Dissenbark
While she rode, Dissenbark Layton remembered all that Nimerly had spoken of that last night before the young witch headed south.
The Dame of the Rootless Isle had entered her room while she packed. Dissenbark knew the Crystal Lady was not young, but there were no lines in her face or grey in her hair.
“You have been a joy since you came to us,” she said. “There is no reason for you to leave.”
When Dissenbark opened her mouth, Nimerly said, “I mean that. This is your home now.”
“Lady, I am glad to travel,” Dissenbark told her. “In fact, I need to.”
Nimerly nodded.
“Very well. And yet, I cannot rightly say I know what you are traveling to. Since you said you were leaving, I have gone to the water to see what might bein store for you. I have dreamed of a great star. A jewel, and that it is in the south. Sometimes when I dream, the star is a woman, and then other times it is a jewel of great power, lost in the Age of Heroes, in the time of the Cities of Light.”
“Some of these tales I know,” Dissenbark said. “But only a little.”
Nimerly said, “Even here, on the Rootless Isle, we do not speak of that distant time, but it has been said that one day we might have to bring back the Beryl that is a Star, that Assanad brought with her from the lands across the sea.”
“Lady,” Dissenbark asked, “do you have any idea where this Star could be found?”
“I do not know completely,” Nimerly said. “It’s location is only rumored.”
“Well, then share the rumor with me.”
The Dame of the Rootless Isle cleared her throat to speak.
“It was stolen,” Nimerly said. “Once it was takn by the kings of Solahn in the south, but it was won back. However the Beryl was stolen again and none knew where it was.
“In recent year there were rumors. Princess Jergen of Chyr, granddaughter of Queen Ermengild, came here, asking. I told her what I had heard, that the Beryl was either in the keeping of the Black Hands in one of their castles or in their Temple. Jergen was never seen again, for she went to the Castles. But I believe it is in their Temple.”
“And the Temple is where, Lady?”
“Hidden,” Nimerly said. “For after some time another people came and took possession of the Temple, or so they thought they did. They practiced their secret rites in it, thinking they knew everything, but they knew very little. If I am right, the Beryl Jergen sought, and of which I have dreamed, is in Ennsalisa.”
“Ennsalisa?”
“As the city was once called. But now it is called Nava, and that dark Temple is the very Temple of the Zahem, where no man who is not a Zahem has ever set foot, not in nearly five hundred years.”
Maud
A servant pushed back the thick curtain of the palanquin, and the bright light of the south struck her eyes so that Maud immediately shielded them.
“Princess, we are nearing the city.”
“My Thanks, Ghan.”
The curtain closed again, the darkness surrounding her, and in this cool lack of light, Maud sat up, preparing her red hair, sweeping it back into order with the back of her hand, and straightening her rose colored gowns. Zahem, the place called in ancient times Deseret. There were stories of this land. Once, before it was blighted, this country had been deeply green. The Temple they loved so much had been built then, by others far older than the Zahem, for rites which the Zahem knew nothing about.
She heard the trumpets heralding her arrival. She could hear the people on the streets of Nava gathering to see the bright palanquins. Heathens they call us! They looked at the gold and beige and brown skin of the Royans, and according to their holy books it was a curse. They said they’d changed their minds on this, had a revelation, but this was because in order to do any manner of business with anyone in this world they had to. As the palanquin swayed through the streets, Maud unfolded the great map of the city of Nava. She could tell they’d entered through the Gateless Gate and were now on the Marvelous Way. She could tell that they had turned on Filup Street and were now on their way to the Street of the Lion, and by the noise, by the shouts outside, she could tell they were now on that street. It was not nearly as loud as the streets of Soladyrr or Immrachyr, but for the people of Zahem, or so it was said, the streets were plenty noisome.
And now they were in the Temple Complex. According to the map, it was quite a labyrinth, the palace half hugging the mighty Temple. Maud leaned over to peer through a space in the curtain and saw the three spiraling towers atop the Temple, gleaming white, almost painful to look at. It was said the Prophet Asdah had built them, and the first of the High Priests had cased them in stone so bright it burned the eye to behold. She allowed the curtain to close but sat up straight, anticipating the moment where the palanquin was lowered, and she was received by the Prophet.
When that moment arrived, her servants, Sinalla and Dalia took her left and her right hands, and as she stood, these white men in black bowed, and she nodded.
“Princess Maud,” a tall, severe man came forward to take her hand.
But Maud had seen the younger, more pleasant one, curly haired, and in some ways reminiscent of her Ethan, standing between two men who appeared to be in their thirties, and it seemed to her that the man before her had violated protocol, had stepped before the younger one.
“I believe you are the High Priest Phineas,” Maud said.
“Yes.”
“But is it not true that the Prophet Dahlan is Lord of the Zahem?”
She looked past Phineas, already wondering what she had started, if her impulsiveness might continue some kind of squabble in this land, but she left Phineas and bowed to the young, curly haired man and she saw the smile on his face as he bowed low in return. He even kissed her hand.
“Your Holiness,” Maud purred, her green eyes glinting, “it is a great pleasure to know you.”
“I do not know what over came me,” Maud said that night in the Lion House. “I came to this land as an emissary from my cousin, Queen Ermenglid, not to speak with the would be head of the Zahem, but the actual Prophet.”
“I am new to this, your Grace,” Dahlan said as he leaned over the table, pouring more wine.
“I want to add,” said the one called Erek Skabelund, who sat next to a pretty wife, “that at every turn our young Prophet has shown himself a lion, and yet the priesthood keeps wishing to assert a power it believed it would hold.”
“Because the Prophet is young?” Maud guessed, “or because they are used to such powers?”
“Zakil was growing old,” the flat faced Allman said. Maud thought he had the perfect look of a sinister person and yet she could tell he was a trustworthy man. Serious, possibly humorless, but utterly honorable.
“Because Zakil was old, Phineas was already overstepping his bounds. The truth is the Lord Dahlan did not seem like he would be as fierce as he has turned out to be. I believe Phineas had planned to take over immediately, and he has, so far, been stopped at every turn.”
Here, Allman even consented to smile, and to Maud, the effect was dazzling.
“My praise to you,” Maud said to Dahlan. She wondered at his mother, so poised. It was said the Prophet could come from anywhere, and this woman had been nothing royal, nothing grand, and yet here she stood with such elegance, the unofficial chief councilor of the Prophet. Maud wondered what Chyr would make of her. But, after all, the new Queen of Rheged was a white woman, a princess of Westrial.
“And yet,” the Princess said, “there is an issue I would discuss with your High Priest.”
“And not with me?” Dahlan said.
“With you as well, I imagine,” Maud said, “but I believed the Black Star were under the employ of your High Priests.”
Dahlan frowned
“Yes, the Black Star.” Dahlan shrugged, “they are not under my jurisdiction. I wish to say all is under my jurisdiction because I am the Prophet and yet… not so.”
“The Black Star came some time ago,” Allman said. “They are not of us, but from Solahn and what is now Daumany. The High Priest Ingasadon made a bargain with those soldiers to help us defend the land, though some believe he really wished to defend himself against the Prophet. This was in the days after Entathen had been crucified with his whole family.”
Maud nodded, steepling her fingers.
“You know what was in this for the priests,” Maud said, “but… and I understand you love your country… what was in it for the Black Star?”
“What do you mean, Lady?” Allman said.
“Why,” Maud said, “would these soldiers, the Black Star, wish to protect your land and your people?”
Skabelund and Allman looked to Dahlan, and Dahlan said, “The truth is, we have been taught to believe that our land is desirable, that we are the center of all things. It has never really occurred, I do not believe, to any of us, that there could be anything beyond simply serving us, that the Black Star could wish.”
Maud looked on him with mild amusement and he added, “But now I see this was foolish. What then, would you say was the reason they were here?”
“Oh, Lord Dahlan,” Maud said, “have you ever heard the term, a devil’s bargain.
Dahlan nodded.
“I fear,” Princess Maud said, “your priests may have made one.”
