Priests gathered to watch, some simply congregating as they did each day to honor the god, others whispering about her miraculous flight from Solus. The false story of her escape from the crowds was already spreading through the empire. The chatter was all around her, but she pretended she could not hear it.
As was custom for the Dawn Crier, she fasted throughout the day, pausing only to catch her breath or to take a draught of water. The fasting and the singing made the day drag on, and she let her exhaustion show on her face. Today she must look penitent, contrite. She must appear humbled, and grateful. The people must believe that Mithra himself had ferried her through the riots on the last day of the year. They mustn’t know that Saad put his sword to my breast, that my cloak was ripped and the crowds nearly tore me limb from limb.
As the darkness crept across the open-air temple, her thoughts drifted. She pictured her childhood home in Asar, the rocky little keep where her family weathered the wet season. She thought about the family she left behind in Harkana. She remembered Arko, bitterly, and her daughters more fondly. I’d like to see their faces again. She had sworn she would never return to Harkana, but perhaps the girls would one day come to her.
As the sky darkened and the air grew cold, she heard the cries of the young boy, Khai Femin, echo in her thoughts. The image of Garia’s severed limbs flashed at the edges of her vision. Sarra wondered if she had acted wrongly, if she should not have sent Garia to stand on the wall. Was there another way—something else she could have done? No. She needed to put Amen Saad in his place, to halt his aggression. By her own estimation, she had been only partially successful in subduing the young Protector. The matter of succession was still unsettled. Saad remained a threat.
Sarra realized she had stopped singing. The cold air made her skin prickle.
The sky was black, and only one or two priests lingered at the temple, shuffling their feet as they hummed the song.
She drew her robe about her and left the temple, bowing slightly as she stepped outside of the prayer circle.
Sarra wore white on her second day in Desouk. She attended to her duties in the temple, ordaining acolytes, and celebrating the start of the new year, the first days of Soli, the first month of the Soleri calendar.
On her third day, when the formal duties of the Mother Priestess were complete, Sarra journeyed high into the Denna hills, to a place where the ancient amaranth fields sheltered in green vales beneath walls of sheer rock. Months ago, the Mother Priestess had uncovered a narrow opening that had once been a doorway, but had centuries ago been covered by an avalanche. Her priests had done their best to remove the obstructions, clearing a narrow passage that led to a set of underground chambers. A young priest who had only just arrived in Desouk, Nollin Odine, waited by the entrance to the excavation, sitting atop a pile of stones, studying a scroll. He was a scribe of the Hierophantic Order, the interpreters of sacred symbols. At a very young age he’d made a name for himself deciphering texts written in hieratic script. She’d heard the boy spent all of his time studying scrolls. Her priests said he ate with a scroll in one hand, and slept often with another beneath his head. Ott had joked that the boy had been glimpsed on the privy, a parchment in his lap, tearing off corners to wipe himself as he read. She hoped his ample knowledge would be of some assistance.
“Come,” Sarra beckoned warmly. “Follow me, Nollin.”
“It’s Noll. If that’s okay?”
“Noll.” She ushered him toward the narrow shaft, lifting the edges of her robe so the hem wouldn’t drag as she slid between the stones. She was eager to show him the mountain chamber, to hear his thoughts on the curious inscriptions that had puzzled their most talented scribes. In their effort to decode the markings, her priests had requested scrolls and clay tablets from across the empire, including Harkana, and her daughter Merit had been kind enough to allow her request. But they had made little progress in their work.
A few steps in, the passage swelled, the walls opening into a vast rotunda hewn from amber stones.
“Where are we?” Noll asked.
Sarra took an oil lamp from the wall and raised it to the distant ceiling. At the dome’s apex, rusted iron bars half sheltered an oculus. “This is a storehouse,” Sarra said.
“For the amaranth?”
“Yes, an old one. We are standing at the base of a grain depository. The priests dropped seeds through the oculus.” Sarra pointed to the opening above. “The grain was stored here and emptied through there.” She motioned toward the floor, then the passage through which they had entered.
“It is a sacred place,” he said, rubbing his eyes.
“Yes, the storehouse once sheltered our sacred crop.”
The amaranth. Not even a plant, but a gift from the gods themselves. When mixed and ground, the leaves of the amaranth formed a thick paste that made the dry soil of Solus fertile—so vital that the priesthood of Desouk, in whose domain the oases existed, had long ago woven the sowing and harvest of the amaranth into their religion. Only a priest or priestess could touch the seed and tender the plant.
“A year ago, you sent a large number of translations to the repository, translations of imperial scrolls dating to the reign of Den, during the War of the Four. One of those documents, a lengthy chronicle of grain shipments, contained this storehouse’s location.”
“Those scrolls were centuries old.”
“Two centuries. Sekhem Den, last in his line, erected the storehouses. His builders left their marks.”
“Yes, I’ve studied Den, but I don’t see the connection. What interest do we have in old storehouses?” Noll asked.
Sarra laid the lamp on the chamber’s grain-speckled floor. The room darkened. She cupped her hands against the stone, scraping sand and pebbles into her palms. She raised her hands to show the young priest what she held. Amber kernels lay among the dust and sand. “See these seeds?” she said. “What if I told you these seeds, and ones like them—the seeds hidden away in the empire’s vast storehouses—are the last fertile amaranth seeds in the empire?”
Noll shook his head. “I don’t understand. I saw a field of amaranth on my walk this morning.”
Sarra’s eyes darted around the empty chamber; even in the safety of Desouk she was careful where she spoke. “You have served only as a hierophant—am I right?”
Noll nodded. “I’ve only just arrived from the southern islands.”