“No!”
Granna burst from the little hut, and all the village stared in surprise and whispered together. No one denied the temple women what they required. Their guards placed themselves between the old woman and their mistresses, but Granna grabbed their spears in her withered hands and strained against them. “You cannot take her!” she cried. “She does not belong to you!”
“You have no say, old one,” said the first temple sister, but her voice was not unkind. “If the Fire demands this child, the Fire will have its due.”
She said no more. Mouse was given no chance to say good-bye, and in the heat of that moment she didn’t care. She was free! Free of the village, free of goats! She was free of the mountains, bound for the lowlands and the great Citadel with its distant light!
The three red-robed sisters placed their hands upon her shoulders and head. “Fire burn. Fire purify,” they chanted together, and Mouse thrilled at their words.
She stood now, her scalp sore and bereft of its black glory, her slender limbs hung with rags. Her smelly goat-girl’s clothes had been finer than these. They at least had borne with them no shame.
A boy. She was dressed as a boy! What greater disgrace for a woman of the Citadel, an acolyte of the Living Fire? And yet, what choice did she have? It was either her own humiliation or . . .
But she could not think on that. She gazed out the tall window of her chamber, out upon a sky as dark as the fallen clippings of her hair.
There, high above, gleamed a blue star.
2
I HAD NOT VENTURED BEYOND THE BORDERS of Etalpalli for some time. But I left it now, under the storming protests of my counselors and ladies. I passed through Cozamaloti and found myself once more flightless in the Wood. I do not know how long I wandered there, for no true Path opened beneath my feet. I never saw the Haven or heard the voice of guidance calling in my head. I was too hot inside to hear anything.
Eventually, I stumbled from the Between into the Near World. I smelled the stench of mortality, and it brought back the memory of my wasted brother, my decayed father and mother. I was sick, and my legs trembled, for I still could not take to the air, not in that dreadful world.
I sought long and hard. I saw many Houses of Lights and heard how the sun and the moon sang through them. But their voices were cacophony in my ears, and I hated the sight of the mortals who danced and sang at the doors of those Houses. I thought how I would like to rend them to pieces!
Instead, I searched. On and on.
Until I found Etanun.
The journey down from the mountains had been a long one, longer still the trek across the lowlands. Always the light of the Citadel guided them, like a red star on the horizon. Other priestesses and their guards, other girls taken from poor villages as a tax to the Flame joined Mouse and her escorts as they crossed the wasteland surrounding the Citadel.
At last the Citadel itself came into view—the great red-stone Spire rising to pierce the heavens themselves, built atop a bedrock of equal redness. Around it spread the temple grounds, like a small city devoted to the Flame’s service.
They passed through an arched red-stone gate and marched through the grounds to the central buildings surrounding the Spire. These buildings were pillared and open to the elements, for it was hot in the cloudless lowlands, and any breeze that might blow through to cool the inner sanctums was welcome.
The girls stood in a courtyard beneath the Spire, flanked on all sides by the temple guards—eunuchs all, Mouse was to learn later, and silent as statues. Priestesses filed from every part of the temple grounds, solemn and beautiful in red robes, their black wigs sparkling with gold. Behind them, lingering on the edges, were black-clad acolytes, hooded so that their faces were unseen, figures of mystery but not of majesty like their elder sisters.
And then the high priestess approached.
In Mouse’s dreams of the goddess, of the Flame herself, she had envisioned something like this exquisite being: tall and strong with features almost too severe to be beautiful, full of power. She was clad in white doeskin stained brilliant hues of saffron, scarlet, and blue, the colors of fire. Her wig was more beautifully decorated than all the others, not in gold or gems, but in a crown of red starflowers, like the Silent Lady herself.