The Orphan's Tales

by Catherynne M. Valente

  Ragnhild continued to smile in her bright, cold way, and her hands tightened on Yashna’s arms. “Then I will burn it to the ground, and let my Centaurs piss on your altars and spill their wine over every holy text in this clutch of hovels. And when I have finished, the Caliph will send his men to rape your nuns and count out every stone of this carrion-town for the Treasury.” Her smile deepened and grew even sweeter. Yashna’s expression did not change.

  “The Caliph cannot and will not touch us. Why do you think he has set up little girls in his bank vaults instead of assaulting us directly? Why has he never marched an army to the brink of our borders? He knows the Draghi are very charming and debonair, but they are decadent, and they are not a tenth of our power. The heavens themselves will crack and spill their mortar onto the heads of any soldier who dares touch the flesh of a priestess of this City. You will find the same if your monsters broach the Gate. Please believe that I do not lie to you—I am of the Dead, and the Dead have no need of fiction. You think we are at an impasse, and that to avoid bloodshed, I will surrender to your smile, or your kiss.” Yashna released the Apostate’s arms, her dark eyes flashing suddenly like iron striking stone. “We are not at an impasse, and the Dead care nothing for whether the blood of the living is spilled. Bring your army within the Salmon Gate, and I swear to you by the Seven Corpses of Heaven, not a shred of their skin will be left when the moon rises.”

  Ragnhild’s smile faltered slightly; her eyes seemed to shiver within themselves, and for a moment, for only a moment, I could see the creature she must have been before the Caliph had her, and I pitied her, may the Bough bend in forgiveness. But it was a moment soon past, and the seraphic smile had returned, harder and brighter than ever.

  “You cannot frighten me with the oaths of the Dead, old woman. I am dead—I am a wraith on the earth. I have crossed into shadow while you and your priests sit playing with toy gravestones in your Tower. Do not speak of what you do not know.”

  Yashna’s gentle gaze returned, like spring returning to a thicket of pine boughs. “Stop, my daughter. You do not need to brag to me of your putrefaction—I believe you. But I have a solution, if you will hear it. In recognition of Ghyfran’s mutilation of your first body, I will extend to you a single chance to take the Papacy in truth.”

  Ragnhild leaned forward eagerly, scenting her victory.

  “You wish to rule the Dreaming City; you must excel in all its ways. Play with me, a single game of Lo Shen. If you best me, I will go into seclusion as you ask, and you will ascend to the Tower without the slightest argument, and without battle. No one will contest you, and you will rule as well as you are able. If you lose, however, you must disband your army, and take the vows of one of our Towers, enter it as a novice, and pledge yourself to our City for the rest of your days. In the Anointed City, this is the way disputes are settled. If you would rule us, you must behave as one of us. Show me that you are the rightful Papess. Show me that you exceed us in all things.”

  Ragnhild seemed to laugh, but no sound issued from her rosy mouth. Her eyes glittered like snowflakes catching the sun. “You cannot be serious. A single game to decide five hundred years of history?”

  “Were it not that once my predecessor harmed you, I would simply kill you where you stand.”

  Ragnhild was silent for a long time, studying her opposite number. There was no sound but breathing in the Tower, the shallow, quick sighs of all of us waiting to learn what would become of this infant war. Finally, Ragnhild seemed to come to a decision, and leaned forward, her shimmering hair brushing Yashna’s wrist. She cupped the older woman’s face in her hand, almost as a sister might, comforting her sibling with a touch. She tilted her head and pressed her lips to Yashna’s dry mouth, kissing her deeply, passing all of her murky magic through her lips and into the body of the ancient Papess.

  When the kiss was ended, Yashna remained as she was, her smile, perhaps, a little sadder and a little more rueful than before.

  “We are both creatures of the Dead, my dear. Let us not try to befuddle each other with these cheap glamours. It does not become us. Play my game, as I have now played yours, or go back to your army and see if the prancing Draghi are the worst we can muster to keep an infidel from our halls.”

  I thought for a moment that Ragnhild would cry. I cannot think why I would imagine that haughty face could break into tears, but I did.

  “I will play,” Ragnhild said quietly, with great dignity—the dignity, one might say, of a Papess. Yashna took her arm in a grandmotherly gesture and led her into the courtyard outside the Tower, and my brothers and I carried the vast ceremonial board into the sunlight, where the nuns and monks, priestesses and oracles, brothers and sisters, gathered to watch the greatest game in the history of Al-a-Nur.

  How can I describe for you the spooling thread of a single game of Lo Shen, let alone the greatest game played in the annals of the Spheres? Should I tell you that the throng was hushed as grasses on a still summer day? How the Merchants and the Oracles and the Patricides gathered close in, how the Living and the Dead peered over their shoulders for one glimpse of the Apostate taking her place at the Board? That the light seemed to fall into Ragnhild’s hair and pool there, so that her head was ablaze in a halo of light? That Yashna was ever Yashna, calm, quiet as the reflection of a star, her head solemn and gray, and never aflame? That the whole thing looked like a painting, and not like anything that was actually happening before us? Or shall I orate upon the nature of the game, its perfect complexity, the slide of stone pieces on a round stone board? What came first, the City or the Game? Surely it must have been the Game; how else could the Towers and roads be arranged in the patterns of the thousand combinations of Lo Shen? Yet the Game contains pieces called Pagoda-Towers, and Draghi, and Papesses, and Gods.

  If the City came first, perhaps the Game is no more than a dumb imitation of Al-a-Nur in all its sapphire-paved glory. But if the Game existed in the shadowy years before the light of the Dreaming Towers, then perhaps there is some secret locked within its moves, some prophecy which would tell us, could we but read its meaning, the fate of all these roofs and doors. Perhaps the Papesses were made to defeat each other within the Game because one day there would be two Papesses to face each other in the City. Perhaps all our lifetimes of study of the Game were meant to culminate on that morning, in the sunlight thin as bones.

  I do not know, little Sigrid, if they have begun to teach you the many formations of Lo Shen yet. If not, they will soon. We spend half our lives in study of this game; all our internecine disputes are solved with it—for the object is to topple the God of the opposing player: the single piece that rests at the center of the board, nestled within thirteen concentric Spheres, unable to move unless it is to defeat its opposite number. It is poetic, and it is political.

  And so it came to pass that two women sat, quiet as nuns, at a great blue board the size of a giant’s shield. Their hands flashed over the pieces like crow’s wings waving, pale Triremes and dark Pagodas rising and falling, ranks of Draghi eradicated in a blow. Intricate combinations arose like glass webs, the Papesses as perfectly matched to each other as sisters: Chang-O and T’ien Fei, Pa Na and P’an Niang. For a long while, no one could see a clear advantage, the pieces merely circled the board like autumn leaves caught in a whirlpool. Ragnhild’s hair curled around her hips as a cat’s tail may around its haunches, and her soft smile never faltered, even as Yashna’s exquisitely executed Mang-Chin-I combination swept her third Papess from the board.

  I watched the sun move over their bent heads, cutting its path through the sky. The struggle for the city passed without a word, between grandmother and grandchild, and neither I, nor my brothers, nor the ranks of Draghi with their silver helmets flashing, could affect a single slide of a Pagoda from Sphere to Sphere.

  It drove us mad, of course, standing still at the sidelines. In the silence, my fur bristled as though it had been set aflame. But we are all of us, no matter what our Towers, acc
ustomed to standing by while our mistresses perform their magic.

  Finally, Yashna brought her Trireme forward in a quick slashing diagonal—just in the way a ship slips between the gusts of wind to stay on course. A ripple of caught breath swept through the crowd. The glistening piece, carved out of dark blue stone in the shape of a ship at full sail, completed her move: Shun I Fu-Jen. All four of her Papesses stood around the center Sphere, with a Pagoda-Tower, slim and gleaming, one ring behind them. It is an inescapable pattern, and Ragnhild’s sea-colored eyes flickered in anger, seeing what we all did: that her God was trapped, and there was no move she could make to save it.

  “Sheng Mu, my daughter. I have slain your God.”

  Yashna smiled in her way, a mother’s smile which at once glows with pride in her child’s performance and softens in regret at their shortcomings. She then stretched out her arm over the embattled Board and plucked the Apostate’s God from the center Sphere. Holding the ends of the featureless blue column, pale as water in sunlight, in either hand, she bowed in the ritual fashion as she broke the piece in half. It takes great strength to end a Game in the old way, the way of the first Nurians, whose honor and shame were measured by the number of broken Gods their altars held.

  Ragnhild, to her credit, took the severed pieces and bowed in her turn. Her face held no expression, but her cheeks burned, in rage, or in humiliation. I could not tell, for myself. She held her God at her side, fist tightening around the pieces until blood began to drip, thick and viscous, from her palm.

  BAGS STOPPED AND STRETCHED IN THE SUN, STROKING his silky muzzle with strong hands. The snow of my Tower swirled lazily around him, unaffected by the warm sunlight.

  “Is the army still at the Gate?” I asked breathlessly.

  He just smiled toothily. “I can’t say I understand her, you know. My brothers and I, with a company of Draghi, took her to the Gate, and the great army stood there, black and red flags snapping in the wind. I thought she would order them to flatten the City. I thought she would try to kiss us again and madden us into joining her. I thought she would conjure some terrible fiend and blow through the blue streets of Al-a-Nur like a fiery wind. Where in women like her is the capacity to abide by an oath? But she did none of these things. She stared at her vast horde with no tear in her gray eyes. Slowly, she unlatched the golden manacles from her wrists and threw them to the dry earth. Her skin was red where they had chafed and rubbed her raw. She held out a white palm for a moment, and the air over it crackled silver and white, like a burning snowflake. Turning her hand over, the crackle of air shot down to the manacles, and they vanished, leaving nothing, not even dust.”

  The Cynocephalus shook his head, as if unable to believe what he was describing.

  “The moment those chains disappeared, the whole army shimmered and disappeared right alongside them. In their place were a few starving lizards, feral cats, and one horse so old and mistreated that its ribs bowed like the bands of wine cask. The spectacle was nothing more than glamours and mirages. Ragnhild’s jaw clenched.

  “‘It is one thing,’ she whispered, her rage barely suppressed, ‘to command love and loyalty under the Rose Dome, where gold and beauty may buy any heart. It is another to bring them across the plains and pit them against a city they are certain is full of witches and messiahs—another to lead them in the body of a dead girl, to lead them when they knew I had stolen it, when they thought me a Yi, to be feared, but never one for whom they would risk death. They would not even risk dying in my presence, in terror that I would seize their corpses. They would not come.’ She sank to her knees, and pulled at the ragged shreds of her gown. ‘What was I to do? Five hundred years, and they would not come. I had to try, didn’t I? For the child I was before all this, I had to try.’”

  I sat back, stunned. All this had gone on while I was ensconced in prayer and study, with no notion of anything but icons of Saint Sigrid and nautical illuminations. Not for the first time, I burned to have done with contemplation, and witness those great deeds—the Game, the army, the fall of the Black Papess—for myself.

  I was never a very good student.

  But as I was rebelling against my Tower in my heart, a great commotion arose in the distance. A cluster of folk were moving up the path toward the Tower of St. Sigrid, kicking up dust like a ship leaving a white wake behind it.

  In the center of the throng was a woman with hair of pale gold that lay over her brow like a crown, and she wore a deep violet dress.

  My voice caught in my throat, and I stood, knees quivering, to greet them as they arrived. The Black Papess, Papess no more, wore a new set of manacles, plain iron, dull and gray. Her head was bent, in anger or shame I could not tell.

  “She was given a choice, as you were, and she chose the Sigrids,” Bags said, reaching across the threshold to touch my hair lightly. “If nothing else, she takes with grace the punishment the seed-scattered earth deals her. You must take her in.”

  “No! I… I can’t! I’m only a novice. I cannot accept a new Sigrid!”

  “Even a novice knows that she who guards the door is charged with the initiation of any postulant who appears on her watch. It is your duty, now.”

  Ragnhild raised her eyes to me, and I am not ashamed to say that I had never seen anything so beautiful as her silver gaze, the depth of feeling and sorrow and suppressed fury in her cool eyes. They searched me with a strange longing. When she spoke, the words were rote, taught to her by her captors, dead and empty, and forced. But her voice was rough, like silk torn by sharp diamonds, and I believed, truly, that she wanted nothing more than to disappear into the Tower and never emerge again.

  “Please, Saint Sigrid, take me in from the storm and teach me to steer through darkness, for I am lost, and I cannot see the shore.”

  I did not move for a long moment. Then, slowly, I reached out my hand to her and whispered, “Come, Lady, I will cut your hair for you.”

  Her hand slipped into mine, hard and cool.

  SIGRID SEEMED ENGROSSED IN PICKING THE DIRT and bits of rope from under her fingernails. She stared at them intently, avoiding Snow’s pale eyes.

  “And that, little love, is where I cease to be the hero of my own tale. Seven years went by, and then my year on the river currents. My time was not so very different from any other Saint—I read, I prayed, I studied sky maps and sea maps; I illuminated countless manuscripts with tiny golden Griffin and their infants. My hair grew back; I did not cut it, as many of the others did. They wished to be humble before the Stars and their servant Saint Sigrid. I believed that I was blessed, chosen. I believed”—the great woman paused and grimaced, closing her eyes as if her mouth was flooded with bile—“I believed that I was the orphan of the prophecy—for I was alone in the world, was I not? My mother was alive when I left her, but perhaps by now she had died and her body was lying cold on a slab of ice in the Temple, tended by my sisters. This was my reasoning, my folly. I was more eager to believe my own mother dead than that I was not spoken of in some old ballad. I let my hair grow long, for I knew that the wolves had led me astray, and my destiny was to find the lost Maidenhead and her captain.”

  In one swallow, Eyvind drained the last of his mug and grunted softly, mockingly. Sigrid smiled ruefully.

  “As soon as I was able, I left the Tower and the Dreaming City, and took to the sea in my little ship—for the last task of a Sigrid is to build a ship with her own hands, to perfect its lines and sails, and prove that it is sea-worthy. On the day of my trials my craft performed beautifully, but instead of returning to receive my marks, I simply sailed away into the horizon. For years upon years I searched for any sign of the Echeneis, any tale of its passing. I scoured every sailor’s haunt and foul-smelling tavern for someone who could tell me where this creature swam. How could something so vast hide itself from me? I found nothing. Not even a whisper of such a beast. Most had never even heard the word. Finally, I was forced to admit that perhaps I had been mistaken, that my mother lived, or t
hat I simply was not the woman of the prophecy. And when this truth settled in me like a stone sinking to the bottom of a well, I died. I died to the world. I was despondent, and in my grief I sailed into a storm that my poor ship could not survive. It was dashed to pieces, and I was dragged from the sea by a Muireanner’s fishing boat, seaweed clogging my mouth and my lips gone blue as sapphires. The fisherman rubbed life back into my limbs and cleared the ropy leaves from my mouth, and fed me a thin broth until I could stand on my own. Muireann is far to the north, the last part of the world graced by Saint Sigrid’s ship and her crew. It seemed a good enough place to waste the last of my days.”

  Sigrid looked up at Eyvind, a strange cloud passing over her broad features.

  “There were other reasons to stay. Things lying in the secret corners of this town I thought were long dead. But in my failure, in my shame and my hubris, I could not seek them out. Instead, I tied the knots of men’s nets on the docks, and drank myself into dreams until I could forget that once I imagined myself a child of destiny, a heroine meant for the greatest task any Sigrid could wish for herself.”

  Snow thought she could see tears well up in Sigrid’s tired eyes, but she could not be sure. She put her hesitant hand on the older woman’s fingers, warm and brown beneath her icy palm.

  “When my parents died,” Snow said quietly, “and my hair went silver overnight, I thought it was a sign. A sign from the Stars that I was their special daughter, that they would be my mother and father. I thought I was meant for something more. But I do not even have nets to mend every day. I scrape in the street for a bit of fish and bread, I starve in the belly of a half-built ship most nights. It is not a grand destiny, but at least it is mine. And without it, I would not have known a real, living Saint.” Snow touched her long, shimmering hair, in awe of it as she ever was, and as ashamed.