High Priestess Izefia looked out on her temple. It was a place full of beauty, lit gently by fires and by the thin squares of sunlight that filtered down through the holes in the roof. On the wall opposing the entrance, their goddess, the Bringer of Health, stood carved in stone, watching over them with her motherly smile. Her simplistic robes parted to reveal her wide hips, her smooth belly and her swollen breasts, all signs of her eternal fertility and health.
From her vantage point above, Izefia watched as the Bringer's three dozen servants burned incense and chanted the smooth, sublimely beautiful songs of their divine mistress. Jaydi, loud, clear and unafraid, led the singing with her honey-sweet voice, while Nadifa blew flecks of powder onto the fires to keep them colored just right. Nadifa's smooth, contented smile peaked out from under her hood as she watched the fire flicker green. Across from her, at the Bringer's feet, the imperturbable monk Nakasi sat in a trance.
Izefia herself completed the picture. Standing on a balcony set high into the wall of the temple, her rich golden-laced cloth and bright blue cape gave her the queenly appearance that befitted a High Priestess of the Bringer of Health. In better times, she would stand on this balcony, and preach the glories and unconditional love of her matron goddess before a crowd of supplicants. Then the masses would line up, a few at a time, to be warded from maladies and evil spirits. All the while, firelight would gleam off the gold band around Izefia's forehead, her cape would fly on a draft, and the golden disks that hung from her ears would quake as she gave her speech.
But these were not better times. Turning around, Izefia watched as unrest frothed in the streets. The Queen was fallen, and the artisans and the traders and the clerks knew it. The lower tradesmen—the quarry diggers and the butchers and the fishermen—knew it too. The warriors knew it, and they had thrown down their weapons rather than defend an empty palace.
And the barbarians knew it. Brandishing purple-streaked shields of a design Izefia had never seen before, the foreign men rollicked through the streets, stealing from vendors, hurling rocks against buildings and getting into brawls, mostly with each other.
Izefia noticed someone standing next to her. Bandele, the Speaker for the Novices, leaned over the outside parapet and watched it all unfold beside her.
"How can it have come to this?" murmured Izefia.
"It was coming for a long time," said Bandele, in her deep, motherly voice. "Ever since the Queen's Finest lost the river, we knew this day would come. The tax-men took too much, the poor stole too much, and the cattle blight did the rest. Our nation was in no shape to last."
"They'll be coming for us," said Izefia. "Those barbarians have no respect for our gods."
"And the Bringer of Health will not keep them out."
Izefia hesitated, knowing what this meant.
Bandele said it for her. "We must abandon the temple."
Izefia closed her eyes tightly. "The sisters will all survive," she assured herself. "The faith will survive. Those are the things that matter most."
"If there is any hope of escape, it's on the docks. Maybe there is a ship still outbound."
Izefia nodded. But she kept watching the chaos, spellbound.
"High Priestess? We need to do it soon."
Wiping her eyes, Izefia tore herself away from the sight below and sadly descended the stairs to the temple floor.
Izefia had hoped to slip out of the temple without worrying anyone by explaining her mission. It wasn't to be. Jaydi stood expectantly at the foot of the stairs, having slipped away from the prayer-song she had started. Her wide mouth smiled as usual, and her body, covered only by the lace over her breasts and the fur that hung from her waist, smiled in its own way. Even now, she looked ready for anything.
Beside her, Nadifa stood tall, hands clasped behind her back, her big, dark eyes peering out from under her hood and seeming to see right through Izefia.
"Oh..." said Izefia.
"High Priestess?" said Nadifa. "We know the temple is in danger. Please, tell us you have a plan."
"As it turns out, I do," said Izefia, mortified that they would think otherwise—and that until recently, she had indeed had no plan. "We are going to the ports. It is time to find a ship away from this city."
"We're coming too," said Jaydi. It was not an offer, but insistence. Even as she smiled, seriousness hardened her usual cheer.
Just as Izefia prepared to refuse, Bandele gently put a hand on her shoulder. "Let them, High Priestess. You are conspicuous enough with all the gold you're wearing. We'll only be safer as a group."
Izefia let out a tense breath. "You are right. Come, girls. We don't have much time."
Outside, the half-empty streets roiled with muted panic as people packed what they had and ran, or else sat and waited to see what the barbarians would do to them. Wood had been pried away from mud-brick windowsills to be reused somewhere else. Holes had been smashed in walls so that towering family totems could be extracted from them. By her goddess, Izefia wished the refugees good luck.
Reaching the port would mean traveling through the parts of the city that the barbarians had held for hours already. Ducking her head, Izefia did her best to stalk through the narrowest streets and walk beside carts to look less vulnerable. But as they passed the gymnastic field in the center of the city, she saw something that stopped her.
Women stood on a stage, side by side and facing a great cheering crowd. But these were not the acrobats who had performed a month ago, nor was this the annual visit of the inlander play-acting troupe. The women were slaves, stripped completely bare, their hands tied behind their backs, baring the curves of their calves, their sweat-glistening stomachs, their heaving breasts and their apprehensive faces. One of the barbarians, feathered like a chieftain, pulled ahead one of the women, a thin, wide-eyed creature, and announced her to the crowd in his thick plainsman accent. As if that humiliation were not enough, he reached down and pinched the woman's nipples, causing her to flinch and close her eyes. But she was helpless to stop her nipples from hardening, and the brute man cradled her left breast and pinched it so the whole crowd could see.
The others on the stage were not spared either. Two girls, just a little younger than twenty by their looks, were lashed together, back to back, trembling and sweating. One unlucky woman was forced to keep her legs straight, as she had been forced onto thin post that rose from the ground and penetrated her pussy, immobilizing her. Every movement she made shifted the wooden peg inside her, and she helplessly struggled to keep still as her juices dripped down the pole.
This was the new status of women in this city. Under the tutelage of the queen, it had become a bastion for females with independent spirit. But now these barbarians had stripped them, chained them and pulled them back into submission.
Finally, Izefia came to her senses. Of all places, this was the worst to catch the eye of some rapacious savage. She crept along the side of the field until finally she and her women left it behind them, arriving at the port.
The port had more ships left than Izefia had dared hope. None were the great ocean-crossers she had wanted most, but a few good house-sized sailcraft looked like they could hold most of the acolytes; merely two of the them would do.
"Split up and ask everyone," said Izefia. "Remember, it makes no difference where we land, as long as it isn't here."
The women split up, and Izefia approached the biggest ship first.
"Yes?" said the captain, looking not the least surprised to see a gold-plated high priestess addressing him. "What is it?"
"The daughters of the Bringer of Health require transport," said Izefia, as calmly as she could. "We would pay greatly if you would bring the thirty-eight of us away from here."
