Priestess of the Dragons' Temple

Chapter 7: Darna Stays-1

Chapter 7: Darna StaysA priestess who retired from Great Rite might take on other roles within the temple or else leave that bridge between the worlds to join a prince’s court. In the guilds, she was prized for her literacy.

– The Chronicles of Theranis

Iola rolled up another pile of linens and carried it to the laundry landing. Jasela had been feverish and sweating like a laborer on a summer afternoon, but she complained constantly of the cold. She was still weak and she drank constantly. The water, medicinal teas, and thin broth were helping to slowly reconstitute her dried-out body as she rested. On the third day after her return, Jasela began to talk in short phrases and parched tones, mostly calling for more water.

“You’re next,” she said to Iola one afternoon. “They told me, they never told me anything like that before, the dragons.”

Iola thought about Anara’s prediction. “Tiagasa says that she’s been positioned to take your place. She wants it as much as I do.” Iola paused. She wasn’t sure why Tiagasa wanted to be ambassadress, only that like herself, it was what she’d always wanted. Besides, Tiagasa was a year older. “Maybe I’ll be appointed after her,” Iola said.

“They’d destroy her,” Jasela said. “Just like they destroy me.”

Iola shook her head. “You’re not destroyed, you’re recovering, aren’t you?”

“Too slowly,” Jasela rasped. “Water, please.”

Iola poured her another cup. Jasela rested in one of the side nooks, within sight of the altar but far enough away to be outside the stream of power that coursed through it. Iola wanted to ask about the dragons’ realm, but she knew it would tire Jasela too much. Besides, custom dictated that she could only pass on that knowledge to the next ambassadress, which might still be Tiagasa. Tiagasa would then pass on the knowledge to her successor. Or, if she died in flight – Iola shuddered at that thought – the other former ambassadresses, the Aralel and the Grandmother, would tell her what they remembered. She was fairly certain that Tiagasa had never so much as touched a dragon.

“Can you take me out to the garden?” Jasela asked a little while later.

“It’s cold,” Iola said.

“Get me some blankets, then,” Jasela said.

“I’ll get Ganie to help.”

“No, bring Tia,” Jasela said. Jasela abbreviated Tiagasa’s name, with the obvious excuse that she was short of breath. Tiagasa hated it, but had to defer to Jasela’s rank.

Iola nodded. She refilled the water pitcher beside Jasela and went out into the peresi’s courtyard. It was late afternoon and most of the priestesses sat on their benches along the north and east sides of the courtyard, basking in the thin winter light. Savasa and Tiagasa leaned against the wall outside Savasa’s chamber.

Iola nodded to them both as she approached. “Come help me with Jasela,” she said to Tiagasa. “She wants to go out in the garden.”

Tiagasa sighed. “I was in there all morning, get Ganie.” She turned away from Iola and whispered something to Savasa, who glared sidelong at Iola.

“She asked me to bring you,” Iola said.

Tiagasa waved her away.

“She did. Please come,” Iola said.

Tiagasa groaned. “I’ll be back soon,” she said to Savasa, standing up reluctantly. “Tell P... my petitioner, if he comes.”

“He might be here any time now,” Savasa complained. “I can’t leave him sitting in the courtyard.”

“Well, do something with him then, only save him for me. I’ll be right back.” Tiagasa trailed Iola back to the ambassadress’s quarters.

At the gate, Iola stopped and turned to Tiagasa. “What were you saying just then?” she puzzled.

“About what?” Tiagasa asked.

“About the petitioner,” Iola said. “Does he come just to see you?”

Tiagasa shrugged. “Well, I certainly don’t want you getting your claws into him.”

“But it’s just the rite, it’s an offering. It doesn’t make that much difference who they go to, does it?” Iola said. “Why can’t he go with someone else?”

Tiagasa snorted. “You’re a good one for theory, but I know better. Parnet’s mine, and when the old man dies he’ll make me ambassadress. Then I don’t have to endure you and your sloppy friends half the year.” She didn’t mention enduring the dragons’ realm. Instead, she swept into the ambassadress’s garden, leaving Iola to hurry after.

Tiagasa pushed into the main chamber and approached Jasela. “I have a petitioner coming,” she complained.

“I want to go up the tower,” Jasela said. “Let someone else take him.”

“You’re not strong enough to go up there,” Tiagasa pronounced. “She said you just wanted to sit in the garden.” She glared over her shoulder at Iola.

“I changed my mind,” Jasela said. “I’ll need one of you to support me on each side for the stairs.” She held out her bone-thin arms to them. Iola took her left side, and Tiagasa, unable to come up with an acceptable excuse, went to her right. Together, they lifted her out of her seat and helped her walk outside, across the garden.

“Tia, get the light,” Jasela said. Iola could feel Jasela’s legs shaking from the effort of standing. She didn’t know how they’d get to the top of the tower.

Tiagasa went forward. “Where is it?”

“Same place as in the other dragon towers,” Iola answered.

She heard Tiagasa scratch around inside the base of the tower, far from the standard lamp-place under the third stair. “Can we take the one on the wall, here?” Tiagasa suggested. “I can’t find the others.”

“Are they there?” Jasela asked Iola quietly.

“Of course they are,” Iola said. “I made sure they were full of oil yesterday morning.”

“Never mind,” Jasela yawned. “I think I’m tired. I’ll just sit here in the garden. We can go tomorrow.” She winked conspiratorially at Iola.

“But –” Iola began.

Jasela hushed her.

Tiagasa and Iola settled Jasela onto a bench beside the waterfall. Its banks were cloaked in evergreen ivy. A weeping willow arched over the bench, its bare boughs forming a lacy veil over the resting place. Jasela sighed as she sat, looking appreciatively up at the sky.

“Go on,” Jasela told Tiagasa. “I’ll call you again at dusk.”

Tiagasa left with a graceless bow.

Jasela patted the bench beside her. “Sit,” she told Iola. “See?” she whispered. “She’s thoroughly unsuited. She just told me all I needed to know to be sure of that feeling.”

Iola watched the water tumbling down. The ambassadress’s garden was a little like a woodland glade. It reminded her of the place she’d last seen the dragon Tegana, at the cave mouth in the hills above her temple. It had been a long time ago, maybe five years before? She’d lost count. The ambassadress’s garden was composed of intimate corners and soft-rounded flowerbeds. A very few of the elders tended it, and only in the seasons when the ambassadress was on the surface of the earth. The peresi’s garden was different, more rigidly symmetrical, pruned with all the rigor of proper ceremony. It was beautiful there too, but the ambassadress’s garden felt more fully alive.

“Fetch me something to eat,” Jasela said.

“Will you be all right here while I go?” Iola said.

Jasela looked at the sky. “I think so. I’m hungry.”

Iola didn’t know much about tending the sick, but wanting to eat was surely a good sign that Jasela was recovering. She followed Jasela’s gaze upwards to a corner of the sky. There, far away in the distance, the bright tip of dragon wing glinted against the blue. Iola made her obeisance to the dragon, and to Jasela, and departed.

§

Darna wasn’t sure why she felt so unsettled by her encounter with Tevan. She hated to admit that the elders were right, that a young priestess needed to be guarded when she went out, but then the one man she’d seen when she was out on her own had made advances. He might have been only being friendly, but it didn’t feel like that. She spoke of it to no one. She paid extra attention to what the petitioners said and did when they came to her, to the rite, but none of them gave her that same feeling of unease. After all, she was ready for them. She knew what to expect and so did they. They waited, always, for her to move first, for her to invite them in. They did not take the robes from her, as she’d felt that Tevan had wanted to do. That was her role, mimicking the dragons, to unveil herself when she was ready, and not at the man’s whim.

She did not ask the Aralel about leaving, though she still wanted to go, didn’t she? She was on her way back from breakfast one late morning when Sunna appeared at her elbow.

“Come with me.” Sunna said nothing more until after they’d left the crowded back courtyard and were away from the other priestesses, and then she said, “Your father is here again.”

“Here in Anamat?” Darna said. “In this season?”

“He’s here in the temple, says he came to see you. The treasurers sent me to fetch you. He didn’t bring them anything.”

“Why should he?” Darna asked as they passed the main sanctuary. “He already paid my fees.”

Sunna chuckled. “You know most men don’t come here to pay novice fees.”

Darna blushed. Of course he was the prince of Tiadun. He must have come last Midsummer to lie with the ambassadress, to send his seed with her to Tiada under the earth.

Her alleged father had come two years into her novitiate to fill the temple coffers. He’d met with her then, as if to affirm that she looked like him, which she did, though she hated to admit it. He’d told her that if she had a son, that child could become his heir. Of course he didn’t care that she didn’t want to have a son, or any baby at all. This idea of inheritance stretched the law of Theranis, especially because Darna’s mother had been an ordinary priestess, not the keep consort, and because the prince had not acknowledged her when she was an infant or even as a young child. She’d been right under his nose and he hadn’t even guessed she was related to him until the night she’d fled that dragon-blinding keep, until after she’d set her heart on getting an apprenticeship in Anamat.

It hadn’t quite worked out that way. Before her last venture out, she’d wished she could leave the temple to become a scrappling again. Now, she wasn’t so sure. She didn’t like the way that journeyman was waiting for her with the apprenticeship. He acted as if she had something he wanted, whether it was her knack for finding holes in walls or just her priestessly power, she wasn’t sure, but she had no interest in giving it to him.

Still, it was probably better than whatever the prince of Tiadun had in store for her. He probably wouldn’t force her to leave the temple – the Aralel wouldn’t let him – and though she didn’t want to be locked up in Ara’s Landing all her life, it would be better than going back to Tiadun keep.

Near the front courtyard, Sunna ushered her into a small chamber, the same one where Darna had met with the prince on his last visit, when he’d come himself rather than sending a note. The chamber was small and dim, furnished only with a square table and a couple of padded stools. The prince sat in the shadows with a hooded cloak shading his face. It was a bare place, a place for counting offerings and dividing them, not for any ritual function. The prince was alone, and Sunna shut the door curtain behind her.

“You didn’t come at Midsummer,” Darna said as soon as the door shut. “You said that you would.”

“Did you receive my message?”

Darna shrugged non-commitally. She’d gotten the message, but hadn’t wanted to reply.

The prince sighed. “Matters at the palace demanded my attention. Also, I was watched.”

“But of course you were. Everyone watches a prince.” Darna looked back at the door. “What brings you to Anamat now?” she asked. It was entirely the wrong season, not even trading season yet.

“I have a shipment of two dozen horses from Enomae,” he said, “from my allies there. I’ve come here to receive it and to speak with their emissary.”

“It’s not trading season yet,” Darna said.

“It is now. At Midsummer the ruling council agreed to extend it to just after Midwinter, though some of us thought we should not close our ports at all.”

Darna had heard nothing of this. “And what did the elder priestesses say?”

“It is none of their concern, nor of yours, daughter.” The prince wore a brown hooded tunic. It was very plain – a servant’s tunic.

“You’re dressed as a servant?” Darna asked.

The prince waved his hand dismissively. “As part of my agreement with the men from Enomae, I’m taking instruction from one of their priests. Did you know, they worship an eagle-headed god? They say he can see everything, and strike down one’s enemies in exchange for a blood sacrifice.”

“What kind of blood?” Darna wondered. She’d spent her last round of monthlies in a foul temper, and imagined that blood could carry some weight with an eagle god.