Call of the Goddess: A Bona Dea Novel (Stormflies Book 1) (5 page)

Nancy staved off further questions with the statement, “When the blood sample results return tomorrow, we must be prepared to reintroduce the Heir to the people. She is to become our Protectress. The people will know something by morning with all the chatter around here. Questions are coming our way, and we must be prepared to answer them. She will require a great deal of training to make up for lost time.”

“But you told us she was likely an imposter,” Foster argued, crossing his arms glumly over his chest.

“My beliefs were misplaced. I will arrange for everyone to meet her tomorrow, and you will see that she must be Ileanne.” Morton made no further apology.

They all agreed to draft an introduction speech and training regimen while gathered in session that night.

“You will find,” said Tyrane “that training a Protectress requires little effort. The Goddess contains the life experiences of every previous Protectress our world has known. Her service will come to her naturally.”

Morton scoffed his sentiment. “Her service isn't so simple. She shows no poise and no restraint. The last thing the people need is a free spirit jumping into the lead.” She grabbed paper and pens for each of them and rejoined them at the table. “We are finished with you for now. Go make yourself comfortable in one of the guest rooms.” Nancy brushed her fingers through the air to dismiss him.

To that, Tyrane excused himself. Nancy glanced up briefly as he walked out to make certain he closed the door behind him.

+++

At a quarter past nine
, sleepiness crept through her body again. The Palace, this room, was the safest place she had slept in a fortnight, yet Axandra remained uneasy about being here. Outside her door, she sensed that people kept passing by, their thoughts curious about the occupant of this room. Their expectations loomed about her in the air.
Is it really her? (Has she come to stay?) Perhaps she will be the greatest Protectress of all time. (She lived among the real people, people like us.) I wonder what service she offered before she came here?

She tried to block them out, but the strain of the day depleted her defenses. Tiny noises bothered her ears, like the hooting nighthawk in the garden outside. She wanted it to fly away and make noise somewhere else. Letting her mind drift, she imagined the static sound of the Ocean and let it wash over her senses.

The knock on the door startled her, bringing her back to where she sat in an ornately carved chair. Who was bothering her now? She sensed the Prophet outside the door. She did not want to be alone with him, yet she rose and loosened the lock.

Don't control me,
Axandra chided the entity harshly.
I will make my own decisions.

“Good evening, sir,” she said politely, though without smiling. “I wasn't expecting you to return tonight.”

“Morton rushed me away before my visit was complete. May I come in?” Tyrane opened his hand toward the chairs set in the front of the room.

Glancing at the furniture, she still dreaded being alone with him. But what harm could he do to her here? They were surrounded by people in the building. “I guess that would be all right. For a few minutes. I'm very tired.”

“I only came to see how you were doing,” he gave as reason for his visit. In this private meeting, his expression softened to one of fatherly concern. He followed her and sat only after she lowered herself into one of the fine chairs. “Receiving the full Goddess is not a pleasurable experience. Usually the receiver returns to the Haven for assistance in accepting the gift.”

“Not a pleasurable experience,” she echoed with wry smirk. “That, sir, is the grandest understatement I've ever heard. I have never felt such pain in my entire life.” The lamps from the sleeping area shown through the silk partition, silhouetting the colorful fairies that carried the theme of the suite. She studied the figures for a moment before focusing her eyes upon Tyrane again. This time, she resisted the floating touches his mind sent out to her. “I am fine now. I have … adjusted over the last two weeks.”

He sat with a straight spine in a spindle-legged chair and waited patiently for her to continue. His posture urged her to keep talking.

“I'm tired,” she admitted, rubbing her eyes and flaring her nostrils as she drew in another deep breath. “It keeps my mind open when I want to block things out. I don't feel any rest.”

“That is typical,” Tyrane responded. He sat very still and kept a respectable distance, though Axandra witnessed tension in his muscles. He probably wanted to reach out and give her help. She created a barrier over her torso with her crossed arms.

“I am pleased that you chose to return to your true life,” Tyrane said to her, expressing genuine gratitude. “We worried a great deal that you had perished in the Storm, that the Sliver of the Goddess was lost. We could not ask for another. Your mother believed you were still alive. She only wished to see you one more time.”

If his words intended to make her feel guilty, they succeeded in giving her such a twinge. Axandra avoided his brown eyes and struggled with her feelings toward her mother, the woman who never seemed to have time for her daughter. When Ileanne was six, she felt nothing but anger at being sent away. Her mother had just been frightened knowing what was to come.

“Tell me why you ran away.”

Axandra felt herself pulled into the past for a brief moment, remembering in flickers the day she escaped. Fear, hate, lightning, and sand were all she could see.

“I will not explain myself to you,” she denied, staring him down. “It is too late to change what happened. And I don't appreciate being saddled with guilt for my mother's grief. I saw her three times in my village when I was growing up. Not one time did she look at me and know it was me. You would think a mother would know her own child.” Axandra said the last part under her breath, more to herself than to him.

“Yet here you are, completing the cycle,” Tyrane reminded her.

“When the Goddess found me, I realized returning here was inevitable,” she explained, her shoulders slumping sadly. “I left behind my home and my loved ones—I don't think I will ever see them again, not in this life.”

The conversation agitated her. Now that she vocalized what she had truly given up, her calmness ended. “It seems inescapable.”

Tyrane placed a hand under his chin and rested a finger along his pale cheek. His skin glowed chalky white and his hair gray and thick. He looked the part of elder, old enough to be her grandfather.

“This is where you have always belonged, Ileanne. It will be your home again—your true home. You will do great things. It is your time.”

Axandra brooded, pursing her lips. “Great things. That is an indistinct foretelling. It could be a great blunder. Don't you see things more clearly?”

“I wish you goodnight, Ileanne,” Tyrane said as he rose to leave, giving no acknowledgment to her scathing remark. “And welcome home.”

Axandra scowled at him and locked the door in his wake. Worked up from his visit, she fretted it would take another hour to settle down to sleep. She set to work relaxing immediately.

In the year 285

“
Mother,
may I go play in the garden?” asked the small child. Ileanne leaned her elbows on her mother's lap and looked up at the oval face and dark wavy hair.

Those strange violet eyes peered down at her with a smile. “Not right now. I need you to go with Corey and learn your lessons.”

“I'd rather go outside,” the girl replied matter-of-factly, testing her mother to see if she might change her mind.

“After your lesson. Go now,” her mother insisted, returning her attention to the pages being handed to her by a dark-suited woman who often worked at her mother's side.

Lips curled in disappointment, Ileanne dragged her feet to leave her mother's office.

“Please put your shoes on, darling,” said her mother, looking to the girl briefly.

“Yes, mother.”

“And I love you. Have a good day.”

“I love you, too, Mother.” Ileanne said it out of habit. She didn't feel it at the moment, but she said it anyway. She wanted to go outside, not into the stuffy library. And she hated her shoes. They were too sweaty in the summer and made her feel hot all over. She couldn't feel the grass in her shoes or the soft carpet or the cold stone floors.

She started toward the Library, walking slowly and dragging her fingers along the wall of the long corridor. As she walked, she avoided various pedestals holding urns and statues, pieces of art from places on this world and one faraway that she would never see. Why did they keep this old stuff? She wasn't allowed to touch it or play with it. The pieces meant nothing to her and most of it smelled dusty and old.

The suns beamed in through the western windows. High suns, just after lunch time. She felt sleepy from lunch. Going outside would keep her awake, not her lessons.

Corey waited for her outside the Library door.

“I'm glad to see you back, Ileanne,” he said with a gentle smile. “As a reward, I will forego the ritual of strapping on your shoes.”

She brightened a little.

“And we will make it a short lesson,” he said, gesturing her inside. “Just a little reading.”

After she read through just a few pages of her primer, Corey dismissed the lesson and took her down to the sunny garden. Gleefully she ran down from the veranda and into the paths, dashing left and right, chasing insects and birds.

“Don't go too far,” Corey called out to her, following her in between the hedges. He laughed as she played. She would take her specimens to him and ask for identification, showing him insects, leaves, flowers and a quick-moving reptile that crossed her path.

But always, something else walked in the garden with her, a strange feeling that someone stared at her. Ileanne felt it whenever she was out here. She kept that to herself.

+++

6th Quadrember, 307

Axandra opened
her eyes to a glaring gray that appeared smooth and unending across the stratosphere. The doors to the small balcony spread wide open, letting in the thick, wet smell of rain and the soft pulse of water droplets pounding on stone and leaves.

Stretching, she sat up in the soft bed and leaned on her bent knees, keeping her eyes on the view outside. She breathed in deeply to bring herself fully awake, drawing the cool moisture into her lungs.

Though she had been away for over twenty years, everything about this place wafted a familiar scent, from the native plants to the aged must of the tapestries and paintings and the tang of the peculiar rain that fell just this side of the mountains.

All of the land within one hundred kiloms of the Great Storm was affected by the churning, ionic atmosphere and the concentration of certain atoms that existed within the contained region. Why the Storm remained stationary was not understood—by all scientific rights it should flow eastwardly with the currents of the atmosphere. Yet it hovered, held by some undetectable force, swirling in a myriad of purple, orange and pink, brightened by flashes of cloud lightning that could be seen over the peaks of the jagged young mountains. The rain from passing storm clouds secreted a more acrid aroma absorbed from those peculiar atoms in the Storm.

Axandra looked out opposite the Storm, east toward the horizon. Except for the columns of trees that lined streams and rivers, the land stretched out in broad, flat plains of tall grass, dotted here and there with herds of grazing animals. Two roads wound out from the City within this panorama. One headed almost due east, toward the shore towns—Otsmouth, Port Galient and Ocean Pointe. The other steered northeast toward Steward Falls and Towton. The roads were paved with chip rock and tar seal. The east road appeared to be in need of repair. A small solar-powered car headed in from the east road, tires bumping over potholes and sloshing in the muddy water.

Stepping out onto the veranda, which was half-covered by a ledge above, Axandra held her hands out into the rain. The sprinkles cooled and refreshed her skin.

Barefoot and in her robe, she decided she would go for a walk.

Moments later she reached the garden and walked among the carefully cultivated vegetation. She let the rain soak through to her skin. The air moved in cool drafts, and goose bumps popped up on her arms and neck. Though she had tied it up in a loose knot, her should-blade long hair dripped and clung to her neck.

The spitting droplets washed the color out of everything from the sky to the ground. Only the vibrant reds, purples and pinks of the blossoms remained, stark against the gray. Some flowers bloomed in tiny bunches. Others splayed large petals, and water pooled in the bells and cups.

As she walked among the hedges and along the paths, she thought back to her dream, the churned up memories of a four-year-old wanting nothing more than to go outside and experience everything she could lay her hands on. She laughed as a bird, startled by her approach, flew out of a nearby bush, splattering her with water from its wings. She opened her mouth as though to ask her tutor what kind of bird it was, then remembered she walked out here alone.

Further along the path, Axandra let her mind empty and thought of nothing more than the flowers and the rain, leaving her anxiety and sadness behind her. Her senses floated in the air just outside herself, listening to everything. A nest of hatchlings lay hidden in the hedge. The mother bird nestled them warmly beneath her breast. Plump raindrops burst into smaller droplets each time one struck a leaf.

Miri approach. Axandra sensed the vibrant young woman long before she arrived.

“Miss Axandra!” Miri exclaimed from under a large umbrella. “You're soaked to the skin. You'll catch fever!” Prepared as she always seemed to be, Miri wrapped Axandra's shoulders in a dry blanket and sheltered her with the umbrella. Axandra took notice that the portable shelter was stitched out of some sort of waterproofed fabric, rather than the gigantic leaves of the umbrella tree prevalent on the islands.

The gentle shower continued to fall steadily as they headed toward the covered portion of the large veranda that stretched across the back side of the Palace.

“The walk was very refreshing,” Axandra explained with a cheerful laugh. The blanket felt warm on her skin. She hugged the fleece closer.

“And a bit chilly,” Miri complained. “If you get sick, Morton'll scuttle me down to basement work.”

On one of the ironwork tables steamed a pot of tea. Breakfast lay served as well, in this case hot fruit and cream.

“It's not that bad. I'm fine,” Axandra assured with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Thank you for the blanket. This smells wonderful.”

As she ate, the warm food and tea heated her from the inside and made the goose bumps recede. Miri waited patiently nearby.

“What time is it?” Axandra asked.

“Ten o'clock” Miri answered.

“Oh,” she responded, somewhat taken aback. She thought it much earlier and hadn't bothered to look at any clocks. “It's difficult to tell time in the rain.”

“I thought it best to let you be. You've been on a long trek to get where you are,” Miri explained as she refilled the mug with tea. Steam drifted into the air and was swept away by a puff of wind coming out of the rain. The precipitation began to thin just a bit, but the wind picked up beneath the clouds.

“The weather watchers says it'll rain for the next few days. It'll be perfect for the spring crops,” Miri said, offering idle chatter for her charge.

But at that moment, Axandra stared into the garden, listening to another voice. She couldn't make out the whisper of thought that brushed her mind, but the Goddess reacted to it like a prairie cat to an intruder, arching its back and hissing, claws extended and ready to strike. The presence concealed itself nearby, watching them.

“Miss Axandra, are you all right?” Miri's voice filtered in when the young woman gently touched her upper arm, a soft but quick gesture only to gain her attention. The woman's mind felt strong and comforting, not painful.

The nudge was enough to bring her back to where she sat, away from the static-like noise made by the strange presence.

“Are there predators in this area?” Axandra asked abruptly, squinting over toward Miri.

Eyes glancing to the side briefly, Miri answered knowledgeably. “A few, yes. Mostly the packhounds that hunt the prairie. They are usually nocturnal, though they do hunt in the rain frequently. The mud slows the bustles or something like that. Why do you ask? They can't get in this garden. The walls are too high.”

Miri must have caught a hint of her worry that one trespassed in the garden, the image of a large dog-like creature snarling and baring its teeth as it watched, secluded behind a hedge.

“Oh, I was just curious,” Axandra dissuaded, looking away toward the garden again. “I thought I heard something,” she said honestly. “I should have known about the wall.”

“Well, the garden was only walled in about nineteen years ago,” Miri told her. “You couldn't have remembered.”

“That makes sense then,” Axandra agreed, taking some relief in that fact. Yet, it also stirred up the fear that she had sensed something worse than a packhound stalking nearby. The presence felt extremely old and patient.

“Well, I should clean up and get dressed,” Axandra rose up from the table, still wet, but warmer. She wanted to the leave the strangeness here. “I think I'll take a warm bath to take off the chill.”

“I'll get one ready for you,” Miri agreed. She hurried ahead, her blue skirt swaying about her slim hips.

Axandra followed more slowly, tarrying across the rug to the main staircase.

“Oh, good morning, Ms. Korte,” greeted Councilor Morton, who just stepped into the main hall from a side room. Once again, the Councilor dressed in formal silk suit, this one maroon flecked with gold in the jacket and slacks. On the right breast of the jacket, she wore a large gold and jeweled broach, an emblem of her office. Ruby stones accented four graceful curves in progressively smaller sizes—the two suns and two moons, the symbol known as the Four Circles.

The Councilor's eyes surveyed her up and down, frowning at her dripping state. In an indignant gesture, she fluffed the curls on the back of her cropped gray hair. “I trust Miri is taking care of your wardrobe. I expect to have the results of the blood sample comparison reported to me this afternoon. Healer Eryn is working on them now.”

“So soon? Uh, yes. Miri is taking great care in her work,” Axandra assured the Councilor who seemed in doubt of Miri's abilities.

“Very good. I will summon you later. Good day.” Morton already turned and started away.

The Councilor already knew the truth, yet she continued to try to downplay the situation, hoping to avoid any premature leaks of information. It was also clear the Morton disliked Axandra and thought her naïve and unprepared. Axandra admitted to herself that she was both of these things.

“Good day, Councilor,” she wished more kindly. Then she headed up the staircase.

The bath warmed her thoroughly and washed away a great deal of grime from her trip. Then she dressed in her freshly laundered blue dress and sweater. Outside the rain still fell and the air felt damp and chilly.

Axandra waited now, not quite certain what to do with herself while the hours stretched before the inevitable news was shared. No doubt the Council needed to make decisions about how best to proceed with reintroducing her to the world-community. They would take great care to limit the shock.

She had no work to do, no chores and no hobbies with which she could entertain herself at the moment. The rain made it less than desirable to explore the town that lay below the Palace, even with an umbrella.

That left exploring the Palace, which she did not feel welcome doing even though Councilor Morton gave such permission, probably with a grudge.

Axandra looked back down at the garden. She stood on a high enough level to see into most of the space between the hedge rows, even into some areas secluded by dwarf trees.

Several uniformed individuals stalked along the paths, clearly in search of something. Axandra thought they must be members of the Elite, the Palace security force. Dark gray rain cloaks covered the uniforms, but as one tossed back his cloak to reach for a pocket, she saw the golden emblem of the Four Circles emblazoned on his chest. The uniforms themselves were dark gray flecked with metallic gold. Each member wore a cap that supported an oil skin against the rain. She counted five visible, possibly more further into the garden that extended over a half-kilom of land. In their hands, they carried small devices the like of which Axandra had never seen before. Non-lethal weapons, she surmised. The humans, upon coming to this world, had discarded all lethal weapons and all knowledge of their construction. Guns, swords, and other devices of war existed only in ancient books that had survived the Journey.

Miri must have mentioned her guest's concern about the packhounds in the garden and asked the guards to check for a stray animal inside the high stone walls. The server seemed very attentive to others whims.

Settling on her occupation for the next few hours, Axandra headed for the Library one story below. She slipped on her sandals and went out into the corridor, closing the door softly behind her. Despite the carpeted runner down the center of the hall and the variety of tapestries hanging along the walls, loud noises still echoed off the stone. She did not want to attract much attention, and she knew that some of those guards lurked in the hallways of the Palace.