by Lesley Smith
Hours later and Baaren’s calm silence had been broken by the sounds of screaming, agonised and heart-breaking, that chilled the souls of all who heard it and muffled the noise of a knife on skin. Lyse lay on the floor, convulsing and covered in blood. Darus looked at his handiwork and delivered his message.
“Your life belongs to Jashri, remember that, you heretical bitch. If you ever try to usurp the rightful Voice of Aia, I will return and take your miserable life.”
Summoning the last of her strength, Lyse spat in his face, a mix of blood and saliva that splatted over his skin, and for a moment she borrowed his eyes, and was disgusted by what she saw reflected in them.
“You think Jashri is the only one to listen? I don’t care for the title, nor would I want it. She seeks control and I will not be bullied into a life of misery in the capital! I would rather die.”
Darus snorted. “There will be no more visions, bitch, no more nights of bliss for you. You might soon wish I had killed you.”
Lyse laughed, her voice wracked with pain. “Stupid man, you think a mortal can staunch the voice of the Disembodied Goddess? You think your mistress can command Aia, mother of the universe? Turning the tides or preventing Thaeos from rising would be easy by comparison!”
“And this how you repay compassion, bitch?”
“Mutilation is not the same as compassion,” Lyse retorted. “You think your mistress will reward you? Your act, here, today, will sicken her, drive her further from your arms, even more than the man who took her eyes. She will never love you, never thank you, and you will spend your life trying to please her in vain.”
Darus swore and hit her hard with the butt of his knife, hard enough to knock her out but not kill her. Jashri had been particularly keen to impress that point. Death would have been too kind, too quick, for Lyse the Heretic. Yet this…he knew it was what his mistress had wanted. She knew it too. He had let bloodlust take him, vented his anger out on one of Aia’s sacred Voices.
“Lyse?” Cie’s hand on her arm brought her back from the memory, rousing her from dreams in the pallet they shared. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, dearest. Just a momentary lapse.”
“Darus again?”
Lyse exhaled. “Spectres don’t stop haunting us.”
“Morning has come, shall we rise?”
“I want to see Senna and find out how Jeiana fairs.”
“Of course.” Cie helped her up, a slow process made awkward by limbs which didn’t respond or moved right when she wanted to go left. “I’ll go and find out in a moment. She might not even be awake yet.”
“But it’s been days,” Lyse sighed, remembering her own convalescence. “I would also like to sit with Saiara this morning.”
“I’ll sort that out, too.” Cie kissed her, if only to stop the oracle from worrying about the changes sweeping through their quiet corner of the world. She was too used to Baaren’s quiet, and the idea that soon, so soon, she would be released to seek another life thrilled her.
After bathing and dressing, Lyse met with Saiara. It was just the two of them, not even Cie and Vashi were in attendance. It felt strange to know a new woman was wearing the blue robes of Aia’s Voice and yet Lyse was pleased and proud. She was not patronising or superior. She was everything Jashri had not been and she knew Saiara, so young, appreciated every kind word and gentle question.
“You’re pregnant,” Lyse said, and there was joy in her voice. “A miracle child.”
“Before Jashri banished Caspa, before he was lost in Danshu and I was called to Aia’s service, we shared ourselves, but I never expected this.”
“It was meant to be,” Lyse said. “Child, I do wish things had been different, that I could have met you and stood in Jashri’s place. I was supposed to do it but I was too afraid and she was too happy in her position to leave it.”
“I’m grateful that you are here now. Eirian is a wise teacher but you have walked the road ahead of me.”
“And now I plan to leave you all too quickly.”
“You don’t have to,” Saiara countered.
“That vision hasn’t come to you yet, eh? It will. All oracles will dream of their deaths and mine comes at the hands of the goddess in your retinue. I have always known this, and I want freedom from my prison as you want to see your Caspa again.”
“I shan’t even try to talk you out of it, I can hear the resolution in your voice.”
“Thank you for that.” Lyse poured tea for them, her hands shaking even as her voice betrayed how grateful she was for the acceptance. “Now as our time is short, what can I tell you which will help you walk this road we share?”
“I fear going underground, hiding.”
“Do not, sister. The people of Baaren have spent every moment since the vision came upon me trying to prepare for your arrival. There is space for the baelish and the people, stores of food and grain, a pool of water which will last, and air too, filtered down through the rocky peaks and forest leaves.”
“I still don’t understand it, how we will be protected.”
“The rock, it will form a barrier between you and Thaeos’ rage. The caves south, in Danshu, are similar but not as strong. They’re too close to the sea, the walls are too thin. At night you can come out, when the heat-haze dies, though it might take a year or two.”
“You speak as if you’ve experienced it.”
“I’ve seen. All that our gift is is a memory we’ve forgotten, future and past lives that we get glimpses of. I’ve seen the second moon named for you, as the first was named for Kaiene. We’ll meet again, you and I, and Vashi will take care of you, as will Kadian and Eirian.”
“I don’t understand.”
“This was destined, a promise you made which is now being fulfilled. You were a Queen once, Saiara, the humblest of monarchs who ceded a throne to a whispering voice, a blind girl who saw. Now you have embraced your destiny, you’ve a people to guide in the darkness as the solar storm rages around you.”
“I will ensure you’re remembered. You should have been my mentor, you would have been a wiser Oracle than Jashri.”
“And yet we stand here now, in the blue, a dying order.” Lyse seemed listless for a moment. “But it was always to be that way. I understand that now where I didn’t before. Now, Saiara, will you come and be witness to my passing?”
Saiara sounded shocked to be asked, but she agreed. “I will, sister.”
“Then let us go, so you and yours can travel to Canhei. There’s little time left till High Summer’s Day.”
Vashi, Eirian, Senna, and Jeiana sat in the main receiving room, waiting. In front of Jeiana were two bottles, one red as blood and the other clear as water. They were waiting for Saiara and for Lyse. Kadian did not want to see this, he had begged the healer to send him elsewhere and Vashi had felt his unease. This was one thing he wanted no part of.
“All right, be calm, Kadian. Why not saddle the baelish for when we’re done here?” Vashi suggested gently. “We need to be at Ishvei’s Rest by nightfall anyway.”
He hugged her. “Thank you, dearest, for understanding.”
“Go quickly then, and I will come and find you when we’re done.”
Lyse and Saiara appeared through a side door. Lyse moved with a strange juddering, as if her limbs didn’t quite communicate with her brain.
“Are you ready?” Jeiana asked, gently.
Lyse was happy and that surprised all but Jeiana. “I have waited for this day.”
Jeiana’s look was one of sadness mellowed by acceptance. “Saiara, come and sit beside me. I would lay down instruction before I forget. This ritual, this Ashenvay, is to be performed only by parents who have lost children. It must be done with consent and without force, a kindness to those in pain. They must ask for it.”
Senna asked, “What’s in the bottles?”
Jeiana spoke and her voice was not that of the woman Senna loved but the goddess walking in her bones. “Tincture of Riverweed and Uryen’s Mercy, the two w
hich must never be mixed.”
In Senna’s head she was mentally working out how many people the tincture in that bottle would end. Even the soporific could kill you, if you took enough.
As an Edoi child, Vashi knew Riverweed. One of the first things she’d learned, after how to find water holes, had been to identify plants that could either poison or feed the desperately hungry. Riverweed was particularly insidious; it grew wherever there was water and was deadly, a weed which strangled life from water and limbs alike. Its name was a terrible pun and many had died through accidental or purposeful ingestion. She thought of the oracles who had chosen to end their own lives. She had never seen it distilled, however, and her curiosity won out against the desire to follow Kadian.
“Vashi, did you find the mask?”
She pushed it over, a ceremonial mask used in the mystery plays across Reshka. This was the white one, worn by the actor who played Jaisenthia. The legends said the gods appeared as the viewer wished to see them, so each mask was plain, made of ceramic and virtually identical but for the name, written in a circular cartouche, on the forehead of the mask.
Jaisenthia’s sigil was written with blood red and starstone ink for extra gravitas, and Jeiana recognised Kadian’s penmanship. He might not want a part in this but he was still one of the best calligraphers she had ever seen. He had the skill of an artisan.
“Lyse, if you’re ready?”
“I am,” she replied with complete contentment.
“Do you want me to help her?” Vashi asked, voice hushed.
“Please.”
Lyse let Vashi help her lie flat on the makeshift pallet. Fresh sheets had been laid, large enough to act as a shroud when this was all done. White was the traditional colour in shrouds and Riverclothes; it was the colour their bodies went after their souls had flown free of physical constrictions.
Her robes settled around her, like hair floating in water.
“Lyse of Baaren, do you seek the ending of your own free will? Do you do it without coercion or force?” Jeiana sounded formal. “Do you consent?”
“I do, I go happily,” Lyse replied, speaking not as an oracle but rather as just one of a thousand souls.
“Senna, would you help me with this? I need two hands and even if I still had both, I need to be steady.”
“Of course,”
Jeiana indicated the bottle of Uryen’s Mercy. “Draw the hieratic for ‘life’ on her forehead with your finger. Make sure you don’t touch her again afterwards, or the other bottle.”
While Senna carefully inscribed the word, Jeiana upturned the mask as if she was going to put on. She had to do this first; to teach so that others could learn. Lyse’s death would be at her hands, given in a way which didn’t rely on her other abilities.
Carefully uncorking the bottle of Riverweed, she dipped her finger into the oil and wrote the word for death, for ending, on the inside of the mask. “Life and death go together.”
“So it was ordained in the beginning,” Lyse murmured.
“And will be in the end,” Jeiana intoned, and gently placed the mask over Lyse’s face. She became death in that moment; the avatar of the Lady of the River as the cords snapped and Lyse had her release. “Close your eyes, Lyse, and go in peace.”
It wasn’t instantaneous, rather her breathing slowed and her chest stilled as Lyse’s body realised there was no longer a soul interwoven with flesh and bone, blood and water. As passings went, it was a kind one, and no one was more deserving of it than Lyse the Beloved.
Senna leant forward and felt for Lyse’s pulse. “She’s gone.”
Jeiana nodded. “And now, I will go.”
“You did all you needed to?” Eirian asked softly as Vashi and Senna wrapped the Oracle’s still form in the shroud; they would carry her outside to be burned and her ashes scattered to the winds.
“More than that,” Jeiana said. “But this always had to have an ending. It could be today, it could be a season from now. All I have is borrowed time.”
“That’s all any of us have,” Saiara said quietly, and both of them knew Jeiana’s time had run out, the last grains still falling as Lyse’s body began to cool.
They met again that final time, closer to reality. Ash was paddling the ferry. There were people around her, the ghost of the son she had not carried and the mate she no longer remembered next to her. She knew them but she was not Jeiana, not anymore. She wore the dark clothes of the Lady of the River, her long hair hanging in ringlets around her shoulders.
She could feel the power, the pull of time in her veins through the essence of her soul. Such power…she could rewrite history with a thought, she could stop time in its tracks and weave atoms into beautiful, living works of art that she could use to interact with a plane too used to corporeal forms. Such power was a choice, a bargain struck long ago in return for eternal service.
For a moment the pull was almost too much.
The sky was filled with stars that the water reflected too perfectly for them to just be hanging in the heavens. Jaisenthia reached down and scooped one out, surprised when the ball of swirling blue didn’t burn her or singe the fragments of another’s soul from her body.
“What is it?”
“Not a star.” He set the paddle down. “Though the metaphor is nice enough. That, my most beloved, is a soul. Specifically, the one of the woman whose form you borrowed. Set it back now, gently. Jeiana has other lives to lead.”
“She won’t get lost?”
“That’s what we do, we guide to as well as from. I’m guessing you forgot that part? Not surprising really.”
“I suppose you can get lost very easily, regardless of whether you’re traveling somewhere or going home.”
“Exactly.” He dismissed one of the shades and it wafted away like incense smoke blown by the breeze. “Do you know why you’re on this kerash?”
“I assume it’s another of your metaphors.” She glanced at the horizon, where sky-stars and those drifting in the ocean met. “The real me is bleeding away. Dying.”
“Something like that. But in truth, you’ve done more than you intended. Your part has been played, and is a life with Senna so terrible?”
“True,” she agreed. “Even if I forgot everything, she would make life a little sweeter, even if that life is days rather than decades.”
“It will be soon now.”
“I know. This is the last time, isn’t it? Hence the boat.”
“So you say.” Ash was reticent. “You’re taking the, albeit temporary, erasure of yourself quite well.”
“I knew what I was getting into,” she replied, and the words were not Jeiana’s. She was herself again, the Lady of the River. “I did this willingly, as it was supposed to be.”
“True, you did, but that doesn’t make it easier. Of all of us, you and I have seldom wandered the corporeal realms. Full incarnation, alone no less, was never going to be a simple task. How much information made it through the transition?”
“Not all of it, not by far.”
“Exactly.” His expression shifted to one of amusement. “I liked your analogy, the one about the soaked map.”
“You heard that?”
“I told you I’d be keeping an eye on you.”
“But those were my thoughts. You heard them?”
“Obviously.”
Jaisenthia’s cheeks burned and she felt stupid. She knew the things he was telling her, but she was no longer entirely the Lady of the River, she had too much of the Kashinai woman whose body she had reanimated. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologise, I would never judge you.” A pause, almost thoughtful. “But I have one last thing to show you, if that’s all right?”
“A salve to ease the pain?”
“If you like.”
The boat was gone, the water and sky, too. Jaisenthia didn’t even feel disconcerted by the change in their surroundings. This reality, she realised, was as malleable as a dream if you had enough power and
knowledge to manipulate it. She didn’t, or at least if she did Jaisenthia couldn’t remember how to use it, but Ash was bound by no such problems.
Stone paving rippled underneath her feet and a shamir ambled by her ear in full flight, the gentle buzz of its wings making this dream-like place seem all the more real. They weren’t inside, rather, the building grew around them, almost organically. It reminded her of watching a plant grow from seed to fruit in a microcosm, sped up so fast you couldn’t blink or the magic would be long gone and forgotten.
Ash strolled beside her, his silver-white hair neatly plaited between his shoulder blades, and he wore robes she didn’t recognise, grey as the winter mornings when the beach water seemed almost like liquid ice and about as inviting.
“What Order is that? Those robes you’re wearing, I don’t recognise the colour.”
“I borrowed these from the attendants. Strictly speaking though, they’re not a religious order, more a guild.”
“Not the Varaiah? Those lost in Danshu?”
“No, but they’re closely linked. The attendants are somewhere between Kodia’s clergy and the esteemed Forgotten Ones, or will be, once they’re remembered.”
“So what is this place?” She looked around in awe. “I don’t recognise this temple.”
“This is Kasan, the City of Remembered Sorrows. This is the city that Jannah will found generations from now if the Kashinai survive.”
“And what makes you think they—we—won’t?”
“I have no doubt of it, but here time is in flux. Things that have happened are yet to occur, and things which are yet to occur have already happened. I just lost you, didn’t I? To safer topics then, this is the new temple. Look up.”
The roof was domed but lacked a lightgate, instead it had been embedded with stained glass windows that moved from where the oculus should have been across the roof in a lazy spiral. The ceiling was graduated to allow for this and it was hard to focus on the plain whiteness of it, rather than on the spectrum of colour. At the central point, where the lightgate would have been, there was a circle of clear glass, decorated with the simple circle that was Aia’s sigil, and it took Jaisenthia a moment to realise that the square panes fanning out depicted names, the formal names of each and every oracle.