My astonishment blotted out my discretion. “The sun is not a god!"
"Not a god? Then what power keeps the Sun in the sky? I have tended this temple all these years, waiting for the Daughter's return. Now I see you and you look so much like her, you, too, must be a god and I will serve you with my life."
Nance knelt before me, which was really creepy, and buried her face in her hands. Her small shoulders shook with sobs. I didn't know if she cried in joy or sorrow. But damn, the tears were real. Which meant hey, Toto, I wasn't in any known American city anymore. Even Disneyworld couldn't have conjured up this place.
And you know what finally convinced me? Disneyworld might toss in similar illusions, but down the hall there would be proper rest rooms. No clean and shining tile here, not even running water. So that's when I accepted as fact somehow I was now in the middle of Weirdville surrounded by people who took beheading seriously and me without my trusty troll.
Back in Seattle, in my own weird neighborhood I had friends who, from time to time, had a neighbor show up on the doorstep to tell them they had inherited magic tendencies, anything from wizard to psychic, and it was time for them to either follow that path or learn to keep things under control, because the deal with inherited magic is it tends to put force behind emotions. Um, for example, a fight in your own kitchen with your own boyfriend could blow out the neighbor's cable reception. So anyhow, whether anyone in Mudflat wanted to admit it or not, facing up to genetics was necessary. Gotta say, I know a very long list of magic sidelines and have heard a lot of prophecies, but never have I known anyone who was pronounced a god.
Time for diplomacy, cooperation, and a whole lot of readjusted attitudes.
How must a god act? I couldn't imagine. Terrified I might be forced to play a god, I grasped her shoulders and shook her.
"Stop that noise! Nance, listen to me, I need to know everything you can tell me about this place.” I said it firmly.
She stared up at me and smiled through her tears. “I will do whatever you bid me, friend of the Daughter."
What could I bid that would give me the best opportunity to remain alive and eventually escape?
"Start by telling me how the Daughter got here.” I knew how she left. She died. I wanted a better route out.
"She and her consort appeared. From the outlands."
"Okay, is there a path? Do you know the way?"
"Of course not. There is no way. They came by magic, the same as you."
"So you've never gone outside?"
"How could I? Only a god can find the way. Though I think when we die, that's where our souls go. If you find a way to the outside, you will be dead when you get there, so you would be foolish to try."
What big choice did I have? I said, “Teach me how to be a priest."
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Chapter 4
When I thought of the years I had studied astrology, days bent over charts, nights peering through binoculars, my life added up to nothing more than years of hard work turned into nonsense. Shoot, even learning to check credit records turned out to be a waste of time. Or maybe not. That move kept me from hanging around and being controlled by Darryl. Still, whatever else he had in mind, I doubted Darryl had ever considered beheading me.
Nothing in my horoscope hinted at a career as a priest in a barbarian temple. Okay, maybe they weren't barbarians, but they also weren't actors and whoever they were, I was stuck with them, which is probably why I kept thinking of them as barbarians.
It was survive or perish time, inspiring me to work hard at my new role. I memorized the senseless chants Nance taught me. When I asked her if they were written down someplace, so I could study them, she frowned and asked me to explain what I meant.
"In a book, maybe? Or never mind, if you can rustle up a pen and paper for me, you can recite the chants and I can write them down."
"Book? Pen? What is that?"
Sure, I realized there wasn't a hope for a computer in a place that didn't even have indoor plumbing, but I didn't expect to have to strip bark off of birch trees and write with ink made from plant roots. “What do people here use to write on?"
"Write? Explain."
Oh. The barbarians were illiterate. Why had I presumed otherwise?
"How did you learn these chants?” I asked.
"The same way you must learn them,” she scolded. “The Daughter said a chant and I said it after her until I had it memorized. And then she taught me to put together chants and make new ones to fit the occasion."
Hmm. As the chants told people what to do and how to behave, composing chants could be a powerful tool. Was it possible I could compose a chant that made clear to them that all outsiders should be returned safely to their homelands? That seemed unlikely but worth thinking about.
I practiced speaking chants in a flat, unemotional tone.
"You did it perfectly,” Nance cried, her eyes and mouth wide, her eyebrows halfway up her forehead, her hands clutching mine. “For me, keeping my face blank is the hardest!"
For me, trying not to laugh was the hardest. I learned to lift the odd-scented lamps and swing them above my head, while I gyrated before the rock she called an altar. Odd plumes of scent floated through the cut grills of these small metal lamps we carried on chains, much like incense. More difficult were the heavy candlesticks used in another part of the ritual.
Like Tarvik, she touched me constantly, nothing more than brushing her fingers against my hand as she walked by, and once pressing her palm to my shoulder with a quick touch, almost as though she meant to reassure herself I was truly there. I had seen small children do that with parents, but not people our age. When we hugged, we had a reason. Umm, except for Darryl. Those flowers and kisses hadn't meant a thing, not that there had been many.
Nance wound my hair up on top of my head to match the style of the Daughter's hair in the portrait, and into it she wove gold threads and bright ornaments. She dressed me in a long velvet robe dyed in strange and lovely patterns spreading like moonlight across the fabric, rich deep purples and blues. The robe hung straight from my shoulders to my ankles and was belted with a rope of gold silk ending in beaded tassels.
"This robe, it's way too long for you,” I said.
"You're the same size. I thought you would be,” Nance said, and it took me a minute for the brain to wake up.
So it wasn't only my face that resembled the poor slob hiker who had stumbled into this place fifteen years ago and been dubbed a god of sorts. We were also the same height, sort of spooky, but also useful. The clothes were loose. Footwear was the right length but wide. So she had more padding than me. I'd like to say that I'm trim, but probably skinny is closer to the truth. In the time my predecessor was here, she had acquired a collection of robes, tunics, pants, as well as sandals and boots, all still stored in the temple, all available for me to wear.
Am I superstitious about wearing the duds of the dead? It beats facing each day with one pair of shorts and two tee shirts. I buy most of my clothes at second-hand stores, anyway, so I was okay with Madame X's leftovers. The next day I dragged all the stuff out into the courtyard and did some heavy soaking and scrubbing, then hung both clothes and footwear in the sun to dry. Nance danced around me complaining bitterly, but Nance was easy to ignore.
Three days later, robed and jeweled, I faced Tarvik when he led a procession of his guards into the temple. Amazing how our grasp on reality morphs. At first he was a bothersome kid in a costume, then I figured he was a member of a game, then an actor in a reality show, and now I accepted him as the son of some sort of ruling family in a puzzling setting. Magic? Time warp? Had I fallen down a rabbit hole?
Nance placed me at the front of the altar gripping a lighted candle in my hands. I stood quietly, froze my face into a mask imitating the faces on the wall, and held my eyes as wide open as I could manage. Nance had drawn dark lines around my lids to make my eyes appear rounder and darker. She had even pasted glittering bits of
metal the size of grains of sand in my eyebrows. They itched, and it took considerable concentration not to scratch at them.
When she worked on me, she constantly stroked my face or brushed back my hair with her fingertips. It was annoying, but when I tried to shrug away from her, she looked so hurt.
Her last gesture was to hug me tightly before leading me into the altar room and to whisper, “You look wonderful. I know you will do well."
Both my robe and my hair ornaments matched the portrait of the Daughter. And in the shadows cast by the candles, my gray eyes must have looked as large and dark.
You could have crashed a lightning bolt through the temple.
Tarvik's men gasped and fell back from him. They bowed and made strange motions in front of themselves, leaving me to watch in silence and wonder if they were bowing to me or if they were making signs to ward off evil. I stared straight at Tarvik. His face paled but he made no sound. Nance, who stood to one side in the shadows, began the ritual chant, her voice high and clear.
"Daughter of the Sun, speak for us. Carry our devotion to our god. Lay down our gold and promises at the blessed feet of the Sun. Beg him to smile on us, his forgotten servants. Tell him of the black winters, the hunger. Thank him for sparing us from fever. Remind him of his promise."
And so on, blah, blah, blah.
Now I picked up the chant, did a singsong straight-faced version. My voice was lower than hers. The men who had murmured in fear now fell silent. It was hard to look at all those earnest faces and not giggle. How could they believe I was a priest or maybe even related to gods, and why would they believe anything so absurd?
"When our ghosts are released from our bodies, remember us, Daughter of the Sun. You eased our pain when you were with us. Ease it now, through our god. Guide us to the land of immortality. Save us from the dark and cold."
What had they been thinking, those two hikers who stumbled into this place? Because that's who they must have been, lost campers, same as me. Was she a doctor or just a mother who knew home remedies that helped clear up a flu epidemic? Were the chants no more than a trick to control the barbarians and keep herself and her boyfriend/husband/whoever alive? Or had she believed them?
Oh well, a few years in this funny farm and maybe, like her, I'd be composing prayers to myself.
Tarvik's followers dropped to their knees, bowed their heads and repeated the chant. Tarvik walked slowly toward me. He wore a long cloak edged with fur and in his outstretched hands he carried a bowl. Nestled in a silk cloth was a pile of gold threads, not gold colored, no, real gold spun fine, like the ones Nance wove in my hair. There was also a finger ring with a large purple jewel, amethyst maybe? And all his trappings, the armbands and rings I had thought were costume jewelry? I now knew the kid was a walking Fort Knox.
I nodded and he passed by me, setting the bowl on the altar. Then he backed away, as one of the slaves would do.
"The Daughter of the Sun accepts your offering,” Nance chanted. “Have you a request?"
Tarvik stood in front of me, staring, his arms hanging limply at his sides, his eyes wide, his mouth open. The word that popped into my mind was “besotted.” I am average pretty and have had a fair number of boyfriends, but none of them ever looked at me like that.
Nance repeated her chant. “The Daughter of the Sun accepts your offering. Have you special requests?"
Tarvik said slowly, still staring at me, “May my gifts buy victory for my father, Kovat."
Nance chanted, “The Daughter of the Sun watches over her servant Kovat."
When Tarvik did not move, Nance repeated her chant. The third time she said it, I thought about snapping my fingers in front of his face.
Fortunately that wasn't required because he blinked, lowered his gaze and backed away from me. Then he knelt on the bare earth floor and recited long chants with Nance. I stared down at his bent head, his hair a thick mop of gold in the candlelight. Watching him was somewhat pleasant. Nothing else was. My legs were tired and my ankles itched where my robe touched them. My arms ached from the weight of the candle in its twisted holder.
Although Nance had told me the chants comforted her people, they weren't doing a thing for my weary bod. At least these folks all wore flat shoes and so I didn't have to stumble around on heels.
After a few eons, Tarvik and his men rose, backed out of the temple and then closed the double doors. Nance flew out of the shadows, dashed across the room and dropped the bolt. I set the candle on the floor and rotated my shoulders to loosen them. Then I scratched the itching bits of glitter from my eyebrows and next I bent over and scratched my ankles, all very unpriestlike behavior.
Running to me, Nance threw her plump arms around me. She laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks.
"Did you see his face?” she cried. “He dares not harm you now. Nor will the others. You are safe with me."
"Oh, yah, I'm hot."
"Are you? I'm so sorry, is that robe too heavy?"
Explain hot? Nah. “I mean, I feel like a damn fool."
"A fool? Stargazer, you look like a god, even Tarvik saw that. Indeed, I know now you are truly a god, for the Daughter herself protects you."
"Why do you think that?” I asked.
"You stood before her altar as her priest and none doubted you. If you were a false god, she would have struck you dead."
If I were to be struck dead, it would not be by the Daughter of the Sun, I knew. Much more worrisome was a ruler called The Slayer.
"How often do we have to put on that show?"
"My uncle and his castle guards come to the temple once every four days. In his absence, Tarvik leads them."
"And the rest of the time?"
She grabbed my hand and led me to the small chamber whose walls were hung with draperies. We got out of our costumes and stored the velvet robes and gold offerings behind the curtains.
"The rest of the time, Stargazer, we do as we please so long as Kovat believes we are in the temple. Hurry now, change out of your robe and I will untie your hair."
Nance pulled a sleeveless tunic over her head, but she gave me a tunic with long sleeves to wear, light cotton slacks, and leather boots, all leftovers from the Daughter. Next she tucked my hair into a scarf.
"There. Now no one will notice you."
"Not notice me! Wearing boots and long sleeves and a scarf over half my face in the middle of the day!"
She giggled, and though it was easy to see she was pleased, I didn't get the joke. “The sun will be gone soon. And when I go out, I always drape my head in a scarf as do all women. Otherwise our skin turns red. Does not yours?"
"What would make my skin turn red?"
"Sun and wind."
"My skin tans from the sun, doesn't often burn, it's not like we live in the Sunbelt. And how fast am I to stride past people in these boots so they won't see my face beneath my scarf?"
She clapped her hands in delight and danced around me. I'd never known anyone so easily excited.
"You shall see!” she cried.
She led me back to her outer room opening into her private courtyard.
Into a large pouch she tucked cheese, bread, meat, an assortment of root vegetables, and a flask of the mead. Enough, I thought, for several days. She fussed around, rolling small blankets and gathering items we wouldn't be using in the courtyard.
This looked way too familiar. “Tell me we aren't going camping."
She ignored me. When the sun dropped beneath the far hills, she pulled a scarf over her own head, skipped into the corridor behind the temple, stopped, turned and listened. Smiling, she reached up to the blank wall, grasped a metal candle holder jutting from the rock and pulled it. The rock moved, turning until there was room for us to crawl through. When we were on the other side, she pushed the rock back into place.
"A secret door,” I exclaimed, stopped to examine it. I ran my palms across the smooth rock wall, searching for the seam. “Who put it there?"
"The cas
tle and stables were built generations ago, before remembering, and the door is forgotten. Kovat built the temple against this wall, unknowing of the door. After my nurse died and I was left alone here, with nothing to do all day but search and touch every item, I found it."
A horse snorted.
I spun around to face a room filled with horses, separated from us by their feeding troughs. They stood quietly in two neat rows, turning their heads slowly to peer at us.
Against a far wall slouched an old man, his eyes closed in sleep. He snored into his short white beard. He was the first barbarian I had seen with a beard, and it grew in thin tufts along his jaw line.
Nance ran across the stable to him, shook him and made little trilling sounds. The old man slowly opened one eye, peered at her from beneath his bushy brows, then muttered vague sounds and closed his eye again. To my surprise, Nance kissed his wrinkled cheek.
He stretched his arms, twisted his head in lazy circles to loosen his neck, then opened his eyes and stood up straight. Spying me, he said, “And who be she? The new priest?"
"Her name is Stargazer and you must pick her a proper mount."
He rubbed his beard, moved cautiously toward me, ducked to peer beneath the fold of my scarf, and clucked his tongue. In his slow, deep voice, he said, “Leave her."
"Why, silly love? She cannot spend her days in that gloomy place, no more than I can."
"Outlander. Slit your throat for you,” he said.
Nance jutted out her lower lip, reminding me of her cousin. “Stargazer is my friend."
The old man's eyes hardened. “I go with you."
"You cannot. Who will care for the horses? When the guards come to the door and find you gone, they will enter, find three horses missing and come searching for us.” Her voice softened into a wheedling sound. “There now, old Lor, old love, you do not want to keep me prisoner in this pile of stones and I cannot leave Stargazer alone. She will be good and do all I say, will you not, Stargazer?"
She did not wait for my answer nor did the old man. He could barely take his gaze from Nance. In his face shone a fierce love and fear, as though she were his only child.
Tarbaby Trouble [Mudflat 1] Page 5