“No,” I said aloud, gritting my teeth. I would not do it. I would not mingle the horror of death with what I most loved.
The chocolate was bitter as iron, the parlor gray in the dawn, the beaded lamps burnt out. “Drink,” said the priest. “You need it after your supplication. But how brave you were! How fine! You have the makings of a priest of Avalei!”
“You will forgive me if I am not comforted.”
He smiled. His flat, peculiar, blurred-looking features were lanced by the glittering points of his eyes. “I will tell you a story,” he said. “Yes, before we return you to the Houses. Just a homely little story. Something to help you sleep.
“I was in Asarma at the time of the cholera. Not many years ago—a few years—a terrible time for us. I was only a child then. I was studying astronomy, and while I was at school they were throwing the bodies into the sea… And the carts, the dead-carts were everywhere. You could see them from the windows. There was no place that did not have the smell of death. When we went out at night to read the stars, we choked on the smell of the city, and behind the sea wall the corpses floated and gave off their phosphorescence… Well. There was a colleague of mine, a boy from the Fanlevain, a clockmaker’s son, very clever and somewhat—lonely. That is, he kept to himself. We shared a room in the dormitory, and I used to hear him talking in his sleep… Ah! Later I cursed myself for not having listened to him, for burying my head under the pillow! For you see, this boy—this boy was a saint. But it was not known until later. Who knows what we might have learned from him, had his power been known?”
The priest paused and turned up the palm of one hand despairingly. “Who knows? You see, telmaro, I was too slow. Only after strange things had happened—after he fell into trances at school, after I found a sheaf of poems he had written—only then did I mention what I had seen to one of our masters, and only then was the youth taken into the temple. But by that time the sign of the plague was on him. When he said good-bye to us he was already weak; as he went down the stairs he was clutching his stomach. And within the week he was dead. He had taken his wisdom into the grave. He had taken the angel’s blessing away with him.”
Auram leaned forward. The dawn in the window glowed on his shaven cheek. He gave me a long, deep glance, as of recognition. “I remember one night,” he whispered, holding my gaze. “This young boy, telmaro, this boy conversed with a statue, alone in the dark.”
My cup was empty; I passed it to him in silence. Then I said slowly: “Your story means nothing to me. Nothing. Do you hear?”
My voice gathered strength as he dropped his eyes and toyed with the enameled clasps on his robe. “Nothing. Your angels, your drugs, your filth, your Avalei! I want only to be rid of the spirit and go.”
“But we can help,” he said, raising his eyes. “We can give you the angel’s body.”
“In exchange for your Night Market. Where I’ll be arrested again, no doubt, and dragged back to the Houses for impersonating a saint.”
He laughed merrily. “Do you think my lady powerless? Oh, no. She has many friends still. Many friends. Day is breaking, and no one has reported your disappearance from the Gray Houses. And when you go back, it will be as if you had never left.”
He slid forward, his eyes still bright with mirth, held my shoulder and rasped into my ear. “You will leave the Isle in a week or less.” His smile had a childlike sweetness, and it struck me that he was, to some degree, mad—as our island doctors are mad, with the potency of transcendence. As the Priest of the Stone was mad: as I was mad. Such spiritual power was always capricious, not to be trusted, likely to scar. But latched to the power of this priest, clinging to Avalei’s mantle, I might claw my way out of the Houses and to freedom.
I was grateful that he said nothing of the angel’s ringing words: Write me a vallon. Perhaps he had not heard. Or perhaps what mattered to him was not what she said, but that I could communicate with her, that I was a true avneanyi. He took my arm and led me to the door, a dim heat in his fingers, a dark note in his breathing like a hidden sob. Long after I had returned to the Gray Houses, his stinging odor clung about me like the ghost of a struck match.
Chapter Twelve
Tialon’s Story
I was cold the next day—so cold my teeth knocked together. Ordu touched my brow and removed the iron chamberpot after I vomited thin gray liquid. I did not join the others for the daily walk in the garden, but curled up and hid my face, wrapped tight in the sheets. When I slept I dreamt of the islands, my brother whistling, the shadows of birds, and when I woke I counted the minutes as if it could make my chills subside. Cries came from behind the walclass="underline" the groans of the mad, inarticulate and frayed at the edges, like prayers.
There Tialon came to see me. It was her first visit in several weeks. She carried her writing box and an umbrella beaded with moisture, for it was raining over Velvalinhu. Her hair was tightly curled and powdered with drops where the wind had blown rain under her umbrella. She placed her things against the wall and came unasked to sit on the edge of my mattress, bringing cold air that had gotten caught in the folds of her clothes, and smiled at me—a fragile smile, for her face was drawn and sickly and great shadows marred the skin under her eyes.
“Jevick,” she said.
“Tialon.”
“Are you unwell?” she asked softly.
“Are you?” I returned.
At that her smile grew warmer and tears came into her eyes. She patted my wrist with a freezing hand. “No. I am very well. Are you still reading Olondrian Lyrics?”
“Yes. And the Romance of the Valley.”
She nodded. Her eyes shone with the transparent light of the sky, as if the rain had washed them. “I’m reading, too. I’ve read your letters. I’m sorry I didn’t answer. I’ve come to you instead. I won’t stay long. I’ll go back to my real life. You remember I told you I’d built something… This is what I have built. This life.”
In the fractured light of the lamp her face looked young, determined, unhappy. There was a recklessness in the way she lifted her chin. “I read. I take notes for my father. I sit in the shrine of the Stone, always reading, watching, gazing into the depths of mystery. The Stone… I wish I could show it to you. Perhaps then you would understand. It is black, heavy, miraculous, covered with writing…” She raised her hands, arms wide, delineating a vague shape in the air, then shrugged her shoulders and let them fall.
“I can’t describe it. But Jevick—it is a very great thing. Our hope. My father is only the second to attempt to interpret its message. For this reason…” She paused and bit her lip, then looked at me and went on quietly: “For this reason it is easy for us to make mistakes. Do you understand? For us, for our cult, it is the beginning. We are still vulnerable—still laughed at, and still hated… We have the support of the king, but of no one close to him. Indeed, his son is one of those who seek most persistently to discredit us. And there is also Avalei’s cult. They hate us because we reject what they love: luxury, harlotry, the pursuit of angels.”
She smiled at my flushed face. “I know you’ve met the High Priestess of Avalei. I know everything. We have spies.” A tear dropped down her cheek to her lap. “Yes. Spies. We listen at doors, we follow people. My father receives reports every morning at dawn. It’s disgusting…”