Excerpt: Elhara's Riddle

from Chapter 2

Shutting the book with a snap, Ingart looked up at the girl. Barely out of childhood, the girl was pretty enough, with brown hair pulled back off her face and a simple maids uniform of blue skirt, while blouse and apron, a ubiquitous look found everywhere about the castle but Ingart noted little of her look. He made careful study however, of the tears that seemed about to well up in her eyes and the frightened, bird like movements she was making. He was quick to note that she wore no ring, so was not betrothed or wed, but she did have a bangle on her wrist, which, as it was forbidden by the dress code for servants, made it probably a gift from some lover that she was afraid of losing if she were to leave it in the servant’s hall during her working shifts. He also saw that on the back of her hand she carried the brand of an indentured servant, indicating that she had, most likely, either been sold into the Queen’s service by her parents in exchange for tax relief or taken from an orphanage and indentured to keep her at the castle for the obligatory service owed by all children raised on the Queen’s purse.

“You will be leaving the castle,” he said coldly.

“I cannot,” the maid blerted out. “I’ve eight years on my indentures yet, and I’m forbid to leave. I’m sorry for what I done, sir. It were just a mistake. I didn’t mean to, but the Queen is so particular, and I was brushing her hair, and I slipped. Please, your Holiness, could you tell her Majesty I am sorry? The gods tell us, ‘be contrite for your wrongs, and ye shall be forgiven’.”

The priest smiled at the thought of this terrified little field mouse quoting scripture to him, then replied “The Book of the Word also tells us ‘If you wrong your King, shall you not be punished? Yea, and if you harm one hair on your Queen’s head, shall your head not be forfeit then? Tis treason, likewise to misdoubt the word of the Priests, for they shall speak with the tongues’ of the gods’.”

The girl began to cry, silently. Her head bowed and she began to quiver. For a moment, Ingart watched dispassionately, then he spoke.

“Do not cry, child. I have not called you here to sentence you to death. But we must remove you from the Queen’s presence, lest she remember the same scripture.” Privately, Ingart doubted very much that the Queen would use, or even remember that verse, but he continued. “I fear that you should not serve in the Queen’s chambers any longer, and for your sake I am arranging alternate service for you.”

As he spoke, Ingart had pulled a parchment from his desk, one that had some printing on it, with some blank spaces to be filled in. He asked the girl’s name, and when she told him, he wrote it on one of the blank lines, using the red ink. She looked on with interest, but, as was the case with most peasants, she could not read, not even her name, so the words on the page were a mystery to her. After filling in a few more details, he lifted the sealing wax to the candle to heat it.

“What is it, sir?” the girl asked.

“It is a document granting you safe passage to your new assignment,” the priest answered briefly. “Tomorrow morning, at sunrise, you will take this to the eastern gate and present it to the temple guard stationed there. He’ll know what to do.”

With that, he deftly dripped wax on the foot of the document and, taking off his ring, plunged the crest into the warm blob. After a moment, he pulled the ring cleanly away and replaced it on his hand. Turning the document over to the girl he said “Remember, always obey the gods, child.”

“Thank you, your Holiness,” she said, bobbing into a deep curtsey.

Ingart looked up into her eyes with a bit of amazement in his glance. “I do not do this for you, child, but for the gods, who have commanded me to guide and protect you, to save you from evil. Do not thank me, but thank them, the ones who put me here to remove you all from the path of wrong.”

The maid bobbed again, uncertainly, frightened by the quiet intensity in his voice. She backed quickly from the room, and as soon as the door closed, he heard the patter of her footsteps running off down the hall. He returned his focus to his work, dismissing her and her fate entirely from his mind. After an hour of translations, Ingart set down the pen and put out the candle on the wall. Taking the other candle to his bed chamber, he noted that he could no longer hear any noises from the castle grounds, that in this dark midnight hour, Elhara and her residents seemed deep in slumber.

Ingart removed his ornate robe, which he wore for temple services, and replaced it with another, course, plain brown robe. He moved to the wall where a fireplace would be, pressed on a particular brick, and as the wall swung away he stepped into the passageway that was revealed. Ingart made his way down the narrow, dusty little space by touch, having left the candle behind. He found a set of steep stairs, and climbed them. Above him, a plain, unmarked door was guarded by a simple iron lock. Pulling his ring out, he found the proper key with just his fingertips and inserted it. Like the door to his room, this one made no noise as he swung it open.

Inside, an ancient stone slab sat across two other stones, a primitive altar. Carved into the wall on the east a curled symbol could be made out in the moonlight, which in itself was of interest, as the chamber had no ceiling. Completely round, and with no other door, this room was one that had never been accessible to any but the high priest, and that only through his chambers. No one except the current high priest was even aware that the temple existed, and the secret was one passed down from high priest on his death bed to his chosen successor.

As the moon crossed above into alignment so that its rays flowed directly into the room, Ingart knelt down before the altar, spread his arms wide and began to intone the Invocation to the Gods.

“Nacru, Edarme, Saisana of the Winds, We-ark, Tin, Saundek, Maraven, Diakar, Powerful Quessa, Beloved Mendi Keeper of the Hearth. I beseech you, heed me. Tauta, Sister Briou, Neskon, Great Parvas, I beseech you, hear me. Dirivot, Argutha the Pious, Brani, Sirkem, Ezathor, I beseech you, listen to me.” Ingart called off the names of the nineteen major gods without missing a beat, as he had done so many thousands of times in all the years he had been high priest. “Guide me, that I may guide them. Show me your ways that I may share it with your followers. Grant me, oh gods, your peace that I may lay down my burdens and join you in the Land Beyond for feasting and joy.”

He bowed his head, knees pressed down on the cold, rough stone floor, and arms held wide open, and waited. No sound pierced the dead silence of the night, no whisper of bird, no whistle of wind. The silence itself was deafening, smothering him as he waited.

The old man did not move. His knees ached, his arms burned, his body cried out for him to shift, even a tiny bit, but the priest held his position. The moon continued its stately, inevitable trek across the night sky. Ingart waited, with his entire being, for an answer to his query. A full two hours passed, as did the moonlight, eventually. When the last moonbeam faded from view, Ingart recited the prayer of release, and only then did he drop his weary arms. Slowly he stood, careful not to lean upon the altar as he did so. He backed away from the stone table, his eyes burning with a dark fire.

“As you will, as you command. It says in the Book of Words ‘Thou shall do as thy gods command, in all thy workings, thou shall punish the wicked, chastise the impious, reward evil with evil and above all else revere and honor thy gods. In all thy dealings with men, let piety guide thee, and do not spare those who break with thy gods, no pity nor care shall you give to the faithless.’ These words I shall obey as you give me no others.”

His devotions concluded, Ingart left the secret temple, made his way slowly down the stairs and back to his room. He lay on his cot and closed his eyes, knowing that in four hours, it would be time to rise and head to the castle temple to perform the sunrise ceremony. He never considered having one of the lower priests fulfill the rites, never once had he missed them since the day he first became high priest. Feeling hollow, yet with the thought that he had once again carried out his duties to the best of his ability, and for the best for all his people, he fell asleep.

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The girl darted through the dark corridors, fleeing the high priest’s chambers, till she made her way back to the servant’s dorm where she slept. Most of the rest of the castle staff was already asleep, but she found one woman waiting up for her, a cook with whom she had become friends in the year and a half since her indenturing.

“Was ‘e ‘orrible?” the older, somewhat toothless crone asked.

“No. He told me I’m to leave Elhara though.”

The cook chuckled. “No one leaves, girl. My service was up more’n twenty years ago, and I’m still here. And you still got years afore you can even think to walk out the gates. How’d you get past the guards?”

Quietly, so as not to wake any of the other women, the girl slipped the piece of parchment out of her sleeve where she had hidden it as she ran.

“He said I were to go to a new position, to give this to the temple guard at the gate in the morning. And that was the all of it. What do you suppose it says?”

The crone took the paper from her hand and looked it over. “I see your name, here,” she pointed out. “But the rest is gibberish. Temple cant, I guess. Like what them prayers sometimes is said in. Sure and only the priests can read it. But this here at the bottom, that is his Holiness’ seal, you can see by the symbol of the gods worked into it.”

The serving girl took the paper back and examined the seal. “Well, I just hope he’s right and this will take me out of the walls and on to some place new. If the Queen wants my head off, I’d just as soon take it some where else that she doesn’t remember to do it.”

With that, the girl wrapped her thin blanket around herself, and fell asleep.

Odd dreams plagued her, dreams of dark chambers, long treacherous journeys and pain. When she awoke at first bell, the signal for all the day servants to rise, she could not shake the feeling that there was something terribly wrong in the world, but said nothing to anyone as her friend had already left for the kitchens and she didn’t trust that one of the other women might not try to steal the priest’s paper and escape the castle herself. Quietly wrapping her blanket around the few bits of clothing she owned, she gathered herself together and left the dormitory. She moved with purpose, knowing that if anyone were to see her, they would think she had orders if she looked as though she were set on her destination. She quickly made her way to the eastern gate. The sun had not begun to peek over the horizon, but there was a glow in the morning sky as she made her way to the guard station and asked to speak to the temple guard.

He stepped forward, officiously, and asked for what purpose this child had dared bother him. She proudly held out the paper, pointing to the seal, and said “His Holiness told me to show this to you. He said you would send me on my way.”

The guard glanced at the paper with annoyance, then back at the girl. “As you wish child, though you will soon learn that pestering your betters is a fools errand.”

With that, he escorted her to a dark wagon that waited, harnessed with a pair of black horses, just inside the gate. He handed her up into its gloomy interior through a door in the back, and when she got inside she realized there were no windows, nor any other doors.

The temple guard took the bundle from her hands saying “You won’t need this,” and slammed the door shut, throwing a bolt on the outside. The servant girl sank to the floor in confusion as she heard the gates groaning open, then froze in terror as the guard’s voice called out to the driver of the carriage.

“This one’s for the Arguthan Abbey,” he said.

The driver cracked his whip and with a creak the wagon started off through the gates, down the narrow path that wound its way across the rocky ground into the light of the rising sun. Neither he nor the temple guard paid any attention to the sounds of terrified pleading shrieks and the pounding of fists coming from the inside of the wagon as the young girl begged and screamed to be killed rather than taken to Argutha.