The Emperor and the Temple

Fifteen days after the meeting in the Temple Library, on a warm spring afternoon, High Priestess Ashala strode into the garden's seed room and, having checked that only Ruta was present, held her head in her hands and screamed as loudly as she could.

"Now, now, Ashala," said Ruta calmly, barely looking up from her work. "What troubles you?"

"Many things! Everything!" replied the woman in the red robes.

"Sit! Talk!"

"I will if you pay proper attention to me." said Ashala, taking a seat beside her friend.

Ruta sighed and raised her arms from the desk, removing her eyeglasses and turning in her chair to face the High Priestess.

"What is the matter my dear?"

"Fris! Fris is driving me insane! Last night in the City, in the workshop that has been provided for him.....well, something happened! The building was destroyed."

"It burned?"

"Well, no. It just, well....it tore itself apart. In just a second. It is gone! Did you not hear it? I thought the whole City did."

"I did not, but I am a heavy sleeper. My night boy did mention something this morning about a noise. Was anyone hurt?"

"None were inside, but a lady citizen was walking nearby with her husbands. Luckily they were between her and the workshop and they bore the brunt, else I'm sure we would have heard more about this from the Council. I have two of the poor boys in the Temple Infirmary - well, I feel responsible. They are not badly hurt, but when I spoke of it to Fris he just shrugged and, do you know what he said, Ruta?"

"What did he say?"

"'He said, 'When one is cooking it is sometimes necessary to break a few eggs.' He seemed almost pleased with himself. And now the Adjutant has given him a platoon of the City Guard, at Tak's insistence, and they follow him everywhere, worshipping the ground he walks upon. They have been going from door to door confiscating metals. Even here in the Temple we must surrender everything that can be used for war. And our gold too! It will compensate farmers who, in normal times, send their produce south; food that will now be stockpiled in the City as Osta's realm goes hungry."

"Tak means to save the City from the Emperor, Ashala. We should be pleased. But, yes, I understand your concern with Fris. Yesterday he came to me and demanded I play chess with him. In the middle of the day! He said it helps him think."

"I hope you told him to go away, Ruta."

"Well, no, I played him of course. But Ashala, we will have to re educate him when this is over and he is once again a simple Temple Boy. You still have the frame of repentance in your room, do you not? The one Nikah assembled. I fear we may need it. Shallie is a capable mistress but she will need help with Fris."

"Oh Ruta, you are so foolish sometimes! Things are never going to return to the way they were!"

Ashala paused for a few moments, allowing the words to sink in before leaning forward to clutch her friend's arm. She continued, "Look Ruta, I need your help. Where is your day boy Samon? I want him now. In here. You will see that we are not disturbed!"

Ruta looked at her, shocked, and replied, "But he is to be your night boy this evening. Can you not wait a few hours?"

"You do not understand. Tak sleeps in my room each night. I have to send my night boys away."

"Ah. Well, Tak is a guest that many ladies of the City would enjoy having in their bedchambers."

Ashala sighed, "Again, you do not understand, Ruta. When I say he sleeps in my room I mean he sleeps! He is exhausted by the end of each day. I hold him in my arms and tell him that everything is going to be alright and then he drifts away with his head in my lap. Every night, Ruta!"

"I see, Ashala. This reminds me that Tak never knew a mother. He had seen but six or seven summers when I crossed his path in the Tajorg Valley, and then he was taken south into slavery on a farm. Tak told me his master was kind but he was ignored by the lady of the house, at least until he grew into a handsome young man and she took him to her bed. And then he came to the Temple; and are we Priestesses any better? He loves and respects you, Ashala, as his father King Alfard did before him. In fact I envy you. I wish only that he had chosen my lap to rest his head in."

A tear came to Ruta's eye and she dabbed at it with her sleeve as Ashala moved forward to hug her, "I do not complain, Ruta, I do not complain. Times are changing, my dear friend, and not just because of war."

Ruta pulled herself away and stood, her eyes avoiding Ashala's, as she spoke.

"I will fetch Samon for you, High Priestess. Lock the door here when you wish to be undisturbed. There is not much comfort in this room, and certainly no priestess's couch."

"I am a creative woman, Ruta. And Samon is an obedient boy. I am sure we will manage."

"Very well."

Ruta's concerned eyes swept over the organised chaos of the room; the trays of seedlings, experiments half completed on the benches, instruments of science resting where they were last used.

"Don't break anything!" she said, as she left.

****

That same afternoon, Nikah met Taneric on the Temple steps and they walked together to the plain outside the City, via the south gate.

"So, you are a free man now Nikah," said Taneric, as they walked. "Ashala honours the pledge Hanja made to you at her mother's house in the south. Will you come with me to Vosgir when we have defeated the Emperor?"

"You have no doubt that we will prevail? Ha! If you did you would not admit it. You are much changed, Tak."

"As are you, Nikah. The boy who ran from the Temple of the Goddess to Vosgir in three days! There are many in the north who will buy you ale for an evening to hear that story."

"Indeed Tak, I hope so. But such things must wait. I wish first to go to my home in the East, to find the family I was taken from as a child, if they still live. After that I will come to you in Vosgir."

Taneric looked at his friend with concern.

"To Vilgen? Nikah, this is not the time to go wandering around the countryside. A foreign army is about to descend upon us!"

"And we know where it will come, Tak. To Casbur and to the City of the Goddess. I will be safer than anyone."

"Vilgen is on the road to Casbur, Nikah, if their armies land at the port cities of the south. Be careful!"

"I will likely be there and gone before the Emperor arrives, Tak. Now, tell me, why do you not come to Priestess Hanja in the evenings? You know she loves you."

"Because you are with her Nikah."

"Tak! Are you now prudish since you went to Vosgir? Come to us tonight! We will serve Priestess Hanja together. She misses you Tak."

"I cannot, Nikah."

"Then after I leave tomorrow. Go to her, lay hands upon her for the first time! She no longer considers that a sin Tak - she is much changed, just as we are."

They passed through the south gate and walked together towards a small group of men on the plain beneath the walls.

"Tak, tell me! Why do you defend the City of the Goddess? You could return north and live in peace and safety there, for those lands cannot be conquered - everyone says so. Why do you feel you owe a debt to a City that enslaved you?"

"I see the City not for what it is, Nikah, but for what it can be. For what it will be. And Nikah, much as I love my father, and much as I have grown to love the north, I cannot live out my life there, confined within its forests. And besides, I feel the presence of the Goddess in my heart now, Nikah."

"Ha! Now that you are no longer a temple boy you feel Her presence! I do not understand you Tak - perhaps I never did. However, the course you now follow seems somehow right. Tell me, what are we doing out here on this muddy field?"

"We are here to see Fris. He has something to show us."

"An even bigger cannon?"

"No, something else. Something even the Emperor does not have, if the man Kamhet is to be believed."

"Oh, I think you can believe poor Kamhet," said Nikah. "I have seen what the herb does to a boy, and Lady Cillah keeps him on a short leash."

"I do not trust him, Nikah." said Taneric. But now they had arrived, and he hailed Fris, mocking him in fun, calling him a madman and asking why they had been dragged out to a muddy field so soon after lunch.

Fris stood next to a tube, about the size of a man's leg, with a point on one end and a long stick protruding from the other. It was leaning on a wooden frame, angled away from the city and towards a small copse perhaps eight hundred paces distant. Without replying to Taneric's taunts, he struck a match and lit a small taper at the blunt end of the device, gesturing towards the copse.

"The trees are the target?" said Taneric, turning to see Fris running in the opposite direction. For a moment he and Nikah looked at each other in panic before they both sprinted after Fris, hearing the whoosh of the weapon behind them, as it took off into the air, leaving a trail of flame behind it, just where they had previously been standing. It rose for a few seconds before dipping and dropping towards the ground and then, just before it struck, there was a flash and a boom loud enough to bring guards to the City walls. The missile split into a hundred smaller pieces, each of them a little ball of flame, spreading outwards in all directions.

"By the Goddess, Fris!" said Taneric.

"Nowhere near the trees though, Fris." said Nikah, a little more calmly.

"It's the range that's important," replied Fris, addressing them for the first time. "We will launch scores of them at the same time, all pointed the same way. For every one that goes right, one will go straight and one will go left. You will see. And they are easy to make. We will have a thousand of them by the summer."

"What do you call these things?" asked Taneric.

"You think of a name! I do not have the time." replied Fris, turning and walking away towards the south gate, his escort of City Guards following, whooping and cheering at the spectacle they had just witnessed.

"He is becoming intolerable." said Nikah.

"Indeed, High Priestess Ashala is at her wits end. I believe she will kill him with her bare hands once this is all over."

The sound of a trumpet reached the two boys from the direction of the East Gate.

"It is Queen Zantina," said Taneric. "She approaches the City. Come, we must go to meet her!"

"Wait Tak, let us run around the wall instead of reentering the City. It will be quicker. I will race you!"

And with that, the two of them set off across the plain.