Priestess of the Dragons' Temple

Chapter 8: The Baths-2

“We’ll go out after this,” Darna said. “Maybe a little outside food will fatten you up.” She glanced over at Iola, but Iola was only looking at Ganie, not listening at all. Iola was uneasy. Why?

“We could,” Myril said, but Darna had turned away. She was looking at the entrance to the baths. Lenasa came in, followed by Tiagasa and Savasa.

“Who’s with Jasela?” Iola asked as they entered and threw their towels off.

Tiagasa waved her hand. “Oh, she’s sleeping, and besides, Sunna said she’d watch her.”

“But Sunna isn’t appointed,” Iola said.

Tiagasa cast Iola a withering look. “She’s permitted to attend the Most Blessed One. Everyone knows that.”

Myril c****d her head to one side. Sunna certainly was allowed to attend the ambassadress, everyone knew that, but no one knew why, except, presumably, for the Aralel and the Most Blessed One herself. But that was not the question she’d come here to answer. The question was over the fate of the changes in Ganie’s womb, over Ganie’s fate, if the dragons had their say.

“We had an awful lot of work this morning,” Tiagasa complained. “I don’t know how I’ll manage to get the energy to see my petitioner tonight.”

“You know you have a petitioner tonight?” Darna asked.

“Of course she does,” Savasa chimed in. “Parnet comes practically every night. The Governor’s son, you know.”

Tiagasa glared at Savasa.

“Oh, I think I’ve seen him,” Darna said, “a few times when I’ve been out in the garden late. Not a very remarkable-looking man.”

“No, but – ” Savasa started.

“Oh, I can’t wait to soak!” Tiagasa filled a bucket with a great splash and slopped some of it onto Savasa.

“We thought we’d come down here and join you,” Lenasa said as she slipped out of her robe. “It looked like everyone was coming, and of course we didn’t want to miss out.”

Savasa flopped into the water, her splash narrowly missing Myril’s pile of incense and her brazier.

“Be careful of that!” Ganie said.

Tiagasa circled in. “Are we doing a divination? How interesting!”

Iola planted herself between the incense and the waters of the soaking bath. “It’s not your divination,” she said.

“Thank the Great Ones for that,” Tiagasa said. She followed Savasa into the water and swam to the far side of the pool. Lenasa joined them and they whispered behind their hands as if that could shield their thoughts.

Myril made an effort not to listen. She picked up the brazier and blew on one of the slow-burning coals. It had not been extinguished in the splash, so there was no excuse to delay.

“Let’s begin,” she said to the others.

Ganie, Iola, and Darna gathered around. Ganie cast a quick look over at Tiagasa and her hangers-on then ducked behind Darna and plucked out one of her hairs, wincing. She threw the hair onto the glowing coal along with a few grains of incense resin. They all clasped hands, as if Iola and Darna were part of this, too. They hadn’t talked about it, but with the girls across the bath looking askance at them, they’d closed ranks around their fellow scrappling.

Myril inhaled deeply. She felt a small part of the fires of the earth joining with their offering. The dragons of the air had been invoked. Whether they came or not was up to them.

“Let’s go in,” Myril said.

Iola got to her feet in one fluid motion and dove into the warm waters. She shot up again at the side with a theatrical gasp. Darna splashed a bucket of rinsing water over herself. Myril watched it eddy away along the tiles and down its channel beside the wall. She poured one bucket gently over her own hair. Ganie sat on the side of the pool, waiting for her.

“Come on in!” Iola reached out of the water to stroke Myril’s ankle. Myril felt an electric shock move through her body and pulled away. Iola seemed oblivious to the effect, but she withdrew.

Ganie squeezed Myril’s hand and she poked her toe into the water. It was warm, but not as scalding as it had felt on the night of her initiation. She used Ganie’s shoulder for support as she lowered herself in, Darna following her. Myril set her free hand on Darna’s shoulder while Iola waited, swirling through the currents of the pool, indifferent to the gossiping princesses behind her. Darna grounded Myril, but she could still feel the dragon currents coursing all around, heating the pool, pulling at her mind. Iola must have felt them, too, but she sat steady in their midst, as calm as if they were her own tamed creation. It seemed that Darna felt the currents only as a tickle at the edge of her consciousness that she resolutely ignored.

Ganie was tense. Hoping the others wouldn’t notice, Myril touched her hands to Ganie’s still-flat belly. “Go ahead,” Ganie said faintly.

Myril edged further into the water, letting its warmth soothe her muscles, which were tired from chopping vegetables and fetching texts all over the temple. The girls at the far end of the pool seemed oblivious to the energies swirling around them, except maybe for Lenasa. Interesting. Lenasa had seemed friendlier lately. Savasa was massaging Tiagasa’s shoulders. Myril almost envied them their indifference to that life force. In the currents, she could feel all the pain of the land, as well as its power. The kitchen priestesses had taught her that much, at least. She did feel the presence of foreigners in the harbor, but she wouldn’t have known what it was if Darna hadn’t mentioned it. She settled all the way into the bath, never letting herself stray entirely out of contact with Ganie’s body.

Up on the edge of the bath, a novice arrived with a tray of tea and set it down by Tiagasa.

“Thank you,” Savasa said. “Pour for us.”

“We can pour our own,” Darna said.

Tiagasa glared at her. She preferred to make the novices wait on her, of course. The novice, uncertain, kept pouring and left the cups on a tray beside the pool, but then she left. Iola floated over and took a cup. She drank, watching Myril anxiously. The tiled bottom of the pool pulsed with the life of the earth. Myril ducked her head into the water all the way. She came up, dripping, and looked at the others through half-tranced eyes.

“I’m ready,” she said. “Give me your hands.” She moved to face Ganie and stretched out her arms. Their toes just touched. Myril opened her second sight. A bubble of light seemed to rise around them. Ganie looked so ordinary, not like a priestess at all, at least not a priestess of the highest temple in the land. Behind her stood a small shrine, just a village shrine. Fields of green and dark-leaved orchards stretched out beyond the village, and this vision of Ganie turned to watch a boy child playing in the lane.

“You will leave,” Myril said. “You will go to a village. You will …” Myril’s words failed her as another piece of vision came to her. A man who was less than devout approached. Ganie let him in, behind the village shrine.

“What is it?” Ganie said.

“You will not be able to stop the change,” Myril whispered. “None of us will.”

She stepped away from Ganie. Suddenly she floated free, with no anchor at all to keep her from the fires of the earth. She sank. She saw lights, flashes, a watery world of crimson and gold and the sapphire blue of the sky, stars long away in the night as if the steady sun were as fickle as the moon.

Someone reached out to her. Myril saw the water above her and blinked where it stung her eyes. The dragon currents under the tile seemed to hold her there, pinning her under the water. Someone tugged at her hand but she didn’t budge, couldn’t float free.

After what seemed like an eternity, it was as if Anara’s claws closed around her back and lifted her to the steady cool tile of the bath’s side, away from those fires. Iola bent over her, her breasts touching Myril’s own, her hands on Myril’s arms, leaving bruises where they had lifted her from the grasp of the other world.

“They want you. The Great Ones want you,” Iola whispered as she straddled Myril on the cool tile floor.

Myril shook her head against whatever Iola was saying. From the across the pool she heard splashing and clamor and a suppressed shriek as the others scrambled out, hurrying to cluster around, to watch. Iola pressed herself to Myril, swallowing and gasping, and suddenly Myril felt the pull go into Iola, and leave her lying empty, cooling, the heat of the dragons gone, and the ordinary world falling back into place around her.

“Is that –” Iola paused to pant. “Is that what it’s always like for you?”

“Yes,” Myril whispered. “Let me go!”

“I’m jealous,” Iola said. “That’s better than… ”

“It’s too much. Now let me go.” Myril’s voice rose, then she could turn her head to see Darna crouched beside them, the bath water shining on the russet hair between her legs, dripping to the cool blue-laced tiles between her heels. Darna tugged at Iola, who reluctantly rolled off and lay beside Myril, gasping, much as she had been a moment before. Myril scrambled up and fled, naked, to where the cold air blew into the steamy languor of the baths, dispelling, a little, that ancient gravity.

Somewhere behind her, Iola hummed a chant, an echo of the rite closing, the sound of a fulfilled priestess with her hands on the pulse of the earth, wrapped around the heat of offering.

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Iola had wondered why Myril had gone into the bath like such a nervous kitten. Lying on the tiles after they parted, Iola stared at the vaulted ceiling and thought back over it all. She hadn’t spent much time with Myril in the past season. After all, they were both busy with their work. Whatever the Aralel said, Iola knew that Myril could follow the peresi’s calling. She’d felt her, been with her, and that had been even before initiation.

Now, Iola wondered if Myril might have been a greater priestess than she was, if she had dared to try. Tiagasa said that Myril was like a mouse, but there was no truth to it, none at all. When she looked into a teacup for a simple divination, understanding flashed around her, something the dragons had yet to give Iola, at least not with her petitioners and never so clearly as that moment she’d just witnessed. She hadn’t seen Myril’s vision, but Ganie had, and she’d gone now, gone to the healers or to the Aralel, Iola wasn’t sure.

The dragons had taken Myril down, swallowing her into themselves. Iola wished she could be consumed by them, too, the way they wanted to consume Myril. She wanted to dive into that whirlwind, to be brought into that power. She had reached for that sense in the rite, never quite touching it, not like that. It came to Myril unbidden, without her even wanting it. What power it would be if Myril embraced it! No one would be able to break it. Only she, Iola, had drawn it away, and not easily.

Darna had struggled to pull Myril’s arms up from the tiles, to push her up, but she came to the surface shaking her head. Ganie had followed and stayed under water for what seemed like an eternity, prying with her fingers, dragging at Myril’s shoulders, locked to the tiles. Finally, Iola stirred, wanting to break in and take Myril’s place – as if she could. Meanwhile, Tiagasa and Savasa had sidled up around her. They grasped Iola firmly on the arms with two hands each, leaning into her.

“So that’s what your little friend does,” one of them said. She reached for Iola, like Myril had once done. “No wonder you took her as your lover.”

For a moment, Iola couldn’t shake them, but then Darna saw what was happening. She struck the water widely, splashing Tiagasa in the face. Someone screamed. Iola broke free and dove into that place that held Myril, that cradled her in the lap of the dragons, that teemed with their power. Iola wanted them to take her instead.

She slid through the water, into the dragons’ mind. She felt as if her body might explode with their heat, but she pushed her way into their vines of energy. Myril floated up from the bottom of the pool and into her arms. The energy receded. Iola wanted to chase after it, but she opened her mouth and water filled it, not dragon power. She pushed Myril to the surface, out of the bath and onto the unshifting tiles. If the dragons wouldn’t have her, she wouldn’t let Myril go there, either. Iola slapped Myril’s body down on the side of the pool and pushed her away from the water.

Iola held Myril’s body close, away from the Great Ones’ hunger. She coughed out the water from the pool and lowered herself onto Myril, taking her power, sucking out traces of dragonfire, breathing it into herself. It filled her, it eclipsed her, and then she took more. Myril’s eyes blinked open. She was cooler now, more solid. She’d gotten it, some of the fire. She bent over Myril to take the rest.

Myril twisted her face away.

Even that second-hand breath was everything Iola had hoped trance would be, and far more than she’d been able to summon, herself. Then she felt Darna’s hand on her back, drawing her off, shoving her away from Myril. As if from a great distance, Iola heard Myril scramble up and go.

“We’ll go meet Thorat now,” Darna was saying. It was like a voice in a dream.

“Who?” Ganie said.

“Never mind,” Darna said. “We’ll take you to the infirmary.”

“Go to the Aralel.” Myril’s voice was weak, almost inaudible, and then they were gone.

Iola replayed the scene in her mind again and again.

A long time later, deep into the evening, someone came and stood over her. It was the Aralel.

“Get up,” she said. “There are petitioners to see. Clearly, we haven’t kept you busy enough.”

Iola staggered to her feet and went back to her chamber alone. At least Myril was only a mortal priestess like herself. She could never be as elusive as the dragons, could she?

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