She sat and half listened to Oranna and Sethennai. The librarian was never eager to take down one of the books, and her distaste for the stranger was palpable, but she had opened a heavy folio and was looking for her place.
“The Reliquary of Pentravesse is said to mark its passage through the world, in the sense that a scythe marks its passage through the grass,” she read. “Seek patiently. Listen for strange accidents, disastrous coincidences, events that slip their reins. You may chart the progress of Pentravesse’s final work through an unsuspecting world. This is the nature of the curse upon the Reliquary.”
“Greed and ambition pursue it,” said Sethennai, as if he too were reading aloud. “Bad luck, ill judgment, and unintended consequences follow in its wake.” He smiled at her. “But the idea is irresistible.”
Csorwe happened to look up just as Oranna did, and saw the look that passed between the librarian and the wizard. Imagine two spies who pass in the street and recognise one another, before each disappears into a different crowd. Ordinary wariness is replaced with shock, delight, terror—and then the moment passes.
* * *
Csorwe saw Belthandros Sethennai only once more in the House of Silence. He stayed in the guest wing, visited the library from time to time, and troubled nobody, as far as Csorwe knew. Her time was taken up with preparations for the day that was to come. There was no ceremonial name for it. Csorwe thought of it as THAT DAY. She prayed and meditated for hours each day. She studied The Book of Unmaking and The Dream of Fly Agaric with the Prioress. She fasted and burnt lotus as the books required.
These preparations were tiring. At first, she slept each night as though she were already dead. Then she began to wake in the small hours, and lie awake, in the grip of a sickly fear, as though just realising what was going to happen to her. As though she hadn’t known since she was old enough to understand it. On her fourteenth birthday she would go up to the Shrine of the Unspoken One and that would be the end of her.
The summer would come. There would be another Chosen Bride. The novices would get their adult tusks and make their vows as acolytes. The world would continue, but she would be gone.
One night she got up from her cot, unable to stand it any longer, and let herself out into the corridor. Here I am, she thought. This is me, in two weeks’ time. Here I am, walking up to the Shrine. This is the end. This is how it will feel at the end. Thy name shall be forsaken and thou shalt be my bride.
The flagstones were ice cold underfoot. There was no light, but she knew the House of Silence too well to trip. She climbed the stairs to the library, at first thinking only of the steps in the mountainside. Then she saw the line of golden light under the double doors of the library, and thought of the warmth of the fire and the comforting smell of pine smoke, the truth about those who are dead and about that which is dust.
She went into the library as quietly as she could, avoiding the door that creaked. Somehow, she hadn’t thought there would be anyone inside. She had imagined the fire wasting all that heat and light in solitude.
She knew at once that she had made a mistake. The librarian and the wizard were there. Sethennai sat by the hearth, as though bathing in the glow of the fire. His ragged coat hung on the back of his chair. Oranna was taking a book down from a high shelf, and froze as Csorwe came in, like a cat surprised in the act of stealing scraps. Csorwe stepped back, let the door swing shut, and scuttled back into the dark.
She knew at once that she had seen something she should not. Whatever the meeting in the library had meant, it was not for her eyes, and the punishments for idle curiosity were severe.
Hasty footsteps followed after her. Incoherent flashes and shadows fluttered over the walls: the light of a lantern carried by someone in a hurry. Oranna caught up to her without much difficulty.
“What are you doing, Csorwe?” she said, in a low voice, careful not to wake anyone else. Csorwe was beginning to realise that she wasn’t the only one here who had broken the rules. “It’s the middle of the night.”
Csorwe couldn’t explain. She shrank back into the darkness. A moment later, Sethennai appeared at Oranna’s shoulder.
“Couldn’t you sleep?” said Oranna, and then her face cleared, as though she understood, and was somehow relieved. “You’re afraid.”
Csorwe nodded. At that moment she couldn’t have said whether she was more afraid of Oranna or the Shrine.
“Ah. The Chosen Bride,” said Sethennai. He hung back behind Oranna, in the dark, and Csorwe couldn’t tell from his tone of voice whether he was suspicious or just curious. “Having doubts?”
Oranna ignored him, still looking down at Csorwe. “Fear is no fault,” she said, quoting the Book. “It is right to fear the Unspoken One. The only fault is to seek out consolation in falsities.”
Csorwe nodded, staring down at her bare feet.
“I knew the Chosen Bride who came before you,” said Oranna. Csorwe startled. This topic was not forbidden, but it was almost unthinkable. Csorwe thought she was the only one who had ever wondered about it. “We were novices together. She was afraid at first, but when the day came she was quite calm. You will find the same peace, I’m certain. Remember your meditations.”
Csorwe assented, and Oranna led her back to her cell. The librarian was not known for such considerate gestures. Csorwe wondered whether Oranna meant it in honour of the Bride she had known. She wished Oranna had said more about her. What was her name? What had she said and done? Perhaps Oranna was the only one who remembered.
By the time she got to sleep, she had almost forgotten about Sethennai.
* * *
Another sleepless hour suspended between midnight and dawn, one week before the day of sacrifice. Csorwe wrapped herself in a blanket and went down to the crypts. Her slippers scalloped the dust as she wandered.
The dead were never quiet in their cells, but they were loudest by night, singing their tuneless, wordless song and battering at the doors. Csorwe went on past the smaller cells, toward the grand central chamber where the Prioresses of ages past were buried, sealed behind a great iron door.
Some of the old Prioresses had been so virtuous they had sewn up their mouths; they died from thirst rather than utter a blasphemous word. The door was marked with the sign of sealed lips, and Csorwe made the salute automatically: three fingers pressed to her lips, between her tusks.
The iron bolt was so cold it ached to touch, as though it drew the living warmth from Csorwe’s bones. Metal shrieked on stone as she drew it back and lifted the latch. At the noise of the door opening, the dead fell silent.
She saw the revenants at the edge of the circle of candlelight, standing among their biers like dinner guests waiting to be seated. Slowly, as though they were shy, they began to approach her. There were dozens of them, wrapped in their shrouds, reaching and watching. She stepped toward them, shutting the door behind her, and walked out into the gathering crowd of the dead. Their bony fingertips ran through her hair and brushed against her bare skin with a kind of desperate gentleness.
Csorwe sat down on the edge of a bier and they gathered around, as though she had brought news from the living world. The Prioresses had lived and died here in the House of Silence, and though the presence of the Unspoken had revived their bodies, their souls had returned to the earth. Their eyes were empty sockets. There was nothing they could tell her.