#It's almost A trade mark of mine to include a sleeping at last song in all my Playlists | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

abunchadorks · 4 years

Text

Chapter Four: Gard’s Tomb

(parts one, two, three, four, five, and six here for hot recaps in your area)

Part Seven: What happened to Elyserin

She didn’t know what context to expect for the rats. She had been positive about the rats. There were not many things she could be absolutely certain of in this world, but she was sure of herself, and she knew it would have rats. What would bring them in the...the vision? Test? Whatever you could call it. Would they find themselves in a sewer? Already in the nest? Some mad torturer’s pit, the rats piled knee deep and rabid with hunger?

One really big rat?

She had not expected to be aboveground. She had not expected to be in a clean temple full of flowers, bright sunlight blasting down through rose window above and behind her. She had not expected the room to be so full of life that did not include rats.

A flute was playing somewhere high up in the temple minstrel chambers, accompanied by two other wind instruments that created a sweet, airy harmony in a peaceful song. Lower down, the temple was crowded: smiling faces, some of them damp-cheeked, all of them as clean as the temple and dressed in their finest. Jewels glinted at the throats and ears of most of the women and many of the men, while silk shimmered over the whole congregation in a vibrant rainbow. Elyserin stared at them, stomach sinking. She recognized a good half of them, mostly the ones seated on the left-hand benches.

She, Phlirp, Mya, Sigrid, and Manatar all stood at the back of the temple, the other four behind her in a square pattern. Sigrid and Mya held between them a length of fine silvery cloth, so sheer it might as well have been spiderweb. They looked at each other, not sure how they came to be holding it, and their eyes followed the cloth down to where it pooled on the floor, then back up again to where it connected to Elyserin’s hair by a dozen pearl pins. Elyserin looked at them, then down at herself, stomach sinking even further. It turned out there was something she feared more than rats. Unfortunate.

Her gown was silver, and made of something slippery that moved like water every time she breathed, white gems at her wrists and studding the belt that hung loose around her hips. Her feet were bare, and she could taste the tang of metallic paint on her lips. Her earlobes felt heavy too, and in her hands she found that she was holding a single golden lily. She didn’t want to, but she could not stop herself from looking down the temple’s aisle to what lay at the other end.

She would rather it had been a really big rat.

The sunlight from the rose window sparkled on the aisle, which was tiled in a deep ocean blue and covered in an inch of water, as was traditional in a Gozreh temple. It sent the light everywhere, leaving no shadow to hide in, and no doubt as to who stood at the other side, beaming face almost giving off its own light. The same smiling, if bland, face she had only met once, whose owner had kissed her knuckles and told her he didn’t mind her odd markings that much. She had said nothing then, only stared at him as her eyes grew wider and wider until he became uncomfortable and had gone away. She had thought that was the end of it, but here, now…

“Elyserin,” said Phlirp quietly, “Are you getting married?”

“I--I--” she wanted to say no, of course not, I’m not marrying anyone let alone that twerp, but the words stuck in her throat as she caught sight of her parents at the front of the aisle. Her mother was openly weeping out of pure joy, her father’s chest high in pride. She wanted to tear the veil off her hair and stomp back to Skald, but seeing them here, like this…

They had neither been happy nor proud that she was their daughter before. She could not turn her back on seeing what it looked like.

She tore her gaze from them to the other people there, and saw that almost everyone her father traded with was here. Heirun from the Southern Hillside Trading Company. Kii from Grace Transport. Brea-Fang and her consort of the Tocktun mafia. Everyone who could financially ruin her father if they should receive an insult from him or his family, for example being asked to come all this way for a wedding only for the bride to bolt at the last moment. She felt like she was eleven years old again, being hauled home by the ear by a nanny while being scolded for embarrassing behavior.

“It’s not real,” she murmured to herself, just as the others had done. She couldn’t bring herself to believe it. There was no comforting sharp drag of her undershirt on scorpion carapace. She was alone.

“Honored ones, I present to you gentle Elyserin and noble Trevek!” This came from the other end of the aisle, a blue and white clad priestess of Gozreh. “Lovers, come together if you would be wed.”

Everyone rose to their feet and stood solemnly, all eyes on Elyserin and the young man. Trevek, that had been his name. He held a lily like hers. She hadn’t bothered to remember him, and now he was sliding forward, as barefoot as she was, entering the water of the pool with as little splash as he could manage on big feet. Elyserin wanted to stay where she was, but something was moving her feet for her, dragging her against her will to step gracefully into the pool as well.

“What are you doing?” hissed Mya. “Who is he?”

“I guess he’s my fiance. I can’t stop,” she whispered in reply. She resisted, and though her muscles shook with the effort, she took one step and another toward the nice young man who had kissed her knuckles, who would probably have her entertain visiting traders while he freshened up, who would father her children and lead her by the elbow when it was time to leave the party and talk over her and touch her while she pretended to sleep. Her whole future, laid out in a neat agenda, none of it written by her, none of it involving her, a gilded cage that came with a gag and blindfold.

She did, at this point, let out a sound that was not quite a sob. Whatever was holding her upright and forcing her steps, it wouldn’t let tears fall any more than it would let her turn around and run, to hell with her parents. She treasured her independence. She needed it like breath, craved it like a drug. And now it was slipping away, and there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.

A pair of thick arms wrapped around her from behind, and with one undignified splash she was flung over Manatar’s shoulder, ass in the air, head down his back, veil twisted into rope. The strange force that moved her feet wouldn’t let her fight any more than it had let her stop walking. She dangled there helpless as the barbarian roared out to the crowd, “You can’t have this woman! She’s already married!”

“What? Liar!” Came the outraged voice of her father. She couldn’t see him, or anyone for that matter, as her head only pointed straight down. She could move her chin a little, but only to lift her nose out of Manatar’s back and breathe in flower scent instead of human musk.

“Married? To who?” This was not a voice she recognized, but it was male and close, probably Trevek. He sounded thunderstruck. He sounded heartbroken. Oh get over yourself, she thought wretchedly.

“Me!” Manatar snarled. “By the Ones and the Other Ones, she’s mine!” Over his shoulder he whispered to her, “Say, ‘by the Ones and the Other Ones, he’s mine.’”

“By the Ones and the Other Ones, he’s mine,” she said, and was surprised that she could.

“There. We’re married. Can’t have her.”

“You said she was already married.” Under her stomach she felt the big shoulder shrug.

“I lied. Not lying now. Can’t have her.”

“Priest! Put a stop to this nonsense!” Her father again. General scandalized murmuring in the crowd, not all of it against the events taking place. They must make quite an entertaining spectacle, she thought. I should burn a hole in the floor.

“As unorthodox as it may be, that’s a real ceremony he just said. The Ones and Other Ones are recognized deities among the mountain tribes. I’m sorry but Gozreh does not make allowance for multiple spouses,” said the priestess.

There was a general uproar, and both sides of the aisle all pressed in around the priestess and around Manatar, who swung her around and strode from the temple. Mya and Sigrid shouldered open the door, and Elyserin was carried over the threshold.

As soon as they set foot on the ground outside, she found she could move again. “Put me down you ugly brute,” she snapped at Manatar.

“That’s no way to talk to your husband,” he said, and she could hear him grinning. She wriggled but his grip was strong and he kept walking. At last she stopped struggling and let it happen, one hand propped under her chin.

“At least shift this side up a little higher,” she said. “Your armor is digging.” He shifted. It stopped digging. “Thank you. And Manatar--thank you.”

There was only the briefest pause before he said “You are welcome. You looked beautiful today.” Elyserin’s face warmed. The second she smiled, the temple and the soft sunlit lawn it stood on were gone.

Her scorpion was back inside her shirt, her feet were back on the ground, her hair tied back in a practical pair of braids instead of loose and decked with pearls. She was underground in a place she was forbidden to go, imminent danger on every side, and her fingers crackling with unsaid magic. Everything was as it ought to be.

She turned to the others still on the stair, but it was just as it had been on the other side of the threshold, a pair of statues that moved when you didn’t focus on them, silent. She reached out and touched the barrier, still as invisible as ever, smooth as glass. Phlirp and Mya watched her curiously.

“He liiiiikes you,” Phlirp cooed.

“Shut up.”

“He married you,” Mya said, mouth hanging open, still shocked from what they had all seen. “You married him.”

“Shut up. It wasn’t real. I don’t acknowledge it. It doesn’t count if it’s during a fear vision quest.”

On the other side of the barrier, unable to hear what they were saying, Manatar wondered how he was going to tell the tribe he’d married a Sylph.

1 note · View note