Echo in Amethyst

by Sharon Shinn

  A pale-skinned woman looked up. “You mean, we have not been deploying our entire armies?” she demanded. “Why not?”

  “Some of our troops are still in transit,” Harold explained. “They are on their way even now, and we hope they will turn the tide of battle in our favor.”

  “Yes, because more fighting and more death will be sure to make the western provinces decide they love you after all,” Marietta spoke up.

  At least five people began shouting at her at once, and she raised her voice to shout back, “You have brought this on yourselves! Force is not the way to end decades of hatred and mistrust!”

  The Banchura lord addressed Harold but pointed at Marietta. “What is she doing here? If she stays, I’m leaving.”

  “Nobody leaves!” Harold thundered. “Everyone is quiet, and everyone listens, and we try to solve this instead of making it worse!”

  The nobles at the table mostly subsided, though several of them threw poisonous looks Marietta’s way. No one had even seemed to notice Elyssa, and I could tell that was fine with her. She was sitting at the end of the table, and I had the impression she was trying to make herself as small as possible. I wondered if she wished she had not joined the council after all.

  “If we can bring the rebel leaders to a parlay, what could we offer them?” Harold asked.

  “Execution in Amanda Plaza!” one of the nobles called out, but the others shushed him.

  “Assuming that option is off the table,” Harold added.

  “But there must be some punishment for the rebels who started the war,” insisted the crafty-looking Sammerly man. “Or what’s to stop anyone from turning to bloodshed anytime they want a policy change?”

  “Oh, I don’t know—how about policies that are fair to begin with?” Marietta said.

  One of the Pandrean woman leveled a hard, steady gaze in Marietta’s direction. “Everyone else at the table abides by the same policies,” she said in a steely voice. “And yet the eastern provinces don’t find them onerous. So the question is: What must we do to keep the peace?”

  “One possibility is to allow secession,” Marietta replied.

  The gaze of the Pandrean noblewoman didn’t falter. “And then you would be a cooperative neighbor instead of an unruly subject? Why do I find that difficult to believe?”

  Three of the other nobles shouted an agreement, which caused Marietta to raise her own voice in angry response. For a few moments, I lost the thread of the argument, which I was finding wearisome, repetitive, and ever more acrimonious. Harold was trying to calm everyone down, but Marietta and the Banchura lord were now on their feet, hurling insults, and five other people were speaking at once. When the king pounded his fists on the table, it added to the general noise but didn’t seem to make any other impression.

  And then, suddenly, the whole room fell silent.

  The effect was so abrupt and so unexpected that everyone seemed taken completely off-guard. People looked at each other in amazement, as if trying to understand why they had suddenly cooled their passion. Then they glanced at the king, who seemed just as surprised as they did. Then they looked around the room again.

  Soon everyone was staring at a figure who stood just inside the door, as if she had entered while all the nobles were shouting and had merely waited until they noticed her. She was a tall, serene, confident woman wearing a white robe belted in red and accentuated with an embroidered black stole. Someone important from the temple of the triple goddess, I was guessing. The fact that she was wearing each one of the goddess’s colors must mean she was embodying all three of her personas at once.

  I couldn’t tell if she had done or said anything to quiet the room, but it was clear that she carried a certain irresistible power and that all the nobles had responded to it, whether they wanted to or not. She didn’t speak for another full minute, and neither did anyone else. They just stared at her, and they waited.

  “The blessings of the goddess upon your heads,” she finally said in a clear voice that carried easily across the room.

  “And upon you, abbess,” Harold replied quietly. A few of the nobles also murmured a response, but most of them simply watched her.

  She took one step deeper into the room. “I come to inform you that the goddess knows of these dreadful battles unfolding just south of the city, and she is wrought with sorrow and pain.”

  Harold was the only one with the nerve to reply. “Yes, war is a grievous business.”

  The abbess continued, “She remembers the days hundreds of years ago, before Edwin was king, when all the nobles fought with each other, and death was a constant visitor at every man’s table.”

  Harold decided not to risk another answer; he merely nodded in confirmation.

  “So many lives have been taken already,” the abbess said. “The goddess cannot bear that any of these names be lost to her. She is instituting an interim Counting Day so that she can be certain which of her nobles and their precious echoes still live. Please present yourselves to a temple the day after tomorrow.”

  That did cause a buzz of confusion and dissension to run through the room. What? Another Counting Day? Suddenly, out of nowhere? Ridiculous! It’s been barely two months since the last one!

  “We appreciate the concern of the goddess,” Harold said respectfully. “But our councils are too urgent and our time too short for us to stop in the middle of our activities and make our way to a temple.”

  “Besides, half the high nobles of the kingdom are on a battlefield,” the Sammerly man pointed out. “How can they observe a Counting Day in the middle of a war?”

  The abbess nodded, as if their objections were reasonable—but she had already come up with the counterarguments. “Even now, priestesses are visiting those battlefields, inviting every noble with an echo to observe the ritual,” she answered. “There are sanctuaries in the small towns all along the Charamon Road. Every fighter will be directed to the nearest one.”

  “But—there’s not enough time to send messengers all the way to Orenza and Empara and Alberta!” Marietta exclaimed. “And to get the news to every noble family living on some isolated estate—”

  The abbess smiled at her. “The goddess has informed all of us, all at once, every priestess who serves in any temple across the Seven Kingdoms. They have time to spread the word to every noble with an echo. There will be a Counting Day the day after tomorrow.”

  “But—” came from several mouths at once.

  The abbess’s expression turned unyielding and her words rang out. “Any nobles who do not bring their echoes to a temple on Counting Day will find their echoes vanished in the morning. As has been the case with every Counting Day since the goddess first required the nobles to make this observance in her name.”

  Now the nobles raised their voices in a strident chorus of dismay and opposition. A few of them flung their hands in the air and two or three came to their feet to make their points. The abbess listened coolly for a moment, then held her arms out as if balancing heavy spheres in each palm. Once again, the room fell abruptly silent.

  “Those are the terms,” she said. “Observe the ritual, or forfeit your echoes. If you would rather spend your day plotting more death and destruction, you may certainly do so. Just realize that there is a price.” She dropped her arms, placed her hands against her thighs, and offered a low bow. “Majesty.” Rising to her full height again, she glanced once more around the room, nodded at the assembled company, and walked out the door.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I couldn’t vouch for anyone else, but I was glad to see this impromptu Counting Day suddenly appear on the calendar because I could not wait to get out of the palace again. I hadn’t set a foot outside since the excursion to the botanical gardens, and I was ready to fling myself out of my bedroom window just for a change of scenery.

  Judging by the expressions of the nobles gathered in the courtyard on the appointed day, I was the only one to feel this way. The visitors from Thelle
ron, Banchura, and Pandrea seemed irritable and short-tempered; Cormac and Jordan looked weary and stressed; and even Harold, who could generally manage to project an air of stoicism, appeared annoyed. Annery was in tears.

  “But what about Mama?” she demanded of her father. “If you don’t let her come with us to the temple, all her echoes will die! That’s not fair!”

  The king glanced down at her with an impatience that he visibly tried to control. “I will have her escorted to the temple later today,” he promised. “Get in the carriage now. We’re wasting enough time on this nonsense as it is.”

  I saw Jordan glancing around the courtyard, searching all the faces until he came to mine, and then he smiled so briefly I was sure I was the only one who noticed. He started pushing through the throng in Elyssa’s direction, as if he would offer to sit in the coach with us, but Cormac caught his arm and he had no choice but to ride with his brother. I sighed silently and climbed into an oversized carriage with Elyssa and Marietta and a woman who might be from Thelleron and who had a single echo.

  Even in the cramped quarters, even under a louring gray sky, I enjoyed the short drive across the city and the feel of the cool air on my face. Once our caravan came to a halt, all the nobles disembarked and began streaming across the three wooden benches to the temple on the center island. The hour was early but no one seemed in the mood to waste time. They probably wanted to be back at the conference table with all haste so conversations could resume.

  It seemed deliberate that the royals and most of the nobles in our party chose to enter through the portal dedicated to justice. Even Marietta and Elyssa headed boldly for the black-painted door, as if sending a silent signal to the king and his councilors that they weren’t asking for mercy. As usual, I saw almost no one choose the red door for joy.

  We stepped inside the round, high-ceilinged space and paused to grow accustomed to the dim light. On the dais at the front of the room stood the statue of the goddess with her arms held out to either side; at her feet, dozens of candles burned with an uneven light. I thought this incarnation of the goddess looked much as the abbess had two days ago when she delivered her ultimatum to the king.

  The pews were more than half full already, so Marietta and Elyssa hurried forward to take their places in the second-to-last row. Marietta’s echo squeezed in next to her; I sat right behind Elyssa, with her two echoes on either side of me. The rest of the pew quickly filled with strangers—nobles from Camarria who were not part of the contentious group that had come from the palace. I could catch a glimpse of Jordan’s light brown hair as he sat with his family on the very front bench.

  “How long do you suppose we have to linger here?” Elyssa whispered to Marietta. “Not long, surely?”

  I found myself wondering if she had toyed with the notion of leaving the three of us behind this morning—or simply not joining the rest of the noble visitors as they set out for the temple. I was fairly certain that this was the last Counting Day I would ever see at Elyssa’s side. Either Jordan would rescue me and I would never have to make another appearance before the goddess as Elyssa’s echo; or he wouldn’t, and Elyssa would bring us all back to Alberta with her. I was pretty sure that, after this trip, Elyssa would be done with echoes forever. If she didn’t get rid of us in some more dramatic fashion, she would simply neglect to present us at a temple on the next Counting Day. I couldn’t help feeling some apprehension about what would happen then.

  But first there was today to get through. Marietta bent her head to murmur a response. “I usually stay about an hour, but I would bet Harold will be on his feet and out the door in fifteen minutes. How long can it take the goddess to count a few echoes, after all?”

  “And why she can’t do it when we’re all comfortably in our own rooms in our own houses, I’ll never know,” Elyssa said.

  Marietta snorted. “Because goddesses are just like kings. They like to prove they have power over the rest of us.”

  Elyssa smothered a laugh.

  A few black-robed priestesses were making their way up and down the pews, nodding to the visitors and offering benedictions to anyone who wanted one. Most of Harold’s councilors were too impatient to accept, but a couple of the strangers accepted a priestess’s touch on their foreheads, their chests, their lips. I was pleased to see that both Cormac and Jordan nodded and submitted to the ritual. Annery, who was still crying, did not. Neither did Elyssa, which meant I could not receive a benediction, though I thought wistfully that I would like to have a single moment when I thought the goddess was aware of my existence.

  One of the priestesses headed to the front of the sanctuary as if she was going to address all the visitors. But instead she turned her back on the pews, folded her hands, and bowed her head, as if praying directly to the statue before her. Her stance was so imploring and so devout that the restless crowd grew quiet simply out of respect, even though the silent prayer seemed to last a very long time.

  When the woman lifted her head and dropped her arms, Harold practically leapt up from his bench, and all the nobles in the section immediately did the same. I had my feet under me as I prepared to stand, when I realized that neither of the echoes on either side of me had risen when Elyssa did. No, and neither had Marietta’s echo—or the echoes of the strangers nearby—or Harold’s echoes, or Jordan’s, or Cormac’s.

  All the originals were standing and all the echoes were sitting, lax and motionless, on their benches.

  A soft murmur of uneasiness and displeasure began rippling through the crowd, building in volume and intensity. I maintained my slouched pose and empty expression, but I was cutting my eyes back and forth across the congregation, trying to understand what had just happened. I could feel my breath coming faster and my hands starting to clench, and it took all my will to merely sit in place and wait.

  Through the clusters of standing bodies, I could glimpse Harold pivoting from side to side, surveying the crowd of agitated nobles and their lifeless shadows. “What is happening? Why do the echoes not respond?” he demanded in a loud voice that rose over the consternation of the crowd.

  The priestess at the front of the sanctuary turned, and I realized it was the abbess. “The goddess has decreed that she will hold the echoes at her side until the rest of you determine how to end your war,” she said in friendly, reasonable voice. “They will stay here at the temple while you return to your plots and conferences.”

  “That’s insane!” Harold thundered. “You cannot keep our echoes!”

  The abbess permitted herself the smallest shrug. “It is not I who keep them, but the goddess. They are hers, after all—she made them, she bestowed them upon you as gifts, and she can take them back if she thinks you do not value them.”

  “Of course we value them!” declared the Banchura lord. He was in the front row, next to Harold, and he looked furious. “All of us—we treat our echoes with the same care and attention we give our own bodies.”

  Maybe some of you do, I thought. Elyssa didn’t even bother to turn around and give us an apologetic look.

  The abbess’s voice was gentle, but no less implacable. “And you hazard them in this pointless war,” she said. “Dozens have already died, and the goddess has felt the pain of each loss. No more, she says. Risk yourselves, if you must, but not one more echo will ride into battle.”

  “But—then—how will we get our echoes back?” a lord from Thelleron demanded.

  She glanced his way. “You will not get them back until treaties are signed and armies are dispersed.”

  “But—that could take weeks. Months!” Harold exclaimed.

  “I hope not,” the abbess answered.

  There was a brief, apprehensive pause, then Cormac spoke up. “Is there a deadline?” he asked. “How long will our echoes survive if they are disconnected from us in this fashion?”

  The abbess paused to run her gaze up and down the pews, where all the echoes appeared to be peacefully slumbering. I was careful not to make eye contact.
“I’m not certain,” she replied. “Two weeks, perhaps. Maybe less.”

  Almost every voice in the sanctuary seemed to repeat her words back to her. Two weeks! Only two weeks!

  “But we cannot—nothing will—it has taken us years to get to this point!” the Banchura lord sputtered. “We cannot resolve our grievances in a matter of days!”

  “Then I suggest you accustom yourself to life without your echoes,” the abbess said.

  That led to another shocked silence. I remembered some of the conversations I had overheard as lords and ladies described the physical pain they felt when they were separated from their echoes for any reason. There must be other nobles who, like Elyssa, either did not have or completely rejected the bond that existed between them and their copies, but most of them seemed to find their echoes as essential to their well-being as their limbs or their organs.

  Harold lifted an arm and pointed grandly at the abbess. “You have no right to threaten such a thing,” he said in the darkest, most regal voice. “Return our echoes to us at once.”

  Again she offered that infinitesimal shrug. “It is out of my hands,” she said. “The goddess has made this choice, and she will determine if your echoes will be restored or if she will gather them permanently into her arms.”

  “Then— What are we supposed to do now?” asked one of the noblewomen from Pandrea. “Just leave them here?”

  “You may stay with them as long as you like, but they will remain here at the temple, just as they are, until your war is decided. Or until the goddess grows impatient and harvests them,” the abbess responded. “But I imagine you will find your time to be more fruitfully employed if you return to your palace and begin negotiations in earnest.”

  A few nobles started churning through the pews, stepping over the forms of their sleeping echoes and heading toward the aisles, but Harold stood fast. “So those of us who have waged war,” he said in a steady voice. “Are our echoes the only ones that will be forfeit if a truce is not signed?”