Would the new matron of Lor'Vanarik consider a union with Hosmyr? Consort to the next matron? Would Zauhune be the better ally?

They needed samples!

She chortled through bloody phlegm and swallowed it all down. She sounded just like the seer. And just like him, she seemed willing to do anything for the work.

18

Taul watched Ryldia through another ding of the hour bell from the sanctuary down the street.

She stared listlessly out the slit-like windows. It was a moonless night and her otherwise lovely features looked sunken, unsalutary. He rose from the servant’s stool and stood beside the brazier, burning incense. He placed a message scroll he'd received secretly from his mother on the embers and watched it burn.

We'll take you in, my son. We have prospects. Do not despair. You can only do so much. Sometimes you must allow a tree to die.

His mother had never sent him such a revelatory message in all his time as prime consort. She'd sent the message within a box with samples of this year's harvest of apricots, from a new tree variety imported from the south side of Saylassa. A vast expense, but as he tasted them, he couldn't help but approve. They weren't power rich, but at least they were flavorful and sweet. Beneath them, he'd found the message, written as a glyph and only for his touch. Anyone else touching it would detect a charm but be unable to read it.

He mixed the ashes of the message. The floral scent filled his nose and he grimaced. It was overbearing. Not at all like the true scent one would experience in the valley where must, manure, sea spray, and the perpetual background scent of kith predominated.

He kissed Ryldia on the forehead, but she didn't acknowledge him. House members murmured that she'd gone the way of a failed priestess. What if she started swaying, drooling, lost forever?

And then what?

A different death ritual would take place. Some matrons allowed such women to continue, cared for perpetually until they died of natural causes, but not Hosmyr's high matron. She'd decreed ring-to-chest while sitting on the Hosmyr throne that no such woman could live in her domain. A house must cut such a woman loose to wander the goddess-path forever.

Killed, she meant.

He suspected houses did just that. The risk was too great that word would get out that a house was harboring and caring for such a priestess, but perhaps some with the means might do the opposite. He'd never in all his years pondered the idea, and now it faced him square on.

As he departed Ryldia's apartment, he said to her attendant, “Do not allow anyone in but yourself, those closest to your matron. And my brother, Balniss, of course.”

She bowed once, and he left. He didn't want to, but he realized sitting in the room, watching her fade, did no one any good. An uncomfortable fire had burned in his gut since receiving his mother's dire message. Ryldia and her house were not merely a tree, as she'd suggested. He couldn't simply allow it to perish. He must try to tend it under their laws and traditions.

And so, he would seek the goddess.

He took the Talurian Road through Halkamas, the City of Blossoms, all the way to the Great East Road. Puul trees lined the wide thoroughfare, a point of pride since no other city maintained such an extravagant display. Petals were falling, the last flowering of the year, and they speckled his boots white and blue and lavender. Nowhere else, in all the crater, did the puul grow so tall or abundantly. At the junction, the road opened onto a wide thoroughfare, one of four maintained by Ilor'Daushalan. Their soldiers patrolled it and manned guard stations at quarter mile intervals. The temple spire, a thousand feet tall, with its massive globe caught in a kithaun claw, loomed over the center of Vaidolin. It was always there, no matter where you stood, but here on the wide road with an unobstructed view, he felt vulnerable. Nestled at its base were the temple grounds and across from it, on the southwest side, sat Isilayne, the kith-walled academy where the Mornae's first knights had trained.

He passed the bridge spanning a wide, deep chasm which joined Halkamas to the temple district's plateau. He should have gone to the temple directly, but he hadn't built up the courage for that yet. It was Daushalan territory, and according to his brother, the first high house paid each diviner who worked in its precincts. Yes, it was better to try in Halkamas first. Wouldn't his wise high matron provide for her own people? Surely there was a bounty here as well. Determined, he walked down the street, avoiding looking up at the gigantic globe.

Near the junction with the Great South Road, next to Isilmyr, was the Vailuriath, the largest public sanctuary in Halkamas. Its buildings sat small in the temple's shadow spire but sprawled wider. On the east side were the small schools where acolytes and apprentices of all kinds learned the basics of trade and managing a house. Houses with sufficient wealth tutored their young within the safety of their estates, but Taul, like all those of Lor'Nevtar, sent theirs to the small schools. A cycle ago, their main purpose had been to prepare the young for entry to the academies or their trials. Now it was the primary school for trades. He'd learned to keep accounts there before returning to the east valley to continue his education as a tender. Then six seasons at Isilmyr, at the end of which he'd sat in a cohort ritual and received his ribbon. He never called himself a knight.

Taking a shortcut through the gardens to the courtyard, he entered a vast space with stone columns arranged like the summer sky's primary constellations. At the heart of each constellation, a small fountain tinkled softly. They whimpered with barely enough water to fill their basins. Mildew stained the columns, worn from age and neglect. Leaves blew in from the surrounding gardens. They rustled and tumbled around the courtyard. Only Halkamas dared display so much abundance in the crater.

His heart sank. Soon these gardens would fail as well.

At the far end, beyond the columns representing Rilanik, the Forge constellation, was the entrance to the sanctuary proper, a kith cylinder sliced at the top like a writing pen. The opening faced the temple's globe as if begging for light. The interior was a single space, circular like the goddess, with the vault open to let in goddess-light. At the base, arched hallways led to instruction halls.

He stood at the very center of the sanctuary space, on a faded cluster of gems that stood for the Eye of the Goddess. As a student, he'd come here with his cohort for special instruction and sat on his heels in silent contemplation. The priestess-in-charge had whipped unruly boys with a reed stick for not focusing. He'd never sat on the eye, the spot reserved for the instructor.

Well-worn kith pavers fanned out from the eye. He strolled along the base, peering down the halls, searching for a diviner or magistrate he could question. Water murmured in the fountains. All the rooms appeared empty. He walked down the widest hall to an atrium with a covered gallery. On the other side, there was a large instruction hall. He paused, frowning. Something seemed wrong about this atrium; it had been one of his favorites as a boy.

He strolled about, hands on hips. His mouth twisted as the realization struck him. The statues, with smooth marble skin, rose twenty feet at each corner where once thick vines had sprung up and formed a canopy which attracted even the bees from the Diviner's school down the street. The vines had been cut down, burned at the roots, and statues of Beyyla Ilor'Daushalan, Voice of the Goddess, stood in each corner. He walked up to one, its arms and body straining to reach the sky, an almost impossible feat of sculpting created by a sorcerer's magic. He gripped the statue's ankle.

“Can I help you?” a woman asked.

He turned, and a priestess wrapped all in gray appeared from a shadowed hallway.

“I had come to…” He removed his hand from the statue. “I was admiring this space. I trained here as a boy.”

She frowned. “And?”

“Is there perhaps a prioress or a senior instructor I could speak to?”

“Follow me,” she said, looking him up and down.

They walked through the sanctuary and down another hall. The chattering rhythm of children reached him now, bouncing off the walls. The drone of repetitions. He'd hated it as a boy, but now found joy in it. He looked in one hall where clusters of boys and girls sat around a diviner or priestess receiving instruction. They wandered back and forth between instructors.

“Here,” said the priestess, drawing him back to his task.

He stepped in the narrow doorway and into a small chamber. Behind a desk sat an elderly priestess, also clad in layers of gray, her face covered by a light gray veil. She was a vaissana, a member of a growing number of priestesses who dedicated themselves in a way similar to diviners. They educated, functioned as midwives, and tried to conserve the past. His circle called them empty vessels. Had they known they'd not produce an heiress? Had this priestess been an heiress, maybe even a matron?

“What can I do for you, Prime Consort?” she asked him.

“You know me?” he asked.

“We must know the houses of the founding and the first cycles to teach the young our history.”

“I see,” he said. Her pearlescent eyes seemed to bore into him, a beam of light to scour his insides. “My name is Taul.”

Her eyes rolled slightly, as if she knew that already. She must have heard their sad story.

“Yes, of course,” she croaked. “Taul na'Nevtar, Prime Consort of Lor'Toshtolin. Shall I give your descent from Tasimar Lor'Hosmyr?”

She'd not used the prefix ilor to name a high house. His circle also considered these new orders subversive of the Fifth Accord, clinging to what was before and rebelling in the smallest ways.

“I've come to ask about the bounty,” he said.

“Bounty? Bounty?” she asked loudly. The echo unnerved him and sweat tickled his temples. Her eyes narrowed. “Adoptions?”

He cleared the lump in his throat. “Yes, precisely. Is it done in Halkamas?”

“No,” she said firmly. “The high matron sees to every child.”

“I see,” he replied, confused. He'd not heard of a bounty overseen by Ilor'Hosmyr. “So, I should request an audience?”

“Do what you will,” the priestess said. “I don't think she hands them out like that. You could always try the temple.”

“The temple?”

The priestess nodded and then squinted at him. “Shouldn't your matron consort be making these inquiries?”