Priestess of the Dragons' Temple

Chapter 5: Myril’s Petitioner Returns-1

Chapter 5: Myril’s Petitioner ReturnsRising, the light grows.

From the depths of the earth, we rise to join the light,

the light of the growing year,

the rejoicing of the plains and the hills.

– The Calendar of the Hours

In the evenings they would sit in the courtyard together, all three of them, unless Darna or Iola was seeing a petitioner. The roses bloomed then dropped when autumn chilled, ripening into rosehips as the days grew shorter and the nights longer. Myril studied, sometimes reeking of garlic and herbs, other times dusty with old parchment and ink. Darna walked out from the temple when she could, but none of the older priestesses would leave her to wander alone, to explore her old haunts as she would have liked. She was wary, too, for signs of men from Tiadun, but she saw none.

Out in the city, Darna noticed that the farmers filled the bottoms of their fruit baskets with straw and that the marketplace tea-sellers asked a small bead for every cup where the old price had been only a tiny bead. There were scrapplings, too. Not many of them, but some, begging even though the trading season had passed. She wondered why they didn’t return to their villages, or why no guilds would take them, not to mention the temples, even if they were all probably dragon-blind. That didn’t seem to matter much, not even in the harbor temple. Perhaps they just didn’t want to be priestesses. She certainly hadn’t. Still, she couldn’t bring herself to envy them as the nights grew colder and the pickings thinner. She thought of going over to the planners’ guild and asking if her apprentice fee, such as it was, was still there, but there was always someone with her, and besides, it wasn’t the right season.

At the temple, she took petitioners from time to time. She didn’t always enjoy it, but she did sometimes. They filled her coffers and brought her news of the world beyond the temples, more than she could gather on Irean’s shopping expeditions. She gave minor prophecies after the rite, told little fortunes based on the thinnest of hints and dreams. The harvest would be better next year – or else it would not – and the trading would go on. The petitioners she saw shared many of the same questions, and they all seemed satisfied with her answers, shallow as they were. They seemed not to mind that she wasn’t really speaking with the dragons. Very few of the other peresi did, apart from Iola. Ganie even complained one time when a man asked what the dragons had said. Tiagasa and her hangers-on, Lenasa and Savasa, chattered endlessly about various men at the governor’s palace: the guard chief, a dignitary, an official of one sort or another. They went on as if the dragons were none of their concern, though Lenasa often looked bored with the gossip.

Iola, returning from her new teaching duties, said that the novices were clumsy, clumsier than any of them had been. She said nothing about the dragons or dragonlets, but her eyes seemed brighter, not drooping and clouded as they’d been through their years as novices. She worked as well as she was able at the various tasks assigned to her, took as many petitioners as the Aralel allowed her to, and sat up on the dragon tower waiting for Anara.

Myril’s assignments kept her busy from breakfast to bedtime. She learned kitchen divinations that did not demand trance, but, Geta told her, could be enhanced by it, and she read some of the scrolls as she cataloged them, stories they hadn’t been taught as novices, stories that hardly anyone remembered anymore. Still, every time she crossed the garden to her room and saw a petitioner going to one of the other priestesses, she felt that she wasn’t doing what she was assigned to do, and that the Aralel would, sooner or later, insist that she try again.

The moon waxed and waned six times, and then came Midwinter.

§

On Midwinter eve, Myril took out her dancing robes and laid them in the thin sun to air for the first time since Midsummer. Darna came over to join her, shaking the dust from her own somewhat more-used robes.

“Tomorrow we’ll be able to leave,” Darna said.

“I’m not sure about that,” Myril said. “The Aralel said I might, but only that one time, and I haven’t cleared my debt from the training.”

“I think they should let you go without it. You’ve been working plenty, even if you haven’t been gathering offerings yourself.”

Myril shrugged. “The treasurers won’t see it that way.”

“I could probably pay it for you,” Darna said. “The prince paid my fees, so I can do what I like with whatever’s in my coffers. I could set up as a shopkeeper with what I’ve gathered here, if they’ll let me go.”

“I don’t think that being a shopkeeper would suit you,” Myril said, “or that the Aralel would let you go for that.”

“It would suit me better than this,” Darna said, gesturing toward the priestesses gathered around the tea cauldron. “But you’re right. She’d probably send me back to Tiadun.” Darna laid her robes out on the sunny stones with a sharp snap. “Whatever happens, I’m sure that the Aralel will have her say in it.”

As if Darna had summoned her, the Aralel appeared at the audience gate, heading straight toward them. Geta walked with her, looking pale and old in the Aralel’s long shadow. Myril shivered, but she and Darna made their obeisances.

“We’d like you to see a petitioner, Myril,” the Aralel said.

Myril felt faint. “But I can’t,” she said. “You know I can’t.”

Darna took hold of Myril’s arm with both hands. “It’s a crossing time. There couldn’t be a worse time!”

“Now, now, child,” Geta said. She stepped forward and tried to pry Darna’s hands away. Darna stiffened and held on.

“You will need to release your friend in time to take a petitioner of your own, too,” the Aralel told her.

Darna looked warily at the Aralel and let one hand go, but left the other still clutching Myril’s hand. Myril shook her arm and Darna finally let go.

“You will be safe, Myril,” the Aralel said, ignoring Darna. “Geta will be right here with you.”

“Oh, the petioner’s sure to love that,” Darna mumbled. “Why don’t you have Iola…”

“That is enough, Darna!” the Aralel snapped. “Go back to your own chamber. I have other matters to attend to.”

With that, the Aralel walked away. Several of the other peresi ran over to trail after her, no doubt with requests of one kind or another.

“You heard Her Holiness,” Geta told Darna. Darna nodded and slouched away, looking back over her shoulder as Geta shooed Myril into her own chamber.

“Now, dear,” Geta said. “You know we wouldn’t make you trance again.”

“If not that, then what?” Myril said. “It’s a crossing time, and with a petitioner – ”

“You won’t be performing the full rite,” Geta said.

“I won’t? But then what will I do?” Myril could feel the edges of entrancement clawing at her consciousness already, even with the sun still well up over the horizon.

“You didn’t perform the full rite last time, either,” Geta said.

Myril tried to remember. “Then what did I do?” she asked.

“You performed most of it,” Geta said, “but at the end you’re supposed to come back, out of trance, and give the petitioner his messages from the dragons, if he has any. If there are no words or thoughts for him, then a simple blessing will do. But it should come from you, not from some other priestess.”

Myril nodded. “I think I can manage a simple blessing, but …” Memories clouded her vision. It seemed to be growing dark outside already.

“Don’t worry,” Geta said, dragging her sharply back to the present. “I’ll be right here to summon you away if you start to slip.” She arranged a pillow on the rug at the center of Myril’s chamber and sat down.

“The petitioner who came to you at Midsummer will return after midnight,” Geta said. “Until then, you and I will keep vigil together. I’ll ensure that you remain with us; I promise it.”

“Yes, honored one. Thank you.” Myril smiled weakly. She wasn’t convinced that she could keep hold of the surface of the earth, but Geta seemed confident, and she did trust Geta. Working in the kitchens, Geta always seemed to know exactly the right thing to do when Myril was mystified by one problem or another. She’d even seen the Aralel go to Geta for advice. If anyone in the temple could keep her safe, then it would be Geta.

Myril clasped the elder priestess’s hand and they sat together for a while, then Geta retrieved Myril’s dancing robes and she changed into them to join the other priestesses in the dance of presentation. Geta said that at most Myril would do a short dance, that she could manage that much. No dragon needed to touch her this night. Myril closed her eyes for an instant. Someone touched her shoulder and she woke as if out of a deep slumber.

“No sleeping now,” Geta chided. “It’s the ambassadress’s voyage. Just because you’re rightly afraid of trance doesn’t mean that you can skip the vigil. Jasela needs your prayers, too.”

“They’ll be hollow,” Myril said.

Geta took her hand and pulled her up. She didn’t use much force, but Myril couldn’t disobey her, either. “They will not be hollow,” she said. “You’ll help me make the tea, then you can come back here and talk to your petitioner from Midsummer. Now, let’s go to the kitchen garden.”

Myril propped the elder priestess up and they walked across the temple in silence. Geta pointed Myril to some of the herbs that stayed green through the cloudy winter, some to keep her awake through the night, then another which Myril hadn’t learned about yet.

“This one’s rarely used,” Geta said, fingering its cold-blackened stem. “It will tie you to the surface of the earth, give you a little extra clarity, keep away the trance.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about it before?” Myril said.

Geta shrugged. “You have done well enough on your own. I wouldn’t want you to be reliant on it, like some girls are on clazan.” She clucked disapprovingly. “Just like the peresi who seek trance, those who avoid it would be better to do so with the power of their own mind, unsupported by herbs they may not always be able to find. But it is a crossing time now, and you will need all the strength you can gather tonight.”

They picked the herbs by lamplight. In the kitchen, Myril pounded them into a paste and mixed them with hot water and honey. Some of the elder priestesses prepared the midnight meal, tending simmering broths and folding dough into pockets around hardy greens and goat cheese.

By the time Myril returned to the front part of the temple, a few petitioners were already in the baths. The priestess who watched the gate strode over toward Myril and Geta.

“He’s here,” she announced.

Geta’s expression tightened. “It’s hardly after dark,” she said. “Make him wait a little.” She turned to Myril as the other priestess walked away and sighed. “At this point, you should have gone through the rite so many times you wouldn’t even have to think about the last part.”

“I’m sorry I’ve disappointed you all so much,” Myril said. For all of Darna’s talk of not being a real priestess, Myril felt she was less a priestess than any of them. She couldn’t even take a petitioner.

“We are not disappointed in you,” Geta said. “You’ll be a great healer, a prophet even. I suppose the treasurers are a little disappointed at the moment, but in the great histories, their testimony doesn’t count for so much.”

“Thank you,” Myril mumbled, not entirely convinced. The possibility that she might join the chroniclers’ guild soon strengthened her a little.

Myril hadn’t thought of Lerat the Roper much since Midsummer night, not nearly as much as the other priestesses expected her to. All the rest of them, with the possible exception of Iola, talked about how it had been with their first petitioner. Come to think of it, Savasa didn’t talk about hers, either. Myril couldn’t form an image of Lerat in her mind. She only remembered that he’d been a man with a full beard. Finally, Geta decided that he had waited long enough.

Myril stood just inside as he approached across the garden. She knew him instantly – the memory hadn’t been lost in the dragons’ consciousness after all. He was muscular, not quite lean, and with a little gray in the hair around his temples. She’d been told that he was considered a very handsome man, but he stirred no longing in her. He looked merely friendly.

Geta stepped up from the side, and he acknowledged her presence with a nod. “Thank you for letting me be admitted again, honored one.”