Tyrant Trouble

CHAPTER 4

  When I thought of the effort I’d put into learning astrology from Gran, it seemed like a waste of time, right along with learning to check credit records and figuring out that Darryl was mixed up with illegal stuff. Or maybe not. That move kept me from hanging around and being controlled by him. Still, whatever else he had in mind, I doubted Darryl had ever considered beheading me.

  Nothing in my horoscope hinted at a career as a priest in a barbarian temple. Okay, maybe they weren't barbarians, but they also weren't actors and whoever they were, I was stuck with them, which is probably why I kept thinking of them as barbarians.

  It was survive or perish time, inspiring me to work hard at my new role. I memorized the senseless chants Nance taught me. When I asked her if they were written down someplace, so I could study them, she frowned and asked me to explain what I meant.

  “In a book, maybe? Or never mind, if you can rustle up a pen and paper for me, you can recite the chants and I can write them down.”

  “Book? Pen? What is that?”

  Sure, I realized there wasn't a hope for a computer in a place that didn't even have indoor plumbing, but I didn't expect to have to strip bark off of birch trees and write with ink made from plant roots. “What do people here use to write on?”

  “Write? Explain.”

  Oh. The barbarians were illiterate. Why had I presumed otherwise?

  “How did you learn these chants?” I asked.

  “The same way you must learn them,” she scolded. “The Daughter said a chant and I said it after her until I had it memorized. And then she taught me to put together chants and make new ones to fit the occasion.”

  Hmm. As the chants told people what to do and how to behave, composing chants could be a powerful tool. Was it possible I could compose a chant that made clear to them that all outsiders should be returned safely to their homelands? That seemed unlikely but worth thinking about.

  I practiced speaking chants in a flat, unemotional tone.

  “You did it perfectly,” Nance cried, her eyes and mouth wide, her eyebrows halfway up her forehead, her hands clutching mine. “For me, keeping my face blank is the hardest!”

  For me, trying not to laugh was the hardest. I learned to lift the odd-scented lamps and swing them above my head, while I gyrated in front of the rock she called an altar. Odd plumes of scent floated through the cut grills of these small metal lamps we carried on chains, much like incense. More difficult were the heavy candlesticks used in another part of the ritual.

  Like Tarvik, she touched me constantly, nothing more than brushing her fingers against my hand as she walked by, and once pressing her palm to my shoulder with a quick touch, almost as though she meant to reassure herself I was truly there. I had seen small children do that with parents, but not people our age. When we hugged, we had a reason. Umm, except for Darryl. Those flowers and kisses hadn't meant a thing, not that there had been many.

  Nance wound my hair up on top of my head to match the style of the Daughter's hair in the portrait, and into it she wove gold threads and bright ornaments. She dressed me in a long velvet robe dyed in strange and lovely patterns spreading like moonlight across the fabric, rich deep purples and blues. The robe hung straight from my shoulders to my ankles and was belted with a rope of gold silk ending in beaded tassels.

  “This robe, it's way too long for you, ” I said.

  “You're the same size. I thought you would be,” Nance said, and it took me a minute for the brain to wake up.

  So it wasn't only my face that resembled the poor slob hiker who had stumbled into this place fifteen years ago and been dubbed a god. We were also the same height, which was spooky, but also useful. The clothes were loose. Footwear was the right length but wide. So she had more padding than me. I'd like to say that I'm slim, but probably skinny is closer to the truth. In the time my predecessor was here, she had acquired a collection of robes, tunics, pants, as well as sandals and boots, all still stored in the temple, all available for me to wear.

  Am I superstitious about wearing the duds of the dead? It beats facing each day with one pair of shorts and two tee shirts. I buy most of my clothes at secondhand stores, anyway, so I was okay with Madame X's leftovers. The next day I dragged all the stuff out into the courtyard and did some heavy soaking and scrubbing, then hung both clothes and footwear in the sun to dry. Nance danced around me complaining bitterly, but Nance was easy to ignore.

  Three days later, robed and jeweled, I faced Tarvik when he led a procession of his guards into the temple. Amazing how our grasp on reality morphs. At first he was a bothersome kid in a costume, then I figured he was a member of a game, then an actor in a reality show, and now I accepted him as the son of some sort of ruling family in a puzzling setting. Magic? Time warp? Had I fallen down a rabbit hole?

  Nance placed me at the front of the altar gripping a lighted candle in my hands. I stood quietly, froze my face into a mask imitating the faces on the wall, and held my eyes as wide open as I could manage. Nance had drawn dark lines around my lids to make my eyes appear rounder and darker. She had even pasted glittering bits of metal the size of grains of sand in my eyebrows. They itched, and it took considerable concentration not to scratch at them.

  When she worked on me, she constantly stroked my face or brushed back my hair with her fingertips. It was annoying, but when I tried to shrug away from her, she looked so hurt.

  Her last gesture was to hug me tightly before leading me into the altar room and to whisper, “You look wonderful. I know you will do well.”

  Both my robe and my hair ornaments matched the portrait of the Daughter. And in the shadows cast by the candles, my gray eyes must have looked as large and dark.

  You could have crashed a lightning bolt through the temple.

  Tarvik's men gasped and fell back from him. They bowed and made strange motions in front of themselves, leaving me to watch in silence and wonder if they were bowing to me or if they were making signs to ward off evil. I stared straight at Tarvik. His face paled but he made no sound. Nance, who stood to one side in the shadows, began the ritual chant, her voice high and clear.

  “Daughter of the Sun, speak for us. Carry our devotion to our god. Lay down our gold and promises at the blessed feet of the Sun. Beg him to smile on us, his forgotten servants. Tell him of the black winters, the hunger. Thank him for sparing us from fever. Remind him of his promise.”

  And so on, blah, blah, blah.

  Now I picked up the chant, did a singsong straight-faced version. My voice was lower than hers. The men who had murmured in fear now fell silent. It was hard to look at all those earnest faces and not giggle. How could they believe I was a priest or maybe even related to gods, and why would they believe anything so absurd?

  “When our spirits are released from our bodies, remember us, Daughter of the Sun. You eased our pain when you were with us. Ease it now, through our god. Guide us to the land of immortality. Save us from the dark and cold.”

  What had they been thinking, those two hikers who stumbled into this place? Because that's who they must have been, lost campers, same as me. Was she a doctor or just a mother who knew home remedies that helped clear up a flu epidemic? Were the chants no more than a trick to control the barbarians and keep herself and her boyfriend/husband/whoever alive? Or had she believed them?

  Oh well, a few years in this funny farm and maybe, like her, I'd be composing prayers to myself.

  Tarvik's followers dropped to their knees, bowed their heads and repeated the chant. Tarvik walked slowly toward me. He wore a long cloak edged with fur and in his outstretched hands he carried a bowl. Nestled in a silk cloth was a pile of gold threads, not gold colored, no, real gold spun fine, like the ones Nance wove in my hair. There was also a finger ring with a large purple jewel, amethyst maybe? And all his trappings, the armbands and rings I had thought were costume jewelry? I now knew the kid was a walking Fort Knox.

  I nodded and he passed by me, setting the bowl
on the altar. Then he backed away, as one of the slaves would do.

  “The Daughter of the Sun accepts your offering,” Nance chanted. “Have you a request?”

  Tarvik stood in front of me, staring, his arms hanging limply at his sides, his eyes wide, his mouth open. The word that popped into my mind was “besotted.” I am average pretty and have had a fair number of boyfriends, but none of them ever looked at me like that.

  Nance repeated her chant. “The Daughter of the Sun accepts your offering. Have you special requests?”

  Tarvik said slowly, still staring at me, “May my gifts buy victory for my father, Kovat.”

  Nance chanted, “The Daughter of the Sun watches over her servant Kovat.”

  When Tarvik did not move, Nance repeated her chant. The third time she said it, I thought about snapping my fingers in front of his face.

  Fortunately that wasn't required because he blinked, lowered his gaze and backed away from me. Then he knelt on the bare earth floor and recited long chants with Nance. I stared down at his bent head, his hair a thick mop of gold in the candlelight. Watching him was somewhat pleasant. Nothing else was. My legs were tired and my ankles itched where my robe touched them. My arms ached from the weight of the candle in its twisted holder.

  Although Nance had told me the chants comforted her people, they weren't doing a thing for my weary bod. At least these folks all wore flat shoes and so I didn't have to stumble around on heels.

  After a few eons, Tarvik and his men rose, backed out of the temple and then closed the double doors. Nance flew out of the shadows, dashed across the room and dropped the bolt. I set the candle on the floor and rotated my shoulders to loosen them. Then I scratched the itching bits of glitter from my eyebrows and next I bent over and scratched my ankles, all very unpriestlike behavior.

  Running to me, Nance threw her plump arms around me. She laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks.

  “Did you see his face?” she cried. “He dares not harm you now. Nor will the others. You are safe with me.”

  “Oh, yeah, I'm hot.”

  “Are you? I'm so sorry, is that robe too heavy?”

  Explain hot? Nah. “I mean, I feel like a fool.”

  “A fool? Stargazer, you look like a god, even Tarvik saw that. Indeed, I know now you are truly a god, for the Daughter herself protects you.”

  “Why do you think that?” I asked.

  “You stood before her altar as her priest and none doubted you. If you were a false god, she would have struck you dead.”

  If I were to be struck dead, it would not be by the Daughter of the Sun, I knew. Much more worrisome was a ruler called The Slayer.

  “How often do we have to put on that show?”

  “My uncle and his castle guards come to the temple once every four days. In his absence, Tarvik leads them.”

  “And the rest of the time?”

  She grabbed my hand and led me to the small chamber whose walls were hung with draperies. We got out of our costumes and stored the velvet robes and gold offerings behind the curtains.

  “The rest of the time, Stargazer, we do as we please so long as Kovat believes we are in the temple. Hurry now, I will untie your hair.”

  Nance pulled a sleeveless tunic over her head, but she gave me a tunic with long sleeves to wear, light cotton slacks, and leather boots, all leftovers from the Daughter. Next she tucked my hair into a scarf.

  “There. Now no one will notice you.”

  “Not notice me! Wearing boots and long sleeves and a scarf over half my face in the middle of the day!”

  She giggled, and though it was easy to see she was pleased, I didn't get the joke. “The sun will be gone soon. And when I go out, I always drape my head in a scarf as do all women. Otherwise our skin turns red. Does not yours?”

  “What would make my skin turn red?”

  “Sun and wind.”

  “My skin tans from the sun, doesn't often burn, it's not like we live in the Sunbelt. And how fast am I to stride past people in these boots so they won't see my face beneath my scarf?”

  She clapped her hands in delight and danced around me. I'd never known anyone so easily excited.

  “You shall see!” she cried.

  She led me back to the outer room opening to her private courtyard.

  Into a large pouch she tucked cheese, bread, meat, an assortment of root vegetables, and a flask of the mead. Enough for several days. She fussed around, rolling small blankets and gathering items we wouldn't be using in the courtyard.

  This looked way too familiar. “Tell me we aren't going camping.”

  She ignored me. When the sun dropped beneath the far hills, she pulled a scarf over her own head, skipped into the corridor behind the temple, stopped, turned and listened. Smiling, she reached up to the blank wall, grasped a metal candle holder jutting from the rock and pulled it. The rock moved, turning until there was room for us to crawl through. When we were on the other side, she pushed the rock back into place.

  “A secret door,” I exclaimed, stopped to examine it. I ran my palms across the smooth rock wall, searching for the seam. “Who put it there?”

  “The castle and stables were built generations ago, before remembering, and the door is forgotten. Kovat built the temple against this wall, unknowing of the door. After my nurse died and I was left alone here, with nothing to do all day but search and touch every item, I found it.”

  A horse snorted.

  I spun around to face a room filled with horses, separated from us by their feeding troughs. They stood quietly in two neat rows, turning their heads slowly to peer at us.

  Against a far wall slouched an old man, his eyes closed in sleep. He snored into his short white beard. He was the first barbarian I had seen with a beard, and it grew in thin tufts along his jaw line.

  Nance ran across the stable to him, shook him and made little trilling sounds. The old man slowly opened one eye, peered at her from beneath his bushy brows, then muttered vague sounds and closed his eye again. To my surprise, Nance kissed his wrinkled cheek.

  He stretched his arms, twisted his head in lazy circles to loosen his neck, then opened his eyes and stood up straight. Spying me, he said, “And who be she? The new priest?”

  “Her name is Stargazer and you must pick her a proper mount.”

  Rubbing his beard, he moved cautiously toward me. When he ducked to peer beneath the fold of my scarf, he clucked his tongue. In his slow, deep voice, he said, “Leave her.”

  “Why, silly love? She cannot spend her days in that gloomy place, no more than I can.”

  “Outlander. Slit your throat for you.”

  Nance jutted out her lower lip, reminding me of her cousin. “Stargazer is my friend.”

  The old man's eyes hardened. “I go with you.”

  “You cannot. Who will care for the horses? When the guards come to the door and find you gone, they will enter, find three horses missing and come searching for us.” Her voice softened into a wheedling sound. “There now, old Lor, old love, you do not want to keep me prisoner in this pile of stones and I cannot leave Stargazer alone. She will be good and do all I say, will you not, Stargazer?”

  She did not wait for my answer nor did the old man. He could barely take his gaze from Nance. In his face shone a fierce love and fear, as though she were his only child.

  “Come now, Lor, what can Stargazer ride? Make it gentle. She is not used to horses. I know! Give her Black. Black will follow Pacer.”

  He grumbled and argued, but Nance ignored him. He gave up, no surprise because Nance had the art of wheedling down pat, and at last he led two horses from their stalls and fitted them out. I watched him buckle straps and smooth blankets, not a skill I intended to learn.

  “Here, Stargazer, you ride Black,” Nance said, in a tone as calm as if she were asking me to put on a scarf.

  “I would rather die first,” I said firmly, thinking I would die anyway if I got onto a horse by myself.

&n
bsp; The old man's lip curled. What busy faces the barbarians had. I might have laughed if they had not been trying to hustle me to my death.

  “Afraid of a little mare, Stargazer?” He probably thought he could shame me.

  He guessed wrong.

  I told him, “Yes. I have never been on a horse except when dragged onto one by that wretched Tarvik.”

  He made a hiccupping noise, his weird attempt at laughter, then grabbed me about the waist and before I could struggle, he swung me up onto the horse. The strength of the barbarians always caught me by surprise. Although he was no taller than me, he lifted me as easily as he might lift a loaf of bread.

  “Hold tight, catch Black between your knees. That's right, dig in, lean forward and you won't fall off,” Nance coached.

  I protested, moaned, and searched for a way to get down without falling. Lor raised his hand and brought it down hard on the horse's rump.

  Black flew out of the stable. I grabbed its mane and buried my face in its neck, at the same time digging my knees into its sides. The horse lurched and swayed beneath me and I expected to be thrown to my death at every flying step.

  Black settled into a rhythm I remembered from the dashes across valleys on Tarvik's horse, Banner. When I dared, I lifted my face and peered through the whipping mane. Ahead of me was the gray one, Pacer, with Nance sitting easily on it. If I really had been a god as she thought me, I would cheerfully have struck her down with a lightning bolt.

  The animals followed a path they seemed to know, down an edge of the hillside away from the huts and cook fires, and then across the shadow-dark plain. Pacer slowed to a walk and Black did also. I sat up, trying to retain some pride in front of Nance. She did not laugh. Perhaps she sensed my fury.

  “We need not hurry now,” she said.

  I glanced back at the city, already faded into dusk. A scattering of torches flickered on the hillside.

  “Very clever of you. And suppose I had fallen off this dumb beast? How would you keep your secret then?”

  She shrugged. “A tame horse is not a beast.”

  “I don’t know which of you is worse, you or your cousin,” I sputtered.

  She wrinkled her nose. “He is.”

  She led the way across the valley until we reached the low hills. We moved on steadily, with the horses following a winding path that all but disappeared in the shadows. Low trees brushed at me. The freshness of the evening air filled my lungs, sweet and clean after the smoky temple. I held tightly to the horse's mane and gripped its sides with my legs. When I could no longer see through the dusk, I kept my face close to its neck to avoid being hit in the head by low branches.

  When we stopped I could just about make out a clearing in the dim moonlight. Nance slid off of her horse and ran back to me, reached up to help me down from Black, then held me until my legs steadied. Good thing, because it was that or pick me up after a major sprawl.

  “We'll camp here for the night.”

  What a surprise, lucky me, another camping trip. “And the temple?”

  “No one enters unbidden. If they knock and are not answered, they go away. They think I spend days alone at prayer. But the Daughter never told me to do that. Old Lor protects my secret.”

  While she moved about collecting wood and lighting our fire, then warming our evening meal, Nance chattered happily. “You will see. We will have great fun. I am truly glad to have you as my friend, Stargazer. Always before I have had to journey alone and how I wished I might have a friend but how could I when I am forbidden to leave the temple?”

  “So do you cut out often?”

  “As often as I can. I cannot exist alone within walls forever.”

  “No one sees you ride out?”

  “Wives and daughters of guards are allowed to borrow horses from the stable. I only ride after sundown. In the shadows and from a distance, no one recognizes me. And if they did meet me on the path, who would know me? They have only seen me dressed in temple robes, my face painted and my hair wound with ornaments. Here, stir the pot while I rub down the horses and tether them. How clumsy you are. Do you know nothing of cooking? If you burn our food then we must eat it burnt. We have no extra. Must I teach you everything? See, I have put no meat in the pot, only grain and roots, so you will eat it.”

  “Nance, even in his tent Tarvik had servants to serve meals. How come you're alone in the temple?”

  “I could have slaves. I hate slaves. They never talk and are more depressing than being alone.” Her voice faded in and out as she moved around the horses, tending them. She added, “What about you, Stargazer? You cannot cook, you cannot ride, and you cannot dress your hair.”

  “I'm not a cook. I know how to ride a bus but don't ask what that is. As for hair, I can wash and comb it,” I grumbled as I tried to stir the pot with the stick she had handed me. “Be glad I do wash my hair and the rest of myself.”

  Nance squatted by the fire and dished up our portions. “What do you do in your land besides wash?”

  “Eat and sleep and mind my own business,” I snapped.

  She laughed. “I mean, what do you do while someone else prepares your meals for you?”

  “I am a Stargazer.”

  “I thought that was your name.”

  “Umm, well, it is also my job.”

  “And what is a job?”

  Get me off the horse and fill me with hot food and I turn cheerful. Achy but cheerful.

  How much should I tell her? And if I told her, would she tell Tarvik and would Tarvik in turn tell others? Would I be less safe if anyone knew I was something other than the new priest? There was no way to explain my world to her. But perhaps I could explain astrology. “I study the stars. I know where they are in the sky and how that tells the future, the best choice of career, when to marry, that kind of thing.”

  Nance squealed with delight. “You see the future? So do the magicians, but they do not use stars. They build a fire and in the flame they see answers.”

  “What magicians?”

  “The magicians of Thunder, a crazy lot. They don't come here any more. Kovat locks them in prison cells and forgets them.”

  “Prison cells? Where do you have prison cells?”

  “Under the castle, holes in the ground, cold and dark.”

  Whoa. Didn't like the sound of that.

  Nance pulled sheepskins from the sack she had carried on Pacer. We smoothed them and settled for the night.

  I lay on my back staring at the familiar stars. Nance was a friendly girl and I liked her company but she could not replace my own world. What were they doing now, my friends in Seattle? Oh, right. Probably telling Darryl I had disappeared to who knew where.

  Ah, if they only knew I was now a god. One friend once said that carved on my tombstone would be the words, “She was always late.” Quite true. I didn't do it intentionally, but I did tend to be late. But imagine adding the words, “Nonetheless, she was a god.”

  From her bed roll Nance said, “They see the future poorly, those magicians. If you can truly tell the future, this will give you much power. I think even Kovat the Slayer will accept you if you do that.”

  And if a ruler called Slayer decided not to accept me, what then?