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

by Emily Croy Barker

  “We thought they were simply poor pilgrims, a little overenthusiastic in their faith, as sometimes happens. They harangued anyone who would listen to them. No one paid any attention, except—I’m sorry to say—some of the other priests made fun of them.”

  “And then?” Nora asked, because he had paused.

  “Why, then the goddess came. And she purified the temple, just as Yaioni and Uliverat predicted.”

  That had an ominous sound. “And the other priests—?”

  “Officially, it was a sudden plague,” Oasme said. His small eyes flicked to Nora’s face, as though to see how she reacted. “I hope you never feel her fury. I don’t think you will,” he added in a brisker tone. “I saw how quickly the First Deaconess healed last night because of your intercession. The goddess favors you, Blessed Lady.”

  “Please don’t call me that. Why would I even want to be the priestess of a goddess who does such terrible things to people?”

  “Better to be the goddess’s High Priestess than not to be her High Priestess, is how I would look at it,” Oasme said curtly. “And it is better, it is safer for all of us to have a High Priestess with whom the goddess is well pleased.”

  Nora hunched her shoulders, trying to ignore the import of his words. “Why can’t Yaioni—”

  “Yaioni is terrible.” Oasme closed his eyes for a moment. “I’m not blessed with the arts of power, and I can’t tell you what she does wrong, but she has killed as many pilgrims as she has cured. More, even.”

  “There’s no guarantee that I’d be any better than her,” Nora said.

  “We will discover that soon enough,” Oasme said. “Here,” he continued, unrolling the scroll carefully, “these are the spells that my High Priest used most often for the princess’s ailment. They will tame the disturbance in the womb that is causing the blood to flow.”

  Nora glanced down. “I can’t read this,” she said flatly. The scroll was written in an alphabet of tight, square letters that bore no resemblance to Ors.

  “I will translate it for you,” Oasme said. He pointed to the first line of the scroll, curling his finger elegantly. “When the walls of the womb are lumpy with growths, the blood is agitated, like water moving over stones, and it will not cease flowing.” The scroll went on to describe various ways of causing the growths to wither: several different applications of fire magic, all of which sounded painful; a spell using water magic; and one based on wood magic. The author recommended the last method as producing the best, most predictable results.

  “I don’t know any wood magic,” Nora said. “I never got that far.”

  “What about the other ones?” Oasme asked. “I know you know something about fire magic.”

  Nora gave him a dirty look. “I don’t want to hurt the poor woman.” She decided: “I’ll use water magic.”

  “As you wish, Blessed—” Oasme’s voice was blandly encouraging.

  “Please. Don’t call me that,” Nora said. The honorific still grated; worse, right now it seemed like bad luck, the deliberate courting of disaster. What if the so-called Blessed Lady couldn’t cure the Princess Loku Baniseikinu?

  The answer was obvious, Nora thought. Then there’s no way that I’ll be the Blessed Lady, the High Priestess—which is what I want anyway, isn’t it?

  And the woman in the dark robe would go away uncured and unclean, shunned by her husband. That wouldn’t be the worst thing, if he was such a pig as to abandon her. And she’d lose her child forever. Nora sighed.

  “Would you read the spell again?” she asked. “The water magic part.”

  When they returned to the hospital, the Dowager Duchess was eating a small, curlicued pastry from an inlaid bowl and addressing a stream of invective to her daughter, who sat slumped against the wall, eyes closed, a half-eaten pastry forgotten in her hand. The duchess’s head snapped around when she heard the door open; she redirected her commentary at Oasme, sounding no more pleased with him.

  Raising his hands in placation, Oasme responded to her in ostentatiously soothing tones. He nodded to Nora with a flicker of appeal in his eyes. With a dry mouth, Nora went over to the princess, trying to walk with a confidence she did not feel.

  “My name is Nora,” she said. The woman raised her head slowly, her dark-fringed eyes half closed. Nora took her hand. “I’m going to try to help you.”

  Behind her, Oasme seemed to be translating Nora’s words, but he went on for quite a bit longer than she expected, and she wondered what sort of flourishes and promises he had added.

  The spell needed a lot of power, the scroll had been clear about that. She would have to pull from the stream. Slowly the magic responded, coy, reticent, a shade distrustful—but that was all right. Typical water magic.

  Nora began to work through the spell. It was long and somewhat digressive; she could not help thinking how scathingly Aruendiel would critique its structure. When she reached the final step, she waited for a moment, but she already knew that the spell was not working. Nothing happened; nothing happened again.

  The Princess Loku Baniseikinu watched her quietly. Her hand rested warm and unmoving in Nora’s hand, and she did not return the smile that Nora offered.

  She knows this won’t work, Nora thought. In a way, that makes it easier.

  Mechanically she worked through the spell again, trying to estimate how many more times she should try before giving up.

  And then she couldn’t hear herself think. The princess was making too much racket.

  Blood swishing, breath creaking. The bones full of music. Nerves sparking. The belly roaring, tearing that bite of pastry to molecules.

  The princess had said nothing. Her mouth remained a straight line of sadness. Nora found that her own mouth had dropped open.

  The big drumbeat of the heart. The twang of muscles. Slow seeps, contented rustles from organs that Nora could not identify. The web of sound had its own harmony, but as she listened closely, she discerned a discordant note. Something wrong, unbalanced deep in the abdomen.

  Gotcha, Nora thought.

  The more she listened, the more obvious were the disruptions in the princess’s womb. She could sense their mass and contours. The body nourished the growths but was fearful of them; they were too insistent, too demanding. One could tame them, Nora saw, by dissolving them in currents of water magic. But when she tried, the growths resisted her efforts. They were stronger than she had imagined, and she could not coax enough magic from the stream to wear them down, the way that Aruendiel no doubt could have done, or the goddess.

  “I’m sorry,” Nora began to say.

  Before she could get the words out completely, another voice sounded in her mind. I will help you, it said sweetly.

  “Sisoaneer?” Nora’s voice was uncertain. The princess looked at her with sharpened curiosity.

  I will lend you the power, the goddess said.

  Oh, God, Nora thought after an instant. I mean, Goddess. That’s enough. That’s more than enough. It’s too much.

  Trying to wield this magic was like plunging into deep, deep water until you could not tell if you were rising or falling. For a moment, she thought the goddess’s power would dissolve and destroy her instead of the fibroid lumps in the princess’s uterus. And yet she was floating safely, protected; the magic flowed around and through her; it buoyed her up and tore away all fear like rotted rags. Anything was possible, anything at all, and she healed the princess’s womb with only a thought.

  Nora listened to the sweet relief in the body’s song, and it almost made her cry, except that somehow she was beyond all tears. Because pain and sadness and death were negligible, she could see that now. They meant nothing; she was too strong for them. The broken flecks of all the days she had lived swirled like bright dust in the distance. She was alone. No one could ever find her here or harm her. All will be well, she thought. All is well.r />
  All was not well. Nora clapped her hand over her mouth. Her stomach heaved. She groped for the reassuring support of the wall and leaned against it, shuddering.

  Someone touched her shoulder. It was the princess, looking concerned. But also looking brighter, less haggard, the strain gone from her face.

  “I’m all right,” Nora said, forgetting that the other woman could not understand Ors. “Sometimes magic—other people’s magic, when it’s really strong—makes me feel a little sick.” She took a deep breath. The internal commotion was dying down. “How are you?” she asked the princess.

  From behind Nora, Oasme’s voice insinuated itself, translating what she had said. The princess responded at once, incomprehensible words pouring out of her as she punctuated her sentences with emphatic nods. She smiled at Nora.

  The Dowager Duchess broke in, her face screwed up into lines of suspicion. A note of skepticism was clear.

  The princess would have none of it. Passionately she corrected the duchess, stabbing a finger toward her own abdomen. Her voice rose into a register of protest that Nora knew well, having used it so often with her own mother.

  With a flawless expression of benign helpfulness, Oasme looked from mother to daughter. “The Princess Loku Baniseikinu is feeling much improved,” he informed Nora. “The Dowager Duchess is concerned that the improvement might be temporary. A mother is cautious.”

  In a slightly different tone, he said: “And then there is the matter of a thank-offering. Naturally, she wants to confirm that her daughter is really cured before we attend to that.” He looked hard at Nora. “Is she cured?”

  “Yes,” Nora said curtly. She pushed herself away from the wall to stand up straight. The room seemed more airless than ever, and she felt very tired. “Excuse me, I need to go outside,” she said. The princess, seeing her movement, grabbed at Nora’s hand and began speaking warmly to her.

  Nora tried to remember how to smile, but smiling seemed pointless, when you had experienced a moment of perfect peace and happiness and then lived past it.

  She made herself look into the princess’s face and saw that it was alive and hopeful again. She kept looking. After all, this is not about me, Nora thought. Her vision blurred with sudden tears.

  “The goddess be praised!” Oasme said.

  “The goddess—” Nora repeated, her voice shaking. She closed her eyes as though she were praying. A single drop squeezed past her lashes.

  Somehow she made her escape from the little room and down the long ward, past the quiet patients on their mattresses. She gave them sideways glances as she went, and saw that they, too, were waiting for her.

  Outside, she sat down on the steps of the hospital and let the night air stroke her face like a cool washcloth. Across the small courtyard, a single light burned behind a shutter. It flickered whenever she moved her head.

  She was not really surprised to discover, after a while, that the goddess was sitting next to her. Sisoaneer’s narrow face bent toward her, glimmering in the darkness like a lily. Her eyes were like black pools. “You did well,” the goddess said. “You did very well.”

  Nora studied her, trying to read her expression. “Who are you?” she asked. “What are you?”

  “You know now,” Sisoaneer said gently.

  “I don’t know,” Nora said. “I don’t know anything. I thought I did.”

  The goddess gave a small chuckle, light as a bird in flight. “You tried to run away!”

  “And I still need to go!” It seemed important not to abandon this point, but Nora was aware of something childish in her tone. “I can’t stay.”

  “But you see, there is so much for you to do here.”

  “I know.” Nora looked down at her clasped hands. “It’s not why I’m here, though. I mean, I left my home, my family—I came a very long way—to find Aruendiel again, to learn more magic.”

  “And what will you do with that magic? How will you use it?” Sisoaneer leaned closer.

  Nora had no ready answer. She’d always assumed that the pursuit of real magic, like poetry, could be an end in itself, with its own intrinsic worth and satisfactions, but now she began to feel that she had missed something important. What was power if you did not use it? Or rather, if you did not plan carefully how to wield power, would you not be more likely to misuse it?

  And magic was useless in so many ways. There were wounds that magic could not heal, losses that it could never make up for. But maybe those limitations obliged you to do as much as you could with the power you had.

  “I hope—I’d like to do good.” Nora made herself meet Sisoaneer’s gaze.

  Sisoaneer gave a flicker of a smile that seemed both grave and approving. “I know.”

  “But I still have to find Aruendiel,” Nora added, a little wildly. “I want to know that he’s safe. And I need to talk to him. He may not want to see me. But I have to try.”

  Sisoaneer’s long fingers, smooth as eggshell, brushed Nora’s cheek. “I will deny my High Priestess nothing—nothing—when she opens her heart to me and asks for my help.”

  Nora thought about this, taking her time, until she was sure she understood.

  “Your High Priestess?” she asked. The goddess nodded. “And you would help me? Help to find Aruendiel.”

  “Oh, yes. Just as when I listened to you last night, when you asked me to heal Yaioni. And tonight, when you asked me to lend you my power. And I did. I let it fill you, and for an instant you made it yours.”

  Nora shuddered, almost afraid to remember what that short and endless moment had been like. “So every time I want to cure someone, I will have to”—she paused, reluctant to say it, but wanting to be exact—“to pray to you.”

  “Ask me, and I will give you what you need. In return, you will do my will, to heal and comfort the poor sick and wounded ones who turn to me. As you did just now. There are so many of them! You can’t begin to comprehend, not yet.” Sisoaneer sighed.

  Nora nodded, starting to do a quick calculation in her head—the men on the ward inside, multiplied by a dozen, a hundred—but the numbers felt too abstract. She thought about the princess instead, her suffering, her drawn face. There would be others like that, many others. All of them looking to Nora for relief. And the goddess’s power flowing into her like a great river, over and over again.

  “You will be healed, too,” Sisoaneer said softly.

  “And finding Aruendiel?” Nora said his name with emphasis. “When would we get around to that?”

  “I will take you with me the next time I leave Erchkaii, soon, and we will look for him together.”

  “When—”

  “When you pray for it, my priestess, my beloved child. When you pray with all your heart. But first we have work to do.” Sisoaneer leaned closer, her long hair swaying, and kissed Nora’s cheek. The goddess’s lips felt soft and precise, as silky as a sun-warmed plum.

  And she was gone.

  Nora waited for a moment before getting to her feet. She thought she caught a sort of quiver nearby in the darkness, a black shimmer, but it was hard to be sure.

  My priestess, my beloved child.

  “Healed?” Nora asked the empty courtyard.

  “That’s the place,” Aruendiel said.

  “Well, I don’t know that you can say so definitely,” Nansis Abora said. “But it is very odd.” With an abstracted air, he pinched out the flame of the candle he held and sat down at the kitchen table.

  Aruendiel was still standing inside the circle they had drawn on the wooden floor. The light from the candle in his hand made his pale eyes gleam gold. “The observation spell failed completely. Three times. There’s an extremely powerful protection spell around that temple. What does that tell you?”

  “I see where you’re going with this, Aruendiel. They have something that they want to protect, and you think it
’s Mistress Nora. But Sisoaneer is a goddess of magic, after all—it’s not entirely unexpected that her priests might have some spells up to make sure that no one steals the temple silver.”

  “We weren’t trying to steal the temple silver. We were trying to take a look inside. None of the other temples have protection spells remotely as powerful.”

  Nansis Abora picked up the mug of milk from the table, peered into it, then added a small amount of amber liquid from an earthenware flask. “We’ve looked into a dozen temples in three days—I’d like to think that you’ve found the right place. But I don’t want to see you chasing fleas in the dark, either. Not in your condition.”

  Aruendiel, who had been ready to sit down, straightened slightly and remained standing. “My condition? I have made a full recovery.” With a sudden inspiration, he added: “Thanks to your care.”

  Nansis Abora gave him a gentle, beatific smile of pure disbelief, then took a sip of his drink. “It is odd, though,” he said. “That is Blueskin’s observation spell. I didn’t think that any modern protection spell would be able to turn it back.”

  Aruendiel, about to say something, checked himself and looked intently at Nansis Abora. “Yes,” he said. “Whoever contrived that protection spell knew the Blueskin spell well enough to come up with an effective counterhex. But the Blueskin spell was lost for a thousand years, until you reconstructed it. Nansis,” he asked suspiciously, “did you give it to anyone but me?”

  Nansis Abora blinked. “I was thinking of sending it to my friend Puen—he was so disappointed when that other spell that was supposed to be Blueskin’s turned out to be a fake—but I don’t believe I got around to it. No, I’m sure I only sent it to you.

  “Of course, Erchkaii is a very old temple,” he added reflectively. “And no doubt there is some very old magic guarding it.”

  “A counterhex to turn back the Blueskin spell would be very old magic indeed,” Aruendiel said. He gripped the back of the chair in front of him—being careful not to seem to be obviously leaning on it—and brooded for a moment. “Sisoaneer. She is of the Ceionian pantheon, is she not? I thought she was a healing goddess.”