The Temple of Doubt

by Anne Boles Levy

  “You were going to tell me what happened,” I said.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  I didn’t budge. “Did you win against the demon?”

  “We’re all still here.”

  “So I’m alright? I can go home?”

  “Well, not yet. Maybe not at all. No one’s ever survived the way you did. All of this is new to us.”

  “Please, Azwan, I want to know if I’ll ever walk out that door again.” If he wanted me dead, I needed to know that, and I figured he’d never tell me outright. Azwan of Uncertainty, indeed. Uncertainties hovered around him, like a buzzing swarm of nettlesome questions that stung anyone who came close.

  S’ami drew a deep breath and shook his head. “Six days ago, I stood over what I’d hoped was your lifeless form. And now, here we are, all cozy and chatty. It’s touching, really. Even if you’re clearly not going to tell me what doubts you still harbor.”

  I must’ve won the challenge, because he began unwinding the entire story of what I’d missed, from the moment I’d entered the sanctuary and knelt, trembling, before the scrying mirror. More came back to me as he talked, until I thought I could see the amber light again, and I tensed, recalling the whine of the spinning egg.

  The Azwans and the high priest had rehearsed in advance, he said, and Nihil had described previous disembodied spirits to them. Though the egg-as-vessel was a new idea to them, they were ready when the time came. When I touched the shell, it released a fiery spray of sparks. Reyhim and the high priest saw only the explosion and not my fingertip tapping the shell. The fire had been hotter and far more intense than they’d predicted, but it shot straight at me, and that left them free for the spellcasting they’d planned.

  The three men had focused solely on the cloud of sparks. They cast spells to surround and contain it within a fraction of a moment. It had been doused, like any other flame. Not so much as a single glimmer of demonfire had reached me, as far as they could tell. Yet my fingertip tingled. Perhaps it was only my imagination.

  “All over with a flash and a fizzle,” S’ami said. “There were no signs of any other entity when I went to finish you.”

  I didn’t buy the friendly tone. “But you don’t know if I’m alright or not. I don’t get to go home, and my family doesn’t know whether to have any hope. Can’t you tell them?”

  “You’ve dropped all pretense of formality. I could almost like that from you.”

  “You’re going to watch me for signs of possession.”

  “Of course. And you’re going to tell me about why you doubt Nihil or perhaps me or the Temple or something. Maybe you doubt the weather. Something made you disobey my request, and I intend to find out what it is, sooner or later.”

  “Or you’ll kill me?”

  “Dropping formality is one thing. I’ll not tolerate impertinence. To think, I almost killed you on the spot that first day on the balcony, with that mouth of yours. A demon could be the least of your worries. Though if you’re possessed, there won’t be anything of you left to destroy.”

  Did he seriously believe I’d find that idea consoling? There’d be nothing left of me to destroy. How sweet. I had to set this man straight, impertinence or not. If he could hesitate even a moment before sending any more deathcasts my way, that would be something—something small, but not nothing. I had to risk it. Maybe this powerful man could stop hating me.

  “You’re the last person I’d disrespect, Azwan.”

  “And why is that?”

  I managed a smile. It was thin and tight and felt more than a little forced. “Anyone who’s willing to wade into the muck, shimmy up a tree, stare down the Gek, and then run like Nihil himself is after him while having enough wits to cast spells the whole time gets my flat-out, whole-hearted respect.”

  I discovered something else important about S’ami: he had a deep, full-throated laugh that he put his whole body into. My smile became more heartfelt and burst into a grin. He’d never been anything but open about my being expendable. If he was restraining himself from snuffing out my short life, I had to accept it, at least until I figured out a way to wriggle out of the Temple’s grip for good.

  “And may I risk one more act of impertinence?” I asked. I had to know just one more thing, something that had nagged at me from the moment I’d awakened. Had my entire ordeal been in vain? “There is a soldier who was sick. A Prince. Valeo, his name was.”

  S’ami’s face darkened. “I know the name, yes. You have some special concern about him?”

  His frown didn’t give me much hope. I swallowed hard and tried to ask, but all I could manage was a feeble “Did he make it?”

  S’ami turned away and murmured, as if unwilling to face me to give me the bad news. “Your tonic saved many lives, but not his. Forget him. You are the one in need of saving now, and to do that, you must relinquish your doubts.”

  Dead, then. I choked back a sob. Valeo had tried so hard to save me. He’d been so brave, even after all the trouble he’d caused my family. I’d wanted so desperately for him to be alright.

  He was the first man I’d ever had any real feelings about. Every other man in my life had been someone I’d known since birth, or they were strange sailors on the wharf, barely worth noticing except to smile at and admire from a distance. But Valeo had been in front of me, close enough for me to touch, and we’d stared down death together with the mash cat and again in the treetops. Wasn’t that supposed to mean something?

  S’ami kept talking about my doubts, but I turned to the wall, unable to think of anything but that last sight of Valeo in his cot, dying and delirious. He hadn’t even had a shred of privacy as I had in this tiny cell. He’d obsessed over my golden eyes and warned me of my city burning—which turned out to be nothing at all, just a final fever dream before he slipped away.

  “Hadara?” S’ami leaned over me. “You’re crying.”

  Indeed, I had crunched a big swathe of blanket into a ball, clutched beneath my chin, and it was already damp from tears. My voice came out raspy and thin. “He’s dead.”

  S’ami touched my shoulder, his tone softening. “There is much living yet to do, Hadara. You are young yet. You will find love someday—I promise.”

  Isn’t that the advice all adults give to people my age? What was I supposed to do, forget Valeo? Yes, of course, I’ll just put him out of mind like a pair of sandals I’d outgrown; how inconvenient to have to replace him. I seethed. How inconvenient that biting S’ami’s hand off wasn’t literally possible, since it’s what I felt like doing. Its presence on my shoulder wasn’t the least comforting. I had a sudden need for him to leave and to be alone.

  I sobbed uncontrollably and squeezed my eyes to shut out anything but that final image of Valeo, clutching my hand, his strength slipping away like sand.

  As if sensing my discomfort, S’ami withdrew with a backward glance and a last warning. “You’ll tell me your doubts, Hadara. You’ll have no choice. You’ve been forgiven your missteps so far, but you’ll come to me of your own accord before you wander much further. Of that, I have no doubts.”

  What if I stumble onto some other truth than yours, I wanted to say.

  But he was already gone.

  There’s no stronger curse than that cast by a broken heart.

  —Meridian proverb

  I had failed him.

  I had only one task, and I had failed. None of the stuff on the altar had ever mattered. Only the moonbloom tonic had, and I’d waited too long and done too little, and far too late.

  I had failed him, and he was dead.

  He was a prince, he was a soldier, he was brave; he never doubted himself or anything, ever. He was confident and strong and . . . and . . .

  He was his own person.

  He was independent and could come and go as he pleased, he knew what he was about, and he had radiated a certain authority, and not just with the muscles he could flex, though, yes, there was that, too.

  Had he lived, h
e never would be told to stay away from the places he loved, to marry someone his father chose, to choose a career that kept him mostly at home, to hide his hair and much of his body. I had envied him his ability to do his job well, without apology, having grown up hearing Mami beg forgiveness for every sachet of herbs or drop of tincture she’d ever sold.

  But even compared to other men, Valeo was alive in the world in a way I’d never seen. His gaze, his voice carried it, his stance, even when he stood in the rain, waiting half the day and into the night for me to do something so he could have an excuse to flex a little more of that power. My brain went around and around on that day, circling back to what he might’ve wanted, whether he was there by choice or under orders, and whether my grief was making too much of it. Instead, if I were being rational, I should see it as a symbol of our helplessness as the soldiers sacked a city that had always prayed for their protection. We were small and weak, and Valeo had been only the most visible reminder of how I had no power and never would.

  So maybe Leba Mara was right in accusing me of self-pity. She’d warned me a few days ago against sitting in my boxy cell of a room, which had forced me out into the main part of the sick ward. Beyond its doors lay Ward Sapphire and its sprawling compound, but I didn’t venture further than a bench along a far wall, watching all the people who would get up and walk out again in a way that Valeo never would. I don’t know how many times I sighed, but I didn’t wish to be seen crying. I didn’t want to explain, and I didn’t want to lie.

  I was only a patient here and had no role in helping anyone. So I sat. And I watched. And I kept thinking to myself:

  Why had I been spared?

  So many had died. Valeo, the best of any of them, had died. Why had a lowly girl, granddaughter of a heretic, proved unkillable?

  I didn’t know how to answer that. Who could say why?

  Nihil himself didn’t know; it had been out of his control.

  That was a dangerous thing to believe. But it wasn’t belief—the Azwans had as much as confessed it. It must be true.

  The Azwans, so casual in their hostility to each other, had let slip that Nihil cannot do anything he wishes.

  And that, I realized at long last, was a very dangerous thing for me to know.

  Greet each day as if today you might gain entrance to my Garden, and someday you may achieve it. Pray to me this way in a public place set aside for your exercise. Pray to me as if the work you do was my special blessing to you, and it shall be so.

  —from Oblations 6, The Book of Unease

  I managed to get myself to the dawn prayers the next day, my limbs going through the Dance of Life only stiffly and by rote. My lips couldn’t quite form the words to the meditation, even as my limbs warmed up, the muscles slowly uncoiling from too many days spent idle.

  I stood far to the back of the crowd, where I could be first inside the doors when prayers ended. My presence must be an open secret, as no one took their eyes off S’ami as he led the chanting and movements in the middle of the Ward’s central courtyard. I couldn’t imagine no one had seen me, even if Leba Mara had led me out a side door and through an alley.

  I wasn’t being hidden, but no one had said I could go home, either, though I’d gotten word that my parents knew I was well, or at least outwardly alright. Or at least there was nothing visibly wrong with me. But I hadn’t been allowed to send word to them. So I prayed to my flawed, imperfect god and kept my opinions to myself, and gulped greedily from the breezy, morning air. It was as if I hadn’t properly breathed in days, or ever, and my lungs needed to learn how to do this whole inflating process, and if I stopped thinking about inhaling and exhaling all the time, I’d suffocate on the spot.

  Finally, prayers ended, and I put my arms down from the final movements, my chest heaving. People milled around and past me, taking no notice. Maybe no one knew what I’d been through or what had happened on the altar. Maybe one day, everyone is told to evacuate the Ward, and the next day, they’re back. And no one knows why.

  So I let people elbow and bump past me, on their way to breakfast or work or home again, and smelled their sweat and breath and tried to remember what it was like to only think about gods and demons the way I was told to think about them.

  “It is time.”

  I glanced up at the sound of S’ami’s baritone voice, just steps away. He nodded at me. My lungs remembered their job, and I didn’t faint or even wheeze. My heart didn’t speed up, and my knees didn’t shake.

  Did the Temple no longer scare me?

  “Good workday, Worthy Azwan,” I said. It was something to say, at least.

  I thought he would lead me away, maybe back to my tiny room in the sick ward, but he let the courtyard empty as he continued to regard me. He was in the bright whites of his dawn prayer vestments, not the purple robes he would likely wear after breakfast and a bath. He looked like anyone else, maybe a dock worker or sailor or cook, except for the iron gaze that never waivered or gave any ground.

  When the last stragglers were too far away to overhear, S’ami cleared his throat.

  “It is time,” he said again.

  “Azwan?”

  “There are conditions.”

  There are likely always conditions, I thought. Whatever they were, I’d likely have no room to haggle. So I kept still.

  “Your parents may know what you remember of your trip to the altar,” he said, “as we don’t encourage children to keep secrets from parents. But this is not something you discuss with anyone else. We have said little, and we plan to say nothing else. Neither will you.”

  “Then I’m going home?” A small hope budded inside me.

  He nodded. “No one can think of a reason you shouldn’t.”

  Hope blossomed into an entire bouquet. I clasped my hands and grinned at him. “Thank you, Azwan.”

  He ignored me.

  “You will not brag about any favors the Temple bestows on you, or they will be swiftly revoked,” he said. “Remember the lesson of Bardusre.”

  I’d no idea which of Nihil’s wives she’d been, but likely Bardusre had come to a bad end. The lesson probably had something to do with remembering to act humble and grateful and utterly pliant. I’d probably fail at that sooner rather than later, but I could work at the not-bragging part. I might get the trick of it eventually. I nodded my assent.

  Favors, he had said. There’d be favors?

  “Good,” S’ami said. “Then we are done here.”

  “When can I go home?”

  And what kind of favors?

  “When we send for you.”

  “And when . . .”

  He cut me off.

  “Good workday, Hadara,” he said. “Be at peace.”

  Peace? What an unusual thing to say. I watched him go, puzzled.

  It was only after he’d turned a corner that I realized I’d started holding my breath again.

  He was right. I’d had plenty of quiet, but no peace.

  I exhaled, slowly and deliberately, and headed back to my room.

  Blessed are those who give and those who keep.

  —Nihil, from the Blessings of Keeping

  The sun was barely up when the Azwans and a contingent of guards escorted me home. I tried to enjoy the thump-thumping of Feroxi boots on the wooden planks and watched their plumes advance in front of me. Up, down, march, march. I pretended it was a parade and I was a hero. I wasn’t sure what I was any longer, and it wasn’t as if I felt free to ask. Reyhim’s head bobbed up and down as he plodded in front of me, and I pictured some of the neighborhood boys tossing it around for sport.

  Meanwhile, S’ami had given me “an insignificant little gift,” as he’d called it. This was like calling the fire in the swamp an insignificant little campfire. He’d given me a wholly breathtaking weave of spider-silk scarves trying to disguise itself as a dress. It covered everything it was supposed to, from elbows to mid-calf, with no skin showing, to be sure, but it clung in graceful ways I wasn’t use
d to, as if I’d grown a second skin, only more supple, though it perhaps cinched a little too broadly over my embarrassing shortage of bosom.

  Alright, I admit it; I couldn’t help reveling in its dozen eye-catching shades of orange and red, as if a sunrise had draped itself over my long torso. As with everything that came from the Temple, there was likely some price I would have to pay. Or maybe I had already paid it. And maybe I was being paraded like this because the Temple already owned me.

  I shunted these feelings aside. I’d earned this, hadn’t I? I felt like a Tengalian princess, only without the ability to snap my fingers and have the guards drag the Azwans to some well-deserved doom. Instead, I basked in the late summer sun and a fresh breeze off the canals that carried the perfume of ripened berries. It eased the ache in my heart a little. Not many people were around to see me, though. I passed empty hearths and open doorways. Maybe everyone was off at work or their daily chores, and that explained the quiet.

  As we got closer, however, I could hear a throng at my parents’ hearth. We turned the corner to people milling up and down my street, maybe three hundred or so—it was hard to count. Houses and hearths sported cloth streamers dyed blazing crimson, the Temple’s color, heralding a religious celebration. A red banner hung over my parents’ doorway with my name painted in gold letters in a sweeping calligraphy. I’d be getting my Keeping Day celebration after all.

  Reyhim nudged me. “Surprised?”

  I put my hands to my burning cheeks and nodded.

  S’ami fanned himself with a silk fan. “My idea.”

  Reyhim grunted his disapproval. “Nihil’s idea.”

  “I suggested it to him,” S’ami replied.

  I pretended I didn’t hear them.

  It looked like everyone I’d ever met had turned out to welcome me home. There were many I didn’t know. Some wore the deep blue robes of Ward Sapphire, others the jade uniform of the Customs House. I felt the honor deeply. I wanted my family to know I was alright—more than alright, and keeping my head aloft and my gaze steady around so many dignitaries was the least I could do for them.