“Forgive me, Goddess,” Yaioni said again, and began muttering something in another language.
The snake’s head moved suddenly, as though it was zeroing in on a place to bite. Nora stiffened as it slipped around her rib cage.
But instead, the snake coiled downward along her body with dexterous intimacy, circling her waist, thighs, knees. When it reached the ground, Nora slowly exhaled. Yaioni extended a shaky hand toward the snake.
“Mother of Power! Give me your kiss, and I will be well again. Please. Your holy kiss.”
Did Yaioni actually want to be bitten? Nora froze. Rearing, the snake faced Yaioni for a long instant. Then it flowed away into the darkness.
That was a deliberate snub, Nora thought. Yaioni dropped her head and sobbed quietly.
“Yaioni?” Uliverat’s voice, sounding frightened. A light appeared some distance away, then bounced closer. Uliverat’s thickset figure and worried face appeared out of the darkness. “What has happened?” she asked, out of breath. “I heard some—”
Her voice trailed off when she saw Yaioni. Most of the First Deaconess’s maran was burned away; the skin on her naked shoulders and breasts was splotched red, already starting to blister. One of her legs splayed out at an odd angle.
“She’s badly burned,” Nora said. “And she fell off the waterfall. Is there anyone here who’s a doctor?” Their precious goddess was supposed to be in charge of healing.
“Oh, yes, yes, of course.” Uliverat sounded distracted. “Oasme—he’ll know what to do. He’s very good.” Her eyes roamed over Nora, her brow slightly furrowed.
“She tried to kill me, but it didn’t work,” Nora said. “If that’s what you’re wondering.”
“I angered Her Holiness, Uliverat,” Yaioni said softly. “Her serpent would not bless me.”
“Oh, dear goddess.” In a lower voice, to Nora, Uliverat said: “I told her not to be rash. She wouldn’t listen.” She sighed.
“You knew she was going to attack me?” Nora tried to keep her voice level. “You could have said something.”
“It wasn’t the will of the goddess. Would you do me a favor, dear one, and run down to get Oasme? Young legs will be faster. He’ll be in the building with the red arch.”
Oasme’s rather small eyes widened when he opened the door to Nora. For an instant he stared at her, his mouth crimped tight. He was another who’d been expecting Yaioni to triumph, Nora decided; she was in no mood to give anyone the benefit of the doubt. But he only clucked his tongue when Nora delivered her message, his expression turning shrewd and practical. Grabbing a covered basket from a shelf, he called out quickly; when one of the yellow-haired ganoi appeared, Oasme addressed him in that staccato language that Nora had heard earlier—even more urgent-sounding now—and then followed Nora to where Yaioni lay on the stream bank.
Without a word, he put wet compresses over her burns with swift, precise movements. Yaioni cried and groaned. At intervals, she implored her goddess’s forgiveness. Mostly her voice was a storm of incoherent pain.
Nora looked away, grateful for Oasme’s calm competence. She found herself wishing that she knew enough first aid to tend to Yaioni’s wounds, then reminded herself that Yaioni had just tried to kill her. But that thought only depressed her more. Yaioni’s machinations on the stairs seemed even more pathetic, almost childish. And that was before her fire spell had gone so horribly wrong. Yaioni had no business practicing magic if she couldn’t control it better, Nora told herself. With a pang she wondered if Aruendiel had had the same thoughts about her.
The acolyte had arrived with several men in short robes. They began to ease the First Deaconess onto a litter, to be carried to the sick house, Nora gathered, although Yaioni kept making a disjointed appeal to go to the temple: “If she sees me, she’ll forgive me.”
Uliverat turned to Nora, as though reminded of something. “Did she say the evening prayers?”
“We never got past these stairs.” The so-called Stairs of Healing.
Uliverat’s mouth pursed. “Then I will say the prayers. You’ll come with me, won’t you?”
What a thing to worry about at a time like this, Nora thought. Although Nora had her own concerns. “I must talk to Sisoaneer. Right now,” she said. Uliverat looked at her oddly, so she clarified: “The woman I came with last night. I have to talk to her. She brought me here, and it was very kind of her, and I appreciate that she saved my life last night, but I think I’m ready to leave now.”
Under her maran, Uliverat’s round face puckered, as though she did not entirely understand Nora’s meaning or did not approve of it, but she nodded. “The temple is the best place to seek her.”
“Good, then let’s go,” Nora said. “Unless you’re planning to attack me, too, in which case you might as well do it now and get it over with.”
Uliverat gave a gasping laugh. “I wouldn’t think of it.”
They both stood aside as the litter passed. Nora got only a glimpse of Yaioni, her eyes squeezed shut, her face tight and agonized.
“You must understand,” Uliverat said, with a faintly admonitory air, “Yaioni is not always so—so foolish and headstrong as she was tonight. I told her she should wait, and let herself be guided by the love of the goddess—”
“Yes, she told me how much she loved the goddess just before she attacked me,” Nora said. After a moment, she asked, “Do you think she’ll be all right?”
“It will be as Her Holiness wills.” Uliverat’s voice sounded both quavering and vehement. “We’ll say a special prayer tonight for the First Deaconess.”
Nora wanted to say, Fine, you can pray all you want, but with unwilling respect for Yaioni’s pain if nothing else, she held her tongue.
By the light of Uliverat’s lantern, they followed the worn stone path upstream. Uliverat kept chattering about the spring flood and the ensuing cleanup. Evidently, she and Yaioni also lived in the Old Dormitory. “Naturally, it was built for many more,” Uliverat said. “Praise Her Holiness, those empty rooms will be filled again. But it all needs more repair, and there are always so many other things to do! You cannot depend on the ganoi—they only work when they feel like it.”
“Mmm,” said Nora, more intrigued by their surroundings. Past the Old Dormitory, the path began to climb as the gorge narrowed. To their left, in a sinuous, deep-worn channel, the unseen stream grumbled and churned. The walls of the ravine leaned close, polished by patient water into bulbous, undulating curves that glistened damply in the lantern light. They looked more like heavy flesh than stone. The path felt claustrophobic, but in an intriguing way; you wanted to see what lay behind the next bend.
At intervals, flatter surfaces of stone had been carved with inscriptions in an unknown alphabet and with bas-reliefs that Nora only glimpsed as she passed: rows of tiny figures, dancing or fighting; a snake devouring a man in armor; a woman in a feathered crown, holding flowers and a knife. In the jolting light of Uliverat’s lantern, the small forms sometimes looked as though they were moving, heads flicking sideways to watch Nora’s progress.
The path turned abruptly, crossing the stream on a small, arched bridge. In the middle of the bridge, Uliverat paused, lifting her lantern. “The Door of Mercy!” she announced.
Across a frothy pool was the grandiose white column of another waterfall, glittering, deafening. This was the tallest yet, its top hidden in the night. The air was chilly with spray; the roar of the falls crashed against Nora’s ears. She frowned questioningly at Uliverat, who smiled with sly pride and pointed: “This way.”
They followed the path along the side of the gorge and beneath a projecting rock. Nora found herself under the spangled canopy of falling water. Carved into the rock face was a tall archway, flanked by twin statues. A faint light flickered inside.
So this was their famous temple, hidden under the waterfall. Nora gave a grudging smile. “Cool
,” she shouted over the sound of the torrent, falling back on the English word; it had no real equivalent in Ors.
Uliverat had no trouble figuring out what she meant. “The pilgrims are always surprised, even when they know,” she yelled in Nora’s ear. “There was a cave here, originally, that was hollowed out. It’s beautiful—you’ll see.”
Nora nodded, and it occurred to her that she might as well treat this temple visit as the opportunity for an art history lesson, the way she’d once toured Chartres and Notre Dame. She squinted critically at the statues guarding the door as she followed Uliverat inside. Something Egyptian-looking about the two substantial female figures, but it was hard to see very much.
Inside, she wasn’t sure she agreed that the sanctuary could be called beautiful. Impressive, perhaps. The builders had burrowed deep into the hillside, opening up a space big enough to give an echoing hollowness to the sound of Nora’s and Uliverat’s footsteps. Corpulent, smoke-blackened pillars crowded the interior, striping the chamber with shadow. A dim, stiff jumble of figures, carved in relief and tinted with faded paint, covered the walls. The air was chilly, aromatic with incense and a persistent ecumenical mustiness that reminded Nora of those European cathedrals.
The light came from the far end of the sanctuary, where a small fire burned on a round hearth before an outsize statue of the goddess. This one was done in a different style than the sculptures outside: flowing draperies, a more naturalistic pose. The goddess held a knife in one hand and a small flask in the other. One elbow rested on a skull. Her head was garlanded with real flowers, pink and white blossoms, already slightly wilted.
The goddess’s feet were hidden under a heap of small objects that looked disturbingly like broken dolls. Then Nora saw that they were miniature clay models of feet, legs, arms, hands, ears, eyes, teeth, noses, heads, torsos—in some cases complete figures of humans or animals.
“You see how many people Her Holiness has cured?” Uliverat asked, indicating the pile. “And this is not all. The more valuable thank-offerings are in the Treasury. Periodically they are melted down for other uses. The previous High Priest had some lovely golden goblets made for himself—which was not proper. Very disrespectful.” She shook her head, frowning, as though she disliked even having to mention this solecism. “We restored them to the goddess.”
Nora considered this. A question presented itself. “And what happened to the High Priest? He is no longer here?”
“He was unworthy to serve Her Holiness,” Uliverat said. “The goddess has decreed she will have no more High Priests, only a High Priestess.” She lowered her voice. “There were many mistaken practices being carried on here, when we first came. The goddess has purified Erchkaii of all that blasphemy. Praised be Her Holiness!”
What else besides golden goblets counted as blasphemy? Nora wondered. “Where were you before you came here?” she asked.
“We followed Her Holiness through many lands until she led us here.” With some feeling Uliverat added: “Such a long way! I still feel it in my feet.”
“ ‘We’? You and—”
“The First Deaconess and I. We were the most faithful. Even when they threw stones at us, we did not desert her. Now I must say the evening prayers.” Uliverat took up a position in front of the statue and began to sing in a sweet, thin soprano that wavered a little when she tried to bridge the larger intervals.
Nora found that she could understand snatches of the song, an invocation in a very old form of Ors. “You who see clearly in the night and in all dark places, to whom the waters and the winds pay heed, who commands the fire and comprehends the earth—” She remembered reading a few spells in the same dialect, with difficulty, from one of the frailest, most yellowed scrolls in Aruendiel’s library.
Her mind conjured up Aruendiel, so real that her breath caught. She saw him leaning over her table, frowning at the parchment. The ancient grammar was something even he had to pause to recollect. “Is this older than you?” she’d asked, playing innocent. Instead of scowling and saying something about the respect a pupil owed her teacher, he’d laughed. And sounded more happy than rueful, as though pleased that she’d ventured to breach the formal reserve, the invisible fortifications that lay between them then.
Where was he now? He could not really be dead, surely. She resolved that she would not consider that possibility again. It was too black. Another option, only slightly brighter: Ilissa had enchanted him, the way she did long ago. Nora tried to imagine Aruendiel as Ilissa’s malleable love-slave. The picture didn’t quite come into focus but was still disturbing to contemplate.
Even worse to imagine: the look on Aruendiel’s face yesterday as she cursed at him. The barriers refortified, the hopeful light in his eyes trapped and dying. Nora winced at the memory. No matter what, she had to find him again. And then what?
“You make your enemies fall dead at a word, you curse the evildoer with sickness and affliction,” Uliverat was singing. “Protect us while we sleep.” She paced a slow half circle around the statue and back again, lifting her arms at intervals.
Nora watched her for a minute, then moved away. More offerings were heaped at the perimeter of the room; Nora discovered this when she stepped on a pile of small objects that rolled and cracked under her foot. She swore briefly in English—Uliverat would be scandalized if she understood—and then conjured a light. Dropping to her hands and knees, she searched out the clay shards and began piecing them together.
Under her fingers, she felt the fragments recall their old shapes. She restored a tiny hand and elbow. An ear. A finger. Correction, a penis. A blob that could be any of several different organs. As magic went, this kind of repair spell wasn’t very complicated or interesting, as Aruendiel had once informed her. It was, however, restorative for jangled nerves. A few columns away, Uliverat was still chanting. Nora found herself humming along as she worked.
The last of the broken offerings, a miniature leg, was missing its ankle. Nora sat back on her heels and looked around for the lost fragment.
“Here you are.” Sisoaneer leaned down, holding out the missing piece.
“Thanks.” Trying not to show her startlement, Nora took the small, curved shard and slotted it into the gap between foot and shin. She looked up to meet Sisoaneer’s inquisitive dark eyes.
“You enjoy that, don’t you?” Sisoaneer said. “Mending things.”
It was not what Nora was expecting to hear. “I broke them. I thought I should fix them.” She was conscious that she sounded brusque. “But yes, I do like mending things. This was the first spell I learned.”
“Really?” Sisoaneer’s half smile broadened. “What happened? Did your teacher break a goblet and tell you to repair it?”
“It was a bowl,” Nora said, intrigued. “How did—”
“Would you like to mend more than just broken clay?” Sisoaneer’s expression took on a new, subtle seriousness, whole histories expressed in the curve of her mouth. “Broken bodies, broken souls?”
“Broken souls?” Nora shook her head. “I wouldn’t begin to know how to do that.”
“Well, you start with mending bodies, and then go on from there.”
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Nora said.
“Come on, I want to talk to you, and this temple is stuffy. They use too much incense. I keep dropping hints, but—” She gave a resigned, delicate shrug.
“And I want to talk to you.” Nora stood up. “I’m ready to leave here. I don’t know if you know what this woman Yaioni did to me tonight—”
“I know all about that. You did very well.” Sisoaneer was already moving swiftly among the columns.
“If I hadn’t, I would be dead right now. I wasn’t expecting to be attacked. Last night you said something about how even the strong need to rest, but this evening has been anything but restful—”
Nora noted with some puzzlement that Sis
oaneer was leading her toward the rear of the temple, not the exit. They reached the open area in front of the great statue, where Uliverat still sang and paced.
Finishing a turn, the Second Deaconess gave a visible start when she caught sight of Sisoaneer. The fine silk of her song snarled, almost snapped. Uliverat sank to her knees and bowed until her forehead touched the pavement, somehow recovering the melody with a slightly off-key warble.
“Lovely, lovely, Uliverat, your holy queen is very pleased,” Sisoaneer said with severe warmth. Glancing at Nora, she pointed behind the looming bulk of the goddess’s statue. The giant figure lounged in an alcove in the back of the sanctuary, appearing from Nora’s current position to be thumbing a remote while staring at an invisible screen. The back of the alcove was the raw rock of the ravine, slit with a narrow fissure, about the height of a human being. For most human beings, though, it would be a tight fit.
Nora looked at Sisoaneer. “We’re going in there? I don’t like small spaces, not that small.”
“Are you afraid?” Sisoaneer asked with interest. “Truly, you don’t need to be. You have nothing to fear.” It seemed to Nora that Sisoaneer put undue emphasis on you. She remembered the villagers choking last night.
Uliverat was still singing the prayers, lying on the floor, the curve of her back just visible beyond the statue’s knee. Nora turned back to the crevice and regarded it somberly.
“What’s in there?” she asked.
Sisoaneer’s eyes had a way of crinkling that managed to suggest she was laughing with you and at you simultaneously. “There are passages that lead down to very deep, very dark caves—where I was born long ago. But we’re going up instead.”
“You were born here?” Nora asked. That seemed odd. The thought came to her, not for the first time, that Sisoaneer might be a little mad.
And then—without quite abandoning that thesis—Nora saw what she had missed, what no one had bothered to explain. “You’re not the High Priestess,” she said. “Are you.”
“Oh, no!” Sisoaneer said, shaking her head, smiling. “Wherever did you get that idea?”
How to Talk to a Goddess and Other Lessons in Real Magic Page 18