The Temple of Doubt

by Anne Boles Levy

  Reyhim was comparing something to dysentery. No, that couldn’t be right. A woman behind me gasped and translated. I was right. He’d likened the astrologer in question to a disease. Other women nodded and filled in the rest, with one adding. “S’ami’s father is the astrologer in question, I think.”

  A guard positioned himself between the two quarreling Azwans and thumped his fist across his chest.

  “A salute,” a woman whispered.

  “Don’t seem as if they deserve it, the way they’re behaving,” said another. That was met with hisses and shushing and more muffled weeping. I silently agreed, but I’d missed whatever the chest-thumping guard had said. S’ami had turned to him to speak.

  “It’s here. I know it’s here; I sense it’s here.”

  Reyhim interjected. “Then it’s back in the town. In someone’s head. One of the men who went out to find it after it fell came back with an unwanted visitor within him.” He waved toward the dead men.

  “Well, now, whose fault would that be?” S’ami’s voice dripped venom. “Perhaps their former high priest’s? The one who was supposed to instill in them a respect for doctrine, perhaps. Teach them not to meddle in, oh, I don’t know, celestial events, say, without consulting the Temple.”

  “It’s been years since I presided at the Ward here,” Reyhim said. “Plenty of time to unlearn what I’d taught them.”

  “Ah, then, we’ll just dispatch with the current high priest along with all the other incompetents and greedy fools in this Nihil-ignored, pestilence-plagued mudpit.”

  His voice dripped with sarcasm, but I don’t know if anyone could doubt he’d do exactly that: randomly kill anyone he found unworthy. The one thing I had learned in my lessons is that Nihil considers us all unworthy, no matter what. This didn’t leave me with a good feeling.

  A shadow fell across my cheek, and I looked up to see the guard that had saluted S’ami. I gasped at the familiar brown-eyed glare, the scarred chin. It was the guard from the pier who’d shouted up at me. Now he was the one gazing down, with a solid frown. I didn’t need Babba there to remind me not to stare impolitely. I cast my eyes downward before trying to peer around that hulking torso with no success. The jug flew from my head, plucked by an oversized hand.

  “Tea or spirits?” The guard waved the jug at me.

  “Tea,” I said. “Would you like a glass?”

  “Not needed.” He unplugged the top of the jug and took a long pull, wiping his lips on his sweaty forearm. His eyes never left my face.

  “Those men.” Did I dare ask? My stomach leaped again. “The guides.”

  “Useless.” The guard shrugged and walked off with my jug, handing it to other guards. Other women passed their jugs to the thirsty men, and there was a brief, incongruous moment where we were all being quite civilized while the Temple debated the merits of all our deaths. No one spoke, not even the guards, except for the Azwans, who seemed to have calmed their voices from irate to merely irritable. I couldn’t catch all of it, since being the tall one in the crowd meant I had a load of jugs to pass back and forth between petite females and towering giants.

  The one guard—I’d begun to call him S’ami’s guard in my head—wouldn’t budge from blocking my view. He didn’t bother to stoop or lean for anyone or anything as he passed jugs, which meant I got in a week’s worth of stretching in a short time. I tried peering around him again.

  “You want a better view of your friends?” he asked. He angled one shoulder so I could glimpse the gory pile of corpses. “Help yourself.”

  I shuddered and looked away, only to exchange worried glances and jugs with the women around me. I finally had to listen in as best I could for whatever sound could pass through the body of that thickly armored soldier. The gist of the Azwans’ discussion, as best I could tell, was that something might be out there yet, but not at the impact crater the starfall had left. That only held muck and dead fish. Reyhim wanted to check the town. S’ami wanted to search the swamps. Both ideas lifted the contents of my stomach again, but S’ami couldn’t know what was in those swamps, as I did.

  He seemed more interested in the mud spatters on his elaborate robes, rubbing at them in short, forceful bursts. He muttered curses in Tengali while Reyhim sneered: “You might’ve worn a more practical frock.”

  S’ami ignored him and turned to one of the many dignitaries standing around looking emotionally constipated. I’d have to visit a sick ward to find a more stopped-up bunch. I recognized the Lord Portreeve, our highest official outside the Ward. He ran the port and everything in the town connected to the trading world. His lordship bowed and cupped his hands beneath his chin as S’ami addressed him.

  “What do you know of the Gek here?” S’ami said, turning his back on the other Azwan. I sucked in a breath. So he did know about the city inside the swamp.

  Reyhim spoke louder to compensate: “A peace accord was signed years before I became high priest here.”

  S’ami tensed at the news. “Peace accord? Who makes peace with Gek?”

  “It’s the Nihil-blasted frontier, S’ami. The Gek were here first.”

  “Then we should go there first.”

  The man must be an idiot. The Gek hated anything magic. They called it unnatural. Mention Nihil’s name, and they’d be all over S’ami and his gold knots, with not enough leftover for a proper cremation.

  S’ami kept his gaze on the swamp. “The trees look passable enough.”

  “It gets worse.” That was Reyhim, sounding wiser than I’d given him credit for.

  The Lord Portreeve interrupted them. “Please, trust us doubtful souls, who know these waters. What the Azwan of Ambiguity says is true. At least give us a day or so to round up proper guides for you.” He glanced at the dead men. “I hope the new ones prove more sufficient.”

  S’ami sniffed. “They’d better. You have dealings with those creatures?”

  The Portreeve continued, “Even the Gek have things to trade. I might know the area very well, actually.”

  No, he didn’t. His portly lordship couldn’t find anything beyond the bottom of a spirit flask. Any foray he led to the Gek city would end in another heap of bodies—if anyone made it out alive to deliver that heap. A human needed gifts, and there were rules and protocol and favors to exchange . . . the thought made me frantic. The Gek might never have seen giants. What then?

  I changed my mind about Reyhim, too. He started agreeing with his lordship, all cozy and friendly. “That’s what I miss about this place: pure mercantile greed. You’d sell the muck out from under us if you could.”

  “Thank you, kind Azwan,” said his lordship. “May you want for nothing, in this life or the next.”

  “If I do, I’ll call on you to obtain it for me.”

  I’d reached my breaking point. Even with a jug on my head in the maddening heat, I was pretty sure I had more sense than the three of them. I had no reason to like the Temple, but I had no reason to wish them a mass slaughter. Their deaths would be so needless. So I blurted—well, of course, it came out in a blurt:

  “You need me!”

  No one heard, or no one noticed. Even the guard in front of me didn’t acknowledge a thing.

  “You need me. I know the way, and I know what they’re like.”

  Not a word. The Lord Portreeve cast me a sideways glance and kept up his bargaining with the Azwans. I tried again.

  “Sirs!”

  A hand on my shoulder broke my concentration. I turned, expecting to see a thirsty guard. Instead, I met Babba’s stern gaze. I could’ve collapsed with relief. Until then, I hadn’t realized how much his absence weighed on me. He could’ve been in that pile of bodies.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  I followed with one last turn of my head. I could see over the crowd to where S’ami’s guard was staring after me, expressionless. I wondered if anything ever moved someone like that, if they ever loved anyone.

  “Now, Hadara.” Babba used his don’t-argue-with-me
voice, so I followed him back along the wooden streets toward home. When he didn’t reprimand me or pepper me with questions about my behavior, I worked up the courage to ask what he thought the Azwans would do next.

  “Whatever they wish.”

  “Do you think they’ll search the swamps or the town?”

  “If you heard what I heard, then it comes down to whichever of those men backs down first.”

  “Then maybe nothing will happen because they’ll be arguing so long.”

  Babba frowned. “There’s nothing funny about it. This isn’t the face the Temple should be showing us. Already this creature, this star-demon, must be working its evil.”

  “How could that be?”

  “I don’t know, nor do I want to.”

  And that was that. I knew better than to try and pry anything else out of Babba when he got all tight-lipped. I let him be, lost in my own thoughts as our feet followed the familiar path home. Whatever I imagined coming from an evil spirit, however, it could not match in ferocity and terror what the Temple itself had planned.

  When he saw the widow of the man he’d killed, Ludsor paused. The dawn light shone in her hair, her lip trembled with fear and sorrow. Ludsor had no wife, and Ulwe pleased him. With none to stand in his way, Ludsor swept her up and made her his wife, though she wept for what she had lost.

  —“The Fall of Ulwe,” from Verisimilitudes 3, The Book of Unease

  The rain began late that night—Babba said the Azwans must’ve lifted their sailing-weather spells. It came in thick, blinding torrents that leaked through thatching and made the boardwalks too slippery to tread. The canals refilled, and our cistern soon overflowed. I rose early with my sisters to move our pots and kettles beneath an awning at the hearth and bring inside several urns of dried beans and herbs and other food we’d forgotten.

  We toweled ourselves dry and began peeling fresh citrines for breakfast. Without warning, the door crashed open, torn from its track with a single firm kick from a Feroxi boot. Three soldiers barreled in, shouting in Fernai.

  I snatched my sisters out of harm’s way, and we huddled in a corner, the guards looming over us, shouting instructions we couldn’t understand. One headed up the angled ladder to the loft, where Babba and Mami slept. The noise had already brought them halfway down. Babba opened his mouth to speak, but the soldier yanked him off the short ladder and threw him to the floor.

  Rishiel screamed. Amaniel clamped a hand over Rishiel’s mouth, and I pulled them both closer, feeling their shivers against my skin. I pretended I was in the wild, hiding from a mash cat or another predator. It’ll soon pass, I told myself. Just don’t move. Mami clung to the wide, flat rungs as the same soldier grabbed her around the waist and ripped her from her perch. He carried her, kicking and thrashing, to the broken doorway and heaved her outside. She landed on the rainy boardwalk and rolled, immediately soaked. She raised herself up and beckoned to us, but my sisters and I were stuck, frozen, petrified. Babba leapt to his feet, but two soldiers grabbed him by either arm and held him. A third shouted. He spoke in the common tongue, his voice harsh and clipped:

  “Surrender the house. By order of the Temple of Doubt.”

  I hugged my sisters firmly enough to feel their ribs beneath their clothes. I tried to keep either of them from screaming, but they clawed at the hands over their mouths. I’d clamped too hard, too focused on my own pounding heart to notice I’d nearly smothered them. Rishiel sobbed into my shoulder. None of us could budge for all our panic.

  “What have we done?” Babba asked. “Just tell me what we’ve done.”

  The soldier drew a dagger to Babba’s chin. “Surrender it. Now.”

  “Go, girls. Go.” Babba nodded toward me, the eldest, the responsible one. I willed myself to move, pulled my sisters to their feet, and herded them to the door. Amaniel grabbed Rishiel’s hand, and they raced to Mami. I paused, as I always do on the swamp’s edge, and made a quick study of the hostile terrain. That meant surveying the soldiers, from plume to bootstrap, dwelling on the menacing way they hunched over Babba. Whatever they were up to, they were enjoying this.

  “You, too.” One soldier crossed toward me and hovered, his face a finger’s width from mine. For the third time in as many days, I stared into zigzag scars on his chin and narrow, brown eyes. He was S’ami’s guard, the one who’d barked at me from the pier, the same guard who’d sneered about the pile of bodies. I clenched up again, remembering, and tried to keep from glaring.

  Up close, he was young, maybe only a little older than me. He was shorter than the other two, perhaps just a little taller than Babba, and nowhere near their pale, anemic look. Again, those dark eyes—not blue—glinted fiercely at me beneath a helmet hammered just a shade shallower than the others with their wide browridges. Something seemed off about him, like he didn’t quite fit with his taller, snowy-skinned, heavy-headed comrades.

  Without thinking, I spoke. “You’re a half-brow.”

  A mistake. The man’s face contorted in rage, his body stiffened, and he wrapped a hand around my throat.

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry. Y-You look half-human, that’s all.” I tried, but I couldn’t take the comment back for all my wishing. I hadn’t known it was a slur.

  “You ignorant island girl.”

  Babba struggled to break free of the two other men. “She’s a child—let her go.”

  The half-brow whipped around. “Get him out of here. We’ll make the girl do it.”

  Girl. At the pier, he’d called me “woman.” I tried not to let myself get distracted, I had bigger worries.

  The soldiers dragged Babba, still struggling, and tossed him out to where Mami and my sisters cowered in the rain. Beyond them, I could make out other families fleeing and shivering and hear the booming cries and stomping feet of soldiers. The invasion must’ve hit suddenly. We’d heard nothing, or maybe the rain had covered the sound.

  The half-human soldier hadn’t forgotten my loose tongue. No sooner was Babba outside than he towered over me, using his height to try to intimidate me. It worked. I shrunk from his glare. “Half-brow, eh? I’m more man than you’ve ever seen in this Nihil-forgotten backwater.”

  I hugged my arms to my chest, unable to meet his gaze, and swallowed again and again, as if I could take back my hateful words. Ignorant island girl, indeed. Me, who loved listening to the chatter on the piers but knew not to repeat the coarse language I heard there. My neck and ears felt impossibly hot.

  The soldier backed away, still redfaced, and muttered something in Fernai that the other men found funny. They gave low, grunting chuckles and kept looking me up and down in a way I didn’t like at all. The half-brow motioned toward our cupboard and said something to the guards, one of whom grabbed me by the arm and pushed me forward. The new guard was taller, blonder, and had a wicked leer I found even less appealing than the half-brow’s frown.

  This new man backed me into the cupboard door and pressed his body against mine. I cowered as the waterlogged, clammy leather of his armor dampened my clothes, metal rivets pressed into my chest where my heart suddenly battered my ribcage as if trying to break free. I glanced up into bemused blue eyes and felt tears form in my own. This man meant to harm me.

  The blond jerked back, yanked by the half-brow, who barked something unpleasant and then said in the common tongue, “Leave her be.”

  “Then why keep her here?” asked the blond one in a thick, rolling accent.

  The half-brow barely glanced my way. “She needs a lesson.”

  The blond shrugged. “Then we can all teach her.”

  I didn’t break eye contact with the half-brow. If I had any shot at mercy, it had to be him, but you don’t beg a mash cat not to eat you, and neither would I plead for my life or honor. I stayed as steady as my shot nerves would let me.

  The half-brow merely snarled. “Don’t sink to the level of these barbarians.”

  He said that last bit with a long, mean look down at me.


  Who was he calling a barbarian? His overgrown, blond comrade had just insinuated the most boorish, obscene thing possible. I scrunched up my face, willing my mouth to stay firmly shut. I knew I should feel relief that the half-brow had pulled the other man away. But I couldn’t stop trembling. Then the half-brow grabbed my shoulder and spun me toward the cupboard door. “What’s in there?”

  I instinctively reached for it when I felt him lean forward, not quite touching me. He took a long breath. My shoulder tingled beneath his hand. I had to keep myself calm. I had to think. I had to somehow plot and plan my way past this moment with this big, hairy, rain-soaked boy-man. I drew my arms back and wrapped them around myself again. He could open the cupboard himself.

  “You’ve nothing to fear if you’ve nothing to hide,” he said.

  “This is obscene,” I said. My voice came out in a hoarse whisper. “My father should be here.”

  He gave my shoulder a squeeze and leaned in close. “Don’t worry. I don’t take what’s not freely given.”

  I glanced over my shoulder at him and flashed him my worst not-impressed look, my brows furrowed and my lips pressed firm.

  “Then get out of our house,” I said.

  “Ah, there’s fight in you yet. Good to know. Now open the cupboard.”

  Furious, I reached for the cupboard, but only to brace myself. It fooled him just long enough for me to draw up my left leg. It came slamming down again, the hard heel of my sandal against the soft leather of his boot. He lurched back, cursing. Let him open that.

  One of the other soldiers barked something in Fernai. The half-brow didn’t answer and whipped me around, locking his eyes on mine. “You’re very lucky I’m so forgiving. But your luck is running out.”

  I turned, hiding my own thin, mean smile at my tiny victory, however fleeting. I’d survived how many forays into the wild? I could survive this overgrown bully. But I fumbled with the cupboard latch, aware of how close his body was to mine, as if the short space between us had become charged, like static, crackling with unspoken threats. The latch broke in my hand, and he reached over me and tugged it free from the cupboard door, which swung open with a squeak.