"Do you really think that those who look ahead can see the future?"
-Attributed to the black alfar poet, Erfrasse.
"Oriel."
Oriel Shirrin lifted his eyes, and blinked a little. He knew the woman in front of him, but she had so changed that at the same time he felt he was meeting someone new. She wore white robes where she had always worn bright colors before, but that was the smallest of the changes. She had a glowing face, eyes transformed with the passing of something great and savage, and a direct gaze where before she had always looked a little to the side like a wolf, and those were much greater.
More, he could feel confidence through his emotional senses, something he had almost never felt from her before. She had not only looked aside, but stepped aside, shied aside, seemed content with a lower place in the world than her character might have entitled her to. And now her confidence buffeted him like waves in a stormy sea.
"Lyada," he said, and held out a hand for her to clasp.
A strange smile brushed across her face. "I forgot," she said softly. "You are almost the last one to know. I am not Lyada."
Oriel lifted his brows. "How can you not be? Are you her sister, or something of the kind?"
The shining blue eyes dimmed with an annoyance he knew well, though she had showed it but a few times. Any difference from her diffidence was so rare that he had marked it, at least during that time in the past when he thought he might be in love with her. "You take things too literally, Oriel, and always did," she murmured. "Now I see why I waited to come to you. My name is Tisuulta now."
Oriel shrugged. "That's an unusual choice. I liked the first name better."
Lyada- Tisuulta, as he supposed he should call her- blew out an exasperated breath. "And I had forgotten how much effort it takes to talk to you. May we go in and sit down, or haven't you finished yet?"
"For the moment."
Tisuulta took a step back and admired his home in silence for a long moment. Oriel held the door open for her in equal silence. He didn't mind people admiring his home. He had been among the first of Oak's settlers to learn the trick of bonding sonor pieces to each other, and he had not scrupled to build houses for others before starting on his own.
While the pieces of metal he had bonded together for others, however, ultimately formed great statues of plants and animals, for his own home he had done something different. He had chosen to sculpt the flowing forms of flames, or of serpents. The house wouldn't be much like either when it was done, but it might be something like the glimpse of grace he'd had in a dragon's eyes years earlier.
Tisuulta walked in at last and sat down at his table without asking for permission. Oriel blinked again, but he was too glad to see it to object. The Lyada he remembered would have waited until she fell dead of hunger rather than sit down without permission.
"Bread and cheese if you have it," murmured Tisuulta, without looking away from the view out the window. Oriel was rather proud of that himself. Instead of glass or wooden frets, he had chosen to spin and pound and beat sonor to its finest form for his own windows, so that he looked out almost through a silvery haze. The view was spectacular, too, revealing the river singing to itself a short distance away, running wild through green, untouched fields. Oriel hoped that the growing city of Oak would leave those fields untouched for a little while. He enjoyed neat rows of orchards as much as the next Elwen, but he didn't want to look at them for a few years.
"I do," he said, and pulled the latest loaf from the shelves he had created. "The cheese is goat's, not cow's. I remember that you used to prefer-"
"That is past and done," said Tisuulta, still not turning her head to face him. Oriel wondered what was so fascinating about the view out his window. Stars knew that he didn't spend so much time staring out himself, at least not when it was a fairly ordinary sunny day. "I don't have preferences now."
Oriel tilted his head to the side. "Yes, you do," he said. "You asked me for bread and cheese instead of flesh."
That at last brought her head around to face him. "You are as annoying as you ever were, Oriel," she said, and there was no softening smile to balance the harshness of her words. Then she took a deep breath and smoothed her shining white hair back behind her ears. "No. I was wrong to demand that from you. I know what you're like, and I have come to you anyway."
"Why?" Oriel asked, pushing the bread and cheese across the table to her.
Tisuulta fell hungrily on them and ate like a raven intent on gorging itself for a few moments. Oriel sat still and enjoyed the swift movements of her head and hands. That, too, was something he remembered. Not all trace of Lyada had completely disappeared from this woman.
When she pushed the remains away and looked up, though, he could see nothing of that woman remaining in her eyes, or her smile.
"So much you don't know," she said softly. "So much that I might teach you."
Oriel sat still, and studied her, and admired the shine of the light reflecting off the river and her hair, and said nothing at all.
"Aren't you curious as to what I've come about?" Tisuulta said at last, with a little prissiness in her tone.
Oriel shrugged. "Yes, of course. But I know that you will tell me when you are ready."
"What does my name suggest to you?"
"It means 'for Suulta,' doesn't it?" Oriel spoke slowly. Save for his own name, which he had appropriated as much for its sound as for anything else, he remained uneasy with Primal, so much the common tongue of the races these days. He still preferred the Arila tongue that the stars had gifted his kind with at their creation of the world five thousand years ago.
He could still remember the starfire burning through his body as he Awakened, and to him, the Arila words were the best way to describe and maintain that connection. He didn't understand why everyone else seemed so eager to forget.
By the look in Tisuulta's eyes, and the way that she rushed over the Arila words, she would do more than forget if she could. She would forsake.
Oriel guessed then what it would be about, but for some reason his discomfort didn't seem to register with Tisuulta. She leaned forward, eyes fixed on his, and spoke as delicately as though she were picking her way across broken glass.
"I came to speak to you because I believe that you might still be in danger."
Oriel shrugged. If this was what he suspected, then it was an unusual way for Tisuulta to begin. "I admit that my house is near the outskirts of Oak, but-"
"Not danger from curalli, or dragons, or wild beasts," said Tisuulta, this time leaning forward so far that she almost fell out of her chair. "Danger of the most insidious kind. Danger from within yourself. You haven't heard, have you, about the promise of the Goddess Suulta?"
"I have heard some of the young ones saying that she would help us for worship, or something of the kind."
"Nothing of the kind!" Tisuulta slammed her palms on the table and leaned forward again, even further. "She has tied Herself to us, and out of no reason but love. When we were born, the fire of the Lord Laerfren burning in us, She looked upon us, and knew that our unrestrained burning might well harm the world. She knew that only something divine could counterbalance that burning, since the fire was a divine gift. And so She bound Herself to us. It was a great sacrifice. Her life will end when we do. That is a sacrifice that none of the other immortal powers has made." Tisuulta sat back, panting, her eyes and face and even her hair aglow with something more than reflected light. Oriel could feel flames like the ones she had spoken of raging behind her barriers.
"I thought she ruled compassion, or something of the kind."
"Not just compassion," said Tisuulta. "But calmness, and peace, and all the other treasures that we forsake too often in our haste to have something more than we have at the moment. She can help us learn calmness, Oriel. She can help us to train the magic that would destroy the ground and the other races and ourselves."
Oriel snorted lightly. "All of those have their own magic, their own means of defending themselves. And I don't think that I need to worry about destroying myself with my emotional magic. The other way around, rather. I have been told that I am too calm."
"Calm?" A smile washed over Tisuulta's lips like flotsam borne on the tide. "But you sound angry."
Oriel stared at her. "Have you lost your senses as well as your sanity?" he asked. "I am not radiating anger, and you know it, or would, did you listen. I am not angry. I am merely wondering about the purpose of your visit."
"To tell you about the Goddess Suulta."
Oriel shrugged. "So you've told me. I should get back to binding sonor, unless there is something else that you wish to tell me."
"You have to make a decision." A bead of sweat slid down Tisuulta's face.
"About what?"
"Damn it!" Tisuulta flung herself back from the table, the chair making a long screech and scratch across the floor. Oriel flinched, but locked his eyes with hers and accepted that as best he could. "You know very well what I mean. You must decide whether to worship Suulta or not."
Oriel sighed. "I thought that it might be something like that. And the answer is that I don't want to waste my time going to a temple and chanting and singing when I don't really enjoy it. I sing to the stars at night, and that is all I want to do."
"Have you ever been to the Temple?"
"Not here." Oriel had passed through a few temples in villages on the way south. He had never understood them. They were cool, white and silver places without raised voices or any emotions except compassion and calm, fine places for patients to recover from wounds but not for anyone else to live.
"You should come," said Tisuulta. "I think you will find something different there, something different from what you may have seen in other temples."
"What?"
Tisuulta shrugged, and her emotions had retreated behind a wall of calm again- almost. If that was not a smug smile, then Oriel had never seen one. "I have heard it given many, many different names. But one thing is certain. After a service in the Temple, then everyone I have spoken to becomes a convert to Suulta, and accepts that She only wants the best for us."
"I can accept it. One thing that I don't understand is what she would want in return."
"Praise. Worship. Little things, really, in return for the counterbalancing that She does, giving us our destinies so that we and the rest of the world can go on living our lives instead of destroying ourselves."
Oriel nodded. "I thought that might be it," he said, and thought only the smooth surface of his voice defeated the scrabbling claws of Tisuulta's eyes. "I will come to the service tonight. At what hour does it begin?"
"Sunset."
"And is it long?"
"It doesn't need to be," said Tisuulta. "Just a half hour or so, and then you will see that She truly has something to offer you."
Oriel stood and bowed her out the door, then looked to the west as she walked away. The river curved there, singing, and flowed away to join Acrad the Great, but that wasn't what he was looking at. Though the light knelt more and more before the dark each day, the late summer evenings still poured light across the sky for a good, long, slow sunset, and would for a dance or so more.
The timing of the service should be perfect, then.
*****
"Welcome, my lord."
Oriel started. He didn't know the frost-haired woman bowing to him, and she didn't know him either, he was fairly certain. Though he had heard titles tossed around like flowers in spring lately, he wondered that she had so given the title to him.
"I have not Claimed land, or become high blood," he said.
The woman straightened and gave him a smile. Her face was as motionless, save for the smile, as a mask of beaten metal. "I know that, my lord. But all who accept Suulta are lords and ladies of their emotions, and it is for that that we address them."
"I have not yet accepted Suulta."
"This is your first time in the Temple?"
Oriel nodded.
The woman smiled a little wider. It was an infinitesimal movement, but it was there. Oriel found himself straining after her emotions and forced himself to stop. She had no emotions to feel, locked behind stone walls as they were. It was like being blind, but if he went seeking them, he would only alert her that he was seeking them, and quite possibly annoy her.
"You will find Suulta here," said the woman. "I am certain of it. There are many other newcomers here as well." She nodded to a section of seats in the back. "You may sit there, and be welcome."
Oriel walked towards the seats, noting that others were openly staring around them and gawping at the Temple. Well, then, he could as well.
But he looked, and frowned.
The Temple was made of white stone that was only slowly being replaced by sonor. The great worship room he had stepped into arched perhaps twenty feet overhead, the walls curving in on themselves in a way that suggested the priests envisioned the final building as an animal with a belly of some kind. Or perhaps an egg, Oriel thought. He could imagine trying to hatch out of this room.
Or pounding on the sides of the shell, never to get out.
Oriel shook the image away and turned towards the front of the room, towards the altar.
A large block of marble that gleamed white and white and white, without even the usually prized veins of green or blue, it hosted several white-robed clerics at the moment, bustling back and forth and whispering to each other. Oriel strained his ears, and caught a few of the words. "...out of the ordinary... surely She has granted us tonight... many converts..."
Oriel sighed and looked away. The walls had designs on them, designs in pale colors that he had at first thought mere random patterns. Now, though, he could see they formed a pair of enormous, diamond-shaped, Elwen eyes. The same pair, he thought, repeated over and over, with only the colors varying: here faded yellow, there a blue on the edge of nothingness, and just beside him a green that resembled pond scum or what his own eyes might look like after a long bout of sickness. Oriel drew close, staring at the eyes and wondering why the priests liked them. The other newcomers looked at thems and then away, repulsed by them. His people cared for strong, bright shades, the hues most often represented in their own eyes and hair.
"Do you like them?"
Oriel started so badly that he nearly fell over. He hadn't felt Tisuulta come up, and he turned around and bowed to her with as much dignity as he could. "The designs might be pretty in different colors," he said.
"Suulta does not like bright colors."
Oriel shook his head. She spoke it as if it were a truth on the order of water being wet, even looking at him a little, disapprovingly, as if she couldn't understand why he didn't believe it. "But why not?"
"They encourage passion." Tisuulta looked up at the eyes herself, and Oriel would have said that the smile on her lips burned, save that that was impossible for a calm smile. "She doesn't want Her servants thinking about anything but Her, and how best to heal the sick and end war in the world."
"That is one of her causes, as well?"
If Tisuulta took note of the scorn in his voice, she didn't let it bother her. "Oh, yes," she said. "Think about it. What is the main reason that wars are fought?"
Oriel shrugged. "Slights of honor. To preserve a people's freedom. To make sure that one city and not another controls precious water or food." He paused, studying her profile, and added, "In the south, the corame fight because they say that their Goddess cannot stand the presence of evil in the world. There are ugly rumors there. They have slain all the lanime, it's said, their dark-skinned kin."
Tisuulta turned and glared up at him, her barriers falling for a moment. Oriel gloried in the rush of emotions as he would at light if he had been shut in a dark prison. "Why do you tell me such things?"
"You asked."
"They have not killed all the lanime," said Tisuulta firmly. "And even if they had, small loss would that be to the world! They ate the bodies of the dead, did you know that? And they wandered naked and sang, and laughed at those who came to teach them."
"So there are some wars that you wouldn't want to put an end to?"
"The ceremony will begin soon," said Tisuulta, her voice cool as the marble, and turned and glided to the front of the room.
Oriel took his seat on one of the long stone benches, fixing his eyes on the clerics. They had begun to sway, and the ones on either end lit candles. Oriel winced as he watched their long sleeves sway past the flames, and wondered why they hadn't simply called upon emotional magic. Those fires would burn at the ends of their fingers, and could not harm land Elwen flesh unless their owners willed it so.
Oh, of course. Because it would probably offend the goddess to do so. Oriel yawned.
The priests began to sing, dancing in circles and lowering and lifting their arms. Oriel supposed the long sleeves were supposed to add grace to their movements, but to his eyes, they looked more like landed fish.
Then Tisuulta stepped forward, a lighted candle in each hand. She put them on the altar and knelt between them, both her long robes and her hair dangerously close to the flames.
"Hear us," she said, and there was a tone of supplication in her voice that would have sounded fearful to Oriel, could he have called anything about her normal any more. "Great Lady, hear us."
The other clerics repeated behind her, "Great Lady, hear us."
"White Lady, hear us!" Tisuulta looked up, shaking back her white robes, and her own long white hair hung around her in a dazzling blaze. Oriel smiled a little as he smelled burning incense. He hadn't thought they intended to honor Suulta with ordinary fire. That was probably even more of a symbol of passion than bright color.
"White Lady, hear us."
"The world is disordered," said Tisuulta, and now she was swaying back and forth. Oriel stirred in his seat. It looked feverish, or as if she had drunk too much and would collapse. "We come to Thee, our hands extended, and ask for Thine help. Put the world back in order, and make us as we were meant to be, not passionless creatures but creatures in control of our own minds and hearts, fires tamed to burn to Thy will. Grant us this, and we will give Thee thanks and praise forever."
"Thanks and praise."
Tisuulta began to repeat the prayer, varying it just a little, and Oriel heard some in the audience joining in. He glanced from face to face, and saw even some of the newcomers watching with flushed cheeks, speaking in passionate voices, and extending their hands towards the scented flames.
Why?
Perhaps it was something that was meant to catch up others and not him. Oriel sighed. He should have expected that. Though he could feel the emotions swirling around him like a gentle blast of flower petals, he couldn't contribute anything to them, since all he felt was impatience that would cut through the petals and the gauzy web of dreams like a blade. He shut in his emotions and lowered his eyes, waiting until it was done.
At one point his vision wavered, and he shook his head, leaning towards the fresh air that blew in through the Temple doors. The incense cleared from his mind almost at once. Oriel smiled grimly, glad that he hadn't sat closer, and returned his gaze to the altar.
Tisuulta stood again, her head tilted back, her hands spread, her voice crooning a clear and wordless song. Oriel could feel the excitement, or what he supposed most closely approximated it, building. He looked from face to face again, wondering if something new might happen.
Something did.
Tisuulta lifted her arms, and white fire flashed from them. For a moment, racing streamers of flame encircled her. Oriel blinked, trying to make sure it wasn't just the reflections of the candlelight in her polished white robe, but it didn't seem to be. She shone, transfused with light, and calm, and peace.
That bothered Oriel most of all. Here was Tisuulta, in the midst of religious ecstasy, and she radiated no more feeling than she would have had she found a particularly pretty flower on a Springwalk. In fact, she radiated less than Oriel thought he would have.
The moment passed. Tisuulta dropped her head forward, and said, "She has come, and honored us with Her passing. She has heard our prayers." Tears gleamed on her cheeks, but her voice continued without pausing. Oriel wondered if she would consider it dishonorable to stutter or sob while speaking the words. "She will grant us what we ask for, the glory of order in the world, so long as we never stop living and striving to serve Her."
The voices murmured and rose and fell. Oriel glanced around again. He had to. The emotions that had beaten like living wind from the people around him when he first entered the Temple no longer did so. Nearly everyone in sight looked as calm as Tisuulta.
He sighed, and stood when the congregation did, and filed outdoors.
They stood on a lawn that surrounded the Temple already, a lawn on which priests and priestesses alike worked devotedly. Oriel could see a few of them moving among the flowers as dusk descended, murmuring over the night-blooming ones. They were all white or silver, of course, those flowers. No flashes of any deeper color.
He looked up.
The sunset had died, and in the east he could see the first stars blooming. The stars, who had created Oriel and his kin and dozens of other races of Elwens, and then withdrawn from the world to watch and shine. The stars, whose gift was not peace, or the guarantee of wonder or joy, but freedom.
Oriel drew in his breath and began to sing.
Some of the celebrants filing from the Temple, who had been talking in subdued voices, turned shocked faces to him as he sang. Oriel ignored them, continuing to sing, his head tilted back and his throat throbbing with the effort. And the notes that emerged from his throat, though as liquid and as sweet as the song that Tisuulta had sung in the Temple, could not be more different.
He began with a deep tone, one that quickly ascended, both into the sky and into the realms of the higher pitches. It dipped and swelled, faded almost to a whisper, then rose again. Silver filled it, and sunlight, and song, and apples, because Oriel liked apples. He sang the sunlight of the day- after all, what was the sun but a closer star?- and the quiet coolness of night. He sang part of the peace, too, that an Elwen could feel when he watched the sunset dying and knew that he had accomplished everything he wanted to for that day.
But he did not stop there. His voice roved on, gathering claws as he thought of the owls who would kill this night, of the stags' antlers growing sharper as their autumn battle approached, of the piercing gleam on the scales of the young dragon toms as they began training for the spring competitions to pair their queens. Deadly, perhaps. The owls killed to live. The stags could stagger into the forest with their antlers tangled and die. The toms would not hesitate to kill each other, with all the savagery of intelligence and cunning mingled. They might die.
They would live.
Oriel's throat burned by the time he began to lower his voice again, whispering nearer and nearer to earth, letting the sound fall back into the lower registers and speak of water. The water would become the dew on the grass in the morning, and the water in the pools of the Temple. Then his voice heated and flashed forth once more in a brassy call, hot and bright as the silver blood that flowed in the veins of his kind.
Then Oriel ceased, and stood looking up at the stars. He had heard some Elwens say that peace fell over their souls as they finished singing, but he had never found it so. He felt a restrained alertness instead, like a stag sniffing for enemies, ready to feed and ready to run.
He turned and met Tisuulta's eyes. She was shaking. "How dare you sing on the Temple grounds?" she said.
Oriel smiled. "So you are intelligent enough to recognize a declaration of war," he said.
Tisuulta's face rippled. Then she shut off her emotions again. "Suulta's priests do not fight wars," she said. "They stop them."
"Elwens don't," said Oriel, and he turned and walked away from her.
Halfway across the lawn, he became aware of someone following him. He spun, wondering if perhaps a cleric had come to hurt him. But the woman, though she wore the white robes of a cleric, also wore an expression of stricken wonder. It was, in fact, the frost-haired woman who had greeted him when he first came into the Temple.
"Will you- teach me?" she asked, reaching out and clasping his hands.
"You already know how to sing," said Oriel, gently.
"But I haven't done it in so long..."
Oriel nodded. "I can help you, then. But I don't sing the same song every evening. It would do you no good to just learn the song I sang tonight."
The woman looked down at her hands, then back up at him. Her eyes, dark but flecked with silver spots for the stars, shone at him, and with both tears and pride. "I know," she said. "That is why I want to learn." She took a deep breath and firmed her clasp on his hands. "My name is Telkyd."
Oriel smiled. "Those Primal words, I know. 'Mind like light flashing off a crystal.' It's a good start."
Together, they walked away into the gathering starlight.
*****
"Claiming the land? How unlike you."
Oriel looked up at Tisuulta, and shrugged. "The meadow is very nice," he said. "But I thought that it was time I put some roots down, for myself and the orchards." He turned back to the land and called again on the earth magic, slitting the vein in his wrist so that his silver blood could fall freely on the soil. The earth surged to meet him, accepting the blood and sealing to him. He would burn if it burned, now, and it would sicken if he did.
Tisuulta curled her lip with enough force that Oriel could feel it. "Such a bloody and disgusting rite."
"Haven't you Claimed the land where your Temple rests?"
"No, of course not. Suulta holds it inviolate for us."
Oriel nodded. He really shouldn't have been surprised, he told himself, wrapping a bandage around his wrist. He turned to Tisuulta, and felt the land wake up beneath him, ready to defend him if need be. "Why did you come here?" he asked.
"To ask you to come back to the Temple."
"All right."
Tisuulta's eyes widened, and again there came a flash of surprise before she cut herself off. "You are willing to do it?"
"Yes, of course. If you manage to convince me, then you manage to convince me." Oriel smiled at her surprise. "I wanted to ask you if you will start singing to the stars at night, besides."
"No. Of course not. It would be blasphemy."
Oriel grinned at her.
"Damn it, stop that," Tisuulta whispered.
Telkyd appeared around the corner, stopping with a wariness that became anger almost at once. It hadn't taken her long to recover her emotions, once she was out of the Temple. "My lady," she said. "What are you doing here?"
"Leaving," said Tisuulta. "The Goddess is not welcome here." She turned and departed.
Telkyd came up beside Oriel and watched her go. "Do you think she'll win?" she asked.
"Probably," said Oriel calmly. "She is a genius at convincing people. You've seen how most of Oak turned to the worship of Suulta after spending a few evenings in the Temple with her, or even only a few hours."
"But then- why stay here?"
Oriel looked into her eyes. "Because I want to," he said. "I will it so."
After a moment, Telkyd nodded. "I don't want to leave yet," she said. "But I might. I can see what Oak will become, and I don't think that I want to stay too near something like that."
Oriel shrugged. "It is entirely your own decision, Telkyd."
She smiled at him. "Yes, it is."
