Chapter 1: The Rulers of Men

Chapter 1: The Rulers of Men

The novice priestess was kept inside the temple, to guard the purity of her intentions before her initiation. She was honored to be chosen, to be among the Blessed Ones.

I

ola reached over to stroke the warm sleeping body beside her, but found only cooling sheets and blankets where Myril had slept. Across the dormitory, Myril’s curtains settled into place. Iola lay back and looked up at the ceiling. They had been novices for four years now, four years of study and work, four years in which she had not seen a dragon, except at festivals and in dreams.

A bell rang outside in some distant corner of the temple. Iola had never imagined that it would be so empty in the temple. She felt dry, abandoned, cut off. She should not have been, not in the dragons’ most favored temple. She’d scarcely seen a dragonlet, only glimpsed a few on faraway rooftops and in shaded corners outside the back courtyard, but only near crossing times and never inside the temple itself. Anara did not seem to grace the small part of the sky above the novices’ courtyard. Iola longed to speak with the dragon again. Soon, she would.

In those barren years of training, Myril’s nighttime visits had been her one consolation. It wasn’t what they’d been told the rite could be, but together they could stir the dragon fires to life in their bodies and feel the sacred rhythm of the earth pulsing up through their veins. It had been enough to slake her thirst a little, but soon all of that would change. Another bell clanged, this time in the novices’ garden just outside. Sunna flung open the dormitory door. She was a young peresi, an initiated priestess who took petitioners, who also advised their group of novices.

“Wake up, girls!” Sunna shouted. She was not as elegant and placid as Iola thought a peresi should be, but she was mysterious in her own way.

The girls grumbled as they stirred awake and rustled their covers, dragging themselves up from sleep.

Thinking back on the years in the temple, Iola realized that Myril hadn’t been her only consolation. She’d also learned to read and dance and to tend gardens far more complex than the village vegetable plot she’d weeded as a child. The other girls, the novices and young priestesses, accepted her as one of their own, even Tiagasa, who had seemed so unfriendly at first. Here, Iola was not so different from other girls. They all courted the dragons, or at least they aspired to. The others said that she was pretty, but they all were, even Darna – at least when she wasn’t scowling. People here didn’t gawp at her or shun her because she was different.

And now it was almost time.

Darna yanked Iola’s curtain open. “Come on!” she said. “You’re getting as sleepy as Myril.” Her red hair caught the dawn light coming in through the open door. It shone like fire. Iola reached out to take her hand.

Darna pulled back. “I’m not getting in there with you,” she said. “I’m getting breakfast. It’s festival bread today!”

Iola swung her feet to the floor and smoothed her hair back. Darna tossed her a tunic, averting her eyes. Iola looked at Darna. From the back, she could only just see the curve of Darna’s old lopsidedness. Her limp had nearly disappeared under a relentless barrage of tutoring from the temple’s best dancing instructors, but they had not been able to smooth out Darna’s impatience.

Myril was dressed already. She was beautiful in a quiet way. Her hair was dark like Iola’s, but her eyes were brown and unremarkable in the daylight. No one else stopped to catch their breath when she was naked, as far as Iola knew. Myril joined the other two, taking Iola by the arm.

They had almost reached the dining hall when one of the kitchen priestesses stopped them and handed them a bundle of thick towels. “Help unload the bread from the ovens, girls,” she said. “I’ve never seen so many scrapplings in my life!”

Iola’s stomach grumbled, but there were a lot of scrapplings, and they looked even hungrier than she felt. The three of them went around to load bread from the oven onto enormous trays. Last year, Iola and Darna had carried one tray between them, but now they each took their own. Iola felt stronger, at least physically, though she was still so delicate-looking that no one would guess it. Darna was stronger, too, and Myril had always been a sturdy girl. She was also at least two years older than the others in their group.

As Iola set down her tray for the swarming scrapplings, she paused to watch them and consider what their lives must be like, but she didn’t linger long. She did not want to go back outside the temple, even if Thorat was there.

Especially

not if Thorat was there.

§

To Myril’s ears, it seemed as though the temple’s population had doubled overnight. Visiting priestesses from the provinces chatted on the porch, with calls of, “By Anara’s grace, you look just the same as you did when we were novices!” and, in more concerned tones, “How have you been, dear?” They came at every Midsummer, meeting with the Aralel as the princes met with the Governor.

Their greetings merged into a babble of gossip: news about their fellow priestesses, happenings in their temples and in the provincial keeps and farmlands. There was never much gossip about the mountains and when there was it came in guarded whispers, “Oh, no, she’s gone into the hills.” Going into the hills was a kind of death. It meant leaving the company of fellow priestesses and of men – except possibly for hill bandits. The hermit priestesses went to court Na, the dragon of wild lands, and to wait for death.

But that morning, the talk was all of affairs, politics, and clothes. “Did you hear?” said one priestess. “Kaisa doesn’t want to leave Onarun, and she’s been there three years already.”

“Do you think there’s a man? You know … ”

“I’d rather come back here if I had the chance, man or no.”

“Ha! That’s what you say now.”

Myril hurried on to the relative quiet of the refectory, where conversation was forbidden at mealtimes. As they were about to go in, one of the gate priestesses ran over and handed Darna a note. Myril paused.

“Go on in,” Darna said, shooing her on.

Myril heard the crumple of parchment and Darna’s exasperated grunt.

“Tell the messenger no, I can’t come to the palace. He should know that!” Darna told the gate priestess.

“I’ll say I couldn’t find you, then,” the gate priestess said.

“If you have to,” Darna said. With that, she came into the refectory, looking agitated. She sat on the bench beside Myril.

“Your father?” Myril whispered.

“He’s not,” Darna grumbled.

Iola gave them a look. She bowed her head in prayer as one of the kitchen priestesses said the blessing.

As they ate, Myril observed her friends. Except for the processions down to the harbor on festival mornings, none of them had left the temple since that Midsummer day four years ago. Darna chaffed at her confines as much as the rest of them combined, but Iola seemed merely disappointed by her life as a novice. She had always seen dragons best in wild places when no one else was around. In the temple, the novices were rarely alone and the sky was confined, walled. At times Iola almost lost the glow of dragonfire that had followed her everywhere in her scrappling days. Even without it, she was beautiful.

Myril finished her bread and tea and waited to be dismissed. At last, the Aralel stood and rang the bell.

“Our near-initiates will prepare to serve tea to the governor,” she announced. A beam of sunlight shone in through the clerestories, making her hair shine silvery and illuminating the green flecks in her eyes. Myril found the Aralel mesmerizing, whether she was reciting chants and prayers or only making a simple announcement like this.

“His retinue is leaving the palace now.” She looked at Myril and the other girls who were about to be initiated. Waiting on the governor and his councilors would be their chance to be noticed by the governor. It was he who, in consultation with the Aralel, nominated the ambassadress to the dragons, the Most Blessed One.

Myril’s stomach tightened. She wished she hadn’t eaten so much. She did not like men. Rather, she did not remember liking men much. Her father had died when she was very young and she scarcely remembered him. She’d only needed to speak to a very few men in her scrappling season and since then she’d only glimpsed them through the back courtyard gate or in the crowds along the processional way at crossing days.

“Come on, Myril,” Ganie tugged her along. “You’ll be fine.”

Ganie, a near-province scrappling, had entered the temple with them. Her freckles set off the deep cream tones in her skin in a way that caught the eye. She was also sensible, practical, and loyal.

Myril took her hand. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s just –”

“We’ll be all right,” Ganie said. “We wouldn’t still be here if the elders didn’t think we’d be able to do the work of the peresi.”

Myril wasn’t so sure. The peresi brought in most of the temple’s wealth, and there had been fewer novices last year. She wasn’t sure she wanted a man to touch her deeply, more than Iola had done, and then there would be the burden of trance along with it. They would have to uphold the sexual rite that the temples of Theranis were known for.

“I don’t think they would let us leave, even if they weren’t sure of our abilities,” Myril said as they skirted around the scrapplings’ bread line.

“Why not?” Ganie asked.

“They say that none of the new scrapplings show any signs of dragonsight,” Myril said.

“That can’t be,” Iola broke in. “I hope it’s not true, anyway.”

They moved on into a narrow passage where they could only walk two abreast. Myril expected Ganie to drop behind, but Iola let go of her hand first and looked back over her shoulder, as if she would be able to detect the talents of the gathered scrapplings merely by looking that way. Or maybe she just hoped to glimpse a dragonlet.

§

“What did the note say?” Myril asked Darna as they picked up their towels to go to the baths.

Darna looked over her shoulder. The princesses were all gathered outside the dormitory, not listening to them. “He wants me to go back to Tiadun.”

“Before initiation? But why?”

“I don’t know,” Darna said. “Why pay for my training and then –” She looked out at the princesses, all gathered around Tiagasa, who had inexplicably come slumming back to the novices’ quarters. “I suppose he wants to make sure I’ll go back, but he should know by now that I won’t. He didn’t even come to the temple himself this time.”

Myril frowned. “I suppose he didn’t want to hear what he thought you’d say. The Aralel wouldn’t make you go if you didn’t want to.”

Darna shook her head at that. The Aralel wasn’t particularly fond of her.

“Or maybe he’s gone over to Cerean ideas,” Myril suggested. “You know, they want their women untouched by other men.”

“What, to marry me to one of them?” Darna shuddered. “It’s ridiculous. He probably isn’t even my father.” Her mother had been a priestess, everyone knew that. She’d been an accident from the beginning, but the prince thought he might have some claim on her, more than just as a subject of Tiadun, which she wasn’t any more. She’d come to Anamat to escape those claims.

Iola and Ganie joined them and they walked down to the baths together. Sound carried and echoed in the stairway. At the top of the steps, Tiagasa drew Savasa aside and whispered something to her then hurried off, presumably back to the peresi’s courtyard. Savasa ran ahead and whispered to Lenasa.

“A young man –” Savasa cut herself off at the sound of her words echoing back. She blushed crimson.

Lenasa laughed, the bright, coppery sound cutting out anything else Savasa might have said. The two of them were always scheming about something, sometimes in collusion with Tiagasa. They’d never accepted Darna as a fellow princess, which was exactly how Darna preferred it. Everyone in the temple – apart from the treasurers – accepted her as just another scrappling girl, whatever the prince of Tiadun might say.

The ceiling of the baths was vaulted marble inlaid with a dark gray abstract pattern. For all her staring, Darna hadn’t been able to figure out how it was built. Maybe the planners would be able to tell her, if she could ever claim her apprenticeship, if she could ever escape the temple and not be whisked back to Tiadun’s imprisoning keep.

“You won’t go, will you?” Myril asked as soon as the noise of the splashing water would cover her words.

“Of course not,” Darna said.

“You can’t,” Iola chimed in. “Your mother was a priestess, that means you belong here.”

Darna sighed. Iola refused to see things as they were.

“You are meant to be here, as much as any of us,” Iola insisted.

Darna tossed her towel onto a bench. “Priestesses aren’t even supposed to have babies. You know that.”

“I wasn’t supposed to be like I was, either,” Iola said. She unwrapped the towel from around her body and reached up to hang it on a peg, letting the steam swirl up her arm, almost as if she’d summoned it. “I don’t think anyone in my village had seen a dragon in a hundred years,” she said. “They didn’t know what to do with me.”

“Tegana probably invented you out of her own mind,” Darna said. “How could a person make a girl who could talk to dragons?”

“Or used to be able to,” Iola said, so quietly that Darna almost didn’t hear her.

“Come on,” Ganie called to them from the edge of the bath. “We have to clean up for the old men now. Might as well get on with it.”

“I hope my robes aren’t wrinkled,” Iola said abruptly. “Will you do my hair?” she asked Darna. Darna wasn’t vain about her looks but she was clever and quick with her hands and the other girls were always clamoring for her help with their adornments.

“I promised Ganie I’d do hers first,” Darna said as she stepped into the bath. “I’ll do yours second.”

“And I’ll do yours,” Myril offered.

“I wonder if the Aralel will keep the old men waiting long,” Ganie said. She pushed off the side of the bath and splashed as she passed the princesses.

“Stop that! You’ll ruin my curls!” Savasa complained.

Ganie giggled.

“I’ll make you a bet,” Darna said to Ganie as she returned, floating across the surface of the steaming water. “I bet it takes us three trips back to the kitchen before the Aralel will give the governor his official audience.”

“And I’ll bet two trips,” Ganie said. “Whoever loses fetches tea and cakes for the other one the whole first week after initiation.”

“It’s a deal,” Darna said.

§

A little while later, they assembled in a side courtyard, arrayed in their best robes and with every hair in place. Geta and a few of the other elder priestesses came to inspect them, adjusting a fold of a cloak here, a strand of hair there.

“Straighten up,” Geta said to Savasa. “Try to stand like Iola does.”

Iola blushed, but only a little. Everyone said that she had excellent posture.

“Yes, honored one,” Savasa said, with a slight bow.

Geta took Myril and Lenasa by the shoulders. “You two are nearly matched in height. Carry the tray between you at the head of the procession.”

She turned back to Savasa and Iola. “You two will carry the wine. Keep pace with each other as much as you can, and serve opposite sides of the gathering when you arrive at the meeting room.”

Darna and Ganie were given the water pitchers to carry at the rear of their procession. There should have been more of them, Iola reflected, twelve instead of six, but the other novices who had come to the temple with them had all been sent away, back to their home provinces or to other, lesser temples.

The girls stepped into their places and Geta led them out. The elder priestess moved slowly, leaning on her cane. Iola didn’t mind going slowly, it gave her time to gather her thoughts. Beside her, Savasa fidgeted. They circled around the back of the new sanctuary, heading toward the elders’ courtyard and the temple’s meeting rooms. The garden there was a more ornamental version of the kitchen garden, with carefully tended knots of medicinal herbs around a reflecting pool, which was a copy of the Eye of Na, a lake in the mountains.

Just before they entered the courtyard, Geta stopped to address them.

“Remember your poise,” she said. “This is not the occasion for you to speak, but rather to listen, although of course you may answer a direct question or a greeting.”

Iola nodded. It was her chance to be seen and to court the governor’s approval. She was glad that she wasn’t expected to speak. She wouldn’t know what to say.

Geta motioned for the girls to move on. Myril and Lenasa stepped up onto the covered walkway surrounding the garden and turned the corner. As Iola and Savasa followed, Savasa hesitated, shifted slightly, and stumbled. She crashed into Iola before righting herself. The wine in her pitcher sloshed onto Iola’s robes. Savasa turned on Iola, glaring.

“Somebody tripped me!” she said.

Iola froze. She looked down at her robe. The wine dribbled down along her belly, seeping into the robe and dripping onto the tiles. It looked terrible. It looked like blood. She felt faint. She set her pitcher down and sank to the floor. Darna was looking down at her with concern.

Iola buried her head between her knees. “I didn’t trip anyone,” she said.

“Of course you didn’t,” Darna said.

Geta doubled back to see what had happened.

“I can’t go in there like this,” Iola moaned.

“You certainly can’t,” Geta said. “Nor can Savasa, if she’s going to be that clumsy.” Geta turned to Savasa. “I’m sure that your fellow priestess would never stoop so low as to trip you. The reputation of our temple and the honor of all the priestesses of Theranis rests on your shoulders. Come with me, both of you. Ganie, carry Iola’s wine.”

Geta urged Iola to get back up on her feet. “We’ll see if we can find you a clean robe,” she said. “The rest of you, go on as planned.” With that, she ushered Iola and Savasa back the way they’d come. Just past the old sanctuary she stopped and sighed, looking at Savasa.

“You were not tripped,” Geta said.

“But she –” Savasa stammered.

Geta waved her to silence. “I’m afraid I really cannot send you back in to serve the governor. You may return to the dormitory and prepare your belongings.”

Savasa bowed her head. “Yes, Honored One,” she said. With a little sniff, she moved off, back toward the novices’ dormitory frowning back at Iola once before she turned the corner.

Geta turned to Iola and looked at her robe. “Now, whatever will we do with you?”

“I didn’t trip her,” Iola said.

“You’re far too sure-footed for that, and you’re not jealous of Savasa, are you?”

“Jealous? Why should I be?”

Geta only laughed. “Come with me,” she said. “I have a thought for you.”

§

The others went on. Darna thought she caught a glint of triumph in Savasa’s eye and wondered if she had spilled the wine for some reason of her own or if Tiagasa had bribed her to do it. She remembered that whisper, on the way into the baths. It had been something about a young man, hadn’t it? Whatever she’d been promised, she must have thought it worth more than being shown off to the governor and his entourage.

Outside the meeting room a green-robed treasurer waited to inspect them once again. “You’re a diminished showing,” she said. “Discipline isn’t what it used to be.” She tut-tutted then drew the door curtain aside.

“Your Excellency,” announced the treasurer priestess, “I present our near-priestesses.” She bowed, making way for the four novices; four where there should have been twelve.

The room was large and airy, not like the cramped chamber where Darna had met with the prince of Tiadun a few years earlier. It had tall clerestory windows all around, making it brighter than a shrine room, though it was similar in form. Thick-piled carpets covered the paving stones and a teardrop-shaped lamp of a thousand colors hung from the central ceiling beam. The men sat on cushioned chairs and benches, all looking at the four young women with… it certainly wasn’t reverence.

Good, Darna told herself. She didn’t feel like being reverent, either. She just wanted to get through the presentation, the initiation, all of it. The governor, a once-sturdy man, half rose from his cushion as the novices entered. Myril and Lenasa set the tray of fruit, bread, and cheeses down before him, and Darna and Ganie came forward with the wine and water.

All of the men wore heavy robes, even though it was the beginning of summer. They looked the future priestesses over as if they were pictures in a gallery or paintings on the wall, and not very interesting ones at that, despite the fact that in another two days any of the girls might play priestess to them. No, these were probably men who would only pay their devotions to the ambassadress. They would spill their seed into her body to be carried directly to the dragons’ realm, to bind them to the land.

Now, they came to the temple was to meet with the Aralel, not to encourage the novices’ ambitions. Darna wondered what the temple’s leader discussed with the governor every year, and how much he heeded her.

“Yes, thank you, a fine group of girls you are,” the aged governor said. “You’ll be good to us and to Anara, won’t you?”

Darna nodded and smiled politely. She filled his cup with water and stepped back to stand against the wall for a moment before another man summoned her. She didn’t feel any attraction to any of them. The governor buried his nose in his goblet. A counselor as white-haired as the governor himself sat to one side, garbed in white and black, his bright eyes taking in every movement. Darna looked around. The prince of Tiadun wasn’t there. There were a bit fewer than two dozen men in the room, including a few who must have been princes.

Lenasa poured an ample cup of wine for the governor’s son, leaning over so that her robe opened a little. He smiled at her and winked.

Ganie and Darna moved on to serve some of the other counselors. There was a man who held an abacus under one arm, the captain of the palace guard, and representatives of the kings of Cerea and Enomae in their peculiar garments. A young scribe and the palace herbalist stood in the shadows. The herbalist was the only woman of the group, probably a former priestess. Myril served her deferentially while Lenasa nodded to a man in princely clothes. He called her over.

“Greetings, niece,” he said.

“In the name of Anara, I greet you, uncle.” She filled his goblet, but this time she did not let her robe fall open. Darna could see the family resemblance between them, a similarity in the shape of their noses and cheek bones, though the man was some years older than the near-priestesses.

Lenasa stepped away, and the governor’s son leaned in to talk to her uncle. “So, Tanest, your brother still sends girls to the dragons?”

“We do,” Tanest answered, “though almost only to this temple, of course.”

“Of course.” The governor’s son eyed Lenasa lasciviously.

The governor yawned. In the corner, the two foreigners whispered to each other. The other counselors idly helped themselves to food. They didn’t speak to the novices and soon stopped looking at them, as if they were mere servants and not about to become some of the most revered women in the land. The governor’s son inspected his reflection in a piece of polished silver. In the reflection, he spotted Ganie. He beckoned for her to come closer, and his hand brushed against her robe as she poured. Ganie blushed. He reached towards her again, but stopped, arrested by the sight of some new beauty.

The foreigners stopped their whisperings. All eyes turned to the doorway.

Iola stood silhouetted by the light from outside. She entered carrying a full carafe of wine. Her hair was piled high – it had survived the tumble – and she wore a colored robe that Darna had never seen before. It was immaculate and looked stunning on her, as everything did. The old governor smiled at Iola and held out his goblet for her to refill.

The governor waved his son aside and beckoned for Iola to come closer. The herbalist signaled to Darna for water, and she went. Meanwhile, Myril was handing a cake to the old man with the black-and-white robes and the heavy silver pendant around his neck. The chief chronicler – that was who it had to be.

He chuckled softly. “Clever of Nalani, that,” he said to the herbalist while Iola knelt before the governor and filled his cup. “Who is that girl?” he asked Myril as he took the cake from her.

“Her name is Iola, Lord Chronicler,” Myril answered.

“Yes, the girl,” he said, nodding. “Nalani, the Aralel, has dressed her in the former ambassadress’s robes.”

“I think that was Honored Geta’s doing,” Myril whispered.

“All the same,” said the chronicler. “They can’t force the old man’s hand. He favors that young boot-licker, Tiagasa.” He stopped and looked directly at Myril. “Pardon me, I’ve been thinking aloud. Thank you for your help, or rather, for the cake.”

Myril bowed and stepped away. The chronicler winked at her, but not at all in the same way the governor’s son had winked at Lenasa. This was almost conspiratorial, humorous. The old governor was still admiring Iola, while his son had turned his attention back to Ganie as she poured water for the foreign emissaries.

It seemed only a moment later when the curtain was swept aside again and the five novice priestesses floated back to stand against the walls. The treasurer priestess who had led them in reappeared.

“Lord Governor,” she announced, “the Aralel has come.”

The Aralel entered and took her place opposite the governor. The elder priestesses filed in on either side, across from the governor’s various advisers. The scryers hung back half a step and sat cross-legged on thick cushions against the outside wall. At their nod, the Aralel moved forward to greet the governor. The novices filled the elder priestesses’ goblets and were dismissed.

§

“Well, that wasn’t much for all the fuss we made of it, was it?” Darna grumbled on their way back to the kitchen.

“I won the bet,” Ganie said. “They didn’t even send us back for wine once.”

“The governor’s son has an eye for you,” Lenasa said.

Ganie shrugged. “Isn’t he a favorite of Tiagasa’s?”

Lenasa glanced at Iola, then nodded. “You wouldn’t want to cross Tiagasa.”

“Well, I certainly don’t want her special petitioner,” Ganie said.

“Neither do I,” Lenasa said. “Unless he tires of her, of course.”

Myril and Iola had fallen back and Myril was whispering something to Iola. Darna waited for them, and Ganie paused with her.

“I wonder why Savasa spilled the wine,” Darna mused. “What did Tiagasa promise her, to get her to douse Iola like that?” She was whispering to Ganie, but Iola and Myril had nearly reached them, so of course they joined the conversation.

“It was just an accident,” Iola said. “The Aralel says we mustn’t accuse each other.”

Myril frowned. “It didn’t look like an accident to me.”

“Besides, Tiagasa’s been so friendly lately,” Iola said.

Darna snorted. “Friendly as a cat on the prowl.”

“Oh, I don’t care!” Iola said. “Look at this robe. Isn’t it gorgeous?”

Geta appeared at the next corner, hurrying toward them. “Dears, dears,” she said. “I didn’t expect you’d be back so soon. Now Iola, you must come with me and we’ll return your borrowed robe.”

A knot of provincial priestesses gathered just outside the passageway. They stopped whatever they’d been doing and stared at Iola, just as the governor and his councilors had done. Savasa was there, too. She saw Iola and for one unguarded moment she looked as if she might explode. Then she calmed her expression and joined the others.

“Hurry now!” Geta said, shooing Iola away. “The rest of you, back to your dormitory and pack your belongings!”

Myril hurried to catch up with Darna and Ganie. “Did you hear whose robe that was?” she said.

Darna nodded.

“No,” Ganie said. “Whose? Tell me.”

Savasa scowled. Her prank had gone awry. Darna only wished she could see Tiagasa’s face turn purple when she found out about it. In any case there was nothing they could do about it until after their initiation. Maybe it was going to happen, after all.

§