for storiesfromhome

[learnandshift]

"Now, my lady," said the priestess. "You will come to no harm. You will suffer no pain. But please, only do not offend him."

The words were probably not as comforting as the priestess meant them to be. She could only imagine what the bride was going through, so suddenly brought to the temple, bathed, anointed with scented oils, prayed over for nearly three hours, and now escorted to the chamber of her husband, the Lord. The priestess had never even been alone with him, much less touched him, but she had faith in the benevolence of the Lord all the same.

One could only imagine that such faith wouldn't be of much comfort to an outsider.

The Lord dwelled in the top of the tower, alone, as always. That would change soon, as would he. They stopped before the grand white doors, where the priestesses all said one more prayer together, then opened the door and ushered Ardan inside.

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[storiesfromhome]

Ardan had known of the Shadow Lord's tower for a long time: its existence had always hovered somewhere in the back of her mind, unregarded and without context, like a distant mountain that had been on the horizon for so long that she no longer noticed it. It was one of several such towers, temples to gods and demons scattered sparsely over spots of power in the land. Often they nestled in the shadow of a range of hills or mountains, or skulked on riverbanks carved deeply into the steppe; they rarely stood as a lone landmark on the endless horizon. The clans did not use them for navigation, nor did they stop to rest near them while travelling or moving camp. It was considered dangerous to approach them unless it was to deliver the seasonal offering of food to their priests. Visitors who stayed near a tower too long, and especially the priests themselves, were treated with suspicion: the temples were uncanny, imbued with the power of spirits not of this world - and those who dwelt within them were host to that power as well.

And now, at the temple of the Shadow Lord, Ardan was to become one of them.

Mistress Izun had said that the priests and priestesses of the many spirits of the Earth were not so different from them, the Wise Women of their clan. They worshiped their gods and knew the history and lore of the land, as they did. They performed magic as they did - not healing magic for their clan, for as temple priests they were clanless and had no community to minister to, except one another - but magic that benefited all of the people of the great steppe. If not for them and their diligent care of their gods, no clan would be safe from their power.

Ardan knew this was so, in a way. In some sense, she would be doing the same duty as she had done as apprentice to Mistress Izun. Except - she would be doing it alone. She would be clanless like the priests, cut off from her people, cut off from her own family who would mistrust her once she had entered the Shadow Lord's temple and never come across the great plans to visit her. And except that she would be doing more than worshiping her new god, her monster in the tower: she was to be his wife.

His wife. Had she not been told that she would never marry, if she entered into the role of Wise Woman under the tutelage of Mistress Izun? Had her father not warned her that Wise Women were to remain virgins their whole lives, forgoing the honor of marriage and the privilege of children to minister instead to the whole clan like a great, many-sided family? (But Mistress Izun had said that the necessity to remain virginal was nonsense really, that she could love as she pleased as long as she never became pregnant, and as long as she chose people from outside of the clan, for it didn't do to show one's people that one was vulnerable to such human vices as lust.) She had entered her apprenticeship gladly at the age of thirteen, unworried by the prospect of living without a man to cook and clean and rear children for. Nine years later she had never broken her vow of chastity, had never lain with another from any clan, and had not yet felt lesser for it. And then one day Mistress Izun had woken up in the night and called to her from her palette in a voice that Ardan had never heard before, a whisper that had sounded small and afraid. Ardan had awoken at once and stumbled up and around the dying fire toward her mentor, fearing that the old women had suffered a stroke of the brain or was dying. And in the near-complete shadow of the tent Izun had pulled her down onto the palette next to her and held her hand in her own strong, gnarled grip and told her that she had been given a vision by the great Sky God, that the Sky God had told her to send her mentor to the tower of the Shadow Lord, for there lay the one who needed her most. She had been shocked, confused: she had not slept the rest of the night and had asked Mistress Izun first thing in the morning if she had misunderstood. But Mistress Izun had looked old and weary that morning, and had said that there was no misunderstanding, that Ardan must leave at once to become the wife of the Shadow Lord and that she must take on another protege to become a Wise Woman when she died.

Ardan thought that the pronouncement must have killed something inside of her, that some part of her spirit had shattered like a thin pane of lake ice dashed against the frozen ground: she hadn't been able to feel anything, not really, since that night. Rationally she knew that what she was experiencing must be shock, not the physical shock that she had often treated in the wounded or ill but a shock of the mind. But even with that knowledge nothing seemed real, her heart seemed separated and insulated from the world as if she had buried it in the ground and left her former life without it. She had not cried as she had bidden farewell to her father and his wives, to her siblings and cousins and to Mistress Izun herself; she had not been heartbroken at the way the men assigned to act as her chaperones - two cousins and two brothers - had refused to look at her, speak to her or even touch her few belongings as they had traveled toward the tower across the hills and plains; she had not been able to smile at the six priestesses who had greeted her at the entrance to the tower as if they had known that she was arriving. Her guards had turned away and gone before she had even entered the tower and she had known with nothing but a leaden feeling in her chest that she would never see them again.

She had been brought into the temple and conducted to a hot bath. The bath was made of porcelain like the bowls that her mother had received as her wedding gift from her father, patterned with delicate red and orange decoration and fastened directly into the stone floor. She had not been able to marvel at its beauty, nor at the size of the room it was in, which alone was as large as any tent she had ever lived in. The priestesses had washed her with soaps and oils and scrubbed her with a cake of sand until her skin had felt raw; they had washed her hair until it shown and braided it in one long tail down her back; one of them had even shaved her with a small, keenly-edged blade until she had rid her of all body hair. They hadn't given her back her riding clothes and shoes when she had come out of the tub, skin tingling in the steam - she felt vaguely that this was a shame, because they were the only clothes that she had come with. Instead she had been given a red robe, soft as foal's hair but not at all padded for the chill. She had felt goosebumps shiver up her arms as they had conducted her out of the room and into a stone hall large enough to fit the tents of her entire family - her bare feet had been soundless on the stone floor but she felt that their steps might have echoed off the high ceilings if she had been in her boots. In that grand hall they had lit fires in a wide circle and made her kneel in the middle on a round rug on her knees as they prayed over her, a low, arrhythmic chant that seemed to go on interminably. Her dead heart seemed to rouse slightly during that time, as she'd become warm once again among the fires and watched the play of light and shadow flickering across her knees. She had known what was to happen next, but been unable to react to it: now, amid the chanting and this huge room and the shadow gathering as the fires began to sink low and smolder and finally go out, she began to feel what was about to happen as well. Soon she would be sent up to her new home, to her lord, to her husband who was neither man nor beast but something from a world beyond the Earth itself. As the chanting began to slow and soften with the darkening of the fires, her heart began to speed up.

And now it was dark inside the great tower, and she was being led up a massive, sweeping staircase - the first time she had ever seen a staircase indoors. It was made of some sort of pale, polished stone that she could not fully see in the gloom, frigid against her bare feet again. It was only visible in its entirety for a short time as the priestesses lit lanterns at the bottom of it and clustered around her to lead her up. Her heart began to beat faster as they began to climb, a beat that warmed the blood in her torso and made her fingertips feel like they were pulsing. The priestesses' lanterns bobbed in front of them and made their white robes look like drops of gold - but ahead of her and behind, the darkness was becoming impenetrable. They seemed to climb for a long time: her feet were numb by the time they came to a stop, although the beat of her heart's growing fear seemed to be keeping the rest of her too warm. She felt herself shaking now, a lump was forming in her throat and a heavy weight was resting in her stomach. Ahead of them were a pair of doors, visible like enormous shrouds against the darkness only because their white surface reflected the lantern light. With a dizzy feeling she realized that these must be his quarters. The priestesses once again knelt in prayer; she felt her knees grow weak, and she hoped that the prayer would be short or she might fall down in the middle of it.

And then the prayer was over and the priestesses were getting to their feet around her - she realized with a thrill of panic that she did not want the prayer to be over, that she wanted to stave off this moment for as long as she could. But it was too late, too late, because one of the priestesses was pulling on a long, thick rope and the doors were gliding soundlessly open into utter darkness...

One priestess laid a hand on her shoulder, making her jump. With a gentle push, she urged her forward, through the doors and into the unknown. She stepped forward - it was nearly a stumble - and realized that the priestesses were not moving with her. They were sending her in entirely alone. She stood frozen for a moment, feeling like she might faint. But - no, she must not faint, she must... she must do what she had been commanded to do. She took a deep, steadying breath, filling her lungs - and then stepped into the chamber. Behind her, the doors silently closed. Her world was eclipsed; the darkness was absolute.

Slowly, her heart pounding in her ears, she sank to her knees, then bowed forward until her forehead touched the floor. She had never kowtowed before; a Wise Woman did not bow to anyone. But she was no longer a Wise Woman. She was the wife to the entity hidden in the room before her.

"My Lord husband," she whispered, her voice bouncing off the tiled floor beneath her lips. "I have come to serve you as your wife."