Wildfire (87 page)

 

  
“What then? Oh no, you can’t mean!—I heard a rumor that a singer enjoyed the favors of Arthygater Keros—was Skolian the one?” Would the arthygaters kill him for that? Maybe, if they thought to bend Keros to her duty. If she was refusing to wed the Starling.

 

  
Aghazal lay down on the bed and covered her face with her shawl.

 

  
I couldn’t think of what to say. She knew I disliked Skolian, and I didn’t want to sound false. But he’d done nothing to deserve such a death. I said, “He sang so beautifully.”

 
  

 

  
I went with Second and Yafeqer and Aunt Cook and her daughters to the famous Temple of Katabaton to buy candles for sacrifices. The temple was crowded with women on the same errand. The stout fluted candles looked as if they were made of marble, and sturdy enough to hold up the heavy tiled roof of the temple. I bought two, one that could burn for five days, and the other for three. We prayed before the enormous statue of Katabaton, whose head nearly reached the carved rafters. Her forearms were gilded; her wig was made of red human hair. Ecstatic worshippers kissed her hem and feet, threw flowers, and sang prayers. We too made devotions, but I wished to speak to her alone, in the cliff shrine.

 

  
I parted from the others and descended into the markets of the lower town. There I found a good flint striker to make sparks, and chewy cakes of almond flour and figs. In the flower market I bought poplar leaves for courage, hawthorn for hope, heliotrope for faith, and saffron ribbons to twine a garland for Katabaton.

 

  
My basket was laden with gifts I’d received from Aghazal’s kin and King Corvus, hidden under some leeks. I took small treasures that wouldn’t be missed: beadcoins, pots of unguent, swirled glass vials of scented oils, golden bracelets, and saffron wrappers.

 

  
I felt Katabaton’s presence in the little shrine, as I had not in her temple. I gave her the garland and the cakes, and sparked a fire in a clutch of grasses, and lit the candle that was supposed to burn for five days. I gave Katabaton the flint for the use of any other worshippers who might visit.

 

  
I prostrated myself and prayed that she would condone my presumption in offering myself as a postulant for her Serpent Cult. I believed in her, though I didn’t hold her higher than the gods of Corymb. I was afraid she knew this. But I told her that I was a true daughter of Lambanein, returned after a long absence, and daily I strove to overcome my strange-ignorant ways.

 

  
They say the gods see farther into our hearts than we do ourselves. I prayed that what she saw, she forgave.

 
  

 

  
In the afternoon there was a lull in the bustle when the Sun shone straight down into the courtyard, and the king came to visit me. Soon I’d be riding from Allaxios with an escort of red-clad guardsmen; or I would disappoint him and refuse to go. Either way there would be no more afternoons such as this, so long, so short, the delicious ache of being aroused and thwarted. I had learned every wile in the list of Flirtations, yet I refrained from all but the subtlest provocations.

 

  
The king and I spoke in the High so we would not be understood by oth
ers. Certainly we were overheard; Aghazal’s cousins Zarfatta and Gazuf had taken turns serving us, and they had teased me often about the lack of moans and cries from the room. I’d lied and said such utterances were considered impolite in Incus.

 

  
I told the king that Aghazal had chosen to enact the Ode of Akantha and Nephelin as a message to her beloved. Her songs—Akantha’s songs—spoke of love that must be hidden, as Aghazal’s was hidden.

 

  
“What does a whore have to hide?”

 

  
“Her beloved must have something to hide. Therefore it is not a patron. I think it’s an arthygater, and an unmarried one at that.” I’d puzzled over Aghazal’s secret and this was as close as I could come to a surmise.

 

  
“Aghazal is an Akanthan, a woman-lover?”

 

  
I smiled. “She’s fickle. She loves with Lightning Passion, first one person, then another. Aunt Cook says the last time Aghazal was smitten like this, she took up with an Ebanakan guardsman and squandered money on him. But she also falls out of love lightning fast, they say, and
phhtt!
—it’s over.”

 

  
We sat on opposite ends of the bed with a four-legged tray between us that held nothing but a tiny dish of anise seeds, a flask with watered wine, and two glass goblets. The king had refused food. “Is he afraid we’ll poison him?” Aunt Cook had asked indignantly.

 

  
The king had ceased to listen to me, uninterested in the gossip of the house. Or he found it hard to believe that our performance had been aimed at someone else. He’d been the center of his kingdom, the one everyone sought to please or schemed to harm. He hadn’t lost the habit of rule and the conviction of his own importance. Was that why I desired him? So I too could feel important?

 

  
I wondered what he was thinking, even as my own thoughts creaked round and round, borne on that wheel of which he was the hub. So we both sat brooding, absurd.

 

  
He said, “We’ve heard some rumors, a disturbing rumor—”

 

  
“Your pardon, Corvus Rex Incus—a rumor?”

 

  
“Many rumors. It’s forbidden for men to witness the mysteries of the Serpent Cult, but men are often drawn to do what’s forbidden, for the sport of it. And someone, it’s said, once hid inside the mountain and saw women sacrificed to the Serpent, or to Katabaton, I’m not sure which.”

 

  
“Men who know the least often speak the most,” I said. “But I’ve heard rumors also. Aghazal told me it was dangerous.”

 

  
“Then you know.”

 

  
“I
know
nothing. I suppose such rumors serve the Serpent Cult well by inspiring awe and fear. And if these arthygaters do it, how can it be so dangerous?”

 

  
“You wish to undertake the initiation anyway?”

 

  
“It would pain me to think of your five thousand in gold going to waste.”

 

  
He allowed himself to frown at my flippancy. “We might find another way—a painted serpent instead of a tattoo.”

 

  
“What will the Starling do to me when the paint wears off?”

 

  
He was silent. I waited a long time, but he wasn’t going to say it; he never would. I said, “You must take me for a half-wit. I know why you’re sending me, and what purpose the guards in my escort will serve. You mean to kill your brother—my betrothed. So you must see why I need the serpent tattoo. If your men fail, it will be better for me if the Stark, the Starling, believes I am Arthygater Keros, a real princess. He might hold me for ransom instead of killing me outright. He might even marry me, ein?”

 

  
With all the time I’d had to weigh my words in silence, still I had spoken past my reckoning. I knew how much I’d surprised him by the stillness of his face and his measured breath. Angered him. That foolish gibe about marrying the Starling—suppose he believed me to have such ambitions? He’d tell his men to kill me even before they killed Merle, lest I give his brother warning.

 

  
“No, listen,” I said. “I didn’t mean that. I’m grateful for your gift—the way back. I dreamed Sire Galan is alive, and while he lives I can hope to find him.”

 

  
“You profess to want him still. I don’t quite believe it, not since you took so well to whoring. When Divine Aboleo proposed to send you to this house, I thought he was mistaken in your character, for you’d never borne yourself like a wanton. Instead I was mistaken. Your Sire Galan will find you much altered. He will guess what you’ve become—he’ll smell the taint of other men on you.”

 

  
The king spoke my fear aloud, but how did it serve him to say so? He needed me to go, yet would mock me out of my reason for going.

 

  
Unless—I dared think it might be the king who was maddened by the imagined fragrance of other men on my skin. Contempt and desire were so often entwined, the Lambaneish had a name for it on their list. As a celebrant I should know how to use the advantage he offered. But anything I said might send that truth, so inadvertently revealed, back into hiding.

 

  
I turned away from him and kept my head downcast. He wanted me to feel shame and I did, and let him see it. My shame was planted deep and could not be altogether uprooted. But I’d been in Lambanein a long time now, and I wasn’t as ashamed as he wished me to be.

 

  
So I hung my head, concealing joy and defiance. I let his words linger between us. Maybe he would hear what he’d let slip.

 

  
“I shouldn’t taunt you for clinging to foolish hopes,” he said after a while. “I have so many of my own.”

 
  

 

  
We set out for Mount Omphalos before dawn. We women were leaving Allaxios, and all were welcome on the pilgrimage, from the poorest bondwomen and beggars to merchants and noblewomen—all but tharais. We crossed the Ouraios River to the western bank over the three bridges, and we were a vaster throng, it seemed to me, than the army King Thyrse had taken to Incus. We sang and danced, played fingerdrums and cymbals and flutes, and talked, of course, and the sound of our songs and chatter, an exuberant commotion, filled the bowl of the Heavens over the plains. Yellow dust billowed around us from the beating of our bare feet.

 

  
The Sun rose behind us as we spread out along the road and spilled into the dry fields on either side. It was not long since Moonflower had nearly killed me, but the music and good cheer gave me strength. Never had I seen such a sight as this saffron river of women, and I was glad to be borne along by the current, and held up by my Sisters when I faltered.

 

  
It took all day to reach Mount Omphalos, and all of us walked except the very oldest and youngest, and those who were too ill. As we drew nearer to the mountain, the smooth snow-capped peak showed its deep furrows. The stone was dark gray and pitted, and had a forbidding look. Wild gorse, myrtle, and stunted cedars rooted in cindery scree on the slopes.

 

  
Aghazal rented shelters of brush and branches from the local villagers, and we made camp in a fold of Omphalos’s skirts. We strolled about to watch the singers hired by wealthy noblewomen and merchants to perform enactments. I bought a tin amulet of Katabaton in her Moon boat from one of the many peddlers. Cookfires were forbidden, but everywhere people lit their stout candles to honor Katabaton. Aunt Cook had prepared a feast to be eaten cold, enough for us and for any visitors who chanced by, beggars or acquaintances. I didn’t eat, for I’d been instructed to fast for a day and a night before the initiation. I sat on a boulder and rubbed my tired feet, and watched and listened. But I felt as far from my companions now as I’d felt close to them during the march. I’d dismissed warnings about the rites of the Serpent Cult as mere tales. Now I wished I’d believed them.

 
  

 

  
There were magnificent temples to Katabaton, Posison, and Peranon on the slopes of Mount Omphalos. But one was not magnificent at all; it was ancient, from the beginning of the First Age of the World. The hierophants of Katabaton chose the time for her festival to coincide with the one day a year the first rays of the rising Sun struck the entrance to this temple, a low cave, a maw in the mountain. The soles of many feet over many years had
smoothed the stone stairs that led to this portal. We climbed in procession before the dawn, adepts and postulants and worshippers, and we added stones to the cairns lining the way.

 

  
We waited on the steps just below the door, the five postulants seeking to join the Serpent Cult. I was the only celebrant among them. I knew Arthygater Keros, and supposed the other three to be wealthy women of the palace district or upper town. We were clad in plain saffron wrappers and shawls; our net caps were strung with gold and amber beadcoins, and about our necks we had pungent garlands of marigolds, which signified prophecy. The adepts wore white wrappers and wreaths of dwale, which in Lambanein meant secrecy. Kin, friends, and curious and devout onlookers waited with us in the dark, in silence; they would not be permitted to follow us into the mountain.

 

  
I found by my right hand a swallowwort plant growing from soil caught between stones in a cairn. Such a sign couldn’t be ignored. I plucked a stem and smeared the yellow sap on my webeye, the better to see what could be seen. It suffused everything with tinted light, so that even the white robes of the adepts were dyed a most luminous tender apricot, like the sky in the east where the Sun was still hidden.

 

  
The night had been cold compared to summer nights in Allaxios, but when I shivered, it was not from the chill. I looked to where my Sisters stood, and found Aghazal weeping. She gazed at Arthygater Keros, who returned her look sorrow for sorrow. And oh yes, I might have savored the discovery at some other time—to find that Aghazal had a Lightning Passion for Keros, and Keros for Aghazal—that First had sung Akantha’s song for Keros—and the musicmaster was their go-between, his visits so frequent he’d been taken for the arthygater’s paramour himself. It was a tragedy fit for an Ode or even an Epic that Skolian had died for them, and poor Keros was forced to undergo this perilous initiation to satisfy the ignorance of a traitor prince, her betrothed; I wondered if she had told Aghazal what husband had been chosen for her.

 

  
I was glad of the distraction of these frenetic thoughts, because I was afraid to be still—afraid to feel fear. Aghazal looked my way and I saw she had tears to spare for me, bless her. Even Tasatyala was crying.

 

  
The fiery Sun breached the horizon and sent her red rays across the plains and up the corridor of stones to the portal of the temple, and there the light stopped, and did not enter the mountain. The adepts ululated, and their wild cries went up like birds taking flight in our midst.

 

  
Some initiates went before us postulants into the mountain, and some followed, so we couldn’t turn back if we lost heart. We descended many stairs in the dark, and crowded into a long room lit with tapers in soot-