CHAPTER TEN

Approaching Mount Teplis from the southeast, Yta and her train did not meet the three princes. At dawn, when Dursoris’s screams rent the quiet of the morning, Yta leaned from her wagon, pulling back the drapes, and ordered her horsemen to halt. The screams continued—piercing, eloquent, full and deep in their anguish.

One of the courtiers with the queen made the sign of the gods before his face and spoke humbly to his mistress. “Per­haps it is some miller—trapped in his grinding wheel.”

“No,” Yta replied.

She knew the voice. How could she not know?

And how could she not intuit those screams as the first of many yet to come?

* * * *

The blood was still fresh on the dais steps, still gummy on the cloth of the white robe. Yta herself, helped across the fissure by servants, examined the blood.

The servants were fearful—murder of a voice of the gods was a crime unthinkable—but some of them were moved more toward immense sorrow. “How could this have hap­pened? Oh, Queen Yta! How could this have happened? Who could have done such a thing?”

Not averting her eyes from the corpse, not shielding her eyes against the glare of the bloody bronze mask, Yta inhaled the stench of death and the aroma of incense. “Bury the body,” she whispered. “Bury the head. Both in one grave. Here.” She crossed the floor of the cave and tapped her foot on the ground where there was but earth and loose stones.

Uncertain, but using their swords as spades, the armed guards of the train bent to the task and within a short while had dug an adequate trench.

Yta, standing all the while in a dark corner of the cave, now strode forward and removed her brilliant gold and crimson cape. “Lay the body in this,” she instructed. And when her servants had done so: “Place the head upon the breast. Yes. Now move the arms so that they embrace the head.”

The arms were not yet stiffened; it was done.

“Cover her with the cape. Lay her to rest.”

Yta returned to her place in the shadows and watched, her expression unchanging, as the fresh earth was returned to the grave and tamped down with boots.

She ordered one of the servants, “Bring me wine from your saddle. And the rest of you—remove yourselves now, please. Wait outside in the sunlight for me.”

They backed out as her man returned with the wine. “Leave me now,” Yta told him. “The oracle will yet speak with me. I will be but a short while.”

When the last of her people had gone, Yta stood above the freshly turned earth, unstoppered the wineskin, and poured a slow libation. As she did, she whispered an old prayer, one she had memorized in her girlhood on Hea Isle, one she had not spoken aloud since the day her feet left that place. She pronounced it now, summoning old spirits, old guid­es, as the wine ran out. Then the queen lay on the damp overturned earth, stretched out on her back, clasped her hands upon her belly, and closed her eyes to rest, to meditate.

She had been awake for a long time, for days full of tension, and she was exhausted. The darkness of the temple and its incenses filled her and lulled her spirit into an effortless slumber. Dreaming, suspended, Yta continued to repeat the prayer she had pronounced with the libation.

She did not stir when the ghost of the oracle came to her. Flowing white, in Yta’s dream, with gray eyes shining be­neath the mask of bronze, the oracle spoke truths as her spirit hovered in the gulf between old life and new death.

“You have committed no sins willingly, and your life has been good, your sins forgiven. Queen Yta, Hea herself forgives you.

“Your thread is nearly run, and you are no more responsible for the children you have brought into the world than are the gods for bringing evil into the world. This is in the nature of all things, and Fate runs its course.

“You will live, Queen Yta, in your purity and goodness, without sin, one with the goddess, when you return to the capital and renounce your throne. Abdicate forever to your eldest, for he will have the throne by blood or not.

“When you have abdicated, leave Athadia and the empire for Hea Isle. Your work is done. The goddess awaits you with warm breast and spread arms. What remains for you is short. This is also in the nature of things. Rejoice that life is not endured forever.

“Crimes have been done; they are not yet completed. My body was slain by Elad, your eldest. Your youngest, Dursoris, was injured by Cyrodian. When you return to court, inquire; these truths will bare themselves. Yet give Elad the throne.

“Know this in the name of the gods, and in the name of Hea, and in the name of all gods as one god: you are purged, Yta of Athadia.

“Fearless as you have been in life, a strong woman, honest with yourself and honest with others, a queen, you must know that this world, your world, has nearly run out its own thread. New gods wait, new worlds aspire, and new lives groan, waiting to be born. All this you will be spared, the end and the new beginning. Upon your death, Hea will welcome you across the river. You are purged.

“You are purged, Yta of Athadia.”

When she awoke, she left the temple, entered her wagon, and ordered her people to return her to the capital.

The words of the oracle’s spirit lingered, and Yta considered them in silence.

The screams that had swept down the moun­tain no longer pierced the morning and no longer pierced the mother’s heart.