Chronicles of the Last Days Chapter 14

Chapter 13

I

ola was not at all resigned to staying on the surface of the earth. She was still thin, but she was filled with angry vigor, as if she gathered energy from the crossing day itself and the dragons were reaching up to animate her, half-mad already. The promise of a half-year of needlework and keeping Iola partly sane did nothing to improve Darna’s mood.

“I can’t stay,” Iola said. “I’m the ambassadress. We’ve cheated the dragons of too much already. Let me go. It will help.”

“It won’t be enough, and besides, it’s not up to me. The Aralel said you can’t go,” Darna said.

“They can’t stop me.”

Darna wondered how far Iola would go to get her way, and how far the Aralel was willing to go to prevent her. With the earth shifting so much, Darna was convinced that Iola needed to stay among humankind. She might even die before she reached the dragons’ realm.

That evening, Darna put on the ceremonial garb of the ambassadress’s attendants. They would all be veiled for the long ceremony leading up to dawn, but she knew that Sunna, Eppie, and her old fellow novice Ganie were Iola’s other attendants. Eppie was about the same height and build as Iola, though she was more muscular underneath her robes.

Night fell and the sanctuary filled with priestesses, more of them than Darna had ever seen together before, as if all of the priestesses remaining in Theranis had crowded into the temple. Their chants rose high into the night air, filling the domed sanctuary, overflowing it, rising to the sky and falling to the earth, even down to the dragons’ realm, where Anara waited, listening. The edge of Darna’s veil rippled, and she saw something flicker in the corner of her vision. Was that a dragonlet? She’d never seen dragonlets in the temple before, but so much was changing, and it was a crossing time. If they were ever going to be seen in the temple, then this would be the night.

She didn’t see it again, and at long last, the light of dawn began to filter in through the clerestories. Most of the priestesses filed out to the peresi’s courtyard to drink a fortifying cup of tea before the procession down to the harbor’s edge, but Iola and her attendants went into the ambassadress’s chamber, where the Aralel was waiting for them.

“Eppie, Iola, change clothes.”

“I won’t do it,” Iola said.

“You are far too frail. You know that,” the Aralel said.

“If anyone is going to die in the dragon’s realm, let it be me.”

“You did want this girl to replace you,” the Aralel pointed out.

“I’m not replacing her,” Eppie said. “I’m just walking down to the harbor as if I’m her.”

“And then what?” Iola said.

“We have a plan,” Sunna said. “I think it’s best if we don’t send anyone to certain death.”

“And how do you know that it would be certain death?” Iola complained.

“Enough arguing. Do as I say. You’ll see,” the Aralel said.

Iola obeyed the order, though she made it clear that she wasn’t happy about it. Darna took the place beside her, with Sunna behind Iola to keep an eye on her. Eppie stood at the center of the group, dressed as the ambassadress. The Aralel led them all out into the peresi’s courtyard together, veiled.

In the temple’s forecourt, Eppie climbed into the ambassadress’s palanquin while the others took the poles. Iola had a hard time managing hers, but it was only a short distance to the front gate, where four of the masked oarsmen took up the palanquin. The priestesses walked beside them. Darna saw Myril in the procession behind them, talking to someone who disappeared into an alley. There were still too many ships on the harbor, but the Cerean king’s ship was well underway. She hoped that Giri was on it, and wondered if Tiagasa had been telling her the truth about his plans to stay. Maybe she was lying or mistaken. Sunna had said that she was planning to go away for the waning year, to walk the paths of the mountains and see all of the dragons’ gates.

Darna took deep breaths as her belly threatened to cramp again. After the morning, she would be shut into the temple with its stifling air until this belly of hers finished whatever it was going to do. In a shadowed corner of her mind, it occurred to her that she might not survive whatever it was. Women did die in childbirth, and if this was no ordinary pregnancy, then it would be all the more likely to kill her. She hoped that she would die where she could see the sky, and not within temple walls, but she knew well enough that it was beyond her control.

The Aralel, Sunna, and Eppie stepped onto the waiting raft. Darna, Iola, and Ganie were supposed to stay on the shore. The raft looked out of place, bobbing between the buildings halfway up the processional way. The houses around them stood, but their ground floors were full of seawater.

Eppie turned to face the crowded shore and raised her hands in blessing, looking up for the dragon. The sky was empty.

Darna’s veil rippled, creating tricks of light that she might have thought were dragons if she’d never seen one so close before. Eppie settled into her seat at the center of the raft, but just as the oarsmen were about to shove off from the shore, Iola leaped onto the stern.

“Get back,” the Aralel hissed.

“I won’t. I must go,” Iola hissed.

The Aralel gave a signal for Ganie to stay behind, but Darna leaped aboard after Iola. As the oarsmen pushed away from the shore, she wondered what was going to happen out on Anara’s island. The sunrise colors faded as the oarsmen propelled them across the long stretch of water.

One attendant and the Aralel were supposed to accompany the ambassadress onto the island to wait for Anara with her, outside the tower. Iola stepped over the side of the raft and sat beside Eppie, almost but not quite pushing her aside and claiming the place for herself. Darna and Sunna grabbed the offering chest and hurried after them.

“I will not have Anara’s choice taken from her,” Iola said.

“The princes’ offerings are not sufficient, and that’s the least of it,” the Aralel said.

Iola tugged the decoy ambassadress over to the tower that hid Anara’s gate. Strangely, the low-lying island was still above the waves. It didn’t make sense, or at least didn’t fit with what had happened along the shore. Darna was pretty sure that it was no smaller than it had been before the water rose. It must have risen. There were cracks in the tower walls, but she couldn’t tell how old they were or how the ground could have moved.

“You can’t go.” Eppie’s voice, from behind the ambassadress’s veil, was sharp and not priestessly at all.

“Neither can you. You don’t have any of the offerings. I at least have some,” Iola argued.

“The attendants stay outside of the tower, Iola,” the Aralel sharply.

“Not this year,” Iola said. Nearly everyone in Anamat was watching them from the shore, ranged along the sand and rooftops, craning their necks to see the ambassadress or the dragon, searching the empty sky above. The priestesses they’d left behind chanted and ululated, calling up the sun, calling up the dragon, and sending the ambassadress on her way. A fishing boat launched out onto the water with a cloaked figure in its stern. Darna wanted to pull her veil aside to see better, but the Aralel pushed her into the tower after Iola along with the offering chest.

It was like being at the bottom of a well or, rather, halfway down it, perched on a ledge. Darna looked down, then wished she hadn’t. It looked as if the pit went straight down into the center of the earth while the tower shot up to the sky. Something rumbled below them. It reminded Darna of the gate of Salara, except that it was turned on its side. The only way through it was to fall, unless you could fly.

Iola looked ready to leap. “I can go to them; I can go to them myself,” she was saying, as if talking to herself and not caring whether or not anyone else was listening.

“Since you’re here, you’d better hold on to the ambassadress,” said a voice from the shadows. It was Sovara, the Enatel.

“I can’t move in this cursed veil,” Eppie said.

“You take my robes,” Iola said. “You can go out with Darna.”

“We’ve already changed robes; I’m not doing it again,” Eppie said. She edged away from Iola as she pulled the top layer of veils off and threw them to Darna.

The sound of chanting and drumbeats outside shifted. The sun’s first rays were cresting over the eastern hills. The pit at their feet was silent.

Darna felt a rumbling in her belly, not the usual sharp pain but a slow, smooth rolling feeling, really quite pleasant. “Anara’s coming,” she said.

She ventured a look down again. The pit churned darkly, with flickers of blue light here and there sparking in and out in threads. Next, it glowed a dark, luminous green. It passed through a range of other colors, the light growing closer and closer until the red and gold of Anara lapped at their feet like lava, hot if you touched it but cool from an arm’s length away. Darna’s belly moved as if in answer to the ripples of light as they turned into scales and wings, eyes and teeth: Anara in dragon form.

Take that away from this place to another land,

the dragon said to Darna.

Then she turned to Iola and opened her mouth. Iola reached out to Anara. Her feet lifted off the ground as if drawn physically up by Anara’s bright eyes.

Something flashed in the pit below, not dragonlight but plain, ordinary steel, reflecting the distant light of the sky above.

“Hold her back!” the Enatel said.

Hold who back?

Darna wondered. She stood, mesmerized by Anara’s eyes, which were swirling with so much power behind them. Iola’s thin arm crossed her line of sight. The dragon would devour her; Darna was sure of it. Anara touched Iola with a tongue of flame, then both shrieked, a dragon’s call and a noise from Iola that was as inhuman as Anara’s voice.

Darna felt sick again, looking down into the gyre of the dragons’ realm. “Let’s go,” she said, more to herself than to Iola. She lunged and caught hold of Iola’s robe, then her arm. She pulled, dragging Iola back to the door of the tower and pushing her out through it. They stumbled back onto the ordinary cold stone shore of the island.

Iola was bleeding, as if from a miscarriage but faster. She lay limp in Darna’s arms, but she was still trying to reach toward the tower with all of her vanishing strength.

“Take her to the raft,” the Aralel said. “Is the… Is the other one safe?”

“I don’t know,” Darna said. She only knew for sure that she was outside, with the sky above and the ground below, not in that tower gate with the dragon’s passageway turning colors and roiling with powers that were too much to survive. How any ambassadress ever flew there and lived, she didn’t know.

In a burst of light, Anara rose from the tower’s top, like flame from a too-short chimney. The dragon was stronger, fiercer than she’d been the year before, but not as drastically changed as Salara had been. Anara raced low over the city, touching down here and there leaving fire in her wake. It took some time for people to see what was happening and to race back to their guild halls and houses to stop the flames from spreading over the city’s scattering of thatched roofs and into the wooden beams that supported the tile roofs of most buildings. The taverns and the market stalls began to burn, matching the red rising light of the sun.

The sun’s light shone a darker red through the smoke as Anara wheeled back to her tower. Faster than the spiraling ash from all the scattered fires, thunderheads massed over the city, letting loose a rain as sudden and fierce as Iola’s blood.

“Get back to the temple!” the Aralel said over the roar of rain.

“What about Eppie and the Enatel?”

“Don’t worry about them.”

Darna could see that there was nothing she could do for them. It was going to be hard enough to get Iola back to shore safely, but she didn’t think that anyone could survive inside the tower.

“She’s bleeding!” Darna said.

“Thank goodness for the rain, then,” Sunna said.

They looked up just in time to see Anara plunge back into the tower, a volcano in reverse. The dragon ripped down through the rain cloud. Blue sky shone through the gap, which closed as she burned down through the pouring rain and into her tower.

The world hung suspended in Anara’s wake. Even the raindrops seemed to pause in midair. The wind stilled. Then a raindrop fell on Darna’s head, stirring her back to life. Everything around her still seemed cold and still, the tower a frozen, dead thing in the warm wet summer rain. Eppie and the Enatel were still in there. She started back for the tower, but Iola’s weight slowed her. She leaned forward to listen and thought she heard a voice over the thunder and the pounding rain, saying, “Come this way!” If that was the Enatel talking, then they were alive.

“Bring her to the boat!” the Aralel said.

Iola was limp. Darna tried to wrest her to her feet, but it was as if her thin frame had no power in it at all. The Aralel came back and took Iola’s legs while Darna held her up by the shoulders. When the wind began, the oarsmen had pushed off from the shore to save the raft from being battered on the rocks, and the Aralel did not beckon them back. Instead, she, Sunna, and Darna waded out up to their waists, dragging Iola between them. They loaded her into the boat like a sack of grain and clustered around her. Not a scrap of cloth on the raft was dry; they had no cloak to warm her with.

“Is she all right?” Ganie asked.

“She’s breathing,” the Aralel said.

The oarsmen leaned on their poles and moved them across the water, making a slow, wet trail back to the rain-drenched shore. As the raft crossed the harbor, the downpour slackened into an ordinary soaking rain. By the time they nosed up onto the cobblestone street, the water had risen so that the shore was two buildings closer to the temple than it had been when they set out. The clouds had begun to let through a bit more light. All but the most ardent spectators had dispersed. Even most of the priestesses had run back to the temple or had taken shelter in doorways and under awnings. Perhaps a few more had climbed into the tenders and fishing boats that were now taking their passengers out to the seagoing craft beyond the breakwater.

Iola was awake by the time they landed, but lethargic. Darna and Sunna propped her up between them to climb out of the raft. They stumbled on their cold, numb feet. Their fine gauze veils spilled red dye as the rain washed them down, dripping on the paving stones like the blood splattering from Iola’s wounds.

The Aralel stood on the high seat at the stern of the raft and announced that the ambassadress had flown, a lie no one heard.

#

Myril took shelter from the rain in a house half-drowned on the ground floor but still dry upstairs, in a loft with a balcony looking out over the harbor. The balcony had been crowded when the ambassadress’s raft set out, but when the rain came, the people on it had retreated. They parted to let Myril through – her priestess robes gave her their respect that morning – and one of them recognized her as a healer. They let her take a place just inside the balcony door, and from there she watched. There was a scrap of red cloth on Anara’s back as she rose through the sky, but it was gone again when she plunged, or was it? It was impossible to see through the smoke and rain, and she couldn’t quite pick out the noises, either, not with the pounding of the rain. She thought that she heard the cloth ripping. What she didn’t hear was the heartbeat of the ambassadress or her quickened breath as the dragon rose. Iola had been on the raft, despite the Aralel’s plans to keep her away from the dragon’s gate. The rain ran down Myril’s face, dripping onto her chest as she leaned up to watch the lightning streak through the dark clouds. Anara appeared again, arcing up once more, then plunging into her tower, into her gate, into the other world.

Was Iola still on the surface of the earth? Myril wasn’t sure. She’d heard a scream, then nothing. She could make out several heartbeats on the island, several pairs of feet, but she didn’t know whose they were. Two disappeared, going down into the tower. She saw the Aralel and one of the attendants haul another of the attendants out onto the raft.

As the raft moved closer again, she thanked the keeper of the house for letting her take shelter there and rejoined the few of her fellow priestesses on the shore. Someone started to chant. After the raft landed, they all fell into place behind the Aralel. The ambassadress’s attendants limped up the processional way. Yes, the one who’d fainted was Iola. Myril recognized the air about her, but her presence was diminished, like it had been at Midwinter, only worse. Darna and Sunna held her up on either side.

The Aralel stopped at the temple gates and watched each of them file through, like a mother hen counting her chicks. Myril stopped before she passed.

“You may go, Myril, but return later,” the Aralel told her. “You must visit with the regent.”

“Yes, Your Holiness.” She watched the ambassadress’s attendants limp toward the peresi’s garden until they turned a corner, out of sight, then she made her way to the small bathhouse near her street. There, she washed off the running red dye of her ceremonial robes and rinsed them in cool water. She soaked in the hot bath – which did not seem as hot as usual – then put on a plain tunic before going back to her room to hang her wet things up.

Back out on the street, the air was heavy with the pull of the other realm, as it always was at Midsummer, even outside of the temple. The ambassadress hadn’t gone to the dragons, but it was still a crossing time. Myril went back inside and took a handful of grounding, trance-blocking herbs. She chewed them whole. If she stayed to make tea, she would never leave her room again before the end of the day, and she needed to see Darna and Iola before she found some excuse not to. She walked back down to the new shore. It was only a little farther up the street than it had been before, but the waters had risen. They would rise again at Midwinter, but they might rise even before then. The dragons were uneasy. She could feel them, sense the gaps in the walls.

She took another pinch of herbs and chewed. They tasted awful, dry and astringent. She knew that she should go to the temple, but first she looked out onto the bay, beyond the breakwater. Ships lumbered toward the horizon. Some of them were still bailing rainwater over their sides, others were driven by oarsmen as their sails hung wet and heavy, but they were all moving away, fleeing Anamat, abandoning it, or preparing to return to steal its treasures before it fell again.

The ships slipped over the horizon, one after another. The Cereans were almost out of sight by the time the rainclouds had cleared. The Enomaeans had lingered longer and their sails were heavy from the rain of Anara’s passing. Lerat’s ship, with a few smaller vessels around him, was almost last to go, but he’d left his sails furled and under loose oilcloths. As the sun shone out again, he raised them, and they dried quickly as they filled with clean, fresh air.

Myril watched him sail away. She was seized with the sudden worry that she should have gone with him after all, despite the fact that it meant leaving Iola behind. Iola would have left her to go to the dragons. Perhaps she shouldn’t have stayed to fuss over the frustrated ambassadress. She should have gone to find a place to take the texts. Lerat’s ship carried her hopes away. She didn’t long for Lerat, but she dreamed of a safe haven on a foreign shore. They would find it; they must find it.

She wondered if the water had reached the guildhalls yet, and went to see.

The Chief Chronicler was closing his study door when she arrived.

“Myril,” he said. “Surely, you have no work to do here this morning. It’s a holy day.”

“Not as holy as it used to be,” Myril said. “I came to tell you that one of the priestesses has sailed with a merchantman in search of a safe haven for both the chronicles and the priestesses. I thought you would like to know.”

“It seems a fool’s errand,” the Chronicler said with a sigh. “If the tides swallow our city before the ships return at Midwinter, there’s no saving any of it.”

“You asked me to try. I’ve done that.”

The Chronicler looked away, as if he’d thought better of it but hadn’t bothered to tell her so.

“There are more histories to save, aren’t there?” Myril asked.

“You need not continue with this. I’ve heard word of a place in Enomae, but my friend there… Well, it is good of you to have tried. I suppose you won’t be going to the temple much, will you?”

“I will, actually. The regent is staying there, and I promised her that I would visit her.”

“Since you’ll be there anyway, it would be good of you to see that the texts there are secure for now, whatever the coming trading season brings.” He yawned. “Pardon me. These last nights have been long. It would be interesting to have the regent of Tiadun’s story in our library, don’t you think? A scrappling prince, or at least a princess. I’m sure such a thing has never happened before.”

“It’s unlikely to happen again,” Myril said. “I’ll write down what I know.”

“Good. I should thank you also for sending that guardsman to me. This so-called Enatel is an interesting phenomenon. I am not quite convinced that they are what they claim to be, but the young man said that you sent him, so I let them take the texts. Also, that baker in the West Market is known to be trustworthy. Do you know if their hiding place is higher than our hall?”

“I’ve never been there. I hope it is. Did you see that the waters rose a little more this morning?”

The Chronicler nodded. “It’s more than just the rain,” he said. “I’ve read of these swordsmen in the old stories. Even if they still exist, they can’t have their old power or their legendary skill. They’re in disgrace, and their totemic stone is gone.”

“It was the priestesses’ totemic stone, too,” Myril said, “and we still honor the Aralel.”

“Ah, but the Aralel has many things to offer the princes. Armsmen can be had anywhere, for a price, and not so high a price as the Aralel’s finest. In any case, you’ve done enough for this moon-round. You may go back to your other work, I think, while you write the history of the regent of Tiadun. Quite an unusual story.”

The Chronicler was not meeting her gaze. He was avoiding looking at her. She had the sense that he wanted her to leave. He was acting uncomfortable where he had always seemed so self-assured. She inhaled. He’d been drinking, and more than just Anamat ale. She smelled a whiff of a foreigner’s perfume, too.

She looked at him more closely as she spoke. “I may do that,” she said. “There are always farmers looking for charms in the harvest season. Are you quite sure?”

“Yes, yes. Take what you need with you today. I’ll see you when you’ve completed it.”

It would take her more than a moon-round. He

was

trying to send her away.

The Chronicler looked over his shoulder. In the shadows in the corridor behind him, Myril glimpsed someone – a foreigner with a turban around his head, a slight man who smelled of horses and perfume. The Chronicler was dealing with foreigners too, like almost everyone else.

“I leave you to your rest, then, guildmaster.”

“And I trust you will go to yours, too,” he smiled at her, looking more like his usual self again. Myril was not put at ease.

#

They had to swim the last stretch through the Defenders’ secret passage between Anara’s island and one of the secret ways that riddled the underbelly of Ara’s Landing. The secret way had been carved by the dragons themselves, then shored up by the temple launderers and the first of Enat’s heirs.

At the base of Anara’s tower, out on the island, there were two ledges on which to perch over the vertical gate into the dragons’ world. The upper one was where the ambassadress stood to meet Anara. The lower one was where the Defenders had stood guard at every crossing time. That morning, Eppie had swung down from the upper ledge to the lower.

“Get into the passage now!” Sovara told her over the roar of the approaching dragon.

Eppie waited for the Enatel to follow. Sovara edged closer to the passage entry but waited on the ledge until Anara surged up. Her tail swished, sweeping the ledge as if she wanted to be rid of them. Anara glared at Eppie, garbed as she was as a false ambassadress. It was a fragment of a moment, but she saw into the dragon’s eyes and was terrified. She didn’t know what Sovara saw. As soon as they heard the priestesses stumble out of the tower, they turned and ran, down into the hollow pipe beneath the harbor burned out by Anara, long ago, when the Defenders spoke to her and she to them.

Eppie and Sovara ran. Eppie felt half-naked in the ambassadress’s fine robes which were draped to suggest breasts and thighs and passion. She hiked up the fine silk, as seawater covered the slick floors at the passage’s lowest point. They went on at a run, splashing through the invading seawater while Anara raged in the sky above. The walls shook around them as if they might break and the seawater come rushing in, crushing them before they could draw breath. Somehow, the old walls held, but the water grew deeper. It rose up to their waists, and at the last stretch, they had to swim.

They emerged, sodden, somewhere under the peresi’s baths.

“You go that way; I’ll see you back at the hall,” Sovara said. Eppie had no time to respond before the Enatel ducked into a connecting tunnel that led out to the East Canal. It was a wonder the dragons’ enemies had never found the passages, there were so many of them, but if the water kept rising, soon only a fish would be able to get through.

The launderers never spoke except in silent hand-signals and unintelligible whispers. One of the women met Eppie, as if she’d been expecting her visit. The laundress’s face was impassive as she handed Eppie an ordinary priestess robe and took the ambassadress’s showy ceremonial robe and veil from her. She only frowned a little as she turned away and led Eppie to the landing where the temple priestesses brought their laundry.

From there, she went up to the main part of the temple. The peresi were in disarray, their robes rain-soaked, their elaborate hairdos falling down in every direction. They whispered to one another, their fearful speculation filling the air. No one noticed her. They must have thought that she was one of them, in her fine red robes, even though she didn’t feel like she fit the part.

Sunna met her at the ambassadress’s gate.

“I was worried,” she said.

“We made it out all right,” Eppie said. There was no one visible nearby to listen. “It’s getting wet, though. The water came into the…you know.”

Sunna nodded. “It’s risen on the streets, too. I’m going to see what it’s done elsewhere.”

“What do you mean?”

“Didn’t you hear? I’m done with this place, this charade of being a priestess.”

“I don’t want to do it!”

“You have to. I’m going to visit Vigda’s band and then some other places. I’ll meet you at the border shrine at the second full moon to give you the news of Tiadun, which you can bring back here to the regent.”

“Can I go wandering, then?”

Sunna shook her head and Eppie knew that it was hopeless. “Sovara wants you to stay. You’ll have another full season of training and then you’ll be able to best any swordsman in the world.”

A gong sounded from the back of the temple.

“It’ll be midday soon; I have to go now,” Sunna said, and she darted away before Eppie could say anything more.

Geta was keeping watch at the gate to the ambassadress’s chambers, but she was too infirm to go back to work in the kitchens. She peered at Eppie.

“Did the Aralel send you?” she asked.

“No, the Enatel,” Eppie mumbled.

“The who?” Geta croaked.

“Eppie, is that you?” Darna called from inside.

Geta took another look at Eppie, nodded, and gave her permission to pass before she closed and locked the gate.

“Where’s Myril? We need her.” Darna was more agitated than Eppie had ever seen her before.

“I don’t know. I just came through. I haven’t seen her. Aren’t you happy I’m alive?”

Darna stilled. “Yes, I’m delighted that you survived, but we need a healer.”

Geta came to a creaky-kneed stand. “I’m a healer,” she said. “I can do more than bake bread. Now, what seems to be the trouble?”

“It’s her,” Darna said, jerking her thumb toward the ambassadress’s chamber.

“In we go. Quiet now.” Geta groaned as she walked, but as they got closer to the ambassadress’s doorway, Eppie could hear that not all of the groans were coming from the elder priestess.

Inside, Iola lay on the floor. Someone had stuck a pillow under her head, and there was another near her feet. She was shaking.

“I couldn’t lift her by myself,” Darna said. She was keeping her distance from Iola, as if she didn’t want to touch her, but together, the two of them moved Iola to her sleeping nook. There, Geta fussed over her for a moment before she bustled off to the kitchens. For the rest of the morning, Eppie fetched and carried herbs and cloths as Geta tended Iola’s wounds, visible and invisible. She wanted to go back to the training hall and sleep, but Darna fretted, Geta made demands, and Iola stayed in a stupor. Late in the midday rest, the Aralel herself came to look in on, purportedly, the regent of Tiadun.

“She’s only in a sulk,” Geta told the Aralel as they looked down at Iola.

“I can see that,” the Aralel concurred. “Well, she’s got nothing to do for the next half-year but to get herself out of it, if that’s all it is. We’ll see that she’s fed when she wakes up and hope the farmers harvest enough to feed all the rest of them.” She looked harried.

“It’s going to be a good harvest. They will,” Geta said.

“I hope you’re right.” The Aralel turned to Eppie. “I understand you’re taking the Blessed Sunna’s place?”

“I don’t think of it that way,” Eppie said.

“Can you train the young priestesses and our three novices in sword work?”

“I don’t know that much myself,” Eppie said, shaking her head.

“Well, they’ll just have to make do with what they’ve learned so far. I’ll try to get more blades,” the Aralel mused. She let out a long sigh and looked toward the peresi’s courtyard. “Carry your messages, then. Come to me if there’s trouble no one else here can manage.”

“Yes, Your Holiness,” Eppie said.

Behind the Aralel’s back, Darna was smirking, a smirk that disappeared when the Aralel turned to her. “And you, regent, have only to help your old friend stay here among the living, in mind as well as in body.” She didn’t give Darna time to respond. “No excuses. You’re the only one we can keep in here with her. She needs you.”

Darna looked down at Iola lying pale and weak in her sleeping nook. She nodded.

It was going to be a long half-year for all of them.

#