Though death had never been a stranger in my life, still it was strange to consider it a friend. Yet this was the enjoinder of the Book of Death, and it was on this that I meditated long after the day had ended and the Ix-akad had grown still.
While there were halls and chambers for sleeping, some druids chose to sleep elsewhere for duty or company—and others seemed not to sleep at all. The halls of Raven Lake were never empty, and even late as it was, there was light in the Fire-Hall when I descended with a mantle around my shoulders. A familiar woman was tending to one of the great hearths; the druid Meva, who looked up to me with a breath of greeting and a gesture of silence, two fingers to her lips.
Beside the hearth, decidedly not in the bed Faith and I had arranged for her earlier in the day, young Hope Spencer was fast asleep, basking in the warmth beneath a simple blanket. There was peace on her features at last. I bowed to Meva and carried on my way.
A wan oil-lamp flickered in the antechamber of the Healing-Hall, its light kept very low. The storage room was silent, though I thought I could discern the movement of a healer or patient from deeper within. I leaned through the doorway to take my pick from a quartet of squat candles on a nearby shelf before I carried on.
Shivex nac-safi tolex.
Dark as the Viisp-akad was, the Hall of Beasts was darker still—a thick, noisome, shuffling mass of shadow, full of the sound of movement. A few lights glowed throughout the vast space, held by druids tending to their animal charges.
This, though, was not my destination. I skirted the easternmost wall, following through a narrow fissure into a chamber that was more a storehouse than a destination.
The faintest spark of scarlet light appeared in the air beside my shoulder, outlining the shapes of clay vessels and wooden scaffolding, hay and drying rushes. In Grannine’s lurid witchlight I discerned what I sought; the edges of a stair that plunged down to the lowest level of Raven Lake.
There was no banister; the architects of this stair had instead notched a long channel into the wall at each side. My deerskin slippers were close enough to silent on the well-worn steps that I could still hear faint sounds from above. The smell of water rose up to meet me, faintly mineral.
Each step lowered me into warmer, damper air, into the sense of an unseen vastness. Bereft of any light or guidance, I counted each stair, and on the forty-seventh step, the wall to my right came to an end. Now, when my foot touched the ground, I heard the faint scuff of an echo rolling back from distant stone…and fainter than a fantasy, the sound of trickling water.
I lifted the candle in my hand, and it flashed to life. This concealed as much as it illuminated, transformed the dark soundscape to a patch of smooth grey stone. I occupied a world of my own, subterranean, below the sleeping heads of Raven Lake…with not another living soul in sight.
Shivex, tolex glacex, nac-safi.
I strode forward, advancing my little circle of light until I discerned the glint of water ahead. The air grew warmer, heavy with moisture.
Here at the heart of Raven Lake was one of its deepest secrets; a constant flow of clean water from the eastern rock face beneath the Hold. Many channels and troughs at the base of this wall captured this frigid outflow, stored it for the sustenance of all. The remainder collected in a deep pool, and from the surface of this pool rose a constant tracery of steam.
The water was warm. Whether by some ancient artifice or by the grace of nature, I did not know, but the air here was in as damp as a summer evening, and in constant motion. Warm air flowed past me as I advanced, making its way out and up the stair, part of the bellows by which Raven Lake drew breath.
I circled deeper around the edge of this subterranean pond until I found what I sought—a small barricade of wood and woven rushes that extended ten feet into the water, a free-standing wall with a base of hardwood, weighted down by stones. It angled sharply to one side, creating an alcove wherein one could stand concealed from any new entrants to the chamber.
I set down my candle in the lee of this wall, turned and looked out over the water. There were no ripples, for there was no wind, and nothing lived or grew within this pool to stir its face. If not for the sheen of dampness on the distant rock face, mirror-black water might have seemed to stretch away forever into the dark. My mind wandered through dreamlike possibilities in that ponderous silence; might there be other such caverns and springs in Frydain? What other wonders might lie in the deep places of the world, unhidden since the dawn of time, known to no mortal eye?
The air here was warm enough to obviate the need for a shawl. I folded my mantle into a small bundle, set it down at a safe distance from the source of the candlelight. Before returning to the water’s edge, I retreated to the corner of the screen for one final wary look toward the stairs.
The chamber was silent. No tread nor tremor escaped the stairway to muddy the peace here.
So here the druids bathe, I mused, looking back to the water. This must be a lively place during the day.
Carefully, I worked the deerskin dress off my shoulders and let it slip to the ground. I stood for a moment in only a short linen shift, straining every ear once again to listen for some hint that I might be disturbed. I turned back to the pool and nearly jumped out of my scant remaining garment when I saw Grannine standing tall and luminous upon the face of the water, looking toward the entrance with eyes that glowed scarlet in the gloom. Red light pulsed and crept beneath the surface of her skin, as though she were a jewel herself.
“No one comes, my Mariead,” She said. More light drew my eye down—to the cabochon upon my breast, half gem, half scar. That smooth, otherworldly red crystal flickered softly with each word from Her lips, a red light flaring within its depths like faraway lightning. “We are alone.”
Despite the warm air, I drew my arms around myself when She looked to me. She picked her way across the water as though She walked upon glass, stopped at the very edge, barely beyond arm’s reach.
“Thank you, Grannine.” I said, in a hushed tone. To speak Her name out loud still seemed like the action of some diabolical pact. But She smiled, looking down at me. The details of Her face seemed to shift each time my eyes left them, but the eyes remained. “You’ve been invaluable these past weeks, and I feel I’ve hardly thanked you enough.”
She lifted a hand to the jewel in my chest, and it flared brighter at Her touch, bright enough to chase the damp stone with scarlet. It burned cold against my heart.
“My Mariead,” She said with terrible fondness. “So little time we’ve had to talk.”
“Much to do.” I felt my shoulders sinking already. “There seems to be some new discovery waiting each time I turn around.”
“You’re outlasting them.” The edges of Her eyes tightened with an impish grin. “Your interruptions are coming fewer and farther between.”
“It certainly doesn’t feel like it,” I muttered, and Grannine laughed. I hesitated. The thought felt mad even before I gave it voice. “Grannine, do you…see?”
“Do I see?” She repeated, amusement in Her voice. In the dark, the hidden fire in Her hair placed a halo and a mantle around her shoulders. “You could say that I do.”
“Could you…look away?” There was a loose or torn stitch on the right strap of my shift. I rubbed it with my left hand, more to distract myself than to resolve the fault. “It’s not that I…”
“My Mariead.” Her smile softened. “I know your body from the inside.”
“Still,” I said, trying not to think of the flush building in my face, nor to characterize the tremor in my voice as stubbornness. “I’d be more at ease if you…didn’t watch.”
These weeks spent with the druids had affected me more than I thought. I looked up again half-expecting to face a contentious debate…but instead, She was gone.
“Better?” She whispered, an unseen presence just over my shoulder, and I nearly started again. She giggled, and I felt the brush of Her hand over my head.
“It’s not that I mind seeing you. It’s just–”
I turned and came face-to-face with Her again, bent slightly low as if to inspect me. She had a grin on Her face that was all-too-evocative of Dermot’s more contrarian moods.
“Be not afraid,” She teased. She brought a hand up to Her eyes and half-turned, just enough for me to catch a glint of scarlet between Her long fingers. “I won’t see a thing.”
“Very funny.”
She giggled and turned her back to me, clasping her hands innocently behind her. Seldom had I seen Her from behind; I was for a moment taken in by the sure, graceful posture of Her shoulders before I, too, turned away, with Her laughter ringing in my ears.
I stepped forward and set one foot in the water, trying to outpace my misgivings. Despite the warmth around us, I had half-expected a chill. Instead, I felt water warm enough to serve as pleasant contrast to the air of the cavern. Emboldened by this discovery, I stripped the shift off over my head, managed an adequate half-fold, and left it atop my dress, pausing only to test that the braids on my hair had held.
“Shall I look now?” Grannine asked, with a devilish smirk in Her voice, and I took a hasty half-step into the water before I looked back to glare at Her.
“Diabolical spirit.”
She laughed again, but did not turn around.
The rocky floor of the pool had a gradually increasing incline, and a pleasantly sleek texture underfoot. It was warm even in contrast to the water, and I wondered if it was from some quality of the stone that the heat was derived. I tried to focus on the texture of my footing, and not on the madness of asking a ghost to close Her eyes.
Only in the Fire-Hall had I ever felt warmth like this in winter. It permeated skin and bone and soaked to the very heart of me, and I moved more quickly to seek the deeper water, while still trying to keep my feet. The demon’s jewel upon my sternum began to brighten, dripping with red light, but I covered that unsettling reminder with my hand until only the faintest rays could escape.
Once the water reached my waist, it was warm enough that I could pause and stand in the dark. Halfway in, and halfway out, I felt a flood of tension leave my back and shoulders, staring forward at nothing but the faint glimmer of distant candlelight on damp stone. I took a breath, closed my eyes.
“Shivex nac-safi tolex,” I whispered. The echoes of my voice fluttered through the chamber like a rustle of dry cloth.
“Shivex li-thiiric-safi tolex,” Saric said.
A sound of unadulterated surprise escaped me, and my feet slipped on the slick stones beneath the surface. I started to fall to one side, and my hands splashed into the water before Grannine caught me by arm and shoulder. I looked up into Her face.
Briefly, I offered Her an expression which suggested my feelings on this development.
“Sorry, my Mariead,” She said, Her smile angelic. “I wasn’t looking.”
“Saric-dae,” I said, sounding too breathless for my own liking. I pulled free from Grannine’s hands, covered the cabochon again with my palm before I turned to seek for Saric on the shore. The screen of woven reeds cast a black shadow over most of the chamber, and it was in this blot of darkness that I heard Saric answer.
“Mariead-dae, I hope I have not frightened you,” Saric said. I heard another scuff of cloth on stone, a faint hitch of movement in her voice. “I am keeping quiet company tonight.”
“I think we both may be.” I reached for Grannine and drew Her sight to me. At once the cavern flashed into view as though illuminated by some ruddy morning sunbeam, a shadowless, red vision of rough stone. This lowest hall was vast, ten feet high or more, and along the opposite wall there were crags and outcroppings that seemed too regular and geometric to be accidents of nature. My candle burned like a point of white light. The water itself was luminous, opaque, a rippling sheet like a crucible of molten lead.
Saric sat on the shore of the lake not fifteen paces away, cross-legged, painted in hues of scarlet. I could see the metal and precious stone of the jewelry she wore, black shapes against softly red skin or the dark burgundy of her dress. She grinned at me in the dark, skull-like and conspiratorial.
“Suuna’astrea,” she said, and leaned back, sinking weight onto her arms with a sigh. “It is very late, or very early. No one has come to the pool in hours.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“This, I understand.” She tilted her head to one side, staring at me curiously. “Have you come down before?” I shook my head before realizing Saric had no way of seeing me in the dark. To my surprise, she continued as though she had glimpsed the gesture. “This is our Meca-Akad. Here we clean ourselves, take water, and teach our children to…to swim.” Her momentary search for the word culminated in a look of triumph, and she shifted her weight back and forth idly from one arm to the other. “Do children of the Church learn to swim?”
“Seldom,” I said. I sank further down into the water, to one knee and then the other, until it passed my shoulders. With much of my weight carried by the water itself, the smooth stone was surprisingly comfortable to kneel upon. It was difficult to read subtleties in Saric’s expression with Grannine’s sight, but I could see that she was still smiling, and something in the expression seemed strange.
“Shivex nac-safi tolex,” Saric repeated the line of druid scripture with an intimacy I had not imagined. “True for all, true for me. You are learning the Aratus Shivex?”
“I am.”
“I heard you speaking. Is it your astrea that listens?”
“It is.” Of all those with whom I had shared this secret, Saric seemed the least impressed. She only nodded as if I had said nothing at all remarkable. For half a heartbeat I felt something curiously like affront at her lack of response.
“Ix frelex,” she said amiably, reclined as she was at the edge of the water. “I speak to my death, and my death listens.” She pursed her lips. “Does your astrea answer?”
“She does.”
“A-ha!” Saric straightened a little, grinning, and I heard the jingle of her jewelry over the water. “Hm! She! Astrea-dae nac-safi kata suuna’astrea, eh? I think this must not sadden you.”
Before I managed to formulate a reply, or even decipher the meaning of her pleased tone, she raised her chin to me in a nod. “And our suuna’astrea speaks of the Aratus Shivex. It is said people of the Church do not believe in death. Is that true?”
I had grown accustomed to this manner of dialogue with Rina, with Eris and Grannine—but it was now in the dark that I saw the pervasive presence of such discourse among the druids. Saric had drifted to matters philosophical with a casual ease that I more expected for discussions of crop and kin. I stirred, shifting my weight, and the water stirred around me.
“No, we believe in death.” Despite myself, I felt the warmth sapping tension from my limbs, and I sank deeper into the pool as if into the embrace of a bearskin. “But the Church also teaches Elysium, a place that follows after.”
Grannine’s presence drew my eye, and I saw Her curled around me upon the surface of the water, bracing Her head on one hand as if to listen. Her eyes glittered in the dark, and in the patient cast of Her expression I saw a hint of disdain.
“The coercion of this false God,” She murmured, a breath in the dark. A frown marked Her features. “This God who knows nothing of deliverance.”
“Saric…” With a lingering, curious look to Grannine, I turned back to Saric upon the shore. “Do druids believe in Elysium? Or…” I hesitated. “What do you say comes after?”
“After death?” Even through Grannine’s sight, I could see Saric raise her eyebrows. “I do not know. Perhaps something we cannot imagine. Perhaps this Ele-sym you say.” She shrugged. “Perhaps nothing.”
“You don’t find that…disheartening?”
“Soi?” Saric’s look of confusion cleared in a blink. “Hm! Ix frelex. Not so. I could die now. I have had a good life in a little time. I have loved many people and killed many of my enemies.”
“I wish I were that certain,” I said dryly. I looked down into the water, my own hands livid against the surface.
“Death is the only certain thing. It is how and where that is the mystery, hm?” Saric laughed. “Tullau iv. Even for druids I am an odd girl in this. I am mavetnin—do you know this word, mavet?”
“No.” I shifted closer to the shore, the better to hear her. For all that the cavern had been impenetrably dark, Saric seemed to track my voice with remarkable ease; her eyes hovered close to mine, almost as though she could see me. “Tell me.”
“Mavet is the name of Death. Peace and the opening way.”
I frowned, drifting another step closer, just enough to keep my shoulders submerged beyond the cooler air.
“The book is the Aratus Shivex. I’d thought Shivex was the name of death.”
“Glet, it is.” Saric tossed her head to one side, and a mass of dark hair followed, with the faint ring of some braided chains or beads clashing. “Mavet is the name of Death, the death of all things. Shivex is the End of Life, and the fear of it. Shivex is the name of Death we use each day. Mavet you must use only in its proper time. It is a holy word.”
“Is this a holy place?” I looked around the pool, stricken suddenly by the thought of intruding upon some reliquary font. “Or–”
“Ha!” Saric patted the air. “Tollau, safi. I may say it when I like. I am mavetnin. I was born dead with a dead mother. Death and Death alone will decide when my time comes, even if I call its name.”
“Are you a…an oltag-al? A priestess”
“Ve berem!” Saric always laughed with a ragged abandon, heedless of when and where her merriment struck. I had envied this in her; now I felt as though I glimpsed the sinuous truth at the heart of her joy. “I am no oltag-al, I do not know well the other aratus. My card is the sayn only.”
“When Lucas was born–” the realization came back to me in a rush of insight. It fit, and I suddenly felt as though I had stepped forward into some new and higher understanding, though I did not yet know what it was. “Brix-dis asked for you. And you said…”
“Tolex, glacex,” Saric leaned onto her arms, arching her back in a stretch, staring up at the roof of the cavern before pushing herself upright like the curl of a whip. “Glet, suuna’astrea-dae. Death is a close friend to you also, I think. You understand its ways.”
“My day has been full of death already, and I’ve only just started the Aratus Shivex.” So forlorn was my voice that Saric laughed, and even I felt a half-hearted smile form at my own melancholy. “I preferred Life.”
“So you have come to find peace in the dark and the quiet.” I could discern Saric’s grin even from afar. A subtle, rosy light began to suffuse her features, and she lowered her voice still more into a raw, youthful purr. “There is little of Life here, Mariead-dae.” She tilted her head and shifted one shoulder, slipping one side of her dress a fraction lower in a gentle chime of precious stones. Something in her voice and her posture was honey-sweet, vulnerable, almost shy. “Perhaps we could find something to chase Death from your mind. Would this please you? It would please me.”
I found myself incapable of speaking. Then I felt myself blushing so fiercely that I for a moment feared I might become incandescent. I thought immediately of Eris, of the hunt that had taken her away, of what I had promised her in the Gate-Hall–
“Saric-d-dae, I’m–” despite the damp air, my mouth was dry. “I c-can’t—or, what I mean to say is—I’m, honored–” Honored?
Saric burst out laughing. With some effort, I abandoned any attempt to defend myself further.
“Ai! Mariead-dae, tollau, tollau,” she held out her hands to me and leaned forward over her bent legs, still in her fit of giggles. “The fire-eyed suuna’strea without words! Ve berem! I wish not to frighten you.”
“You don’t,” I lied, quickly enough to momentarily dispel the tremor in my voice. “It’s j-just, I’ve never…”
Saric fought back her merriment on the shore, wrapping arms about herself to stifle the jingling of precious stones. Her titanic efforts towards silence obligated me to finish the thought I had started. “Saric,” I felt strangely close to tears. “I don’t want you to think that I—it’s just that I’ve never–”
“Tollau, safi,” Saric said gently, leaning forward. She patted one hand on the surface of the water, evoking little ripples over the surface. “Calm, calm, calm. You do no harm.”
One unsteady breath begat another, and with her admonition I found my nerve returning.
“I’ve never refused anyone I…admired, before.” I looked back up to Saric. Through Grannine’s sight the subtleties of her expression remained inscrutable, but I saw her shoulders had fallen, her hand still on the surface of the water. “Eris was the…the first.”
It took Saric centuries to answer. It took only heartbeats.
“Ai, Mariead-dae,” the young druid said, and now her voice had an unbearable new softness. “Your church has taken much from you.”
Shivex nac-safi tolex.
“Yes,” I whispered. Again the strange pulse of sorrow in my heart throbbed like a swollen limb, all-too sharp and fresh for an old wound. Paired with it was that sense of confusion, of other-ness, as though I were staring through some open window at a world I had never imagined, and could not understand. As though I were a woman raised my whole life beneath the ground. They see me and say, she has never seen the dawn…but I never knew what sunlight was to feel its absence. I grasped for something, anything to say. “But I think—without this I might not have come here to Raven Lake. I might never have become this…suuna’astrea. Or met you.”
Is this God’s design for me? Is this the wisdom of my trials?
“Maybe,” Saric shrugged. “Maybe you might just have suffered less.” She drew back her hand, swayed to one side as though to rise. “Maybe I have been unkind to you. If you wish I might leave–”
“No!” I half-started forward. “Please. I do enjoy…talking with you, Saric-dae. I do.”
Even in the dark, through my demon’s eyes, I could not miss it: the smile flashed over her face like a drawn sword.
“Hm!” Saric leaned back on her arms again. “Glet. Nac-beautiful suuna’strea-dae, then we will talk all night, until we can sleep.”
“I’d like that.”
“And maybe some night something more, hm?” By now I knew Saric well enough to divine the mischief in her voice, but it did not stop her words from evoking another thrill of that strange, foreign apprehension. She laughed before I replied. “Tollau! Tell me of other things then. Eris-kae was your first? Women of the Church must be blind. I will tell you of my first, if you will speak of her.”
Once, I had overheard Dermot and Eris having a not-dissimilar conversation. And with our erstwhile blackguard, I, too, had commiserated over the ebb and flow of our romance. But to share our story with another woman…
This, too, was new. But unlike the disquieting Book of Death, this was a novelty I could embrace. I thought the expression on my face might have been a smile, though I knew it was invisible to Saric.
“I’d like that.”
*
BLANK SLATE 
Writing, backstory, and interactions as heady and warm as the steaming pools. Adore this chapter ❤
LikeLike