by Sean Wallace
“Your soul will find peace here,” Cet said.
The youth stared out over the dreamscape, lifting a hand as if the beauty hurt his eyes. When he looked at Cet he was weeping. “Must I die now?”
Cet nodded, and after a moment the youth sighed.
“I never meant to hurt anyone,” he said. “I just wanted to be free.”
“I understand,” Cet said. “But your freedom came at the cost of others’ suffering. That is corruption, unacceptable under the Goddess’s law.”
The narcomancer bowed his head. “I know. I’m sorry.”
Cet smiled and passed a hand over the youth’s head. The grime and reek vanished, his appearance becoming wholesome at last. “Then She will welcome your return to the path of peace.”
“Thank you,” said the youth.
“Thank Her,” Cet replied. He withdrew from the dream then, severing the tether and collecting the dreamblood. Back in waking, the boy’s body released one last breath and went still. As shouts rang out around the village, Cet knelt beside the body and arranged its limbs for dignity.
Ginnem and one of the Sentinels ran up. “Is it done?” the Sentinel asked.
“It is,” Cet said. He lifted the jungissa stone he’d taken from the boy’s hand. It was a heavy, irregular lump, its surface jagged and cracked. Amazing the thing had worked at all.
“And are you well?” That was Ginnem. Cet looked at the Sister and understood then that the question had nothing to do with Cet’s physical health.
So Cet smiled to let Ginnem see the truth. “I am very well, Sister Ginnem.”
Ginnem blinked in surprise, but nodded.
More of the villagers arrived. One of them was Namsut, breathless, with a knife in one hand. Cet admired her for a moment, then bowed his head to the Goddess’s will.
“Everything for Her peace,” he said.
The Sentinels went into the hills with some of the armed village men, after Cet told them where the brigands could be found. He also told the villagefolk where they could find the parent-stone of the narcomancer’s jungissa.
“A basin marked by a bird’s beak. I know the place,” said Mehepi with a frown. “We’ll go destroy the thing.”
“No,” Namsut said. Mehepi glared at her, but Namsut met her eyes. “We must fetch it back here. That kind of power is always valuable to someone, somewhere.”
Cet nodded. “The Temple would indeed pay well for the stone and any pieces of it.”
This set the villagers a-murmur, their voices full of wonder and, for the first time since Cet had met them, hope. He left them to their speculations and returned to the guestroom of the headman’s house, where he settled himself against a wall and gazed through the window at passing clouds. Presently, as he had known she would, Namsut came to find him.
“Thank you,” she said. “You have saved us in more ways than one.”
He smiled. “I am only Her Servant.”
She hesitated and then said, “I . . . I should not have asked you for what I did. It seemed a simple matter to me, but I see how it troubles you.”
He shook his head. “No, you were right to ask it. I had forgotten: my duty is to alleviate suffering by any means at my disposal.” His oath would have become meaningless if he had failed to remember that. Ginnem had been right to remind him.
It took her a moment to absorb his words. She stepped forward, her body tense. “Then you will do it? You will give me a child?”
He gazed at her for a long while, memorizing her face. “You understand that I cannot stay,” he said. “I must return to the Temple afterward, and never see the daughter we make.”
“Daugh—” She put a hand to her mouth, then controlled herself. “I understand. The village will care for me. After all their talk of a curse they must, or lose face.”
Cet nodded and held out a hand to her. Her face wavered for a moment beneath a mix of emotions – sudden doubt, fear, resignation, and hope – and then she crossed the room, took his hand, and sat down beside him.
“You must . . . show me how,” he said, ducking his eyes. “I have never done this thing.”
Namsut stared at him, then blessed him with the first genuine, untainted smile he had ever seen on her face. He smiled back, and in a waking dream saw a horse running, running, over endless green.
“I have never wanted to do this thing before now,” she said, abruptly shy. “But I know the way of it.” And she stood.
Her mourning garments slipped to the floor. Cet fixed his eyes on them, trying not to see the movements of her body as she stripped off her headcloth and undergarments. When she knelt straddling his lap, he trembled as he turned his face away, his breath quickening and heart pounding fast. A Gatherer belongs wholly to the Goddess, that was the oath. He could hardly think as Namsut’s hands moved down the bare skin of his chest, sliding towards the clasp of his loinskirt, yet he forced his mind to ponder the matter. He had always taken the oath to mean celibacy, but that was foolish, for the Goddess had never been interested in mere flesh. He loved Namsut and yet his duty, his calling, was still first in his heart. Was that not the quintessence of a Gatherer’s vow?
Then Namsut joined their bodies, and he looked up at her in wonder.
“H-holy,” he gasped. She moved again, a slow undulation in his lap, and he pressed his head back against the wall to keep from crying out. “This is holy.”
Her breath was light and quick on his skin; dimly he understood that she had some pleasure of him as well. “No,” she whispered, cupping his face between her hands. Her lips touched his; for a moment he thought he tasted sugared currants before she licked free. “But it will get better.”
It did.
They returned to the Temple five days later, carrying the narcomancer’s jungissa as a guarantee of the villagers’ good faith. The Superior immediately dispatched scribes and tally-men to verify the condition of the parent stone and calculate an appropriate price. The payment they brought for the narcomancer’s jungissa alone was enough to buy a year’s food for the whole village.
Ginnem bid Cet farewell at the gates of the city, where a party of green- and gold-clad women waited to welcome him home. “You made the hard choice, Gatherer,” he said. “You’re stronger than I thought. May the Goddess grant your child that strength in turn.”
Cet nodded. “And you are wiser than I expected, Sister. I will tell this to all my brothers, that perhaps they might respect your kind more.”
Ginnem chuckled. “The gods will walk the earth before that happens!” Then he sobered, the hint of sadness returning to his eyes. “You need not do this, Gatherer Cet.”
“This is Her will,” Cet replied, reaching up to grip Ginnem’s shoulder. “You see so much, so clearly; can you not see that?”
Ginnem gave a slow nod, his expression troubled. “I saw it when I realized you loved that woman. But . . .”
“We will meet again in dreams,” Cet said softly.
Ginnem did not reply, his eyes welling with tears before he turned sharply away to rejoin his Sisters. Cet watched in satisfaction as they surrounded Ginnem, forming a comforting wall. They would take good care of him, Cet knew. It was the Sisterhood’s gift to heal the soul.
So Cet returned to the Temple, where he knelt before the Superior and made his report – stinting nothing when it came to the tale of Namsut. “Sister Ginnem examined her before we left,” he said. “She is healthy and should have little trouble delivering the child when the time comes. The firstwife did not take the news happily, but the elder council vowed that the first child of their reborn village would be cared for, along with her mother who so clearly has the gods’ favor.”
“I see,” said the Temple Superior, looking troubled. “But your oath . . . that was a high price to pay.”
Cet lifted his head and smiled. “My oath is unbroken, Superior. I still belong wholly to Her.”
The Superior blinked in surprise, then looked hard at Cet for a long moment. “Yes,” he said at last
. “Forgive me; I see that now. And yet . . .”
“Please summon one of my brothers,” Cet said.
The Superior started. “Cet, it may be weeks or months before the madness—”
“But it will come,” Cet said. “That is the price of Her magic; that is what it means to be a true narcomancer. I do not begrudge the price, but I would rather face a fate of my choosing.” The horse was in his mind again, its head lunging like a racer’s against the swift river current. Sweet Namsut; he yearned for the day he would see her again in dreams. “Fetch Gatherer Liyou, Superior. Please.”
The Superior sighed, but bowed his head.
When young Liyou arrived and understood what had to be done, he stared at Cet in shock. But Cet touched his hand and shared with him a moment of the peace that Namsut had given him, and when it was done Liyou wept. Afterward Cet lay down ready, and Liyou put his fingertips over Cet’s closed eyes.
“Cetennem,” Cet said, before sleep claimed him for the final time. “I heard it in a dream. My daughter’s name shall be Cetennem.”
Then with a joyful heart, Cet – Gatherer and narcomancer, Servant of peace and justice and the Goddess of Dreams – ran free.
GOLDEN DAUGHTER, STONE WIFE
Benjanun Sriduangkaew
For skeleton, steel and stone. For life, the edge of youth and command.
These are the things my daughter is made of. These are the things she leaves behind when the spell is gone and the wish is dead.
Sometimes I’d cup her chin and say that I wished her skin was like teak and her hair like the vestment of a crow, the natural shades of my lineage. And she would tell me, I would have been ugly and despised to the one whose wish bought my provenance.
Do you think me ugly, then?
Golem honesty, she answered. You aren’t beautiful. Neither are you ugly. And children, Mistress, must believe their mothers pretty – thus I do, imitating the limits and distortion of their perspective.
I laughed. It was glorious to have a child such as she, frank and strange. A child that was old when we boarded the exiles’ ship. A child my wife named Areemu, her last gift to me.
“Mistress Erhensa,” someone says. They’ve been saying that for some time, in the belief that shock has deafened me and robbed me of a voice.
My brow to the window, Areemu’s remains in my arms. The road outside is a black ribbon, wet-sharp with frost under the halo of my seahorse lamps. An empty road. This is not a season for visitors.
“Mistress Erhensa. The Institute of Ormodon is here to collect the golem.”
A girl purchased her some 200 years past. A girl gold of hair and skin, eyes like the canals after a storm. “Tell them there is no golem.”
“But there must be, Mistress Erhensa.” This voice does not belong to my servant. “We detected the flux of its dissipation. I was dispatched immediately.”
It’s too dim for the glass to glare, and so I’m obliged to turn. The Ormodoni is ludicrously young, ludicrously freckled, and it is an insult they’ve sent this over a gray-haired officer. Her gaze severe, her shoulders high beneath the weight of pauldrons, her stance square despite the bulk of plating. Much too proud, before age has earned her the right.
“You must be tired from the journey,” I say, rote. There’s no journey – it is a step and a thought from the Institute of Ormodon to my domain, a requirement all practitioners must heed. Keep our doors open, or else. “We don’t often have visitors. Lais will find you a room and supper if you want it. In the morning we will talk.”
“I’m Hall-Warden Ysoreen Zarre.”
“I’m sure you are.” I did not ask.
“I am to bring your answer within the night.”
“Expectations have a way of being thwarted, Hall-Warden Zarre. Your superiors will have to understand. Over breakfast, we may discuss the golem. Or you may depart now and we may discuss nothing.”
Who defies Ormodon; delays its enforcers? Who dares? No one wise, but lately I am past wisdom.
“In the morning, then.” Hall-Warden Zarre turns on her heels. “I look forward to it.”
I watch her back and watch the door shut behind her, thinking again of the girl with the pale hair. A child with no real thought between one act and the next save her own pleasure. I consider the matter of remaking and redoing, of resurrection.
Her death is new. There is time. If one callow wish animated Areemu once, might not another bring her back?
* * *
Ysoreen’s gums burn, acidic, with the residue of golem death. Unlike most officers she doesn’t need Institute scryers to sense this. Gifted, they’ve always praised her; fine material for thaumaturgy. Instead she trained to understand golems, those double-edged creatures, those threats to Scre from within.
To think Erhensa – a foreigner living on sufferance – would treat an Ormodoni as she has; to think Ysoreen did not teach the sorcerer her place. This failure stays sour on her tongue and keeps her from tasting the foods. They are foreign: a tea red as garnets, pastry that crumbles at a glance, a smell of cardamom and tropical fruits. An island to the west, bordering turquoise sea under a gilded sky; so she’s heard. She does not believe, for if there exists such a paradise, why would Erhensa be here? The reality would be a patch of territory off the coast, mired in gray silt.
But Erhensa’s fancy has been given part-life in the piscine gazes blinking at her from between mosaic tiles, in the murals moving out of the corner of her eye. Figures in the distance balanced impossibly on the crests of tides; birds slashing through a burnished horizon.
Ysoreen sleeps against an unpainted wall, pulling the blankets over herself, breathing her own leathers and steel. Tomorrow she will confront; tomorrow she will demand. Ormodon assumes efficiency in its operatives, and she’s armed to subdue wayward sorcerers. In this house she is no one’s lesser.
She is up before dawn may warm the room and wake the fish. She straightens out the sheets and coverlets so no imprint of her may linger in the creases. She drinks from a bedside jug and rinses her mouth. When the manservant comes she is ready.
He takes her to the garden with its outland trees, its high walls of iron and lazuli. So high the world outside may not be seen; so high the house seems its own dominion, the islander its queen.
She comports herself like that too, as though the bushes are her throne and the scarlet ixora her maids. The sun glances off the darkness of her skin so she seems chiseled, more wood than life. Within the circumference of Erhensa’s power, the rime stays out and the flowers thrive.
The sorcerer does not rise; barely stirs as Ysoreen approaches. In her lap is a clear casket holding loose gemstones, platinum filigrees, a fistful of thread.
Ysoreen points at the box. “I’ll be taking that, Mistress Erhensa.”
“This is a collection of baubles, nothing more.”
“I am not unschooled.” This specific golem is a common choice of study for its unusual construction, and she has read the manuscript of its creation; more than can be said of the islander. “Nevertheless it is law, and by law the golem never truly belonged to you. As all constructs it belongs to the Institute, and so does its material.”
A smile on those thin, lined lips. “Technically I brought my golem with me when I came to Scre, but of course I’ve agreed to your laws. What do you do with their parts? It can’t be avarice that drives you to collect – were this one baked of mud and silt you’d have demanded the same.”
“Yours is not the place to question.”
“As you will,” Erhensa says. “Allow me to make you a gift, as amends for making you wait a whole night. Fox fur imparts excellent warmth and will make the season more tolerable.”
Ysoreen’s teeth click together. Protocols force her to accept tribute from any sorcerer, so long as the object inflicts no harm or malice. “Fox fur, in this weather?”
“I was hoping you would hunt. Inconsiderate of me to ask of a guest, but I’m no good at the business of tracking and conquering anima
l wits, a task that perhaps better suits you.”
The insult needles, but Ysoreen does not react. She is stone, Erhensa less than wind.
I watch her through the bright, clear eyes of a fox. You see the world differently this way, closer to the ground, sight plaited from smells, nose to soil and snow. A fox’s mind is so wide, made of simple geometry and immediate needs.
The fox sniffs and tosses its head. She comes.
I lied to the Hall-Warden: the hunt is no mystery to me. It is different here in a country that knows no frost, where predators and prey do not have to contend with a chill that would shrivel the lungs and bruise the cheeks. But there are certain principles in common, certain rhythms that aren’t so unlike. A need for subtlety, a requirement for finesse.
Ysoreen Zarre disregards them all. Her boots stamp deep prints, and she marches without care for tracks or stealth. She is unerring in her pursuit, and though I make the fox give her a good and worthy chase, she never loses the sense of where it is, where it heads.
It is fleet, but she is fleeter. It is clever, but she is cleverer. It tires long before she does, heaving on its legs.
When she has pierced its side with arrows, is she aware I am watching? Her knife cuts abrupt and efficient, opening its belly: entrails steaming in the snow and flecking her gloved wrist.
The fox’s vitals push their final beat, and my sight extinguishes in smears of blood and heat.
Erhensa nods when the manservant brings her the fur, cleaned and scented and brushed to a sheen.
Ysoreen sits by as the sorcerer works. “A description of the golem in your own words?”
“Your Institute is obsessed with cataloguing everything, reducing the world to verbiage. It’s no way to be.” Erhensa leans back into her cushions. “Her name was Areemu. It was something else once – a thing bleached as summer-beaten bone, frail as sun-baked clay – but when one takes on a child, it’s correct to recast her a little.”
“Golems are servitors, Mistress Erhensa. You do not call a shovel your daughter.”
“Golems,” the sorcerer says, “are vessels of wishes. When you’re done building one it is as if you’ve given birth. When you take one in it is as if you’ve adopted new kin. You put so much of what you want into them, just as with offspring of the womb. Less blood, less mess. No less love.”