Interlude
The Lady of the Long Silence
1
JEAN TANNEN entered the service of the Death Goddess about half a year after Locke returned from his sojourn in the priesthood of Nara, with the usual instructions to learn what he could and then return home in five or six months. He used the assumed name Tavrin Callas, and he traveled south from Camorr for more than a week to reach the great temple of Aza Guilla known as Revelation House.
Unlike the other eleven (or twelve) orders of Therin clergy, the servants of Aza Guilla began their initiation in only one place. The coastal highlands that rose south of Talisham ended at vast, straight white cliffs that fell three or four hundred feet to the crashing waves of the Iron Sea. Revelation House was carved from one of these cliffs, facing out to sea, on a scale that recalled the work of the Eldren but was accomplished—gradually and painstakingly, in an ongoing process—solely with human arts.
Picture a number of deep rectangular galleries, dug straight back into the cliff, connected solely by exterior means. To get anywhere in Revelation House, one had to venture outside, onto the walkways, stairs, and carved stone ladders, regardless of the weather or the time of day. Safety rails were unknown to Revelation House; initiates and teachers alike scuttled along in light or darkness, in rain or bright clear skies, with no barrier between themselves and a plunge to the sea save their own confidence and good fortune.
Twelve tall excised columns to the west of Revelation House held brass bells at the top; these open-faced rock tubes, about six feet deep and seventy feet high, had slender hand-and footholds carved into their rear walls. At dawn and dusk, initiates were expected to climb them and ensure that each bell was rung twelve times, once for each god in the pantheon. The carillon was always somewhat ragged; when Jean thought he could get away with it, he rang his own bell thirteen times.
Three initiates plunged to their deaths attempting to perform this ritual before Jean had passed his first month at the temple. This number struck him as surprisingly low, given how many of the devotional duties of Aza Guilla’s new servants (not to mention the architecture of their home) were clearly designed to encourage premature meetings with the Death Goddess.
“We are concerned here with death considered in two aspects: Death the Transition and Death Everlasting,” said one of their lecturers, an elderly priestess with three braided silver collars at the neck of her black robe. “Death Everlasting is the realm of the Lady Most Kind; it is a mystery not intended for penetration or comprehension from our side of the Lady’s shroud. Death the Transition, therefore, is the sole means by which we may achieve a greater understanding of her dark majesty.
“Your time here in Revelation House will bring you close to Death the Transition on many occasions, and it is a certainty that some of you will pass beyond before you finish your initiation. This may be achieved through inattentiveness, lassitude, ill fortune, or the inscrutable will of the Lady Most Kind herself. As initiates of the Lady, you will be exposed to Death the Transition and its consequences for the rest of your lives. You must grow accustomed to it. It is natural for living flesh to recoil from the presence of death, and from thoughts of death. Your discipline must overcome what is natural.”
2
AS WITH most Therin temples, initiates of the First Inner Mystery were mostly expected to train their scribing, sums, and rhetoric to the point that they could enter higher levels of study without distracting more advanced initiates. Jean, with his advantages in age and training, was inducted into the Second Inner Mystery a bare month and a half after arrival.
“Henceforth,” said the priest conducting the ceremony, “you will conceal your faces. You will have no features of boy or girl, man or woman. The priesthood of the Lady Most Kind has only one face, and that face is inscrutable. We must not be seen as individuals, as fellow men and women. The office of the Death Goddess’ servants must disquiet if those we minister to are to compose their thoughts to her properly.”
The Sorrowful Visage was the silver mask of the order of Aza Guilla; for initiates, it bore a crude resemblance to a human face, with a rough indentation for the nose and holes for the eyes and mouth. For full priests, it was a slightly ovoid hemisphere of fine silver mesh. Jean donned his Sorrowful Visage, eager to get to work cataloguing more secrets of the order, only to discover that his duties were little changed from his month as an initiate of the First Inner Mystery. He still carried messages and scribed scrolls, swept floors and scoured the kitchens, still scurried up and down the precarious rock ladders beneath the Bells of the Twelve, with the unfriendly sea crashing far below and the wind tugging at his robes.
Only now he had the honor of doing all these things in his silver mask, with his peripheral vision partly blocked. Two more initiates of the Second Inner Mystery fell to a firsthand acquaintance with Death the Transition shortly after Jean’s elevation.
About a month after that, Jean was poisoned for the first time.