by Lisa Daniels
“Hmm,” the man said, now unfolding his arms and stepping forward. Beginning that sinister, circling movement she'd seen happen to the other women. Like he was sniffing her out. “I'm inclined to agree. But what hope is there in a world taken over by darkness? When the only thing we have left is our own light, which is but a pale imitation of what existed before?” He stopped close, the mask now leering over her shoulder from the back. She resisted the urge to slap at him and remained as still as possible, though her knee jerked of its own accord.
“Well, for a start, we could try to figure out how it happened,” Kiara said. “Combine all the lightweavers together, make a new sun, or locate the old one, if it's so important.”
At this, the god laughed. A low, incredulous chuckle, which made Kiara's cheeks flush. “You think we can just locate the sun, like it hasn't been taken from the sky?”
“Sure,” Kiara said. “But it's not like we need it, is it? We seem to live just fine. Don't know what all the fuss is, with the world ending. Last time I checked, world's still turning, and we're still living.”
“You may be right about that, Fjorn princess.” He prowled in front of her, giving her more time to inspect his fine form. He did have a rather interesting scent to his body, a kind of heady aroma that made her take in deeper breaths. She also had that prey feeling, like this man deliberately hunted her, and now sought her weaknesses, for a way to drag her down to the ground.
She hated that feeling, and it made her stand taller. Admittedly, that wasn't a whole lot of height to stand for, but she refused to be cowed. “What's the big deal with you and your masks, anyway? Why not just walk around with normal faces like normal people?”
“A custom,” the man replied. “Perhaps an outdated one, but one that many Highborn cling to, and many Kanthians swear by. Structure. Society. We need rules. We need our customs. They make us who we are.”
Kiara sighed. “That's stupid. Customs don't make a human.”
“No. But they do make a society, for a select group to fit in with, to feel kinship...” The man's hand reached out for her. It appeared tanned, smooth, without a single blemish. She moved away from the touch, and his hand stopped, before he nodded. “Most of the women we get from other places, for those who wish to spy into our culture, learn our secrets as to how we fend off the night hordes so effectively—their women are shy and demure. You appear to be ill-trained.”
She pursed her lips, throat now tight. “Thanks for that observation. But not every woman on this planet can be a docile mouse. Some of us have better things to do. I don't even want to be here, but my dear father decided it best to send me off.”
Again, the man chuckled. “I see. Well... my name is Mordred. You might see some more of me. But I must depart now.”
“Wait. What? Already? You've barely spoken to me for a minute!”
Mordred ignored her protests, and he moved off, now threading himself through the crowd that Kiara could see. Some women preened themselves, trying to stand out as much as possible, and they had several masked gods taking an interest in them.
Few took an interest in Kiara. She did get more prowlers, however. Unlike Mordred, they prowled in silence, with black and gray and gold masks, sometimes brushing close by so that their snouts touched her clothes, other times gliding a hand over her skin. It bothered Kiara, though they didn't touch any sensitive regions, like her breasts, rear, and between her legs. They always went for the arm or her upper back.
Kiara also seemed to be the only one finding this uncomfortable. The other women positively shivered if one of the gods touched them, as if it was the greatest honor bestowed upon their worthless lives.
Vasha sought out Kiara again—the blonde-haired woman didn't get any of these “gods” stalking her. Kiara wondered why. “So, I see you've garnered some interest for yourself,” Vasha said, smiling rather smugly. “Which is quite the miracle, considering you're doing absolutely nothing to attract people to you.” She indicated one of the Highborn women, who was now tearing off the outer layers of her dress to reveal little more than a night shift underneath. Kiara found herself blushing at the wanton display of flesh.
Obviously, in her final consummation, she was fully expected to strip down and please whatever man she ended up with. She just preferred not going to that stage in her mind. One of the gods reached to the near-naked woman, and she thrust her chest towards him, forcing him to touch her there. With this encouragement, he moved closer, that masked face draped over her shoulder, hands roaming.
“Oh, please don't tell me they're going to have sex in front of everyone!” Kiara exclaimed, her face burning.
“They won't! They won't!” Vasha laughed at Kiara's embarrassment. “But they might end up taking it somewhere else if they act like that. It won't make for a good relationship, though. Some of the women are always mistaken like that, thinking all they need to do is show off some flesh, and they'll get their god. What actually happens is that they'll get the wrong sort of suitor. One that doesn't know how to respect someone, who sees us as little more than baby carriers. So I pity that one.” Vasha shook her head. “Even our gods are flawed. Some are here for the hunt and the thrill, and not because they intend to settle down, like they should.”
“One of them gave me a name and a few sentences,” Kiara said, realizing that none of the others who stalked her had held much of a conversation.
“Oh! Lucky you.” Vasha nodded at her with a big smile. “Looks like you have got someone interested. The gods don't usually hand out their names unless they're seriously considering you.”
“Wonderful, I guess.” Kiara's lips wrinkled like a prune. Vasha acted delighted about this fact, but Kiara didn't feel the same—mostly because she didn't want to end up hitched to anyone. Except, well, she was here for her country. Here because they sent her over Bethany, for some absurd reason. Bethany was the one with the correct training. Kiara was more likely the one who got herself executed for accidentally disregarding some culture's sacred laws or something.
She took in everything. The circling wolf mask wearers, the peacock dressed women, and the distant song of one of the women as she went onto stage to sing. Not a powerful enough voice to carry. “Is it like this all the time?” she asked. “You just all gather here and... have the mask people circle around?”
“Not always. The gods tend to visit the court about one week out of every month. Depending on how many of them are around and single. Highborn men will be there otherwise. So it's always cause for excitement when it's that time of the month again.”
Kiara stifled a snort, before nodding sagely. “There seems to be a lot of gods. I count about eight. Why so many?”
“Oh, there's more of them. But I guess they've had a pretty lonely year...” Vasha grinned.
Still taking advantage of the fact Kiara finally had a woman who could talk directly to her without dissolving into a blubbering mess of fear for having her tongue cut out, she asked, “Why isn't anyone going for you? Do you have someone?”
At this, Vasha's eyes clouded over. Her body language became tight, defensive. “No. I don't have anyone. But I'm also... not interested. I come here a lot. Most people know by now that I'm not here for the courting.” Her expression recovering a little, she leaned over in a conspiratorial way. “We have to collect gossip somehow. It's better than sitting around at home doing nothing.” She waved at a small group of women who waved back.
“You could visit the city or those creepy glowing swamps or another city,” Kiara said. She wondered what had bothered Vasha so much. Had she lost someone? Did she think herself unlovable? Some women did. They lamented about that issue for weeks, never doing anything active to change the outcome. Vasha didn't seem like someone who went and sulked in a corner about the miseries of life, but Kiara couldn't know for sure. Not without some more time spent with her.
“Oh, no, dear. I wouldn't want to go to a barbarian city. I have everything I need right here, thank you very much!”
The Tarngol were said to be a low-tech, savage human civilization that relied exclusively on conquering foreign nations and pillaging their light to survive. Even with the world plunged into near absolute darkness, people squabbled and caused unnecessary tensions, just like in the past.
Part of that threat was what propelled Father to try and make an alliance with Kanthus for months. The kingdom was notoriously rejecting of outsiders, perhaps trading a little, but otherwise keeping themselves aloof. He offered his daughter to cement a trade. And although the ambassador acted like her being here was a great thing, she didn't feel like she was a great thing.
Just a person at the court, watching as the men stalked her. No special ceremony arranged for her to go into marriage. So did these Kanthians not take the idea of an alliance seriously?
A bell rang through the court, and people instantly started heading for the exits. “Time to go,” Vasha said. “You'll be here tomorrow, right?”
“Wait. It's ending already?”
“Yes. The gardeners need to tend the biomes, make sure everything's healthy. We can't hang around them all night.”
Inwardly, Kiara sighed, though she tried not to show her discomfort too obviously. Why couldn't they just do things normally? Why all this pointless ritual?
She found herself hating Kanthus when she went through the exits, making her way to her rooms. Winifred met her about halfway, but again, the servant didn't talk to her, leaving Kiara bored and lonely.
Inside her grand quarters with the shimmering lights, she undressed herself, ate something that the servants had brought, some kind of flatbread to dip in a sweet sauce, drank, then fast curled up into bed.
There, she thought about home, about everything she'd left behind. She thought about the times spent in the forest, of the children she used to play with in the streets, of taking amusement in the fact that everyone thought her such a tearaway.
She also remembered the way her sister Bethany comforted her, helped her mind to settle at night by reading to her. Kiara could barely sleep without something going on in the background, to lull her, like music or a voice.
The long journey, the rough ground, the constant knowledge that she had lost everything forever, now made Kiara bury her face into the pillows and cry.
Chapter Three
One day of being avoided by servants led Kiara close to apoplexy. Without someone to talk to, and without really knowing where any of the other Highborn were, it left her chomping at the bit, wanting something, anything to take her out of this. She tried asking the servants about where to find Vasha, but they flushed and didn't say anything, until Winifred admitted, in that infuriating, roundabout way of not really addressing her, that she wasn't allowed to leave until she had been chosen by a god.
Which meant—if they didn't select her within this week, she'd need to wait another month. A month of not talking to people, of being confined to a small section of a big city.
No way. The mere thought made her boil with rage, and she could barely wait until they took her to the Dome of Delights again the next evening. Well, she supposed she could talk to the other women in the domes every evening, except she didn't know how friendly the others were—plus there was a chance the palace guards wouldn't let her go unless the gods were there.
The longest she sat still was to ink a letter to her sister. Several letters, actually, since she crinkled up the first four. All of them contained some degree of pleading, of asking to be taken out of here. None of them matched the tone she knew should be sent to her sister. One that feigned calm and a cautious happiness, that showed things proceeded as hoped, and their alliance would be secure.
In the end, Kiara didn't bother with anything, not fully trusting the security of Kanthus to not open up the letter and read through the contents. They probably needed to check that she wasn't inciting rebellion or something. Might be a nice idea for this place and some of the crazy that influenced it. They were so wasteful with their light, their colors. They overdressed for everything, and spoke of heathen gods. Shapeshifters who had taken on a quality of the night hordes themselves for their own purposes.
Her second time at the court went easier. Vasha again sought her out, and Kiara understood now that for Vasha, she was exciting and new in a lifetime of attending the domes and never being chosen—though that seemed to be by active choice.
“I just find it so irritating that none of the servants can talk to me,” Kiara said, following the Highborn woman towards a secluded spot, elevated above the crowds. Others had chosen similar spots to hold conversation without interruption. “Like, how am I supposed to learn anything about Kanthus if I can't even talk to anyone?”
“True. That has to be annoying. We do just assume you already know everything by the time you come here. People aren't really used to marriages outside the city. It's rare—not unheard of. Just rare. You get some women who are curious about Kanthus. And, well, since we're getting more infertile women...” Again, Vasha's lips twisted in that peculiar way, “we are taking more people from the common population to help make new gods. And now, it seems, from other kingdoms.”
Are you infertile? Kiara kept the question to herself, sensing it might not be the best way to keep a new potential friend. Clearly one of those sensitive subjects. “I don't really feel like I'm actually important,” Kiara confessed, gesturing to the masked men, “because it doesn't feel like an arranged marriage, or that you Kanthians are taking the possible alliance thing seriously. Like, I'm here, but I'm being treated exactly the same as everyone else. I think. Like I'm a member of the city, and not of another nation with which you're trying to improve relations.”
At this, Vasha shook her head, smiling in that condescending way, as if Kiara had spoken utter nonsense. “The fact that you are being treated like any other woman is a good sign. We are taking this seriously. Some of the commoners might be against it, because it gives them less opportunity to marry up, so to speak, if we start arranging marriages from all corners of the illuminated world. But don't worry. You're secure. Though... you might want to get an open declaration from one of the gods soon, because I can see you're rather, uh, less than satisfied with your current position in life.”
Kiara ran her hands over her face, dragging down her eyelids in the movement. “Just something needs to happen. I want to get out, see this city and maybe even visit one of those stinky bogs of yours. I don't want to spend weeks staring at a wall whilst servants skitter at my feet, too timid to say anything. Except for those who are smart enough to sort of talk to me, but without actually talking to me.”
“Ah, yes. They're pushing the boundaries a little, but we forgive them for it,” Vasha said. “Mostly. I did hear of one Highborn who didn't even tolerate that, and he executed all of his servants. Rather a stickler for the law.” Vasha now preened down her flamboyant green and yellow dress, embedded with pearls at the bottom. The kind of dress that would soon mysteriously lose all said pearls if Vasha ever happened to make a trip down to the lower city in Fjorn. “Also, ‘stinky bog’?”
“You know. You have swamps everywhere. Swampy, nasty spots where no sane person would want to be at the wrong side of night.”
“I like our ‘stinky bogs’, thank you very much. We have the Flower Fens—that's where we get our food. Not stinky at all. We have the Green Morass—that's the area you see when you're coming in, with the green lightweavings. We extract some of the salt we need from it. Everybody likes salt. And then there’s the Black Muskeg.”
“I wonder what that area is all about,” Kiara said in a rather dry tone.
> “Well, that probably is the ‘stinky bog’ you're referring to. Quite a few of the night hordes have simply drowned there, sucked in the peat bogs. We don't leave much light in it, because if we do, it gets absorbed by the night hordes anyway. They have a thing for stealing light.”
As the myths say they do, since we consider them responsible for the loss of the sun. Though what “they” actually are... people don't really know. Unless they're soldiers. Kiara crossed her legs, sitting more comfortably on the stone bench she and Vasha had procured. From this height, she enjoyed being able to watch some of the activities of the others. There were mostly familiar faces, even if she hadn't spoken to any of the other women directly yet. There was the blonde-haired woman who seduced the god yesternight, already back there, flaunting herself, ready for more action.
She recalled Vasha saying that the woman was looking for a relationship and going the wrong way about it, but Kiara simply suspected she was more or less the equivalent of a court prostitute, out there for a good time only. Though others might look at her as if she was a lowly being, Kiara didn't really care either way, except to silently wish her luck. At least someone knew exactly why she was there and didn't hide it.
Kiara drummed her fingers on the arm rest. What would Bethany do in this scenario? Well, for a start, Bethany probably wouldn't try and throw herself out of a window in boredom from people not speaking to her. Neither would she knot up her insides in frenzied irritation at the notion of having to sit around whilst this arranged marriage made itself happen.
In her absent, reflex gesture, Kiara inhaled her light and let it furl out of her fingers again. A little like smoking, since the light had a strange, ethereal quality to it as it infused her body and leaked out of her fingers.
Maybe she should learn to practise blowing light rings, just to add a few party tricks to her limited pool of talents. Come to think of it, what could Kiara do?