BeneathCeaselessSkies_Issue011 Read online

But he opened the door and let go of the lamp, leaving it swinging in her hand. “I want my breakfast.”

  She could not both keep the door open and look in the alcove, but she had not seen the boy use a key. She took the lamp into the black opening, alert for a trap. But there was nothing in there but her dagger. A chain with two iron keys hung from a hook.

  The heavy door to the main temple clicked closed. Halla swung the lamp over—but the priestling had vanished. She was alone in the temple, unguarded and unmutilated. Her skin crawled.

  But she was not going to let herself get caught again. She took the keys from the wall and strapped on her dagger. As a gesture of freedom, took the brooch from her boot and pinned it to the front of her shift. Then she opened the door, extinguishing the lamp as she did so. She slid out into a familiar white and gold hallway, keeping to the shadows. There should be an exit just a few yards. The door she had left was plain, unassuming. Strange how she had never known where it led.

  She turned the corner and there was the outside door. Dawn must be near, and Uncle Ollen’s execution at the ring on the hill. He didn’t deserve the God-Death for toppling the Mouth to the floor. But he did deserve it for killing her mother. Halla could leave him to the temple’s justice.

  Yet she stood there in the shadow of the exit, wavering.

  From the other side of the temple, the gong rang. First waking call for the priests.

  Halla left the temple in the near-dawn light. Only a few people were out at this hour, priests and sellers setting up for the huge crowds the investiture would bring. It would be a good day to slip in and out of familiar houses, with everyone in the center of town. This might be the day she stole enough to buy land, just that small piece of land. She had lost her chance at the wealth of the temple, but she would not lose sight of regaining her citizenship. It was unfair for children to suffer for the crimes of their parents. She mustn’t lose sight of her plan for change.

  The decision cleared her mind. Halla strode away from the temple. She was just deciding on a house where she’d once been to a funeral when pain swept from one side of her body to the other. Her hands clenched, her body throbbed like a struck gong. It focused to a pinpoint in her head, then as abruptly, vanished. An image, a feeling blossomed in her mind, a blood lust without words.

  Kill Ollen.

  He was at the ring on the hill, and she could kill him before his God-Death came. She could be the one to enact revenge, to make him pay.

  And she should.

  Flooded with that thought, she charged through the temple grounds. She passed nuns, assistants, market-sellers, but their eyes slid over her. They all looked away.

  Down the stone road to the temple’s hill. No one climbed that hill, but everyone knew the path. Everyone knew exactly where the God’s justice was served, though the top was shrouded in bamboo, and there was no silhouette of a man shadowed at dawn, awaiting execution.

  She slipped through that stone archway where nobody went without a purpose. It was strange how her feet propelled her forward. She had never had to kill anybody—why should she start with a man already destined to die? Almost she turned around but no, the path was there, and though the hill was dark and steep the path drew her upward. She would just see him, anyway. Just see if he was up there. Then she would turn back.

  The bamboo pressed in thicker till suddenly it thinned, revealing deep blue sky. Why would she think of murdering Ollen, Uncle Ollen who had taken her to see the traveling animals, who had let her pet the snakes?

  The dawning light picked out a figure in the middle of the clearing and her head rang.

  He was chained to the pole, arms fastened behind him, crumpled. His nose bled and he drooled. The sight surged fresh blood lust through Halla. She stumbled from the bamboo, dagger high.

  Kill him.

  Uncle Ollen’s grey eyes watered and his nose trickled. He was so weak, so stupidly weak, so incompetent. How had such a fallen thing killed her mother? His death would be a relief. A relief.

  She was on him then, one hand at his throat. He squealed, fought her with his knees. One knee caught her on the nose and cheek. Her grip loosened, but she seized him again and raised her blade. His white hair foamed around his face. She would kill him. She would be his executioner.

  She would be his God-Death.

  Her entire body convulsed on the handle of her dagger. She would be his God-Death. The Mouth had made it so. The dizziness she had felt all those years was nothing next to the actual touch of the God, yet that was what this was. The compulsion to obey thickened her spirit, crushed her fingers to the dagger’s handle.

  Halla would not submit to the Mouth. She would not.

  She would not be Uncle Ollen’s God-Death.

  Halla gripped the handle with all her will and plunged the dagger into the ground.

  Scrabbled away, the compulsion tearing her mind. Kill Ollen. Kill.

  “I love you,” blubbered her uncle. His nose ran; his beard filled with snot and blood. She loved him and loathed him. She understood what he had done, what he had become from doing it.

  He didn’t say anything else, just babbled and bled on the ground. Halla felt the God-touch like her own purest desire—she was dying to strangle him from his miserable existence. She breathed, funny little gasps, trying to sort out her wants from the God’s. Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  It was clear now why they had let her escape. The Mouth had probably compelled the priestling to do it. She put one taut hand into her shift and pulled the chain with its two keys forth. That seemed to take forever. Threw it at her uncle’s curled side, the links clinking. He sniveled.

  “Take it,” she said hoarsely. But as she threw it she realized he couldn’t. His hands were chained behind him. Halla flexed and unflexed fingers, took several more breaths. With long steady strides she crossed to her uncle, grabbed the smaller key, and unlocked his wrists. Dropped the chain in front of him and strode back to her spot in the bamboo.

  They stared at each other, breathing hard.

  Ollen wiped his face with his hand, his sleeve. With fumbling fingers he unlocked his ankles. He stumbled towards her.

  “Stay away,” Halla said. Her hand flicked to her empty dagger sheath.

  He wavered, tottered.

  “Farther,” she said. “Out of reach. Out of a good long lunging reach.” She went towards the pole to get the dagger. He scurried around the circle, not really getting any farther away. She gritted her teeth and wished she could kill him for it.

  “Now we’re going down the hill,” she said. “And you’re going to stay behind me where I can’t see you, and answer my questions. What do you know about my family? Our family.” The lust to kill him suffused all her questions with rage.

  Ollen sniffled.

  Halla strode down the path, smacking the bamboo with the flat of her hand. “Stop crying. And I don’t want any garbage about the God’s fingers either. Give me sane Gooseberry. Give me facts.”

  “I can’t, I....”

  She glared.

  “I.... Your father was of the holy rich.” He fell in behind her, his feet noisy and slow.

  “Yes.” She smacked the bamboo again. It felt good to hit something.

  “Your mother and I weren’t. Our family were landowners, on the outskirts, struggling.” He sniffled again. “Your father went between the committee of the rich and the temple. He was known to be close with the former Mouth. And he had, uh...nasty methods of making the politics go his way. Which was the temple’s way, for a long time.” Ollen’s feet slid and now he was too close, pacing her. He had wiped his face and smoothed his hair, and for a moment he looked quite sane. “But ten years ago the new Mouth was chosen. The one we’ve got now. Your father disliked the new choice.”

  “This new Mouth wasn’t going to let my da run things,” Halla said slowly.

  Ollen nodded. “So your father took you up to the temple, brought you to the old Mouth. He thought he could...he wanted you to replace.
..I don’t know if what I think is so. No, I know. You were so tiny. Each time you came home so...strange. Like you didn’t know what was going on.” He tilted his head, mimed a lolling motion.

  Halla strode ahead, swallowing.

  “Do you know what happened next?” he said.

  “Yes,” said Halla. “My mother killed him.”

  Behind her, Ollen was silent.

  He did not say and then she was executed for it, but Halla’s fingers still clenched and unclenched at her sides. “And the Mouth had something to do with it?”

  “She was an angel, your mother—my darling. Too good for your cold father. The old Mouth must have broke with your father. And when the new Mouth took over, I think the first thing he did was compel my darling, my sweet, to kill. A God-Death without the God’s wish behind it. I don’t know. I just—she wouldn’t have done it, not a sweet sweet woman like her, she wouldn’t have killed anybody without a compulsion.”

  He underestimated her mother. Halla thought she might well have been capable of murder, if her daughter was in danger. “I’d almost rather believe she did it on her own,” Halla said softly.

  She didn’t expect her uncle to respond, but he started babbling again, something about hands and fingers, and the God-given rage swelled. “Gooseberry,” she said, danger in the word.

  Too much danger. Uncle Ollen flung himself at her feet, crying. “I had to kill her. It hit everything inside of me, horrible. I wanted to kill her, don’t you understand? My pretty sister, I loved her and the Mouth destroyed us. I wanted to hurt her. It broke our family, it broke me, made me a vagrant, no money, no land, no name. I remember, you see, all that true pure rage I remember, because it’s in me, and I wanted it. She made me promise to help you, but I couldn’t bear it. The God forgive me, I couldn’t.”

  She stumbled and kicked at him, trying to get him out of reach. “Move it, damn you!” She escaped from his clutching fingers, backed up against the bamboo.

  He sobbed again and she pulled the dagger halfway out of its sheath. She breathed long and low, stomach clenching. The God-lust was sharp and taut in her mind; she could feel its line stretching back to the Mouth, just as she always had during the judging.

  One way or another, the Mouth had killed her parents.

  Both of them.

  “I’m going to that ceremony.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  The judging square was fuller than she had ever seen it. Every inch crammed, a mob of watchers and priests. Halla tried again to shake the God’s blood lust, but she was still taut with it. She remembered the prisoner reaching for the dove yesterday morning, his face distended. He had stayed in agony till he got to complete the God’s task of killing it. She swallowed and pushed through the restless crowd.

  She caught glimpses between necks, under arms. The Mouth stood at the dais, loomed over the young priestling. A bleating goat was tethered off to the side. This was the part she had thought merely ceremonial, but now she was not sure. The old Mouth’s killing of the goat was the moment of investiture. Ritually, it showed that his hands were free again. That he was a citizen again, willing to act when the God required.

  But perhaps it was more than ritual.

  Perhaps it was the way the power was passed on.

  She pushed through, moving to the front.

  The boy’s head was upright and he looked more awake than that morning in the dungeon. She wondered what compulsion the Mouth was sending to him. Alertness?

  The ritual continued, the words rolling on. “As the God speaks through me, so shall the power pass to his chosen one. So shall the next ten years pass with the God and his new Mouth.”

  “May he speak to us,” answered the crowd.

  She was nearly to him, this man who had killed her father and through other hands her mother, who had nearly killed her uncle. The Mouth of the God, her family’s death.

  “By this sacrifice, he shall prove he is willing to act for you. His mouth is the mouth of the God....”

  Maybe you didn’t have to be a landowner to provoke change.

  “May he speak to us,” answered the people. Fingers touched lips.

  Halla stepped forth from the crowd, onto the dais. “You’re using that boy,” she said to the Mouth. Her voice rang out over the judging square. “You don’t intend to step down at all. You’re perverting the voice of the God.” There was absolute silence in the crowded square.

  “Take her,” said the Mouth. His face stayed calm, his hands still folded. A blue-robed priest moved in.

  But the blood rage was still hot in her, and though directed at her uncle it was easy to let it loose on the priest. She had never killed anybody, but now she killed him, largely out of luck. She wanted to drop the wet dagger, she wanted to scream, but she did neither.

  Temple guards were closing in from the sides, but the crowd pressed around the dais, bodies tense, tongues whispering. Watching the new drama play out in the judging square.

  Harder to rein in the lust, but she took a deep breath and bent her mind to it, packing it back down inside her. She moved closer to the Mouth. In her mind, Halla could feel where the directive flowed from him to her; the open thread along which the compulsion ran. The tongueless boy at his side turned and ran, but the one-handed girl watched her with quiet black eyes.

  “He’s abused this boy to stay in control,” Halla said to the crowd. “To keep control of you.” The roar of the crowd grew, and in her side vision she saw the guards encountering resistance.

  On the level where her mind was focusing on the Mouth, she could feel that there were two channels open from him. From the Mouth to the boy, a well-worn path. From the Mouth to her, thick and shining. Her uncompleted God-Death made a channel he couldn’t close. She felt her way along it. “He’s not planning to pass anything on. He’s planning to compel the boy the way he compels the city. This boy is a puppet.”

  “Your father would have done a similar thing to you,” the Mouth hissed. “Once he saw what you could control.” His body was coiled for action but his mind wasn’t. He didn’t even understand how the power worked. His mind was too limited. He was supposed to open a thread of compulsion to the boy, to the sacrifice, giving the boy access to the God. Then the old Mouth would sacrifice the goat, completing his own compulsion from ten years ago. He would draw back, cede his power, take himself out of the loop.

  But he didn’t understand that. He didn’t understand that the same charged line was open from him to Halla. She didn’t think she fully understood the God’s power, but he definitely didn’t.

  The guards were closer now, the Mouth smiling. “Ignore the heretic,” he said to the crowd. “The God will decide her fate.” To her, quietly, “I did you a favor. Your father would have destroyed you.”

  Halla used that tendril, that slim thread he had left open to her. “Perhaps,” she said. “But he didn’t.”

  And then she pulled with all her will, pulled along the thread of that God-driven blood lust, pulled it out of the Mouth and into her. The power spread into her hands, her feet, until for one moment she was lit up golden like a God herself, and from far away the crowd roared at the sight.

  She could feel the thread stretching back into the weight of history, through the Mouth, who was crumpling in front of her, through the Mouth before him, and before him, back and back until it granulated and she could see no further. For one beautiful moment she saw the whole city strung beneath her, relationships, cause and effect, everything a network, a comprehensible tapestry. Threads and patterns, and she could see how events and people were there to be patterned and picked apart and rewoven.

  But even as she watched, the tapestry grew more and more complex until it spun out of control, broke apart, and then the world glittered gold in her sight and was gone.

  She was standing on the dais, a God, and then the world broke apart and she was all too human. There was immense power inside her, huge and trembling in her fingertips, but the corresponding knowledge was gone.


  Yet there was—something—out there; it was not all the Mouth’s perversion and tricks. She almost felt giddy with the realization. She wavered and the crowd gasped and those at the front stuck out useless hands as if to catch her.

  Uncle Ollen tottered up to the dais where she stood. Underneath the calm and power, the compulsion implanted by the Mouth—the former Mouth, now—still screamed.

  Kill.

  It was too much to hope that the compulsion would end; it seemed to be the line through which all her power came. Unless she could figure out how to shut it down without losing her power, it would probably never end, not till his death. The future was suddenly dense and strange, both full of possibility...and empty.

  Ollen looked at the unconscious former Mouth, the dead priests. The lolling priestling, the stone-silent crowd.

  Her.

  “Ollen,” Halla said. “My uncle. My family.” In the packed and silent judging square, she was the only person moving. She unpinned the stolen emerald brooch from her shift, the brooch with which she had hoped to restart a life.

  Halla closed the clasp and placed it into her last living relation’s hands.

  “Please,” she said. “Don’t come back.”

  Copyright © 2008 by Tina Connolly