Chronicles of the Last Days Chapter 7

Chapter 6

D

arna had always loved the ambassadress’s garden, but it did not suit her mood. She paced the tiny quadrant of it that was out of sight of both the gate and the entrance to Iola’s chamber, where the prince of Onarun was rutting away. Darna felt no stir in the energy of the dragons in the earth beneath her feet, despite the rite in progress. Maybe the magic of the ambassadress’s realm was constant, unmoved by the rite no matter what the ambassadress did, or maybe the dragons had become indifferent to even the most alluring priestess in the land.

It was no good to be back in Anamat and then have to be shut up in the temple again, though she hoped that it would only be for a few days. She wondered – not for the first time – how Iola managed to live as she did, always trapped within those walls. Then again, she did get to go to the center of the earth, where no other living person could follow. Perhaps that compensated for her confinement. The princely petitioner lingered.

Darna itched to go out, to see what the rising waters had changed in all the quarters of the city, to find out which of her old secret ways were still passable. She even half-wanted to see Tevan, her never-quite-satisfactory former lover. She fidgeted. The sun warmed the earth and the flagstone pathways. Some flowers reached for it while others shrank back into the shade. The cooling waterfall fountain burbled.

She needed to see Gallia. She wanted to talk to Myril, or even to Tiagasa, to find out what form the tribunal would take. Would Tiagasa take Calar’s side, or hers, or would she hang back, the image of a meek Cerean woman? That would be the worst of all. It was foolish to confront Calar, who had any number of henchmen and an army at his back. She didn’t want any throne, much less the throne of a barren land, a place where she had only ever loved the dragon, and the dragon was gone. Still, she could not let Tiada go unavenged. Letting Calar take the land and hand it to his Cerean troops would be the worst of insults to the dragons. Besides, the bandits in the hills and the Order of Enat thought she should take it back, and no one else could be expected to take her place. She could hardly let them down now.

At long last, when the sun was high in the sky, the prince of Onarun left. As he went out through the gates, a messenger arrived, a young priestess who must have been waiting for him to leave. Darna heard the murmur of their voices from inside, then the messenger hurried out again. She realized that she was hungry, but the cramps deeper in her belly hadn’t troubled her all morning. As soon as the gate clanged shut behind the messenger, Darna darted back inside.

Iola was in the bath. “Who’s there?” she called out.

“It’s only me,” Darna said.

“There’s a message there for you – you’re to go see someone. Sunna is coming to escort you. All of the princes have arrived, Calar too. They say he’s at the palace gate now.”

Darna’s belly cramped briefly at the mention of her uncle’s name.

“How many more do you have left to see?” she asked. As beautiful as the garden was, it was awkward to wait there while Iola saw her petitioners, not that it had ever bothered her much during her season in the peresi’s courtyard. There, the young priestesses had often passed the doors of each others’ chambers when there was a petitioner inside, just to be sure that all was going as it should. But that had been different: she hadn’t been trapped and obliged to keep her presence a secret.

“Come in here, why don’t you?” Iola said.

Darna realized that she’d been standing awkwardly in front of the offering place, which reeked of sex and perfume. Its power felt diminished, not as strong as it had been earlier when she’d lain there herself. At the door of the bath chamber, a wave of steam wrapped around her, like a tendril of the dragons’ power reaching up.

“I think I’d better stay out here,” Darna said.

Long ago, when they’d been young priestesses in the temple together, Myril had been sucked under in the baths, almost into the dragons’ realm herself. The dragons had never wanted to claim Darna like that, but now, with whatever was in her belly, she was afraid to tempt them.

“I haven’t seen all of them, I know that for sure,” Iola said, drifting across the pool with languid strokes. “I think there have been eight so far, and Parnet.”

“That should mean four more, including Calar,” Darna calculated, “if he’s going to come at all.”

“That was the other part of the message! Their councils will begin tomorrow evening.”

Anxiety gripped her by the throat. She wasn’t ready. There was a cough at the outer doorway, and Darna turned to see Sunna standing there, dressed in priestess garb but with the unmistakable shape of a sword poking out the left side of her robes.

“Gallia’s waiting,” Sunna said. “Did you get any of that?” She pointed to a tray of food on a table beside the offering place, as far as possible from Iola’s sleeping nook. It was piled high with some of the best delicacies Anamat had to offer, including juicy meat pies, a salad of early berries, the temple’s bread, and a carafe of wine. One of the cakes had been bitten into, and there was a spoon in the bowl of olives, but otherwise it looked untouched. Darna salivated.

“Go on, eat quickly,” Sunna urged her while taking one of the pies for herself. “I’ll see if I can open the other passage.” She disappeared into the garden while Iola continued to float in her bath, humming softly.

#

All too soon, Sunna hurried Darna across the garden and out through a hidden doorway behind a fall of ivy near the fountain. The door had an ingenious design. Darna noted the place where Sunna pushed against a bit of mosaic, all of her energy focused into her straining finger. The mechanism creaked, but it did open. Beyond it was a long, narrow tunnel lined with rough, ancient stone. The floor was slightly damp in places, but it had not flooded. The passage emerged into a storeroom near the old sanctuary. From there, they hurried across the back courtyard with their hoods up. Sunna shooed her into a meeting room on the elders’ courtyard, then went off to fetch Gallia.

It took Darna a moment to realize where she was. The curtained room felt dusty in the dim light filtering around the edges of the curtains. When she’d first seen the place, as a novice, it had been sumptuous. There, she and the others had waited on the old governor and his guests on the day before their initiation. The room had been built to rival and surpass the governor’s chambers in the palace. She wondered if its tapestries had been threadbare along the bottom hem then, or if they’d been worn ragged in the years since. Would the elders air the room before Parnet came to leer at whatever new girls, if any, were moving from the novices’ halls to the peresi’s garden?

Despite the dust, she could tell that everything in the room had been beautifully made. The tooled silver pot at the center of the table needed polishing, but it was old, probably from before the beginning of the decline of the guilds, some hundred years before. Darna was about to pick it up to examine it more closely when she heard one of the tapestries behind her move, and a slippered footfall on the stone floor at the room’s hidden entrance.

Gallia paused to look around before she entered. When she saw that Darna was alone, she let the tapestry fall shut behind her.

At first, they said nothing to each other. Gallia looked older than she had the summer before, but then Darna smiled to realize that it was probably only her hair – she’d stopped dyeing it.

“I understand that Calar has arrived at the palace,” Darna said.

Gallia nodded. “My girl there just brought me the news. They’re to feast tonight, and the councils begin tomorrow night. Our part in it could come at any time, but Parnet will want to have it as soon as possible, to see whether or not to include Calar in the rest of the councils.”

“Tomorrow?” Darna said. It was too soon. The bandits wouldn’t have had a chance to come in from the hills in time.

“They will most likely have only their opening ceremonies tonight and drink a great deal of wine. That’s what Terenet said they always did on the first night. He didn’t enjoy that part of it. Maybe he was a little bit like you in that. Nalani tells me you’re impatient.”

Darna smirked. The Aralel would say that.

Gallia circled the heavy table that dominated the center of the room, to stand opposite Darna, resting her hands on the board. “What made you decide to help me in challenging Calar?”

Darna looked over her shoulder. She’d barred the door to the courtyard behind her, but she guessed that there might be more than one other entrance, too. She hadn’t thought to look before Gallia had come in, which was foolish.

“A few things,” she said, “one of which is that Hedrin tried to kill me, even though he wasn’t really sure of who I was.”

Gallia snorted. “He’s a fool, that one, and always has been.”

“The prince imprisoned him in the dungeon. If was still there when the waters rose, when Slaradun fell –”

“Then we need not worry about him anymore,” Gallia said. “Sad, he was so young, but I doubt he would have improved much with age. His father certainly hasn’t. That leaves only Renar, who was never even as good a swordsman as his brother. Neither of them had much else to recommend him. An excellent archer, though. It’s lucky that the council chambers will be too crowded for a man to draw a bow in, to shoot you with, and that you have the prince of Slaradun as an ally.”

Darna crossed quickly to the window. Someone was standing outside – probably just Sunna. “The prince of Slaradun is dead,” Darna said. “I saw him die.”

“So many young men. So, you have no one, apart from myself and perhaps the Aralel, to take your side?”

Darna shrugged. “I know some armsmen, some particularly skilled ones, who are upset at the death of Tiada, and who will guard me for the tribunal and maybe beyond.”

“Good, you’ll need them,” Gallia said.

“I don’t like Calar any more than you do.”

“I doubt that,” Gallia said with a low chuckle. “You’ve never had to live with him. I don’t think anyone could hate him as I do.”

“He killed Tiada, as much as a dragon can be killed.”

“Let’s sit.”

As far as Darna knew, the room they stood in was reserved for the governor’s visits alone. There was a chair for him on a low dais against the wall opposite the obvious door, flanked by chairs for his advisors arranged in a close semicircle. Darna had stood behind them once. She hadn’t caught the governor’s eye on that day, just before her initiation, and that had suited her well enough.

With a nervous laugh, Darna settled into Parnet’s chair.

Gallia laughed too. “That’s a thought. Maybe you could displace him, too.” She took the chamberlain’s seat, which was not quite as high-backed as the governor’s chair but just as ornately carved. She sighed as she leaned back against its soft cushions.

“We should tell them when we’d like to have the tribunal. They don’t need to take our suggestion, but Tiagasa can have things arranged.”

“Tiagasa?” Darna had never liked the governor’s mistress. “I don’t think she likes me.”

“She doesn’t like Calar and his Cereans, either, for all that she keeps a Cerean of her own close at hand.”

“Not Giri – Girizit, is it?”

Gallia waved her hand. “I don’t know what his name is. Their names are only so much noise to me, no matter how I tried to please Terenet. He’s the king’s emissary.”

“And his slave. He doesn’t like me, either.”

Gallia turned to her, eyes wrinkling at the corners. “He knows you? That may complicate things.”

They lapsed into an awkward silence. After a while, Gallia straightened up and turned to Darna again.

“Never mind about the Cerean for now. Do tell me, heir of my prince: why did you run away all those years ago? Life on the streets of the Anamat can’t have been easy.”

“It was easier than working under the cook at Tiadun, and I wanted my freedom. I didn’t have to answer to anyone for that one season,” Darna said. “If the prince had acknowledged me, I would have been trapped at Tiadun keep forever. I never felt anything but caged when I was there, and the thought of never escaping it was unbearable, even if Calar wasn’t trying to kill me then. I think he would have, if he’d known.”

“He didn’t know, nor did anyone else at the keep, as far as I know. I never learned about you until the end. No one really thought that it mattered, I suppose, as long as it was possible that – that we could have had a son. I loved Tiadun keep, though, at least my rooms in it. They had a lovely view over the bay. But then, I helped rule the place for a time. It felt like the first place that was really mine.”

“I used to feel that way about the city, Anamat, the whole city,” Darna reflected.

“And now?”

Darna shook her head. “You know, I can’t even show my face in the streets with this death threat, and with the waters rising, things are changing, ending. I need to set things right before the end, or at least see Calar condemned for sending Tiada under the earth forever. Anamat may not be here much longer.”

“I wonder if anything will be,” Gallia said with a shiver.

“I don’t know.” A pain ricocheted through Darna’s abdomen. She cringed, but Gallia didn’t notice. She wondered what they would ask at the tribunal, and if she would even live that long.

“Tell me what you know, what you learned as ruler of Tiadun,” Darna said.

“I was only the keep mistress, but that will take some time. Meanwhile, I’ll send word to the palace that you are ready to challenge your usurping uncle. Are you?”

“I have no idea,” Darna said, “but I suppose I’ll try.” Just at that moment, she did not feel ready. “I want to see their faces before I face them at the tribunal.”

Gallia had begun to rise, but she paused.

“That’s not a bad idea,” she said, peering at Darna. “Come over here in the light.” She rose and Darna went with her to the window. Gallia pulled the curtain aside just enough to let in some light. Someone was waiting outside: Sunna.

“It will be night, and the lamps will be dim. I see that someone has muted your hair with ash. That’s good. A few more lines on your face, to make you seem even older, that would be advisable. I’ll send for a servant’s dress. Do you know your way around the palace?”

“I’ve been there,” Darna said.

“Good, that’s decided, then. I’ll have my girl introduce you to the woman in charge of serving at these things. You know how to be a servant. Even that will serve you well.”

With a bitter smile, Gallia let the curtain drop.

#

Myril heard a familiar step on the stair and Thorat was at the door a moment later.

“I just barely got away,” he panted. “I’m supposed to be delivering an invitation to the temple; I can’t stay.” Carelessly, he picked up a piece of cheese and ate it while Myril poured him a cup of water. “I can’t stand it; they’re going to send him to her in the morning, before this tribunal even confirms him. The worst of it is, he’s recognized me. I’m fairly sure of it. I don’t want him to ask me anything.”

“The tribunal can’t confirm him,” Myril said. “Tiagasa, well, maybe she’s sending him to the temple to get some kind of revenge on Iola after all these years.”

“I wish I could stop her, stop Tiagasa.”

“It would be better if you could stop Iola from going down to the dragons. The Aralel doesn’t want her to go. The dragons won’t let her come back to us, if they even take her down at all. I’m not sure that they will.”

Thorat took a gulp of water. “I have to see her. Can you help me?”

“I have a favor to ask of you in return,” Myril said.

“Fine.” Thorat walked over to Myril’s shelves of dried herbs. “Do you have something in here that will make me sick to my stomach? Not too long-lasting?”

“I don’t want to make you sick.”

“It’s only to persuade them to let me off duty for this cursed feast tonight. They’re welcoming Calar along with the prince of Naramun. I can’t bear not to see her before she goes down to the dragons for the last time.”

“She already has gone for the last time, if you can persuade her to stay,” Myril said. She took down a couple of jars, pinching a little from one, a bit more from the other, and mixing the pinches in a small leather pouch. She held it out to him but did not let go as his hand closed around it.

“Take this with water or ale a short time before you want to be sick. You’ll feel ill. It would be good if you could have Sunna waiting, in guise of a healer priestess, to show you the way to the ambassadress’s chambers.”

Thorat nodded. “I think I can do that.”

“Then, when you see Iola – I don’t know what to say. She’s more a creature of the dragons than any of us, except maybe Darna, now. If there’s anyone who can convince her that human life is worth living, you can. Try to persuade her to stay on the earth, to stay alive.”

“Is it that dire?”

“Anyone can see this rising water. The dragons are done with us, and I want Iola to stay as one of the living people on the surface of the earth.”

Thorat nodded and swallowed. “I’ll do that then,” he said faintly.

Myril let go of the pouch and he took it.

“Should I try to poison Calar?” Thorat wondered aloud. “Could you do that?”

“I’d rather see him set down in the tribunal,” Myril said. “Besides, he’ll find his end soon enough. There’s no need for you to bloody your own hands.” She shuddered at the thought of it. Yes, Calar would meet his end soon enough.

#

Thorat was lucky to meet Sunna just outside of the secret way to the Defenders’ training hall.

“Could you come up to the palace for me?” he asked.

“I’d rather not. What in… Na’s balls, you did get a position there.” She eyed his livery with distaste. “Better you than me. What all are they doing up there?”

Thorat looked over his shoulder at the busy street nearby. One of the neighbors was shaking a rug out her window. “I’ll tell you another time. Walk with me?”

Sunna shook her head. “I have to get back to the Landing to look in on our other charge.”

“So, she’s there? Good.” He was glad to know that Darna was safe.

“She’s in with your favorite,” Sunna said as they reached the main way up to the palace. A trio of armed Ganateans strolled by. One of them began to leer at Sunna, but Thorat froze him with a look.

“Wouldn’t it be better for you to go about in a training tunic?” he asked her.

Sunna shrugged. “I’ll survive. I always have. I’ll see you later.”

“Please, come up to the palace,” Thorat said. “I’ll be in the barracks. I’ll need a healer priestess.”

Sunna stopped. “Oh?”

“I want to go see her.” He didn’t need to tell Sunna who he meant. “Can I go to her tonight?”

“I don’t know,” Sunna said. “I’ll see about it. I’ll come to let you know, one way or the other.”

It was late in the afternoon when he walked back into the barracks to find several of his fellow guardsmen helping themselves to the leftovers of the governor’s midday meal.

“Mind if I have some of that?” Thorat said.

“Didn’t see you in the mess hall,” one of the men said.

“I looked in on a friend. Didn’t think it would take so long. I didn’t stop to eat.” It was true that he was hungry. He surreptitiously slipped Myril’s herbs into his ale and swirled it around.

“A friend, eh? I’ve seen you around other years. Priestess?”

Thorat shrugged noncommittally. “Former priestess.”

“Ah, they’re the best,” one of the other men said. He launched into a long story about a young woman he’d met out in the provinces the year before, going into her charms in considerable detail. Thorat nodded along with the rest of them, starting to feel a bit worse for wear.

Just as they were marching across the front courtyard to resume their duties at one post or another, Thorat bent double. The contents of his stomach erupted onto the paving stones.

“Say, there.”

“You all right?”

Thorat shook his head. “I’ll be fine.”

“You don’t look so good.”

“New fellow’s sick,” someone said.

A surly-looking serving woman arrived to escort him back to the barracks. “Now, you just rest easy, there. Which is your bunk?”

“I’m not sure. I just got here.” He really did feel ill. “I’ll just rest by the fire.”

“Better for you to go to your bunk. I’ll send for a healer.”

Thorat shook his head. “No need. I’ll be fine.”

The serving woman looked skeptical but didn’t linger to insist. Thorat sank onto the bench by the common fireplace, cold as it was, and wrapped a blanket around himself despite the heat beating down through the roof above.

He was wakened soon after by a hand on his shoulder.

“Get up, sleepyhead.”

It was Sunna. “That was quick,” he said.

“It wasn’t,” she said. “It’s halfway into the night and you’d better hurry. If you can. You sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.” He got to his feet with a great deal of effort and nearly lost his balance.

“You don’t look so well.”

“Myril says it’ll wear off.”

Sunna looked skeptical. “All right, then. Lend me your arm. Go on; you’re supposed to be sick.”

He took her arm, letting her support him a little while trying to maintain the look of being the one leading her. He needed to let his fellow guardsmen know that he was ill, but he didn’t want to be seen as weak, either.

The walk down to the harbor temple seemed longer than usual. When they were nearly there, Sunna shooed him into a side alley and handed him a bundle of clothes.

“Give me your sword and put these on over your tunic,” she said. They were the drab robes of an elder priestess. “I’ll say that you’re ill and that I’m taking you to the old sanctuary to wait for a bed in the infirmary. Whatever you do, don’t talk. You couldn’t even feign a woman’s voice when you were pretending to be a minstrel.”

“I could,” Thorat protested.

“Not very well.” She looked out of the alley to see that the street was clear. “Hurry up.”

He started out, following her lead. She stopped. “That won’t do.”

“What?”

“Shush! You need to walk like an old woman, like this.” Sunna demonstrated a shuffling step.

“That’s the weakest gait I’ve ever seen.”

“That’s the idea. I don’t know why I help you.”

“Oh, yes, you do,” Thorat whispered. “Myril told me. I’m supposed to convince Iola to stay on the surface of the earth.”

#

The ambassadress’s garden was peaceful in the moonlight. The scent of roses and jasmine filled the air. Sunna clutched the hilt of her sword more tightly and ushered Thorat forward.

“Is there something wrong?”

“It’s too quiet.”

Inside the ambassadress’s marble-domed chamber, all was still. A single lamp burned on the altar, a lazy thread of smoke spiraling around its flame from a nearby incense burner. Slow, sleeping breaths sounded from one of the nooks in the side wall. Sunna went to a different nook.

“Where in the chambered world is Darna?” Sunna said, not bothering to try to be quiet.

Iola sat up, blankets falling down around her. “I think she went out.” She yawned. “I don’t really know.”

“Out?! She can’t go out. You know that.”

Thorat laid a hand on Sunna’s arm to try to calm her. “I’m here,” he said.

“Thorat?” Iola swung her feet to the floor and started to hurry over to them, but then she staggered and had to hold on to the wall.

Sunna ground her teeth. “It’s not safe for her to go out!”

“I was with a petitioner,” Iola said. “She didn’t ask me.”

Thorat went to Iola and held her hand.

“I’ll leave you two lovebirds and go look for her, then, since neither of you is any use,” Sunna said. “Who did she go with?”

“She said something about Gallia,” Iola said uncertainly.

“I’ll go look for her first, then,” Sunna said. “Thorat. Wait for me in the passage if I’m not here to show you out when you’re done.”

Thorat and Iola stood together, holding each other’s hands gently until they couldn’t hear Sunna’s footsteps any more.

“It’s all right,” Thorat said. “Darna knows how to look after herself as long as there’s no one trying to kill her.”

“It’s so strange to me that they would try to kill her. Oh, I understand that the threat is real, but why do they think she should stay here with me?”

“I can’t think of a safer place,” Thorat said. Iola glowed in it like a pearl in a perfect setting. “I’m glad to be here with only you, but –” He

was

worried about Darna. He dismissed his worry, or tried to. Sunna would find her, and then she would be all right. He had to cherish this one night with Iola. As always, it could be his last. “Come, let’s light a lamp. I want to see you.”

Iola went to her sleeping nook and took down a lamp, but her hand shook. “I’m not ready,” she said. “If I should take anyone’s offering, it should be the Defenders’, but –”

“I didn’t bring an offering,” Thorat confessed. “I forgot. I only wanted to see you.”

Iola set down the unlit lamp, her gray form moving hesitatingly away from him in the nearly dark chamber. Finally, she turned back to Thorat.

“Did the Enatel forget?”

Thorat hurried to her side and took her hand. “No, I’m sure she didn’t; it’s just that she’s been away from Anamat and isn’t back yet.”

“You could bring the offering later, or send it with Sunna.”

“Are you strong enough?”

Iola made an ambivalent gesture. “I can; it’s only that I’m so tired. I’ve never been tired like this before. It’s been worse since…after whatever happened in Slaradun.”

The mostly healed wound on Thorat’s shoulder itched at the mention of Slaradun. “You’ve seen what happened in Anamat, too?” he asked.

“I haven’t.” Iola swallowed. “They’ve told me, but I haven’t been strong enough to climb the tower to see for myself. I haven’t dared, either.”

“I could help you,” Thorat offered.

Iola didn’t back away when he came to her. As their clothes brushed against each other,she took hold of his arm. “You’re not a priestess. I’m the only one who’s supposed to go up there.”

“Well, maybe Darna can help you, when the sun is up.”

“No, the moon is rising; let’s go now,” Iola said with sudden firmness. “I’ve been afraid, but with you, I’ll go.”

Thorat took Iola’s arm, but she was the one to lead the way through the garden and to light the lamp. Her hands shook less. “I don’t know if I can make the rite, since you haven’t brought an offering,” she said.

“Let me stay with you, at least.” He didn’t much like the idea that others had been lying with her, and pushed the thought away. She wasn’t well. Sunna was right: she couldn’t go to the other realm, not like this. Even being at its mouth was a strain. She should go to the hills. He couldn’t help but think that the bandit women – or even Sovara – would know how to make her strong again.

Iola said nothing as they climbed the stairs. They had to stop several times for her to catch her breath. By the time they came to the top landing, the moon was high in the sky, its soft light shining on the seawater lapping the shore.

“Stay inside the tower,” she said.

“Anara will know that I’m here. I don’t want you to fall.”

Iola chuckled. “There’s more than one way to be a fallen priestess, I suppose.” She let him follow her out onto the narrow ledge, but he regretted it almost immediately.

Below his feet, there was nothing. He could look straight down into the ambassadress’s garden, but it made him dizzy.

“Look at the moon,” Iola said. “It will steady you.”

He had to clench his eyes shut to wrench his gaze away from the drop. When he opened them again, he made sure to look up. The sky looked just like it did from the ground, only there was more of it, with no buildings, trees, or mountains in the way. “You’re right,” Thorat said, but as he spoke, Iola gasped.

“I had no idea,” she said. “I mean, they told me there was flooding, but it’s as if half the city is gone.”

“Less than a quarter of it,” Thorat said. “At least, that’s what I’m told.”

“Too much.”

A distant, cloudy shape moved over the eastern hills and spiraled down. Maybe it was only a bat, or an owl. “I don’t want Anara to –”

“She can hear you.”

“I don’t want her to steal you from me.”

“And I don’t want the rising seas to take you away. Look, there’s a ship under sail. What are they carrying, to go at night like that?”

“It could be only a fisherman catching the tide,” Thorat said, but he knew that it wasn’t true. No fishing boat hoisted so many sails. “It’s a Cerean merchant vessel. I hope they’re not carrying away any –”

“Priestesses. The Aralel told me. If I stay on the surface, will that be my fate?”

“I won’t let them take you.”

The shape on the horizon circled again, crossing the edge of the moon in a blur. It looked like an owl swooping.

“It’s no use,” Iola said. “I have to fly down, to see the winged ones again.”

“No,” Thorat said. “We’ll see them again somehow, before the end, but if you don’t stay on the surface of the earth, you’ll be lost to me forever.”

From far away, they heard a distant rumble, almost like a bell-struck note reverberating through the crust of the earth.

“Wait for me here,” Iola said. She squeezed his hand and left him standing by the small doorway as she slowly walked around the ledge, looking down at the city. When she returned, they descended together, hand in hand.

Iola wanted to go into the baths to warm herself, but the water was cooler than it had been. “It’s like she’s drawing away,” Iola said.

Thorat nodded. “It was the same with Salara, or so Darna said.”

“We don’t neglect the dragons, here in Anamat,” Iola said.

“You might not, but others do.”

“We should make the rite. You might not be able to return.”

“I brought no offering. It wouldn’t be right.”

Iola slid away from him. “I don’t want to let you go, but I know you shouldn’t stay.”

“I have to stay until Sunna comes back, or another one of your petitioners comes. You should have retired and made someone else be ambassadress.”

“You know there’s no one to take my place, since Eppie won’t.” Iola’s voice shook. She was angry or afraid. That wasn’t like her.

“I’m sorry, but Eppie had to choose for herself. Maybe I should have tried harder, but I just can’t see her as a priestess.”

“Never mind.” Iola got out of the bath. She was shivering.

“Let me warm you,” Thorat said, following her.

“You can’t,” Iola protested, but when he led her back to the sleeping nook and lay down beside her, she welcomed him.

#

It was almost dawn when Sunna found them there, violating the protocol that governed the ambassadress and every other peresi. Not that she minded. No one was much of a stickler for the rules anymore, and many priestesses had lovers who only pretended to be petitioners when they had to. The birds were beginning to sing and a faint gray light was washing away the stars in the east.

“Two lovebirds?” she said, waking them.

Thorat sat up, and Iola pulled the blankets around herself. They felt guilty.

“You know you’re not supposed to be in the sleeping nook.”

“We only slept –” Iola began.

Sunna waved her away. “I haven’t found Darna. She was at the palace, but she’s gone now and no one knows where she is. Gallia said she’ll send word to her ‘girl’ there to look for her, and to find out if there’s any news.”

“She’s alive,” Iola said.

“Oh?” Sunna looked skeptical, but Iola only shrugged.

“I just know,” she said. “If anything had happened to her, I would know.”

In the outer courtyard, an alarm bell rang. Sunna looked grim. Thorat looked for his sword. “I’d better go see what that’s about,” she said.

She nodded to Thorat. “You suit up. Get on those old priestess robes you wore last night. I’ll see you out as soon as I’ve dealt with this.”

“Another bad petitioner,” Iola said, sadly.

“Do you have a bell of your own?” Thorat asked.

Iola shook her head. “I’ve been all right so far. The price is too high, but –”

“But that might not be enough,” Thorat said. “I wish I could stay to guard you.”

“You can’t,” Iola said firmly. “I’m going to send for tea. You’d better go.”

#