Her jaw clenched. She’d not let this green-eyed demon have the last word by dying. Once the valmasin were in her power, she’d give Vakayne and Roturra—and Zauhune—reason to follow her lead.

And then the balance of power in Vaidolin would change again.

32

It had taken little convincing for Ryldia to issue the command, and her house moved to the east valley estate. Taul had sent word to Silla Lor’Vamtrin so that she may visit and provide some comfort to his consort. Silla had accepted and sent a coterie of valley priestesses to make the estate ready. These women would provide a more wholesome and helpful gathering of priestesses—not like the vultures of the Halkamas estate.

Xura and the rest were more subdued. Their knights guarded the estate, their squires ran messages and scouted, and their women spied as only women can. They recognized the threat to themselves and their future as the Toshtolin matron. First, there had to be a Lor’Toshtolin to rule. So, for now, they whispered behind his back, but obeyed every command to his face.

Taul refused to blame himself for the high matron’s reaction. He was right. He’d done all things according to tradition.

From the roof of the valley estate, through a dense, wet haze, he could make out the boundaries of the various houses that divided up this part of the valley. The Lanassin, one of four narrow rivers cutting the east valley, snaked down from the black and white-speckled peaks of the northern range down to the southern range, a line of jagged gray mountains. Nestled between the ranges was the true wealth of Ilor’Hosmyr, their special sorcery: a patchwork of terraced fields, groves, vineyards, and orchards which should not be able to grow here at all, but somehow did.

As a boy, it had filled him with pride to know he was part of this. This day, it felt distant, but it had always been here, waiting for his return.

The last of the carts entered the gates, and he motioned to Valtos, Ryldia’s nephew, to take charge of guard duty. The fast action, the command, thrilled Taul. It also exhausted him as the rest of his problems clamored for attention. He turned to the ancient orchard on the other side of the estate. From here, Zeldra looked like an enormous field of dark green chased through with lighter green, the recent growth. He gulped down the heavy, water-logged air and his body tingled, both with excitement and anticipation.

Guards were at their posts, the house secured. He’d sent Xautan with a squad of knights to escort their matron out of the crater. This would be the opportune time for another house to take advantage. It was not the hour of assassins, but he’d not take any chances with their matron. Things were going well despite the threat. This is what it felt like to be a prime consort, to be in command of the security of his house. He shoved aside the thought that he should have told Ryldia everything, that he edged close to being insubordinate. He had a perfectly good explanation: the defense and protection of his matron.

“I’m going out into the orchard,” he said to Valtos.

“Should some knights accompany you?”

“Yes. Perimeter only. I wish to be alone with my thoughts.”

Valtos nodded. He was Xura’s son. Since arriving, he walked proudly, decked out in armor and his spear, ribboned and polished. In fact, all the knights and squires, even the diviners, every consort, seemed revived. The house had needed an outside threat to unite it.

He’d have to talk to Ryldia eventually and have her press the other priestesses—dare he say branches of the house—to help with the tax payment.

Not yet though. No one respected a rash consort who burdened his matron with trivialities. He descended from the roof and into the main house. Servants and workers buzzed in the halls, finding places for the crates of goods he’d ordered removed from the vaults. The vaults had once been an inviolable trust, but new laws made them the high matron’s, and that legality wouldn’t catch him again. Let the other houses see what was happening. He feared that, like him, no one would do a thing until it was too late. These new laws would destroy them before any aid could come. Younger houses waited, ready to fill the vacancy.

He made his way to the back gate and pushed it open. Ahead lay a marked path through the orchard. The crater could be dark, but out here in the valley, there was no place denser with shadow than the heart of an ancient orchard. He removed his gloves, tucked them in his belt, and loosened his tunic.

The air was thick, and it took him a hundred paces to reacquaint himself with it. Spongy earth squelched underfoot as he veered off the path. A smile broke out on his face. Here, at last, he felt like his true self. Not that he wasn’t at Ryldia’s side. He felt guilty finding pleasure here while she suffered, no doubt because of his mediocre quality as a consort. The fact was his brother, the first son, would have been the better choice for her, and yet here he was, the prime consort of Lor’Toshtolin and responsible for a nine-thousand-year-old orchard and forty-member house.

His thighs burned from the effort. The ground was like deep sand, and he sank deeper and deeper. Ahead of him, under breaks in the canopy, starlight cut sharply through the shadow. It was the heart of the orchard, a twining of thirty ancient trees; thick, black trunks and roots, a sea of arms, legs, and bodies—if trees had such features. That’s how it looked to him in that strange light. Sometimes they seemed to shift and move, but it was just his mind adjusting to the shadows.

He climbed over thick roots jutting up from the earth and found the place where he’d made his first trial. The trial was simple: to rest in the orchard's heart for a night, under the goddess-dawn, hands cut along with the roots of the orchard, blood to sap, sap to blood. If you survived to the next day, your master declared you a tender. If your life ran out before the goddess had left the sky, you were not. They gave you an apprentice’s funeral and blended your ashes with the mulch and spread it upon the fresh growth. If you climbed out before the goddess had left, you may as well leave Vaidolin. Exile or death was preferable to remaining.

He stripped down, furiously removing tunic and pants, hopping about while his hands undid his boot’s laces. Kicking away his boots, he stood ready, knife in hand, to make the trial again. He’d tried not to recall that night. It had been terrifying, a bottomless dream, and yet, he’d not died and not run away. He needed such courage again, but also dreaded it. Would Zeldra reject him this time? The goddess wasn’t present tonight. No moons crossed the sky. Only Nilas, the tender constellation, sat overhead. A good omen if one believed in such things.

Dressed only in a loincloth, he dropped into the warmth and felt for the bark where the last tender had made his cuts. They were barely there, already healed over. How long had it been since anyone had undergone a trial here? Were tenders no longer tried here? He shook away the concern and decided on a place for each hand.

He raised his own hands to the starlight for Nilas’s blessing, calling upon the goddess to strengthen him. There, deeply scarred now, was the thin line where his master, Voldin Lor’Vamtrin, had cut his hands. Taul cut the scar and blood bubbled out, looking like pitch, and then he cut the other hand. Blood dripped down on black roots. He quickly cut similar lines across a meaty root. He pressed his hands to the tree’s flesh and lay back. Nilas’s three primary stars shone brightly enough through the layers of branches and black leaves.

He took deep breaths, preparing for what he knew would come next. Nilas slowed so that each star left a trail of its passing.

“Goddess, guide me,” he said.

His voice warped and echoed. The orchard’s sap tickled his skin at first, searching for entry, and then it flowed into his own wounds and mingled with him. He strained to keep his eyes on the stars and slowly, everything became dark except for the three stars throbbing down at him.

This was the moment of truth. None ever mentioned that some tenders didn’t survive because they’d become lost, trapped by those glittering stars or in the goddess’s swirling face, in the endless dream of the orchard. He considered the dozens who’d ended their lives there. Like failed priestesses, their houses would put them out of their misery, useless to all, and give them a funeral proper to their effort. There were many ways to die as a Mornae, but that one at least was honorable. He let his mind drift as the sap wended its way through his arms and to his spine, warming and soothing him. It moved to the base of his skull and around his temples. His eyes closed.

Like the hands of his lover, it caressed his face. He saw Ryldia’s face, lovely and serene. Her eyes, her white lashes, touched by goddess-light. Yet less so than when he’d first met her. His love and worry and concern bubbled together, and he shared it with the orchard—all his fears, all his dreams.

An eternity could have passed; he wouldn’t have known. He’d entered the space between the now and the next. This was the Dark. Knights entered via another door, the door of their weapons. A tender entered through the sap-life of the orchard. He delved into those limbs and roots, digging deep into the blackrock, and there extracted zaeress from it. He mined like the sorcerers in the caves, but what he retrieved was for the orchard alone, and for the air, and the water, and the grainy, black soil which sustained the growth.

The sap rose in him, filling every pore and fiber of him, and he felt for a moment that he and the orchard had exchanged blood for sap and sap for blood. The orchard groaned and creaked and he with it, feeling as if it would tear him apart.

Deeper!

Deep into the earth he went. One must go to the very tip, Master Voldin had said. Strange that as the Mornae grew weaker, the roots went farther and farther, requiring even more from them. He strained to reach the ends, but they went on and on.

And with each grasping thought, the thoughts of those that had gone before, that had plunged deeply as he did now, came to him. So many lives, so much feeling and emotion, all so alike in their desire, to serve the goddess in her priestess, in his matron. The feelings welled up in him and out into the trees joined to the heart, their branches and roots intertwined throughout. He felt courage, the truth of his people as they had once been, drawn to this faraway place to seek perfection.

Tears of ecstasy streamed down his face.

This is what he was: a tender. As much as he was Mornae. He would serve her best as a tender. The orchard seemed pleased and ceased wrestling with him, loosening its grasp on his limbs. He soared high above, joining with Nilas, traveling the night sky. From that great height, he looked down upon the world, upon the crater with its valleys, and saw the blackrock throbbing across the continent like veins.

He gasped and blinked, his chest heaving. Lightheaded, he pulled his hands away gently, tearing at the mesh of blood, skin, and sap that had formed there. He ground his teeth as he pulled away with one quick motion, flexing his hand until the blood started pumping again, threatening to break through the sap-crusted scab.

He yanked his other hand from the tree’s wound and waited while his strength returned to him. Huddled over his wounded hands, he accepted he would do anything for Ryldia, for his house. No matter what they might take from them—estates, chits, silver—this thing, this sorcery, was his, his legacy, his ancient inheritance. This they could never take from him unless he gave it up.

Nilas had moved on. The day would dawn soon, and the workers would be out. Grinning, he decided he would work side by side with them. In three days, he’d meet the agent. This time, he wasn’t seeking a morsel, and wouldn't be a beggar. He would take what his house needed.

SUMMER

Some Mornae dug deep into the earth. To rock and fire. Others sought help in the clouds and winds or the waters of streams and ocean. Still others found it in the dance of life coursing through plant, animal, and man. From the smallest thing, invisible to the eyes, to the great behemoths, they linked themselves to the fate of living things. This last is the most unstable, most chaotic, most… fickle.

And the torment and victory we left behind in our works, like distant whispers, echoes of our suffering.

I bleed upon this kithaun blade, cruel and perfect in its form, and there leave memory for posterity. When my bones burn, let me fill the sky with knowledge.

Let another do what I could not.

May my lessons prove useful.

FROM MEMORIES BY JEVAN LOR’VAKAYNE, SON OF SAVRA.

33

Three weeks later, two days after the summer gong, Ren crept through Vaidolin’s crater like it was a sleeping beast ready to devour him at the slightest touch.

The massive east gate tunnel devoured the shuffling sounds as the evening crowd made its way in. It smelled of manure and bark and countless other country smells for half the length and then shifted to the stale, warm air of the crater for the last half.

Most of the crowd was lordlings and house members returning to the crater after a day’s work. The valley was heading to bed, but the crater was coming alive. Guards checked his badge at the end of the tunnel. He resisted grinning at them. It was all so easy!

He’d memorized the route as Nevyll had explained it to him. It shouldn’t be too hard. Just take the major thoroughfares. Don’t get lost in the estate streets. You’ll never find your way out. The goddess will guide you. And sure enough, even from the east gate, nearly five miles away, the temple spire rose like a silver spike, and atop it the globe. More light was swirling in it than he’d seen last time. This made him happy. He followed the east road to the wide avenue that encircled the temple plateau. Bridges leapt across chasms, thin and wide, to join the cities to the temple and to each other.