Age of Myth (7 page)

Around them, faces clustered, peering over shoulders. Those who spoke did so in worried whispers.

Holliman was one of the dahl's best hunters. The deer he killed in winter were often the difference between life and death. He had no children, and his wife had been lost to a fever three winters back. He hadn't taken another. Too heartbroken it was said. Although not someone Persephone would pick as chieftain, he was a good man.

Konniger leaned against the well, waiting and still holding his bloody ax. Persephone wouldn't have chosen him, either. He didn't impress her as being wise or the sort to inspire others. He was a warrior, a shield, an ax.

Padera, who was wrapping the blackened flesh of Holliman's knee, paused. She stared at his face as if the unconscious man had asked a question. Putting aside the wounded leg, she reached over and laid a hand to the side of the man's neck. As she did, the furrows on her craggy face deepened. The urgency the old woman had radiated died along with Holliman. She untied the leg and returned Roan's hammer. Then the old woman walked to the well to clean up.

“Congratulations,” Padera told Konniger. “You're the new chieftain.”

Delicate, radiant, beautiful, in our eyes she was every inch a god, and she scared us to death.

—
T
HE
B
OOK OF
B
RIN

While every other Fhrey in Erivan celebrated, Arion stood alone in a darkened tomb. She put a hand on the marble urn that held Fane Fenelyus's ashes. The vessel was eight feet tall, wider at the top, tapered near the bottom, and polished to a smooth luster.

Just outside, crowds filled Florella Plaza, all the avenues, and even the palace. A thousand bonfires blazed, commemorating the start of Fane Lothian's reign.

Less than a month and they've already forgotten you.

Arion rested her head against the urn. The stone was cold, so very cold. “I worry about what's to come and could use your counsel.” She paused, straining to hear any faint sound.

Fenelyus had been the first to wield the Art and founded the Miralyith tribe. In her time, she'd single-handedly defeated entire armies, built the great tower of Avempartha, and become the fifth fane, leader of all Fhrey.

Is it so unreasonable to hope she can speak to me from the other side? Why not? The old lady did everything else.

But if Fenelyus had replied, Arion couldn't have heard over the whoops, cheers, and laughter of the city's celebration.

The tomb of the old fane was dark; Arion hadn't bothered to light the braziers. Instead, she left the door open to admit the moonlight, and along with it came the noise. Somewhere a group was singing “Awake the Spring Dawn,” but their rendition was so bad that winter was certain to return. The clamor ruined her mood. The very idea that anyone could be happy after Fenelyus's passing made her angry. Death wasn't something Arion was used to. None of them were.

Why am I the only one here? The only one who seems to care?

Arion tried to block out the shouts and the singing and focused on the urn. She wasn't going to hear any messages that night, but that wasn't really why she was there. Arion just wanted to say goodbye, again. “I'm going to teach Mawyndulë as you asked. Lothian has decided to allow it. But will that be enough? After all you did, after all you gave me, taught me, will anything ever be enough? I just wanted to—”

Outside, cries of celebration became shrieks of terror.

She rushed out to find a flooded Florella Plaza, the entire square had turned into a lake. From the steps of Fenelyus's tomb, Arion could have dived from the porch of the sepulcher and not hit bottom. Streamers and banners, splintered boards that once had been part of a stage, and other debris bobbed and spun on the surface. People thrashed and gasped for air. Those who could swim, screamed; those who couldn't weren't able to.

Arion flung out her arms and with one loud clap exploded the water. Like stomping in a puddle, the lake burst in a spray that flew in all directions. She did this three more times before the stone was visible again. What had been a marketplace recently decorated for the coronation was now a disaster of shattered shops and horrified people spitting water and holding on to poles or one another.

A gaggle of soggy youth picked themselves up, laughing. Arion marched toward them. “Who's responsible?”

Eyes shifted to the tall one in a powder-blue robe with a smirk on his face.

His name was Aiden, a graduate from the Estramnadon Academy of the Art less than a decade ago. Arion had taught him advanced chords. A bright kid. Looking at their faces, she remembered having taught all of them. Some of the younger ones were still in school.

Aiden held up his hands in defense. “Hey, we all agreed there was absolutely no better use for water on a night like this than a living sculpture of Fane Lothian. Am I right?” He grinned at his fellow conspirators. A few smiled and sniggered. “Certainly no sense drinking it. Am I right? Am I right?”

Aiden staggered, and the rest of them laughed.

“You're drunk,” Arion said.

“But that's not why it failed.” Aiden pointed at Makareta. She'd been one of Arion's students as well. A mousy introvert with a wonderful talent for sculpting stone. “She took too long getting the features just right. Perfectionist, you know.”

Makareta scowled and blushed at the same time. They were all drunk.

“You tapped the Shinara River for a sculpture?” Arion asked. “Here. In the square?”

“Genius, am I right? We were gonna have it smile and wink as people walked by.”

Behind them, an elderly Fhrey coughed as she got to her feet. She struggled to drag hair from her face as she stared across the plaza. “My stand. It's gone.”

“Do you see what you've done?” Arion asked the students. “If I hadn't been here, if I hadn't intervened, she might have drowned!”

Aiden looked at the old Fhrey and shrugged. “Who cares? She's not Miralyith. Lothian proved how insignificant, how useless the other tribes are now. If they can't take care of themselves, they don't deserve to live.”

Makareta must have had less to drink than the others, or perhaps she'd paid more attention in Arion's classes, because she took a quick step back.

With a hiss and a squeezed fist, Arion summoned light and turned Aiden into a living torch. He shrieked, and the square glowed with brilliant fire as tongues of flame slithered up and down the ringleader's body. The others fell over themselves trying to get away. Looking back, they cringed at the sight of their accomplice burning to death. Even the elderly Nilyndd crafter looked aghast, one arm raised to protect her face, eyes wide in horror.

With a quick puff of air, as if she were blowing out a candle, Arion extinguished Aiden. The ex-student shook but appeared unharmed.

“Illusion,” Makareta whispered.

Arion took a step closer to Aiden. “Not so drunk now,
am I right
?” She glared at him, and when she spoke again, her tone was cold. “Here's the problem with the young: You think you're invincible. Just because Ferrol's Law prevents me from killing you doesn't mean you're impervious to harm.” She crept closer. “How painful do you think it would be to live three thousand years without skin?
That
I
can
do. And I
will
if I hear you speaking in such a way again. Any of you! We are
all
Fhrey. Do you understand?”

All heads nodded but none as vigorously as Aiden's.

“Now clean up this mess and make restitution for anything you can't restore, or Ferrol help me I'll—”

They were moving before she finished. Arion caught Makareta before she could set off to join the others.

“I expect better from you. You're smarter than that. You should stick to your sculptures and paintings. They're lovely, and the world can always use more beauty. There's plenty of ugly to go around.”

Makareta couldn't quite look her in the eye but managed to say, “I'd like to think the Art is for greater things than pretty pictures and carvings.”

Arion nodded. “Perhaps, but certainly nothing so wonderfully pure of purpose.” Then she allowed herself to look back at the tomb of Fenelyus. “And a thing wrought in stone is a beauty and a truth that lasts forever.”

The next morning things had calmed down. The celebrants were sleeping, and Arion was looking forward to her first day as the prince's tutor. Passing through the Garden of Estramnadon, she spotted her mother sitting on a bench directly across from the Door. Arion hadn't seen Nyree in at least five hundred years, but little about her had changed. She still wore her cloud-white hair long and loose, still sat straight and proper, and dressed in what could have been the same white asica Arion had last seen her wearing. The garment's folds enveloped Nyree in a monochromatic pile of silk. The elderly Fhrey presented an image so ancient that it appeared she'd outlived color.

“Hello, Mother.”

“Oh, it's you,” Nyree said with an indifferent tone that nevertheless translated as disappointment.

Arion expected something else, something cutting, but her mother merely continued to sit with hands clasped in her lap, looking past her daughter at the sacred Door.

“That's it?” Arion asked. “You haven't seen me in half a millennium and
oh, it's you
is all you can say?”

Nyree turned and faced Arion. She tilted her head up, squinting as she studied her daughter. “You look ridiculous, shaving your head like that. Also, you're too thin and pale, but I suppose they don't let you out much now that you're a famous magician.”

“An Artist, Mother. Miralyith are Artists, not magicians. Magicians perform tricks using sleight of hand. Artists raise mountains, control the weather, and reroute rivers.”

“You use magic. That makes you a magician.”

Nyree's gaze left Arion again and returned to the Door.

It isn't only the asica that hasn't changed,
Arion thought.

She sat down beside her mother, who frowned and shifted over despite having plenty of room. For no reason Arion was willing to admit, she, too, sat unusually straight and adjusted the folds of her asica, regretting that morning's choice of bright yellow with ornate blue piping.

The two sat for several minutes in silence, listening to songbirds in the trees and the trickle of streams and the miniature waterfalls that skilled artisans had crafted to perfection over the centuries. After a minute or two, Arion also looked at the Door on the other side of the path. Painted and repainted bright white, the Door was an otherwise nondescript gate in a solid, circular wall supporting an enclosed dome. Ivy and flowering vines had covered the dome and sides ages ago, but nothing encroached on the Door's surface. Before it, several stone benches had been placed for visitors to sit and contemplate the simple white threshold.

“You're looking well,” Arion offered. “I like your asica. Is it new?”

“No.”

Arion waited. Nyree remained silent.

“How is Era?”

“I don't know. I haven't spoken to your father in centuries.”

“Oh, I hadn't heard.” Arion tucked a tiny edge of piping out of sight. “I recently separated from Celeste. So it's just me in my little house again.”

“I'm sure it was the filth that drove him out.”

“
Her,
Mother, not
him.
Celeste is a—never mind.”

Arion found herself slouching and straightened up again.

Why do I let her do this to me? I'm not a child in my first century. Nor am I insignificant. I am—

“I've been appointed to tutor the prince,” Arion said.

“But not in the faith of our lord Ferrol, I take it,” her mother responded without looking away from the Door.

“Of course not, Mother. I'm Miralyith now. I have been for nearly a thousand years.”

“Oh, you're right,” she said without a bit of surprise in her voice. Instead, a colorless, odorless poison coated her words.

“You know, most mothers would be proud to have a daughter rise to such an important position in the fane's court.”

Nyree made a sound with her nose, less than a snort and more than a sniff but most certainly unfavorable. “If the fane were a devout member of the Umalyn tribe rather than a godless Miralyith, I'd agree.”

“We aren't godless, Mother. At least no less so than the other tribes.”

“Oh, no? I've heard the rumors. Miralyith claim the Art has elevated them above everyone else. Some even declare themselves gods. I've never heard a member of any other tribe making such blasphemous claims.”

“The Rhunes believe the Instarya are gods. Why aren't you complaining about them?”

“That's different. The Rhunes aren't Fhrey. They're barely one step above rabbits. They see gods everywhere. The only Fhrey they've ever met are the Instarya, and I've never heard of anyone from that tribe claiming to be gods. I can't say the same about the Miralyith. Besides, what a Rhune believes is of no consequence. I'm sure ants consider mice to be gods, too. Such notions don't diminish Ferrol.”

“If you took the time to talk to a few Miralyith rather than basing assumptions on hearsay, you might discover any ideas of divinity are in the minority.”

“And are
you
in this
minority
?” Nyree asked.

“No.”

Nyree smoothed nonexistent wrinkles from her asica. “Well, I'm sure it won't be long before you join their ranks, what with you becoming so
important
and all.”

“I don't want to fight,” Arion said.

“Fight? Who's fighting?” Nyree leaned back, folded her arms, and lifted her chin so that she was looking down her nose at the Door.

“I came here for a few moments of tranquil contemplation. Nothing more,” Nyree added.

Superior even to it,
Arion thought.

They sat again in silence, and Arion wondered if she should leave. She hadn't expected to meet her mother that morning, although she should have. All the Umalyn high priests and priestesses were in the city of Estramnadon to witness the coronation of the new fane, and her mother always took every opportunity to visit the Door. Given that Nyree was a morning person prone to early-dawn meditations, Arion could have calculated her mother's Garden visit down to the minute, but she hadn't. Nyree spent countless hours contemplating the disappointment otherwise known as her daughter, but Arion gave no thought to her mother. This stab of guilt prompted her to make one last attempt before departing.

“Is there nothing positive you wish to say to me?” Arion asked.

Nyree appeared surprised by the question. She didn't look at Arion, but she no longer stared faithfully at the Door. Her sight fluttered across the ground while she thought. After a long moment, during which Arion's heart sank with each passing second, Nyree nodded, straightened, and smiled. Arion suspected the grin wasn't born from pride in her daughter but from the pleasure of beating a dare.