Four knights stood watch to ensure they executed her command.
Taul’s mind raced as smoke and flame crept over the bundle. Which one of these priestesses would take over when Ryldia passed? What would happen to him? Would he return disgraced to his birth house, overwhelmed by its own problems? Or would the new matron want him to consort another in the house? He could not fathom any other consort but Ryldia.
He secretly hoped to be dead by then, but it was shameful for a man to die before his consort. And not just his consort, but his matron.
“Face of the goddess,” he whispered. The words escaped his lips like a hiss. Xura turned briefly, brow knitted. He looked away. He mouthed the words again once she’d turned back to the ritual. When would the goddess heed him, aid him? When would she help his house?
The flames flickered yellow and Xura dropped more resin on them, and they shifted to a whitish blue. It all seemed pathetic. Why the ruse? Appearances didn’t matter to him. He just wanted to acknowledge the child as having been, even for a brief time, one of them. Taul looked down at the grass, fighting through the rocks at his feet, recalling the kicks in Ryldia’s belly. Everything fights to live, but sometimes there is only so much fight in you.
His eyes threatened to fill with tears, and he struggled to keep it all down, bottled up. He could not afford to let the others see his grief, but even more, his fear.
The flames roared for a while, spurred on by the accelerant in the linen, and they all watched in silence. Then the fire died down, as brief and bright a life as his daughter’s time had been. What looked to him like tiny bones jutted out from the ashes, a last grasp at the world.
He bowed his head and admitted to himself that he loved her, the idea of her. That she was his if only for the briefest moment, not even a breath in a Mornae’s life. In the silence of his heart, he named her Hydira, for the smallest blossom constellation.
Sadness swelled his chest; his face sagged with the burden of it all. Nomads buried their dead. Baikal displayed their bones in great tombs of stone. Not the Mornae. It was their way of returning one of their own to the goddess, with her own power, on the winds and into the stars. But this fire had been insufficient. A servant gathered the ashes, sweeping them carefully into a linen pouch. He folded it over and bound it all with a ribbon. He then presented it to Taul.
Taul looked about. What was he to do with it? He accepted the bundle, now so much smaller than the original. Mornae didn’t like touching the remains of the dead. There shouldn’t be any remains. His head throbbed. He’d have it buried somewhere on the estate or cast into a crater chasm. Let the waters of the deep carry her away.
His fingers fiddled with the ribbon as Xura uttered one last prayer. A plea to the goddess for aid. It didn’t sound very earnest. The priestesses followed Xura out. She glared at Taul smugly.
Across the way, a rogue pear tree had grown in the craggy rock, a sparse cluster of half-eaten fruit, pecked at by wild animals or plucked by the daring poor of the ditches. A shiver ran through him. All the world conspired against it.
He glanced up at the fading night sky, the last stars flickering. Goddess above, he thought, what next for this, your faithful house?
The word faithful stuck in his mind.
Was it? Was he? Had he truly done all that was necessary to avoid this calamity?
Men from the distillery approached, hauling behind them a tarp with debris. They waited to the side, but Taul motioned them forward. The trash from the distillery tumbled down into the pit. Fine dust plumed like smoke from a pyre as they shook the tarp over the pit. Once finished, they bobbed their heads, fearing to offend him. They were honest valley folk, just trying to earn a living. Their dead burned in yellow fire.
He’d bury her ashes in the orchard. It seemed right.
As he walked toward the main road which would carry him into the valley, Outer Halkamas came to life as people made their way to the workshops, distilleries, mills, and forges. In the valley, the work of the farms had already begun. The east was cloudy, and the sun battled to get its last light on the fields before winter.
Balniss’s suggestion came to him then as he wandered down an old, familiar trail. The goddess’s bounty could solve their problem. Even a boy would be helpful. They could make a trade alliance with another house with enough leverage to decide on an heiress of Ryldia’s choice. Someone she could mentor. Someone with a link to the foundress’s bloodline. That way Toshtolin could keep its line of matrons unbroken. She needed that leverage.
His mood brightened.
A boy could buy her time to recover. They could try again for their own child later. Balniss’s diagnosis seemed definite, but Taul thought time in the country could help her. Silla’s care, away from her relations, would renew her. Didn’t Ryldia descend from master tenders? Yes, the sap, the dense air, the open skies may help. Yes, in the spring, they’d make a visit. Even to the cliffs.
If the High Matron upheld the message’s demand and commanded a change in matron, could they join Lor’Vamtrin? Live on the edge? He couldn’t see Ryldia as a country matron. An expelled house could never again walk the halls of Halkamas, appear in the High Matron’s audience halls, or send a son to Isilmyr. But the orchard, bound to her bloodline, would still be hers. Hosmyr could take everything else, even the estate, but not the trees and its precious fruit.
And yet, he’d loved the Vamtrin’s little estate with its country styling. He craved Zeldra’s embrace once again.
A litany of tasks, small and great, needed attention, and now he’d have to plan the trip. He’d not let Ryldia down. He’d not give into negative thoughts. Second best. The second son. The third child. He knew this is what many in the house thought. The High Matron must know as well. Why else send such a message? Meddling in the private affairs of a true Mornae house? The indignity of it!
This was the time they lived in.
A troupe of men walked past him, ready and eager for work. They gave him a respectful nod and continued their way. He should be out there with them, a tender out in the orchards, pleased with a valley priestess as consort, not the scion of a house with a lineage going back to the founding.
There was no one to duel, no justice to seek, no great deeds to accomplish. Just small, trivial matters that meant everything. Who could ask the goddess why she did what she did?
He might.
He would.
Why had this tragedy befallen them? Standing on a rise overlooking the vast expanse of the orchard’s canopy, he felt out of sorts. Nothing made sense anymore. Mornae were supposed to be clever, but he didn’t feel that way. Arguing over chits wasn’t their destiny. Had there even been chits in ancient times?
He gazed down the long paths that led deeper into the dark and throbbing orchard. There hadn’t been chits, then. There had only been the orchards. They beckoned him ceaselessly.
Chits and manifests, debt sheets and invoices, were the tools of other, lesser people. In Hosmyr, a cascade of blossoms was always best. Up to a fourth, even a fifth, blooming.
He walked down the steep hill and entered the youthful growth of the outer edge of the orchard. He spied a hole dug for a new sapling from the south and set the bundle there, covering it over with a handful of dirt.
That’s what he dreamed of as he strolled beneath the canopy of yellowing leaves. They’d all fall by the next ten-day.
The winter gong had sounded three days ago and Halkamas’s winter bell rang. There was nothing to do now but wait for the diviner’s gong announcing spring and the goddess’s return.
Vaidolin was at rest, silent as a Kuxul crypt.
SPRING
Under bright Sayin’s rays, the celestial council determined an Alcar's place in society, and once placed there, an Alcar began the tedious cycles of building or shaping what the council decided.
My mother and her collaborators wanted to return to bloodlines, smaller communities… dare I say families… and to unfettered personal progress, to reach beyond what the celestials deemed acceptable.
The first Mornae were not afraid to die striving for one more drop of power.
