Priestess of the Dragons' Temple

Chapter 8: The Baths-1

Chapter 8: The BathsThe illness of the Ambassadress was attended by much speculation. In those times, a priestess might advance herself through talent, political connections, or ambition.

– The Chronicles of Theranis

As the moon waxed and waned again after Midwinter, Myril soothed herself with the daily round of lesser rites. She hardly ever saw Iola, who seemed to still be taking as many petitioners as she was allowed in between attending the ambassadress and helping the novices in their dance lessons. Myril continued to avoid the peresi’s courtyard most of the time.

In the kitchens, she chopped and scrubbed. She had learned a great deal in the waning year, but now she began to feel idle and restless despite the work keeping her hands busy all day and sometimes into the night. The soups and breads began to all smell the same, and the elders’ lessons began to repeat themselves. She kept her grounding, feeling the earth under her feet and the temple’s solid walls surrounding her. She told herself that she was safe, but then she would think of Iola, and the thin winter light would seem even dimmer. Her Midsummer trance had nearly shattered her, but from the distance of over half a year she almost wished she could take that trance back into herself again.

“Careful with that knife, youngster,” Geta warned her. Myril looked down to find she’d sliced past the end of the chopping block. “Maybe you’d better go on to the library, today.”

Myril bowed her head. In this distracted mood the library would be safer. There, her sense of emptiness didn’t seem to matter so much. No chronicle had ever induced a trance, as far as she knew. The chronicles had a clear-headed magic that required none of the ecstasy demanded by the rites or divination, and her mind didn’t slip away as it sometimes did when she was in the kitchens doing something repetitive like pounding herbs for the Most Blessed One’s medicines. Jasela still hadn’t emerged. Even in the morning chants to greet the sun, and the daily offerings to Anara, Myril felt the pull of the currents in the earth, dragging her toward Na’s realm.

When Myril reached the library, she took a dust-covered scroll down from a back shelf, one she hadn’t seen before. It told of an ancient, long-neglected festival which used to be held one full moon round after Midwinter, the veneration of Anara’s stone. Myril had never heard of Anara’s stone except in that one account. She wondered what it might have been, and whether it still existed.

She could hear Taira in the back, sorting through a pile of crated scrolls.

“Taira,” Myril called, “have you ever heard of Anara’s stone?”

“Which one?” Taira said from the back room. “All the dragons have stones, don’t they?”

“They do, but we don’t venerate them, do we?” Myril asked.

Taira shook her head as she came into the main part of the library. “We don’t even see them, usually. Why do you ask?”

“There used to be a festival in ancient times,” Myril said, turning her attention back to the scroll in front of her. Taira peered over her shoulder.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” she said as she bundled some scrolls into a satchel. “I’m supposed to find some old healing texts.”

“Oh dear, for the librarian?” Myril asked.

“Mmm,” Taira said.

They weren’t for the librarian then. No one was talking much about the ambassadress’s recovery. She was supposed to remain in seclusion for at least another half-moon, but the elders seemed worried. Myril wondered if she would recover, then stopped herself before curiosity temped her to try a divinatory trance. She took a moment to re-read part of the scroll, written with a shaky hand. There had been a theft. The tale began with the image of a broken place in the temple’s courtyard. Myril thought about it. Yes, there was a place where the pattern of the stones was broken. The surface had been worn smooth, but it would have been rougher in centuries past.

She was puzzling over an unfamiliar word when Darna arrived.

“There you are,” she said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“You have?” Myril said, reluctantly rolling up the scroll.

“There’s the herbal,” Taira said, stepping away from the cabinet. She nodded to Darna and took the document to a table by the window to lay it out in a spot of direct light.

Darna followed Myril to the library’s back room. “Thorat’s back in Anamat,” she announced. “Sunna just told me.”

“He is?” Myril almost squealed.

Darna hushed her. “Sunna says that she can take us to see him, out at some tavern. You should come.”

Myril set the scroll about Anara’s stone carefully back in its place. “I think I will,” she said. “I should go out at least once before I go to the chroniclers’ guild. It shouldn’t be long now, as soon as trading season opens.” She looked at Darna.

“Trading season’s already opened.”

“What?” Myril said.

“I heard a rumor, that’s all. It’s not really trading season, is it?”

Myril felt the currents of the earth from her safe distance. “No, it’s not. But it’s coming soon.”

“In any case, we can go meet Thorat tonight.”

“We should tell Iola, shouldn’t we?” Myril said. “She’d want to come with us, maybe.”

Darna wrinkled her nose. “I wouldn’t. If she does come they’ll just moon all over each other.”

“It’s been years. Maybe things have changed.”

Darna shook her head.

Myril wanted to ask more about the trading season, but Darna was standing in the doorway, fidgeting. She should probably wait to ask the Aralel about it.

If Iola came along, they might even talk, not just exchange quick greetings as Iola rushed off to tend Jasela or to take yet another petitioner, or even to wait for a dragon’s visit. If they all met together, maybe everything could be like it was in that brief season of freedom they’d shared. As frightening as it had sometimes been, they’d had a sort of home all together.

“I would like to see Thorat,” Myril said, setting a scroll back on its shelf.

“Good, let’s go then,” Darna said.

They had nearly reached the peresi’s courtyard when Iola met them in the hall. Myril averted her eyes, but Iola radiated an uncharacteristic feeling of fear and uncertainty.

“Myril, I need your help,” Iola said.

“We’re going out,” Darna announced.

Myril ignored her. “What is it?” she asked Iola, daring to look at her now.

“It’s about Ganie,” Iola said. She looked back over her shoulder, as if to make sure there was no one behind her, listening. “She’s in her chamber. You have to come with me, now.”

Darna sighed. “I’ll tell Sunna we’ll come later.”

Myril put out a hand to stop Darna from going. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, to feel for the future in the paths of time around her.

“Tell her it will be around sunset,” Myril said.

“All right, then, I’ll tell her.” Darna set off to find Sunna.

Iola took Myril by the arm, her touch warm, tingling.

“What’s the trouble?” Myril asked.

Iola shook her head. “You’ll see.” She laced her fingers through Myril’s and dragged her to Ganie’s chamber.

Ganie’s chamber was much like the others. A statue of Corana sat in her nook. The rug on the offering place was crumpled, though, and a veil of dust had begun to settle over the less-used corners. Ganie sat in one of the sleeping nooks, crying. She looked up as Iola and Myril entered.

“You shouldn’t have told her!” Ganie said, burying her head again.

Myril came on in anyway. “Iola hasn’t told me anything,” Myril said softly. “Only that she needed help, that it had something to do with you.”

Ganie glowered at Iola, then she turned back to Myril. She sighed and wiped her nose on a corner of her robe. “I suppose everyone will know, sooner or later.”

Myril sat down beside her, still knowing nothing, but then she picked up Ganie’s hand. It was warm, warmer than it should have been, but Ganie was not feverish. She touched a hand to Ganie’s forehead and could almost feel the worries clouding her thoughts. Then, suddenly, she knew, or at least she guessed. She reached towards Ganie’s belly, and Ganie shrank away.

“My mother was a midwife,” Myril said, “or at least a midwife’s apprentice. You’ve been ill?”

Ganie nodded. “Tired, mostly, and I’ve missed my monthlies, and I just don’t know!” She wailed, a quiet, despairing sort of wail.

Myril took a deep breath. “We can take you to the healers, to the infirmary. They’ll know what to do. They say you can be back to usual in only a few quarter moons, if – ”

“I’m not sure that’s – ” Ganie looked helplessly at Iola and Myril. Iola was standing a little distance away, as if Ganie’s condition could spread to her by touch. “It was Pannen. He became a city watchman.” She shook her head. “Do you remember him?”

Myril did. He’d been charming, even as a scrappling. She didn’t think she would like him any better as a watchman.

“If you want to know the dragons’ will, we could do a divination,” Iola said. “Myril’s very good at that sort of thing.”

Myril’s stomach clenched, and she felt as ill and weak as Ganie looked. But then she looked at Ganie, so sad, so uncertain. She could do this. There was no reason not to, apart from her own fears. And she would not be alone, the others would be there with her. Still, she was uneasy.

“Let’s go to the baths,” Iola said. “I’ll hold on to you if you need it.”

“Yes, the baths!” Ganie said. “I think a bath would help me feel better.” She sprang up and crossed over to her linen chest.

“I’ll go tell Darna,” Iola volunteered.

“But you could just go after,” Myril said as Ganie rooted around for a towel. “I could just bring a cup of tea here …”

Iola was up the stairs already, though, and Ganie looked so much more cheerful. “You will help me learn what to do, won’t you, Myril?”

Myril nodded. “I will. I suppose I will.”

She went to get a clean robe from her own chamber along with some incense for the divination. Sometimes she went into half-trance at the mere suggestion of a divination, but it wasn’t a crossing time and she had been getting better at keeping her grounding. Still, around water, she might go into trance without any other stimulus at all, at least since Midsummer. She still couldn’t drink plain water, only tea and broth. The water drew her towards that other state of being. It tempted her to float away forever. She never even sat beside the fountain alone, but only with Darna, and in the baths she’d only splashed off with the buckets of water on the edges, not gone in to soak. She was clean enough, and because she wasn’t seeing petitioners no one noticed the difference.

She caught up with Iola, Darna, and Ganie in the garden and they walked together through the vaulted passages down into the earth. The edges of the dragons’ realm clawed at her mind.

“Stop squeezing,” Iola complained.

Myril relaxed her grip. She told herself that if she breathed carefully, she wouldn’t slip out before she wanted to. Just the day before, Geta had praised the strength of mind she’d gained, her self control. Myril helped Darna out of her robes, as she always had when they were novices. In their years in the temple, Darna had grown stronger, and in the season since their initiation she’d gained enough weight to round out the hard angles of her bones. She could not rival Iola for beauty, but not even Tiagasa could do that, not in Myril’s eyes. She folded Darna’s robe and placed it on the bench.

“You look well,” she said.

“Thank you,” Darna said, turning Myril around to unfasten her robe. “You feel skinnier. Why don’t you eat more, since you’re in the kitchens all the time?”

Myril felt her bony hip self-consciously. “I eat a little more, I think, but since summer it just seems to go right through me.”

Meanwhile, Ganie was helping Iola out of her robes. Ganie stood naked and ordinary, reassuringly pretty without a trace of glamor except for that new, soft glow around her midriff. It was growing. Myril wondered if the dragons would stop it. As Iola slithered out of her tunic, Myril caught her breath. Iola, always dazzling, was surrounded by an aura of vibrant, dragon-like light, different from what Myril remembered in her. She, too, had grown since their initiation, but Myril hadn’t wanted to see it, had avoided looking.

Iola glowed a half shade softer than the unmediated dragon-fire of the earth. She slipped the soft cloth from around her waist and stood with light pulsing out from her womb until she was almost translucent, open to everything. It wasn’t like the comforting, familiar spark of life in Ganie’s womb.

Myril averted her eyes. When she looked back, Iola was only her usual stunning self, with alabaster skin and ebony hair and the light of the other world contained in her indefinable eyes. Myril felt Darna’s hand on her shoulder.