by Jane Kindred
But Shiva understood the punishment she’d inflicted for the killing of Ahr far better than Ra. Solitude had been the hallmark of Shiva’s existence since before remembered time. She’d had no intimacy with others except the night she’d consented to with Ra’s father. The lustful vetma she’d conferred upon Ahr after transforming the girl into the man following the Expurgation had hardly counted as intimacy.
She had been always without kin, without friendship. A Meer could not form casual attachments to ordinary women and men, and certainly none dared to come close to a Meer such as she. The lives of others were transitory. They’d come and gone within her consciousness like faceless drones to the hive. She had been a singular being unto herself—the queen—acknowledging no one else, nor had it ever occurred to her to seek the reflection of another.
After the birth of Ra, she’d regarded him as no more permanent than these bottle-fly lives, and amity with him had been out of the question. She’d chosen not to see him, to feel no compassion for him. Maternal affection hadn’t been within her realm of experience.
But her son was long dead, and this new, exquisite Ra had returned in his place. Dispossessed through her own doing of her great love, Ahr, and cut off by her iniquities from her beloved Jak, she had no one but Shiva. And Shiva, for once, had surrendered to the weakness of feeling.
Not only had she never needed anyone, but she had never been needed. She hardly knew what to do with Ra’s affection, but Ra had freely given it, and it was clear to her that Ra would prefer to give more.
“I’m not your daughter,” Ra reminded her daily, and Shiva laughed as they reclined together on the hillocks of wildflowers with which she’d decorated the interior of her tower—ever growing at her whim—and watched the clouds soar lazily overhead.
“You hardly know who you are, my dear. But you are most certainly not my child.”
They were in danger now, however, of another kind of Meeric madness, forgetting all else but the other’s company, and neglecting those things that even Meer eventually required to keep them alive. Shiva remembered now and then to conjure sustenance, mindful of Ra’s depleted state—the onset of Ra’s madness had been a protracted period of gradual wasting as she denied herself food—but she couldn’t do so indefinitely without depleting her own reserves.
With Ra restored to full health, it was time to rejoin the greater world with its mundane concerns. And Ra had one more act of penance to complete. Ra’s love who remained, the falender Jak, had been nearly destroyed by Ra’s madness. It was time for Ra to return to make things whole.
Winter was upon them. There was no more ignoring it. Though the Delta cities saw no snow and turned only mildly with the seasons, the bare bones of the deciduous trees in the temple courtyard and the shallowness of the Anamnesis betrayed the time. If Jak didn’t leave soon, returning to Haethfalt would be more difficult than it must be already. Jak delayed, ostensibly because of the affection that had grown for Merit, but in truth it was the finality of the unbearable loss. Merit would survive on his own—if he survived at all, for his health had become poor since the news of Ahr’s death. Jak was a comfort to him, but their parting wouldn’t bring pain. It was Jak’s emotional survival that was in question.
Jak broached the imminent departure with Merit, stumbling over the Deltan words though Merit’s teaching had been patient. Despite the faltering speech, Merit knew what Jak was getting at, and he tried in vain to argue. Even in halting, broken Deltan, Jak was impossible to best in debate.
“Tasunth durrh zelfaal,” Merit protested.
“Dai,” said Jak. “And it is zelfaal.”
“Durrh,” Merit repeated, and made a motion of one hand passing through the curled fingers of the other.
“No. I said ‘until’.” Jak held up one hand and brought it toward the other, but stopped at the fingers instead of passing through.
“Ischnaishaêl.” Merit’s expression was grim, but Jak shrugged, unfamiliar with the word. “Naishaêl.” He looked about for something to demonstrate. A peach remained in a bowl at the table beside the chaise he was seated on, and he took it out and placed it on the table’s surface, near the center. Merit patted the fruit. “Shaêl.” He set it rolling, and as it neared the edge, he cupped his hands and cried, “Nai shaêl!” as though in warning to the unsuspecting fruit, and grinned at Jak. The peach smacked against the floor and burst on the tile. He pointed to it. “Naishaêl.” Merit shrugged and held up his hands as if to say, I warned it.
Jak looked down at the mess with a reluctant smile. “Dangerous. Unsafe. I see. Merit, my friends need me. Mene midten aovetma.”
Merit’s frown was back. “Ma taaovet.” This was an approximation of “need”, different from aovetta, which implied desire. Merit’s lingering cough seized him as if to corroborate his words, his face reddening. “Ischma nai tene midt?” he said with strain at the end of the cough.
Jak sat beside him and took his hand, concerned. “Of course you’re my friend. Dai. Mene midt.” Jak sighed. “Ai, Merit. I know who you are to me. It’s myself I can no longer place.” Jak made no attempt to translate this, and Merit offered the sort of smile one gives when language fails. “Durrh winter.” Jak pondered. “Perhaps I should. Ischbessauschma.” Merit’s sharp wit had quickly cured Jak of the Molish tendency to separate each word in such a phrase.
Before Merit had a chance to gloat over his victory, a servant entered with a bow and an announcement Jak couldn’t follow in the boy’s swift tongue. Merit rose to attend to whatever had come up.
“What is it?” Jak rose with him. “Kasísch?”
“Travelers.” Merit had picked up a bit of Mole in turn. “Two women kuth uhnten vetmas, ischbess. Still they come to seek blessing, so long after the Expurgaht.” He turned to follow the servant, and Jak’s gut clenched with fear.
“Wait!” Jak grabbed his arm. “Two women. Maybe two Meeric women. Meeren ahnna, ischbess.”
Merit paused, frowning in thought. Jak watched the emotion warring on his face: anxiety, fear…hope. Merit turned again to the passage, eager, and Jak caught him by the shoulder.
“Nai, Merit. Nai taaovetem. Don’t bring her here!”
Merit put his hand over Jak’s and gently removed the tight grip from his arm. “Pentheta ma bahretems?” Jak watched his lips, anxious and unable to understand this. Merit went out after his servant.
On the steps of the court, the two women stood, tall and cloaked in dark garments, hair and faces hidden by traditional Rhymanic veils. There was a thickness in the air around them, an electric formication. They could be no one else. “Do you think I could refuse them?” Merit had said to Jak. Because of course it was impossible. He would serve Ra to his death—even if it was Ra who killed him.
Before Merit had crossed the atrium toward them, one of the women moved, her hand gripping her companion’s.
“Merit,” she said.
The other glanced at her over the top of her veil. Those were Ra’s coal eyes.
Merit had thought the sight of Ra would heal him, that he’d go to her, her unflinching servant, and be filled with the joy of seeing her. But he was caught short by the heaviness those eyes brought to him. She had killed Ahr. Free of the madness now or not, she’d sundered one corner of the pyramid on which the bond of years had held them.
He turned to the boy waiting beside him. “Prepare rooms. The Lord’s, and the Sapphire Room.” As the boy scurried off, Merit bowed on his knee toward the formidable pair, emotionless, waiting for his master’s word.
“May we enter?” Ra’s voice was deep and still, as though she’d been resting for centuries.
Merit kept his head bowed. “I am your servant, meneut. Ludtaht Ra is yours.”
“No, Merit. I gave it to you.” She crossed the threshold and came to him, bidding him to rise. “Jak is here.” It wasn’t a question, but Merit nodded.
Th
ey stood watching one another. Ra removed her veil and Merit’s gaze was drawn for a moment to the faint, curved lines that marked her cheeks. A “gift” from MeerShiva, she’d told him once, for being foolish enough to challenge her. The scars were a reminder that the one she’d brought with her, still waiting in the arch of the court, was an unpredictable being of tremendous power, and that both were mad.
“Merit,” Ra began, but for the first time in their association, Merit interrupted her.
“My liege.” He said it with the depth of feeling with which these words would always leave his mouth. “I have missed you terribly. Perhaps more this time than when you died. But now…I don’t even want you to be here.”
Her pupils widened in silent acknowledgment of his words, black on deepest coal. She looked down at the long gloves protecting her hands against the wind, as if seeking something more forgiving to focus on, and began to remove them.
Ra sighed as she tugged at the fingers. “I have possessed you for far too long.”
He was no longer listening to her words. “How could you take him from me?”
Ra raised her eyes, from which volumes spoke. She said nothing in her defense, only offering her unguarded expression of sorrow.
Merit would not be taken in by Meeric sleight of hand. “I was intimate with Ahr.” He took immense satisfaction in the look of astonishment that crossed her face as the gloves came away. “Your slave and your concubine. You created us. It was inevitable.” He tried to still the trickling of fear at his boldness. There was no telling what Ra might do. “But for you,” he said bitterly, provoking her, “he would have stayed with me. He went to you, and you took his life. An eye for an eye, was it?”
“No, Merit.” She shook her head emphatically. “Never.” Folding and unfolding the gloves in her hand, she searched his face. “I didn’t know you felt so about Ahr.”
“From the first,” Merit avowed. He would spare Ra nothing, no matter the consequences. “To carry you while she…” He paused. “It was unspeakable.”
Ra’s features rippled with a wave of surprise, regret and shame. “I’m sorry, Merit. I never thought. There was only Ahr. The world might have perished around me, and I wouldn’t have known. I regret that you had to endure what my greed engendered—that I injured you.”
“Unspeakable joy,” Merit clarified. “I could sense the rise and fall of her breath, the fluttering of her heart, your motion. It was a vetma you cannot imagine. I was overcome. There was no injury…until now.”
Ra regarded him, her eyes intense with longing. “Your mother named you so well.” Her fingers brushed his hand like wind, a fleeting acknowledgment of her bridled feelings.
It was sufficient for Merit. He grasped the fingers and dropped to his knees, his cheek against her thigh. “Meneut. Meneut.” He moaned the address. “I cannot resist you. You have cut out my heart, but I am your servant.”
Ra dropped to his level and wrapped his hands together in hers. “My dearest Merit.” She met his eyes earnestly. “I have cut out my own.” The other cloaked figure flowed past them as she spoke, retreating into the temple, and they were alone on the luster of the cobalt tiles.
“I betrayed your trust.” Merit hung his head. “I trespassed against you with Ahr. I have never before, my liege. I swear it.”
Ra rose onto her knees so that they were face-to-face, and held his between her cool hands. “There can be no trespassing between us, Merit. You have always been with us.” She kissed him, and he wept, transported and heartbroken at once. Ra held on to him, her head against his shoulder. “I would tell you I’m sorry for what I’ve done, but it would be such a poor phrase to express my regret. There isn’t a moment that passes when I don’t see it again and again before me, and each time it’s too late for even the Meer to change.”
“It’s as before.” Merit stroked her hair in a soothing gesture, as though Ra were the one who’d been wronged. “We were desolate without you during those dark days, and Ahr was culpable in taking you from us. Now you both have only turned along fate’s spindle.”
Ra closed her eyes and clutched his arms. “Meershivá, what we’ve done to you. You are always our comfort, when it’s you who need comfort the most.” After a moment, she raised her head with a look of dread.
Merit knew what distressed her even as she thought of it. “Jak fears your madness,” he said as they rose together, a shiver of his own apprehension running up his spine at having spoken of it to her.
Ra’s face twisted, and she pulled her cloak around her. “Jak has great cause. I am recovered, but Jak is not. You couldn’t fathom how I’ve harmed Jak.”
Shadows were settling over the soft lines of the temple. Merit breathed in, deep and resolute, and weary all at once. “Let Jak have the night, then. There will be time enough tomorrow.”
Ra had won over her servant. Awaiting her on the curved seat in the window niche in the master’s chambers, Shiva saw it in Ra’s relieved mien, though she still carried the burden of worry. There was no need for words about what had transpired, or of what was still to come for Ra. She offered Ra her hand, and they settled together onto the high, peacock bed, traveling garments shifting to embroidered robes in their sacred colors at Shiva’s orchestration. She placed Ra’s head against her bosom and produced a silver hairbrush with which she soothed Ra to sleep, drawing it hypnotically over the great obsidian lengths.
She’d never seen Ra’s temple before. It was an impressive, if modest, creation. Her own temple at AhlZel had been vast and opulent, but contained none of the touches of warmth and comfort Ludtaht Ra possessed. She found herself suffering a touch of envy. It was clear from the care with which the temple had been maintained over the centuries that Ra had been, at least at one time, beloved by his subjects.
Only after the Deltan Expurgation had Shiva considered her reign and how she’d been regarded. Choosing to live a meager existence, she’d put on the guise of the crone—in part, to keep from being found out, but also as her own form of penance.
She hadn’t seen the Expurgation coming. It had woken her from a long numbness when her servants had dragged her from her bed during her depleted state after the Autumn Boon. They’d nearly succeeded in destroying her with the advantage of their ignorance.
After AhlZel’s end, long after her name had been forgotten, she’d taken another temple in the Delta, and her subjects knew nothing of whom they possessed, daring to grip her by the hair and plunge her skull toward the sharp stone table beside her bed. She’d struck it once, split down the center of her face, before summoning her resistance. The blood and wreckage of her ruined countenance had blinded her, but Shiva had lashed out, the pearls from her throat leaping forth with the heads of asps to strike each of her mutinous templars down. They died instantly, and she fled her temple without looking back.
In the days of Soth AhlZel, she would have struck them all down, every citizen of her soth, of the Delta itself. She would have destroyed with a wrath from which none would have escaped. But in her pain and blindness, she’d stumbled on the steps of her temple, tumbling down them to the courtyard below, and in that moment realized she was no longer what she’d come to define as Meer. She was a woman, frightened, at the hands of a mob that hated her. Despite the vulnerability of the naked, half-dead Meer, no one had dared to try to take her then, and she’d crawled to her feet and disappeared in a Meeric camouflage among the crowd.
Shiva had slept among refuse at the river’s edge, through her influence remaining unnoticed by any who happened by, until the gash in her face had mended. It had aggravated her madness, and she’d lived for a time like a river rat among the rushes, eating grubs and insects. Once recovered, she’d chosen to remain among the Deltan society that despised the Meer, an old woman in whom no one took interest.
Ahr’s appearance in Soth In’La, where Shiva had taken up residence, had shocked her. Shiva had conjured nothing
since the Expurgation, and had used no Meeric knowledge to divine who Ahr was when she’d seen her in the market, only recognizing her by the ring from the House of Ra. Ahr was ordinary, and yet extraordinary, for she’d seen what no one in In’La had. She’d managed to unveil a fugitive Meer without Meeric blood of her own. Shiva had felt the thunderous desire and love of her son surrounding this woman, and its potency had stunned her. She hadn’t imagined that Meer could feel.
Ahr was a mystery. She intrigued Shiva—enough that Shiva had agreed to grant Ahr’s vetma and transform her into a man.
Later had come Ra herself, reborn into a breathtaking demoness of retribution. Again Shiva had been startled in the market. She’d underestimated her son while he lived, dismissing him as weak, only a mediocre power. But while ordinary women and men seemed to reincarnate with an almost casual simplicity, it took great power to return as Meer. She knew Ra had not only managed to return without the tedium of birth and gradual maturing, but had effected his own distillation by fire from the grave to allow it. Shiva had never heard of such a thing.
This potent Ra had stirred her, bringing color and dimension to a world that had been dull and flat. Shiva had awakened from the apathy of her self-punitive existence, renaissanced herself by the unpredictability of this delicate and deadly creature.
She’d determined to remain at a distance from Ra after releasing her to finish her quest for retribution. Shiva didn’t need the complication—and Ra was entangled in a skein of lives by the intensity of her own love. But from the primal beat within the Meeric flow had come the knowledge of the resurrecting of Soth AhlZel, and Shiva had known this meant catastrophe for the one who’d raised it. Ra’s blood had beckoned her. And so Shiva had gone.
She watched Ra beside her, breath rising and falling beneath the gold threads of her robe. Perhaps it would have been better not to break the eternity of emptiness with this brief communion. But Ra had grown too dependent on her. It was time to let her stand on her own. Shiva went out and left her sleeping.