Once Was: Book One of the Asylum Trilogy (2 page)

My captor quivered, his anger coating my tongue as he breathed onto my upturned face. I could feel the screaming inside his skull as he barely restrained the urge to strike me. Liand would not allow him to mar my flesh more than necessary; I had seen the fliers for my capture posted in all the city gathering halls. My captor could not make me look at him from brute force. I would not give him the satisfaction of doing anything on their terms.

When his superior officer forced me to my knees, and both men gripped my hair, I cringed. The smell of the spirits on their breath was as rank as the dried sweat on their uniforms; days of marching followed by chasing me on horseback had not improved their scent or moods. There had been no denying my capture was coming; Liand would never have let me go uncaught for many more months. Hundreds of battalions had dispersed from their headquarters in Lorilindo, all to find me. If I had been any other priestess, I might have been flattered at how badly he wanted me destroyed. Instead, I was dismayed by my capture.

My disappointment stemmed from the desire for more years free beneath the open sky and the need to satisfy my curiosity. I had to find what had happened to Fion. More than that, I had to return to Madani at least once more, then go on to the temple in Sheelin. Existing beneath the banner of the Sun Lord within Liand’s prison was not the way I wished to retire from my missionary work. In the dark recesses of my heart, I have always known my retirement from the world would be spent in the Temple. Here in Silvatania, or worse—Lorilindo, was not where I wanted my path to divert from the Goddess-given road I walked. I wished to forge my own way and return to Her when I was ready.

“Look at me, Witch!” Spittle coated my cheeks and lashes, the wet heat cooling in the autumn breeze. “Open your blasted eyes and look at me!” Pain burned through my scalp as the leader’s hand tightened, breaking some strands of hair at the base of my braids.

Serenity filled me as I prepared to meet death. If I could push him just a little farther, it would all be over. Death was yet another surrender. As a priestess, I had no fear of leaving this life, though I had no desire to do so as of yet. There were far too many lives I could yet reach in Their service. There were far too many followers of the new religion for me to enrage in my own service.

Aye, that too.

With my lips curving up into a mocking smile of acquiescence, I opened my eyes, the green-tinged grey cold as I regarded my captors. “I’ve opened my eyes, kind sirs. How else may I assist you? Do you require healing?” A quick appraisal showed heavy limbs and soft flesh; neither would be able to catch me in a footrace should I gain my escape. “Nay. You saw my markings and need an oneira’s interpretation of your dreams.” The flash of anger in their eyes gave me hope. Angry men were careless men.

Pitching my voice into a low, sultry tone, I whispered, “Tell me your dreams. I can make them reality.” The magic to force their hearts to slow and minds to rest so that I could twist a dream into shape would overtax me, but I would still have enough energy to escape. “You have caught an oneira, what more do you want?” Despite the rough twine digging into my wrists, I spread my palms as wide as I could, my gaze changing to one of false-innocence.

Their smiles, when they came, were dirtier than their hands. “Hear how the little heretic sings when she wants to save her breakable neck?” Thick fingers moved to cup my chin, callouses scraping my skin. “So breakable,” he repeated.

An inch closer and I could bite.
Bas, help Your daughter
, I called out silently to my Goddess. Would She still answer me?

*

“And answer you I did, didn’t I, My daughter?” Bas pulled me out of the vision as quickly as She had thrust me into it.

My heart pounded like the drums of my first hidden sight, burning and cramping as it tried to give my body everything it needed to fight the men who had held me. It remembered the magic I had summoned to blind their eyes, cramp their hands, and allow me to run. True, I ran straight into another trap and was taken before Liand.

My body had never learned not to respond to visions. However, even lost to the whims of Bas’ power, I had done my healer duties to the man on his makeshift mattress of old clothes within a straw ticking sack. Black and green syrup ran down his body to puddle on the rocky ground. The fever had cooled to just above a normal temperature; Aya’s forge no longer ravaged his body as it tried to burn out the sickness. Labored lungs were now clear, though weak. He would need days of rest before they begged safe passage to the inner lands, fertile countries where the war had not yet taken root.

“Thank you, Lady.” Something in me, perhaps my soul, ached as the woman old enough to be my grandmother’s mother bent to touch her forehead to the ground. “May the Paw shelter you in your travels, Lady of the Moon Circlet.”

As if I had forgotten it, my fingers, still coated in the illness that could not touch me, rose to the simple metal band resting upon my brow. I had not always been burdened with the circlet of the Lady, nor had I been plagued with Her dreams my entire life; the first few years of my childhood were spent free. My eighth birth celebration had just passed when the walking nightmares began in earnest.

Waking from the dream of the nemeton ablaze, I was too young to seek the truth in what I beheld. I lacked the training to seek out the subtle nuance to determine the moments leading up to the glimpse of possibility She gave me. It was for me as it had been for all other priestesses.

When the burning vision did not end upon opening my eyes, I had tried to escape the burning Grove. Running from the horrific images painted behind my eyes, I smashed into a stately, bedside mirror my father had made for me. The worked silver frame had mocked me in tinkling silence as it shed its broken reflection still displaying my dream.

I have been escaping it ever since. Nay, that is not quite truth. I revel in the powers She and Aya have granted me in Their names. I have loved the intricate vines etched into my arms by the Oracle’s handmaidens as they marked me as an oneira
—
a dreamer
—
and a healer. Most initiates of the Goddess only had one school; She gave me two. Pale spirals of clouds and stars wrapped around trees and stylized hearts, dreams and lives entwined. No priestess had the same tattoos, but mine rivaled even the Oracle’s.

That distinction made me the source of envy. Women gossiped behind my back, darting looks as Sesha, the Oracle of Bas, summoned me to her chambers for an extra lesson in oneiromancy. I learned to dream walk before my menses had begun. What other priestesses struggled to harness even a rudimentary understanding of, I mastered by the time they could give me the clawed paw mark upon my brow.

The healer on the island had given me my lines too young, and they faded as I grew; the clawed mark became all but indistinguishable when the summer’s sun tanned my aging skin. The crescent moon
—
a claw of Bas
—
still displayed my allegiance to the old religion. The silver circlet was given to each priestess when she was deemed ready to spread Bas’ healing touch throughout the world. It was a sign of my missionary status, a weight to remind me of my devotions, a binding touch to hold me true to my path.

As if I could ever forget.

The band would do more for the old couple than it did for me. Pushing in and up, I freed the circlet from the skin it rested on, feeling its smooth warmth glide up my forehead until loose. “Sell it,” I ordered. The woman cried but offered outstretched hands, then snatched it to her chest. She was shrewd enough to realize she could sell it to the soldiers for weeks of food, safe passage past the Wall, and have enough remaining gold to purchase a few months of room and board in a refugee camp.

“Tell them you came across a woman named Asha if they ask. The priestess was sleeping and you used your husband’s hunting knife to slit her throat. She’s a fire-bearer. Her tattoos are of ships sailing in a sea of flames.” Asha never came this far north or west, but the soldiers and priests of Liand’s faith would not know that. A priestess dead meant a round of drinks around the fire that night.

I should have been happy Bas held off Her judgment until I left my patient to sleep off the after effects of my magic. She was even gracious in Her allowance of time for me to wash in the communal bath house. Closing Her out of my mind had been a conscious effort for more than eighteen months. Each cycling of the moon had grieved my heart. I could feel Her there, watching, waiting, praying for me to open to Her. She was a Goddess, and likely able to force me to Her will, but She had the patience of a mother. She knew that forcing me would gain my action but not my heart.

My hair, another of the symbols of my office, was long. It had gone uncut save minor trims for health in my twenty plus years of service. It hung to my knees when unbound, and brushed my waist when plaited in three long braids that I twined together. She waited as I oiled the strands, looking much like a cat feigning disinterest in its prey, Her golden hair shimmering in the fading sunlight. Outside of the too-wide eyes reminiscent of a feline’s, Bas showed me Her human form as She soaked in the steaming water. Any others coming to bathe might see a shadow near the water when She moved, not the form She created for me.

I dried my hair slowly, the woven cotton wicking the mint-scented water in which I had bathed. I pulled a comb through and replaited the lengths, a feat requiring minutes in what used to take hours. “I am ready, Mother,” I admitted at last as my linen shift settled over my hips.

“Shoes, Roseen. You will need them.” Bas stepped from the water, sheets of clear droplets running off ample curves a doxy would envy. A white robe of the sheerest silk covered Her already dry body. She watched in amusement as I laced the mid-calf high boots and smoothed the creases from the leather. They were a gift from my father the last time I passed through Bivii.

Bas did not allow me to stand upright before Her hand settled on my chest, a claw hooking beneath the skin to catch my breastbone. She tugged Her hand free, leaving no visible wound, but I could feel the string connecting Her deadly scythes to my heart.

“It’s time to come home, Roseen. You’ve been called.”

Chapter Two

Learn to love the land, Children. Your service to Bas will lead you outside the mapped boundaries and into the wild. Your feet and heart will be your only companions on days where you believe even the Mother has abandoned you. She is always there, if you reach out to Her. Remember that any forge will shelter you. All smiths belong to Aya and will give you a roof for a night. It is only right that devotees of the Goddess’ Consort protect Her priestesses.

Letters to the Initiate, Tenth Consort

H
ome.
Did
a nomadic priestess have one?

Madani, the town that expelled me as if I were a plague-ridden murderer when I was but a child, no longer welcomed me but was still my home. Before my forced education, I had thought Madani was the center of life for the entire world, not a mere harbor community in which I was a girl destined to be ostracized. Madani natives lived the way we always had, thatched roofs and sun-bleached wood walls. We were not poor, but we did lack the wealth of our sister city, Aristeer. Our people were happy and rich of heart if not of gold within our pockets.

The tides of our lake
—
what I thought then to be an ocean
—
brought life to our village in the forms of fish, shells, and trade, but the waters claimed a steep price. They also took our women away.

There is an island in the center of the lake where the women—and the rare men—who had aislings were taken. The Goddess Bas awakened their abilities, then called them to Sheelin for training in Her ways. Much like the hooking claw still tugging me home, Her paws swept up devoted priestesses and gathered them in Her service.

It was by some divine choice that Bas marked the women as special to Her, and in return they required education to handle their new abilities. It was to that magic isle of trainers I was sent in my eighth year when Bas’ mark appeared. The fine scars itched when I thought of those first days.

While my mother abandoned our partially made breakfast to pluck the glass shards from my skin, leaving mirrored red snakes running down my arms, father fetched the healer from her hut. In my darkest memories, those I have hidden along with those Bas makes me remember as punishment, echoes of Kira’s words call to me. “This will sting, Roseen, but less than Sheelin’s first sign must have.”

The island did not just bring pain; it ripped my family apart from my first dream. Father’s eyes shimmered in the morning light as Kira coaxed the remaining glass from my flesh. His jaw had been clenched as the healer bound my arms with a pungent, yellow paste reminiscent of the golden rod that harkens the start of summer. His face was far less stoic than it should have been.

I believe he knew this was coming. As a smith, Father was a priest of Aya, even though he worked without the official bands upon his wrists. He would have heard the divine whispers as he stoked the fires and hammered blades. The morning my sister, Sava, was made aware of her initiation into the priesthood, Father had come in with a torq for her. The simple copper braid ended in her favorite sunflowers, the centers of each metal blossom embossed with our family crest.

Father’s soot covered cheeks were tear-streaked upon his return. The clean tracks showed the pain he tried to hide. When he came in with the healer for my arms, the tears flowed without care. Mother was too busy acting as an apprentice to Kira to show me her fear, or perhaps she too had known that my feet were already upon the Goddess’ path.

I do not recall crying from the pain in my arms; in that respect I was an exemplary citizen of Madani. Youth there are taught in childhood to accept what comes with grace and move onto the next experience with the gained wisdom of the past. I suppose I must have cried; the scars are still upon my arms, unseen to all but the closest lover. Fion had mapped them out with a soft touch when we were together outside of Aristeer. Liand had traced them with the tip of a dagger, reopening the largest of the lines, when I was forced to be a willing courtesan of his attentions. The priests I had sometimes lain with on Sheelin never worried about the marks, claiming all priestesses bore scars. I was lucky enough to bear mine on the surface.