Garden of Madness (30 page)
Not until she spoke the words did she realize that her loyalty still lay with Nebuchadnezzar, now and always. Father or not, he had loved her as his own—more than mother or sister ever had— and she would sacrifice anything to see him safe and restored.
Amytis’s eyes glittered with anger and tears she was too controlled to shed. “What
would
you allow then,
Princess Tiamat
?” The words tore at Tia, left her disgraced, humiliated. “Tell me, wise daughter, how would you suggest we save our own lives?”
Tia sniffed and rubbed at tightness in her neck. “I will announce that I am not the king’s daughter. Tell the people the truth. Then Shadir will have no one to marry Amel, no one to strengthen his claim to the throne.”
Amytis crossed her arms over her chest. “And you think this will put an end to Shadir’s plan?”
“You must denounce him before the priests, the advisors. Have him executed.”
“Hah! This is your defense?” Amytis held out empty palms. “To simply declare Shadir a traitor and be done with him?”
“You have the power. The advisors listen—”
“No,
you
listen, Tia.” She drew close and seized her with those cold eyes. “You are a child, ignorant of the workings of power. You have no idea who are friends and allies, nor who seeks the destruction of our family.”
Her mother’s breath was hot against her face. Tia’s limbs trembled at the fury, but she hardened her muscles against it. She would not show her mother fear. Her own small deceit, but why should she not be allowed some lies of her own?
“The balance of a kingdom’s power is a tenuous thing. Fragile as an eggshell and just as brittle.” She raised an open hand, then clenched it—a sudden, harsh movement that made Tia jump. “It can be crushed in an instant.”
Tia dared not speak. Amytis must have her say.
“I cannot simply kill one of them and be assured that the threat is removed. Another will rise up and take his place.”
Tia thought of the night she heard Shadir conspiring with someone on the rooftop garden. She still had no idea as to the other’s identity. How many more traitors lurked behind false respect?
“I must work in other ways to secure my family’s safety. That is what I have been doing. And that is your responsibility also.”
Amytis grabbed Tia’s arms above the elbow, squeezed stone-like fingers into her skin. “If you make that announcement, you sign a death sentence for all those you love.”
Tia felt her lips part, draw more air into her compressed lungs.
“Do you not understand? If it is known that you are not his daughter, my cousin will return to Media without a bride. But Shadir will still lead his uprising, with or without you. And his first task will be to kill every member of our family, every threat to Amel’s succession. Is that what you want?”
Amytis released her with a tiny shove, and Tia fought to retain her balance and her composure. The bitter truth, layered with her mother’s honeyed deceit, was enough to choke.
Tia had come to her chamber full of indignation, passionate with accusations. And somehow Amytis had twisted it all and thrown it back, as if Tia were the one whose integrity should be doubted.
“I have never been more to you than a useful coin for bartering, have I? The product of something you wished to forget, wished to hide. A living reminder. No wonder you have never loved me.”
Amytis swung her dark hair over one shoulder, a fluid, feminine motion to cover her discomfort with the truth. Her face was as smooth as the plain of Dura, but if the sand were blown away, the decay and rottenness underneath would be revealed.
“You have always been a difficult child, Tia. I did my best—”
“You did what you must. Nothing more.”
“Yes, I did what I must! What is wrong with that? I have watched over every member of this family for seven long years while your father has growled and drooled and scuttled through those Gardens like a senseless beast.” Her eyes flared and her hands formed fists at her chest. The words cost her something, Tia could see. She never spoke of his madness. “I have kept his secret, perfected the deception, made certain that anyone who knew the truth was taken care of.”
Kaldu? Ying?
“And still, you have nothing but contempt. You, who live in your own world of running and of leaping bulls, as if your only enemies were stuffed with straw!”
Hot, searing words ripped open Tia’s self-deception.
It is I who have lived in a shell
.
“But now you know, Tia. Now you have heard everything; you have all your answers. Only one question remains. Will you continue to play your games, seeking false thrills, or will you stand up and do your part to save your family?”
The fury that had driven her here drained away, leaving Tia hollow, emotionless. The silence lengthened between them but changed nothing. Her mouth was dry, for she had turned to sand herself, and the words emerged sticky and distasteful, but they emerged all the same.
“I will do my part.”
Time passed without Tia’s awareness. Not the missing hours she had experienced in past weeks, but a simple, wandering lostness that carried her through the palace and through the afternoon until it was dusk and she found herself climbing the slanted steps of the Tower of Etemenanki.
Would she find what she sought on its lofty platform? What
did
she seek?
Since her agreement with her mother, Tia had felt nothing but a scraped-out hollowness where thought and emotion should reside. Could the chants and prayers of priests, the blessing of gods, fill her now?
The arduous ascent to the Tower’s platform paid homage to the divine ones, showed devotion from the seeker. Tonight Tia’s legs were wooden and her heart stone. Did the gods honor only those whose hearts beat with passion?
The sun had fallen into the empty horizon, and the whiplashes of purplish clouds followed like fading bruises as she climbed. Above, the torches at the platform’s perimeter snapped in the dusty wind, and she could hear the drone of a growing crowd come to seek favor. With the Akitu Festival only two days away, even the most nonreligious of Babylon’s citizens would remember to bring an offering, whisper a prayer.
Tia reached the platform at last and let herself be sucked into the mob, a false sense of belonging, of being wanted, pulling her toward the central altar.
The kalû chanted their rhythmic bursts of prayer like beating drums, over and over, the words pounding against her skull. She winced against the pain, blinked, and shook her head. Magi surrounded the altar, lifted hands holding amulets to be blessed and fretting lambs dangling by thin legs and all manner of charms.
I long, also, to be somehow blessed or charmed
.
Tia smelled the burnt flesh of earlier sacrifices, finished gifts to the gods that now smoldered on the altar’s embers. Above her, the charred sky absorbed the smoke, drawing it away into silvery stars. The sadness pierced her again—a gleaming sharpness of starlight burrowing in her chest.
She pushed through the crowd until she reached the altar and laid her hands across its ashy stones. The coppery-red blood of the first sacrifice pooled in a basin and at the deeper edges of the altar’s surface, its scent cast off with the smoke.
What am I to do?
Tia asked the question of herself; she asked the question of the gods.
Her only desires since Shealtiel’s death had been freedom for herself and safety for her father. But now he was not her father. And she would give her freedom to save him and his kingdom.
Her mother did not love her, and now she knew the reason. The king’s love
had
no reason—neither motive nor sanity—and as such it could do nothing.
It was true.
I am nothing more than an asset to be traded
. This was her role, her function. Her duty.
Her mother had lived a lie, and it was now her turn. Tia would leave Babylon, leave all she knew, and begin her own life of deceit in the palace of Media.
A coldness enveloped her at the altar’s edge and she leaned toward its center, toward the consuming heat of its ochre flames. Someone bumped against her, priest or magi, she did not care. The kalû’s chants grew frenzied, the murmur of the crowd swelled.
Everything within her reached out to the gods for wisdom and strength. “Hear my prayer.” She whispered the words into the flames. “Hear my prayer.”
The fire flickered and snapped, and she blinked. Did a face form in its angry depths? She gripped the dry stones of the altar wall and leaned farther. Heat flushed her skin.
A pressure grew against her chest, familiar and therefore comforting. But no, no—this was the pressure Pedaiah and Daniel had released. She had not felt it since, until this moment. The face in the flames wavered and reformed, clearer now.
Labartu!
She drew back, struck with a weakness in her legs.
“What is it, Princess?” A mage appeared at her side, his words soft and kind.
“I—I see the demon Labartu—in the flames.”
He laid a hand over her own. “Tell me what you see.”
“Her lioness’s head. Teeth to gnaw flesh. A great pointed cone above her.” Light-headedness swept over her. “What does it mean? Am I cursed?”
“Hush, child. It is not Labartu you see but Ishtar. The goddess appears to protect you.”
Was it true? She drew in a ragged breath of hope.
“You must listen if she wishes to speak.”
Tia listened with all of her heart, opening herself to the goddess’s wisdom, to the goddess’s direction.
Her vision narrowed, constricted to that single, horrific face in the fire, and it seemed as if the torches at the edge of the Platform extinguished, and the crowd melted away, the chants faded over the desert. Only Ishtar and she remained, and Tia waited, trembling.
The mage had assured her that the goddess Ishtar appeared to her, not the demon Labartu. But in that flickering moment, gentle words spoke into her consciousness and chilled her soul.
They are one and the same
.
But this was not true. The priests and magi performed their rites to appease the gods, to gain their protection from the dark powers of the demons.
They are one and the same
.
The oppression bore down on her, her chest wrapped in bindings too tight to breathe.
She waited for the goddess to speak, to deny her blasphemous thought, but she did not. Was Tia unworthy of a special message? The rejected, discarded pseudo princess?
Something other than words reached out for her, slithering like tentacles. Tia’s stomach wobbled and she felt an incredible thirst.
The face of the god, or perhaps demon, hissed in anger. A hate-filled, spiteful hiss like moisture sizzling in the fire.
And then she spoke. Tia did not see lips move, but the words seeped into her head.
Fear me, or serve me, it matters little
.
Beneath her hands the altar stones grew wet, slimy. She heard a far-off howl from the underworld, and the reeking stench of death filled her nostrils. The odor set her gagging, even as the ferocious face of Labartu putrefied into a lascivious grin, algae-green.
Fear me. Or serve me
.
Her thighs tensed and her head quivered like an aged woman. What was happening to her? She screamed, but only inside her own head, the shriek rebounding, echoing.
To whom did one pray when the gods themselves turned against you?
“Awake and rise to her defense.”
“Contend for her, my God and Lord.”
The taste of incense and tar, smoke and sweat and burning grain, filled her mouth.
Tia tore herself from the web of terror, slashed at the unseen bonds, covered her ears to the demanding, hateful voice.
Faintly, she heard her name called. But she was running. Running once again, from the leeching fear of the altar, toward the one person who had once set her free.
Pedaiah
.
Down the Tower’s zigzagging steps, across the dark city, up the palace steps.
Why had she never learned where he lived? The last time she found him in the palace, he had said he was staying there. Would he still be there tonight? Waiting to release her?
She reached the family’s chamber entrance and pounded a flat palm against the wood.
“Please! Please, I must speak—”
The door
swooshed
open, held by Pedaiah, his brawny frame outlined with golden torchlight.
She fell into his arms, wrapped her own around his neck. Found no words.
Pedaiah bent, swept her up against his chest, and carried her. She buried her face in the pulse of his throat.
He laid her along a carved bench and knelt beside her, his face nearly touching her own and his palm on her forehead. She shook like a leaf in a storm under his hand.
“What is this fear, Tia? I have never seen you thus.”
She chewed her lips, clutched his sleeve. “I saw something. Heard something.”
“Tell me.”
She spilled all of it, then. From Shadir’s revelation, to her mother’s betrayal, to the bewildering horror she had witnessed on the Platform.
At the end, Pedaiah raised his eyes to the heavens and whispered only, “Praise You, Yahweh.”
She struggled from his hold and pulled herself upright on the bench. They were alone in the room, though several braziers burned. She saw a table laid with dishes painted like sunshine and bunches of lavender and sage. “Tell me the meaning of this vision, Pedaiah.”
He still knelt before her and took her hands in his own, clutched together in her lap.
“Your eyes have been opened at last.”
“But I do not understand what I have seen.”
“You have seen the truth. Isn’t that what you have been seeking?”
Tia slouched against the wall, tired and confused. “I do not know what is truth.”
“This is what I have been trying to show you, Tia. The gods your people worship—they are nothing more than demons with different names. The powers of evil do not care if you are a sorcerer committed to destruction or a priest faithful to protect. They will control you through fear or through devotion, they care not which. Do you see that now?”