The Lotus Ascension (7 page)

“
You’re not living up to your reputation, Ausir.” Soren liked to
tease Konas.

“
Orgies haven’t interested me for years,” Konas said with a smile.

Soren looked around the
room. He, on the other hand, was very interested indeed. There were quite a few
women walking around who caught his eye him, and they all beckoned to him with
every look and every move.

Chapter Thre
e

As the litter carried her back to
her father's house, Sillara relaxed. Everything had gone perfectly, aside from
Nathen's inexplicable attempt to keep her at the party. She refused to think
any further of that, though, and reflected instead on the celebration itself.
The entertainers she had chosen had been perfect, and the feast had been worthy
of the King's own palace. That in particular had pleased her. Preparations for
such a feast took days, and had she not begun them well in advance, there would
have been no feast for Soren's glorious return. He had brought fresh honor to
the Itenu name, and she knew that her parents were both glowing with pride.

Ajalira was not in the litter, for
Sillara rode in her own, attended by her maids, and as Ileke, her body-slave,
began to untwist Sillara's elaborate—and headache inducing—hairstyle, the young
Sunjaa spoke. “Does it not seem hard,
Mistress, that
you must leave?
Particularly when the young Kesandrahn lord
was so eager for you to remain.”

Sillara laughed. “I am Queen of the
Ausir, Ileke, and more to the point, I am a maid. It would not be proper for me
to remain. There will be such goings-on as always happen when sailors return
from the sea, and no maid should witness that.”

Ileke released the last braid, and
Sillara's mass of black hair tumbled down her back. Sillara gratefully shook
her head, sending her loose curls into a fresh confusion. As she did so, she caught
the light footfalls of a girl darting past the litter. She opened the curtains
to peek, and she saw Merieke disappearing back in the direction of Konas's
house.

Ileke also must have seen, for she
turned her eyes toward Sillara again. “How can it be improper for maids to
witness if Lady Merieke is staying?”

Sillara's mouth twisted wryly. “I
am not Lady Merieke.” Sillara was quite certain that Merieke, who was a close
friend and childhood playmate, was not a maid any longer. Sunjaa girls came of
age at fourteen, and Sillara doubted that Merieke had retained her maidenhead
much beyond that date, four years ago now.

“
And they are not,
Mistress, at common quarters.” Ileke adjusted the collar of Sillara's Ausir
gown. Of all her attendants, Ileke best understood the complex Ausir fashions.
“There are girls with them, you know.”

“
I know.” Sillara closed
her eyes. After putting so much effort into her song, she was tired. She had
practiced that particular song in her head during the three hours between
Soren's arrival and the party itself, but the self-harmonizing always exhausted
her. She had, by the grace of the goddess, been able to divide her voice, to
sing multiple parts at once, a gift given only to the most favored of Melara's
priestesses.
Melara Rose-goddess, the goddess of wine, music,
beauty, and impossible love.

“
Mistress?”
Ileke's voice startled Sillara, and she realized she had been
lost in her own thoughts again. Sometimes it happened that Sillara could close
her eyes, and the image of a garden bower, filled with roses beautiful enough
to adorn the Rose-goddess's own hair, would snatch her from herself. It was not
a place she had ever seen, no place
she had
ever been.
It was rather the shadow of a dream, a half-remembered echo.

“
Yes, Ileke?”
Sillara shook her head, as if by doing so she could shake loose
the last tendrils of the vision.

“
We are here.” Ileke
helped Sillara from the litter, but no sooner had Sillara left the curtained
privacy than she saw the gathered knot of people outside her father's gates.
They were
not,
she knew, here to see her father. They
were here to see her.

“
You have supplicants.”
Ileke's attitude shifted, and Sillara smothered a sigh. Though Ileke, having
been Sillara's attendant since they were both no more than six, was generally
able to overlook Sillara's qualities in the familiarity of mistress and maid,
there were times when Ileke drew back to the same distance as nearly everyone
else in Sillara's life. Ileke's eyes no longer held the cheerful affection
Sillara was fond of seeing. Instead there was an almost worshipful look that
served only to remind Sillara that she was not really a Sunjaa. No more was she
really an Ausir.

“
I will see them, of
course.” Sillara did not show on her face any of her discomfort. “But do not
let my parents be disturbed.”

“
Of course not, Mistress.”
Ileke slipped away from Sillara's
side and went to the gate. There she held a whispered conversation that Sillara
could hear perfectly.

“
The Queen of the Ausir
will hear your pleas,” said Ileke. “If you will be quiet, orderly, and patient,
she will touch each one of you.” She unlatched the gate, and the small
crowd—not so small as Sillara had at first hoped—entered as quietly as
twenty-five barefoot Sunjaa could.

“
We will do anything if
the Queen will only see us.” The spokesman for the crowd was a middle-aged man
with a withered arm. “Her touch is our only cure.”

Sillara did not bother trying to
refasten her hair. She squared her shoulders and moved toward the gathered
crowd. “How can I help you?” she asked. She hoped that her parents were already
indoors. The last time Kamen had caught her at this she had been kept within
her chambers for a week.

“
We seek your gracious
touch, O Queen.” The same middle-aged man spoke again. “Our Queen, Queen of all
the destitute.”

Ileke had resumed her place by
Sillara's side, and the pride with which her body-slave walked would have
brought a smile to Sillara's lips had she not made out her parents' litter
entering the courtyard.

Sillara resolved to continue. It
was too late now to retreat, and she would not have it said she turned away any
who came to her, even if what they sought she could not give. “I will touch
you.” Sillara smiled at the man and laid her hand on his arm.

“
Thank you, mighty
Queen.” He bowed to her and shuffled away, walking backward lest he turn his
back to her.

Sillara bit her lip. Her father
would doubtless see this. Even as she touched the feverish baby a young mother
held out, Sillara heard her father and mother exiting their litter.

“
What is going on here?”
Kamen's roar broke the stillness of the courtyard, and despite his volume,
Sillara could make out the harsh intake of her mother's breath.

“
I will be just a moment,
Father.” Sillara quickly touched a young woman with no visible illness, but the
haunted, haggard look in her eyes told Sillara that there was something indeed
amiss.
Perhaps she cannot conceive.

“
Sillara.”
Kamen traversed the courtyard and laid his hand on her arm,
staying her.

“
Yes, Father?” Sillara
looked up into his eyes, but she did not see there the disapproval she had
dreaded. She saw fear, and her heart ached.

“
How often do they come?”
asked Kamen. Ajalira was at his side, and Sillara saw reflected in her mother
the same fear she felt in her father.

“
Not too often.”

“
Sillara.”
Ajalira shook her head.

“
At least once every
three days,” said Sillara. “But since they came last night I had hoped they
would not today.” Since her parents were not sending away her supplicants,
Sillara turned back to the poor, suffering people. Touch and touch.
A coin given.
A kiss dropped on the brow of a child. Touch
and touch.

Sillara hoped that, by the time she
had finished, her parents would have already gone back inside, but she knew her
hope was vain. She did not hear their footsteps retreating, though she did not
turn to look at them.

“
What do they call you,
daughter?” Kamen seemed suddenly old to Sillara's eyes, and tears spilled down
her cheeks.

“
I am sorry, Father,
truly.”

“
Let us take this
indoors, my love.” Ajalira's hand on Kamen's trembled slightly, and Sillara
caught the movement.

In silence Sillara followed her
parents through the wide corridors of her father's house, and she knew with a
cold piercing of her heart that this was not her home.

No one spoke, aside from Kamen
giving order for a fire and mulled wine. The sea breezes could lend a chill to
the marbled rooms, and only when Kamen and Ajalira sat side by side on a soft
sofa with Sillara seated across from them did Kamen speak again.

“
What do they call you,
daughter?” He asked the same question again, using the same words, and Sillara
could not meet his eyes.

“
Queen,” she said.

“
Queen of the Ausir?”
asked Ajalira.

Sillara heard her parents' breath
cease. They were both waiting, both afraid.

“
No.”

Her parents both exhaled, but
Kamen's was more a groan than any other sound. “Queen of the Sunjaa?” he asked.

“
No.” Sillara could not
bear to make the situation worse, and she hoped that this would at least
comfort them.

“
Then of what?” Kamen's
voice was tight.

“
Of them, of the destitute.”

Kamen shook his head, but Ajalira
smiled.

“
I tried to give them
coin, Father, truly.” Sillara paused. “But they did not want it, at least not
most of them.”

“
They want you to touch
them. I heard.” Ajalira's smile did not reach her eyes.

“
Does your touch heal
them?” asked Kamen.

“
I do not know.” Sillara
wished that Soren were here. He would understand. “I do it because they wish
it. It makes them feel better.”

“
Have you seen the same
people more than once?” Kamen pressed her for an answer.

“
No.”

“
But they keep coming
back?”

“
Yes.” Sillara knew as
well as her parents that this was most likely due to at least some of her
petitioners being healed. “May I go to bed now? I am tired.”

“
Yes, daughter.”
Ajalira did not embrace her, nor did Kamen. Instead they held to
each other as
Sillara
bowed and left. She knew, with
an ache at her heart, that it was dread of her eventual apotheosis that filled
them.
Sillara
herself felt no particular confidence
that she would become a goddess, but this was manifestly what her parents feared.
And there was some small part of her mind that could not ignore the facts. She
prayed; her prayers were always granted. And yet she was certain no god heard
them.

Ileke was waiting outside the door.
“Mistress?”

“
Is there a bath drawn
for me?” asked Sillara.

“
Yes, Mistress.”
Ileke's earlier deference had not entirely faded, and Sillara
could almost have wished she had imitated Merieke and gone back to the party.
Not that she wanted to participate in the orgy. She simply wanted to see faces
that were not touched by either worship or fear.
To see Soren
or Konas.
As for the orgy itself, sex was something that would come to
her eventually.

And soon.
She knew that, unlike
the Sunjaa, the Ausir did not account a girl to become a woman at fourteen. The
Ausir considered a girl a child until eighteen. And Sillara's eighteenth
birthday had been a week before. Soon King Tivanel would summon her to his
city, Duildal, and she would become the Ausir Queen in truth.

Sillara did not linger in her bath.
As quickly as Ileke could bathe her, she was done, and she slipped on a flowing
nightgown of simple white. It was neither fitted like her Ausir gowns, nor
translucent like her mother's Sunjaa dresses. Her hair hung in damp ringlets
down her back, and she could feel her nightgown soaking up the water. But
instead of going to bed, Sillara turned to the shrine of Melara in her
bedchamber.

Melara Rose-goddess was usually
depicted as a dancing maid with flowing hair, laughing and lovely, but
sometimes she was shown as a melancholy musician, with sad eyes and an unplayed
lyre in her lap. It was before this latter image, cast in silver and decked
with fresh roses, that Sillara knelt.