The Rector greeted Remè with a tilt of his head. “Honored father.” His voice was still strong and imposing, even as he bestowed a greeting that should have swelled Remè with pride. If only—
“We have come to ask about your wife.”
The Elder watched Remè with those deep-set hazel eyes, oddly disconcerting in their intensity despite his age. “Is she ill?” he asked.
“No, my Elder,” Remè answered, knowing full well the heart of the Elder’s inquiry and deciding that truth, at least in barest form, would be the best course. “She is saddened, as is her due, but she is fine. Her absence today was entirely at my bidding, and for that, I am most sincerely regretful. As you know, she is the daughter of a previous honored family. Plus, we have two young ones within our household. I felt her duty was best served to stay here, for comfort and reassurance, if for nothing less.”
The Elder held his gaze, weighing the answer a moment on the scales of reality and reason. Remè set his face, hopefully seeming undeterred by the scrutiny of the old Rector.
The Elder bobbed his head, echoing what Remè had said. “She and all of her family are also among the honored.”
“Yes, Elder,” Remè offered. You should know. You were the one that performed the sacrifice of Skye Grayson.
The Elder gave a heavy sigh, pursing his lips, letting Remè know wordlessly, and full well, that he should count himself fortunate under the circumstances. “It was likely a wise decision that she should stay with her loved ones.” Then he added with a tilt of his head, “Her . . . duty, as you say.”
Remè let loose a sigh of relief he had not known he’d been holding, hoping the Elder had not noticed. “That was my only thought, my Elder.”
The Rector nodded his head slowly, still skeptical, still in consideration. “You have another son . . . and a daughter, if I remember correctly,” the Rector said. For some reason, this simple question gave Remè pause.
“Yes, Elder,” he answered. “Arteura, my daughter, is a season younger than Tristan is—was. And Marcus is not yet six.”
The Rector continued his nodding, his voice a whisper of contemplation. “Yes. Yes. I see. I see. A wise choice indeed.” He breathed in, seeming to be satisfied with the reasoning for this transgression. At least for now. Yet, for some reason, the unease Remè felt still lingered.
Then it hit him: It was the intensity of the old man’s eyes. His face may have softened and his posture may have relaxed, but whatever satisfaction the Rector seemed to take in Remè’s answers had yet to reach his eyes.
“Very well,” he said, stepping back and motioning to his guards. “She shall stay in your house, in mourning, for a period of twenty-eight days. Then, my assistant Doronaeus will return to accompany the both of you to the Temple of the Cyneþrymm for the sanctification of her sorrows. Until then, Remè, we leave her under your care.”
Dear gods, Remè thought, twenty-eight days?!
“Thank you, Elder,” he said. “It will be done as you say.”
The Rector bowed, turned, and shuffled away as the guards fell in step behind him. Remè watched them leave until they rounded a corner and disappeared down the central boulevard. He may have dodged that arrow, but Remè wasn’t yet convinced that the Rectorship or Council was finished taking aim at him.
Rhiana appeared from behind the curtain, fixing Remè with what was becoming a habitual glare of the morning.
“You heard?” he asked.
“I heard.”
“And?”
“What is there to say?” She shrugged. “I will fulfill my duty, as you say. As the Elder says. I will mourn, and I will be ritually sanctified.” She gave a second shrug. “And I will move on.”
“That is the way of the Cyneþrymm.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “Unfortunately.”
He stepped forward and raised his hand, gently this time, toward her bruised cheek.
She flinched away from him. “Don’t!” she hissed.
“Rhiana,” he said softly. “I am sorry.”
“As am I,” she answered. About so many things, she thought. “But here we are.”
They stood, uneasily facing each other for a long moment before Rhiana broke the awkward silence. She brushed past him, moving to resume her task of cleaning the pots and dishes in the wash basin.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” she said without the slightest hint of emotion, “I have duties to perform.”
7
Cierra
I followed Daina around a corner and up a gradual incline where I could see the first rays of light beyond the torch she carried. Another bend and we were out from the mouth of the cave into the brilliant light of midmorning. Marshaan followed.
“About bloody time,” he growled.
Daina turned, shaking her head and laughing. “You say that every time.”
“I feel it every time.”
I stepped around Daina. I had to shade my eyes against the sudden glare of daylight, but still, I couldn’t help turning my face to the day and breathing it in, both in wonder and a bit of relief. Little wisps of clouds painted white swirls across the sky, and a gentle wind, already warmed by the late summer sun, dried what little water was left on my skin and ruffled my hair as it blew up from the valley below.
I took a few more steps to peek over the edge of the path we stood on.
Something’s not right, I thought. The sun’s on the wrong side.
I scrunched my face as I looked around, trying to figure it out. That’s when it hit me: north. I was facing north! I’d never faced north before, at least not without looking straight into the face of Dunwielm! When you emerged from the Gildrom, you were usually looking right into the sun about this time of morning. But now the sun was high and behind me as I looked over the northern landscape for the first time.
I wasn’t impressed.
The land was open, dull, and barren, all the way to the distant horizon. It was quite a contrast to the brilliant colors of the Brynslæd Empire. There, the thick pines of the Gespyrian Forest lay beside the checkerboard grainfields of the Talenwood Plains, all of it separated by the zigzagging blue of the Sadrean River. Here, there was nothing but sparse desert, shimmering in the growing heat, dotted only by a few tufts of plumose grass and stands of pale wormwood here and there. Brynslæd, in all its white marble and polished stone, was a brilliant pearl at the edge of emeralds, jades, and citrine. This? This was nothing but browns upon browns upon browns.
I looked more below me and saw a village. Sort of. It was a lot smaller than Brynslæd, laid out in an almost perfect grid. Small homes dotted the front of each square, and walking pathways separated each home from its neighbor. The homes were low-slung and made from dense red clay and roofed with perfectly laid wooden logs apparently felled from the thin stands of surrounding trees up the mountainside. The only relief in the endless shades of brown was an odd, bright patch of green set behind each small home.
There was a medium-sized creek that ran below us, between the hillside and the southern edge of the village, a mere trickle compared to the Sadrean River of home.
Home.
What was home once you were dead?
Where was I now? Was this Daina and Marshaan’s home?
Would it be mine?
The small stream was channeled off, ringing the village all the way around, outlining the grid in a stagnant blue-green. There was also a trench flowing along the wide, central path that bisected the village. From these channels, even smaller ditches had been carved leading to each home. That’s when it hit me: aqueducts . . . water . . . channels for irrigation . . .
I get it! The green patches are gardens!
I guess that made sense to me. What didn’t make sense was that there were no walls around the village. No fortresses. No battlement. In fact, there seemed to be no defense surrounding the town at all, just the canals that led off to the irrigation channels between homes, and even those certainly weren’t wide enough to act like any kind of
moat.
Daina leaned down beside me and swept her hand across the landscape. “What do you think?”
“I-I don’t know,” I stammered. “I thought there would be, umm, more, I guess. Does anybody actually live here?”
She chuckled and looked to Marshaan with a shrewd smile.
“Come,” she said. “I’ll show you.”
We followed the path down as it made a wide sweep of the mountainside, then sliced through a broad field of golden grass swaying in the breeze. We crossed a small wooden bridge over the creek, and then we were on the central pathway of the town.
Not only did there not seem to be any defense of the town’s perimeter, there were no doors on these dwellings, front or back. Also, these “homes” were even smaller than I thought from my first vantage point at the cave’s entrance. Overall, I was getting less and less impressed.
“Do you . . . live here?”
“No, my child.” Daina giggled. “These are outbuildings. For our gardeners.”
She paused, slid her arm around my shoulder, and pointed to one of the green patches. “Behind each building is a small plot for several families. We have beans, onions, tomatoes—pretty much all you can think of. And, close to the ridge there, that field we passed through? We grow both sorghum and wheat there. We use those for everything from flour and cereal grains to syrup and distilling.”
“Distilling?” I asked.
She smiled and bounced her eyebrows. “You’ll learn all about that in due time, my child.”
Something else struck me as odd: There were no people. At all.
“Are you sure you aren’t the only ones who live here?” I asked, only half kidding. “Where is everybody?”
She laughed that infectious laugh of hers and grasped my shoulders, turning me around.
Oh. My. Gods!
I was now facing the broad mountainside we’d just descended, and the sight was breathtaking.
We’d come down a meandering pathway that made a wide arc around the brunt of the mountain face, and now I could see why. The hillside, to about two-thirds of the way up, was crisscrossed with pathways and dotted with entrances to countless numbers of caves and caverns, all shielded from view as we’d made our way down. The pathways looked like the thick leather laces on the boots of the Þrymm guards, and the entrances resembled the steel ringlets connecting them all. Even from this distance, I could see that each entrance was carved with elaborate designs and splashed with color, laced with intricate details and with what appeared to be words in a language I didn’t understand. The pathways were worn smooth and lined with greenery, dotted with flowers of every color and size, many that I’d never seen before. Ivy laced its way up the rock face, looped around the entrances, and spanned the pathway atop wide trellises. It was beautiful and colorful, and all of it a beehive of activity or, maybe more fitting, an anthill of activity. People were coming and going from the various caves, milling up and down the paths, carrying bundles or water jugs, idly chatting with one another all along their way.
I was stunned.
Then someone spotted us in the garden grove and shouted a greeting. All eyes turned and, almost as one, they exclaimed their excitement at seeing the three of us there. Then, like a game of Stones and Pegs, they began to clamor down the pathways of the hillside, pinging back and forth like an emptying hopper until all seemed to be at a run by the time they hit level ground.
Well, that’s a little scary.
Daina must have seen the concern cross my face, or maybe it was the two steps I took backward, and she threw her arm around me, drawing me close, her face beaming.
“It’s okay,” she said. “It is not for us they cry out, my child. They are happy to see you. You’ve passed through the Waters of Death and Life, and now you’ve come to join us in the community of the chosen.”
That didn’t seem to help. At all.
“This,” she said with a sweep of her arm, “is Cierra. Your new home.”
Whoa! What??!!
I couldn’t help it. I shook myself loose from her grasp and turned to face her, my fists balled at my side and my mouth tight. “Wait,” I snarled. “What? This is what? You mean I’m not . . . I can’t . . . go home again? To Brynslæd?”
She knelt beside me, her wide grin replaced by an intent look of compassion and sympathy.
I don’t want that! I don’t want—
Maybe I did want to go home.
No, that wasn’t it. In fact, that was the most frustrating thing of all: I didn’t know what I wanted. I didn’t want to be here, but I didn’t want to go back to Brynslæd either, to the Temple, to my father.
Daina held me the whole time, letting me process, not letting go even as I struggled. I was beginning to think she didn’t have an angry bone in her body despite what I might say to her, or how I might feel. After a moment she released me, holding me at arm’s length. “I’m sorry, my child, but no, you cannot go home. Not to Brynslæd. Not anymore. You were made an offering there. An unwitting pawn in a ceremony to that city’s Hæðn gods.”
My eyes flicked between Daina and the oncoming crowd, who’d slowed now, sensing the rising tension between us. “What . . . what does ‘unwitting’ mean?”
The corner of Daina’s mouth ticked up in a hint of a returning smile. “It means I don’t think you really knew what was happening, what they were doing to you, or what you were to them.”
But I did know, I thought.
Without losing a hint of her compassionate smile, she asked, “Is that how it felt? To you?”
The word didn’t want to come out. I breathed heavily and looked away.
“No,” I finally said.
She nodded in understanding. “That’s what unwitting is.”
I huffed, not happy with the explanation but knowing I probably wouldn’t get much more. Instead, I asked, “What’s a Hæðn?”
“It’s a word we use to describe an action or a people that runs counter to what we believe is the right path of life.” Her smile broadened, and wrinkles creased her forehead. “Even if it’s done unwittingly.”
“Like my sa—uh, ceremony?” I still couldn’t call it what it was: a sacrifice. I was sacrificed.
I shuddered at the thought. I guess Daina would say I was becoming witting to what had happened.
She was nodding. “Yes. Exactly. The taking of life? For the pleasure or favor of some god?” She shrugged. “That is a Hæðn act done by a Hæðn people. I know of no true gods who would ask us to take life for their enjoyment or their purpose. No. That is nothing more than an act of power, by men, to instill fear and cause submission. Nothing more.”
“But I thought it was what I was supposed to do,” I said. “The scriptures all say—”
“I understand,” she said. “I do. And I have no better way of putting this to you, my child.” She got down on one knee so we were eye to eye. “Your father, your family, and everyone in Brynslæd now thinks you have passed on as an offering to their Hæðn gods. You—” Her voice caught, and she closed her eyes and shook her head. Then, heaving a long sigh, she looked to Marshaan, who slowly nodded in support of her, before continuing. “For all intents and purposes to the people of Brynslæd—and to your family—you are now dead.”
We stood, her on one knee and me trying my best to hold it together, looking at each other for the longest time.
I knew this.
Deep down, I’d known it from the moment I was led into the mouth of the Gildrom. And I wanted to be brave, I wanted to be strong, for my father then, and for Daina now, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. She didn’t te
ll me anything I didn’t already know, but it still hurt.
I’m too young for this crap!
Tears dripped down my cheeks, and I let them come. I let Daina pull me in, wrapping me up as best she could in her warmth and understanding. I felt a broad hand, surprisingly tender on my back, and I knew it was Marshaan.
All of the people who had rushed down the mountain now stood in silence surrounding us, some with hands outstretched to me, some arm in arm with those beside them, heads on shoulders, tears flowing freely.
“This is too much for you to understand, young one,” Marshaan said, “but all of us have been where you are now. And we will be here for you from now on. In time, I promise, you will understand it all, and more.”
≈≈≈≈≈≈
Marshaan knew, as did everyone else in the community of the chosen.
They’d been there, all of them. All had felt exactly what this young boy wrapped in Daina’s arms was feeling right now. Every man and woman surrounding the two of them had passed through Estemere, the Waters of Death and Life, and were saved by Watchers like Daina and Marshaan. They called it “reaping,” and it was the most important calling in all of Cierra.
Some, like Marshaan, used what wisps of memory that remained from their own reaping as something almost like a tool, wielding it to spur themselves on in their given tasks, vowing that no one should ever be made to feel so helpless and spurned by any community, by any family, so long as they have a say.
Others chose to wipe the memory from their mind altogether, choosing to begin their life memories totally anew in Cierra, as if their previous life were a phantom dream, a nightmare to be shoved to the furthest, darkest recesses of their conscience.
The journey of adjustment into the community was rarely an easy one. Tristan’s reaction was no better or worse than most all who had come through Estemere before him, at least those who Marshaan had a hand in reaping.
No, it was never easy. What the boy was experiencing now, at this moment, was unavoidable and inevitable, and it was why a woman was always chosen as one of the Watchers. Men like Marshaan could be tender, but often their mere presence was an overwhelming distraction to a young, impressionable mind. The news was devastating enough. A woman’s voice and her soothing demeanor, no matter if the reaped sacrifice was a young boy or young girl, was always the surest balm of comfort. Not that it always provided its intended effect, but the gentle arms of love would often make up for what words could not say. And Daina was the best Marshaan had ever worked with.