“House above all,” he whispered, his breath hot on her old hand.

All for their house. That was the one thing she could count on with Maunyn.

She watched him leave.

Goddess above, forgive me, she prayed. Forgive him for what he will do.

The thoughts soured in her mind. Mornae don’t make supplications to the ether, hoping and hoping. No, they worked; they toiled; they acted.

“House above all,” she whispered and sipped the seer’s brew.

8

The mountain goat struggled and fell over. Taul said nothing, and his bow arm fell to his side. He’d not wanted to host the annual hunt, but he must as Prime Consort.

“Rotin’s beard, fine shot,” Xautan said under his breath. “The horns alone are worth the kill. He must be four hundred pounds!”

The hunting party of house knights, consorts, squires, trackers, and servants rushed forward to the downed mountain goat. Like everything around Vaidolin, it was not like any goat found anywhere in the world.

“He must have come down from the high valleys to feed,” Rodar said. He scanned the upper reaches of the slope. “No sign of a herd.” He motioned to a tracker to search ahead.

The party marveled at the black-haired beast, its two-foot-long spiraled horns sparkling with zaeress, goddess-power. Its eyes were two silver marbles with a sharp black slit.

Taul wondered why he’d even shot the beast, clearly more a child of the goddess than his party. Sure, the hide would provide excellent leather; the organs had medicinal value. Hunters prepared the meat and fat into a paste for those who braved the wider world. Ah, and the horns! Diviners and southern magisters would pay twenty marble chits for them to perform strange magics. Baikal shamans pierced their flesh with fragments of their horns and bones, and thus took on the goat’s abilities. Taul had only glimpsed a shiver of movement. It was only when the arrow pierced the thick hide that its hulking form manifested into common view.

He turned away from the party and his kill to look back over the valley, a strange mélange of black, dark greens, and specks of brilliant color. From this lofty place, the valley twinkled: life-rich water filled the myriad holes in the valley’s foundation and shone with starlight. The holes provided experimental pots for sorcerers to learn and assess their power. That was how it had all begun. The oldest glyphs were made fifteen cycles ago when they first arrived. Beneath it all was a web of mineral-rich waters from the high mountains, and the hot, sulphureous waters of the deep crater. A haze was forming as colder air flowed in from the sea.

The beauty of it made his heart ache.

“Terin is taking care of the carcass,” Rodar said. “Let’s push on, shall we? The night is still young.”

Rodar was the consort of Ryldia’s aunt, another matron candidate should Ryldia fail. In the starlight, the older man’s face looked harsh, even cruel. He’d dressed in the now-current style of the Zauhune champion. It didn’t suit a man of his age though, unused, thin muscle covered poorly by wrinkling skin. His three centuries were weighing on him. He’d not see another century, and he wanted nothing more than to see his consort at the head of the house.

Taul reached for the knife at his hip but stopped short of drawing it as Rodar turned and left him. Would they try such a thing out here? The rest of the valley was asleep, according to the motion of Sayin, the sun, sunrise to sunset. Whereas Taul and his party were crater Mornae—except for their trackers—whose waking hours followed the night. This would be as good a place and time as any to assassinate him. Perhaps they hoped to come across Mavir’s children, huge boars with spears for tusks, or the legendary black lion the size of an ox with razor claws and fangs? That would give them a clean excuse to off him.

Toshtolin’s members now numbered forty-two adults—too many, according to Mornae ideals. Too many priestesses without a matroncy of their own bred resentment, but to split the house would mean splitting Toshtolin’s resources, weakening it further. He realized they had little hope in Ryldia’s pregnancy, but Taul must hope for a good outcome. An heiress would silence all rebellious chatter. If Ryldia was a ruthless matron, she’d have exiled them, or if she was harder still, executed them. But those harsh days were in the Mornae’s past. Now, each house member was too valuable, mediocre as they were. And they knew it.

Dalkos, consort to Yelara, another of Ryldia’s cousins and a candidate for the matroncy, waved to him from higher up the slope to continue the hunt.

Taul glanced at the stars, noting Barona—the Mother Bear—crawling along the crest of the Bulor range, the southern boundary of the east valley.

“Only four more hours of this,” he muttered and trudged toward them.

After the hunt, they’d gather at the valley estate, rewarded with Ryldia’s best wine and finest fare. It was customary in the autumn to celebrate the harvest, but none of these lordlings did any work in the groves, orchards, or fields—not even the silk farms. None but Taul was a real tender, a survivor of a trial in Zeldra’s black womb.

Hairs on the nape of his neck prickled and his skin blackened in defense. He looked over his shoulder discreetly. Xautan had not moved up, but was twenty paces below him on the slope, an arrow nocked and ready, but pointed down. Taul was at a disadvantage. The best he could do was drop to his belly and hope the arrow shot over him.

They would say it was an accident. Secretly, they would say it was necessary to help their house. This was the conundrum. This happened when houses expanded too much, had too many competing voices. And Xautan’s consort, a priestess of more age and standing, had a daughter already, a young acolyte and, from all reports, a fine young woman. Other priestess relatives had children and had consorted into other houses to bring in new blood.

There were times—this wasn’t the first he’d seen an arrow pointed in his direction or felt the goddess rise to his defense—he hoped one of these men would do it. It was a terrible, un-Mornae thought to court a feeble death. Did they want her to take a new consort? A first son? Someone with greater power?

“Move up, Xautan,” Taul commanded. “Don’t lag. The next kill could be yours.”

Xautan smirked and jogged up the slope. He loved the hunt.

Taul paused at the carcass as Terin and his apprentice were field dressing the massive goat. They acknowledged Taul with quick nods and continued their work. There was no time to waste. Servants would carry it all back. He let out a heavy breath and continued. They’d wandered over the hills north of the Toshtolin estate, a crystalline jewel with Zeldra’s darkness surrounding it.

Why was he so plagued by thoughts of failure when he and Ryldia were so close to ending the incessant concern over an heiress? Because they had failed before. He wasn’t like other men who laid all the blame on his consort. The pregnancy was theirs. As Mornae, they were partners, each contributing to the house’s future. Consort bonds could sour when disaster struck, especially when the house’s future and security were at risk. It was not customary for a cousin or even a sister—if there was one—to take over the matroncy from a living matron. Lor’Toshtolin had an unbroken line going back to its founding nine cycles ago. No Toshtolin matron of that line would accept replacement. She’d die first. These days matrons secreted what remained of their house into the fringes of Mornae territory to live out its last days. The shame of failure was too great to live it in public.

“Goddess above, help me,” he whispered as he trudged through dense tufts of grass. Asking anything of the goddess was not a Mornae custom, though. The goddess had already given him everything he needed to succeed. He was Mornae, master of the stars and kith, and he was a tender. Yes, he wanted to do his duty, but he also loved Ryldia. He admitted it in the silence of his mind. Duty and devotion were so much more important. Love just made them sweeter. And love matures, his matron mother had told him, through the cycles, through tribulations and setbacks. No life is without strain. If it was, we would not be Mornae at all.

“To strive,” he said, clambering over a fallen ironwood. “To fail… to thrive.” There was no thriving without difficulty and challenge and even more failure. We learn through failing, his father had said on his deathbed. Never be afraid of it.

The current failures seemed critical, though. A misstep could bring Toshtolin crashing down.

A stench was in the air. He turned back to look at Zeldra’s blackness.

Goddess above, if you fail, then what was the point of me?

He shook his head. Zeldra didn’t depend on a single tender. It was a feat of majestic sorcery. So what if he’d bled for her? So had hundreds of tenders more worthy than him.

His party was waiting for him up the slope, dark shapes against the starry sky. Massive peaks loomed behind them. Did they whisper? What were they saying? The Dark tempted him to use what little skill he had to listen in, but if they detected him, he’d be a laughingstock. Everything Mornae did was a calculated risk. He let out a deep sigh, longing to be back among Zeldra’s roots, hidden and protected, free to run and bound like a wild animal. That seemed so much more useful than this charade.

He raised his bow, and the party startled. He shot past them to a low branch and a midnight blue grouse fell to the ground. The party just stared, frozen. Taul called to Terin’s apprentice, and the lad ran off to collect the grouse.

“Fine shot, Taul,” Xautan said with a nod as Taul approached the party. They all gave signs of approval, of feigned obeisance.

Taul lifted his chin, a sign of acceptance, but also that he was above it. He was a prime consort. These men couldn’t know his true feelings. None could be trusted. Let them wonder if he too might strike unawares, eliminating any threat to his consort. The Mornae saying was “House above all”, but Taul struggled with it… for him there was just Ryldia.

“What were you discussing?” he asked.

“Rodar is taking bets on the court,” Xautan said. “Care to place a wager?”

“Not bloody yet, so small wagers only,” Rodar added.

Taul hid his indignation.

“I, for one, can’t wait for it to turn bloody,” Dalkos said. “We’ll wager on what kind of beating that fool takes.”

They expected so little of the Zauhune champion, a knight of Zauhune’s lowest tier, with no academy badge and no training but what the Wilderlands frontier had taught him for twenty-nine years.

“I think he is brave,” Taul said. “Can anyone deny the goddess works through him?”

They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

“What happened in the Beytol was nothing,” Xautan said, sneering. “A bunch of stupid boys caught off-guard.”

“Rumors spread by old men only,” Dalkos concurred.