Chronicles of the Last Days Chapter 16

Chapter 15

E

ppie hesitated a moment before she left. The elders looked frail and tired as they witnessed Darna’s agony. She wondered if Myril wouldn’t just come on her own – surely she would have heard Darna’s cries – but Raina would not have heard, and Darna had asked for her. She wondered how many of the elders knew that Iola had stayed on the surface of the earth, and if all the helpers streaming in for Darna would be able to keep up the deception, or if Iola would simply stay out of sight until after the sun rose. Midwinter dawn was close. Eppie swallowed hard and set out.

Myril was probably on her way already, Eppie told herself, but her place was on the way to the West Gate and Raina’s farm. Halfway across the peresi’s courtyard, Eppie paused to strip off her priestess robes and bundle them under her arm. She would go out through the front courtyard – it would be faster than going the other way.

Over the course of the waning year, she felt like she’d worn grooves in the paving stones between the temple, the fortune-tellers’ street, the palace, and the training hall. She’d run in all those places as a scrappling, but not with the frenetic energy of her role as a messenger. Sometimes at night, after training, she met Kinner at Ink Pounders to hear what was happening at the guild, as well as to get his letters for Darna. Sometimes, they met for no reason at all. Despite his scrawny boyishness, he was nearly her own age, and sometimes he surprised her with some bit of elderly-sounding wisdom. She refrained from picking his pockets and even taught him how to avoid falling victim to the last desperate remains of the scrapplings of Anamat.

There was a gang of them outside the front gates of the temple that evening, waiting to pick petitioners’ pockets, or maybe to beg for refuge when the ambassadress “returned.” The treasurers at the gate ignored Eppie as she ran out, making her wonder how many priestesses had left while the gatekeepers turned the other way. A dark mass of foreign ships stood on the horizon, or maybe it was only the dark of a gathering storm.

She felt a tug. One of the scrapplings had crept up behind her and gotten a grip on the priestess robe under her arm. The youth – maybe a girl, maybe a boy – yanked it free of her grip. Eppie saw the scrappling’s look of exultation.

“Hey! Give that back!”

The scrappling only shook her head and ran, as fast as the crowds would let her through.

Eppie wondered what price a priestess robe would fetch as she chased the scrappling down toward the harbor. She was fast, and she would be able to catch the scrappling eventually if she gave chase, but she didn’t need that robe. What she needed was to get Myril and Raina for Darna. Some of the other scrapplings were closing in to block her pursuit. She knew this game, she could dodge them, but it would take time.

“Fine! Take it, then!” she shouted after the fleeing thief. She turned and ran the other way, shouldering past the surprised scrappling boy who’d been just behind her, ready to push or trip her up.

A group of petitioners, smelling of sandalwood and gold, blocked her way, but these were clumsier than the scrapplings and she passed them easily, breaking through onto the relatively empty street down to the East Canal bridge and Myril’s place.

The underside of the bridge was still flooded out, no longer providing any shelter or refuge. She jumped over the risen water at either end rather than balancing across the slippery planks. Her feet got wet, but she didn’t have far to go.

She found Myril waiting in her doorway, a satchel held tight against her chest.

“It’s a crossing time. I might trance if I go to the temple,” Myril said as Eppie approached.

“Darna needs you.”

“I know,” Myril said. “It’s only that I’m –”

“She’s screaming with pain. It doesn’t seem like her to do that.” At Tiada’s gate, when everything had been thrown into chaos, Darna had seemed quite calm, for all that had happened to her. Myril nodded. She had none of her usual placid air. She was shaking as she stood at the foot of her stair, as if she were being pushed back inside.

“Don’t you have herbs to steady you?” Eppie asked.

“I used them all.”

“I’m sure Geta has more. Darna asked me to come for you.”

“I know,” Myril said. “I’ll go to her, but…”

Down the street, a huge clay jar shattered and someone screamed. Men’s ribald laughter followed, and more screams. Of course Myril was afraid, anyone would be, but it would only get worse as the night went on.

“We have to go quickly. I’m supposed to get Raina, too. I have to go all the way out to her farm.”

Myril shook her head. “She’s in the city. I heard her come in. I think she must have gone to your training hall. I can’t hear her anymore.”

Eppie nodded and took Myril by the arm, propelling her out into the street. She wished she had a sword with her instead of just the long knife she kept in her belt. Myril marched stiffly down the street and across the bridge, where the water churned underneath them with the rising tide.

They paused at the mouth of the alley to the side house. Myril leaned against the wall as if she could sink into it, as Darna had once been able to do, but then she shook herself and went in to see the Grandmother. Once she was inside, she would be safe enough, Eppie told herself.

From there, she set out for the training hall. A year ago, there had been several ways to go between the side entrance of the temple and the training hall, but since the waters had risen at Midsummer, the back alleys around the canal were flooded out. She had to go by the main roads, but she didn’t mind the crowds that were gathering, most of the time. Normally, she enjoyed the press of the crowds, but that morning, there was an undertone of worry to the usual celebrations. The fires were smaller and fewer but the crowds were larger. Perhaps people were remembering how the roofs had caught fire at Midsummer and didn’t want to destroy their own city when even its own dragon seemed to have turned against it.

Myril’s sense of dread had infected her, Eppie reflected. Women often died, in childbed or after, and there was nothing she could do to help. She’d carried food to the women in the ambassadress’s quarters all through the waning year, but now all she could do was to fetch Raina.

Based on the wet stench of the fires, people seemed to be raiding the midden heaps more than usual. As Eppie passed through the last square before the entrance to the training hall, someone threw a wet sack of something foul onto the bonfire there, sending up a cloud of damp, putrid smoke. The people in the square shouted, but the miscreant fled faster than they could follow, back to the harbor.

The underground passage into the courtyard was still dry, unlike the hidden passages around the temple. As Eppie ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time, she wondered whether the waters had reached the shrine below her feet yet. She burst into the hall just as Midwinter practice was about to begin.

“Darna’s in labor. She asked for Raina to come,” she announced breathlessly.

Raina looked back and forth between Eppie and the shrine.

“Must she go now?” Sovara asked.

Raina frowned pensively. “I don’t think I need to go yet. It’s her first. It won’t come before dawn, and she’s not alone, is she?”

Eppie shook her head. “Geta and the Aralel were there when I left, and Myril’s on her way, but she seemed to be in a lot of pain. It didn’t seem normal.”

“Have you ever seen a woman in labor before?” Raina asked. Eppie had not. “It can wait for practice and –” She didn’t name the shrine below but only looked anxiously at the trapdoor. Eppie could tell from Raina’s voice that she was just as afraid as any of the rest of them about what lay below. No one had been down there since midsummer. Apart from Raina and Sunna, only Garren, Thorat, and Anot were at the hall. Forlan, Ferrent, and Sunna were all still off in the provinces or with the bandits. They were expected to return soon, though, maybe even that night.

Eppie shook off her sandals and took her practice sword down from the wall, though half of her thoughts were with Darna, back in the temple. The Defenders stretched out in a long row before the upper shrine, the one that was part of the everyday training hall. Sovara sounded the gong and they bowed together, beginning their silent practice. The Midwinter practice felt weightier than the one at Midsummer. Eppie faced her comrades one at a time. The rest of them were still far more skilled than she was, but in the last two rounds, when she worked her sword against Thorat and Sovara, she at least managed not to fumble. Sovara gave her a nod – as close to a blessing as anything she would give.

Finally, they rested their swords and gathered before the shrine. Sovara opened the hatch and they walked down. Eppie went last. She could hear what was happening up ahead, though. Sovara’s feet splashed into water at the bottom steps, and one by one, the others followed, gasping with the cold. When it hit her own toes, she almost shrank back, but the others had gone on, even though the water must have made their ankles ache, too. The cave of the world-tree was knee deep in water, strangely bright water.

The tree was a sign and map of the dragons’ world. Its branches reflected the paths of the dragons and burned with their fire, which flickered on the water’s surface. The tree gave just enough light to see by. The moment Eppie stepped into the room, the water around her feet turned warm.

Sovara said words which Eppie still did not understand, and the tree flared to life.

It roared.

It screamed.

Its fire filled the cave, driving them back to the rough walls, which had once been smooth and dry but were now slick and rough with the sea’s reaching weeds and barnacles. Eppie clung to those stones, seeking anchorage. Then she looked up.

Each branch of the tree was a white-hot cord firing up through the cracks in the surface of the earth, yellow and red layers of heat around it, no cool threads to mark any one dragon’s place.

“We go now,” Sovara said.

Underneath them, under the water, the bedrock shook.

Eppie reached the stairs first. The moment her feet were out of the water, everything seemed quite ordinary again, and that was strangest thing of all.

There were whispers as they climbed, hurriedly hushed. No one really spoke until Sovara had secured the bit of flooring over the stair at the top. The training hall and the shrine were just as they’d left them a short while before. Sovara stopped to light more incense, but instead of putting on a few pieces into the brazier, she emptied a whole box of it in, filling the hall with smoke.

“I’ve never seen it like that before,” Sovara said, breaking the silence at last.

“The waters rising,” Garren said. “We’re caught between fire and water.”

Raina nodded. Her eyes were red.

“What will we do?” Anot asked.

Sovara looked slowly at each of them in turn. “For tonight, we will keep vigil as always. I don’t think that we should go to the island. The ambassadress is not returning, and we don’t know if Anara will come at all. If she does, it will not be in peace. Whatever happens, it will not be as it has been; we shouldn’t pretend otherwise, even if the priestesses choose to keep up a facade.”

“What about the oarsmen?” Garren asked. He and several of the others were among the oarsmen who took the ambassadress’s raft out to the island gate. Eppie had suspected it, but no one had told her about it explicitly.

“I suppose the oarsmen should go,” Sovara said. “We are pledged to protect the priestesses. It’s a lesser pledge than our oath to the dragons, but this morning, we can fulfill it for the last time.”

“For the last time?” Thorat said.

Sovara nodded. “Yes, for the last time. Make what efforts you can to convince the city watch – or even the palace guardsmen – to watch over the ladies of the temples, but after the sun rises, we will devote ourselves wholly to the defense of the dragons’ gates. We cannot be everywhere, and for myself, I choose the dragons.”

“I’m going to stay right where I have been,” Raina said.

“Then you can keep the shrine… or what’s left of it,” Sovara said.

“Where will you go?” Garren asked Sovara.

She looked toward the door. “First, to the hills, and then probably to the northern provinces, which have not sunk so much. You can go to the near provinces, or do what you can here, I suppose.”

“I’ll go with you,” Anot volunteered. He glanced at Eppie, but she shook her head. She didn’t want to leave, but she thought that maybe she could go see to one more dragon’s gate, maybe back in Coradun, where she’d been born. Thorat was looking away, as if he could see through the walls all the way down to the temple and into the ambassadress’s chamber. If he’d seen as much of it as she had, he wouldn’t be looking at it so longingly.

“Is that all?” Raina said after a long silence. “I’d better go see about the regent of Tiadun and her labor pains.”

Eppie considered following her, but she wasn’t ready to face the temple again. She settled down in front of the shrine, choking on the clouds of incense, to keep her final vigil with the Enatel.

#

Up above, in the tower, Iola heard the screams, but she heard so much more that she was reluctant to come down. Maybe this was what it was like for Myril, she thought, hearing and seeing everything in a never-ending cacophony. The sun was sinking toward the horizon. It was the first time she’d seen the Midwinter sunset from the tower, Iola thought, the first time she’d seen it at all since she became ambassadress. It would probably be the last, too, because whatever the waxing year brought, her perch in the temple would not survive it. She might not survive it herself, but she was going to try.

Below her, the women of the temple were making their way to the sanctuary for the night’s vigil, the vigil that was supposed to be for her safety. Too many of them were gathered in the garden and in her quarters below, but the sanctuary would be even more crowded. She counted the priestesses as they left the peresi’s garden after the last of their petitioners left. They carried small lamps and walked in pairs and trios. They were three and four to a room now, even more than there had been at Midsummer. Even the priestesses had ignored the ban on travel, or maybe these had just come from the village temples around the valley.

The sun set into a bank of clouds, which were on fire with the colors of all the dragons but most especially red and golden, like Anara. Iola leaned back against the wall and gazed out at the sunset. Yes, it would be possible to console herself with this world if the dragons turned their backs on her and made themselves invisible. The clouds washed over the sky as the chants rose up from the sanctuary. The dew fell, chilling her, as city folk and villagers danced around bonfires in squares and on greens. She thought about going down, but what would she do? Darna’s screams had eased. She heard someone say that the baths were warm again.

Around midnight, the clouds began to blow away. In the last watch of the night, the Midwinter sky was as clear and sharp as diamonds. A deep stillness lay over the valley, muting the sounds of the chanting priestesses below. As the first wash of gray brightened the sky beyond Lemira’s hills, Darna cried out again. No one could pretend that was an ordinary cry. With one more longing prayer to Anara, Iola began her descent. It was time for her to rejoin the world.

#

At times, it seemed to Darna that she floated free of her body. Hundreds of priestesses gathered in the sanctuary that night: those who’d lived most of their lives in the temple and those who’d come only in the past half a year, those who had been under the earth, and many, many more who had never even felt the tug of trance. They gathered and they barred the outer gates. The Aralel was late in coming to the sanctuary, but Darna knew where she was, standing over her labor pains, even though her soul hovered over her fellow priestesses in the sanctuary.

The Aralel arrived in the sanctuary at last, so Darna knew that someone must have taken her place in the ambassadress’s chambers. The priestesses could still hear her cries from time to time over the beat of the drums and the hum of the chant, through the shuffle of dancing feet and the blurring cloud of incense. Darna felt as if she were chanting, just as she had through so many vigils before. She opened her eyes and saw the concerned lined faces bending over her. They seemed too far away to reach. Every ounce of her breath went to screaming and refilling her lungs. She could not spare or slow it for speech, or hold it in except to gasp for it again.

The heat grew unbearable. She tried to slow her breathing, and this time she succeeded. “Baths,” she managed to say. Myril had arrived, but Raina had not. Between Myril, Geta, and her own efforts, Darna managed to get moved into the bath. The skin on her belly felt like it was on fire. “Water,” she said.

Some time later, Raina arrived, looking worried. She and Geta muttered in the background, then someone went out, whispering about telling the Aralel. Darna wanted to say that nothing had changed about her belly, but maybe that wasn’t what they were talking about.

The bath helped, but she felt like she was a world away, with the dragons. It wasn’t cold any longer. She melted into it, the boundary of her skin feeling no more significant than a whisper in the air, a change in the current.

It was dark outside. She was fairly sure that it was dark outside. Iola was still in the tower. Time passed. They brought her some kind of tea. Sweat rolled off her brow.

“The water!” Raina said. “It’s too hot. Help me get her out.”

“I can’t,” Myril said weakly.

“Come on; I’ll hold you, too,” Raina said brusquely.

Darna managed to open her eyes enough to see Geta slip something into Myril’s hand, which Myril put into her mouth to chew.

“That’ll hold you,” Geta said.

They pulled Darna out of the bath. She was red, like Anara, the scales on her belly the dark green of the dragon who’d last marked her. The second dragon who’d marked her.

Time passed more slowly once she was out of the water. They moved her to one of the sleeping nooks. Someone else arrived, and though she could hear people talking, she couldn’t make out their words.

“Put her on the altar,” Raina said.

“You can’t do that!” It was Gallia. That must have been who had come in.

“I can go on the altar,” Darna croaked out. It could hardly be worse than being out in the naked air. The dragon currents there might warm her, as they had in the bath, or ease the pain as they had before.

After a moment of indecision, they helped move her to the altar. Geta began to arrange linens for the birth. Darna began to scream again. She fainted, then the pain woke her once more. Hands pressed down on her. She felt like shaking them off, like Salara had shaken her off.

“Something’s not right,” Raina said. “I can’t feel feet. It’s too big, too hard.”

Darna tried to reach for her belly, but it was as if her arms had decided not to obey her. With an effort, she pulled herself back into her body, trying to block out the pain.

“It won’t come out like that,” Darna said. “Cut it.”

She’d seen it done once before, with a nanny goat back in Tiadun. The nanny goat had struggled all day, and she’d been losing strength. They brought the midwife, and between them, she and the farmer managed it. Darna had missed the details, but there was more blood than usual. The kids, two of them, had lived, and the nanny goat survived that next year but never recovered her strength. She didn’t care if she never recovered her strength. She couldn’t go on with the pain.

“I don’t know if it’s come to that,” Raina said, though Darna could tell that she was considering it.

Myril said, “I’ll be back,” and then she was gone.

Gallia paced as anxiously as a young father.

“Here, drink this,” Geta said, thrusting a bitter liquid at Darna. It was hard to swallow, but she could feel her toes growing numb, then her hands and her legs. Everything was very distant, pleasantly so. The pain was still there, but it was far away.

“More?” she asked.

“That should be enough,” someone said. It sounded like Vigda’s voice, but that was impossible; her mother was a bandit in the hills. She could not be in Anamat on Midwinter night, could she?

Myril came back, carrying a bundle.

The pain came again. “I need it out. I can’t birth it.”

Darna felt Raina’s hands on her again. “It’s not moving the way it should. Your skin, though. It’s also hard and different.”

“These are the best knives,” Myril said.

“They’ve gone down to the harbor,” Geta reported. “They’re going to say that the ambassadress died.”

Everything felt numb. Darna didn’t need to drift so far away. She wondered where Iola was.

“They can’t. I’m right here,” said Iola’s voice, but Darna couldn’t see her, her eyes were clouding. She fell into welcoming darkness, feeling only a comforting hand in her own, callused and wrinkled.

#

Everyone paused as Iola announced her presence. She looked serene and impossibly distant from the sweat-stained sheets on her altar where Darna lay unconscious, her pulse flickering madly.

“You’d better go tell her that you’re alive, then,” Myril said. “The rest of us are busy.” She had the knife in her hand, but she wasn’t sure where to begin.

“It’s all right; I’ll go,” Gallia said.

Myril was glad to see the last of Gallia. Vigda seemed less nervous. She smelled of the mountains and a little bit of dragonfire, and she did look a bit like a much-older version of Darna.

“There was an old priestess who used to do this; we would call her in when the mother couldn’t push anymore,” Geta said. “I remember seeing it, but you must use the knife; my nerves are too old.”

“Me?” Myril said. They were all looking at her. “Can’t you, Raina?”

Raina shook her head.

“That thing will kill her,” Vigda said. “I’ll help. I saw it done on a goat one time, and another time they cut a woman in the village. I think I can help. You two, get clean cloths,” she ordered Geta and Iola.

Iola hesitated only a moment before running to a chest at the far side of the chamber. She took the cloths and laid them on the altar beside Darna. “Let her live,” she said, gazing up at the dragon’s statue rearing above them.

Myril felt Geta’s hand on hers, covering and guiding her grip on the knife. Iola moved around to hold Darna still, in case she should wake with the pain.

“We must move quickly,” Vigda said. “Is there thread and needle?”

Iola nodded and ran to get them, then returned to hold Darna’s limp hand. Myril couldn’t look at her.

“Start here. Slice as neatly as you can.”

Myril cut. She did not faint. She had only ever fainted at the threat of trance, and this was nothing like that. It was blood, human and grounded and falling, not ethereal, not mind-numbing. It sharpened her wits. Vigda and Geta guided her and cleaned the way as she cut through skin, muscle, so much blood and something thick and hard then finally something completely unyielding, like stiffened leather.

“What is it?” Iola said.

Geta shushed her. Blood and water poured out. Myril ignored the flicker of flame, dragonfire reaching up from inside Darna’s belly, and pulled the round, hard, luminous thing into the air. Geta’s hands were under hers, very steady.

“Take it to the baths,” Vigda said.

Iola reached for it, but Geta was already there.

“You stay. Hold the girl still while they stitch.”

Iola handed Myril a needle and thread and Raina took another one. They made stitches to close the cuts, which still bled and bled and bled.

Geta returned, looking grim.

“Is it alive, the baby?” Myril asked stupidly.

“Is Darna?” Geta asked.

Vigda felt Darna’s wrist for a pulse and nodded. “She’s breathing.”

“Keep her that way,” Geta said. “I’ll go fetch the Aralel.”

Myril looked up. The sun’s first rays were coming through the clerestories. “I think that the Aralel is gone,” she said.

#

Darna woke to the sound of Iola’s voice.

“Oh,” Iola was saying. “Oh, oh.”

“What?” Darna managed to croak.

“You’re alive!” It was Vigda. Myril and Raina crowded around her too.

“What is it?” Darna asked.

“It’s an egg,” Iola said. “Geta showed me.”

“It’s what?” Darna tried to sit up but it felt like she was ripping herself in two. The dragon scale marks on her belly burned with fresh ferocity. Someone was holding her down. “I can’t get up,” she said. She looked up at the beard of Anara. She’d never really thought about the way the dragon’s chin dripped before, even in the statue. The real Anara was out there somewhere, all too close and getting closer.

“That’s no kind of heir,” Gallia said from the doorway.

“That’s not for you to say,” Darna gasped out. “Let me see.”

“Hold still; I’m still stitching you up,” Myril said. “We’re almost done.” Raina’s hands were holding her down at the hips. She could feel the earth in them, their intimacy with the valley soil, with the growing things. They made her feel better. Iola and Vigda held her arms.

“It’s a lot of blood,” Raina said.

“She’ll live,” Geta decreed. “She’ll live. I’m going to have a little nap.”

“Wait ’til they hear this.” Gallia again, her voice grating.

She might have been a priestess once, but this was not her mystery. Fortunately, Darna didn’t have to say anything.

“They won’t hear it,” Iola said. She’d never been so glad to hear Iola’s voice before. Also, she’d never heard Iola snarl before, not for a long time, anyway. “Don’t you tell anyone. This is a mystery, our mystery. It’s not for the palace.”

Darna managed to smile faintly as she met Iola’s gaze.

“You do what you’re told,” Vigda said to Gallia. “There are others of us loyal to Darnasa, even in Tiadun. We’ll make sure you know it.”

“It’s no kind of heir,” Gallia repeated. That was the last Darna heard of her.

Vigda handed a packet of salve to Raina, who plastered it over Darna’s split and mended belly. Darna felt every stab and tug of Myril’s needle and thread, pulling her back together into yet another new shape. Her breasts were sore. Other than that, she felt rather like herself, only very, very weak. The pain was everywhere and not just in her hip or on her skin. Still, she felt more ordinary than she had since she’d gone to Slaradun, maybe even longer than that. As Myril tied off the last of the stitches, she realized that she could wiggle her fingers again. She pushed herself up just a little, and Iola thrust a pillow under her back.

The egg was right beside her, glowing, but its glow was already fading and hardening. She reached out to touch it, but it burned her fingers. It was cooling, though.

Suddenly, she started laughing, so hard that she almost cried. “It’s an egg. Well. They’re always calling us hens, like Conn’s Coop. Well, I laid an egg.”

“It’s not a hen’s egg,” Iola pointed out.

“No, it’s not,” Raina agreed. “Nothing like a hen’s egg.”

Then everything began to shake and they scrambled for safe cover, egg and all.

#