by Vox Day
There was only one option left to her. It might be wrong, it was almost surely wrong, but she couldn’t think of anything else and she couldn’t bear to wait any longer. She rose from the divan on which she had been lying and walked across the room to a little table upon which was set a little silver bell. She picked it up and flicked her wrist; it produced a clear and distinct ring that was audibly different from the bells belonging to the other members of the family.
Eudiss appeared quickly enough that she must have been either waiting in the corridor outside or simply happened to be walking by. “My lady,” she said softly as she entered the room, her eyes fixed firmly on the floor.
Eudiss was a tall young woman with dark, reddish skin and black hair that was long and straight, but needed a brushing. More handsome than pretty, she moved with all the lack of grace of a newborn colt, but she was both kind and close-mouthed, two attributes which set her apart from the rest of the estate staff. She was two years older than Severa. Severa had claimed the woman for her own due to her ability to guard her tongue, much to the irritation of the other servant girls who obviously believed Eudiss to be better suited to the kitchens or the cleaning staff.
There was another reason why Severa preferred Eudiss, though. Unlike most the local Salventians, who were staunch members in good standing with the Church, Eudiss was the daughter of a slave who had been brought to Salventum from Illyris Baara, and she wore three earrings in both her ears. In Amorr, Severa had heard many whispers about women who did not worship the Immaculate, or even God Himself, but secretly worshipped a goddess instead. She had not really credited the stories at the time, since they sounded too farfetched to be true, but supposedly, three earrings was the symbol of the goddess.
“Close the door,” Severa ordered, and the young woman complied. “I have a question for you.”
“I will answer it, if I can, my lady.”
You don’t worship the Immaculate, do you?”
Eudiss’s eyes widened with instant alarm. “No, no, my lady. I am clean! I am pure, like a good Amorran.”
“Don’t be afraid. I saw your earrings. They signify the Three, don’t they? It’s okay, I’m not going to tell anyone.” Severa walked over to Eudiss and placed her hand on the other woman’s shoulder. It was bony and trembling with fear. “You have nothing to fear from me. I need to find a wise woman, a woman who knows the secrets of the moonblood. I imagine there must be a woman like that around here somewhere, in one of the villages.”
“Is…is my lady with child?” Eudiss asked nervously.
Severa stepped back and covered her mouth with her hand, shocked. “No, of course not!”
“Oh, I thought…well, there is a woman in the village of Seijiss who knows many things. Many secret things. She is wise, perhaps she is the one you seek?” As she spoke, Eudiss ran her first finger lightly along the line of her left ear, touching each of the three earrings in turn.
One, two three. Maiden, Mother, Crone. Yes, that was exactly what she sought.
“What is Seijiss? Is it far? Can you take me to there?”
“It is the next village to the east. It’s not a long walk.”
“Even less if we ride.”
“It would be better if we walk. I could take you to where she lives, my lady. But I do not know if she is there today.” Eudiss shrugged, her eyes still fixated. “Also, I fear it might not be wise for the daughter of Severus Patronus to be seen visiting her house. It would be the subject of much conversation, here in the house and in the town too. People would…assume things of you. But if you were to give me a token of your desire to speak with her, I am sure she would arrange to meet you in a more discreet manner.”
“Yes, of course,” Severa agreed reluctantly. There were times when being a patrician’s daughter felt like being trapped in a gilded prison. Everything thing one did or said was an object of interest to someone. Even if they had no legitimate interest in her, it might be a weapon against her father, or someone else in the family. If she had learned anything from her sudden removal to Salventum, it was that she could not be too cautious.
“What sort of token would you recommend? I would have her understand that it is important. Urgent, even.”
Eudiss nodded. “If you had need of her services, I would suggest a coin. Silver, not copper. But since you speak of secrets, and wisdom, then I think jewelry would be the better choice.”
Severa smiled. Of course. It only made sense. She went to her jewelry box, a yellow-white square said to have been carved from a unicorn’s horn, and withdrew two golden hoops, small, but thick. But when she extended her hand to Eudiss and offered them to her, the young woman withdrew in alarm.
“Gold, my lady? If you are not with child, then surely your need is not so dire!”
Severa wanted to slap the woman. My need is more dire than you could ever imagine, you country cow! But she held her tongue and smiled sweetly instead. “Let us say I wish the wise woman to understand that I am very serious about my desire to speak with her.”
Eudiss could not take her eyes off the earrings. She had not moved to touch them. “Only one, for now, perhaps. I will tell her that you will present her with the other when you meet.”
“Very well. If you are certain that will not offend her.”
The servant woman laughed. There was a note of near-hysteria in it. “I promise you, she will not be offended, my lady. Seijiss is a poor village, and although many have need of her, few have much to give her in return.”
“Then go,” Severa ordered after the woman finally reached out and delicately took one of the little hoops in her long fingers. “Go now, and if anyone stops you, tell them you are on an important errand for the Lady Decia. For my lady mother, mind you, not me. And tell your wise woman she shall have both its match and a silver coin when I speak with her. But before you go, tell me, what is her name?”
“She is called Idemeta, my lady. Idemeta Venfica. I shall return as soon as I can.” Eudiss nearly ran from the room.
Idemeta, mused Severa. Idemeta the witch. That sounded promising indeed, although it was a pity she was already so well known in the nearby villages. She would have to create an excuse to see the woman on a regular basis, and one that didn’t cause her father, or as was much more likely the case, her mother, to suspect she was stealing off to see another young man.
Three days later, Severa was on her knees, pretending to pray before the shrine of Saint Malachus, the patron saint of Salventum. According to the garrulous sister of the order which was nominally charged with maintaining the shrine, long before the fall of the Andronican kings, long before the imperial conquests of the Sacred Republic that followed, Saint Malachus had been tortured for thirty-nine days and nights by the pagan king of Salventum. On the fortieth day, he had died of his multitude of wounds, but not before inspiring the Salventian king, who was duly impressed by the saint’s boundless courage, to cleanse his soul.
As was so often the case in those simpler times, as the king worshipped, so too had his people to worship. Now the Salventians were as reliably immaculate as the Amorrans themselves. Indeed, much more rigidly so, from what little Severa had seen of them thus far.
The paint on the small statue at the shrine was faded and flaking away, but the stone face underneath still revealed a calmly stoic expression. It was a face to inspire bravery, and the thought encouraged her, even if Saint Malachus himself might not look any more favorably on her less-than-immaculate intentions than her mother or her father. But she was determined even so. She bowed her head and prayed—neither to the saint nor his God, but to the mysterious goddess of the three earrings.
Bless me with love and beauty, Maiden. Grant me my heart’s desire, Madonna. Teach me your secret wisdom, Crone. And please, please, tell me that he lives. Tell me that he loves me still!
“The sisters say he was one of us in the end.”
A voice behind her stirred her from her prayers, which had subsided into a wordless wave of tears a
nd hope and longing. Severa wiped at her eyes and turned her head. Behind her, in the dim light, she saw a small, hooded figure wearing a simple brown robe. Judging by the sound of her voice and the shape of the robe, it was an elderly woman, stooped with age. Could it be Idemeta Venfica?
“The sisters?” she asked, unsure of whether she should ask the old woman if she was Idemeta.
“The sisters.” The woman drew back the left side of her hood, and Severa saw that her hair was white and she wore three earrings in her left ear. Severa’s heart beat faster when she noticed that the bottom one was the hoop she had given Eudiss two days before. The woman gripped the unpainted stone of the creche and carefully lowered herself to her knees. She raised her face to the saint and her hood fell back, revealing wrinkled, desiccated features and thin white hair, streaked here and there with grey. Her lips were thin and colorless, her jaw was strong and masculine, but her eyes were unfilmed despite her age.
“The last of his wounds, the one that killed him, was when King Egnacias had him gelded. In some older versions of the tale, the king ordered him used as a woman as well. That is why you will see the cult of Saint Malachus established in places very far from Salventum. He is she, and she is we. Thus the goddess hides us in plain sight, behind the mask of a man of their god.”
“This is a shrine to the goddess?” Severa asked, startled.
“This is a shrine to Saint Malachus. Everyone knows that. Perhaps it is something more for those with the eyes to see. But first, the sisters wish to know why the daughter of Severus Patronus seeks out the goddess. Are you not cleansed? Are you not purified by the Immaculate? By what right do you seek access to the secret mysteries?”
It was a question Severa had been considering herself for the last two nights. “The priests tell me I am cleansed, but I do not feel clean. They tell me I am purified, and yet my heart is full of shame. But I am a woman. I claim the secret mysteries by my womanhood.”
The old woman shook her head. “It is an answer, but not a sufficient one. Do you bleed?”
“Do I bleed? Of course—” Severa cut herself short. The woman was telling her something. Of course merely being a woman wasn’t enough. “I claim the secret mysteries of the goddess by the blood the moons call from me.”
The woman nodded and grunted as she pushed herself back to her feet. She nodded stiffly to the statue, then beckoned to Severa. “I have something to show you.”
Severa felt a little silly, but she imitated the woman’s gesture and bowed before the saint’s impassive, particolored face. She followed the old woman as she shuffled down a narrow brick passage that was lit by a single torch flickering in its sconce. It led to a room that was barely better lit than the passageway, an unadorned chamber with a brick floor and crumbling stucco exposing the bricks beneath it. In the middle of a room was a strange bronze contraption, a metal disk supported by a wooden tripod. On its rim, each of the 22 letters of the alphabet were inscribed.
“Can you read?” the woman asked her. Severa nodded. “You have a question for me.”
“How did you know?” Severa stared at her, astonished.
The woman only shook her head and made a wheezing noise that Severa didn’t immediately recognize as laughter.
“Few come to me without questions. They say you were brought here because you took a lover and were discovered. You want to know if he loves you still?”
“I did not take a lover!” Severa protested, stung by the unfairness of the stigma.
“But you would have, had your family not prevented you, yes?” The woman wheezed and shook her head again. “I have eyes, girl. You may be a maiden yet, but your body betrays you. Those ripe young curves are itching to be taken and conquered, to be mounted and ridden. That is the way of the goddess, and you will fight her in vain. She is stronger than parents, stronger than patricians, stronger even than great men such as Severus Patronus. For the journey to reach its end, every step along the way must be taken in its time. The Maiden must be loved by men before she can become the Mother.”
The old woman withdrew a long thread from her bodice and muttered something Severa couldn’t understand as she ran her thumb and forefinger along its length. “Give me your ring,” she demanded unexpectedly.
Severa reluctantly complied; it took some effort to work the simple gold ring adorned with a single amethyst off her finger.
But the woman didn’t pocket the ring or slip it on, as Severa half-expected. Instead, she slipped the thread through the ring and held it suspended over the etched bronze disk.
“Your lover. What was his name?”
“Clusius. Silicus Clusius.”
The witch, for Severa was now convinced the old woman had to be Idemeta Venfica, began to chant in a tongue that was not Amorran. It sounded similar. She could almost understand a few words, but it sounded crude and rough. She wondered if it might be the original tongue of the Utruccans and reminded herself to ask Father or one of his scribes about it.
Then she gasped. The ring was swinging, somewhat like a pendulum, but in a pattern that was anything but natural. It leaped from one letter to the next. As she watched, it indicated the letters r and t, then u twice, followed by an s.
It didn’t make any sense to her, but the old woman dowsing the letters seemed to understand it. “How?” the old woman hissed. “Tell me how, in the name of the Crone—the goddess requires it!”
The ring moved from letter to letter, beginning with the letter c and spelling out the word cruentes. Severa stifled a cry. She suddenly knew what she had missed at the beginning of the first word. As tears began to run from her eyes, she watched as the last word was spelled. Sands. The answer to the witch’s question wasbloody sands and the first word had been mortuus. Dead.
Clusius was dead now, slain on the very sands on which he had triumphed so many times. It could have been an accident, it could have simply been that the beautiful young man who had awoken her heart finally encountered a more deadly opponent. But she doubted it. Her father could have arranged Clusius’s murder in a hundred ways. There were a thousand stories about murders in the arena, from poisoned weapons that killed with a scratch to soporific seasonings that slowed a fighter’s reactions just enough to make him vulnerable.
She was suddenly angry. Very angry.
The crone could see the rage in her eyes.
“My lady, I am sorry. Do not be angry with me!”
“I am not angry with you,” Severa said, staring past the woman, staring past the walls, and seeing nothing but the cold expression on her father’s face the night he’d caught her slipping out of the house. “You said the goddess is stronger than men, even men such as my father?”
“She is, my lady. She is indeed.”
Severa took a deep, deep breath. With it, she could almost feel the hate and anger penetrating down to the very depths of her soul, burning the last vestiges of her innocence from her.
“Then you must teach me, Idemeta Venfica. You must teach me of the goddess!”
The old woman sat back and looked deeply into her eyes. Then she looked away, as if she did not like what she saw there. “If the goddess calls you, Severa, it is not for me to deny you. But I can only teach you a little, for you will not be here in Salventum for long. You must find a teacher in Amorr.”
“There are those who worship the goddess in Amorr?” Severa found it hard to believe. It was forbidden to worship the old gods, forbidden on the pain of death for man, woman, or child.
The old woman smiled, exposing gums that were missing more teeth than remained. “There are those who worship the goddess everywhere, daughter of Severus Patronus. The goddess is older than your city, older than your Sanctiff, older even than your religion. If you wish, I will put the mark on you, and in her time, the goddess will come. But you must be certain, girl, because come she will, whether you later wish it or not.”
Severa stared at the old woman, knowing she was standing on the very edge of a precipice, at the brink of a
new dawn that could change her life forever. She thought of her father, of her family, of her tall, fierce brothers and her innocent little sister. She could turn and walk away now, and her life would go on as before, the comfortable life of a patrician’s daughter, a patrician’s wife, a patrician’s mother. Then she thought of a beautiful boy and a brilliant smile, and a red token wrapped around his wrist. He was dead now, murdered, and all because she was powerless to resist, helpless, and entirely in the dark about the invisible hand that had struck him down. The invisible hand of her father.
“Let her come, Old Woman,” she hissed angrily. “Give me the mark, and let her come!”
CORVUS
They had made excellent time, all things considered, thought Corvus as he and Saturnius approached the bridge over the river that separated the Republic of Amorr from the vast empire over which it ruled. They had left most of the twenty guards who had accompanied them the day before, freeing them to separate and visit their families, which were settled in Vallyrium. The two who lacked families, and the two whose families lived in the city, were following a few lengths behind where they could talk freely without concern for their officers overhearing. Saturnius had initially balked at abandoning most of their honor guard, but he’d withdrawn his objections when Corvus had pointed out that no brigand would attempt to interfere with six armed men wearing legionary cloaks within a day’s ride of Amorr.
He was more eager than ever to see Romilia but reluctantly concluded that it was Magnus to whom they must go first. Corvus didn’t relish delivering the bones that were presently stowed away on the back of one of their two pack horses. But over the course of their travels he had convinced himself that Magnus would be inclined to receive the news as a proper stoic should. Did he not pride himself on his equanimity? The guards at the bridge tower recognized their rank and saluted as he and Saturnius passed. One of them must have been acquainted with one of the legionaries, as a series of glad cries erupted behind them.