How to Talk to a Goddess and Other Lessons in Real Magic

by Emily Croy Barker

  Something of her emotions must have shown on her face. Yaioni stared at her, unsmiling. “You will not give praise to Her Holiness?” Her Ors sounded rough, faintly stilted, as though she had learned it as an adult. Well, so did I, Nora reminded herself.

  “I respect your beliefs, I don’t mean to be rude,” Nora said. “But I’m afraid I never heard of your goddess before today. Or this place.” She summoned all her scant knowledge of this world’s geography. “Is Erchkaii near the Kingdom of Semr?”

  “Oh, we’re far south of Semr,” said Uliverat, just as Oasme said: “Semr is many weeks’ journey to the west.”

  Wonderful, Nora thought. They don’t even know where they are.

  “I left my people, my child, my riches behind to follow Her Holiness,” Yaioni said suddenly. “Even before that, I worshipped her in my heart. And you have never heard of her?”

  “Well, I’d be interested in knowing more about the, um, Queen of Holy Power,” Nora said cautiously. These are true believers, she reminded herself, and any sign of disbelief is an attack on their god. “Can you tell me more about her?”

  Yaioni looked away, with a sour twitch of her mouth, but Oasme answered immediately, as though he had been waiting for the opportunity. Erchkaii was the chief place of worship for the Lady Healer, as Oasme called her, although she also had lesser shrines elsewhere. A temple had existed here for more than a thousand years, starting with simple underground shrines in the secret caves where the goddess was born, the daughter of an earth goddess and the sun god.

  “Erchkaii has long been known as a place of medicine,” he said. “People first came to bathe in the river, seeking to be cured, and by the grace of Her Holiness, the waters washed away their suffering. Then Ulausoes, the founder of my order, built the first sick house, and the priests of the Lady Healer have cared for the sick ever since.”

  Nora decided that it was not the first time that he had given this lecture to a visitor. Oasme was just explaining with some pride that Erchkaii had once been the traditional site for the anointment of the Ghaki Kings when Uliverat broke in.

  “Her Holiness is also Queen of Power, you know.” Pursing her lips, Uliverat nodded sagely, as though Nora would know what she was talking about. “She is most revered as the Mother of Power.”

  “Yes, indeed,” Oasme agreed. His tone was buttery, faintly apologetic. “We have always honored Her Holiness here for her healing arts. But of course she has other responsibilities that are even greater.”

  “Let us not forget that,” Yaioni snapped, looking up from her plate.

  “I do not,” he said.

  Nora looked curiously at Oasme, but his face gave nothing away. She caught the boy Lemoes’s eye, and he grinned at her shyly before turning back to his dinner.

  “I thought that Helmis was the god of medicine,” Nora said into the silence that had descended on the table. Helmis had a dog’s head. That was probably why she remembered him, from some reference in one of Aruendiel’s books.

  Yaioni muttered something to herself. Uliverat seemed puzzled. “Helmis? Well, yes, he had a shrine in my old village.” With more certainty she added: “Some pray to him, but Her Holiness is much greater, of course.”

  It must be complicated, being a polytheist, Nora thought, always trying to figure out whose god was bigger and badder. “Helmis is a demigod of the western lands, and no, we cannot compare him to Her Holiness,” Oasme agreed. “Some say he is the same as our Anies, the son of Ioma.” He began a long explanation of Anies’s convoluted genealogy. Once he prodded Lemoes to recite a few lines of verse and made a little show of fussing fondly at the boy when he stumbled.

  Perhaps too fondly? Nora felt a question form in her mind as she watched them. There were all those church sex abuse scandals, back in her world. Oasme was so much older than Lemoes—and Lemoes was so gorgeous with those big eyes and eloquent cheekbones, not unlike Andy Reeves, captain of the baseball team, who had sat in front of Nora in tenth-grade English and borrowed her copy of The Catcher in the Rye and returned it full of penciled underlines that she could never bring herself to erase. Were these clergy celibate?

  Lemoes shifted in his seat, eyes downcast, as though sensing Nora’s attention. Maybe her speculation was unfair, Nora thought, but something in this place was off-kilter. And what of Yaioni and Uliverat? The First Deaconess had just leaned over to whisper something to the Second, who nodded hastily, with the air of wanting to please.

  Both Oasme and Uliverat were a little afraid of Yaioni, Nora thought. And yet the First Deaconess was very much their junior. Early twenties, Nora guessed. She was still growing into those sharp, striking good looks of hers. Some childish softness remained in the curve of her cheeks, the sulkiness of her mouth.

  Now she looked at Nora and smiled with more friendliness than she had before. “You have not seen Her Holiness’s sanctuary, I think? I will take you there myself. It is time for evening prayers, to ask for the goddess’s protection in the night.”

  “That would be nice,” Nora said, feeling a mild interest in seeing the sanctuary. “There’s no prohibition against a nonworshipper going inside?” she asked, to make it clear that she did not plan to join in the prayers.

  Something about Nora’s question seemed to please Yaioni. “Anyone may enter the Great Hall of the sanctuary.” She stood and nodded at Nora. “We will go now,” she announced.

  Nora rose, snatching at her maran—it had slipped entirely off her hair during dinner—and walked alongside Yaioni out of the dining hall, which was almost empty. It was dark now, except for the few torches burning, and the air was already chilly. Nora was suddenly grateful for the woolen folds of the maran. Yaioni led her through the complex to the Stairs of Healing.

  “What happened to your hand?” Yaioni asked brusquely.

  “I cut myself by mistake,” Nora said. Involuntarily she touched her thumb to the stump of her missing finger. She wanted to ask if Sisoaneer, the High Priestess, would be at evening prayers, but thought it might send Yaioni off again, for whatever mysterious reason.

  They set off up the stairs, which rose even more steeply than Nora remembered. Falling water roared below. Nora kept her hand on the rock face to her right. Then Yaioni said clearly: “You are a witch.”

  “A witch? Oh, no,” Nora corrected, recalling what had happened the last time someone called her a witch. “Not a witch.”

  “You are a witch,” Yaioni insisted. “You know the arts of power?”

  The arts of power? Nora hesitated. “I’ve studied some magic, yes.”

  “A witch,” Yaioni said. “I also am a witch.” Her lovely, angry face was suddenly visible in the darkness, a pale flame flaring in her hand. An illumination spell; she must have pulled light from the torches below. “Those who serve Her Holiness must know the arts of power. More than that. They must be very, very skilled”—she almost sneered—“in the arts of power.”

  “I didn’t realize that,” Nora said, disturbed, fascinated. It made sense: Sisoaneer was nothing if not skilled in the arts of power. A cadre of female magicians? Nora had not dared to hope that such a thing could exist.

  But Yaioni’s tone was not exactly reassuring.

  “You are completely ignorant of Her Holiness,” Yaioni complained. “You are a pagan, a heretic. You practice her arts without honoring her. Why are you here? Why have you come here? You insult Her Holiness’s sacred ground by standing upon it!”

  “I’m sorry—” Nora stopped, thinking: why am I apologizing? I didn’t ask to come here. And Yaioni was beginning to impugn her professional pride. “Magic doesn’t come from the gods,” Nora said firmly, repeating something Aruendiel had once said.

  “Then where does it come from?” Yaioni’s words were a taunt.

  Nora didn’t need to quote Aruendiel this time. “It comes from knowing the world around us—from feeling the true connections amo
ng things.”

  Yaioni’s face brightened, as though she were happy to establish the depths of Nora’s ignorance. “Lies and blasphemy. Have you no respect? You are foolish to say these evil things before the temple of the goddess, before Her Holiness’s most devoted servant.”

  “I really don’t mean to offend you,” Nora said. She was a little out of breath. They were at the top of the stairs. “I’m sure your goddess is very powerful and good—and everything a goddess should be. But I learned magic without having to worship any gods. You don’t need gods to be a magician.”

  Yaioni shook her head slowly, an unpleasant smile on her lips. “Your words are filth, they insult the goddess’s blessings,” she said. “Her Holiness does not tolerate your insolence.”

  “Look—” Nora began, intending to say that she was sorry that they had gotten off on the wrong foot, and the last thing she wanted to do was quarrel with another magician—especially a female magician—but just then the air turned thick and frantic.

  Soft, bony wings swooped close to her face, small pointed claws caught in her hair. Bats. More bats. Nora shrieked and ducked.

  Yaioni was smiling. None of the bats were dive-bombing her.

  Slapping at a wing that brushed her mouth, Nora flinched again. “Is this how you treat a guest?”

  “Her Holiness has allowed me one challenge,” Yaioni said.

  “A challenge?”

  “It was what I prayed for, and Her Holiness listens to the prayers of those who love her.”

  I’ve always tried to be open-minded even about the most close-minded people, Nora thought—ducking again, arms over her face—but this is it, now I know that religion makes you crazy. This was a silly challenge, anyway, it was as though Yaioni had watched too many cheesy horror movies. And at the same time you could see why those movies had been made. It was ghastly to be swarmed by bats, and that didn’t even include the risk of rabies. Maybe rabies didn’t exist in this world, Nora thought hopefully.

  Can I repel them magically? she wondered. Aruendiel had once said that it was hard to control animals with magic—harder, in fact, than controlling human beings. An animal forced to do something against its will for very long was quite capable of deciding to lie down and die; humans usually found some way to rationalize the loss of autonomy.

  She flung a couple of elementary counterhexes at the bats. Nothing very precise, but maybe they would loosen Yaioni’s control of the animals. The cloud of bats thinned after the Selvirian counterhex. She sent a meaningful glance toward Yaioni, but Yaioni was looking toward Nora’s feet.

  Nora followed her gaze. A black scribble on the ground. She jumped back even before her mind formed the word snake.

  Her foot missed the top step. It found the next one, barely; the jolt of her landing almost sent her down the Stairs of Healing. The snake moved gracefully toward her. The Selvirian counterhex was not working.

  “What have I done to you?” Nora demanded of Yaioni.

  Yaioni held herself very straight, lifting her arms as though conducting an invisible symphony. “You see how Her Holiness deals with heretics? Her sacred snake comes to punish you. Whose power is greater now?”

  “Is that what this is about? You think I’m challenging you and your goddess?” Nora levitated the snake off the ground; it thrashed wildly, obviously annoyed at being dangled in midair.

  Leaning away, Nora was intensely conscious of the ski-jump pitch of the stairs at her back. If she fell, could she work a levitation spell powerful enough to save herself? In a split second?

  A couple of bats still flitted near her head. She made herself ignore them. Yaioni said something angry in a different language.

  It was as though a door had slammed shut. Everything around Nora went black. Yaioni’s contorted face, the light she held, the lashing snake, the bats, the moon that had just swum out from behind a cloud—all wiped away.

  A stroke, Nora thought. No, a blinding spell.

  Staring into darkness, Nora called Yaioni every filthy name she could think of, in English and Ors. Yaioni laughed once, then was silent.

  Which was unnerving. Maybe Yaioni was tiptoeing closer in order to push Nora off the edge of the stairs. Nora stopping yelling and listened hard. The bats and their flapping wings seemed closer when you couldn’t see them. You’d think it would be the other way around. Twinkle twinkle, little bat, how I wonder where you’re at.

  The snake—she decided not to worry about the snake right now. It was a couple of feet away, last time she’d seen it.

  Nora touched her eyes gently to make sure they were still there. They felt fine. They were not bleeding, like poor Gloucester’s. They just couldn’t see anything. She tried a counterhex to Vlonicl’s spell for confusing an enemy’s sight, but whatever Yaioni had done, it wasn’t the Vlonicl charm.

  A flurry in the air right next to her face, needle claws raking her scalp. Instinctively Nora jerked away. Her foot slid off the edge of the step. Arms flailing, she tried to right herself.

  Instead, she fell.

  That levitation spell, maybe I’ll try it now, Nora thought.

  A few seconds passed. All she could discern at first was that she had not smashed into the ground. She reached out cautiously and registered only air. A breath of dampness from the waterfall washed over her. The water’s roar was louder, she noticed. She must be just above the pool under the falls.

  All right, Nora thought cautiously. Not bad. Once before, she’d used a levitation spell to climb a cliff higher than these stairs, but it took a lot more power to raise something that was already plummeting through the air.

  A slight noise came from above. A footstep? Nora lifted her head automatically, trying to focus her useless eyes, and felt outrage all over again at being blind. What was Yaioni up to now, in this unreadable darkness? Cautiously Nora extended her arm again to see if she could find the stairs, anything at all.

  Her hand grasped stone, and then something cool, dry, supple, and living. The snake wrapped around her wrist before she could drop it.

  Chapter 14

  How long did it take to die from snakebite, and how painful was it? Nora wondered, trying to shake off the snake as violently as she could, even though that was probably just going to provoke the thing into biting her. The snake squeezed her wrist harder. Any second now she’d feel the prick of fangs.

  In the middle of her panic, though, Nora could not help feeling indignant, almost insulted. The bats; the snake; the blindness; Yaioni’s maneuvering to get Nora to fall off the staircase, without even considering whether Nora might know a levitation spell or two—it was all so clumsy and stupid.

  All at once she saw what Aruendiel would no doubt have seen from the very beginning—that Yaioni was not a very good magician, and that this so-called challenge was jerry-rigged from a handful of rather basic spells. They could be deadly enough, though. Nora knew no spells to counteract snake venom. She allotted a few luxurious seconds to do nothing but hate Yaioni with a rage too pure for words.

  Gratifyingly, Yaioni screamed.

  Nora raised her head, and this time she saw light. Flames, real fire, not the illusion of it. She blinked.

  The world had returned. She could make out the shape of the looming cliffs against the night sky and the glimmering curtain of the waterfall; she could see the churning foam a few feet below her. The bottom of the Stairs of Healing was only an arm’s length away. She scrabbled her way onto a step, then ran up the stairs, enjoying the solid stone under her sandals.

  A tall bonfire was lit at the top of the stairs, a column of light. The bonfire was Yaioni. Flames were devouring her maran, casting a stark, brilliant light on her distorted face. Yaioni beat at them with both hands, roaring. Nora caught the acrid stink of burning hair.

  And just a few feet away, the cool torrent of the waterfall. Yaioni turned, and Nora saw exactly what she woul
d do next.

  “Yaioni, wait!” she shouted.

  Yaioni leaped through the air, bright and blazing as a comet. She landed at the top of the waterfall, swaying in the middle of a hissing cloud of steam and smoke.

  Then she was over the edge. Nora threw a levitation spell at her, felt it catch—but she had reckoned without the force of plunging water. The torrent seized Yaioni. She crashed onto the rocks below. The last flames winked out.

  Nora pounded down the stairs. Yaioni was a shadow in the moving water, streamers of pinkish foam unfurling from her body. Nora summoned a light and waded into the stream.

  “Yaioni! Are you all right?” Yaioni didn’t answer. Nora grabbed her arm to pull her to shore. Yaioni shrieked. Nora remembered the burns and cursed herself. “Here,” she said. This time, the levitation spell did its work. With all the control she could muster, Nora raised Yaioni from the water and set her down on the bank of the stream as gently as she could.

  “You’re going to be fine, Yaioni,” she said. It sounded stupidly unconvincing.

  Yaioni moved her head. “Your Holiness, forgive me,” she said. “I failed.” Nora began to say she shouldn’t worry about that right now, but Yaioni went on: “The heretic lives. Her unholy power was too strong. I failed.”

  “Don’t feel bad, you did your best,” Nora said. “Listen, I’ll go find your friends—the other deaconess, Uliverat, and what’s his name—”

  “Goddess, forgive me.” Yaioni’s voice rose. “I was too weak to serve you correctly. Forgive your unworthy servant.” She stared at Nora.

  Nora looked down and felt her heart choke. She had forgotten the snake.

  It was still twined around Nora’s arm, its small yellow eyes only inches from Nora’s own. The set of its mouth, like an old man’s, gave it a curiously self-righteous look. Nora fought down the urge to scream with an almost physical effort, like throwing her weight on a bursting suitcase.