The further we walked, the further I looked, the more the riches of the archive were compounded. Not for the sake of gold alone—though gold there was, and silver, and precious stones—but for the skill with which this silver and gold were worked, joined as they were to wood and stone and leather. Patterns began to emerge the longer We looked.
Weapons were few, and those which were present looked ceremonial, richly outfitted with gold or silver. There were many pieces of woodworking; tables, chests, larger cabinets and weapon-racks, all inlaid with lapidary and chased in precious metals, filled to bursting. There was more cloth-of-gold and silver here, in garments or plain bolts rather than tapestries—including many blankets or large shawls patterned in a manner similar to the one Rina wore, with the druids’ characteristic central opening to admit the head. There were suits of armor, cuirasses of black or silver with strange, segmented shapes like the shell of a turtle. There were statues; many animals in fantastic shape and variety, many proud faces with features like those I had seen among the druids, painted with darker skin, with strong, bent noses, with hooded, winking eyes.
“You’ll have questions,” Rina said. Grannine flickered past alongside her, in and out of the treasures piled to either side. In one moment I saw Her crowned in splendor that outstripped any mortal gold, and the next she walked clad in simplicity like a naked blade.
I glanced at Rina sidelong. The eyes of those Imperial statues were reborn in her face, and the light of this gold and power drew out the gilded undertones of her skin. Her necklace of rough garnet, the brilliant yellow of her shawl, all were dazzling here.
“May I show Eris this place? Or is it meant to be secret?” I now regretted leaving behind my shawl upon the altar of the dead. Not for warmth’s sake—I could hardly remember the last time I had been truly cold—but simply because I felt wanting in its absence among this barbaric display of opulence. My deerskin shift felt at once both dull and too revealing beside Rina in her finery. The only possible adornment I had was the cabochon upon my chest, and I walked still with my hand upon it.
“Yes, and no.” A smirk crossed Rina’s face. “This place is hidden from no one, and open to all, but what we keep here cannot be taken freely. I have thought before how to share this place with your people; I still do not have an answer.”
She slowed her pace. In both hands now she carried the small book before her, and I caught the hint of a smile in her eyes. “But Eris-tae I know, and trust. She is welcome here.”
“What of…” I did not dare look back quite all the way to the black stone idol. Whenever I shifted my attention to the memory, I once again could feel the strange, sunny heat over my skin, and I knew with a kind of dreamlike certainty that it was still visible at our back. “What of that?”
“That?” Rina glanced back at the idol carelessly. “Another gift from before the Fall. It is said that in the Empire there are many such things. Here in Frydain there are only five.”
“There are five?”
“Of course.” Rina offered a smirk which now verged further into the playful than the enigmatic. “There were once many who knew their use. Now the secrets of the gel-salmnor are known only to the Speakers and Elders of a Hold.”
So they could be used for other things. Ask an answer of a druid…my glance drifted past Rina to the demon lurking beyond. Speaking Her name aloud felt always like it verged upon a revelation, some sacred breaking of trust.
“Grannine says it could be of use.”
Rina paused. She turned to look at me. On the floor beside us, at the foot of a narrow, black wood furnishing like a cabinet or folded writing-desk, I noticed a pair of sheathed weapons, a sabre and long knife with hilts of jet. Rina’s gaze traveled over my face, then to my hand, further, and back.
“Mariead-dae,” she said, and before she said another word I was braced for some new assault, my nerves aroused by the careful softness of her voice. “If you persist in concealing your suunalan, it will only draw my eye the more. We are alone here.”
She reached for my arm, and I flinched back. She did not pursue—not at first; at first she simply held still, and I stared her down across the space between us.
More slowly, she took my wrist and drew my hand away. I did not struggle as much as I might have. Her eyes remained locked on mine—in them I could see reflected all the splendor around us, the true magelight of this Imperial trove. In her iris, the faint flecks of brown were glowing, and in her pupils, I thought I glimpsed the most distant sliver of that black stone idol whose presence still murmured upon my skin like a living thing.
Rina let go my wrist. I had not realized my arm had gone limp until it fell to my side.
“Tollel iv,” she said. “Here we speak without secrets.”
She took a step back, past the sheathed weapons upon the floor. Along the edge of the path sat a couch as opulent as a throne. Square and uncompromising, black lacquer inlaid and accented with silver and druidstone. A somewhat threadbare cushion of red velvet served as seat. Rina sat down upon the farther side without a flicker of hesitation, and gestured to the open space beside her.
The back of this small couch was a woodcarving which alone could have fascinated me for weeks; a series of steps and upward lines, many rectangular panels stacked upward in diminishing width. Silver and druidstone traced diagonal lines across this carving, dominated by a burst of rays originating just behind Rina.
I sat. Velvet purred against my shift, clinging to the warm material. I put a hand down beside my leg, felt velvet cool and sleek against my palm, drew a swath of crimson over the cushion. I felt at once very at home and very out of place; the familiar sensation brought back old memories, grounded me, pulled me back into myself.
Rina’s eyes were on me. On the demon’s jewel in my chest. I looked down at it sidelong, as best I could while I ruffled the surface of the cushion; smooth and flawless as a drop of blood, it pulsed gently to its own rhythm, light welling up from deep within.
Behind Rina was a chest of drawers crowded with boxes of wood, silver, and jewels. Nearest to us upon the edge was a box cut entirely from rock crystal set with hinges of gold. Inside, long faded, a crown of dried and woven sulphurstars rested alone and out of place among the finery. I looked back to Rina.
“The here and now, I understand, but…”
Rina unclasped her long shawl and threw it back from her shoulders. Beneath, she wore trousers with a high, triply-laced waist—and above, and a slip of a garment too short to be called even a smock. Fastened about back and shoulders with braided leather, it rested in tension upon her skin and left bare a naked strip around her torso that I did not know how to acknowledge.
“…but?” Rina said. She twisted away to secret the book beneath a fold of her shawl. Laces crossed over her back, and her shoulders pulled them taut as she moved.
“…but, I…” I retread my thoughts. “But–how did this come to be here? And why have you kept it…below?”
There was a flat, red disc of agate hanging from a cord at the lowermost hem of Rina’s more licentious garment. It swung slightly this way and that above her navel. My eyes sought refuge in some red embroidery across the room, a folded-over banner that depicted some spiked black outline. “…Are these things here never to be used? Even the…the key?”
“We use them when we have need of them.” Rina rested her hands on her lap. She sat upright, her back straight, head moving this way and that, now taking in the sights around us, now turning to regard me with her habitual, enigmatic expression. “But never without reason.”
A look crossed her face which I had seen many times before. Behind her sanguine manner, Rina’s mind was weighing some as-yet-unspoken thought. For a moment, we sat together wordlessly, the still air broken only by our breathing—the subtle swell and contraction of four ribs visible between the hems of Rina’s garb despite my best efforts to ignore them—until she broke her silence.
“One day the Veil will fall,” she said, more quietly. “One day, we will rejoin the Empire. Our Holds are like acorns, Mariead-dae. One day the winter will end.”
The Veil will fall.
The shape of this thought felt difficult to grasp. The world beyond Frydain was the realm of stories, legends, the oldest books in my father’s library. There was no settlement further south than Dawnfire, and only the most daring homesteaders built their farms in north Queensforest.
Deep in my heart I felt a winding, gnawing, restless anger like a black and bottomless pit, a soundless sea. The conviction in Rina’s voice was potent. Intoxicating, even as I balked at the scale of the idea—even as I felt it sink into that pit in my heart like a fishhook and set itself firm.
“…and the Church?” I saw Grannine stir beyond Rina, a fleeting curl of crimson.
“The Church is only men,” Rina said. Ever slow to smile, she bared her teeth at last in a curl of white. It was a bitter expression, and proud. “They hunt us. They fear us, but they have forgotten why. They do not know enough of Molok remains to be feared.”
Her shoulders—bare, far too bare beneath a lattice of leather—sank a little, and she looked out upon the hall of treasures. “Or so we tell our children. So I was told. We are told there is power here, in the gel-salmnor, in the jewels, in the words of the Scrolls, but I have never seen it used.”
“We could use it,” Grannine whispered. “I can feel it, my Mariead. With that, I could call…and call…and call. I could find them.”
The jewel in my breast was glowing brighter. I saw Rina’s eyes once again flicker to it. I fought down the urge to conceal it, placed my hands instead in my lap. To stop from clenching my fists—a deference to a governess who had long since ceased to hold any sway over me—I brushed out the scant wrinkles in my skirt.
“Seven Holds are left.” Rina’s right hand drifted to the black book beneath her shawl, but she did not withdraw it. “And Starfurrow Hold is dying. Every year the Church pushes deeper into the Forest, and every year we have less land to farm.”
“Gafed sent food. We sent warriors, as well.”
She smiled again, but it was a tighter, wounded expression, closely held.
“It is true. But I wonder if she sent them not in part to guard the Thiirgranel gel-salmnor. I may never see Thiirgranel again. I fear for my old flock, Mariead-dae. I fear for their archive and their Night-Key.”
She put her hand over mine. I felt suddenly obliged to sit very still, very conscious of the heat of her palm, the weight of her. Rina looked down, to the jewel burning brighter above my heart, to our hands.
“I am afraid, suuna’astrea,” she continued, more softly still. “Every year brings new death to us. My task is now to teach you the Aratus Vadeloc, but I am afraid I teach a philosophy that will end within our lifetimes.”
My mouth was dry. To my relief, Rina did not press further, nor did her fingers close any tighter about my hand. I sat beneath her palm feeling very much like a flower pressed flat against a page, unable to stir.
Rina pulled her hand away.
She withdrew the book, held it in both hands with a finger sliding through to some predetermined point.
“You give me hope, Mariead-dae,” she said briskly, but to my horror I discerned the faintest tremor in her voice. “You learn well. Within the Aratus Vadeloc are certain lessons which may help us understand your astrea.” She took in a single sharp, quelling breath, stifling, controlling. I knew that breath from the inside. The marshalling of will, gathering of command over myself, my emotions. I reached out and nearly put my hand on her bare shoulder, only restraining myself at the last moment, close enough to feel the heat of her.
“Rina–”
She held the book out to me.
“You must practice. Read.”
I put my left hand over the page.
Before I could speak, Rina shook her head—one sharp movement to either side, left, right. Her eyes remained fixed on the book. “Do not. It is wrong of me to seek this solace in you. You have no cure for these evils.”
“Rina–”
“Rina-al,” she corrected, sharper. She withdrew the book. “I am your Speaker.”
“I’d hope I’m also a friend to you.”
At this, at last, she finally met my eyes. The look on her face was as sharp and remote as ever—might seem almost remonstrative to a stranger…but not now that I knew to look for the softness at the corners of her eyes.
“Rina-dae,” I said. The suffix proved more potent than I had thought—her look of reprimand faltered. Grannine poured into my heart, into my veins. Before I even thought to ask, She fulfilled the need, drew the Grey Speech fluently to my tongue. “If you see in me more than suuna’astrea, I can see more in you than Speaker.”
Her answer was at first a curious hitch of breath, nearly a laugh. Her ironclad poise slouched inward, and her bare shoulder bulled into my outstretched hand.
“Bemespe?” she retorted. The light of gold in her eyes reflected a proud challenge that I could not decipher. Her shoulder was smooth and strong, but it faded almost entirely from my attention the moment Rina returned her hand to my leg.
I felt as though I were standing over some precipice.
Almost I would have preferred to pluck up that black Imperial sabre and face down a second Inquisitor. My heart felt as though Grannine were squeezing it in Her hand, but the very inconstancy of its flutter obviated that possibility.
Am I dying? I wondered. Is the night-key somehow…
Rina leaned forward. A fraction of an inch, perhaps, but she had so suddenly become my only point of reference in this room full of wonders that even the subtlest of her movements shook the world as though the ground had heaved beneath my feet.
I must be careful what I say, I thought, but then could conjure no detail as to how or why, nothing as to what might happen if I spoke well…or spoke poorly.
By the grace of God, Rina kept talking, saving me from my sudden and utter lack of any recourse in these uncharted waters. “Then what else do you see, Mariead Lady-dae?”
“I…” Again I needed to gather my voice. Rina seemed curiously engaged by the way I pressed my lips together to swallow. I was stricken. I thought of Eris. Why was it Eris who came to mind? I felt I had forgotten to inhale.
With this inspiration, I saw the connecting line, the subtle order to my thoughts. The commonality shared. I spoke before I could lose my nerve. “I see an…a woman of whose wisdom and fortitude I have the deepest envy.” This breath seemed somehow more urgent than the last, as though my throat were attempting to constrict against my will. I felt warm, not with sorcery but as though with fever, and at the same time strangely young, fumbling like a fresh colt.
With that comparison came a host of other thoughts—the entirety of the Church of Saint Kendrick rose up in my chest like bile, but gave way to a perfect, incongruous, clarion sense of outrage. I am a woman grown! Am I not beyond such things?
“Your…” I said, and I struggled to regain control of my thoughts. “Your courage and kindness to myself a-and Eris has been…a constant source of inspiration. I-I-I–” This last word came out in three syllables, along with the rest of the air in my lungs, as Rina smiled. “If you had been chosen to be a suuna’astrea instead of me—”
“Mariead-dae,” Rina interrupted, again with that tone of shocking gentleness that made my blood turn to ice. “Do not say such things.”
“It’s God’s own truth,” I protested. I shut my eyes, thereby to keep from seeing her long enough to gather my thoughts. This trick at least served me well, and by the time I looked upon her again the words had picked up an impetus of their own. “All that became of me—my escape, the forest–I owe all of that to Eris. And what I’ve learnt here, from you, the Scrolls, molok…Even my body. I could scarcely walk from one end of the Ix-akad to another when first we arrived. Once I might have been a huntress, or a noble…or a nun, but I really know very little of the world, Acrurina-dae, I really don’t. You’ve taught so much and I still—I still feel I hardly know anything even about something as simple as being qualdae—about being kata…”
This was the last thought I had, pleading with her to understand. To see how much I owed her, owed Eris, who I desperately wished to show this hall of wonders.
Belatedly, I realized I had not spoken in several heartbeats. Several more. What I could not puzzle out was why I might have done so; it was not quite accurate to say that I had stopped.
More accurate it seemed to say that I could no longer speak because the entire world had become a perfect, tender emptiness. My face was very warm, warmer on my left side than on my right, and I could see nothing.
Something brushed my lashes, the side of my nose, and some of my confusion resolved itself: I could not see because I had once again shut my eyes. This time it appeared not to have sufficed to gather my thoughts. With this mystery untangled, I was in no rush to open them.
I felt Rina’s lips part against mine. She tasted of honey, a sickly and fleeting sweetness like the scent of fallen leaves in the very deepest nights of summer. She was saying something. It had been her nose brushing against mine.
“Mariead,” she sighed.
Something deep in the pit of my stomach felt as though it were tied up in a knot, and the way she said my name with three syllables were the only thing that could unpick the noose. The sound of my name upon her lips—lips so freshly departed that I still felt their heat upon mine—the sound of her saying my name without the distancing modesty of a suffix made me feel as though my soul was bare in her hands. I felt as though some noise had been drawn from me, but could not recall what it might have been.
Each heartbeat was like a hammer stroke against the cabochon in my chest. Opening my eyes felt like the labor of saints. In a dazed fashion I pieced together where we were.
The room around us seemed brighter than most chambers in Raven Lake. Rina held my cheek in her right hand—her left was at my waist, her thumb along the seam of hip and abdomen, fingers closed firmly upon my side. I sat transfixed in her grasp, in her gaze.
“I told you once before,” Rina said gently. “Ix qualdae.” She smiled. Her teasing I knew well, but this was different—unutterably sweet and intimate, a playful tremor in her voice. “This, too, I could teach you.”
Eris. What have I…Eris–I can’t. I couldn’t do this to–
My spine felt as though it were turning to ice. I wanted nothing more in God’s own glorious world than to lean forward and begin learning lessons from my patient tutor, but at the same time I felt as though moving would rip the heart from my chest. Each instant I held back from kissing her again was a torment; but to do so was almost unthinkable. The trust I would betray…was there a trust? We had exchanged no vows, but likewise no vows had ever sufficed to paint Eris in my heart. But to abandon Rina!
God help me, I thought, but I had never learnt a prayer for this. Grannine–
“Forgive me,” Grannine said with my voice. “I can’t. Not yet.”
With Her I found the strength I had lacked. She tore me away from Rina, and I ran—and by some miracle I did not fall headlong upon this or that treasure of the ancient world, but instead gained the door of the archive, burst through the tapestry—in a blur of startled limbs I saw Saric fall to one side on the dais in surprise—and without explanation We were running, Grannine stirring my limbs in harmony until I ran like Dermot did, an upright, loping gait like that of a Hunter.
I ran. Away from the Mavet-akad, from Rina, and away from the hidden world I had only just begun to understand.
*
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