She went over to her bed and sat down on it. Her hair was damp from bathing, twisted into a long thick plait bound with silver thread. Cool sheets, faintly scented with spice.
We all drew our lots, she thought. Helase’s yellow, mine red. What would we rather, that we had drawn the black or the white? Fifteen years dead, both of us. And drowning is a hard way to die, they say. Maran Gyste drowned, she thought then. He grew old and fat and married and never cut off his manhood, and in the end he drowned swimming in a lake.
The day after a sacrifice was always a busy one in the Temple. After the sacrifice of a child, doubly so. People flocked to the Temple, offering small gifts of silver to buy candles, seeking blessing on a child born, a marriage contracted, an agreement made. A child was not sacrificed often, and was especially pleasing to the Lord.
Thalia felt tired and drawn still, her sleep heavy, broken with dreams. The extra day’s fasting, she told herself. Drained her. The wound of her left arm ached. It never fully healed, a delicate pattern of scar tissue, silver, black, red and white. She thought momentarily of Helase’s description of Lady Emmereth, scarred and grotesque. Her own scars a mark of her status. Words written on her skin.
She ate breakfast alone in the small room off the dining hall where the other priestesses sat. They were mostly silent, heads bowed, but smiles and nods and short exchanges passed between them. She ate a bowl of wheat porridge, sweet with milk and honey, studded with slivers of almond. It steadied her a little, gave her a little strength. The act of eating made what had gone before seem less real.
After breakfast, she was bathed and robed for her duties in the Temple. Her gown was grey, the colour of thin high rain clouds. She liked this robe and this ceremony, a day of joy after the shedding of blood. Walked with slow steps to the Great Chamber, Samnel walking before her, old fat Ninia and another couple of priestesses behind. Not Helase, today.
It was still early enough that morning light shone through the high east windows of the Great Chamber. The great room resounding with light, so brilliant it sounded in the heart. Thalia stood before the High Altar and her body shone in the light. Samnel chanted in a dry voice, the other priestesses echoing her. Old words, recited in a long rhythmic drone of old cadences. Like birdsong. Like rainfall. Thalia knelt before the High Altar, gazing up at the single red light. Dear Lord, Great Tanis Who Rules All Things, from the fear of life and the fear of death, release us. We live. We die. For these things, we are grateful.
Afterwards, she went back to her bedroom and sat by the window again, looking out at the gardens now bright with the midday light. The day was cool, a fresh breeze and a few clouds scudding in the golden-blue sky. The strange beautiful golden light of the desert that makes the air clear so that detail is picked out like the brush stroke of a painting, the soft wide shape of things blurred with wind-blown sand. A lovely day. Clean. She felt clean, bright as the sunshine, bright as the gardens. If she listened carefully, she could hear the bustle of the city, forever just out of reach beyond the high walls of the Temple. Laughter. Noise. The shouts of children, the clatter of a beggar’s bowl, the stamp of sandalled feet. The great towers and domes of the palace loomed above her, gold and silver, the only other building she had ever seen. The pethe birds called and whistled, higher pitched than the ferfews, less melancholy. The Small Chamber seemed very far away now. It is necessary, she thought. So that the living remain living, so that the dead may die. A good life and a good dying. And the things beyond either kept back. The world is a good place. Even with pain in it. Even with death.
Somewhere in the shade beneath the trees, a slave of the Temple would be digging a tiny grave.
Chapter Nine
I was handed over to the Temple when I was three hours old. I am told that my mother cried, although why she should have done so, I do not know. We are born and bred to it, and whatever comes of us is decreed by fate. I was lucky beyond all things, for the lot I drew was that of High Priestess.
It is a curious thing, when I think of it. It is not the first thing that I remember – that, strange to say, is simply a blurred image of an old woman Temple servant, entirely insignificant to my life or any other’s, who died when I was three or four – but it is the first thing I can hold before me with any meaning, understand all that took place and render the events clearly from my recollection of them. Unwanted girls, girls whose parents cannot afford to keep them, girls who have been promised, girls who should not have been born … they are handed over to the Great Temple, dedicated to Great Tanis Who Rules All Things. At five, each child is taken into a dark room at the back of the Temple, to draw a lot from a silver box. The room is briefly illuminated and the lot examined before being replaced in the box. If it is black or white, it means death by drowning. If green, death by sacrifice. If yellow, the child is dedicated as a priestess of the Temple. If red, the child is acknowledged as the new High Priestess, holy beyond all things. Needless to say, there are a great many black and white lots, but only one red. It had not been drawn for forty years, before it was drawn for me.
You will ask, I suppose, what happens to the High Priestess-that-is, when the red lot is drawn. A simple thing: the High Priestess-that-will-be kills her. There is a great deal of training and suchlike first, of course, for there is a great deal to learn and to know. And five is rather too young, for killing or for learning. But when the High Priestess-that-will-be reaches the age of fifteen, she stabs a blade into the heart of her predecessor and takes her place. It has been fifteen years now, since I drew my lot, and I have not yet seen the red lot drawn. Perhaps it will be drawn tomorrow. Perhaps it will not be drawn for a hundred years, and I will live until I am an old woman, and die quietly, and be without a successor.