Priestess of the Dragons' Temple

Chapter 9: Outside Temple Walls-1

Chapter 9: Outside Temple WallsThe priestess’s body was consecrated to the rite, and to the dragons. To take a lover outside of the rite was at times condemned, at other times a tolerated heresy. In all times, the priestess was told to guard herself from the pull of common lovers.

– The Chronicles of Theranis

“We need to go out,” Darna said. “Now.”

Myril stumbled on, away from the baths. “I don’t think I can.”

“You need to,” Darna said. “Temple air is different. It keeps you from being altogether here, on the surface of the earth. You’ll be safer outside, you won’t slip away like that. You might have said things sometimes when we were scrapplings, gone a little far away, but nothing like this.”

Myril shook her head. “I’ve changed. I didn’t trance much as a novice, either. Why would it be the same?”

“I’ve been outside. I’ve seen it, felt it,” Darna said. “Besides, Sunna agrees.”

Myril stopped for a moment and leaned against the wall, looking into the garden. It was almost evening now, the day’s crossing time. She only wanted to sleep, but if she slept now it would be trance again.

“Na’s blood!” Darna cursed. “I can’t believe I haven’t gotten you out of this coop before now.”

“Don’t call it that.” Myril pushed herself away from the wall and walked on before she continued speaking. “You’re the same as you always were,” she said to Darna. “The temple hasn’t changed you like it has me.”

“I might have more of a gloss of sophistication,” Darna said. “Can’t go around this place hitting boys with my cane, can I?”

Myril laughed despite her disjointed mood. Darna wore priestess robes now. She looked elegant, not like the patchy scrappling she’d once been, always ready for a fight.

“Maybe you have changed,” Myril conceded. They’d reached the entrance of her chamber and she shook off Darna’s hand.

“I’ve never been prone to trance, but I can feel the difference between here and outside,” Darna said. “It’s real, you have to come. Go get your street robes and put them on. Do you know where they are?”

Myril nodded. “I think we’d better go find Sunna first, though.”

“We should,” Darna said. She hesitated for a moment, as if she were listening, then took Myril’s hand and pulled her away, toward the ambassadress’s gate.

“Why are we going this way?” Myril asked.

Darna sighed. “Tiagasa said they’d left Sunna to attend the ambassadress. I’m sure they’re not back on duty yet, and neither is Ganie, if she ever will be.” There was no question that Iola was still in the baths.

Darna peered in through the gate of the ambassadress’s garden. The garden lay in quiet shadow, cool in the late afternoon. No one, nothing stirred.

“She’s probably sleeping,” Myril said. “Maybe we can go another day.”

Just then, a heavy curtain rustled inside. A moment later, Sunna crossed the garden. She took in the sight of Darna and Myril.

“I can’t go now,” she said. “We’re supposed to meet him at Ink Pounders. Do you think you can find it?”

Darna hesitated. “Was it on the east canal?”

Sunna nodded. “Below Guild Bridge, just up from the confluence on that same side.”

“I can find it,” Darna said.

“I’m sure I’ll hear what happened later,” Sunna said. “And I’ll join you if the Aralel lets me go, once those birds come back here.”

Myril shook her head. Sunna waved them away. “Go on now,” she urged.

A short while later, Darna led Myril along the narrow walkway to the side house.

“This is the long way,” Darna explained as they got to the top of a narrow stair. “I usually go past the Aralel’s study, but I don’t think we need to talk to the elders just now.”

Myril looked back uneasily. Darna came to a narrow door and shouldered it open. It took them into the upper chamber of the side-house.

“Have you come through here often?” Myril asked.

“Of course,” Darna said, tugging her along through the attic and down the two flights of stairs to where the Grandmother kept watch.

“Did you bring your offering?” Darna asked.

“Offering?”

“For the Grandmother,” Darna said. “Never mind, I have enough for both of us.”

The Grandmother reclined beneath the room’s dimly shadowed window. There was a light about her, Myril thought, then realized that it was only the dilute light of the rising moon coursing in through the parchment shutters. She squeezed her eyes tight to shake off the inner vision of Iola pressing down above her. The Grandmother was still there and looking straight at her.

“Ah, the timid little vision-seeker.” The Grandmother cackled.

“I don’t seek them,” Myril said.

“You will, you will, plenty of visions.”

Myril started to back up, but Darna pushed her forward, pressing a bead into her hand. It felt unfamiliar against her fingers. She hadn’t handled currency in years, but to her surprise it did ground her, and somehow it dispelled the feeling of encroaching visions, the sense of that other realm that tugged at her always. Myril passed the bead to the Grandmother.

“Very well, little one. When will you bring your foolish other friend for me to see?” she asked Darna.

“Iola?” Darna asked.

“Yes, that’s the one,” the Grandmother said.

“We can hardly get her to leave her chamber,” Darna said. “Not that I’d want to bother.”

“Now, now, of course you can,” the Grandmother said. “Hurry along.”

Myril saw Darna drop her own offering into the Grandmothers’ outstretched palm and then they were out on the street. In the common space of the alleyway, Myril did feel something shift within herself. She inhaled. The air came fresh and new to her lungs, lighter. Darna paused for breath, too. The cobblestones were gray and lumpy under their sandals, with none of the smooth sheen of temple courtyard pavers. Myril was surprised by how much the outer air eased her, just as Darna had said it would.

“We’re not supposed to stop here,” Darna said. “If we stay in the alley too long people might notice.”

Out on the main street, Myril felt disoriented again.

“Come on, we’ll go down over the bridge and up past the chroniclers’. That way, you’ll know where to find it when you go,” Darna suggested.

As they walked, Darna chatted about the city around them, pointing out interesting carvings on shutters and small houses on side-streets. She told Myril where each of the streets led as if she’d walked them for a lifetime, not for just one season. Gradually, all those sights and stories drew Myril’s mind away from the chaos she’d felt in the baths. She tried not to touch the tradespeople who hurried past, cloaks drawn tight against the chill evening air.

Darna stopped to buy tea near the bridge where they’d once camped. Puffs of smoke from a badly-built fire puffed out from under its arches and a fish splashed in the canal. There was no sign of the dragonlet. Darna handed Myril a cup of tea and they sat on a nearby bench.

“Aren’t we supposed to go meet Thorat at a tavern?” Myril asked.

Darna shrugged. “I like to come this way. Besides, the tea will keep us awake and we won’t be too thirsty, won’t drink too much ale by accident.”

Myril nodded. “I’m glad I’m not going alone. I wouldn’t have any idea what to do or where to go.” She hesitated. “Where do you get all those beads?”

“Offerings from petitioners,” Darna said. “I would have enough to pay for any apprenticeship I wanted, if I needed it.”

“Oh,” Myril said. “Do you think I have any?”

“I imagine so, from Midsummer night. There’s a box drawer under the audience altar. Whatever’s in it is all yours, unless you want to take it to the dragons, but only Iola does that. You haven’t even looked?”

“No,” Myril said. She hadn’t even thought of it. She took another gulp of her tea, which was sweet and thin-flavored compared to temple tea. “My petitioner gave me a box at Midwinter, but I haven’t opened that, either. I’m not in my chamber much except to sleep.”

Darna had Myril’s cup refilled, but soon the tea-stall closed its shutters and she led the way over to Ink Pounders, a sooty tavern at one end of Chronicler’s Way, not far from the planners’ guildhall. The room was dark, with tables and stools scattered all around. Darna found a small round table in the corner. There was just enough space for Myril to make her way across the room without physically touching anyone.

As they sat down, a tavern maid deposited two flagons of ale in front of them.

“Bread, too,” Darna said, handing the young woman a bead.

The ale was bitter. Myril set it back down. Darna took a deep gulp.

“You don’t have to drink it,” Darna said. “I always wondered why we can’t get it in the temple.”

“I don’t think I like it anymore,” Myril said. She wasn’t sure that she’d ever liked it.

“I’ll finish it if you still don’t like it by halfway down the jar,” Darna offered.

As Myril stared at her full jar of ale, an ill-sorted group of swordsmen and palace guards slouched in. They clustered to one side of the hearth, leaning against a narrow shelf and calling for the tavern girl. Some of them perched on the edge of a table. One of them raised his eyebrows at them, two priestesses sitting in a tavern. He nudged the man beside him, and each turned to look, one by one, then they turned back to their mugs of ale. The last one, a young palace guardsman, looked up a second time and hurried over to them. He was taller than most, but not the tallest. He was younger than most of the others, too, and he had an easy stride, alert but unworried. His brown hair had grown a little longer than was fashionable among the men of Anamat, but his eyes were more or less the same as Myril remembered. She smiled at him as he approached.

Thorat pulled an empty stool over from a nearby table and sat down with them.

“Myril? Darna?” he said, looking back and forth between them. “You look well. Sunna tells me you’re well, anyway.”

“Thorat?” Darna said. “What are you doing in that get-up?”

“You look different,” Myril said.

He peered at Myril. “You’re thinner than you were. I’m just recovering from the thinner years of my training, myself, but Sunna says the food’s good in the temple.”

“It is,” Darna said.

“I don’t usually come down here with these fellows,” Thorat said. He signaled for another ale.

Thorat still had the radiant innocence he’d had when they first met. He looked sadder, though, now that he was close at hand. Did he know about Darna’s debt to the prince of Tiadun, and that the prince might be her father? Myril suddenly wanted to tell him all about it, though it was Darna’s story to tell, if she wanted to, which she obviously didn’t. She held her peace.

“I thought you promised me never to get mixed up with the city watch,” Darna said.

“I’m not,” Thorat protested. “I’m a palace guardsman, and that’s only for a little while now. It’s not so bad. I leave the watch to Pannen.”

Myril stiffened. After so many years, that was the second time she’d heard about Pannen in a day. “He takes bribes, you know.”

Thorat narrowed his eyes at her and nodded. “They all do, but I don’t worry about it too much. The palace is easier, except now the old man is on his deathbed. That’s what Parnet calls him, the old man.” Thorat shook his head.

“Parnet,” Darna mused. “That’s Tiagasa’s special petitioner.”

“The governor’s son?” Myril said.

Thorat nodded. “But enough about him. There are some decent rulers in the provinces, like that fellow Tanest from Getedun.”

Myril tried to recall where she’d heard that name before. “Ah, Savasa’s uncle. He came with the governor at Midsummer.”

Thorat tipped up his glass. “They’re all angling to be the next governor, those two and a few others.”

“A viper’s nest?” Myril asked, recalling what her petitioner had said.

“Maybe more like rats,” Thorat said. “But tell me, how have you been? Where’s Iola?”

“We’re well enough,” Darna said. “Iola had to stay behind today.”

Myril looked away. She’d never been much of a liar, and Darna wasn’t much better.

“Where were you this autumn?” Darna asked Thorat.

“I was hired as a guardsman out in Kiralun, walking fences and looking out for raids onto his land by the neighboring prince’s chiefs. My swordmaster sends us all over the place, but Kiralun’s about the biggest backwater I’ve ever seen, worse than Onarun. I’m glad to be back in Anamat. My swordmaster wants me to get a second guild apprenticeship,” he said. “You know, guard work only lasts so long, and it’s mostly younger men, so I have to find a guild.”

“You do?” Darna said. “I never heard of a guardsman belonging to a guild.”

“It happens all the time,” Thorat said.

“Like guild priestesses?” Myril asked. There weren’t many, but the older chronicles mentioned them often.

“Exactly,” Thorat said.

Darna looked puzzled.

“What guild will you join?” Myril asked.

“The minstrels, if they’ll have me,” Thorat said. “Some of us in the training hall are swordsmiths, but I like traveling the countryside almost as well as I like Anamat, except for the really dull places like Kiralun.” He shrugged and grinned. Myril saw one of the other palace guardsmen wink at Thorat.