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

by Emily Croy Barker

  Nora caught the implied rebuke. “Not tonight.”

  “Well, if there had been one, you might have caught me on the floor with sawdust and a brush. Pray to Her Holiness that my knees hold up.” Uliverat grunted a syllable signaling extreme exertion.

  “Was there anyone else in the temple just now?” Nora asked. “I thought I saw someone heading this way.”

  “Just me, only me.”

  From Uliverat’s tone, Nora realized her own omission. “Thank you very much for cleaning up the oil, Uliverat. I know that’s a lot of extra work for you. Are you sure it was Olig who spilled the oil, though?” she ventured. “If he didn’t tell anyone, then how do you know—”

  “Of course, it was him, the young liar! He’s always spilling things.”

  “You’re sure there was no one else there tonight?”

  “Not a body! They were all down watching you dancers. Of course, if there had been a procession, it would have been different.”

  “Very likely,” Nora said. She saw that she would have to come up with a reason for cutting tonight’s ceremony short, if only for appearances’ sake. Would Sisoaneer want to know why? She had gotten her promised dance from Nora. “Do you know if any new pilgrims arrived tonight, after Ieona started?”

  “How would I know that, when I’ve been up at the temple all evening? Lemoes was supposed to be on duty at the hospital tonight—he would know. He should have told you if there were any urgent cases that couldn’t wait until tomorrow. But he’s always daydreaming, that boy, away with the birds—doesn’t hear a thing I tell him.”

  She had more to say on the subject. Nora wondered if there was anything one could say that would not somehow provoke a flood of smiling, voluble indignation from Uliverat. Probably not.

  The lantern in Uliverat’s hand bobbed up and down as they walked downstream; shadows slid around the rocks and quivered among the ferns that grew at the stream’s edge; the tawny ravine wall at their side rose steeply into heavy, uncompromising blackness. Over the rise and fall of Uliverat’s voice, Nora kept listening for a third pair of footsteps, the scratch of an unseen person’s breath. The small circle of lantern light felt like a prison. Somewhere in the night, maddeningly close—she was certain of it—Aruendiel waited.

  First she could not sleep, staring holes in the darkness as she lay on her pallet, lying as still as she could so that she wouldn’t miss the scrape of a boot on the stairs, the rustle of a traveling cloak, the lightest tap at her door. Once she heard an owl screech across the ravine, and her heart thudded with joy, but there was nothing but silence for a long time after that.

  When someone did knock at the door, she was lost in a restless jungle of troubled dreams, Raclin grinning at her as she danced madly in a torn maran. With both hands, Raclin lifted his head from his shoulders and tossed it toward her. As the head bounced on the ground with a thump thump thump, still smirking imperturbably, she hoped frantically that none of the other dancers had noticed it, but she could not bring herself to kick it aside with her naked foot—

  “What is it?” Nora sat up on her pallet. The knocking at her door was real. “Aruendiel?” she called softly.

  Someone outside cleared his throat. “It’s Lemoes.” He coughed apologetically. “I’m sorry to bother you, but Oasme said to tell you if there was any change with the baron.”

  The baron? It took Nora a moment to remember what he was talking about. The pilgrim she’d seen this afternoon. Lemoes was saying something about fever, a leaking wound.

  Nora dressed quickly and made her way down to the hospital. Over the rim of the ravine, the eastern sky was brightening, layered with clouds. The thought crossed her mind that perhaps this summons was some sort of ploy by Oasme to teach her a lesson for interrupting Ieona and then ending it too soon, but the baron really was worse, flushed and clammy, shivering with feverish chills. He muttered as she examined him, words sliding incoherently from between cracked lips.

  She began a spell to reduce fever but almost immediately she knew that something was wrong. The spell felt slack, insubstantial. There was magic nearby, but she could not make it respond. It slipped away, refusing to answer.

  Sisoaneer, lend me your power. Nora thought the words, then spoke them aloud. She waited for the surge of magic that would carry her safely into the infinite depths of the abyss and back again.

  There was no reply from the goddess. No acknowledgment, no magic. Waiting, then waiting longer, Nora could only feel the staccato beat of her own pulse.

  She tried the spell again, knowing that it was useless. She was right.

  Lemoes was looking at her expectantly. Nora bit her lip. “I can’t do anything,” she said. “Not right now. I’m sorry.”

  She was apologizing to the baron as much as to Lemoes. His eyes were dull slits in his slick, ruddy face. Putting the back of her hand to his forehead again, she registered its heat and grimaced before she could stop herself. Don’t Scare the Pilgrims was one of her private rules; she hoped that the baron was too sick, too out of it to see her sudden panic. What to do now? Without magic, she was useless, clumsier and more ignorant in the hospital than even the least experienced of the ganoi nurses.

  Lemoes gave her a quick, shy smile of encouragement. “The goddess—”

  “I tried!” Nora said. “She’s not helping. Give him some water, and—and try to cool him off, and let someone take care of him who actually knows what they’re doing. Not me.” She stood up, rubbing the palms of her hands against her dress.

  It was only a fever. People recovered from fevers and infected wounds all the time, even without magic.

  She looked down the ward. Most of the pilgrims were still sleeping, but the man in the next bed was awake, coughing quietly. Nora recognized him. Pafagus from Bisr, his name was. He had what they called bloody breath here; as far as she could tell, that meant TB. Catching her eye, he pushed himself slightly higher against his pillow and twisted his gaunt face into something that might have been intended to be a pleading smile.

  “Blessed Lady, if you could do something for the pain—it has been bad tonight—”

  He was the one who was supposed to go home next week. But Sisoaneer had said no, he would die. “I’m sorry,” Nora said. “I’m really sorry.” She walked quickly down the ward, trying to step quietly so that she didn’t wake anyone else up. Then they would all want her to help them.

  Something for the pain. She needed a pain spell herself. Her headache was back, hot and gritty, making her thoughts slow and sore.

  Outside, a gray dawn light had spread over the temple complex, turning the walls of the ravine an ashen yellow. The tile roofs of the squat buildings around the hospital shone dully. Some rain must have fallen during the night, although Nora had not heard it. Probably she had slept more than she thought, although right now she felt as though she had not slept at all.

  She closed her eyes. Where was Aruendiel? Where would he have gone last night, after his brief appearance at the Ieona dance?

  And today Sisoaneer did not answer Nora’s prayer, did not share her power. It was because of Aruendiel, Nora was sure. Had he somehow blocked Sisoaneer’s magic? Or had he offended the goddess? That was a real possibility.

  For the sake of thoroughness, Nora went to each of the pilgrim dormitories and managed to establish, from a halting conversation in pidgin Ors with the ganoi porters, that no tall, dark-haired man with a limp had arrived recently or was in residence. She had learned some basic phrases in the ganoi language by now, but it seemed to her that a kind of curtain swept across the faces of the ganoi whenever she tried to speak to them in their own tongue. Either they saw her as an oppressor, like Uliverat, or she was butchering their language, or both.

  Picking a new route through the huddled buildings of the temple complex, Nora made her way to the courtyard where she had seen Aruendiel the night before. The rain had washed
away most of the charcoal lines that marked the space for dancing, but she could still pick out the place where he had stood. Aruendiel would never be found unless he wanted to be, she reflected. That was truer of him than of anyone else in the world. So where did that leave her now?

  Lost in her thoughts, she did not see Oasme until it was too late to avoid him. He was aiming directly for her, anyway, and he was wearing the expression that sometimes inspired Nora to picture him with a clipboard, a precisely knotted tie, and small, stylish, black-framed eyeglasses.

  “Blessed Lady, Baron Tesein—”

  “Is he dead?” Nora asked.

  “No, but he is in a very bad way. We must make every effort with him. His wife is not yet delivered of his heir, and apparently there is some difficulty with one of the brothers. Haariku is one of the richest provinces in the eastern Empire.”

  Nora shook her head. “Oasme, I can’t help him. Didn’t Lemoes tell you?”

  Oasme gave her an understanding smile, the kind meant to spread like jam over last-minute jitters. “My old High Priest said that with bad cases, sometimes the only thing you can do is keep them from dying today, so that they can get better tomorrow.”

  “I mean I can’t help any of them.” In a lower voice, Nora said, “I can’t do magic right now. She’s not answering me.”

  “What do you mean?” Oasme’s gaze traveled over Nora in a way that suggested that without budging he could still scrutinize her from several different angles. “Have you angered her?”

  “Me? No, I—well, how would I know? She seemed fine last night.”

  “Mmm. That was before the Ieona ceremony, I believe?”

  Nora sighed. “All right. I cut it short. A lot of the pilgrims there last night are still weak; I thought they should go back to bed instead of walking all the way to the temple.” Try to argue with that, she thought. “But she’d let the baron suffer because of what I did? Really?”

  “Blessed Lady, the ways of the gods are unfathomable.” Oasme raised his eyebrows as if to convey that they were not nearly as unfathomable to him as to Nora.

  “I don’t think she really cares whether we did the whole procession or not,” Nora said, although she could see that it was a lost cause.

  “Gods are easily offended, not so easily appeased,” Oasme said. He lowered his voice: “And if the goddess is truly angry, it is not only the baron—or the other pilgrims—who will suffer.”

  Nora rubbed a fingertip against her aching temple and felt like saying she knew that perfectly well, she was already suffering. Instead, she asked, “What if it’s nothing I did?”

  The lines of Oasme’s frown shifted subtly as he performed a new calculation. It did not take him long. “The man you said you saw, when you interrupted the dance—your old teacher, you said? Did you find him?”

  Nora shook her head. “I did see him, you know,” she said warningly.

  “You think he might have angered Her Holiness?”

  “She wouldn’t be the first,” Nora said.

  “Then you must pray,” Oasme said, in a voice that almost made her jump, it was so harsh. “Pray for Her Holiness’s forgiveness. Pray for your teacher. Pray for the baron and his recovery. Pray for the other pilgrims under our roof, who came here to be helped by you.”

  “But—”

  Before she could get out more than a single word, Oasme’s finger flew to his lips. She is always listening, he mouthed. He pointed toward the temple. “Go,” he said. “You’ll be late for the morning prayers.”

  With its full lips curved in a sinuous smile and its heavy-lidded eyes, the statue wore an expression of beneficent cunning. Incense hung in the air like a veil, blurring the arches of the sanctuary and the bowed shapes of a half-dozen pilgrims small and isolated in the forest of columns. The morning prayers drew the lowest attendance of the three daily services.

  “Daughter of death, lead us in the arts of power. Grant that everything we do”—Nora paused in her chant, rummaged for the correct word—“we undertake will be pleasing to you. Hear us when we call upon you. Help us, for we are weak and you are strong.”

  There was more in the same vein. Her head throbbing, Nora stumbled again, and then again in reciting the prayers. The statue listened with its vacant, unvarying smile. “You who bring death and bring life, it is not for us to understand the mysteries, the mysteries, um—” This time Nora completely lost the thread of the words.

  “—of your will,” Yaioni prompted from behind her, in hushed tones that were just loud enough so that everyone in the temple could hear. “Beloved child of darkness, the number of—”

  “—the number of our days is known to you alone,” Nora finished, seizing back the chant.

  She was almost at the end. Only a few verses to go, and would any of them do any good? Enough of this, she suddenly decided.

  “Sisoaneer! I would like to talk to you.” To her own ears, Nora’s voice sounded raw and uncertain after the smoothly gliding syllables of the hymn.

  She waited. There was no sound except for the low rise and fall of a pilgrim’s mumbled, private prayer, drifting from the rear of the temple. She wondered if his request was getting through. Nora stepped closer to the statue.

  “Where is Aruendiel, and why aren’t you answering when I call to you?” She did not bother to lower her voice; she did not care if the pilgrims heard or what they might think. “There is at least one person in the hospital who will probably die because I can’t help him, because you won’t help me.”

  She took a deep breath. “If I have done wrong, I’m sorry that I’ve offended you. And I don’t ask this for myself. Give your power to Yaioni”—she turned to drill the First Deaconess with a sharp look—“or to someone else who can cure those pilgrims, if you want. I don’t want them to suffer because of me.

  “And, again, where is Aruendiel? I know I saw him. I just want to know that he is all right.”

  The cloying smoke of the incense felt like sandpaper on the back of Nora’s dry throat. For the first time, she noticed that the carved skull that was the statue’s armrest was missing a couple of teeth. Perhaps it had been modeled on a real skull. Its grin was manic, pitiless.

  “You know, this is why I gave up on religion before. You talk to God, and you never hear anything back.” She waited, listening to the silence, then said: “I’m coming up now.”

  Behind her came a faint, exasperated hiss. “You will only annoy her more,” Yaioni said softly, “if she sees you. When she is angry like this, it is easy to make her angrier.”

  “Then maybe you’ll get to be High Priestess after all.” Nora sidled around the statue, fitting herself into the crooked gap in the temple wall. It did not yawn any wider at her approach. Apparently she was not expected, not today. Nora took a little more time than she actually needed to clamber through the hole, taking extra pains that her maran didn’t snag on the rough stone.

  Yaioni was probably right; this was a bad idea. However, Nora reflected, she had no better ideas.

  Carefully she counted her way past the entrance to the lower caves and followed the twisting passageway upward. In the pure black darkness her aching head felt cooler and less heavy, not exactly released from pain but accommodated to it. Still, it was because of the headache that she sensed the light ahead before she actually saw it. Rounding a turn, she smelled the sharp, warm astringency of pine trees and then stepped outside.

  This part of the mountain was new to her. A grove of pines held fast to the mountainside, their roots knotted around cracked rocks, their limbs swaying gently like gallant green plumes. Through the trees she glimpsed the hazy curves of other mountains and a slice of the distant lake, slate-colored on this overcast day. A set of rough steps, cut into the exposed stone, twined uphill.

  Climbing them, she noticed recent footprints in the pine-needle loam covering the steps. Some seemed large enough
to be from a man’s boot. It was hard to tell for sure.

  The stairs brought her around a giant, burled tree. She found herself at the edge of an open space rimmed with more pines, their twisted limbs framing glimpses of the overcast sky. The wind murmured in their needles, but the air inside the grove was quiet and warm. The space felt oddly like a shrine.

  It also made a nice place for a picnic. Directly ahead, at a stone table in the center of the clearing, sat Sisoaneer, her hair loose and shining around her shoulders. She leaned forward, one slender arm bent, her eyes rapt, somehow expectant, as she listened to Aruendiel.

  Chapter 20

  He sat at Sisoaneer’s left, angled toward her across the corner of the table, so that Nora could see only the back of his dark head. She could hear the rumble of his voice without making out any words. He sounded calm, perhaps even amused. His left hand played with a silver goblet. On the table between him and Sisoaneer was the heel of a loaf of bread, a small jar, a silver bowl half-full of peaches, and another silver goblet.

  Sisoaneer saw Nora first. She lifted her head from her hand with the kind of delicacy that one might use to aim an extremely precise instrument, a telescope or a gun. Aruendiel turned. Nora met his eyes, as cool and cloudy as the sky above, and his expression shifted indefinably. Something swift and elusive darted through the harsh landscape of his face and then disappeared, leaving no trace on the bare rock. Whether he was angry or pleased to see her, it was impossible to tell.

  Nora approached the table, her heart pounding. “Aruendiel. You’re here.”

  “Blessings of the morning, High Priestess,” Sisoaneer said. Something about her was different. “You wanted to speak to me?”

  “Yes.” Nora looked at Aruendiel instead. She had an awkward sense that she was trespassing, like an insistent waitress bearing down with a check. “I saw you last night, just a flash, and then I looked for you. But I couldn’t find you.”