Tomebound

The life of a daymoth is nothing in the time of a man. The daymoth hatches from its cocoon in the morning and passes from the earth before the sun has set. So too is the life of a man in the time of the world. The life of a man is no more than a hundred years; for a hundred years he lives before he passes from the earth. But the man goes on living long after the daymoth is no more, and forgets it easier than a dream. So too does the earth forget the man when he is no more. For the time of the world is many thousands of years, and the Time Before Time is unknown.

-The Testament of Kahlo Hadrizeen, First Prophet of Eloei, Chapter 92, Verses 20-27

Rayyaq Raleed, Qarda

Lanor wore the same purple robes she’d been wearing for the past eleven days. She lay in her purple silk bedding in her old room in the Palace of the Hierophant. Outside, pale purple smoke poured from the palace umat over the city of Rayyaq Raleed. The cantor sang the same morning nasbilha, a dirge of sorrow, that she’d ordered him to sing every morning since her return.

Her whole world was dressed in the Qardish customs of mourning.

There was a dull haze to everything now. It was impossible to tell whether it was her grief or the fact that she had eaten almost nothing in the past forty-three days since that night. All she cared to do anymore was sleep. Sleep until the nightmares brought her back to the bloodstained floor in Castle Muadazim and she woke up screaming.

The worst part was that she hadn’t cried once. Not that night. Not on the long horse-drawn palanquin ride home. Not when her father’s body, wrapped in regal shrouds of purple and gold, lay in state in the Temple of Eloei. Not even when they entombed him in the royal crypt beneath the palace.

She longed for a release that never came. It felt unnatural, her lack of tears. Evil, even. Broken.

Only when her head ached and her parched lips chapped did she even have the motivation to drink water. She sipped from the bowl at her bedside. Had she had that cup of gruel two days ago, or three? She couldn’t remember.

Yesterday was Hur Adhajah, a holy feast day for the Eloheed. It was the first year she’d ever missed it. She missed all the traditional Hur Adhajah dishes. Aromatic rice and herbs. Curdle porridge. Laftih triangles stuffed with fruit, sweet cream, or preserves. Her favorite had always been forty-layer bread. Paper-thin layers of dough baked into a fine flaky crust flavored with crushed almonds and honey.

But she had no craving for any of the feast day delicacies. Not like she used to.

***

At the funerary feast for her mother, Lanor remembered being just tall enough to sit in an adult-sized chair at the table. The funeral happened to coincide with Hur Adhajah that year. Clerics, elders of the Synod, and even her father himself read verses from the Testament of Kahlo Hadrizeen and gave speeches on death and mourning. All she did was sit there teary-eyed and missing her mother.

She wouldn’t touch a single dish from the feast. She wouldn’t look at the servants who placed the golden plates in front of her bearing the most exquisite foods the known world had to offer. It wasn’t until the end of the night, when everyone was milling about and talking, that her father snapped her out of it.

“Lanor,” said Drakhman, thudding into the chair next to her. “You must try this.”

“I don’t want to,” she said tearfully. “I want my mother.”

“I know you do, Lanor. I do, too. But I give thanks to Eloei every day that I still have you.” He set a plate on the table next to her; she gave him a sidelong glance. “And I know that I’m a poor substitute, but you still have me. Right?”

“Yes,” she mumbled. Now she rewarded him with her full attention.

“There’s my girl. Look at this, see? Forty-layer bread. I want you to try it.”

“I don’t want to. It looks foul...”

“Ah, but listen!” He held up a finger as he often did when he told her fables or recounted entertaining stories of his. “Forty-layer bread is a sacred tradition here in Qarda. Do you know why?” Lanor shook her head. He held up the pastry before her eyes and showed her the stack of impossibly thin layers baked to a flaky crisp. Admittedly, it smelled good. “Forty layers. One layer for each year of the reign of the First Prophet, Eloei grace him. Forty years!”

“Wow,” Lanor gasped.

“I am about the same age he was when he established the hierophany. Did you know that? And he reigned for forty years. Eloei will watch over me now that I have the throne. You’ll have me for at least another forty years, Lanor.”

“And then you’ll leave me?” She panicked, on the verge of tears again.

“No, Lanor. They’ll have to invent a fifty-layer bread. Or a hundred. Or a thousand!” He held out the pastry up to her mouth. “Do you think you could even get your teeth around a thousand layers?”

“No,” Lanor giggled. It was the first time she’d smiled since losing her mother.

“No? Well, you’d better practice! Here, try the forty-layer bread. Ready? Just one bite and then I won’t ask you again. But I think you’ll like it.”

And she did.

And for a little while, she forgot what she’d lost.

***

There was a knock at her chamber door. In the early days following her father’s death, she turned people away, sometimes furiously when they made a habit of pestering her. Now she had no energy to say or do anything in response.

“Hierophant Lanor,” said her Uncle Ghamal. She hated the pairing of those words. “May I enter?” He waited a few moments in silence and then entered anyway like always. Ghamal slipped into the room, latching the door behind him, and sat in the ornate velvet chair next to her bed. His voice was softer when he spoke again, just above a whisper. “Lanor.”

“What?” she said without rolling over in bed to face him.

“It’s been forty-three days, Lanor.”

“I can count.” She licked her chapped lips. “What news do you have today?”

“Lanor, this cannot—”

“What news,” she cut him off harshly, “do you have?”

Ghamal sighed. “No word yet from the veracidins. I have scattered them to the ends of the earth. Your father’s killer is out there, and I’m certain they will find him eventually. In the meantime, Qarda’s problems continue to accumulate. A new line of supplicants has formed outside the palace gates, Your Holiness.”

Lanor nodded once weakly. “Thank you. Bring me word at once when the veracidins find who did this.”

A pause hung in the air. “Lanor,” said Ghamal.

“You can go now,” she replied.

“What about the supplicants?”

“Send them away.” She was mumbling into her pillow now, hiding from the cracks of sunlight seeping into her room between the shutters. “Leave me be.”

“You sent them away yesterday. Today they returned, and there are even more of them. Those with infirmities—”

“Unless you have more news,” she cut him off bitterly, “then get out of my chamber. I don’t want company.”

“I see.” The scowl in his voice was audible. “Very well. Rumors of rebellion continue unabated. Two more usurpers have been caught and punished for their heresy. Their bodies hang with the four others outside the palace walls. The rebels who followed them have been deported for trial, sentencing, and imprisonment on the desert island of Jal Hakhan. Your rule as the first female Hierophant is safe... for now.” Ghamal sighed again. “Lanor, I must advise—”

“That will be all, Uncle.”

“Lanor.” His tone was dead serious. “I think you may not understand the gravity of your situation. As the new Hierophant—”

“Do not speak to me like you are my father,” she said through gritted teeth. “This is the only time I will warn you.”

Ghamal jumped up from his chair. “You? Warn me?! You insolent brat!” He yanked the pillow from beneath her head and threw it on the floor. “I am trying to help you, and you won’t listen!”

“Get out this instant!” Lanor shouted. Her voice was hoarse with disuse. She sat up with great effort, eyes stinging and head pounding. “One more word and I will call the paladins. I am your Hierophant, and you are not my father!”

“No! No, I am not!” She laid eyes on him for the first time since the funeral. His salt-and-pepper beard was a shade saltier now, bloodshot veins slithering out from beneath his tired eyelids like little red serpents. There was a look in his eyes she didn’t recognize. “I am not your father. He was a fool, too! A fool with a sword traipsing about the known world from the day he was crowned. Meanwhile, his vizier had to stay home and do the real work of ruling his kingdom while he played war hero. Me! His older brother! I was first in line for the throne and was passed over when I could sire no children.” He was shaking now. “It should have been me on that throne! Then there would have been no more Circles of Kings. No foolhardy military campaigns across the sea, sending our men to die on foreign shores. It should have been me! I wouldn’t have been fool enough to draw the ire of assassins, let them sleep in my castle, in my beds! Then we wouldn’t be in this mess! Then he would still be here.” Ghamal’s eyes were suddenly damp. “My brother would still be alive. And he wouldn’t have left his only child an orphan. Damn fool!” His voice cracked.

Lanor felt the edge of her anger soften. She relaxed her shoulders. “Uncle,” she murmured, but he turned away and made for the door.

“I have said too much,” he choked out. “A thousand apologies, Hierophant. Good day.” The chamber door swung shut behind him and he vanished.

Even now, the tears wouldn’t come.

Outside, the cantor was already singing the midday nasbilha. The sound of the cantor four times a day and the angles of the slivers of sunlight—these were Lanor’s only measures of the passage of time. She sank back into her bed and felt another sleep coming on.

***

There was a knock at her chamber door. Her eyes snapped open—she was suddenly alert and on edge again. The angle and orange of the sunbeams suggested it was late in the day. “No, Uncle,” she rasped. “Please go away.” She didn’t have the heart to endure another outburst like his earlier one. But there was another knock.

“My prophetess.” It was Sashani’s voice on the other side of the gold-trimmed ebony wood. “May I enter?”

She sighed. “Fine.” She wondered what Sashani wanted, or if her uncle had sent her in his stead.

Her handmaiden entered the chamber and latched the door behind her. She carried a golden platter in her hand with an embroidered red cloth draped over it. “I’m sorry to trouble you,” said Sashani, bowing at the edge of her bed. “I’ll only be a moment.”

“What is it?” Lanor asked, sitting up.

“A gift.” Sashani pulled the cloth away to reveal a layered pastry. “Forty-layer bread. For you.”

Lanor was thrilled at first, but she tempered her expectations. “Thank you, but this isn’t the ceremonial bread. This is something different. The dough is only made once a year, and it goes bad the next day. What is this? Did you have the cooks make it?”

“It’s forty-layer bread. I promise. I was going to bring it to you this morning, but I heard a commotion. I thought it would be better if I came back later... ” Sashani held out the platter toward her. “Please, my prophetess, eat—if I may be so bold.”

“How did you...?” Lanor didn’t know what to say. She lifted the flaky square to her mouth and bit off a small corner. The layers melted the moment they touched her tongue. She tasted almonds, honey, and butter. She tasted the sacred dough. She tasted all forty layers, no more, no less. She tasted the eye of a storm from her distant past when the world was finally calm again for a short while. “How did you get this? Hur Adhajah was yesterday.”

“I saved it for you. This was my serving.” Sashani smiled sheepishly. “I wanted you to have it because it’s your favorite, Lanor.”

Lanor’s arms acted on their own. They reached out and wrapped around Sashani, squeezing her tightly, careful to cradle the forty-layer bread safely in both hands. Lanor wept. Her stomach heaved with grief until the muscles ached. Her chapped lips split with her sobbing. Sashani returned her embrace, timidly at first. They stayed like this for a long while, until the sunset nasbilha had begun, and for a while after that.

When she had finally calmed down, she said, “You called me Lanor.” Sashani had also been crying, but she wiped her eyes and nodded. “Split it with me.”

Sashani shook her head deferentially. “It is for you. I couldn’t—”

“Please,” said Lanor, tasting iron on her split lip. “Please. It was your only portion and you’ll have to wait until next year otherwise. I want us both to have some. Please?” Lanor held out a corner for her handmaiden to bite. Reluctantly, Sashani accepted. “You’re my only friend. Please don’t leave me.” Lanor sniffled. “You deserve anything you want. Do you want gold? Do you want a pet from Xheng Yu Xi—a bird, a tiger? Or a camel from Zan Vayonado?”

“Your company is a fine gift, my prophetess.”

“Sashani.” Lanor gave her a stern, tearful look. “I’m being serious. I want you to be honest with me.”

Sashani’s expression relaxed then in a way Lanor had never seen before, and she looked more like a friend than a servant. “I mean it, Lanor. I have all the material things I could ever want. But I don’t have any other friends, either.” She smiled kindly. “If you are my friend, I need no others.”

More tears seeped from Lanor’s eyes and she dabbed them away with the corner of her purple sleeve. “I want you to continue to be honest with me. That’s what friends do.” She bit off another corner of the forty-layer bread and handed it to her friend again. “And if you think of anything you would ask of me, just ask it. It will be yours.”

“I have one request, my prophetess, when you are ready.” Sashani held a finger up to her nostrils. “May I draw a bath for you? Please?”

Lanor was more relaxed now. She indulged in a bit of humor. “Do I smell that bad to you? I’m wearing perfumed robes, you know.”

“It’s not that. You haven’t bathed since...” Sashani looked down at her feet. “I worry you’ll fall ill. And I don’t want my friend to be sick.” The handmaiden met her gaze again. “What do you say, Lanor?”

The hierophant heaved a deep, shuddering sigh forty-three days in the making. “All right.”