Once Was: Book One of the Asylum Trilogy (5 page)

A clawed hand beckoned me nearer, and I saw white eyes, milky with age and some advanced illness, look through me. “Her death was a painless one, as will befall all those who bow now. Bas is dead; all Her priestesses will fall soon enough. The Blacksmith still fights, but He will until His last priest drops his sword upon the battlefield.” A rosary of gold and black stones soon spun through his fingers, murmured prayers dropping from his lips so quiet I could not hear them when close enough to smell the rotting breath of one who drank from the moment of waking until passing out.

I smiled and broke off half my breakfast, settling the loaf into his open palm where the sundisk with its black, equilateral cross stared up at me. “A Goddess never dies, Brother.” I hated to use that term for a fallen priest, but I was determined to return the social niceties he had attempted. “Bas may go silent as She weeps for the darkness sweeping over our lands, but She never dies.” Bas certainly did not look dead when She summoned me home.

Sightless eyes filled with tears as he lifted the bread to lips still vibrating with his orison. “I will pray for you, Sister.”

“I’d rather die than accept a prayer made in the Sun Lord’s name. Pray instead that the people come to their senses and this war is stopped before more lives are lost. May Her paw shelter you from the sun, and His hammer not fall upon you. Be well, Brother.”

I sped away from the street prophet before he could recover from my verbal parry. If my city was now a refuge for the Sun Lord’s priests, even those who were new converts, was this a safe place for me? With the army’s mania having reached Madani, future visits were no longer guaranteed. My safety was at stake with each breath I made inside its walls. Was I able to call this city my home still? I was gone from Madani for ten years for my forced studies, home for just one harvest to refresh my mind, and then gone another ten while I made my way in the world spreading the healing touch of Bas. I had returned for two brief visits in those ten, one to bury my mother and a second when I was on my way to Sheelin to choose the next Fire-Bearer after Kira had passed.

*

With my father gone from Madani, I had no reason to set down new roots. Years ago, my father moved away from the coast to warmer lands, working in the forges to earn a roof and food as needed. I crossed through his city often, a convenience offered to few priestesses. His new home lay at the crux of two major thoroughfares of the explored world. I could look upon Father’s scar-crossed yet smiling face at least once per year.

No family held me here in Madani, yet this city would always be the roots supporting my life. Its heartbeat, made audible by the forge built by my grandfather for the then blacksmith, rang out for me, pulling me by Bas’ summons.

Chapter Four

The priesthood will give you the tools to control your abilities, but it is your heart and soul that give you strength. Do not fear the paths of which you are uncertain, for the Mother walks with you always, Priestess of Bas. She is always a hand’s breadth away to catch you should you stumble.

Letters to the Initiate, Thirty Fifth Oracle of Bas

T
he
walk
to my old home was familiar; my steps followed the path well-worn into my heart despite the scenery’s changes. On my last visit, white-washed buildings ringed packed-earth pathways. Now, small factories and workshops were dwarfed by grand gates hiding homes nestled into forested glades. Each rang of the wealth of Aristeer; families looking for a quiet life, I would expect. Many of the black iron gates bore shining gold and bronze sun sigils as though great branding of the power of the army. Wealth was already synonymous with religious strength.

Liand and his power sickened me. The crimson bread turned to ash upon my tongue, forcing me to spit it out onto the ground. So starved were the mice hovering near the factories that two scuttled out for the moistened crumbs. Tossing them the rest, I brushed my hands clean of the baked goods. Liand’s poison leaked from my soul and into my mouth and memories, washing everything in its bleak undertow.

His touch had spread the disease to the deepest recesses of my heart. For months, Liand had the entire countryside scoured for priestesses of Bas and Aya. Many a night was spent on the run, and days curled up in the branches of a tree, just so that I could avoid capture. When the two men finally caught me, at first I had tried denying who I was.

Having knowledge of my abilities, their leader wanted me at any cost. It was not the first time my healing talents had earned me a place in dark gossip, and I fear I have not yet attained the last. Through several cities I had heard that the Army of Righteousness was detaining women bearing the marks of a priestess. Each woman was given a simple choice: summon Roseen of Madani, the then-twenty-two year old healer, and if not, be prepared to die. When he finally found one willing to compromise one of the sacred tenets of our faith, to never misuse the calling even when facing dire circumstances, Liand leapt at the chance to capture me.

With my heart open to Bas’ magic, my sister’s call latched onto me. While the direct summons from the Goddess gave no chance of disobedience, one from another priestess was a gentle pull. It let one know she was needed and where she needed to be.

Where I needed to be was not within a holding cell as I waited for Liand to finish his latest doctor’s round of treatment. I fumed during the first days, unable to do anything but rail at the Gods and the sisterhood who had shackled me to this place as surely as the witch who bound me from harming the others or myself. She came the first day and several times after
—
a woman with flowing locks and delicate features; she simply had to circle her fingers around my neck for a moment after entering my cell to bind my magic. It held for a few hours at best, but I fought the guards who held me for her to do it each time. Without true earth beneath me or sky above, I had no connection to the elements or way to recharge myself outside of awaiting my body’s natural recovery. My powers were going to heal the small wounds I sustained in the three day journey to Lorilindo and keep me alive me on the meager water and stale bread ration I was grudgingly gifted. While the worked stone surrounding me would have given strength to a devotee of the Smith, to me it felt like a tomb.

The priestess responsible for summoning me toward this mausoleum of the spirit was killed by a guard when I arrived in Lorilindo, a fate far better than the one I wished to exact upon her. With only remnants of Linaia’s bloody ghost as a companion, I sat in the dark room where I made friends with a small spider in a corner near the door. It had made its web in the diffused light coming through the grate across the door, scuttling into the darkness when the guards approached with heavy footfalls.

When I was eventually “invited” to the Sun Lord’s private receiving chamber, I was surprised to see a rather pale, drawn looking man reclining on a veritable mountain of cushions atop an imposing bed. Liand looked little like the leader of an army on a crusade and more the dying heir to a great fortune. Dark blond hair was curled in a ponce’s tied ringlets, or perhaps just sweat-soaked and dried into such an arrangement.

A lazy eye drifted out as Liand stared at me, willing me to feel his lagging strength. His beauty, that which I had seen on numerous sheaves of parchment in larger cities, had fallen into a sickly pallor. For the first time ever in my work as a healer, I had contemplated denying my patient, or worse yet, misusing my gifts to end his life.

When Liand spoke of a recurring growth that even his medic’s surgical removal had not cured, I had rejoiced until he discussed how he’d sought any answer he could. He thought I was his answer, even though the sudden death I felt within the room was more for me than him. The sun cross behind him, a huge symbol dominating the dark wooden wall, had caused me more fear than the soldiers with swords drawn, ready to spill my blood over the tapestry-covered floor. To die there, beneath their god’s symbol, a sigil that had caused so much pain, would have been to die in vain. To die there, not defying their new regime, would have been to die a coward.

What they did to me was nothing in comparison to the atrocities his men had committed upon my sisters, those who were not healers. Liand had desired my talents, despite the “heretical” nature of my gifts. What the doctors of Lorilindo could not do, I could due to Bas’ divine grace. I had refused him, and the pain that exploded through my skull as the pommel connected with the top of my head was still there when I awoke sometime after dark, Fion’s light eyes staring softly at me as he wiped crusted blood from my forehead.

The sun cross on display here in Madani helped push me back into the world of dark dreams while my heart and feet traversed the back streets to familiar buildings that had changed little in my years away. Reaching a part of the city visually untouched by the new religion, I felt myself relax. My hood dropped back a bit, my sleeves were shoved up to allow the sun to warm my arms, and I felt a smile grow upon my lips. Some things, like a little girl seeing her home for the first time after an absence, never change.

Mother’s shop sign had long since faded into the background, the word “Weaver” now a smudge of illegible purple shadows in the morning’s clear light. My parents’ storefront had been opened up into the house before Father moved, wanting more space and less work once my mother had died. Father’s successor used it as storage, leaving the living area of the home to me. One of Mother’s apprentices purchased the larger looms and took over her clients, giving my father the small nest-egg he used to eventually relocate.

The ringing of the hammer and roar of the fire next door brought back memories of watching Father in the forge as he made tools, decorations, commissioned pieces, and the torq which to this day rests around my neck. The worked iron and copper braid was tipped in reflective pieces of gold. They had tarnished through the years, but the message my father had wrapped into them remained. I was his most precious treasure, and my powers were still malleable. He had made one for my sister, just as fine, but the High Priestess had not seen fit to return it upon Sava’s death. It had been during a time of leadership where lives before the aisling were considered gone. Once you were initiated, your prior family was dead to you. As such, “Sheelin’s business” was not shared with the families, and spells ensured missionaries and fire-bearers were unable to do so without permission from the High Priestess or Oracle.

I think my parents knew Sava had perished but never spoke of it to me. I did not become aware of her demise until after I was well into developing my abilities and pulled the thought from the Abbess, the woman who led the building for women who did not pass the tests to become a priestess. Sava, upon learning her abilities were not strong enough for Bas to grant her the claw mark, had climbed to the old stone circle that was no longer used and dove from the top of the cliffs. Her body was never recovered from the current, though her blood had washed along the stones for days, caught in the pull of Sheelin’s magic, so I was told.

Life as an initiate was hard enough, let alone being told you were not good enough to the Gods to be tattooed in the ways of the priesthood. Even in the darkest nightmare I had upon Sheelin, as dreams of all the blood and fire I was meant to prevent inundated me, I knew that Bas wanted me. Sava did not have that while she was on the island. She was just special enough to be unsafe upon the mainland, but not desired enough by the Gods to wear Their circlet or bracers. Where we would have had a life as ever-so-slightly comfortable merchants, she would have had to work from sunrise to sunset in whichever task the Abbess would have assigned her; Sava was too proud for that.

I am not certain what would have happened to me had I not passed the tests upon Sheelin. I would like to think Bas would have taken pity and somehow let me escape the island. Madani might have reclaimed me as a mistaken initiate. Before the clawed mark was etched into my forehead I had been a much loved part of the community. Perhaps I would have gone on to Aristeer when I reached adulthood, found Fion, and prayed we could rekindle what had been there as children.

He and his family lived not far from ours during my childhood. His mother was a wildcrafter who could find medicinal herbs wherever she went and grew what she could not. Fion’s father was a medic. He took his wife’s herbs and made potions and poultices to do what magic did not give him the abilities to. When their daughter was marked for Sheelin, I cried the entire night of her first vision.

My soul ripped in two that day; I knew his parents would leave and take him with them. Six young years were all that I had walked in this life, but I knew as certain as my belief in Bas that he and I were meant to be together. Fion was my best friend, along with Cade, and I still consider him to be my soulmate despite years of separation and loss. While still children, we had demanded to be bound in anticipation of one day being hand-fasted, and Fion expected us to be wed when our turn came.

Our turn did not come.

I had to content myself with memories. At an age where boys ran in the dunes, played with wooden swords as they fought imaginary foes far less threatening than those on a religious crusade, and tangled in the fishermen’s net, Fion chose to help me in Mother’s workshop. We spun the wheel, helped fill shuttles on the looms, gathered more wool from the marketplace, helped father in the forge, and supplemented our chores with laughter and snitching food from the kitchen. Nay, it was not just the two of us doing that. Despite my heart’s remembrances of it being just Fion, I know Cade was there with us each laughing step of the way.

The only child of a widow thanks to marauders from the far shores across the lake, Cade was quiet. He preferred to let his actions speak for him. When I left for Sheelin, Cade became an official apprentice to my father. It was a repeat of my father’s own cycle, part of the reason my father asked of Cade, or shared his letters anytime I stayed for a few days in his new forge before moving on.