Brood of Bones (4 page)

The accusations drove me to re-inspect the pregnant women I had seen. I bobbed toward one mirror, and swaths of velvet and silk flowed around me, weightless and drifting. Only half the women wore twined marriage necklaces; the rest were unmarried. I checked them all again and again, multiple times a second, their reflections spinning past.

This could not be right. I must be missing something, some citywide jest of which I was not aware. Or Diamond Way had an uncharacteristic amount of ill will between competing merchants, who had written their arguments on walls. And as for the unmarried, pregnant women, I must have observed a sample unrepresentative of the city.

A peculiarity even more difficult to explain was that all the women had appeared to be in the same trimester: the final one. I had always prided myself on my ability not to speculate prematurely, yet this last detail splintered my composure into shards of boggling color.

“All the women of Morimound are with child.” The memory of Sri’s words echoed in my dream laboratory; jewels trembled in the air.
“And all for just as long.”

She had to have lied. Rather, the Fate Weaver must be guiding me toward a future of insanity. The mirror now showed
myself
, mouthing my promise not to return to Morimound, while the images of the recently seen women squeezed around me, entwining me in tangled arms and between rotund bellies.

It was too much. I had to stop thinking. I had to flee my laboratory.

To exit my dream, I
Burdened
myself, my magic increasing my weight until I smashed through the diamond dais below me; sparkling jewels scattered and faded into blackness.

I awoke in a blissful stupor, in the shadow of the White Ziggurat. As we traversed to the west side of the step pyramid, its gypsum plaster shone red in the late-afternoon sun. The carriage rolled past lotus gardens and beneath arches formed of the draping roots of banyan trees; we stopped alongside the elliptical court of God’s Eye.

Deepmand the Spellsword opened the carriage door and announced me. “Elder Enchantress Hiresha, recipient of twenty and seven honorary gowns, and the Mindvault Academy’s Provost of Applied Enchantment.”

Of course, I did not wear all twenty-seven gowns. That would be ridiculous. I only wore six; the rest were interwoven over my back and trailed behind in a procession of resplendent color.

The occupants of the court gawked at me, and I returned their stares, open-mouthed. Women stood in a line around the circumference of the court, yet, no, I could not call them women. All younger than fourteen, these girls had not yet accustomed themselves to their maturing bodies, and their gangly limbs teetered as they tried to support the weight of their pregnancies.

Two girls backed away from the rippling spread of my gowns as I staggered forward. I searched their faces and those of male acolytes in the center of the court for signs of suppressed humor. This had to be a jest. The priests had known I would return today and had prepared an elaborate and reprehensible hoax at my expense.

Their faces seemed surprised and otherwise indecipherable. I would know no more until I slept.

I asked, “What is the meaning of this conspiracy?”

A cluster of acolytes bowed their heads and parted around Abwar, the Priest of the Ever Always. I recognized him by his robes; he wore the representation of the sun adorning cloth the shade of green peridot, and a long sleeve flowed behind his arm as he gestured to the girls.

“Praise the Ever Thriving, Always Dying! These pregnant women are all virgins.”

“We have you to thank, Elder Enchantress,” Priest Abwar said, “for this miracle.”

I slumped on my cane for support, and my head rolled up then down as the world seemed to tilt under my feet, to the point that I might fall over backward into the sky. Nothing here made sense. Everything was wrong.

Spellsword Deepmand said, “Lustrous Priest of the Ever Always, I assure you the elder enchantress was not responsible. She has not left the Academy for over three years.”

“Observe the bowed head of the elder enchantress.” Priest Abwar strutted among the acolytes, his green sleeves flapping as his hands beat the air in time to his words. “Her humility is commendable before the deeds of the divine, of which she served a part. Five times by flood and once by raider’s blade, the holy city of Morimound has been cleansed by death. The Ever Thriving, Always Dying reaps and sows. He takes life and births it anew.”

The eyes of the girls bulged at the priest, and not simply from alarm. The internal pressure caused by their pregnancies doubtless contributed to their ocular protrusion.

“Morimound has reaped six floods of death. There will be no Seventh Flood, thanks to the Flood Wall constructed by this lustrous enchantress, this jewel of our city. Now the Ever Thriving, Always Dying has repaid our suffering. He has sown in these wombs a harvest of life.”

Priest Abwar slapped his hands onto two distended bellies, and the girls cringed, one backing a half step away from him.

“Now that the Flood Wall protects us from another catastrophe, the souls of the drowned are safe to return to life once more. This renewal heralds a diamond age for Morimound, a time of growth and wealth.”

He lifted his arms toward the Garden Ziggurat, its terraces lush with fruit trees and ferns. The sun dipped below one of its lower sections.

“Tell the city, my acolytes. The steps of the Garden Ziggurat will run with the blood of twenty oxen. No, fifty oxen! I will perform the sacrifices myself for this divine gift.”

Among all these pregnant girls, the mention of blood reminded me of childbirth. Women so young tended to die in delivery, along with their babies. The thought wracked my insides with nausea, and stomach acid burned its way up to my tongue before I could swallow it down.

The words of the priest confused me, and I hesitated to believe them. I had lost faith in the Ever Always. Sacrifices of the lives of animals as well as my own years of life had yielded me nothing.

If Priest Abwar spoke truth, then this miracle would rival the ones I had learned as a child: The Ever Always had rained fish on the city to feed the hungry. A bestowed melon had grown with each cut of a knife. An army of attackers had transformed into monkeys.

“Look around you, Enchantress,” Priest Abwar said as he beamed with ruddy face and swinging jowls. “We are witnessing the wonder of the city’s Seventh Age.”

Each woman in Morimound was pregnant, except for me. The thought stunned me, and Abwar of the Ever Always was grinning about it.

“This is a matter most grave,” I said. “Pregnant women face seven deathly dangers.
The yellow-eyed death.
The shaking death.
The bleeding death....”

Spellsword Deepmand cleared his throat, an unwelcome distraction. I strove to remember all seven deaths.

“...The white-bloat death.
The childbed death.
And the fainting death.”

I feared I had forgotten one. Deepmand sighed, and I noticed the raised brows and horrified faces of the pregnant girls.

Abwar of the Ever Always shrugged. “He reaps and He sows.”

The priest’s uncaring attitude toward the lives of these girls disturbed me.

A man’s voice whispered from behind my shoulder, “Elder Enchantress Hiresha, I prophesized your coming.”

The voice surprised me, and I swiveled my head, one eye seeing past the profusion of silk spreading from my neck in frills, scarves, and collars. Morimound’s second priest, Salkant of the Fate Weaver, I believed, had slunk behind me in a manner most discourteous. If one had the habit of sneaking up on people then bells tied to one’s feet would be a matter of simple courtesy.

“I didn’t expect you so soon,” Priest Salkant said. “I only sent out a messenger last month. The Fate Weaver must have guided you here with all eight of
Her
hands.”

Salkant of the Fate Weaver wore black robes patterned with blotches of venomous yellow. Cobwebs stuck to him, and he had lost a few finger joints on both hands, no doubt due to carelessness in regards to spider bites.

“Priest,” I said, purposefully leaving out the honorarium of “Lustrous” because he had snuck up on me, “I must have passed your messenger on my journey.”

I refrained from mentioning that the Once Flawless’ message had brought me here, as an association with her at this moment seemed of dubious repute.

He glanced at the green Priest of the Ever Always and said, “I fear Abwar has mistaken the signs. The webs do not confirm this to be a divine act, nor one of benevolence. If anything, the strands point to the opposite.”

“How could this be anything but an act of divinity?”

“This the webs do not tell, and I worry. Morimound’s women…that is, all those my acolytes spoke to…they haven’t quickened.”

“Have not kicked?” I was dumbfounded. “They are in their third trimester, are they not?”

“Most unusual, I know.”

“Unusual? It is
an implausibility
too rude to be considered.”

“Fate decides what is possible,” he said, “not you or I.”

“You old spider,” Priest Abwar interrupted, “what’re you whispering to the enchantress? And you won’t be wheedling away all the credit, because I don’t have to read webs to foretell that she will one day be known as the city’s paragon.”

Salkant of the Fate Weaver nodded. “Lustrous Enchantress Hiresha, at the center of every web I see the patterns of the outcast, the sage, the secret benefactor, and the spinster. These all refer to you.”

“I find some of those implications abrasive, Priest.” I again refrained from calling him “Lustrous Priest” due to his effrontery. My mind reeled at what he had said about the lack of quickening, unable to fully grasp the ramifications.

“From the center, the strands grow tangled and senseless. You must right them or break them. You will bring about Morimound’s salvation, or its destruction.”

Abwar of the Ever Always asked, “What’s this about destruction?”

“I am no spider at the center of a web,” I said, although in the next instant I wondered if I had said something foolish. The temperature had begun to escalate within the insulation of my gowns, the heat boiling away my thoughts.

“A spider?
Certainly not.”
Abwar of the Ever Always stroked his jowls as he regarded me. “A flood of fabric, maybe. Yes, I like that.
‘A flood of fabric with a froth of jewels.’
I want a scribe to write that down.”

Salkant of the Fate Weaver leaned so close that I had to suffer his stale breath. “You must guide the city through its time of strife, as its arbiter.”

“Through its time of plenty,” Priest Abwar said, smacking his own bulbous green belly. “You will be the first among jewels, the Flawless of Morimound.”

I tried to work out if they had suggested I become the city’s highest mediator. I believed they had, yet I could not conceive of it. If I spent all my time
officiating
the city then I could never return to the Academy and cure my somnolence. My head had grown light with heat, and I widened my stance to form a firmer tripod with my cane to stop swaying.

I knew also that the Flawless could never marry.

“I cannot accede to this.” The thought of staying in this city with so many happy mothers
agonized
me. “I must return to my position and studies at the Academy.”

“The future of the city depends on
you,
the webs leave no question to that.”

“Stay and witness Morimound’s diamond age.”

“You do not need me. Free Sri the Once Flawless from her cage and return her to this court as arbiter. You can hardly fault her for an act of divinity.” Then again, I recalled that she had said something about her shame.

“I had forgotten about her,” Abwar of the Ever Always said. “No, I don’t think we can pronounce her the Flawless a second time. Her proportions no longer seem suited.”

He made a rounded motion with his hand over his gut.

“I saw no sign of her reinstatement in the webs,” Priest Salkant said from behind my shoulder. He picked cobwebs out of his hair with two partially amputated fingers. “Historically, the priests have chosen, well, young women. Because purity of decision requires....”