A Fading Sun Read online

  “You did that drudgery yourself, Hand-wife?” she asked, her eyes narrowing as heavy lines creased the corners. Her eyes were the dark brown of sweetnut shells, and she glanced at the bucket and rags Voada was carrying. “That’s servants’ work. Why, I was intending to send some of household slaves to the temple later today.”

  “I wanted to do it myself, Voice-wife,” Voada answered. “Our temple deserves the touch of someone who honors its history, not just someone who’s following her mistress’ command.”

  Dilara’s eyes narrowed further, as if she were turning over Voada’s words to see if there was something unpleasant buried in them. “Then I must thank you, Hand-wife,” she said finally. “It’s good that at least some of the Cateni understand their roles, as do you and Hand Paorach.” She glanced back into the courtyard, where her slaves were working. “You!” she shouted at one. “Look at the mess you’re making. Be more careful, or you’ll find yourself cleaning the midden.” With that, Dilara turned back to them. “We’ll see you tomorrow at the ceremony?”

  “Of course,” Meir answered her. “We’re looking forward to it. Aren’t we, Voada?”

  Voada forced a smile onto reluctant lips and nodded to the Voice-wife. “We certainly are.”

  Dilara’s sour expression didn’t change. “We’ll see you then. The Voice and Hand must show the rabble the importance of the emperor and how we’re proud and united behind him. Without Emperor Pashtuk and us Mundoa, the island of Albann would still be nothing but an uncivilized wilderness.”

  With that, Dilara took her leave, going back into the courtyard to scold those working there, and Voada and Meir continued walking down the lane. “I’m sorry,” Meir said when they were out of earshot of the Voice’s estate. “She doesn’t think about who might be hurt by what she says. I’ve known other Mundoa in other cities; not all of them think as she does.”

  “It’s fine,” Voada answered. “The Voice-wife is only saying what she’s been taught.” Still, part of her wanted to rage and rant. Uncivilized wilderness? We Cateni had cities and temples everywhere in Albann before the Mundoa ever came here. We had our own ways, and they were good. Why, the tales my grandmother told me before she died … But no, saying any of that would only start the old arguments again. Meir might not like the Mundoa, but as the Hand, he was simply another one of the overlords to most of the Cateni.

  And therefore, as his wife, so was Voada.

  The Hand’s residence was of Mundoan style, about halfway down the temple path, balanced between the old and the new parts of the town. As Hand of Pencraig, Meir was responsible for collecting taxes and tribute for the Mundoan administration centered in Trusa, their capital city well to the south, once just a small village that the Cateni had called Iskameath. Meir reported to Voice Kadir in most things. Recruiting locals to help run the government was one of the ways the Mundoa kept the people they conquered in check. They were integrated into the bureaucracy, living in houses like those on the mainland, speaking the language of the Mundoa instead of their own as generation by generation their history and culture slowly vanished. They became nominally Mundoan themselves.

  Voada knew that for the fallacy it was.

  Their servants met them in the courtyard. Like the Voice’s servants, they were all Cateni; there were no slaves of Mundoan origin in Albann. Hurrying forward, they took the bucket from Voada’s hands and slipped the cloaks from their shoulders. “Here, Hand-wife. Sit here, and let me take your boots to be cleaned. Look, here are your house sandals. Would you like some wine, Hand Paorach? You seem tired from your walk. The cook has stewed a rabbit; I can bring the two of you a fresh bowl with some bread …” The chatter went on around them. Meir was breathing heavily as he sat in his chair. He waved the servants away, and they vanished into the house, leaving him alone with Voada in the well-shaded courtyard, surrounded by the delicate fragrance of the trumpet flowers blooming on the trellises.

  “You know we have to keep appearances, no matter what you believe yourself,” Meir said. His eyes were half closed; he spoke to the air.

  “When have I ever not done that?” she answered him.

  “I know. You have.” She heard him sigh deeply, and he sat up and looked at her. “This ghost, this taibhse … It will be there tomorrow.” He said it without the rising question at the end—a simple statement.

  “I expect so,” she told him.

  “You rid the temple of the other ones.”

  “I know. This one, though—it won’t listen to me or can’t hear me, and I can’t hear its voice.”

  “Maybe it’s not someone’s soul. Maybe it’s something else.”

  That comment, Voada thought, was a sign of their long marriage. He spoke exactly what had been in her mind as well since they’d left the temple, and though he couldn’t see the ghosts as she could, he had never questioned her insistence that they were really there. She said they were and that she’d been seeing them since she was a young girl; he was still Cateni enough to accept that. In their lore, the souls of the departed sometimes had to be guided to the sun-paths. Her forbearers had done that in the very same temple, so it was unsurprising that Voada had inherited that gift and continued the tradition, even if the temple was now occupied by a travesty.

  “In that case, my husband, there’s nothing we can do about it. You couldn’t see it; I doubt anyone else will either. There’s no sense in worrying ourselves over it.”

  His chin lifted and fell again, a faint nod accompanied by an equally faint smile. She returned the smile.

  She wondered if he felt the gesture’s emptiness or if he’d heard the lie in her words. If today’s ghost wasn’t another wandering soul looking for release, then she didn’t know what it was or what its portent might be.

  The apparition would be in her thoughts the rest of the day and through the night.

  2

  The Blessing of Pashtuk

  THE GHOST WAS STILL THERE in the temple. Voada could see it restlessly prowling the open space near the altar, watching her and gesturing as if trying to call her. Voada did her best to ignore the taibhse.

  She stood with her family on the western side of the altar: Meir closest to the altar as Hand, then Voada as Hand-wife. Beside them were their two children: Orla, their fourteen-year-old daughter, at Voada’s side; their son, Hakan, ten, next to Meir. It had taken her a long time to become pregnant again after Orla’s birth, and since giving birth to Hakan, Voada had been pregnant four more times, but each time the pregnancies had ended in blood and pain after only a few moons. Since the last failed pregnancy, she’d been unable to conceive at all despite the fact that Meir still came to her occasionally. Her moon-time bleedings had become erratic, no longer predictable.

  At thirty years old, she was nearly at the age when she would be considered an “older woman,” when she might reasonably expect grandchildren in the next few years. It seemed her childbearing days had already passed. Despite that, she still prayed to Elia at the solstices for the blessing of another child, but so far Elia hadn’t chosen to answer those prayers.

  At the eastern side of the altar were the Voice and Voice-wife, and clustered around them were six children of the nine Dilara had carried to term, the other three having died of illnesses in infancy.

  All around them, the temple was packed with people come to celebrate Emperor Pashtuk’s birthday, the crowd ringing the altar at a few paces’ distance. A squadron of Pencraig’s garrison of Mundoan soldiers, under the command of Sub-Commander Bakir, were stationed prominently behind the altar and at the temple doors. A choral group of Mundoan singers chanted verses praising Emperor Pashtuk’s great accomplishments, their mingled voices echoing from the stones. Incense burned in twin braziers on either side of Pashtuk’s bust, filling the air with pungent smoke that drifted toward the eastern windows and up to the open sky above the altar. The acrid scent made Voada’s nose wrinkle and filled her with a desire to sneeze, and she heard Orla sniff loudly next to her. Voada put an arm ar
ound her daughter and shook her head.

  “No,” she whispered. “Not here.” Voada saw her daughter’s eyes—grass-green like Voada’s own eyes—narrow and focus on something in the shadows behind the altar.

  “There’s a taibhse, Mother,” Orla said, a little too loudly even over the chanters, and Voada saw Dilara’s frowning gaze swivel to rest on them.

  Voada put a finger to her lips, then bent down to Orla as if she were chastising her. “You see it? Have you seen others, too, before this?”

  A nod answered her. “We’ll need to talk about that,” she breathed into Orla’s ear, “but that will have to wait until afterward. Does seeing it scare you?”

  Orla screwed up her nose. “The ghost doesn’t bother me, but the incense stinks.”

  Voada smiled at that. “It does, but the Voice-wife’s breath will be worse if she comes over to scold us for talking.”

  She heard the giggle that Orla barely suppressed as the chanters finished their paean and pressed her own lips together in a false serious frown as she straightened up again, holding Orla’s hand. She shrugged to Dilara in apology.

  Voice Kadir nodded to Meir as the last reverberation of the chant faded, and Voice and Hand now approached the altar, each carrying a silver plate heaped with small copper coins adorned with Pashtuk’s profile. They placed the trays in front of the bust. The coins, representing the tribute due to the emperor, would remain there, guarded by the soldiers of the garrison until they mysteriously vanished in a moment during the night, as if Pashtuk himself had accepted the offering. Only the empty silver plates would be there in the morning to greet the first worshipper. That was the ritual, repeated every year. Voada knew that it would be Sub-Commander Bakir who would gather up the coins in the darkness and return them to the Voice.

  Meir stepped back while the Voice pivoted slowly to face the audience. Voice Kadir had the sagging posture and figure of a bureaucrat and the same long and thin nose that adorned Pashtuk’s bust. Weak-eyed, he squinted constantly, and he had a habit of running his fingers through his close-cut and thinning dark hair.

  As the Voice turned to the onlookers, Voada saw that he had moved directly into the path of the ghost, fading out of existence as it moved into sunlight before reappearing again in the shadow cast by the altar and the sculpture of Emperor Pashtuk. No one else in the audience saw it or responded to the taibhse’s restless pacing of the temple.

  Voice Kadir cleared his throat. “Today,” he said, “we celebrate the birth of our great Emperor Pashtuk, blessed by our gods and sent as their emissary to this world, and beloved by all the people he rules as we mark the twentieth year of his glorious reign.” Maki Kadir might have been Voice for the village, but his own voice was small and muffled, as if he were too lazy to fully open his mouth. Voada doubted that anyone not directly in front of the man could hear what he said, though no one dared to complain. “Today, we come together to praise Emperor Pashtuk ourselves, as he so rightly deserves.”

  The ghost was next to the Voice, and as he finished that last statement, it seemed to Voada’s eyes that he and the taibhse merged together. Voice Kadir visibly shivered, as if it were full winter and the air were touched with ice. His voice faltered mid-sentence, his eyes widened, and his body went stiff. His head turned ponderously until his gaze met Voada’s. “We shouldn’t be here,” he said then, clearly and loudly, as if someone’s else’s voice had stolen his own. His words echoed unnaturally throughout the temple. “And neither should you. We belong there.” With the last word, he pointed northward. “In Albann Bràghad.”

  There was an audible gasp from the onlookers at that name: the northland, where the unconquered tribal remnants of the Cateni still lived. Albann Bràghad. The River Meadham was the dividing line between Albann Bràghad, the northern portion of the greater island Albann, and its southern portion, Albann Deas, which the Mundoa ruled. Sub-Commander Bakir’s bristling eyebrows lowered as he stared at Voice Kadir.

  Then Voice Kadir shivered again, and his hand dropped as Voada saw the shadowed outline of the ghost step away from the Voice, its hand still pointing imperiously to the north. Voada wordlessly tightened her grip on her daughter’s hand. The taibhse wants me to go to Albann Bràghad? Why? The apparition stepped into the sunlight pouring down through the open roof and was gone in the assault of its radiance.

  The Voice was sputtering and blinking, his knees seemingly weak underneath him. His gaze swept around the room as the crowd gawked at him and a susurration of whispered comments filled the silence. Dilara stepped forward into the confusion, touching her husband’s shoulder, though she—and Meir and Bakir as well—kept glancing toward Voada. “What the Voice means,” Dilara declared, “is that Emperor Pashtuk has heard our praises and blesses us all. He wishes us well as we return to our homes, for that is where we should go now. This year, in his largesse, the emperor wishes us to take these coins as tokens of his blessing and leave him.”

  Dilara tugged at her husband’s sleeve. She nodded her head to the plates of copper coins on the altar. Voice Kadir seemed to shake himself awake. “Yes,” he said, and it was his own voice again. “Accept the blessings of our emperor.” With that, he grabbed a small handful of the copper coins and tossed them into the crowd. A moment later, as the Voice scattered a second handful, Meir joined in with the coins from his own plate of offerings. Children shrieked in glee, diving for the coins as they clattered on the marble flags; the adults laughed, many of them also crouching down to gather the money. Bakir’s soldiers watched restlessly, glancing uneasily at their commanding officer over the chaos of what was supposed to be a solemn, dignified occasion.

  “Our ceremony is ended,” Dilara shrilled over the clamor as both Meir and the Voice tossed a third handful of the coins into the crowds. “All of you should return to your houses and thank Emperor Pashtuk in your prayers this evening.”

  Dilara nodded to Sub-Commander Bakir, who shouted an order. The soldiers clashed the butts of their spears against the tiled floor and slowly began to move forward, herding the worshippers toward the doors, though they passed around the Voice, the Hand, and their families. Voada could feel Meir staring at her. She kept her gaze on him as something familiar and supportive, not wanting to see the expressions that might be contorting the faces of Dilara or her husband.

  She could see the ghost again, lurking in the nearby shadows: still pacing, still speaking wordlessly, still watching her. Always watching her.

  “Mother, you’re hurting me,” she heard Orla cry out. Voada realized that she was still holding her daughter’s hand, that she was squeezing it far too tightly. She let go of the hand, putting her arm around Orla’s shoulders instead and kissing the top of her head. She did the same to Hakan, who stood next to Orla looking like a small version of his father, with the same yellow-brown hair Meir had once had—though Hakan’s gaze was fastened on a copper coin at his feet, not the adults. “I’m sorry, darling,” she said. “I’m very sorry.” She looked back quickly to Meir. “Should we go, husband?” she asked as Hakan stooped to pick up the coin. “The children are tired.” Her eyes pleaded with him. He nodded to her, looking tired and older than his age. The Voice’s children were rushing about, picking up the scattered coins and laughing. Voada doubted that either of their parents found anything amusing in the morning’s fiasco.

  “You go on,” Meir told her. “I’ll stay here and help the Voice and Voice-wife put the temple back to rights. And why don’t you take the Voice’s children with you? I’m sure Voice-wife Dilara would appreciate that.”

  “Certainly,” Voada told him. She nodded quickly to Dilara, who looked as if she’d just bitten into a rotten berry, then gestured to the children. “I’ll see you at home, then.”

  Gathering the children together, she hurried from the temple.

  When she returned to the house, Voada sent Orla and Hakan away with Una, the house servant in charge of the children: a large-boned, plain-faced Cateni woman, her features worn with the line
s of age, her hair thin and white. She had other servants bring retted flax straw, a wooden knife, and a wooden scutching stand to her in the courtyard. “I’ll work here,” she told them. “Leave me for now.”

  She began to work the flax, placing a bundle of the straw into the v-shaped notch in the scutching stand so it hung down, then running the blade of the wooden knife down the fibers. It was laborious, tedious work, scraping away the woody, clinging bark from the flax fiber so the resulting bast could later be heckled and combed into flaxen strands and spun with a distaff and spinning wheel into linen threads. The retted straw stank of decomposition and resisted her efforts to free the flax from its wooden sheaths.

  It was exactly what she needed. She could concentrate on the work, take out her worry and fear on the flax, and not think about the taibhse or what had happened at the temple. At least not until she could talk to Meir.

  Voada glanced up as Meir entered the courtyard some time later. His face was red, and she didn’t know whether that was from the exertion of walking down from the temple or from having to deal with the aftermath of the ceremony with Voice Kadir and Dilara. He allowed the servant who scurried forward from the house to take his cloak, gratefully accepted a cup from another, and sat down in the shade next to Voada. She said nothing, only put down the scutching knife and placed her hand over his on the armrest of his chair. From inside the house, they could hear the high laughter of Hakan and the more solemn tones of Orla. Meir’s elderly hunting dog, Fermac, came shuffling into the courtyard from where he’d been sleeping in a sunny patch of the portico and nuzzled at Meir’s other hand. Voada watched Meir ruffle Fermac’s ears absently.

  “Was it the ghost?” Meir said, staring past Fermac to a nearby trellis and the trumpet flowers blooming there.

  “Yes,” she told him. “I’m afraid it was. I saw it walk into Voice Kadir—and I mean walk into, not just pass through him, as I’ve seen other ghosts do. Somehow, the taibhse was speaking through the Voice. I’ve never seen one do that before. Ever.” She decided not to mention that Orla had also seen the ghost.