Chapter 28
Zaidna
The Empire of Judath
The Temple of Marin
Kirin held the bar of soap up to the dim light and resumed normal focus, placing her gold-bladed knife down on her desk at the same time. Why wasn’t the soap foaming yet? Her carved glyph looked right. She glanced at her classmates, many of whom were already delighting in all the waterless suds that spewed from their bars of soap. She snatched up the glyph diagram she had been working from, compared it to what she had just carved, and then saw immediately that she had jumbled up the stroke order of the glyph’s execution radical. She crunched the paper up in her fist and proceeded to snap the bar of soap in half. Binding ormé was stupid, useless!
“Are we having difficulties, Kirin?”
Kirin cringed. Of course Batem would notice her mangling their project for the day. She faked a laugh and gently set the two broken halves of the bar on top of the pile of shavings on her desk. Without another word, Batem produced another gray bar of soap from his sleeve and passed it to her, then left her to start over.
Kirin watched him go, glowering. She hated being trapped in this study, always under his careful watch. She should have never told him about her nightmares. Every time she even started to doze, there he was, prodding her to stay awake. And even after a week, she could not stop thinking about Javan. Any time she allowed her mind to wander for even a second, it returned to the one moment they had shared, in that warm embrace. She missed him. She missed all those trips back to Marin and the long conversations they used to have about everything and nothing. She couldn’t even look at steamed milk cakes anymore without seeing his smiling, bespectacled face hovering over them.
Javan had finally stopped sending notes to her house, and she wondered if he hated her. He was right to if he did, but she couldn’t risk his presence causing her nightmares to get worse. She would be no good to him broken, so there was really no way for them to be together anyway, at least according to Batem. Now Javan was free to find whoever he was truly psyche bound to. They’d both be happier in the end.
But the damage might have already been done. Kirin’s nightmares hadn’t grown noticeably worse, but they hadn’t gone away, either. She wondered if Anji and Tirbeth were still in rough shape. She felt bad about cutting off all communication with them, too, but it was the only way that she wouldn’t be forced to make their situations worse with her useless elucidations. Besides, her repentance process had to be focused to be effective.
Kirin lifted her knife to begin her carving anew, but was interrupted as a high priest, recognizable by his feathered headdress, entered the study and spoke with Batem in hushed tones. After a few moments, they both stared directly at Kirin. Uh oh.
“Candidate Kirin, please come with us,” Batem mumbled, a tight smile pulling at his face.
Kirin set down her knife, her pulse drumming in her throat. The high priests had finally discovered her secret! Had Batem told them about her sins and nightmares? Shakily, she grabbed her satchel and tossed it over her shoulder. She followed the priests into the dim, tiled hallway outside and was surprised to find herself standing amidst several other girls. Many of them she knew from her classes—students in the year before her own—but some were much younger. This wasn’t just about her, then.
Batem placed a hand upon Kirin’s shoulder. “You’re to follow that high priest to the Chamber of Dreaming,” he whispered into her ear. “Be on your best behavior. The Nassé has invited every candidate to have an audience with her.”
“Why would the Nassé do something like that?” Kirin whispered back numbly. But Batem was already pushing her down the hall as the high priest led the way. Kirin furrowed her brow as she trailed after the other girls, who were chattering excitedly about getting to meet the Nassé.
They were hurried down the main staircase toward the lobby. When they reached the temple’s main floor, they were led brusquely through the forbidden passage and up the long, winding stairs at its end. By the time they finally reached that last landing at the top of the stairs, Kirin was hugging her middle, where painful stitches gnawed into her sides without mercy. She couldn’t tell if they came from the long journey up the stairs or her nerves from having to see the Nassé again. The others seemed just as tired, but there was no time to recover. More high priests greeted them at the entrance of the curved gallery and ushered the group into the short, mirrored hall. At its end, the wide, silver doors of the Chamber of Dreaming were already open.
As they approached the chamber entrance, Kirin could see all of the Nassé’s attendant priestesses inside as well as a group of senior acolytes dressed in gray, all facing the bed at various angles. Xinthi herself was not on her bed, and instead was pacing around it, her loose robes leaving large swaths of her skin exposed to the sunlight.
One of the high priests brushed past Kirin just as she and the other students entered the chamber. “Your Holiness, what are you doing out in the light? You must cover yourself! The sun—”
Xinthi raised a hand, already pink with sunburn, and the doors slammed shut with a deafening boom behind Kirin, causing her to freeze mid-stride. Outside, the remaining high priests began to bang at the doors, demanding to be let in, but none dared move to do so.
“Are these the last of the candidates?” Xinthi demanded of the lone high priest still in the chamber.
The priest stood rigid, his lips parted and twitching. “Well, yes, but—”
“Good,” Xinthi hissed with a note of venom, and the high priest bowed shakily. She turned from him to face the nervous candidates partially surrounding her. “I deeply regret that the candidates from Xeshun and Chalei could not be here as well, but Judath’s candidates will have to suffice.” She resumed her pacing. “Now that you have all been gathered, and a witness is in attendance, we will begin.”
Begin? Begin what? Kirin glanced around at the other candidates, who stood in a ragged half circle three rows deep. Beside the older priestesses, who looked tense, the chronicler’s desk sat empty, spilled ink drying on its writing surface. Where was the chronicler?
Xinthi chuckled, the sound frightening and unnatural. She lifted her chin and stared straight up at the skylight, tears beginning to streak down her cheeks. No one dared to speak, nor did anybody move to stop Xinthi from blinding her engstaxi eyes. “My burdens have been lifted.” She thumped herself in the chest with rigid fingers several times. “Naltena has chosen to speak to me in the flesh, and not merely through the symbols of a dream!”
To see symbols of Naltena in dreams was common, to be shown things by her more common still, but an actual visitation? Kirin shifted uneasily on her feet as the high priest and acolytes cooed in unquestioning wonder. This proclamation was unprecedented—a sign of something miraculous at such an auspicious time. Had Naltena returned?
“I have seen the glories of the Mother Star, and I have seen Naltena’s face!” Xinthi cried out in shrill zeal. “She is more radiant and silver than the sun itself—more beautiful and wise than even the greatest of our previous Nassés have described. Truly, she is the creator of us all—the very mother of our psyches, the provider of our spirits, and the savior of our very world! And she has chosen me—me—to be her messenger—to call forth a new age!” Xinthi lowered her chin, and her eyes were like a pair of wide rubies rattling loose in their settings.
It sounded miraculous but Kirin only felt dread. She wished for Xinthi’s words to ring true, but could not ignore the manic look in the Nassé’s eyes or the flecks of spit flying uncontrollably from her lips.
Xinthi’s blissful reverie suddenly turned to despair as she burst into sharp sobs. She knuckled her cheeks dry, chafing the blistered, burned skin until it bled. “But while I am so blessed, the goddess also comes to chastise me, to call for my repentance. No longer am I under the goddess’s protection, and every night I receive my punishment for failing to discern Naltena’s will and withholding her messages. I am compelled to confess my sins and the nightmares that I am sent, despite my station.” Xinthi paused only briefly before looking at the candidates with a cold, serene stare. “But we all know that I am not the only one with these nightmares.”
“Why are you speaking this way, Holiness?” the high priest demanded from behind the rows of women. His expression was one of confusion and anger.
Xinthi ignored him and swiveled around. She shuffled to her bed and parted the curtains. Those who had a clear view into the bed gasped. The Nassé calmly reached into the shadows with both hands, and with decidedly unengstaxi-like strength dragged the broken body of the chronicler from the mattress and to the floor with a loud thud. The dalanai’s lip was split, and her eyes were blackened. She had been beaten with such force and brutality that even when her mouth opened to scream, only a rasping burst of air escaped.
The candidates and priestesses broke their loose formation, panicking.
“My chronicler has sinned and has been punished,” Xinthi sneered, foisting the chronicler up by her torn collar.
“How could you?” the high priest breathed.
“It was necessary,” Xinthi declared, her voice hollow, weary. “And now she must confess in front of these candidates so that all may know that they cannot hide their sins from me. All must confess and be punished if they are to be saved.”
Kirin looked at once to the exit. Xinthi was insane! If she could just get close enough—make a run for it—anything! But the pounding on the doors seemed to indicate that no one was getting in or out of the room until the Nassé allowed it.
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“The sun emperor was right about you!” the high priest stammered, backing away from the group. “I’m putting an end to this!” He dashed toward the doors, but Xinthi lifted her hand, and her pattern weaving was so fast that Kirin didn’t even have the chance to blink before the arc of lightning scorched into the high priest’s back, immediately filling the entire chamber with an acrid, hot stench. The priest fell, twitching and screaming, to the floor, and when Xinthi seemed satisfied, the pattern was released. The agonized sobs of the priest that followed were but whimpers compared to the shrieking of Kirin and the others.
“I am on the goddess’s errand!” Xinthi spat, turning to face the candidates. “Try to run—try to work ormé against me, your prophetess, and I will burn you where you stand! Now all of you be silent!”
The women readily obeyed. There was no other choice. Kirin’s basic training in ormé was no match for the Nassé’s power or her callousness—Kirin would be fried like a poji in a pan if she tried anything. If only her father were here; he could outmatch Xinthi and put a stop to this madness!
“Now, Chronicler,” Xinthi purred, directing her attention back to the trembling woman kneeling at her feet, “confess to the others as you confessed to me.”
The chronicler grimaced and spat blood on the floor. When Xinthi raised her free hand, the chronicler cowed and sobbed through swollen, bleeding lips, “I’ve had nightmares—since winter!”
Nightmares. Kirin paled even further. If the chronicler had been having nightmares just like Kirin and the Nassé then—oh no! Kirin looked again to the others. The priestesses and acolytes, even the young girls, were staring in horror and shame.
“Go on,” Xinthi pressed.
“It is the same every night. I am in a grove that turns into a desert, and I am so thirsty,” the chronicler wept. “A man appears with a flask of water and brings me to an oasis, but the water in the oasis is poison! I try to get away, but he drowns me! Every night!”
Kirin covered her mouth as it opened wide. The shadow maker!
“And you tried to hide these things from me, didn’t you?” Xinthi cooed, stroking the chronicler’s bruised cheek. “You would sip my ketas root tea and thought that I would never notice it on your breath. But we engstaxis notice everything, don’t we?”
“Yes!” the chronicler wailed.
Xinthi shoved the chronicler to the floor, stepping around her limp, sobbing form in order to address the women and girls. “Now then,” she chimed as she quickly worked another pattern. A transparent whip, undulating like a live, glass-scaled serpent, solidified in her hand. “Which one of you will confess next?”
None dared to speak, least of all Kirin, who prayed with all of her might to simply vanish from this room.
“Very well,” Xinthi sighed. She grabbed a priestess, almost at random, and threw her to the floor. With a vicious lash, the priestess’s robes split, leaving behind a gorge of ruined flesh across her back. “Confess!”
The priestess cried out, clutching at her back, but she did not flee or fight. “Yes! A black-eyed man comes to me in my dreams! He takes me to his bed and smothers me with a pillow!”
The shadow maker again! Why were all of these candidates dreaming of Anoth? It didn’t make any sense that they’d all be so full of premarital sin that they’d all have nightmares. This wasn’t right. The shadow maker wasn’t a symbol; he was a plague!
The Nassé dipped her chin in a nod, before she proceeded to lay blow after vicious blow to the now shrieking priestess. Each time she drew back the glass whip to strike, it splattered streaks of blood across Xinthi’s robes.
The rest of the priestesses and acolytes looked on in wordless horror. Kirin couldn’t believe this was happening. What was the Nassé trying to accomplish and was there really no one to save them?
Finally, Xinthi abandoned the broken priestess and looped the blood-coated whip about her shoulder. “Punishment for your sin.” Xinthi then moved with methodical malice toward the next priestess, pulling her from the group.
This woman needed no compelling. She dropped to her knees and immediately sobbed, “Please don’t! I’ve had nightmares, too! I’m out cold and hungry, but a man comes and brings me to an inn. He gives me food, but when I’m full he forces me to eat more. He crams it down my throat until I choke to death!”
Xinthi nodded, and without a word she proceeded to lash this priestess as well, before moving on to the next and then the next. Each candidate confessed to nightmares, where the shadow maker appeared in form after different form, and each candidate was lashed in turn. Soon the whole room stunk of blood, and the floor was littered with torn, bleeding priestesses.
With only a handful of girls and women left standing, Xinthi caught the arm of the youngest, a twelve-year-old, and dragged her from amidst the cowing acolytes. “Confess!” She tossed the girl to the floor and raised that awful whip again.
“But I don’t know anything about nightmares!” the girl sobbed.
“Of course you have had nightmares. Now confess!”
“No!” the little girl screamed, scooting away from Xinthi through the blood. “I haven’t had any!”
“That’s a lie!” Xinthi snarled, stalking after the girl like a wild padu. “The goddess has told me that all daughters of the eighth house are sullied and must be saved! Confess or you will be thrust to the void!”
The little girl shook her head, sobbing haltingly, “But I’m a daughter of the seventh house! The seventh!”
Xinthi parted from her mania for a moment, a bemused expression on her blood-splattered face, but all too quickly it soured with rage and determination. She swept past the girl and flung her blistered talon of a hand out to the wounded high priest. “Your naming crystal! Now!”
The high priest reached into his dalmatic, fumbling out a long, thin wand made out of quartz, each of its six sides carved with a string of glyphs.
Xinthi snatched it from his outstretched hand and stormed back over to the girl. “You think you can conceal your house, but I will force the truth out of you!” She hauled the girl up to her flailing feet and pressed the crystal to her forehead, and almost at once it flared a brilliant blue. Xinthi seemed at first surprised, then irritated. “Well, well. The blood of the child was red—always red. You are a daughter of the seventh house, indeed. It appears that you are blameless.” She thrust the girl back to the floor and returned to the other priestesses. Now she began to test each one with the naming crystal before torturing them, and all were revealed by the wand’s red glow to be daughters of the eighth house, just like Xinthi. Just like Anji and Tirbeth.
The eighth house was the one thing they all had in common. Their house had to have something to do with the nightmares! But what? Kirin wasn’t a daughter of the eighth house, but she was having nightmares just like the rest. They couldn’t all be sullied. There had to be some rational explanation. This insanity had to stop! “Nassé, please no more!” Kirin screeched. “They haven’t done anything. None of us have!”
Xinthi looked up after laying a vicious kick to an acolyte’s gut, seemingly having grown weary with just the whip. “Ah, Kirin Toredath! Anxious for your turn, are we?”
Kirin scrambled to get away, but Xinthi caught her arm, wrenching it hard enough that Kirin’s legs crumpled to ease the pain. She saw the whip held high, as red as Xinthi’s gleaming eyes, and was paralyzed. “Please don’t!”
“You know well that I must do this,” Xinthi seethed. “You alone have seen my nightmare. I finally understand its meanings, don’t you see? Naltena has shown me everything!”
“Please let me help you!” Kirin pleaded. “I can elucidate for you again!”
“Everyone marvels over the tragedy that befell the star emperor and empress. But I foresaw it all! A woman with a diadem on an altar, sacrificed by the goddess and left to roam the shadows with the Dread God for eternity. Who is that but the star empress? I saw the servants of Anoth undertaking to restore their god with the help of the candidates, and Naltena has given me the mandate to stop any of this from happening.”
“You’re mad!” Kirin screamed. “The Dread God is dead!”
“Now confess,” Xinthi rasped.
Kirin sucked in a sob and said nothing. She didn’t want to be beaten. There was no way she was going to confess anything to this deranged woman.
Xinthi shook Kirin’s shoulders hard enough to knock her teeth together. “You answer with silence? You have lied to me once already, while looking me in the eyes. Do not lie again!”
“I’m not having nightmares!” Kirin blurted out. But she knew she could never get away with it.
“I told you not to lie to me!”
“I’m not! I’ve had no nightmares!”
Xinthi glared hard at Kirin, every muscle in her face vibrating in certain fury. “Daughter of the ninth house,” she muttered, glancing at the orange glow of the naming crystal. Snorting in disdain, she flung down the naming crystal and Kirin along with it.
Kirin felt the wind burst from her lungs as she hit the floor. Xinthi believed her! She held still as Xinthi moved on to her last victims. Finally, every priestess and acolyte, save for Kirin and the little girl of the seventh house, lay beaten and bloody at Xinthi’s feet, weeping or attempting to nurse the wounds of their more severely injured sisters. Xinthi paced amongst them, the red of their blood streaking her white hair. This crazed, evil woman was no longer Kirin’s prophetess, if she ever had been.
“If you’ve finished, let us go!” Kirin shouted.
Xinthi turned her head slowly. Her eyes were empty. “It is just as well that you are here as witness. You will tell the emperors, then.”
“Tell them what?” Kirin challenged as she picked herself up. “That you’re insane?”
“Tell them we were wrong,” Xinthi murmured regretfully. “Our pride has made us blind to too many of Naltena’s warnings. We held ourselves above nightmares, above reproach, and your generation will suffer for our hubris.”
“I don’t understand,” Kirin said.
Xinthi half-smiled, revealing her pointed teeth, and held her hands out to her sides. “Come to me, my sisters,” she declared loudly. “Understand that I have only done what I was commanded to do. I love you all, and you are forgiven.”
Kirin stared numbly as all the brutalized candidates went to Xinthi, hobbling or crawling, and accepted her and the others in a collective embrace.
Xinthi raised one hand up high, and once again, her red eyes bored into Kirin’s with piercing intensity. “You will tell the emperors everything.”
There was a loud crunching sound, and Kirin jerked her head up just in time to see the glass dome above Xinthi and the others splinter and crack, all the fractures spreading across the surface of the skylight in a web. Kirin immediately remembered the sky shattering in Xinthi’s dream and knew what she was trying to do. She intended to fulfil the end of her nightmare by her own hand.
Kirin shifted focus, desperate to try to mend the glass before it was too late, but she panicked, unable to recall the pattern, and lost sight of the primal matter just as the skylight burst. Kirin fell back with a startled cry, catching hold of the girl of the seventh house beside her and scooting rapidly with her into the wall as the glass cascaded to the floor with an earsplitting smash. All too quickly the shrieking of the candidates was silenced, and there was no sound left, save for Kirin’s halting breath.
When she opened her eyes all she could see at first was red. Then shapes and sounds returned, and through the wailing of the girl she had saved, she heard the shouts of the high priests as they were finally able to open the unbarred doors and spill into the chamber. But then the girl wailed alone as the priests were met with the macabre display, unable to move closer due to the shards of glass that had shredded the bed and the bodies in a perfect circle.
The Nassé and all her candidates were dead.