Idol of Blood

by Jane Kindred

  Pearl watched the temple pass by as he continued downriver. There was nowhere for the child to be kept there. He departed the riverboat at its last stop, just yards from the shore. The rhythmic pounding of waves carried to him like the beat of Meeric blood. He would listen here for the child.

  Cree felt like an asshole for leaving Ume. She’d used the lame excuse that fishing boats paid better than tavern work and they needed the money. Ume had only blinked at her and tried to smile as if Cree weren’t lying straight to her face and cutting out bits of her heart. She couldn’t help it. She couldn’t look in those eyes like rising moons burnished by a setting sun without thinking of how Nesre had used both Ume and Cree since before the Expurgation began. The Expurgation made her think of MeerAlya, and how heartbroken Ume had been after Cree had helped foment the rebellion against him and nearly gotten Ume killed. And thinking of Alya meant thinking of the child. Which meant thinking of what Nesre had done, and the endless circling spiral of regret was more than she could stand.

  It was better out here on the water. She’d worked the docks before in In’La, but working a river barge was nothing like being afloat in the expanse of the Great Northern Lake, surrounded by so much water one couldn’t see the shore. And out here, Cree was just one of the men. Able to do it easily since her youth, passing made it simpler to find work without having to prove herself. Unlike Ume, who’d always felt like a girl regardless of her outward presentation, Cree had never felt like a boy; she’d just found it easier to pretend to be one.

  The best part of the work, however, was that it was hard. There wasn’t time to think about the child that could never be hers, to wonder what he looked like or what he was doing. She was up before dawn swabbing decks and mending nets, spent her mornings casting and pulling in the hauls, and her afternoons cleaning and scaling and packing fish. At sunset, they headed back to the dock only to spend most of the night unloading and preparing for the next day’s trip. In the spare moments between the myriad of laborious tasks, there was all they could eat from the day’s catch. Not that she’d probably ever want to look at fish again after Stórströnd, let alone eat it, but hunger from a hard day of honest work made anything delicious.

  It was the few hours of sleep each night that were difficult to bear. As tired as she was, Cree had expected sleep to be easy, but it was the only time she slowed down long enough to hear herself think. And her thoughts were deafening. How could she not have known the child had lived? What mother wouldn’t know it, feel it in her bones that her child was alive, that he needed her? Cree had accepted the stillbirth without question, grateful for the ordeal to be over. Nesre hadn’t needed her anymore, and he’d let her and Ume go. Had she wanted that freedom so badly she was willing to ignore the maternal instincts that said her child was alive? She’d left him to be raised in a cage like an animal. What kind of mother could let that happen?

  Ume thought having the child with them would fix everything, but Ume was wrong. Any child so abandoned by his mother would be bitter and damaged. But this child wasn’t just any child. He was Meer. Cree prayed to the dead gods of the Delta and the Hidden Folk and all her dead ancestors that the child would never find her.

  Pearl watched the moon rise over the waves as he waited on the beach. He’d been here all day, transfixed by the beauty and power of the ocean. His Meeric visions had never shown him the Southern Sea. He’d known the Anamnesis flowed into it eventually, its destination from the moment it left the Great Northern Lake, and he’d had a vague idea of the size—and had felt the pull of tides, as the ebb and flow was the same as the source of the visions in his blood—but he hadn’t imagined its weight and magnificence. Each crashing wave on the shore seemed capable of swallowing up the earth, and yet it flowed softly out, receding with the gentle tug of the tides as if to assure him it meant him no harm.

  It was clear, however, that his Meerish friend would not be found by sitting and waiting. He rose reluctantly, slinging his bag over his shoulder, and then remembered it was the act of drawing that had opened the lines of communication between them. Perhaps he could create a drawing in the sand.

  Pearl knelt in the damp powder and closed his eyes, letting the rhythm of the waves synchronize the rhythm of his breathing and the circulation of his blood. The comforting thrum of Ra’s beat within the flow came to him first as he surrendered himself to it. The path of her thoughts seemed to curl and wander like the lines of ink he’d made on Lord Minister Merit’s drawing, like tributaries of the Anamnesis meandering in their own convoluted paths to the sea. Shiva’s imprints upon the flow were there, also, but Pearl skittered past these whenever he felt them. They were prickly with warning, as though she was aware of his tuning in to her rhythm and meter, and didn’t appreciate it.

  There was another distant pulse, so faint he couldn’t make it out, but it was not the child. But that was all right. He knew he couldn’t initiate contact himself. He only needed to draw.

  Pearl opened his eyes and let his finger trace over the sand in front of him, letting his blood direct him. His finger rose and curved, and descended and curved again, turning once more upward. He’d drawn the heavy waxing moon. He moved his finger in a spiral within the large moon shape and made a series of concentric circles, drawing ever closer to the center, the lines thinner and tighter as he reached it. It was a very pleasant moon.

  Beneath it, he drew the waves, thick grooves at their tops representing the whitecaps as they toppled over on their way to the shore. In front of that, as he scooted back, he depicted the very medium in which he was drawing, smoothing his hand over the sand and pressing it down in spots so that it rose in others, pushing it gently into the foaming tide of sand waves above it. Then near the top of the waves beneath the moon, he added another, fainter moon, the light’s reflection on the distant surface of the ocean.

  Pearl sat back on his heels and observed his drawing. He liked it very much indeed. The true tide was coming closer with each crash against the shore, and the edges of the foamy water had begun to erode his first moon. Pearl didn’t mind if the ocean chose to collaborate with him on this project. It would take the drawing with it eventually, like it must with everything it touched, and his drawing would become part of the vast sea itself.

  Near the bottom, the lines of his beach within a beach began to move. The Meerchild was speaking. Pearl? Is that you?

  It’s me, wrote Pearl, excited and anxious. I’ve come to Soth Bessaht. I’ve come to set you free from your master. Can you guide me to where you are?

  There was a long pause before the swirls in the sand shifted again. I think so. You’re by the sea.

  Yes, Pearl agreed.

  I can hear the sea from here. The shifting sand erased and coalesced once more. And horses.

  Pearl glanced up, his gaze moving slowly along the shoreline. In the distance beyond the pier at the end of the point, he spotted a structure that had the look of a stable. He closed his eyes and focused on the building, focusing on the elements that formed it: the minerals in the stone, the pitting from the salt air, the way the breeze coming from the shore embraced it. The scent of hay and manure came to him, the snorting breath of horses.

  Pearl wrote excitedly. There’s a stable beyond the pier. You must be very close.

  Yes, wrote the Meerchild. Yes, a stable. That’s where the mirrors are.

  Pearl felt a flood of anger rush through him. The cage was in a stable. At least his master had kept him in the temple. He’d only felt such emotion once before, when he knew the Master intended to hurt Ra. The anger frightened him, because in it, he saw what he might do if his emotion went unchecked. He felt the power that had come from Ra’s one angry word in Rhyman.

  He wrote hastily in the sand. I’m coming. Hold on. Scuffing his boot across the drawing and returning it to the sea, he ended their connection and ran for the promontory.

  At full dark, he felt the likelihood of runni
ng into any stable hands was slim, though the Meerchild’s captor might have posted guards outside. At the end of the point, he climbed over the rocks to the flat outcropping where the stable had been built and crouched in the bulrushes, watching for signs of activity. There were no lanterns showing through the high windows, and except for a sleepy guard nodding at his post, no one seemed to be about.

  Pearl rose from his hiding place after he was certain the guard was slumbering and hurried to the back of the stable, where a low structure beside it offered enough holds for climbing, letting him clamber up to the windows in the hayloft. Lowering himself through one of them, he landed in the hay and dropped into a roll to cushion his fall.

  Before he’d righted himself, something struck him in the back of the head and knocked him flat. Disoriented and stunned, Pearl gasped beneath the weight of the person who’d fallen on him with ferocity, and before he could even let out a cry, a rag had been stuffed into his mouth and a leather bit jammed between his teeth, the straps yanked tight at his nape with a buckle and secured with an iron padlock to hold the gag in place.

  Only after his wrists and ankles had been bound tightly with chain and fitted with another set of locks did his assailant climb off and allow Pearl to roll onto his side to see who’d attacked him. He blinked up at the ruffian, trying to understand what had happened. Where was the Meerchild? He lifted his head and gazed about the stable, finding nothing that could have held a mirrored cage.

  “Looking for your friend?” His captor smiled and poked his own chest with a grimy finger. “Right here, boy.” The man lifted a leather pouch from inside the shirt, hanging from a thong around his neck, and bounced it on his palm. “Meertongue powder. Lets me send you messages, and lets me read yours. Got it from your old master.”

  Pearl’s spirits sank. Such a vile and simple trick. The man had used the severed tongue of a Meer killed in the Expurgation, ground to a powder that still retained the essence of the conjuring properties of its long-dead owner. There had never been any other child. Pearl had only wanted to believe he wasn’t alone. Not that Ahr and Merit made him feel alone, but they weren’t like him. He missed Ra more than he’d let them see. Ra understood him. And he was a fool.

  “Name’s Pike,” said the ruffian. “I know who you are, of course. Nesre’s little pearl. He thought he was so clever, thought no one knew he’d created you, but I have my eyes and ears in many former holy places.” Pike took a tin from his vest pocket and popped it open, pinching out a dark lump of something and tucking it into his mouth between his lower lip and his gums. “In case you haven’t guessed, I’m a Meerhunter. But don’t worry. I have no intention of beheading you.” Pike spat the dark juice of his chew from the corner of his mouth into the hay. “The head I want is MeerRa’s.”

  Pearl blinked hatred at him. He would not betray Ra.

  “As you must have realized, I’m aware also of your special gift for drawing. What I propose is that we come to an agreement. You draw for me the whereabouts of MeerRa of Rhyman, and in exchange, once I have the Meer in my possession, I will free you. Of course, I’ll need some assurance from you first that you won’t visit any plagues upon me, or blow me into smithereens as Ra did with the prelate of Rhyman, so before I give you anything to draw with, I’ll need to exact your promise. I know the word of a Meer is sacrosanct. Will you give it?”

  Pearl growled like an animal and made a lunging motion toward Pike, though there was little he could do but flop in the hay like a banked fish.

  Pike sighed. “I see.” He spat again. “I’m very disappointed.” The Meerhunter rose and fetched something from a hook on the wall.

  Pearl rocked away from him, instinctively horrified when he saw the leather collar, but Pike had him at his mercy, and the large man shoved him onto his stomach once more and knelt on his back while he fitted Pearl with the collar, then snapped a lead onto it and forced Pearl up onto his knees.

  “I’ll unchain your feet so you can walk with me, providing you don’t do anything stupid like trying to kick me. I’d rather not have to carry you over my shoulder in a sack tied like a hog, but I’ll do it if I have to. Is that clear?”

  When Pearl gave him no visual response, Pike jerked on the lead, yanking Pearl off his knees and knocking the wind out of him. Pearl lay breathing roughly, hay poking into his face.

  The Meerhunter prodded him onto his back with his boot. “Are we clear, boy?”

  Pearl swallowed against the dryness in his throat and gave him a bitter nod.

  Five: Revelation

  Ahr stood at the edge of the courtyard once more, drinking in the surreal visual feast of floating petals and winged things vying for the title of most fantastic. He couldn’t seem to stay away from it. Every delicate petal, its heady fragrance tumbling with it to the ground, and every veined, translucent wing with its attendant lazy hum—the dance of damselflies and butterflies that seemed to court the petals themselves—reminded him of the ticking down of time of those brief weeks as consort of a Meer.

  Like the mysterious painting of the courtyard he kept in his room, time here seemed suspended yet ephemeral. A moment that would pass and return him to the long, dark moments that had followed Ahr ever since, like a glowing light dancing on the Haethfalt moor to wink out in an instant, leaving the observer wondering if it had been foxfire or the ectoplasm emanating from a trickster being of the hidden world.

  Whatever drew him here, he was careful to keep his back to the steps that would take him down to the riverbank and the cold, pallid body of Ra he couldn’t expurgate from his memory. No matter how he tried to ignore it, the echo of the words Ra had spoken after Ahr had robbed her of her second death still lingered there: “How I loved you, Ahr.” She was seducing him again, across one hundred leagues, and he must resist. He would not be drowned in the selfish Meeric cauldron of desire. Not this time.

  She made him angry. It had taken him these weeks to realize she’d stolen his bitterness and hatred, even his self-loathing, which had molded him into the man he was. She’d stolen it with her burning hand after he’d been driven to his knees beside her bed, and in its place was the heartache those prized possessions had submerged, dredged up like something putrescent and long forgotten at the bottom of a lake. And beside it, like a child among the dead who will not leave its plague-ravaged mother, sat sorrow.

  The emotion was alien to him. He didn’t care for it. It was the antithesis of his bitterness, as heartache was to hate. He was filled with quiet grief at the long-dead MeerRa and RaNa, and with the terrible burden of remorse. He had never even told Ra he was sorry. How arrogant to deign to forgive the father for taking the child, when the mother had murdered them both.

  His understanding of the world was flipped on its head. Who he was now, he didn’t understand at all. And how could one apologize to the person one had murdered for spurned love? Forgive me. How terrible of me to have killed you. How uncouth of me. Let me wipe that up. It wasn’t a stain on a priceless rug. It was the theft of life.

  What was even more difficult was the realization that Ahr had killed because Ra hadn’t loved her—but after all, he had. “How I loved you, Ahr.” It repeated in his head, merciless. How it might have been different if Ahr had known it.

  This courtyard—not redolent with spring blooms as it was now, but littered with the sweet potpourri of aging blossoms, and bathed in a white, late summer moon—had been another of their beds. There was nowhere in the temple Ahr could escape the potent memory of their sex. It lingered after all these years. MeerRa had undressed his consort right here on this portal, at the top of these same steps, unwilling to wait even an instant once she’d arrived.

  Merit, the prince of discretion, had simply stepped past the denuded Ahr to stand guard in the courtyard. Ra had knelt before her, the Meer become the serf, and made his petitions in the crest of her soul, anointed and perfumed with her benediction—the expression of her pleasu
re at his humble service. She had swayed, disembodied, at the culmination of her “blessing”, her vetma bestowed upon him, and he’d caught her and scooped her up, kissing her through the veil with the aphrodisiac of the taste and scent of her own body.

  Then he’d taken her on the carpet of petals, to be penetrated at last—a blissful ache inside her flesh she’d begun to miss when he wasn’t in her, its memory rousing her to new heights of longing until his servant would come to take her once more to the god. Though she didn’t climax when he was inside her, it was his pleasure and the sweetness of the touch, the link of intimacy that no other act could offer that was bliss. And then he would pour into her the flooding tide of his desire, clinging to her, whispering her name, and she’d wanted it never to end.

  With a sigh, Ahr drew his shoulders up straight, shaking the cobwebs of the past away, and crossed the courtyard, taking care to avoid treading on the ghosts who copulated here. He had business to attend to with Merit. There was no time for ghosts.

  They breakfasted these days in the courtyard garden. It was a ritual Merit enjoyed, rising with the sun and letting the first person he saw each day be Ahr. The change in Ahr had at first been jarring, to see a man where once had been a woman, but Merit soon forgot that Ahr was anything but herself. He looked at Ahr and saw the maiden. “Society’s Virgin”, Ra had once called her, despairing of ever knowing her face.

  Ra had spoken of her from time to time after RaNa’s coming, as though forgetting Ahr no longer came to him. Merit had respected Ra’s order to give up urging that he send for her, and had ceased to see her himself once the child was born—couldn’t face her after the theft of her child—but MeerRa seemed sometimes not to know that RaNa had come of that union. He’d referred to Ahr as pregnant on more than one occasion, as though she could be perpetually with child despite her daughter’s presence in the temple. Merit had been disturbed by the peculiar inconsistency. The Meer, however, didn’t always seem to live in sequential time. It was, perhaps, incidental to the length of his years. Ra’s life had ended in the Three Hundred and Seventieth Year of the Reign of MeerRa, and Merit was certain Ahr had been the only woman to know him.