by K J Taylor
“Look, Laela—”
“C’mon,” she said more softly. “I ain’t gonna bite yer head off. I’m just . . . curious.”
He brightened slightly as he looked her in the face. “Ye’re direct, ain’t ye?”
“Er—”
“I like that,” he added. “I always liked that about ye, Laela, since the first day we met.”
Laela smiled. “Me dad always said that the best way to get somethin’ off someone is to stop foolin’ around an’ just ask for it, ’cause it’s amazing what people’ll do if yeh put them on the spot.”
Yorath took a sip from his cup. “That’s very true. I’m curious myself, though.”
“About what?”
“Everyone’s curious,” said Yorath. “About ye. Where ye really came from. Seems ye just appeared in the Eyrie one day, an’ no-one ever saw ye come in or knows how ye got into the King’s favour so fast.”
“Oh.” She had a feeling he had wanted to ask her about it for some time.
“Ye don’t have to tell me,” Yorath added. “I just thought I’d ask.”
The rest of the food arrived at this point, and Laela had a few moments to think while they ate. Well, why not just tell him the truth? She couldn’t think of anything else to tell him, anyway, and she didn’t want to be rude to him.
“I came ’ere from the South,” she said eventually, and braced herself for the reaction.
He started. “The South? Where in the South?”
“Nowhere special,” said Laela. “Little village not far from the Northgates. Sturrick, it was called.”
Yorath was looking at her with a new interest. “I thought yer accent sounded . . . different. But if ye were born in the South, how did ye get here? An’ why did ye come?”
“I bribed the men at Guard’s Post,” said Laela, as casually as she could.
Yorath stared at her, and then laughed. “Ye gods! An’ then ye came to Malvern, eh?”
“Yeah.”
“Why, though? I mean, why come North if ye had a home?”
“I didn’t,” said Laela. “I grew up there with my dad . . . well, he was me foster father, really. Never knew me mother. Then he died, so I sold our house an’ came North.”
“Shadows, that’s rough,” said Yorath.
Laela shrugged. “These things happen. I ain’t got it so bad.”
“So why did ye come North?”
Laela tried to smile. “’Cause I’m a darkwoman, that’s why. An’ where else can a darkwoman go?”
“True.” Yorath smiled again. “How did ye end up in the Eyrie, then?”
“I got into some trouble in the city,” said Laela. “An’ the King rescued me.”
“What? The King?”
“Yeah. He was passin’ an’ saw me.”
Yorath looked surprised but not overly so. “Didn’t know he’d been down into the city. He doesn’t do that much any more.”
Laela tore a piece of bread in half. “He brought me back here, anyway. We talked a bit, an’ he asked me a bunch of questions about what’s goin’ on in the South, an’ I told him what I knew, an’ afterward he said I could stay here.”
“That’s all?”
“More or less,” said Laela. “He just took a likin’ to me.”
“Huh.” Yorath rubbed his chin. “Well, he’s got eccentric over the years, no-one’d argue with that. I guess maybe he was impressed about how ye’d come all this way just t’live in his Kingdom.”
“Yeah, he said that,” said Laela.
“It’s just a bit odd, though,” said Yorath, half to himself. “All the mistresses he’s had before, they were all . . . well, high-born. An’ they were . . . well . . .”
Laela gritted her teeth. “I know. Yeh can’t understand why he’d be wantin’ a peasant girl now. One with filthy Southern blood in her.”
Yorath jerked as if she had slapped him. “Laela—oh, gods, please, I didn’t mean—”
“Well, don’t worry about it,” said Laela, more sharply than she meant to.
Silence.
“Listen,” Yorath said eventually, “I’ll go. I didn’t mean . . . I’m sorry. I’ll leave ye.”
Laela grabbed his arm. “No. Stay. Yorath, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at yeh, I’m just . . . feelin’ a bit out of sorts, like.”
He looked thoroughly awkward and unhappy to be there. “Gods, what would my dad say? He was over the moon when I told him I’d been asked to be yer tutor. Said it was the best opportunity I’d ever had. Told me a hundred times, ‘Don’t say anythin’ out of turn! Be polite as ye can! If ye put one foot wrong, ye could lose it!’”
To her own surprise, Laela took him by the hand. “Yorath, listen. Yeh’ve got it wrong. I ain’t angry with yeh. I . . . well, I like yeh.”
He tried to pull away, but gently. “Laela, don’t. We can’t—”
“Yeah, we can,” she said impulsively. “Look, it’s fine for us to spend time together. The King won’t care.”
“Laela, if I do somethin’ to make him angry—”
“Yeh won’t,” said Laela. “Yorath, it ain’t . . . we ain’t sharin’ a bed. The King an’ me ain’t lovers. Actually . . .” She looked shyly at the tabletop. “Actually, I ain’t never had a lover. Never. Who’d bed a half-breed?”
Yorath gaped at her. “What? But the King said—”
“He was lyin’,” said Laela. “An’ yeh’ve got to keep it a secret. He told me never to tell anyone else. He said if I wanted to stay ’ere an’ be looked after, I should pretend t’be his mistress, ’cause it would be simpler, an’ everyone would leave me alone. I asked him if he wanted t’make it . . . real-like, an’ he said no.”
“I’ll . . . I’ll keep quiet,” Yorath promised.
“Thanks.” Laela let go of his hand. “The King an’ me ain’t . . . well, we ain’t lovers, an’ we ain’t friends. He just decided he wanted t’take care of me. I dunno why.”
You remind me of myself.
She shut the memory out.
“The King doesn’t have friends,” said Yorath. But he looked less surprised now, and more . . .
Laela blinked, puzzled. He looked oddly . . . disappointed.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“What? Oh . . . nothin’.”
“Yeah, there is,” Laela said firmly. “So tell me. I hate liars.”
“It’s not important,” said Yorath. “I was just thinkin’. . .”
“What?”
“The King’s done a lot for ye,” said Yorath. “Ye do know that, don’t ye?”
“Of course I do,” said Laela, more than a little taken aback.
“Do ye?” He looked her in the eye. “Do ye really?”
“Well—”
“He’s never done somethin’ like this before,” said Yorath. “An’ if he’s done it for ye now, without askin’ for anythin’ in return . . .”
“What?” said Laela. She felt the same sick, frightened feeling in her stomach that she had felt the night before, by the tomb.
“I dunno,” Yorath said abruptly. “It just seems like . . . maybe he is expectin’ somethin’ back from ye. An’ if it’s not yer body, then I dunno what it could be.”
Laela didn’t reply, and the rest of the meal passed awkwardly, with neither one of them seeming to know what to say. She wanted to talk more—about things other than the King—but a strange feeling of guilt and shame had come over her, and it was so powerful, it made her keep her silence.
When the meal was done, they took their leave of each other and began to go their separate ways. But at the last moment Yorath stopped and hurried back.
“Laela!”
She started. “What?”
“I nearly forgot—ye’re supposed to go to the Moon Temple after lunch.”
“What? Why?”
“So ye can start learnin’ about the Night God,” said Yorath. “There should be a priestess waitin’ for ye up in yer room—hurry up there, they don’t like to be kep
t waitin’.”
Laela cursed and darted off.
• • •
Sure enough, when she entered her room, she found a woman sitting by the fireside with a slightly bored expression.
The woman rose when Laela came in, saying, “There ye are. I was about to come looking for ye.”
Laela smoothed down her skirts. “I’m sorry, I didn’t get told yeh were here until just now.”
The woman shrugged. “There’s no great hurry. I’m Aderyn. And ye would be Laela, the half-breed?”
Laela growled. “Yeah. Do I go to the Temple with yeh?”
“Yes.” Aderyn was already moving toward the door. “Let’s go.”
Her new companion, who was stoutly built and looked about thirty, took Laela down the endless ramps and stairs to the ground floor of the Eyrie, where an impressively large door took them out of the building. Laela hadn’t come this way before and looked around with interest as they crossed the open courtyard to the outer wall. The gates set into it had a pair of alert and well-armed guards stationed on either side of it, but they stood aside immediately when they saw the priestess coming, and she and Laela passed out and into the city.
It looked different in the light of day, and Laela thought it looked friendlier, too, now that she was more or less one of its citizens.
Aderyn walked briskly toward a building that Laela saw almost instantly, mostly because it was the largest one in the city that wasn’t the Eyrie. It had a domed roof and looked much like one of the Sun Temples in the South. Laela had never been inside any sort of Temple before, and she felt deeply excited to be going into one now. The fact that the Night God was said to be a cruel and savage deity only added an extra thrill.
The doors had been carved with a massive triple spiral that had been inlaid with silver, and the handles were also spirals—double spirals, in this case, made from what looked like bronze. Aderyn grasped one and pulled one of the doors open.
She gestured at Laela. “Go in.”
Laela hesitated ever so briefly on the threshold. Gryphus is your god, her memory whispered. To flirt with any other god—even to enter a heathen temple—is to risk the corruption of your soul by evil.
She took a deep breath and went in.
Inside, the Temple was dark—but not gloomy. There was light in there, but it was dim and cool, and she quickly spotted the blue glass lamps that produced it.
She had an impression of the enormous space around her, and she saw the strange pillars made to look like trees. The floor was covered in a mosaic of leaves of all kinds, picked out here and there with silver and chunks of crystal. It was like standing in a forest, but an otherwordly forest. Perhaps a forest in the afterlife.
A memory came to her without any warning—a memory of her dream of Gryphus, in the field of flowers and sunlight, and she had the strange but absolute certainty that while Gryphus had his sunlit meadow, this moonlit forest belonged to Scathach.
In its way, it was just as beautiful.
Aderyn came up behind her. “What do ye think of it, Laela?”
“It’s incredible,” said Laela, and she meant it.
The woman smiled for the first time since they’d met. “It took our people nearly ten years to make. This was a heathen temple once. Built by sun worshippers. When we took this city, we took the temple, too, and remade it to serve the Night God. There has never been a Temple like this for her.”
“Really?” said Laela, genuinely surprised.
“Yes.” Aderyn nodded. “In the past, we worshipped the Night God in the open air, under the stars. Our temples were stone circles, built by our ancestors long ago. When the sun worshippers came, they knocked down our stones and commanded our people never to worship the Night God again. Those of us who defied them were burned alive.”
Laela shuddered. “Why? What’d they done that was so wrong?”
“The Day God hates our people, and our beautiful god,” Aderyn said solemnly. “To follow her is to be his enemy. He commanded his followers to destroy us. They were our oppressors for centuries, until the Night God sent her greatest follower to us. Her warrior.” She smiled. “The Master of Death, blessed by the Night God and given her power. He destroyed the Southerners in her name, and set Tara free.”
“Tara?”
“The North’s true name,” said Aderyn, sounding slightly annoyed at the interruption. “We were given this land by the Night God, and now we have it again, and the Shadow That Walks rules over us, as she commanded.”
The King, Laela thought.
“Now,” Aderyn went on. “Come with me, and I will show ye the altar.”
They went to the middle of the floor, where a circle of upright stones had been arranged in a ring. Laela, looking at them, instantly realised what was going on—the Temple’s interior had been decorated to look like a forest, and here was the stone circle that would have been erected at its centre. They had built a new Temple to recreate the old.
In the middle of the stone circle was the altar, which was covered in spiral patterns and had a silver bowl set into its top.
“This altar is where the High Priestess, Saeddryn, comes every night to offer our prayers to the Night God,” Aderyn explained. “And on very special occasions, the King himself comes here. He came here only a few days ago, on the night of the Blood Moon, to make the offering of blood.”
“He told me the Night God needs blood to survive,” Laela volunteered.
Aderyn nodded. “True. Now, the King has commanded for ye to learn the ways of the Night God, but first I must ask ye some questions.”
“All right.”
The priestess gave her a slightly irritated look. “Ye are a half-breed,” she said bluntly.
“Yeah,” said Laela, trying to sound polite.
“How were ye conceived?” said Aderyn. “Who was yer mother, and who was yer father?”
Laela reddened. She almost snapped at the woman. “My father raped my mother,” she said stiffly. “My mother was a Southerner livin’ in the North, an’ my father was a darkman criminal.”
“What was his name?” said Aderyn, unmoved. “Do ye know?”
“No,” said Laela. “All I know is he got out of prison an’ died tryin’ to escape.” An’ good riddance to him.
“What clan was he from?”
Laela looked blank. “What?”
“What clan was he from?” Aderyn repeated patiently. “Do ye know?”
“No,” said Laela. “What do yeh mean, clan?”
“There are four clans,” said Aderyn. “Once, there were others, but they were lost, and only four are left. Bear, Wolf, Crow, and Deer.”
“Oh, all right,” said Laela. “What does that have to do with anythin’?”
“The fact that yer father was a Northerner means that ye, too, are a Northerner,” said Aderyn. “Since ye were born out of wedlock, ye should be glad, half-breed. If it had been yer mother who was a Northerner, ye could not be initiated. Now, if ye knew what clan yer father was from, ye would become part of that clan when ye were initiated. But since ye don’t know . . .”
Laela wanted to hit her. “What does that mean?”
“It means ye’ll have to find out which clan ye should be part of. Tell me, do ye know what phase of the moon it was when ye were born?”
“No.”
Aderyn sighed. “That makes it even harder, then. Ye understand—we have a priestess for every one of the clans. If ye were a Bear, ye’d be taught by that priestess. If ye were a Deer, the Deer priestess would take care of ye. But since ye don’t know, ye’ll learn from me until we find out.”
“How do yeh find out?” said Laela.
“Our guiding phase always finds us,” Aderyn said primly. “We don’t find them. Now, move close to the altar.”
Laela did. “What do I do?”
“See the water in the bowl?” said Aderyn. “Look into it and don’t look away.”
Laela obeyed. The water was clear and silvery in the muted
light.
As she stared, the priestess dipped a finger into the water and moved it in a circle. Once, twice, three times . . .
“Repeat the words,” said Aderyn.
Plentyn yn tyfu’n ddyn,
Gorffennol ddaw’n bresennol,
Rhaid i amser fynd rhagddo
Arglwydd tywyll y nos, gweddïaf
Cwyd len y nos, rho i mi ond trem
Yn y nen, tair lleuad lawn ar ddeg,
Pob un yn fywyd blwyddyn,
Llygad y nos, agor led y pen,
Dangos fy nhynged i mi.
“Say them. Keep your eyes on the water.”
Laela obeyed. The words felt clumsy, but she repeated them doggedly, watching the water closely and trying not to feel too embarrassed. What in the gods’ names was this supposed to do?
Aderyn continued to swirl her finger in the water, slowly and methodically, and Laela kept on repeating the Northern words and watching the water. Finally, Aderyn withdrew her hand. Laela was about to look up and ask her if she could stop now, but then . . .
But then she saw the shapes in the water.
Her eyes widened.
The visions were faint, but not so faint that she couldn’t recognise them.
Something moving, something . . . something . . . some animal . . . a griffin! A griffin, wings spread, rearing up on its hind legs. A man, reaching out to her. A great globe, flaming and terrible . . . the sun. And another globe, this one shrinking to nothing. The moon. And something else . . . it looked like a ring.
The visions faded as quickly as they had come and left Laela blinking in confusion.
When she looked up, it was into the eyes of Aderyn.
“Did ye see anything?” the priestess asked softly, but she sounded as if she already knew the answer.
“Yes!” said Laela. “I saw . . . saw things in the water. There was a—”
“Don’t tell me,” said Aderyn. “Don’t tell anyone. What ye saw was for ye. Not for anyone else. What ye do with it is yer own business.”
“What did I see?” said Laela. “What were them things?”