Elizabeth Culmer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
edenfalling) wrote2006-07-27 12:23 pm
edenfalling) wrote2006-07-27 12:23 pm
Entry tags:
[Fic] "Finding Marea," part 2 -- original
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Finding Marea: Part 2
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The study of heresies and pagan religions is allowed on the tacit understanding that scholars will refute what they learn. To me, it has always seemed more useful to identify the structure and patterns of a religion and attempt to understand it on its own terms, in order to approach its followers with tact and charity. God loves us; we, who are created in his image, can do no less than try to love each other. Therefore, I looked for ideas and practices held in common with the Church -- elements to use as bridges -- not for theological points to refute.
This approach was not appreciated by my abbess, nor by the deans of the College of St. Larach, nor yet by the Archbishop of Kos. I was able to continue my study of the Circle, but I suspect this was only because I was unable to satisfactorily distill my thoughts into a paper, and thus unable to present them to my colleagues. My other studies were less fortunate.
In my thirty-second year -- five, the number of humanity, whose shadow, thirteen, warns of misfortune and imbalance -- I attempted to publish a monograph on the recently subdued Madan Island heretics, who deplored infant baptism, renounced the rules of hierarchical succession, and declared that people should seek God without intermediaries. The Archbishop's council censored my manuscript, and I was warned to avoid heretical leanings. Shortly thereafter, I was assigned to a year's retreat at the convent of St. Fioline in Peruthy, far from any students I might corrupt. I held my peace and traveled east into the hills.
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Peruthy, a small city compared to Kos, lies on the Erisokos River at the western edge of the Bannerry Hills, and is blessed by plentiful waterfalls, rich coal deposits, and its location on the trade route that connects Kos to the riverlands. It is a manufacturing center, home to sawyers and grain traders rather than scholars, smiths and engineers rather than sculptors. Peruthy produces raw materials that other cities craft into furniture, food, and art. Nevertheless, Peruthy has its own beauty, a beauty of utility and efficiency grafted onto the rambling ruins of ancient fortifications and country estates, and its people are willing to explain their work to a curious stranger.
Peruthy was, at that time, experiencing economic troubles as several of the coal mines petered out, and religious uncertainty was rampant. The sisters of St. Fioline took every opportunity to remind people of their duty toward the Lord, but their efforts had limited success. I learned of at least four moderately heretical preachers come to prominence within the past decade, whose cults gained new converts monthly, but who had thus far remained below the official notice of the Archbishop of Toren and the provincial governor of Cesta. I also learned that the local Circle had split into two factions, which were also gaining converts.
The idea of a doctrinal split in a religion that -- so Ifira Burosca and all Kosian Circle members had assured me -- had no creed, intrigued me. It also seemed to me that documenting internal dissent in the Circle, perhaps with an emphasis on how this turmoil showed the flaws in their beliefs, might help return me to the graces of archbishop, college, and abbess.
Ifira had discovered my vocation on my third visit, and had been quite indignant to learn that I had assumed she would discriminate against a nun. "You're a child of Kemar as much as anyone else," she had said. "You have more to unlearn, that's all. Doesn't the Church teach you not to lie?"
To avoid a similar confrontation, I decided to approach the Peruthy circles without subterfuge.
The original circle remained true to my impressions of Ifira's circle, and was thus not the focus of my attention. They warned me to be wary of the second circle, however, which they called a broken ring; its members followed one woman's vision instead of creating a more egalitarian community.
"She speaks well," a ritual choreographer told me, "and there's no question that the Goddess touched her heart. She has that look people get when Kemar speaks to them or fills their souls. But I think Kemar's light blinded her heart as well as her eyes; she saw the infinite, and now she can't see the world in front of her. What worse is that she blinds those who listen to her stories."
Sun-crowned, blessed by lightning, moon-touched, heart-blind, soul-swallower, mad. These were the names they gave to Somae Taucannig, a washerwoman turned prophet and demagogue. After meeting her, I understood how her intensity could unsettle people unused to charismatic leaders, but the word I believe describes her best is 'driven.'
Her circle called her Mother Somae, though she was childless and had never married. She had brothers and sisters in abundance, as well as cousins, and her nieces and nephews could almost have been called a tribe. They were miners, and as the coal grew scarce, their money dwindled and their anger grew. No one, however, was angrier than Somae.
She called for intercession from the mayor, the governor, and the emperor. She called for Kemar to touch the mountains and crack the stone open on new seams of coal. She called for the mine owners to pay their workers, and to answer when people asked if they had plans to support their dependents, or if they were preparing to take their profits and flee. She called for the people of Peruthy to turn from an uncaring or non-existent Lord, from the lunacy of the cult preachers, and from the foolish complacence of the other circle.
"Kemar helps those who help themselves," she preached as her circle lit candles and swayed in a prayer dance. "Reach out your hands and bring justice to the earth!" Her open hands stretched toward the crowd, and the dancers snaked past to brush her fingers.
She had little time to meet with me, but I caught her one evening at the door of her circle's meetinghouse and offered myself as an extra set of hands and eyes to guide her steps. She tilted her head, her sightless eyes focused unnervingly on my own, and then nodded. "The Mother provides," she said, and held out her hand, her roughened fingers closing lightly around my own.
Over the next month, as she strode between meetings and dances, between prayers and trips to the mines, Somae told me the history of her city and her people. Once Peruthy had mined iron, until the shallow seams of ore were gone. Then the miners found coal deep underneath the hills and began to sell it to iron foundries, or ship it downriver to Kos. The mine owners lured families to Peruthy with promises of easy work and rich pay, until the town grew into a city, but now the coal seams led into the bowels of the earth and the mines were filled with water and poisoned air. The flood of wealth and promises had slowed to a trickle, and the owners were shutting the mines though the workers still wanted to brave the shafts, sure that easier seams lay just around the corner or through a narrow wall of stone.
"That's the way of the world," said Somae, standing on the cracked earth at the mouth of a closed mine, after leading a prayer dance. "The powerful always step on the poor and the weak -- but," she added, her voice rising with emotion, her arms flung wide to encompass the sky, "everything can change. If we stand together in a circle, our strength can shake the mountains!" The listening miners shouted their agreement.
"Strength is the seed inside Marea's story," Somae mused later that afternoon, as we rode back to Peruthy in an empty coal wagon. "Have you heard it?"
"Yes," I said, "but that's not how the storytellers I know interpret it."
Somae snorted. "And people say I'm heart-blind. Fools." She drew herself upright despite the wagon's jolting sway, and fixed her blank gaze on a point just over my shoulder. "Listen, and I'll tell you the story. It lives in my breath and my voice; it changes and will never die. When King Mechved needed to make peace in Ochre Varos, the priests of the Church had the most power, so their faith won and all others were outlawed. But the Circle can't be broken, and we survived, as we always do. Even in darkness and in secrecy the Circle grew, and people left the empty promises of the Church to step into the light."
"Kemar's light," the driver murmured.
Somae nodded. "Marea Shouja was the daughter of a Church family, but she had eyes to see truth and strength to choose her own way. She stepped into Kemar's light and opened her soul to the Goddess. She danced the Great Rite at equinox, to bring life to the crops and fortune to the people, and Kemar touched her. That sealed her fate. To feel Kemar's light in your soul is a blessing and a curse, for who can see in shadows once you've seen the sun?"
"Only the strong," the driver said, flicking the reins at his horse.
"Only the strong," Somae agreed. "Marea's family betrayed her. They led priests to her circle, to capture Marea before she finished the Rite. The priests made her into an example, to puff up their power and fool the people into believing that the Circle was weak. She was sentenced to life, and watched day and night for seven months, but she never wavered. She held to her faith. She was strong.
"In the end, the king summoned her and ordered her to repent, to convert, to lie. Marea refused. The king took her to a balcony and showed her the city. He told her to think of the people, to think of the chaos that would reign without his laws.
"Marea laughed. 'The people are stronger than you think,' she said, 'and the Goddess is with us. We'll find our own way to peace without you. Kemar has touched my soul, and you have no power over me.' And she leapt from the balcony, into the light, flying home to our Mother past the end of her circle."
Somae's hand described a graceful arc through the air, and then flew upward with open fingers instead of finishing the descent. "She triumphed. This is our example. This is our memory. This is our strength. Kemar be thanked."
"Mother be with us," the driver responded as we reached the city walls.
"She is," said Mother Somae. "She always is."
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Laila Tolemeus did not accept Kemar immediately. She was attracted to a deity who promised aid to the oppressed, and whose earthly followers did not make a mockery of those promises, but she found it difficult to let go of the doctrines and beliefs she had followed for over forty years, even if she no longer felt much love for them. She was also uneasy at the Horse-dancers' disdain for the written word, and the acceptance of blood sacrifices. Nevertheless, she spent many evenings talking with Orin Fichona, the Circle missionary who had married into a farming family and settled in the village.
"We don't say writing is evil," Orin told her as he methodically weeded his wife's vegetable garden. "We just say that it's dangerous -- it tries to deny time, to deny change. Time washes everything away in the end."
"Some things remain, though, some traces to testify to the past. That's what history is," Laila said as she followed him, gathering the uprooted weeds into a wide, shallow basket. "If you don't leave written records, aren't you afraid that the Circle will vanish and be forgotten? Also, how can you know if your stories are true? How can you prove that they really happened? How can you be sure that your circle follows the same rites as a circle in Minrocheh, or in Amarida?"
"Why would that matter?" Orin asked. "The rites are to honor Kemar, and to gather our hearts so we pray as one -- if they work, it doesn't matter that each circle dances a little differently. As for your other questions..." He shrugged and tossed a handful of weeds into the basket.
"The Circle will never vanish; we hold the truth in our hearts, but we don't fight change. If we have to move, we move. If we have to hide, we hide. And all the time, we tell the stories so other people can hear the truth. All the stories are true -- we don't need to prove that. Not everything can be proved with words and numbers, anyway. Some truths you just have to feel in your soul." Orin stood and surveyed his work, and nodded in satisfaction.
Laila hefted her basket thoughtfully, and considered the Church's likely reaction to Orin's rough philosophy. "Perhaps. But words convince more people."
When the missionaries swung past Lake Nacoma in the spring of the year 720 -- nine, for understanding and endings -- Laila spoke with Orin's parents, Achal and Oria Fichona, and requested to travel with them. She loaded her books back into her wagon, reclaimed the mules she'd lent to Orin, and left the village at the tail of the missionary caravan. Laila didn't evangelize, but she danced and sang in rituals, and studied the theology, rites, and organization of the Circle.
"Why Kemar?" she asked Oria in late summer. "I see the appeal of throwing out the clergy and speaking directly to the infinite. I can even understand letting go of things because nothing lasts forever. But why a goddess instead of God? Why Kemar, who only watches, instead of the Lord, who died to save us?"
Oria smiled. "I don't need anyone to save me. I've done nothing wrong, and even if I had, no single man's sacrifice can carry the weight of the whole world. Why should I bow down to a false god if empty promises are all I get in return?"
"The sin in the garden--" Laila began.
"That's not how we tell the story," Oria interrupted. "Seeking knowledge -- seeking truth -- is never wrong. It's what people do with knowledge that's dangerous." She sketched a spiral with one hand, tracing around and around as her finger inched forward across the space between her heart and Laila. "The garden is a lie. The garden denies time, denies change. When Zefaiah and Adin ate the apple, they joined the world. They began to change. Any god who punishes people simply for being born -- simply for living -- is a false god."
"And sacrifice?" Laila asked, pushing Oria's hand aside.
"Two reasons," Oria said. "First, nothing is free. Second, nothing is forever. It's hard, it's painful, and it's terrible... but so is life. Besides, we don't kill the unwilling, like the Jenjani raiders, and the Church has no high ground to spit on us, not when they worship a man who sacrificed himself."
By autumn, Laila began to lend her voice to the preaching. She made little headway with farmers, but her ability to quote the Book of Days, and to argue theology with the authority of three decades' study, made an impression on many village priests.
She continued listening to the missionaries, and began to write their stories in the margins of her books, adding notes with each village until she felt she had all the pieces of each story. Then she rewrote them in the endpapers, in her own voice. She also wrote her understanding of Circle theology, and her attempts to either reconcile it with Church theology or to prove the Church's teachings wrong.
Oria and Achal were bemused. "What will you do with your dead words?" Achal asked when he discovered what she did with her free evenings.
Laila shrugged. "I don't know yet," she said, "but someday, this will be important. I feel that in my heart. Perhaps it's Kemar's wish."
Achal looked doubtful, but he told the missionaries not to bother Laila for her habits. Instead, he and Oria welcomed her around their fire at every meal, and clapped and sang as she argued with priests. She asked them not to use her true name outside the caravan, since her husband and brothers might still be searching for her. The missionaries understood the need for caution, and appreciated the courage it took to abandon one life for another calling.
"We'll call you 'Sister Broken,'" Oria said, "because you break the circle of the stories when you trap them in your books. Just make sure you don't write down where our son lives -- we move, but it's not so easy for him to hide."
Laila agreed. She continued listening and debating, and writing stories, and Sister Broken's name began to spread through the riverlands.
"You're wasted with us," Achal said to Laila after she'd traveled with the missionaries for nearly two years. "You should go to the cities, to bring Kemar's light to the cathedrals and the colleges where the Church teaches lies. Maybe they'll find a use for your dead stories."
Laila thought on that for a long time. When summer faded and harvest drew near, Sister Broken turned her wagon away from the caravan and left the riverlands, heading west toward Kos and the College of St. Larach.
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Sixteen years after my time in Peruthy -- the number of cycles and the return to beginnings, shadowed by two, the number of arguments -- a recently ordained monk was brought before the Archbishop's council on charges of heresy and false vocation. He had written a monograph questioning the doctrine that condemns pagans to hell with no recourse. Surely, he wrote, if the Lord came among us to take all sin onto himself, if the Lord perfected the law with the teaching of divine love, then those pagans who led otherwise blameless lives -- who worshipped the divine under masks, as it were -- should not burn, particularly if no missionaries had yet gone among them to offer them the choice of accepting the Lord.
His name was Brother Enos Harumonos. He named me as the source of his struggle with the creed and law established by the Church after the Lord's sacrifice.
Rather than wait for the council to assign penance, I suggested to my abbess and the deans that I might go on pilgrimage to the abbey of St. Amil and then further into the riverlands to the shrine of St. Deianora, martyred for her refusal to convert to the heresy of Pomosa, which denied both the divinity of the Lord and the existence of hell. Within the week, I had joined a small company of pilgrims and left Kos, heading upriver and east to the Bannerry Hills.
We circled to avoid Peruthy, which was still in chaos from the coal miners' ill-fated rebellion a decade past, and from the more recent introduction of steam engines to pump water and dead air from the reopened mines. After leaving the main road, we climbed a series of switchbacks that led us to Ganthy, the provincial capitol of Cesta. Despite its political importance, Ganthy was small -- merely a fortified town and castle in a narrow valley near the top of the ridge. The heart of Cesta's economy lay in the lower hills, near Peruthy, and its religious center had long since moved to Toren, Peruthy's sister city on the Erisokos river.
A bad rainstorm trapped us in Ganthy for three nights. I passed the time in the chapel, debating theology with the elderly local priest. When he learned that I taught at the College of St. Larach, he recommended that I stay an extra day or three at the abbey of St. Amil, to properly appreciate the monks' famous library.
"Many people tithe their books to the abbey when they die, or as penance," he said. "Several generations of the Tolemeus family -- they hold the castle in trust from the emperor -- have given to the abbey, starting with Laila Tolemeus nearly five hundred years ago. She was the mother of Aemon Tasca the Younger, you know, before she vanished."
I agreed to give the abbey library the attention it deserved. This was far from a difficult promise to keep, since the library was everything the priest had said, and more besides. Instead of one room and one librarian, the monks had extended their library six times over the centuries, and a cadre of nearly twenty librarians and assistant librarians tended the books and escorted visiting scholars. Initially, they frowned on letting me past the first room, but my credentials from the College of St. Larach convinced the head librarian to assign me a young assistant monk.
I spent a week exploring the library of St. Amil. The monks had collected hundreds of illuminated copies of the Book of Days, in all its various translations, and they had at least one copy of nearly every theological book or treatise I had ever heard of, as well as hundreds whose existence I had never imagined. Their secular philosophy, history, and mathematics sections were equally rich, and in addition, they owned texts on farming, mining, building, and dozens of useful topics. They had books from all quarters of the Empire and from beyond -- from the mountain kingdoms of the south, from Nalus on the northeastern sea, from the southeastern reaches of Tuvia beyond the plains of Jana, and from distant Calaea, at the end of the Silk Road beyond the mountains of Accia and the salt deserts.
I recognized at least a hundred titles that I knew had been interdicted and burned in Kos. "How did the abbey acquire dispensation to hold pagan and heretical works?" I asked on my third day.
The assistant librarian shrugged. "So long as we store the dangerous works separately from the approved writings, there's an old precedent for keeping them. It dates to Laila Tolemeus Tasca, who gave us nearly two hundred books when she left the Bannerry Hills to marry Arrim Tasca and live in Dora."
I was growing curious about this woman, Laila Tolemeus, who had owned pagan books and raised one of the most famous generals in the history of the Empire. "Which books were part of her collection?" I asked. "Are they too delicate to read, or have they been copied?"
The monk was sorry to tell me that those books were no longer in the abbey. "We only copied the holy texts," he said. "As for the others, when Lady Tasca left her husband, she came here and reclaimed her books. Then she vanished."
Perhaps the best way to engage scholars' attention is to place a mystery before us. My attention, far from being on the ostensible purpose of my pilgrimage, was now firmly fixed on Laila Tolemeus, her pagan books, and her inexplicable disappearance. Still, there were no further clues abbey, and I had a pilgrimage to complete. I joined the next passing group of travelers -- in high summer, at least one group arrived at the abbey each week -- and set out toward the shrine of St. Deianora and the heart of the riverlands.
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The shrine of St. Deianora stands in the town of Pomosa, which otherwise has little to distinguish it from a hundred other farming communities in the riverlands. The shrine lies on a low hill just outside the town wall, and three inns sit nearby, just inside the town's main gate. Their food is more expensive than necessary, but the Pomosans regard the prices as payment for the disruption pilgrims bring to their lives. That, at any rate, is the explanation Larachine Avedura gave me.
When I met her, she was still Larachine Challo, whose family owned the largest of the three inns, and was in the process of arranging her marriage to a local farmer. She worked at her family's inn and earned some coin on the side by showing pilgrims around the burned foundations of St. Deianora's home while she explained the fine points of the old Pomosan heresy, the saint's death, and the Church's response.
I was, therefore, surprised to learn that she belonged to the Circle of Kemar. I was even more surprised that a circle existed in a pilgrimage site, let alone a site carefully watched for the recurrence of heresy. The Circle is officially a tolerated pagan religion rather than a heretical sect, but given humanity's flawed nature, it seemed rash to invite the close attention of the Church.
Nevertheless, after Larachine told me the story of St. Deianora opening her door and preaching to the mob that had come to kill her, and continuing to preach the Lord's divinity as she was stoned to death, she excused herself to attend a Circle meeting.
I asked if I could observe. She agreed, and led me to a house right against the village wall, on the opposite side of town from St. Deianora's shrine. Thirty people -- the entirety of the Pomosan circle -- were squeezed into the large common room, with a few spilling back through an open doorway into the kitchen. Larachine introduced me as a daughter of the Church, asked her circle to answer any questions I might have, and left me pressed against the front door next to a tall, dour man with dirt-stained hands.
"Are you converting?" he asked.
"No," I told him. "I'm a nun, from the convent of St. Ithigea in Kos. I study heresies and pagan religions -- I've been studying the Circle for almost thirty years."
He nodded minimally. "Tasso Avedura," he said. "Larachine and I are getting married after the harvest." In the kitchen, someone began to beat a complicated, rhythmic tattoo, and the press of people linked hands and shuffled around the common room in a series of concentric circles.
Tasso stayed by my side, making no move to join the slow dance. "I'm Church-folk, not Circle-folk," he said in response to my questioning glance. "I come because Larachine's the storyteller, and I love hearing her talk. Besides, she respects the Church -- she tells St. Deianora's story, and she knows half the Book of Days by heart -- so I try to respect this."
He shifted restlessly, as if unsure what to do with his hands, and then shrugged as the circle members began to sway and sing a hymn to Kemar's love. "It's hard," he said, "but I have to try. It wouldn't be right not to."
When the meeting finished, Larachine and Tasso spent a few minutes in quiet conversation, ending with a kiss. "I'll stop by the fields tomorrow," she called after him as he walked toward a small gate in the wall. He waved, and then he was gone.
"I'll walk you back to the inn," Larachine said, rejoining me. "What did you think of our circle?"
"It's small," I said, as we began walking, "but large enough for a true meetinghouse. Why don't you build one?"
"All religious structures in Pomosa must be approved by the Archbishop of Nacoma. He doesn't approve of us." Larachine traced a circle in the air, and shrugged. "We're growing -- we have four families with children now, as well as converts. Things will change."
I murmured something noncommittal and changed the subject. "Tasso is a son of the Church, and if your circle follows the pattern I've seen in other places, being a storyteller requires a lot of dedication and faith. Are you sure your marriage will last if you build it on such unstable foundations?"
Larachine smiled. "Unstable? Faith is the best foundation. It's true that Tasso only sees a reflection of Kemar's light, and all reflections are distorted, but it's still the same light. We'll show our children both paths and let them choose. If Kemar gives that choice to us, her children, how can we trust our children any less?"
She pointed past her parents' inn to St. Deianora's shrine. "Faith is faith. That woman had as much faith and strength as Marea in Ochre Varos, and no faith goes unrewarded. Listen: I'll tell you, and maybe Kemar's light will touch you through my words.
"Marea Shouja was raised in the Church and she loved the light of God. But one day she looked around her and saw what people did in his name. They hated each other and said it was God's will. They killed each other and said it was God's will. They bloated with sickness, they lost their homes to drought and wars, they starved and died for lack of water, they drowned in floods, and they said all their troubles were God's will, or a punishment because other people had turned away from God. Then they hated and killed each other again.
"Marea looked, and she turned away. She thought she was turning from light to darkness, but in turning from the reflection she found the true light of Kemar. The Goddess doesn't punish us. The Goddess doesn't teach us to hate. She teaches us to endure, to find joy in the hard times, and to remember that nothing is forever. All things change, and even the earth moves beneath us.
"In those days, King Mechved of Ochre Varos had outlawed all faiths but the Church, because of the hatred people preached. The priests thought they could hide the light and keep people from seeking it. Marea thought she could hide her new faith and keep her family from trouble. But light can't be hidden -- it shines through the darkness.
"So when the Circles gathered and chose to hold a Great Rite, to call life to the land and luck to the people, Marea stood and said, 'I will dance.'
"She danced. She called Kemar into her soul, and she was filled with light.
"In those days, when people felt the Goddess in their souls, we sent them past the end of this circle to be with Kemar. In these days we wait -- we share the light on this earth -- but it's hard to stay when you've seen what lies beyond, or so I hear." Larachine sighed, still looking toward the shrine beyond the village wall. "Someday I'll see Kemar, but I hope she waits until my children are grown and Tasso is gone. I wouldn't want to be pulled in half.
"It was easier for Marea, of course, since she'd already drawn away from her old life. But her circle was betrayed, and she was held prisoner so she couldn't return to the Goddess. Priests and nuns tried to make her convert, the way the Pomosan heretics tried to make St. Deianora convert, but Marea wouldn't trade light for a reflection.
"After seven months, they brought her to King Mechved, who told her she was causing unrest and begged her to surrender for the people's sake. 'I danced for the people,' Marea told him, 'and I owe them nothing anymore. Let me go home to Kemar.'
"King Mechved looked at her for a long time, and then looked over the balcony railing at his city. 'I owe safety and prosperity to my people,' he said, 'and you disrupt that. But you're also one of my people, so maybe I owe you something as well -- and if you're gone, the people will forget you and be peaceful again.'
"He stepped aside and gestured Marea to the railing. 'Here is your choice,' he said.
"Marea smiled. And she stepped off the railing, into the light."
Larachine turned back toward her parents' inn, and smiled. "If I didn't have Tasso, I would dance. I'd call Kemar and open my heart to her -- I'd stretch my soul wide enough to hold her touch. But for now, this circle is all I want. Time will carry me home fast enough."
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Laila Tolemeus arrived in Kos sometime in the year 723. The exact date is uncertain, but she was certainly there by autumn, when Sister Broken is recorded as debating the prior of the abbey of St. Larach. She is then recorded as being imprisoned in the neighboring convent of St. Ithigea while the Archbishop's council prepared for a trial. 723 adds to twelve, the number of both perfection and stasis, whose shadow, six, is the number of journeys and pauses along the way.
One of the nuns, Sister Josia Agipae, became Laila's primary caretaker. She brought Laila meals, guarded her during her daily walk in the convent gardens, and tirelessly coaxed her into conversation. They spoke of politics, poetry, and history; of the famine in Jana that had driven the Jenjani across the Mother River in greater numbers than usual that summer; of the emperor's death the previous winter and the usual chaos and raw ambition of the succession struggles; and of nearly every topic under the sun, except theology.
Josia was a shipwright's daughter, who had married a fisherman. When he died, their sons inherited his boat and his house, and Josia left secular life behind. "I miss my house," she told Laila as they walked the tidy, stone-lined paths of the garden, two weeks into Laila's imprisonment. "But Sikoros and Girian didn't need me hanging around their necks like deadweight while they went courting and settled themselves. I visit every month, and I think we're happy this way."
She smoothed the skirt of her habit, and smiled. "Besides, it's a noble calling to serve the Lord. I didn't always have faith -- I never paid enough attention -- but God's love is a shelter in this world. When Davos died, rest his soul, I was all at thirteens until I opened my heart to the Lord and found a new path. Marriage and family are great gifts, but they can pin your attention to material things and blind you to the infinite."
Josia turned to Laila. "Were you ever married, Sister Broken?"
"I am married," Laila said. "I simply choose not to be with my husband. And, like yours, my children are grown; they don't need me hovering at their shoulders."
"But your husband -- doesn't he worry? Why isn't he here, trying to save you? And your children -- I'm sure they'd want to know that you're in danger."
"If he were here, I doubt he would try to save me. Acknowledging me could only bring him shame, and while we respected each other, we were never close. As for my children... I'll be dead soon enough; it's best not to worry them over something they can't change."
"If I were in their place, I would rather know," Josia said. "Lying is a sin, and lies of omission are still lies."
Laila shrugged. "They live too far away for a message to reach them in time." They passed the courtyard door, and she stepped forward to hold it open for Josia. "Nevertheless, thank you for your concern."
Josia continued to talk with Laila over the next month and a half, until the trial began. Laila was summoned to the Archbishop's palace, which stood in solitary splendor on a small island next to the cathedral, and forced to listen to hour upon hour of accusations and legal precedents dealing with heresy and paganism in Kos.
"Why the Horse-cult?" Josia finally asked that evening. She stood outside Laila's cell, guarding the open door while Laila ate her meager supper. "I suppose I understand leaving your husband -- if Davos had been cold to me and I felt a calling, I might have done the same -- but I don't understand turning from the Lord. It's only brought you trouble."
Laila ate several bites of coarse bread while she worked through her answer. Finally, she said, "When your children grew old enough to think for themselves, you didn't hold yourself over them with a switch in your hand. I didn't either. I trusted that I had done my best, and I stepped back. I didn't want to live their lives for them. Kemar loves us, and she lets us choose our own paths. To me, the Lord seems like a jealous father, who fears that his son might surpass him and who cripples the boy with self-doubt and impossible rules.
"Change is the only constant," Laila continued. "Trying to codify the infinite is futile at best and dangerous at worst. Look at us -- I'm trapped in a cell because I dared to ask questions, and you're bound keep me here even though you might otherwise consider me a friend. I won't bow to any god who thinks this is right."
"Who can know what God thinks?" Josia asked. "God is perfection. Humans are creatures of error, and the Church is a human creation. You talk as if there is no difference between humans and the infinite, as if we could dream of surpassing God, but that's nonsense. If Kemar loves people, why doesn't she give you help and something to guide you?"
Laila spread her hands and smiled. "Kemar does help us, but only when we help ourselves. She loves us, so we love each other. She shows us that nothing is permanent, so we don't hold too tightly to things that will only crumble and cause us pain when they vanish, and we don't despair in hard times because they too will pass. She tells us that someday all things will come round to the beginning, and so we have faith. Who needs more?"
"Most people," Josia said dryly. "And in any case, you don't follow her guidance -- you wrote the stories, even though you say you shouldn't hold onto things."
"Humans are creatures of error," Laila said, equally dryly. Josia laughed.
Laila drank a swallow of water and continued. "I don't want to preserve anything forever; I know that's futile. I just want to save my words until the Church is ready to listen. The stories live in the Circle, but the Church doesn't trust anything until it's been written down and dead for a hundred years. The Church hates change."
Josia stood silently for a long moment, and then held her hand over the threshold of Laila's cell. "The Church may hate change, but God loves truth, and I trust that His word is strong enough to withstand the Horse-cult," she said quietly. "I'm being called to your trial tomorrow, to testify whether you seem repentant. Your books are stored in a room just down the hall from the trial chamber. I can hide a few before they convict you and burn them."
Laila set down her bread crust and her cup of water. "Thank you," she said, rising to clasp Josia's hand. "If the books will be burned, I don't care about damaging them. Tear out the endpapers -- that's where I wrote the stories and the teachings of the Circle. Have those bound, and hide them."
"What name should I write? 'Sister Broken' can't be the one you were born with."
Laila hesitated, searching Josia's face for deception; she found none. "Laila Tolemeus Tasca," she said. "Dedicate it to my children."
Josia looked at her sharply, and then squeezed her hand before releasing it. "Ah. It was your son who sacked the Jenjani fortress across the river from Rimaspa in the eighth month," she said. "At his triumph in Dora, the emperor proclaimed him a general and set the laurel crown on his head with his own hands."
"I knew since he was five years old that Aemon would be a soldier, not a Senator," Laila said softly, "but to be a general at twenty-two -- this is more than I dreamed. He has surpassed his father."
"His human father," Josia said.
Laila shrugged. "All things in time. Thank you, and God bless you. Peace upon you." She sketched the cross in Josia's direction.
"Kemar smile on you, and peace in your soul." Josia drew a circle in the air and shut the door. The heavy iron bar slammed down across the oak, leaving Laila in darkness.
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Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Story Notes
Finding Marea: Part 2
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The study of heresies and pagan religions is allowed on the tacit understanding that scholars will refute what they learn. To me, it has always seemed more useful to identify the structure and patterns of a religion and attempt to understand it on its own terms, in order to approach its followers with tact and charity. God loves us; we, who are created in his image, can do no less than try to love each other. Therefore, I looked for ideas and practices held in common with the Church -- elements to use as bridges -- not for theological points to refute.
This approach was not appreciated by my abbess, nor by the deans of the College of St. Larach, nor yet by the Archbishop of Kos. I was able to continue my study of the Circle, but I suspect this was only because I was unable to satisfactorily distill my thoughts into a paper, and thus unable to present them to my colleagues. My other studies were less fortunate.
In my thirty-second year -- five, the number of humanity, whose shadow, thirteen, warns of misfortune and imbalance -- I attempted to publish a monograph on the recently subdued Madan Island heretics, who deplored infant baptism, renounced the rules of hierarchical succession, and declared that people should seek God without intermediaries. The Archbishop's council censored my manuscript, and I was warned to avoid heretical leanings. Shortly thereafter, I was assigned to a year's retreat at the convent of St. Fioline in Peruthy, far from any students I might corrupt. I held my peace and traveled east into the hills.
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Peruthy, a small city compared to Kos, lies on the Erisokos River at the western edge of the Bannerry Hills, and is blessed by plentiful waterfalls, rich coal deposits, and its location on the trade route that connects Kos to the riverlands. It is a manufacturing center, home to sawyers and grain traders rather than scholars, smiths and engineers rather than sculptors. Peruthy produces raw materials that other cities craft into furniture, food, and art. Nevertheless, Peruthy has its own beauty, a beauty of utility and efficiency grafted onto the rambling ruins of ancient fortifications and country estates, and its people are willing to explain their work to a curious stranger.
Peruthy was, at that time, experiencing economic troubles as several of the coal mines petered out, and religious uncertainty was rampant. The sisters of St. Fioline took every opportunity to remind people of their duty toward the Lord, but their efforts had limited success. I learned of at least four moderately heretical preachers come to prominence within the past decade, whose cults gained new converts monthly, but who had thus far remained below the official notice of the Archbishop of Toren and the provincial governor of Cesta. I also learned that the local Circle had split into two factions, which were also gaining converts.
The idea of a doctrinal split in a religion that -- so Ifira Burosca and all Kosian Circle members had assured me -- had no creed, intrigued me. It also seemed to me that documenting internal dissent in the Circle, perhaps with an emphasis on how this turmoil showed the flaws in their beliefs, might help return me to the graces of archbishop, college, and abbess.
Ifira had discovered my vocation on my third visit, and had been quite indignant to learn that I had assumed she would discriminate against a nun. "You're a child of Kemar as much as anyone else," she had said. "You have more to unlearn, that's all. Doesn't the Church teach you not to lie?"
To avoid a similar confrontation, I decided to approach the Peruthy circles without subterfuge.
The original circle remained true to my impressions of Ifira's circle, and was thus not the focus of my attention. They warned me to be wary of the second circle, however, which they called a broken ring; its members followed one woman's vision instead of creating a more egalitarian community.
"She speaks well," a ritual choreographer told me, "and there's no question that the Goddess touched her heart. She has that look people get when Kemar speaks to them or fills their souls. But I think Kemar's light blinded her heart as well as her eyes; she saw the infinite, and now she can't see the world in front of her. What worse is that she blinds those who listen to her stories."
Sun-crowned, blessed by lightning, moon-touched, heart-blind, soul-swallower, mad. These were the names they gave to Somae Taucannig, a washerwoman turned prophet and demagogue. After meeting her, I understood how her intensity could unsettle people unused to charismatic leaders, but the word I believe describes her best is 'driven.'
Her circle called her Mother Somae, though she was childless and had never married. She had brothers and sisters in abundance, as well as cousins, and her nieces and nephews could almost have been called a tribe. They were miners, and as the coal grew scarce, their money dwindled and their anger grew. No one, however, was angrier than Somae.
She called for intercession from the mayor, the governor, and the emperor. She called for Kemar to touch the mountains and crack the stone open on new seams of coal. She called for the mine owners to pay their workers, and to answer when people asked if they had plans to support their dependents, or if they were preparing to take their profits and flee. She called for the people of Peruthy to turn from an uncaring or non-existent Lord, from the lunacy of the cult preachers, and from the foolish complacence of the other circle.
"Kemar helps those who help themselves," she preached as her circle lit candles and swayed in a prayer dance. "Reach out your hands and bring justice to the earth!" Her open hands stretched toward the crowd, and the dancers snaked past to brush her fingers.
She had little time to meet with me, but I caught her one evening at the door of her circle's meetinghouse and offered myself as an extra set of hands and eyes to guide her steps. She tilted her head, her sightless eyes focused unnervingly on my own, and then nodded. "The Mother provides," she said, and held out her hand, her roughened fingers closing lightly around my own.
Over the next month, as she strode between meetings and dances, between prayers and trips to the mines, Somae told me the history of her city and her people. Once Peruthy had mined iron, until the shallow seams of ore were gone. Then the miners found coal deep underneath the hills and began to sell it to iron foundries, or ship it downriver to Kos. The mine owners lured families to Peruthy with promises of easy work and rich pay, until the town grew into a city, but now the coal seams led into the bowels of the earth and the mines were filled with water and poisoned air. The flood of wealth and promises had slowed to a trickle, and the owners were shutting the mines though the workers still wanted to brave the shafts, sure that easier seams lay just around the corner or through a narrow wall of stone.
"That's the way of the world," said Somae, standing on the cracked earth at the mouth of a closed mine, after leading a prayer dance. "The powerful always step on the poor and the weak -- but," she added, her voice rising with emotion, her arms flung wide to encompass the sky, "everything can change. If we stand together in a circle, our strength can shake the mountains!" The listening miners shouted their agreement.
"Strength is the seed inside Marea's story," Somae mused later that afternoon, as we rode back to Peruthy in an empty coal wagon. "Have you heard it?"
"Yes," I said, "but that's not how the storytellers I know interpret it."
Somae snorted. "And people say I'm heart-blind. Fools." She drew herself upright despite the wagon's jolting sway, and fixed her blank gaze on a point just over my shoulder. "Listen, and I'll tell you the story. It lives in my breath and my voice; it changes and will never die. When King Mechved needed to make peace in Ochre Varos, the priests of the Church had the most power, so their faith won and all others were outlawed. But the Circle can't be broken, and we survived, as we always do. Even in darkness and in secrecy the Circle grew, and people left the empty promises of the Church to step into the light."
"Kemar's light," the driver murmured.
Somae nodded. "Marea Shouja was the daughter of a Church family, but she had eyes to see truth and strength to choose her own way. She stepped into Kemar's light and opened her soul to the Goddess. She danced the Great Rite at equinox, to bring life to the crops and fortune to the people, and Kemar touched her. That sealed her fate. To feel Kemar's light in your soul is a blessing and a curse, for who can see in shadows once you've seen the sun?"
"Only the strong," the driver said, flicking the reins at his horse.
"Only the strong," Somae agreed. "Marea's family betrayed her. They led priests to her circle, to capture Marea before she finished the Rite. The priests made her into an example, to puff up their power and fool the people into believing that the Circle was weak. She was sentenced to life, and watched day and night for seven months, but she never wavered. She held to her faith. She was strong.
"In the end, the king summoned her and ordered her to repent, to convert, to lie. Marea refused. The king took her to a balcony and showed her the city. He told her to think of the people, to think of the chaos that would reign without his laws.
"Marea laughed. 'The people are stronger than you think,' she said, 'and the Goddess is with us. We'll find our own way to peace without you. Kemar has touched my soul, and you have no power over me.' And she leapt from the balcony, into the light, flying home to our Mother past the end of her circle."
Somae's hand described a graceful arc through the air, and then flew upward with open fingers instead of finishing the descent. "She triumphed. This is our example. This is our memory. This is our strength. Kemar be thanked."
"Mother be with us," the driver responded as we reached the city walls.
"She is," said Mother Somae. "She always is."
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Laila Tolemeus did not accept Kemar immediately. She was attracted to a deity who promised aid to the oppressed, and whose earthly followers did not make a mockery of those promises, but she found it difficult to let go of the doctrines and beliefs she had followed for over forty years, even if she no longer felt much love for them. She was also uneasy at the Horse-dancers' disdain for the written word, and the acceptance of blood sacrifices. Nevertheless, she spent many evenings talking with Orin Fichona, the Circle missionary who had married into a farming family and settled in the village.
"We don't say writing is evil," Orin told her as he methodically weeded his wife's vegetable garden. "We just say that it's dangerous -- it tries to deny time, to deny change. Time washes everything away in the end."
"Some things remain, though, some traces to testify to the past. That's what history is," Laila said as she followed him, gathering the uprooted weeds into a wide, shallow basket. "If you don't leave written records, aren't you afraid that the Circle will vanish and be forgotten? Also, how can you know if your stories are true? How can you prove that they really happened? How can you be sure that your circle follows the same rites as a circle in Minrocheh, or in Amarida?"
"Why would that matter?" Orin asked. "The rites are to honor Kemar, and to gather our hearts so we pray as one -- if they work, it doesn't matter that each circle dances a little differently. As for your other questions..." He shrugged and tossed a handful of weeds into the basket.
"The Circle will never vanish; we hold the truth in our hearts, but we don't fight change. If we have to move, we move. If we have to hide, we hide. And all the time, we tell the stories so other people can hear the truth. All the stories are true -- we don't need to prove that. Not everything can be proved with words and numbers, anyway. Some truths you just have to feel in your soul." Orin stood and surveyed his work, and nodded in satisfaction.
Laila hefted her basket thoughtfully, and considered the Church's likely reaction to Orin's rough philosophy. "Perhaps. But words convince more people."
When the missionaries swung past Lake Nacoma in the spring of the year 720 -- nine, for understanding and endings -- Laila spoke with Orin's parents, Achal and Oria Fichona, and requested to travel with them. She loaded her books back into her wagon, reclaimed the mules she'd lent to Orin, and left the village at the tail of the missionary caravan. Laila didn't evangelize, but she danced and sang in rituals, and studied the theology, rites, and organization of the Circle.
"Why Kemar?" she asked Oria in late summer. "I see the appeal of throwing out the clergy and speaking directly to the infinite. I can even understand letting go of things because nothing lasts forever. But why a goddess instead of God? Why Kemar, who only watches, instead of the Lord, who died to save us?"
Oria smiled. "I don't need anyone to save me. I've done nothing wrong, and even if I had, no single man's sacrifice can carry the weight of the whole world. Why should I bow down to a false god if empty promises are all I get in return?"
"The sin in the garden--" Laila began.
"That's not how we tell the story," Oria interrupted. "Seeking knowledge -- seeking truth -- is never wrong. It's what people do with knowledge that's dangerous." She sketched a spiral with one hand, tracing around and around as her finger inched forward across the space between her heart and Laila. "The garden is a lie. The garden denies time, denies change. When Zefaiah and Adin ate the apple, they joined the world. They began to change. Any god who punishes people simply for being born -- simply for living -- is a false god."
"And sacrifice?" Laila asked, pushing Oria's hand aside.
"Two reasons," Oria said. "First, nothing is free. Second, nothing is forever. It's hard, it's painful, and it's terrible... but so is life. Besides, we don't kill the unwilling, like the Jenjani raiders, and the Church has no high ground to spit on us, not when they worship a man who sacrificed himself."
By autumn, Laila began to lend her voice to the preaching. She made little headway with farmers, but her ability to quote the Book of Days, and to argue theology with the authority of three decades' study, made an impression on many village priests.
She continued listening to the missionaries, and began to write their stories in the margins of her books, adding notes with each village until she felt she had all the pieces of each story. Then she rewrote them in the endpapers, in her own voice. She also wrote her understanding of Circle theology, and her attempts to either reconcile it with Church theology or to prove the Church's teachings wrong.
Oria and Achal were bemused. "What will you do with your dead words?" Achal asked when he discovered what she did with her free evenings.
Laila shrugged. "I don't know yet," she said, "but someday, this will be important. I feel that in my heart. Perhaps it's Kemar's wish."
Achal looked doubtful, but he told the missionaries not to bother Laila for her habits. Instead, he and Oria welcomed her around their fire at every meal, and clapped and sang as she argued with priests. She asked them not to use her true name outside the caravan, since her husband and brothers might still be searching for her. The missionaries understood the need for caution, and appreciated the courage it took to abandon one life for another calling.
"We'll call you 'Sister Broken,'" Oria said, "because you break the circle of the stories when you trap them in your books. Just make sure you don't write down where our son lives -- we move, but it's not so easy for him to hide."
Laila agreed. She continued listening and debating, and writing stories, and Sister Broken's name began to spread through the riverlands.
"You're wasted with us," Achal said to Laila after she'd traveled with the missionaries for nearly two years. "You should go to the cities, to bring Kemar's light to the cathedrals and the colleges where the Church teaches lies. Maybe they'll find a use for your dead stories."
Laila thought on that for a long time. When summer faded and harvest drew near, Sister Broken turned her wagon away from the caravan and left the riverlands, heading west toward Kos and the College of St. Larach.
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Sixteen years after my time in Peruthy -- the number of cycles and the return to beginnings, shadowed by two, the number of arguments -- a recently ordained monk was brought before the Archbishop's council on charges of heresy and false vocation. He had written a monograph questioning the doctrine that condemns pagans to hell with no recourse. Surely, he wrote, if the Lord came among us to take all sin onto himself, if the Lord perfected the law with the teaching of divine love, then those pagans who led otherwise blameless lives -- who worshipped the divine under masks, as it were -- should not burn, particularly if no missionaries had yet gone among them to offer them the choice of accepting the Lord.
His name was Brother Enos Harumonos. He named me as the source of his struggle with the creed and law established by the Church after the Lord's sacrifice.
Rather than wait for the council to assign penance, I suggested to my abbess and the deans that I might go on pilgrimage to the abbey of St. Amil and then further into the riverlands to the shrine of St. Deianora, martyred for her refusal to convert to the heresy of Pomosa, which denied both the divinity of the Lord and the existence of hell. Within the week, I had joined a small company of pilgrims and left Kos, heading upriver and east to the Bannerry Hills.
We circled to avoid Peruthy, which was still in chaos from the coal miners' ill-fated rebellion a decade past, and from the more recent introduction of steam engines to pump water and dead air from the reopened mines. After leaving the main road, we climbed a series of switchbacks that led us to Ganthy, the provincial capitol of Cesta. Despite its political importance, Ganthy was small -- merely a fortified town and castle in a narrow valley near the top of the ridge. The heart of Cesta's economy lay in the lower hills, near Peruthy, and its religious center had long since moved to Toren, Peruthy's sister city on the Erisokos river.
A bad rainstorm trapped us in Ganthy for three nights. I passed the time in the chapel, debating theology with the elderly local priest. When he learned that I taught at the College of St. Larach, he recommended that I stay an extra day or three at the abbey of St. Amil, to properly appreciate the monks' famous library.
"Many people tithe their books to the abbey when they die, or as penance," he said. "Several generations of the Tolemeus family -- they hold the castle in trust from the emperor -- have given to the abbey, starting with Laila Tolemeus nearly five hundred years ago. She was the mother of Aemon Tasca the Younger, you know, before she vanished."
I agreed to give the abbey library the attention it deserved. This was far from a difficult promise to keep, since the library was everything the priest had said, and more besides. Instead of one room and one librarian, the monks had extended their library six times over the centuries, and a cadre of nearly twenty librarians and assistant librarians tended the books and escorted visiting scholars. Initially, they frowned on letting me past the first room, but my credentials from the College of St. Larach convinced the head librarian to assign me a young assistant monk.
I spent a week exploring the library of St. Amil. The monks had collected hundreds of illuminated copies of the Book of Days, in all its various translations, and they had at least one copy of nearly every theological book or treatise I had ever heard of, as well as hundreds whose existence I had never imagined. Their secular philosophy, history, and mathematics sections were equally rich, and in addition, they owned texts on farming, mining, building, and dozens of useful topics. They had books from all quarters of the Empire and from beyond -- from the mountain kingdoms of the south, from Nalus on the northeastern sea, from the southeastern reaches of Tuvia beyond the plains of Jana, and from distant Calaea, at the end of the Silk Road beyond the mountains of Accia and the salt deserts.
I recognized at least a hundred titles that I knew had been interdicted and burned in Kos. "How did the abbey acquire dispensation to hold pagan and heretical works?" I asked on my third day.
The assistant librarian shrugged. "So long as we store the dangerous works separately from the approved writings, there's an old precedent for keeping them. It dates to Laila Tolemeus Tasca, who gave us nearly two hundred books when she left the Bannerry Hills to marry Arrim Tasca and live in Dora."
I was growing curious about this woman, Laila Tolemeus, who had owned pagan books and raised one of the most famous generals in the history of the Empire. "Which books were part of her collection?" I asked. "Are they too delicate to read, or have they been copied?"
The monk was sorry to tell me that those books were no longer in the abbey. "We only copied the holy texts," he said. "As for the others, when Lady Tasca left her husband, she came here and reclaimed her books. Then she vanished."
Perhaps the best way to engage scholars' attention is to place a mystery before us. My attention, far from being on the ostensible purpose of my pilgrimage, was now firmly fixed on Laila Tolemeus, her pagan books, and her inexplicable disappearance. Still, there were no further clues abbey, and I had a pilgrimage to complete. I joined the next passing group of travelers -- in high summer, at least one group arrived at the abbey each week -- and set out toward the shrine of St. Deianora and the heart of the riverlands.
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The shrine of St. Deianora stands in the town of Pomosa, which otherwise has little to distinguish it from a hundred other farming communities in the riverlands. The shrine lies on a low hill just outside the town wall, and three inns sit nearby, just inside the town's main gate. Their food is more expensive than necessary, but the Pomosans regard the prices as payment for the disruption pilgrims bring to their lives. That, at any rate, is the explanation Larachine Avedura gave me.
When I met her, she was still Larachine Challo, whose family owned the largest of the three inns, and was in the process of arranging her marriage to a local farmer. She worked at her family's inn and earned some coin on the side by showing pilgrims around the burned foundations of St. Deianora's home while she explained the fine points of the old Pomosan heresy, the saint's death, and the Church's response.
I was, therefore, surprised to learn that she belonged to the Circle of Kemar. I was even more surprised that a circle existed in a pilgrimage site, let alone a site carefully watched for the recurrence of heresy. The Circle is officially a tolerated pagan religion rather than a heretical sect, but given humanity's flawed nature, it seemed rash to invite the close attention of the Church.
Nevertheless, after Larachine told me the story of St. Deianora opening her door and preaching to the mob that had come to kill her, and continuing to preach the Lord's divinity as she was stoned to death, she excused herself to attend a Circle meeting.
I asked if I could observe. She agreed, and led me to a house right against the village wall, on the opposite side of town from St. Deianora's shrine. Thirty people -- the entirety of the Pomosan circle -- were squeezed into the large common room, with a few spilling back through an open doorway into the kitchen. Larachine introduced me as a daughter of the Church, asked her circle to answer any questions I might have, and left me pressed against the front door next to a tall, dour man with dirt-stained hands.
"Are you converting?" he asked.
"No," I told him. "I'm a nun, from the convent of St. Ithigea in Kos. I study heresies and pagan religions -- I've been studying the Circle for almost thirty years."
He nodded minimally. "Tasso Avedura," he said. "Larachine and I are getting married after the harvest." In the kitchen, someone began to beat a complicated, rhythmic tattoo, and the press of people linked hands and shuffled around the common room in a series of concentric circles.
Tasso stayed by my side, making no move to join the slow dance. "I'm Church-folk, not Circle-folk," he said in response to my questioning glance. "I come because Larachine's the storyteller, and I love hearing her talk. Besides, she respects the Church -- she tells St. Deianora's story, and she knows half the Book of Days by heart -- so I try to respect this."
He shifted restlessly, as if unsure what to do with his hands, and then shrugged as the circle members began to sway and sing a hymn to Kemar's love. "It's hard," he said, "but I have to try. It wouldn't be right not to."
When the meeting finished, Larachine and Tasso spent a few minutes in quiet conversation, ending with a kiss. "I'll stop by the fields tomorrow," she called after him as he walked toward a small gate in the wall. He waved, and then he was gone.
"I'll walk you back to the inn," Larachine said, rejoining me. "What did you think of our circle?"
"It's small," I said, as we began walking, "but large enough for a true meetinghouse. Why don't you build one?"
"All religious structures in Pomosa must be approved by the Archbishop of Nacoma. He doesn't approve of us." Larachine traced a circle in the air, and shrugged. "We're growing -- we have four families with children now, as well as converts. Things will change."
I murmured something noncommittal and changed the subject. "Tasso is a son of the Church, and if your circle follows the pattern I've seen in other places, being a storyteller requires a lot of dedication and faith. Are you sure your marriage will last if you build it on such unstable foundations?"
Larachine smiled. "Unstable? Faith is the best foundation. It's true that Tasso only sees a reflection of Kemar's light, and all reflections are distorted, but it's still the same light. We'll show our children both paths and let them choose. If Kemar gives that choice to us, her children, how can we trust our children any less?"
She pointed past her parents' inn to St. Deianora's shrine. "Faith is faith. That woman had as much faith and strength as Marea in Ochre Varos, and no faith goes unrewarded. Listen: I'll tell you, and maybe Kemar's light will touch you through my words.
"Marea Shouja was raised in the Church and she loved the light of God. But one day she looked around her and saw what people did in his name. They hated each other and said it was God's will. They killed each other and said it was God's will. They bloated with sickness, they lost their homes to drought and wars, they starved and died for lack of water, they drowned in floods, and they said all their troubles were God's will, or a punishment because other people had turned away from God. Then they hated and killed each other again.
"Marea looked, and she turned away. She thought she was turning from light to darkness, but in turning from the reflection she found the true light of Kemar. The Goddess doesn't punish us. The Goddess doesn't teach us to hate. She teaches us to endure, to find joy in the hard times, and to remember that nothing is forever. All things change, and even the earth moves beneath us.
"In those days, King Mechved of Ochre Varos had outlawed all faiths but the Church, because of the hatred people preached. The priests thought they could hide the light and keep people from seeking it. Marea thought she could hide her new faith and keep her family from trouble. But light can't be hidden -- it shines through the darkness.
"So when the Circles gathered and chose to hold a Great Rite, to call life to the land and luck to the people, Marea stood and said, 'I will dance.'
"She danced. She called Kemar into her soul, and she was filled with light.
"In those days, when people felt the Goddess in their souls, we sent them past the end of this circle to be with Kemar. In these days we wait -- we share the light on this earth -- but it's hard to stay when you've seen what lies beyond, or so I hear." Larachine sighed, still looking toward the shrine beyond the village wall. "Someday I'll see Kemar, but I hope she waits until my children are grown and Tasso is gone. I wouldn't want to be pulled in half.
"It was easier for Marea, of course, since she'd already drawn away from her old life. But her circle was betrayed, and she was held prisoner so she couldn't return to the Goddess. Priests and nuns tried to make her convert, the way the Pomosan heretics tried to make St. Deianora convert, but Marea wouldn't trade light for a reflection.
"After seven months, they brought her to King Mechved, who told her she was causing unrest and begged her to surrender for the people's sake. 'I danced for the people,' Marea told him, 'and I owe them nothing anymore. Let me go home to Kemar.'
"King Mechved looked at her for a long time, and then looked over the balcony railing at his city. 'I owe safety and prosperity to my people,' he said, 'and you disrupt that. But you're also one of my people, so maybe I owe you something as well -- and if you're gone, the people will forget you and be peaceful again.'
"He stepped aside and gestured Marea to the railing. 'Here is your choice,' he said.
"Marea smiled. And she stepped off the railing, into the light."
Larachine turned back toward her parents' inn, and smiled. "If I didn't have Tasso, I would dance. I'd call Kemar and open my heart to her -- I'd stretch my soul wide enough to hold her touch. But for now, this circle is all I want. Time will carry me home fast enough."
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Laila Tolemeus arrived in Kos sometime in the year 723. The exact date is uncertain, but she was certainly there by autumn, when Sister Broken is recorded as debating the prior of the abbey of St. Larach. She is then recorded as being imprisoned in the neighboring convent of St. Ithigea while the Archbishop's council prepared for a trial. 723 adds to twelve, the number of both perfection and stasis, whose shadow, six, is the number of journeys and pauses along the way.
One of the nuns, Sister Josia Agipae, became Laila's primary caretaker. She brought Laila meals, guarded her during her daily walk in the convent gardens, and tirelessly coaxed her into conversation. They spoke of politics, poetry, and history; of the famine in Jana that had driven the Jenjani across the Mother River in greater numbers than usual that summer; of the emperor's death the previous winter and the usual chaos and raw ambition of the succession struggles; and of nearly every topic under the sun, except theology.
Josia was a shipwright's daughter, who had married a fisherman. When he died, their sons inherited his boat and his house, and Josia left secular life behind. "I miss my house," she told Laila as they walked the tidy, stone-lined paths of the garden, two weeks into Laila's imprisonment. "But Sikoros and Girian didn't need me hanging around their necks like deadweight while they went courting and settled themselves. I visit every month, and I think we're happy this way."
She smoothed the skirt of her habit, and smiled. "Besides, it's a noble calling to serve the Lord. I didn't always have faith -- I never paid enough attention -- but God's love is a shelter in this world. When Davos died, rest his soul, I was all at thirteens until I opened my heart to the Lord and found a new path. Marriage and family are great gifts, but they can pin your attention to material things and blind you to the infinite."
Josia turned to Laila. "Were you ever married, Sister Broken?"
"I am married," Laila said. "I simply choose not to be with my husband. And, like yours, my children are grown; they don't need me hovering at their shoulders."
"But your husband -- doesn't he worry? Why isn't he here, trying to save you? And your children -- I'm sure they'd want to know that you're in danger."
"If he were here, I doubt he would try to save me. Acknowledging me could only bring him shame, and while we respected each other, we were never close. As for my children... I'll be dead soon enough; it's best not to worry them over something they can't change."
"If I were in their place, I would rather know," Josia said. "Lying is a sin, and lies of omission are still lies."
Laila shrugged. "They live too far away for a message to reach them in time." They passed the courtyard door, and she stepped forward to hold it open for Josia. "Nevertheless, thank you for your concern."
Josia continued to talk with Laila over the next month and a half, until the trial began. Laila was summoned to the Archbishop's palace, which stood in solitary splendor on a small island next to the cathedral, and forced to listen to hour upon hour of accusations and legal precedents dealing with heresy and paganism in Kos.
"Why the Horse-cult?" Josia finally asked that evening. She stood outside Laila's cell, guarding the open door while Laila ate her meager supper. "I suppose I understand leaving your husband -- if Davos had been cold to me and I felt a calling, I might have done the same -- but I don't understand turning from the Lord. It's only brought you trouble."
Laila ate several bites of coarse bread while she worked through her answer. Finally, she said, "When your children grew old enough to think for themselves, you didn't hold yourself over them with a switch in your hand. I didn't either. I trusted that I had done my best, and I stepped back. I didn't want to live their lives for them. Kemar loves us, and she lets us choose our own paths. To me, the Lord seems like a jealous father, who fears that his son might surpass him and who cripples the boy with self-doubt and impossible rules.
"Change is the only constant," Laila continued. "Trying to codify the infinite is futile at best and dangerous at worst. Look at us -- I'm trapped in a cell because I dared to ask questions, and you're bound keep me here even though you might otherwise consider me a friend. I won't bow to any god who thinks this is right."
"Who can know what God thinks?" Josia asked. "God is perfection. Humans are creatures of error, and the Church is a human creation. You talk as if there is no difference between humans and the infinite, as if we could dream of surpassing God, but that's nonsense. If Kemar loves people, why doesn't she give you help and something to guide you?"
Laila spread her hands and smiled. "Kemar does help us, but only when we help ourselves. She loves us, so we love each other. She shows us that nothing is permanent, so we don't hold too tightly to things that will only crumble and cause us pain when they vanish, and we don't despair in hard times because they too will pass. She tells us that someday all things will come round to the beginning, and so we have faith. Who needs more?"
"Most people," Josia said dryly. "And in any case, you don't follow her guidance -- you wrote the stories, even though you say you shouldn't hold onto things."
"Humans are creatures of error," Laila said, equally dryly. Josia laughed.
Laila drank a swallow of water and continued. "I don't want to preserve anything forever; I know that's futile. I just want to save my words until the Church is ready to listen. The stories live in the Circle, but the Church doesn't trust anything until it's been written down and dead for a hundred years. The Church hates change."
Josia stood silently for a long moment, and then held her hand over the threshold of Laila's cell. "The Church may hate change, but God loves truth, and I trust that His word is strong enough to withstand the Horse-cult," she said quietly. "I'm being called to your trial tomorrow, to testify whether you seem repentant. Your books are stored in a room just down the hall from the trial chamber. I can hide a few before they convict you and burn them."
Laila set down her bread crust and her cup of water. "Thank you," she said, rising to clasp Josia's hand. "If the books will be burned, I don't care about damaging them. Tear out the endpapers -- that's where I wrote the stories and the teachings of the Circle. Have those bound, and hide them."
"What name should I write? 'Sister Broken' can't be the one you were born with."
Laila hesitated, searching Josia's face for deception; she found none. "Laila Tolemeus Tasca," she said. "Dedicate it to my children."
Josia looked at her sharply, and then squeezed her hand before releasing it. "Ah. It was your son who sacked the Jenjani fortress across the river from Rimaspa in the eighth month," she said. "At his triumph in Dora, the emperor proclaimed him a general and set the laurel crown on his head with his own hands."
"I knew since he was five years old that Aemon would be a soldier, not a Senator," Laila said softly, "but to be a general at twenty-two -- this is more than I dreamed. He has surpassed his father."
"His human father," Josia said.
Laila shrugged. "All things in time. Thank you, and God bless you. Peace upon you." She sketched the cross in Josia's direction.
"Kemar smile on you, and peace in your soul." Josia drew a circle in the air and shut the door. The heavy iron bar slammed down across the oak, leaving Laila in darkness.
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Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Story Notes