She motioned him forward, and he waddled toward her. He tripped and fell against her knees. She reached out to hold him up.

Taul smiled. Her hands were fine and gentle, patting his head and holding his face. The boy responded by trying to reach her lap. She obliged him. He investigated the silver chain about her neck and the weave of her robe.

“He is curious,” Taul said. “That is an excellent trait.”

Ryldia nodded and wrapped her arm around the boy. Then, she exhaled, as if releasing all her past failures.

“Call in the witnesses,” she said.

Taul whipped about to the door and showed in the small gathering of relations with Balniss at the rear. He would act as a magistrate today and seal the naming of Ryldia’s son for posterity.

When they had settled, she spoke, head high, her right hand bearing the Toshtolin ring splayed open on the boy’s chest.

“This is my son, Pemzen,” she said. “He has the bearing of his great grandsire, Pemzil na’Hosmyr.”

Everyone nodded.

“Well chosen,” Xura said, at the head of the coterie of priestesses. All agreed.

“Many blessings on the boy,” Naldira said. “May the goddess be with him always.”

The others repeated the blessings effusively. They, too, must feel the yoke loosening. The high matron could make no move now that Toshtolin had a son who could make an alliance with another house.

Ryldia seemed to alter and blossom, brightening with each utterance.

“Balniss, he has great intelligence,” she said. “I see it in his eyes. I would hire you to be his tutor. He will be an asset to this house until the day he leaves it to care for another.”

Balniss bowed.

Again, members of her house uttered more blessings.

Pemzen looked up at his new mother, but said nothing, nor cried, nor made any kind of expression. He just looked and looked, taking it all in.

A sinking feeling overwhelmed Taul. What if the boy was lacking in speech, or had a hidden defect?

Balniss stepped forward to save him from his anguish.

“We should begin then, Pemzen,” he said. “Do you know any glyphs yet? Or numbers?”

The boy stared at Balniss intently and then nodded.

Taul let out a halting breath. Goddess above!

“Good, we have a solid base,” Balniss said. “You will make a fine knight and consort someday. I can see that already.”

Pemzen slid off Ryldia’s lap and waddled toward Balniss, taking his hand.

Ryldia thanked everyone and dismissed them. Taul waited for them to leave before approaching her.

As he did, she held up her hand. Her eyes narrowed; her nostrils flared wide as if a secret rage had taken over her otherwise graceful visage.

“A girl,” she said forcefully. “You will find me a girl next.”

Taul paused. He couldn’t defy her, not while she sat enthroned with the ring of the house upon her breast.

“That is my command,” she said.

She had never issued an order to him before. Not like this. His heart felt crushed at that moment, his love blown out by a strong wind. So ruthless, she seemed.

“As you command, matron,” he said, bowing.

She returned to looking out the window, her face melancholic, her gaze distant.

Something had awakened in her. Before, she had just been a woman wanting to have a child. Now she was a matron, struggling for her house, making the ugly decisions that a matron must often make. He thought of Maunyn and the terrible commands he must have received. Even if he took pleasure in the violence and the seeding of his voravin line, he’d done it not for love, but duty. Or love for a consort was the fulfillment of command and not admiration or respect for her.

She said nothing more. The audience had ended, even for him. Though pleased with her newfound strength, he mourned the loss of what had been. He had indulged their affection for far too long, reveling like a boy in the feelings of love he had for her.

Now he had a new task, an impossible task. Until he fulfilled it, she wouldn’t consider him, she wouldn’t look at him. She might even cast him out, or worse, have him executed for disobedience.

A vast, silent chasm opened between them.

He bowed again and left her.

AUTUMN

There has always been a distinctive tension in the Mornae: to seek the Dark for oneself, or to prepare ourselves so that our children and their children and theirs can plumb its depth beyond what we were capable of.

My mother, Savra the Blessed, and her daughters pushed themselves through the cycles to gain just one more inch, to stretch themselves a speck more, only to realize the eternity they sought was for the young. In the end, they, too, must relinquish the future to the next generations and place their ambition and craving in another. And so, they shaped what would become tradition: that a matron should spend her first century preparing for her priestess trial and her first cycle preparing for her heiress. In that cycle she may savor her power, grow its influence in others, relish its ascent, but all with an eye to the day she’d pour it into another vessel.

It became a source of shame to not give, to become empty, and thus kill one’s house; for a matron’s greatest duty, the body-urge within her, is to make that future possible, a two-edged knife that cut her deeply. She must push herself to the limit, face death with each breath, for another. Just when she could see the violet goddess rise in glory upon Vaidolin, just then, she might give all she’d accumulated to another and see that goddess fade to white… ordinary.

Such is the glorious, bright, blazing life of a matron.

I willingly prostrate myself before her.

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

50

Gishna sat on the citadel’s south veranda, staring at a lone gray leaf flitting precariously on a bare branch. She hated autumn, with its harvest and tax reports, the vows and oaths, and most of all the last audience of the year, when her vassals would battle each other for her approval. She sighed. How little that approval mattered now that it was all crumbling.

She rubbed a slip of vellum, one of the seer’s discarded names. Yaenor Lor’Pelaun. The young man had seemed promising. Logic demanded it, but the seer was reluctant to use the squire to patch a hole in any of the trees. It seemed like more and more Hosmyr names ended up burned. Only names from other houses were acceptable to her green-eyed sorcerer. She wanted to ask why, but she sensed his answer meant her house was truly doomed.

She moaned softly. The pain was intolerable today.

Her effort to gather fresh blood was causing turmoil. The east valley demanded she act on the acolyte’s murder. The south valley was in a furor over the mishap with that Belthrae boy. A week ago, led by a so-called prophet, they’d burned a large estate in the goddess’s name. These prophets appeared regularly. Roturra’s lords were distracted by the goddess-court and hadn’t asked for assistance from its master. Gishna agreed. It would send the wrong message to allow another high house’s army into one’s territory.

“It’s my territory now, too,” she mumbled. She needed more houses, new bloodlines to offer the seer. She couldn’t allow visionaries to ruin her agenda in the South Valley.