By way of an answer, Babba gave me a squeeze. “We’re meant to feel doubt, as ever. Doubt like a damnable knife wound, like the stabbing my predecessor got.”
“But I went through so much.”
“And we owe them so much.”
“Don’t they owe us? Didn’t Reyhim say so?”
“Do they?” Babba searched my face. “Do they ever?”
I couldn’t answer that. My last semblance of dignity was crumbling. I’d kept it together all day, telling myself I’d bought us peace, that what had happened would be a benefit, a credit to my family, maybe my whole nation.
And here Babba was saying it would all go on, just as before, living day to day, waiting for the next banging at the door.
“I don’t understand how even this could be another failure on my part,” I said. “When I tried so hard.”
Babba sighed and rubbed his temples. “You mustn’t think that. I talked to one of the Azwans myself,” he said. “He said flattering things about you.”
“Which one?”
“The purple one.”
I had to chuckle at that. “Babba, you’re very drunk. Time for bed, I think.”
“Aah, see, you sound like your mother.” He grew thoughtful. “You know, there was no one to keep her when she was your age, and the Ward didn’t want her. Isn’t that the paradox? We want and don’t want the Temple to see us. Which is worse? Ah, but, this is the wine talking. She’s very happy for you.”
“Where is she?” I’d barely seen Mami all day. She’d been busier than I’d been, if that were possible.
He shrugged. “Out back with Leba Mara, working out the terms of your apprenticeship.”
“Apprent . . . I’m to be a healer?”
“Seems I don’t get to keep you after all.” He returned to his happy drunk look, and double-triple-moonlight beams of joy and pride radiated from him. “An apprentice healer! That’s my Dara.”
Me? A healer? My first thought: was I good enough for this? Healers were . . . well, they were extraordinary. Everyone loved them. They were allowed to get grubby and bloody—it was expected. And still they had more honor and accolades than anybody but priests.
Plus, they knew things. What kind of things? I don’t know, but surely it wasn’t which of Nihil’s wives plucked her lute left-handed, or whatever useless trivia school had taught. I would know what healers knew, and no one would laugh or roll their eyes.
I would know what happened to Valeo, and there would be no more like him, if I could help it. I owed him that, too, didn’t I?
Babba squeezed my mute, shocked self in a giant hug again and rocked me all around, until he had to stop himself from spinning, still grinning even through his wooziness. He cupped my chin in one hand.
“You’re happy, aren’t you?” he asked. “This is a big honor, Hadara—think of all you can do, and you know they don’t take many . . .”
I nodded dumbly, my eyes round as wine cups. Leba Mara must’ve been impressed with me that night at the sick ward. I had done something worthwhile, something helpful, and that meant more to me than any party. But still. The Temple. The Ward! “I don’t know how I feel.”
“It’s done. Told the purple one I was alright with it. More than alright. You’ll come home at night to stay with us. It’s a good compromise.”
“When did he ask?” I’d stay at home? What a relief not to live under the Ward’s roof.
“Just before he left. Told, by the way, not asked.” He shook his head. “If only this wasn’t the Temple asking. Ah, but, all the Temple gives us is both wondrous and terrifying. Why can we never have the first and not the latter?”
His meaning was lost on me, as all I heard was that the Azwans had wanted me to keep me after all. Leba Mara was doing as she was told. So much for impressing her.
Probably all those hints Reyhim dropped about Babba to the Merchants Guild came with a price, one that either of the Azwans could collect at any time.
I felt betrayed, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. Like my mother, I balanced on a knife’s edge when it came to the Temple. I loved the wild, but I was a kind person; I was outspoken, but did as I was told. I had a thick skull for theology, but I wanted to do what was right. What had I done? I’d trusted S’ami. He must’ve known what he was doing when he sent me dancing away. He wasn’t done with me. As a healer, the rest of my life would be played out under the Temple’s gaze.
Yet how could I ignore the fatherly pride that brimmed over in Babba, the sheer giddiness?
That decided it. I’d do whatever needed doing. I’d be the best pupil Leba Mara could ask for, even if it hadn’t been her idea.
Yes.
It had the ring of truth. Hadn’t I vowed back in the swamps with Mami that day that I’d never withhold my talent from anyone? Here was a chance to make good on it. I straightened my shoulders. Everything would be alright.
“We did it,” Babba said. He threw his arms wide and his head back. “We survived the whole damn lot. They threw everything they could at us, Dara, and we’re all here. All together.”
He plunked himself down on the table, squashing a half dozen of the courting notes, and rested his elbows on his knees. “Ought to be a man gets judged by how well he looks out for his family. And Nihil blast me to the Soul’s Forge and back if I didn’t think we were falling apart there. Didn’t know from one day to the next. You. Your mother. Amaniel and Rishi with that stuff the soldiers took.
“Worry a man onto an early pyre. Fetch me a drink, blossom. The cup’s sad when it’s empty.” He swirled it for emphasis.
I gingerly sat down next to him, being more careful of the fancy scrolls and their cheery ribbons. “You’ve had enough, Babba.”
That was true on so many levels, I thought.
“You’re going to take the job, of course.”
I smiled and spoke from the deepest part of my soul, though I wasn’t sure if Babba would notice my intensity as I took one of his hands in mine. “Of course. I won’t bring you any more shame, any more worry. I swear it. You’re done worrying on my behalf.”
I leaned over and kissed his temple, and he wrapped an arm around me and looked me straight in the eye. His gaze was suddenly serious and quite sober.
“I’ve never been anything but proud of you, you know?”
My eyes welled up again. “I can’t see why. It’s Amaniel . . .”
He shook his head and quietly shushed me. “I have three daughters, and only one is going to be a healer, yes? And only one deserves it.”
“But I worry . . .”
“. . . about being the best healer our little island’s ever seen.” He tweaked my chin between thumb and forefinger. “And that’s probably one of the last orders I can give you, until I arrange a marriage for you.”
I shook my head. “I told you, I’m not ready for that.”
Babba looked down at the squashed pile of scrolls. “Seems others disagree.”
“Oh, Babba, don’t you think all these men are being a bit mercenary?”
He shrugged. “Many men feel that way about the women who marry them, that it’s all about the man’s money and status. You’re lucky to have it the other way around.”
I didn’t feel lucky. I felt exhausted.
But sleep wasn’t going to come. Everyone else eventually filed off to bed, with so many more hugs and squeezes, I didn’t think my rib cage would ever recover. Long after Babba’s snoring drifted from my parents’ sleep loft, I crept outside to the hearth, wrapping a thin blanket around me.
There was one more language I had to see if I knew.
I scouted around the hearth, hoping Bugsy was there and not hiding beneath the house again. But she was curled up in a still-warm clay oven and woke instantly when I tapped on its side. There was no light but the moons, but the Gek have enviable night vision, and I knew she could see my fingers as they flew in greeting.
She sniffed me and croaked. “You smell different,” she said, or at least that’s
how my mind heard it.
Well, that answered my question. The Gek’s croaks were a language, and it was one I could understand. I told her as much.
She perked up at that and crept out of the oven then scampered over to a clear area and gazed at the stars. I sat on my haunches beside her and just watched, waiting for her to say something else. Finally, she pointed.
“That was you,” she said. “That empty spot there, between those two larger stars.”
I tried to follow her finger, but there were thousands of spots it could be. And what did she mean, that was me? She said it with such certainty, as if it were something she’d witnessed.
“When the star fell down to us, I asked if that meant the sky was missing one,” Bugsy said. “My mother and I climbed all the way to the top of the tallest tree one night to search for a hole between the stars. She said she couldn’t be sure that had been you, that sometimes stars twinkle and fade and then come back. But it didn’t come back, so I think that is where you were born.”
I searched her face before signaling back to her. “I was born here, Bugsy. My own mother will swear to it.”
I couldn’t get her to look at my hands. She was deaf to me, her eyes trained on the sky. “You are the star. You will unmake what the Nothing Man has ruined.”
I shook my head, but how could I translate what I was thinking and feeling into clumsy hand signals? I didn’t want to unmake. I wanted to do—to heal and help and comfort. Unmaking sounded dangerous and wild, and taking on Nihil—for who else could she mean—didn’t sound wise. My father had only just set aside his anger and fear long enough to say he was proud of me. My mother had at last found the right balance between avoiding and obeying the Temple. I was the key to my family’s safety and even their honor, as odd and unexpected as that seemed.
And I had returned home with some new power I couldn’t explain. After thinking and fretting about it all night, I realized I’d been glad to know what the soldiers were saying, all the more so because of their crudeness. I was too fascinated to be afraid of hearing people’s languages, whether they wanted to be understood or not. Was that an ugly thing to admit? I wasn’t sure. Bugsy believed my soul held a speck of a star, and S’ami kept examining me for some remnant of a demon. Maybe I was something of both, and maybe we are all part of some great constellation, a mix of night and fire, of inexplicable darkness and unruly light.
I tilted my head back as far as it would go, searching again for the empty space that Bugsy insisted was there. Finally, after much more pointing and directing, I thought I’d found it.
Bugsy’s gap rested deep within the Wisdom Knot, with its intricate, swirling layers of stars within bands of stars, tangled and twisted, bright with possibility. The Wisdom Knot, reminder of lessons learned, guide to all who seek to repair what they’ve ruined, a beacon to light the way out of despair.
The Gek kept her eyes on what she insisted was missing, and I kept mine on everything else, and we both stared up at the brilliant night sky for a long, long time.
THE TEMPLE OF DOUBT
PRONUNCIATION KEY
Amaniel ah-MAN-yell
Hadara Ha-DA-rah
Lia LEE-ah
Nihil NIH-hill
Reyhim ray-HEEM
Rimonil ree-moe-NEEL
Rishiel RIH-shee-ell
S’ami SAH-mee
Valeo vah-LAY-oh
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
An influenza bug in late 1999 kept me bedridden for a week, long enough to work out the premise and most of the plot for what would become this series. Thanks, germs! In some alternate universe where viruses are sentient, there is a DNA strand that is shrugging right now.
My patient, long-suffering husband, Brett, has lived with the entire population of Kuldor for fifteen years and counting, and still puts up with them—and me. He is my hero, and I’m his unexpected plot twist.
My two children have shared me with a bunch of imaginary people their entire lives and have almost forgiven me for not including any dragons in this story, or at least a kitten.
The incomparable Bruce McAllister coached, coaxed, and cajoled me into being a better writer and saner person.
No matter how many incarnations Nihil & Company went through, my writing group patiently helped me separate wheat from chaff. Big, weepy hugs go to Tanita Davis, Sarah Jamila Stevenson, Sara Lewis Holmes, Kelly Herold, Jennifer March Soloway, Yat-Yee Chong, and several other members who’ve given me sage advice and a virtual shoulder to cry on.
My agent, Regina Brooks, plucked me from obscurity and helped turn my raw manuscript into something polished and saleable. Her infectious enthusiasm for this book and her army of awesome staffers helped assuage my own temple of doubts.
My editor at Skyhorse, Nicole Frail, took a chance when so many others would not, and the English language has not enough words with which to thank her. Also to Rain Saukus, for his work on the cover art; Adrienne Szpyrka, for her assistance on first and last read-throughs; and everyone else at the Sky Pony Press imprint.
My four brothers and their wives are the best people I know, and they’re all still speaking to me, which is kind of a nice surprise. In particular, Howard and Melanie Schloss gave needed support way back when, for which I’m still indebted.
Somewhere out there is Pam Noles, who told me my first draft sucked and was very explicit about why. I’m sorry, Pam, wherever you are. If this version is any better, it’s because I listened.
COMING SPRING 2016 . . .
THE
WELL
OF
PRAYERS
Book II of The Temple of Doubt series
Your soul must come to me, clean and unblemished, purged by fire of sin and fleshly weakness. From the fire shall your soul be released, and your ashes scattered that your sins do not stick to one place and curse it.
—From Oblations 3, The Book of Unease
It was my task to clean up after the drunks, sobered by having their heads split open, who huddled in corners, puking, looking unsure how they’d gotten there. A mop became my best friend as I swabbed away piss and blood and worse things. The gore wasn’t much different than the muck and mires I’d once waded through, and a mop handle was lighter than an herb basket. I threw myself into my job, the more mindless the better, happy for any distraction.
It’d been a fortnight since I’d begun my apprenticeship as a healer for Ward Sapphire, reporting each morning to the main room of the sick ward, which consisted of two large rooms, one lined with benches for people who could be healed immediately and one with cots for those who couldn’t. By breakfast, the rows had already filled with the woozy and the wounded. They looked more fidgety and anxious than usual that morning, with everyone glancing around suspiciously, even narrowing their gaze at others, as if they’d each appointed themselves magistrate over others’ misfortunes, and were sitting in judgment over every clot or bruise.
Today had begun as always: bandages needed rolling, bedpans needed cleaning. There were sheets to lug to the laundry and rows of cots to make up, with blanket corners folded and tucked. A healer would inspect my work, rip out the neat little “y” at the bed corners, and make me start over. But there was a new tension in the air, a terseness with the way healers snapped orders, even at patients.
Healer Mistress Leba Mara, a big woman with a voice to match, worked the line herself, her sturdy frame squeezing between the rows, using magical incantations to heal cracked ribs and the shallower stab wounds. I hated to watch the spellcasting: it created a jarring shock of electricity that fizzed in the air that only I could see and a metallic taste that only I could sense. It was one of many secrets I kept, and one more reason I should’ve kept my head down and bent on minor tasks. But I never could. I was always looking up and butting in. I didn’t aspire to be an orderly, after all. I wanted to do what Leba Mara and the other healers did—but without all the irritating magic.
All I had to do was figure out a way.
Leba Mara did tria
ge as she went, sending the severely injured inside to a cot, with me following along to sop up any trail of blood. Orderlies carried them to and fro on stretchers that never looked empty. I hustled from one room to the next, darting around busy people, my hands trembling only partly from fatigue.
There had to be a way. All this magic—it belonged to Nihil, and it should’ve stayed with him.
“You should do me first,” a shopkeeper shouted out, waving his swollen and obviously broken wrist. “I’m the only one who’s legitimate.”
He cradled the injured wrist in his good hand as Leba Mara gave him a disapproving up-down glance.
“Well, it’s true,” he persisted, his haughty air crumbling into a working class accent. “I just got mine’s with a fall. Tripped over my own clumsy feet, is all. These others . . . huh. Guards had to drag ’em out of doorways and knock ’em sober. They’re pyre fuel for sure.”
I had to wedge myself between a suddenly very awake and angry drunk and the shopkeeper. I got a face full of stale, boozy breath and my smock became dotted with blood as the man wobbled into me. I propped him back up, but he swayed like a buoy at high tide, making me dizzy, too. This too was part of my job.
“Tripped and fell, by Nihil’s scrawny buttocks, you did,” the drunk man said, waving his fists. “The guards was settling accounts with you again, wasn’t they?”
Leba Mara cut in with a harsh, “Gentlemen!”
“Don’t know what you’re saying, you souse,” said the shopkeeper. “Sober up and shut up.”
But the drunk wasn’t letting up and shouted past my shoulder at the other man. “Tipping your scales again? We’ll see who ends up in an ash heap.”
An orderly and I ended up pinning the drunk’s arms to his side and walking him back to a bench while Leba Mara held a meaty hand over the shopkeeper’s mouth.
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