimble could climb. She understood now why the City of Tents was the Edoi stronghold, but there was nothing here. How had they survived with just salt water and flowers surrounding them?
The isle was all but deserted when they finally stepped back onto solid, barren rock. The ground was hard beneath her feet and secure, as opposed to the way the bridge moved, a living thing suspended by chains. She nearly fell over, glad to be back on what amounted to real ground, even if they were now floating in the middle of the cursed sea.
Abbia wasn’t a large island, and it seemed to be an odd choice of sanctuary. The rock was jagged, crater-like, and the waves regularly reached out, trying to swamp the island but never got quite high enough.
An old structure sat almost in the dead centre of a small grove of fruit trees which had been planted around the small temple. The trees were laden with fruit, sweet, plump, ataani, ripe and ready for the plucking, which meant only one thing: there was fresh water and rich soil here, and both were plentiful.
That was how they survived.
The baelish had been freed to feed on the lush grasses on the edge of the beach. Not all the Edoi were crossing, some were waiting to point the dir
ection to the island for the caravans of incoming refugees. No one knew when the remaining clans would arrive, much less how long a parliament of the Edoi would take. The sense of urgency remained and those who crossed began putting up tents. Taras beckoned the two women into the old temple where they could avoid the heat of the day.
The cool darkness was a shock after the unrelenting heat. The small temple was plain but for its domed roof and miniature lightgate, both of which were a signature of Kashinai architecture. As she stepped over the threshold, Jeiana had memories of countless other sacred spaces across the universe…temples, synagogues, threshing floors, mosques, churches, altars, and arenas. She thought of the rope-wrapped trees and free-standing shrines on quiet streets, made noticeable by the sacred gates which framed their boundaries. None of them were like this.
They descended steps into the earth, the smell of salt and weed mixed with the damp scent of moss that bioluminesced gently, amplifying the small wax boated wicks floating in a large bowl on which statues of two deities watched. She saw their faces carved in stone, and she recognised them as brethren playing parts in the Great Story of the Kashinai race. They had come in the Year of the Night Plague to save the scapegoated Edoi, but they themselves were not mortal.
Jeiana asked, “This is the temple of the Bard and the Healer?”
Those names made Jeiana smile to herself. They were appellations for the wandering souls of her sister and the one who was her opposite. If she took life away, then he restored it and so their daily ‘battle’ would continue.
Taras laughed. “You make it sound like a thing of myth, like the single-horned baelish or the immortal firebird!”
“Outside of the Edoi, it is a myth. Did the Bard and the Healer really guide you to this island?”
“We believe they did, that Ishvei and Uryen wrapped themselves in mortal forms far from the eyes of oracles to help us in our time of trial.”
Jeiana spoke, “There are some in Aiaea who call that blasphemy. That the gods could descend again and not make themselves known to Aia’s Oracles.”
“You do not believe this?”
“I don’t believe gods are constrained by what we believe about them. What kind of deity would they be if we could tie them in knots like that?”
“True,” the old Clanfather agreed. “But yes, during the year when the Night Plague moved through the cities like wildfire, we believe they came to help us because we were innocent of the crimes the populace decided we were guilty of. They came to ensure our survival and so we have come here to thank them ever since, as tradition decrees.”
Jeiana squinted at the two statues. They didn’t look anything like the image of Ishvei in the Aiaean temple, rather, here was a Kashinai woman in a hakashari sitting sideways on the back of a baelish with a man in travelling clothes holding the reins. They looked lifelike, realistic, as if their bodies had been petrified the moment their souls departed. Perhaps they had…
“Tell me, Jeiana, if you are truly indwelt by Jaisenthia. Tell me why we are here. There’s a reason for your decision to come. I’m a Clanfather, the patriarch of the Feium Asun. With that title comes knowledge of what is kept here. If you are truly indwelt by Jaisenthia, I ask you to tell me what that is.”
Memories blossomed and Jeiana was sure of herself for the first time since they had left Pesh. “He left a gift behind for a daughter in his service, a few precious things not made on this world, just as she wrote down the contents in three scrolls.”
The older man stared and, for a moment, Jeiana was convinced he was going to faint. She found herself leaning against a wall, panting, as blood began to drip from her nose. She had over-exerted herself, connected too many threads and the knowledge that came with it was too much for her damaged Kashinai brain.
“You are her.”
“Not all of her, just a shard walking in a body whose original soul passed into dimensions unknown to your kind. Oh, such a tiny thing and I’m exhausted. It never used to be this hard.” Jeiana straightened and wiped at her nose, looking at the blood. “For those you call gods, time doesn’t flow like it does for you. We see everything, all the threads in the weave of the universe. I knew who Senna was before we met. I was drawn by the pull of her soul, the memory that in another life we should have been together. I remember you, I remember Vashi too…even though I couldn’t remember your names.”
Taras pressed his hand on a stone in the altar and gently pulled it out, fingers fitting in the empty space where the mortar should have been. After a moment, he reverently removed something, a pouch designed to be stung on someone’s back.
“He left these for your beloved.”
“What is it?”
“As you said, his possessions,” Taras said. “We’ve never opened it, I was only shown the storage place once as a child.”
Jeiana carefully opened the bag. It was held together by stitching at one end and a ribbon tie which pulled the bag closed at the other. She opened it slowly, feeling the tautness of the material; it was stiff and ancient but still held. An inner bag slipped out. It had three rings and metal tubes marked I, II and III, designed to hold three scrolls, and Jeiana suddenly knew, in a moment of clarity, that they were to hold the scrolls Senna had brought with her from Aiaea.
The material was a roll, designed to hold much but take up as little room as possible. It was the same kind of thing healers across Reshka used for its lightness and portability. Inside were various instruments, some she recognised and others she didn’t—like an impossibly sharp and thin tube which reminded her of a shamir’s sting, designed only to pump venom through a tiny gap in the skin. There were blades made from metal and baelish bone which balanced perfectly in her hand, as if they were an extension of her body. She found tiny jars containing traces of powders and liquids, another with a trace of anaesthetic salve which bore the distinctive tinge of Uryen’s Mercy.
Suddenly the scrolls she knew Senna had spent years reading, copying, and annotating made more sense. Parts of the first scroll had been in the form of a list, and she had thought it to be nothing more than a recommendation as to what a healer should keep in their kit, but it was actually an inventory as well.
“Senna could do so much with these,” Jeiana said. “I am to take them to her?”
“Yes.” Taras’ voice was firm. “Along with them came a message, that the woman, the daughter in his service who accepted this gift would need it in the days ahead. That with them would come both great knowledge, but also great suffering.”
Later, Taras walked through Abbia’s shifting streets as night closed in and Abbia came alive. Around him were hundreds of tents, many marked with the hieratics of the different clans and wandering families. It felt both heart-achingly familiar and shockingly strange. He remembered Ishran running through the natural streets between lines of tents, he remembered Jio hiding behind tracts of canvas.
Both his sons were dead. Kadian had mentioned something about one of the young oracle’s visions, about an Edoi boy who was still alive. Vashi, he’d said, had believed him to be Jio and she had much faith in her Lady’s prophecies. She believed, but Taras was old, and he had to tell his lifemate their youngest son was dead. Prophecies and half-hoped for miracles would not make his task any easier.
Garrin came with the dusk, the hooves of his clan’s baelish hammering against the grassy cliffs. He was early, and that gladdened Taras’ heart, but also deepened his sorrow.
Taras’ mind turned to darker thoughts as he waited for Garrin and his clan to cross the rope bridge. His beloved saw him and Garrin’s eyes lit up. He waved and called out,
“Ho, Taras!”
It was hard for Taras, as travel-weary as he was, not to smile at his lifemate’s greeting. Seeing Garrin gladdened his heart and it felt like more than just a season since they’d last seen each other. That was when Kadian had asked for passage to Aiaea to begin his apprenticeship and to be closer to his beloved Sarivashi, and Jio had accompanied them, if only for the New
Year’s festivals.
“Brother of my heart.” Taras found himself enveloped by his beloved. In Garrin’s embrace, in that wondrous moment, everything was finally right with the universe.
“I thought you’d be waiting,” Garrin was joyous. “We rode the baelish hard. What’s going on? Is the Oracle really here?”
“Come, we have much to talk about.”
“Where are the boys?”
“Kadi is with Vashi.”
“Who? Meresia’s girl? What’s she doing here? Did she break her bond?”
“Long story.”
They went to the temple first, to make the offerings, and it was there that Garrin discovered his third son with Taras was no longer walking among the living.
“What?” Garrin fell to his knees. “What happened?”
“We don’t know. He was apparently trying to chase a dennabird and, I think-” his voice faltered for a moment. “I think he was there when the quake destroyed Danshu. There were hundreds of bodies, Garrin, and we couldn’t stop to search for him.”
Garrin went white. “Oh Taras!”
“Both my sons gone.”
“Hey now, we still have Kadian. He is as much your son as he is mine. After all, we both made him,” Garrin’s tone softened. “I know it’s no help, but I’m here. We will never be parted again and we will walk strong, in the memory of our boys.”
Taras swallowed, unable to speak as his beloved lifemate hugged him, and together they prayed for the souls of their lost boys, for them to find peace across the River.
Grass and Water
The Edoi are the lifeblood. They move in freedom, something that even oracles do not share.
The writings of Kaiene the Blessed, first Oracle of Aia.