The Lotus Ascension (24 page)

Chapter Fifteen

“
Please, Your Grace, will you follow me?”

“
Yes, of course.” Sillara followed Vaelus as he led her once more
through the wide streets of Tambril's City. She and Konas had now been a week
among these strange Desertmasters, and though she was now fully recovered from
her ordeal in the desert, she was not sure yet about Konas's eyes. The injuries
they had sustained during the sandstorm itself had been exacerbated by their
two-day walk thereafter, despite the care she had insisted he take. She hoped
that soon he would be well enough to attempt the return to Arinport.

“
Does this please you?” Vaelus stopped before a large dwelling,
easily half again as large as any building she had seen aside from Tambril's
temple-tomb.

“
It is a fine building,” said Sillara. “What is its purpose?” The
week she had spent among these people was more than sufficient for her to have
learned their tongue, particularly as it was so similar both to ancient Sunjaa
and to ancient Fihdal, two languages she had studied thoroughly.

“
It is for you. It is the Queen's house, the one prepared for you
centuries ago. Oh, and Sir Konas may dwell there, too.”

Sillara
smothered the smile that tried to form. No matter how often she told them that
Konas's title was “Lord”, they refused to give him that honorific. She suspected
that it was due to his pure-blooded status. She had noticed that the
Desertmasters viewed themselves, as a mixed-blooded people, to be superior. It
amused her that this racial pride, so prevalent among the Sunjaa, should have
survived in a group whom the Sunjaa themselves would have shunned.

“
But the house we have now suffices,” said Sillara. A sudden worry
took from her any desire to smile.
“For we will not be long
among you.
You need not have given me the Queen's house.”

Vaelus
smiled,
an indulgent, easy smile that struck Sillara like a
dagger of ice. “That is as it pleases Abrexa and her Master.”

“
You know Abrexa?” asked Sillara. “How long have the Desertmasters
dwelt here?”

“
For nearly one-thousand-five-hundred years,” said Vaelus. He opened
the door and showed Sillara a larger, more open space than the small house
where she and Konas had spent the past week. Again, however, she noticed that
there were two beds, this time, in fact, in two separate rooms.

“
And how do you know Abrexa?” asked Sillara. “For the goddess has
been known to mortals for less than a millennium.”

“
She is the River-goddess, the Lady of Lakes,” said Vaelus. “How
should she not make herself known to us when Galadrin abandoned the waters?”

“
True.” Sillara looked over the house as she spoke. “It is larger
than two people need.”

“
But you will need servants.” Vaelus led the way up the second floor.
“For you
are
the Queen.”

Sillara's heart
thudded painfully in her chest.
Queen and Queen.
Roses and roses.
Why could she not be left alone? “Where I
would be accounted Queen,” she said, “for I am of royal blood even among my own
people, Queens have no servants. A King must be able to do anything for
himself.”

Vaelus stared.
“Royal among—you are indeed the gift of Abrexa to us!
For we
had thought that it would be strange to you to be a Queen, not that we would be
taking the Queen of another people from them.”

Sillara squared
her shoulders. “But is this house the only reason you brought me out this
morning?”

“
No,
Your
Grace.” Vaelus's embarrassment was
clear in his lowered eyes. “We would like for you to bless those who have taken
ill with the water-sickness.”

“
Water-sickness?”
Sillara did not even hesitate at the suggestion she should touch
the ill. It was too much a part of her life, wherever she was, for it to
surprise her. “What is this?”

“
It is a fairly recent thing, Your Grace.” Vaelus, having shown her
through the two large bedchambers on the upper floor, bedchambers for servants
Sillara had refused, now led her back down and outside. “The water from the
well does not always agree with us, but we dare not drink too deeply of the
lakes.”

Sillara
understood. To drink too much of the lakes would make them vulnerable to the
desert winds, and the water would be lost altogether. “Who designed your well?”

“
It was Tambril's own creation,” said Vaelus. “And we who attend
it—and all his other designs—are the priests of Abrexa's Master.”

An
Ausir,
or half-Ausir at any rate.
Sillara said, “Show me, then, his designs. And do you also give to
Lord Konas any collection of histories you might have, for if I am to be your
Queen, I must know of you.” Sillara had yet no clear intention of being the
Queen of the Desertmasters, but she hoped instead to find a reason in their
history for refusing this crown. She knew, too, of course that Konas, with his
bandaged eyes, could not even try to read the documents, but she would do that
herself later.

“
Of course,
Your
Grace.” Vaelus took her
back to the temple-tomb of Tambril, and there he opened for her skillfully
concealed crevices where plans had been stored. They were not, as the Sunjaa
records usually were, on papyrus, but rather on a parchment the likes of which
Sillara had never seen. It was neither sheep nor calf-skin, but she could tell
that it was of something that, like calf-skin, could have been treated
differently to produce leather.

“
And these are all?” Sillara looked up, hearing the distant footsteps
of three approaching men.

“
They are, Your Grace.” Vaelus was clearly puzzled that she did not
look at him.

Sillara sighed
when she saw that it was three acolytes, all attired like Vaelus, in the
official cloaks of their order. Underneath the cloaks they wore only the skin
loincloths that all
Desertmasters
wore. “Do you serve
Tambril himself?” she asked.

“
No, for he was only the instrument
of Veirakai.”
Vaelus, now that his acolytes were
with him, spoke the name of Abrexa's Master openly. “It is from Veirakai that
all craft springs.”

“
True enough. You do not take these out of the temple.” She turned
her attention back to the stack of parchments. “Fetch light, please, for these
are faded with much time.”

“
You heard Her Grace.” Vaelus sent the acolytes scurrying, and soon
Sillara was seated at a table, surrounded by oil-lamps, with the parchments
before her. Behind her rose the steps to Tambril's sarcophagus.

She smiled wryly
up at the sarcophagus. “Did you think,”
she
murmured
in Ausir, “whoever you are, that your works would become the relics of a cult
of Veirakai?
One that would worship your craft?”

Shaking her
head, she bent her attention on the parchment. She soon saw that Tambril must
have been a very skilled craftsman indeed, as well as an engineer, for the
pumps he had designed were brilliantly executed. She could find only three
places where they might have been improved, which was fewer than in any design
she had seen before. She and Soren had often played with designs before he went
to sea, taking turns pointing out where the designers could have improved their
plans. She felt her throat tighten, and she wished Soren were here with her
now. He would have loved to see something so well-designed.

Sillara leaned
her head down on her arms and let the tears flow. Konas was safely sleeping,
for his eyes were still bound, though the bandages were due off that evening.
She did not weep before him, for she did not wish to seem to reproach him for
having carried her off into the desert. How could she blame him for loving her?
But she missed Soren with an unspeakable ache. It was not like her fear of
death, for that she knew that Soren had felt from her. She expected he could
feel this, too, for she felt his impatience to see her, too. This was like what
she had felt when he had first gone to sea, but it was worse in that there was
no set end. When Soren had gone to sea, she had wept for a week. Each day
thereafter she had marked off, counting down until his return, but how could
she count now? When could she see him again?

“
Enough, Sillara.”
She spoke to herself sternly. “Would you drag Soren down with your
weakness? He will come for you as soon as he can.”

“
Sillara?”
Konas's voice made Sillara glad she had already dried her tears,
despite the fact that he was still being led by the hand by one of the
Desertmaster youths.

“
Yes, Konas?”
She rose and went to him. “Did they bring you the histories I asked
for?”

“
So that is what those stacks of parchment were.” Konas smiled,
enfolding her in his arms. “What does Vaelus want of you now?”

“
I have been looking over the designs of their well.”

“
Your Grace, if you have a moment, those with the water-sickness
would like for you to touch them.” Vaelus, whose departure Sillara had been too
absorbed in the designs to notice, now swept back into the temple-tomb.

“
I will go.”

“
Sillara, we have to talk,” Konas whispered in Ausir.

“
I know.” She understood his fears, and after what Vaelus had said
earlier, she shared them. “But first I must help these Desertmasters.”

“
Supplicants,” said Konas.
“How else to describe
them?”

Sillara felt
tears well up in her eyes, but she blinked them back. Soren had always known
about her supplicants. In fact, he had gone with her to greet them until he had
gone to sea.

When she stepped
out into the brilliant sunlight, Sillara was dazzled, and for an instant she
could almost imagine herself back in her father's courtyard. There was the same
diffident, hopeful look on the faces of the gathered people. But here no one
wore linen; instead all wore simple skin loincloths, with the women wearing an
additional strip tied across their breasts.

Sillara moved
among them. Touch and touch. Kiss a child. Pat the hand of an elderly man.
Touch and touch. Bless and be gone.

“
Is it over?” Konas, who had had to wait by the temple door as she
attended to the Desertmasters, asked.

Sillara went to
him. “Yes, and we have a new house.”

“
Abrexa's cunt.”
Konas's oath was so low that Sillara, despite the keenness of her
hearing, only barely caught it.

“
Yes.” Sillara dismissed Vaelus with a wave before he could approach
her again. “Konas and I are going to retire to our new house for the afternoon.
When the evening comes and we can work, I will show you what to do about the
well.”

Konas did not
speak again until Sillara closed the door of their new house behind them.

“
Do not take off your bindings yet,” said Sillara, forestalling him.
“Wait until the sun goes down. You should start with moonslight before you try
the sun.”

Konas nodded,
but he held out his arms to her. Sillara went to him, and the feel of his
arousal pressed against her belly delighted her.

“
I will wait only long enough for you to speak of what you have
learned,” said Konas, skimming his hand up her side.

Sillara laughed
as he, despite his lack of vision, unerringly caught her nipple between his
fingers and pinched it lightly.

“
What I learned from Tambril's designs is that he built their well to
last—but not quite so long as they have been using it.” She led Konas to a low
chair, and he sat down, pulling her into his lap.

“
It is the Ausir way to design something to last his whole
lifetime, that
he need not return to it again.” Konas nuzzled
her neck.

“
And this well has been used for well over an Ausir lifetime.”
Sillara
sighed
her pleasure as Konas nibbled the flesh
of her throat. “Doubtless some of the pipes are no longer functioning well, are
perhaps clogged or dirty. That would explain the water-sickness.”

“
You can fix it?” asked Konas.
“After only looking
over the schematics for a morning?”

Half a
morning,
thought Sillara. “Yes.”

Konas slipped
his hand inside the strip of cloth that covered Sillara's breasts. “I like
these Desertmaster fashions,” he said. “They are even easier of access than
Sunjaa gowns.”

“
You,” said Sillara, “would have me go about naked if you could.”