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July 7 - July 12, 2021
My Ead, she had whispered, and breathed in the baby scent of her head. My evening star. If the sun burned out tomorrow, your flame would light the world. The memory made Ead ache to be held. She had been six when Zāla had died in her bed.
This was the Mother as she had been in life. Hair shorn close to her skull, an axe in one hand and a sword in the other. Her dress was made for battle, woven in the style favored by warriors of the House of Onjenyu. Guardian, fighter, and born leader—that was the true Cleolind of Lasia, daughter of Selinu the Oathkeeper. Between her feet was a figurine of Washtu, the fire goddess.
As soon as she touched its surface, a scream leaped from her lips. Sarsun let out a scream of his own as Ead collapsed before the Mother, her fingers bound to the jewel like a tongue to ice. The last thing she heard was the skirr of his wings.
In her lost years, she damaged him enough to somehow bind him, but it was not enough to prevent him rising anew.” One thousand years he will be held and not one sunrise more.
“Eadaz,” Aralaq said. “Yes?” “Do not follow stupid birds into dark places again.”
“The Witch of Inysca forged Ascalon. An object imbued with power. This jewel may be another of her creations,” Ead said. “Kalyba walked this world long before the Mother drew her first breath.”
“Aren’t all you Ments a little in love with knowledge, Niclays?” “Much to the distaste of our cousins in Virtudom. They often wonder at how we can question the foundations of our adopted religion, even though its bedrock is a single bloodline of no great exceptionality, which hardly seems sensib—”
“The one who wears the chains is a thousand times greater than the one who wields them,” Nayimathun said. “Chains are cowardice.”
The water in you has grown stagnant, Roos, but it is not beyond cleansing.”
“I trust you to conquer it, beloved. Or to turn back if the risk becomes too great.” He patted the ichneumon beside her. “Be sure to return her to me in one piece, Aralaq.” “I am no stupid bird,” Aralaq said. “Ichneumons do not lead little sisters into danger.” Sarsun cawed in indignation.
Once, Kalyba had come across Ead and Jondu while they played under the sun, and she had smiled at them in a way that had made Ead trust her utterly. What would you become, little sisters, she had asked them, if you could become anything?
What had they told the Queen of Inys about Ead? That she was a sorceress and a traitor, no doubt. Whether Sabran had believed it, in her heart, was a different matter. She would not want to accept it—but how could she challenge the Dukes Spiritual when they knew her secret; when they could destroy her with a word? Did Sabran still trust her? She hardly deserved it. They had shared a bed, shared their bodies, but Ead had never told her the truth of who she was. Sabran had never even known her true name.
I dream of a shaded bower in a forest, where sunlight dapples the grass. The entrance is a gateway of purple flowers—sabra flowers, I think.
At the end of the path, I find a great rock, and I reach out to touch it with a hand I do not think is mine. Ead turned. There it was, a slab of stone almost as tall as she was, guarding the mouth of a cave. The rock breaks in two, and inside— “Hello.”
“Mita Yedanya is not like her predecessors. She looks inward,” Ead said. “I do not.”
“Tales to frighten wayward children. I do not fear that which I do not understand.”
am Firstblood. I was first and last to eat of the hawthorn, and it granted me eternal life. But of course,” Kalyba said, “you have not come out of curiosity about my siden, for siden is familiar to you. You wish to know the source of my other power—the one no sister understands. The power of dream and illusion. The power of Ascalon, my hildistérron.” War-star. A poetic term for the sword. Ead had seen it before, in prayer books—but now it plucked a string in her, and the realization came forth like a note of music. Fire ascends from the earth, light descends from the sky. Light from the sky.
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All of you are soaked in ignorance. My knowledge—true knowledge—is a valuable thing.”
Once there were at least three siden trees—the orange, the hawthorn, and the mulberry—but now, to my knowledge, only one remains.
“But siden, dear Eadaz, has a natural opposite. Sidereal magic, or sterren—the power of the stars. This kind of magic is cold and elusive, graceful and slippery. It allows the wielder to cast illusions, control water . . . even to change their shape. It is far harder to master.”
“There is a balance between the two branches of magic. They keep one another in check. When one waxes, the other wanes. An Age of Fire will be followed by an Age of Starlight.
The Long-Haired Star. The Tablet of Rumelabar. The fall of the wyrms in the Grief of Ages. The strange gifts of the woman who now stood before her. All of it connected. All of it stemming to one truth: fire from beneath, light from above. A universe built on this duality.
“Long ago, I used my fire to reshape the star rot I had gathered.” Kalyba combed her fingers through her hair. “To create the most remarkable weapon ever made.” “Ascalon.” “A sword of sterren, forged with siden. A perfect union.
“She might embellish the truth,” Chassar said, “but bloodthirsty and cold though she is, she never struck me as a liar. In her day in Inysca, there were brutal punishments for oath-breaking.”
“An Easterner,” Ead said quietly. “Surely that tells you that the Mother was interested in the world beyond the South.”
Meanwhile, the menfolk of the Priory, who dealt with domestic matters, might soon have to be trained as slayers.
“I suppose a little caprice is to be expected of a woman born to sit on such a throne, at such a price.” Nairuj patted her belly. “This is heavy enough without the fate of nations perched on top of it.”
Cleolind had not wanted the pomp and circumstance of courts for her handmaidens. Intimacy was what mattered. The coming together of sisters in support and praise of one another.
She could not be seeing this. Kalyba had addled her senses. He was dead. He was lost. He could not be here. And yet— and yet, he was. Loth.
For months he had walked these halls in a half-sleep. He suspected they were putting something into his food, to make him forget the man he had been. He had started to misremember the details of her face—his friend from far away.
she looked . . . whole, and full, and fire-new. As if she had gone for too long without water, and now she was in bloom.
No matter what she was, she was still Ead Duryan, still his friend. Somehow, he had to reach her. Before it was too late to remember.
Next you will tell me that you came to care for Sabran Bereth—” “What if I did?” Chassar scrutinized her face. His mouth was a fess in the depths of his beard. “You heard the blasphemy of the Inysh,” he said. “You know what they have done to the memory of the Mother.” “You told me to get close to her. Is it any wonder if I did?” Ead shot back. “You left me to fend for myself in that court for almost a decade. I was an outsider. A convert. If I had not found people to hold on to, to make the wait endurable—”
“By the Mother, what have I done to deserve more exile?”
know full well who I am,” Ead snapped. “What I do not know is why, in the years I have been absent, this house of ours has become unable to see beyond its nose.”
And as she turned it over in her hands, something woke in her memory. The twin goblets. The age-old symbol of the Knight of Justice. And her bloodline. Crest. Descendant of the Knight of Justice. She who weighed the cups of guilt and innocence, of support and opposition, of virtue and vice. A trusted servant of the crown. Cupbearer. Igrain Crest, who had always disapproved of Aubrecht Lievelyn. Whose retainers had seized control of the Queen Tower even as Ead fled from it, ostensibly to protect Sabran. Ead gripped the balustrade. Loth had sent one warning from Cárscaro. Beware the Cupbearer.
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If she did not return to Inys, she would be abandoning all of Virtudom. That seemed to Ead to be a betrayal of all she knew to be right, and all the Priory represented. She was loyal to the Mother, not to Mita Yedanya. She had to follow the flame in her heart. The flame the tree had given her.
“You are a fool.” He nudged her brow with his nose. “Without the tree, you will wither. All sisters do.” “Then wither I will. Better to do that than to do nothing.”
Most of their number were unscathed, but two men had been tossed from the cliffs. The sea had not returned their bodies—but another body had washed up a day later. The body of a dragon.
Finally, the elders had concluded that this dragon had been boiled. Boiled alive by the sea itself. Nothing was more unnatural. No omen could be more sinister.
The old Tané would have refused, but all she had wanted since arriving here was to feel nothing. To forget herself.
Sobbing in agony, she reached for her side—and the lump, the thing she had carried for years, slipped from the burst seam in her body. Shuddering, she looked at it. A jewel. Slick with her blood, and no larger than a chestnut. A star imprisoned in a stone.
She buried the jewel in the soil of the courtyard. Whatever it was, she had to keep it hidden. As she had all her life.
The worst was yet to come. She had to stay awake, just for a little longer. Nayimathun and Susa had suffered because of her. Now it was her turn. The needle pierced her skin.
She found Loth arranging a platter of fruit with Tulgus. His eyelids looked heavy. Dreamroot. They must be trying to make him forget.
His eyes were the pale yellow of groundnut oil. Perhaps he was the one who had gifted Nairuj her eyes.
Zāla also believed that we should stretch our limited resources to protect all humankind. She was always whispering in the ear of the old Prioress, telling her that we ought to protect every sovereign in every court—even in the East, where they worship the wyrms of the sea. Where they idolize them as gods. Just as the Nameless One would have had us do to him. Oh, yes . . . Zāla would have had us protect them, too.” Something about her tone sat wrong with Ead. The hatred in it.
Zāla would have had us open our arms to the world and, in doing so, expose our bellies to the sword.” All because Mita Yedanya told her I had poisoned your birthmother. Kalyba had worn a mocking smile. As if I would ever stoop to poison. Mita had banished the witch and never allowed her to return. An outsider, after all, was an easy scapegoat. “It was not the witch who killed Zāla.” Ead closed a hand around her blade, and it nerved her. “It was you.”
Ead could scarcely hear her. For the first time in her life, she felt the Draconic fire in her blood. Rage was a furnace in her belly, and its roar overwhelmed all other sounds.
“I don’t know if I trust the woman you are,” he admitted, “but I trust the woman I knew.”
