Anna Spark - The Court of Broken Knives

Afterwards, she went back to her bedroom and sat by the window again, looking out at the gardens now bright with the midday light. The day was cool, a fresh breeze and a few clouds scudding in the golden-blue sky. The strange beautiful golden light of the desert that makes the air clear so that detail is picked out like the brush stroke of a painting, the soft wide shape of things blurred with wind-blown sand. A lovely day. Clean. She felt clean, bright as the sunshine, bright as the gardens. If she listened carefully, she could hear the bustle of the city, forever just out of reach beyond the high walls of the Temple. Laughter. Noise. The shouts of children, the clatter of a beggar’s bowl, the stamp of sandalled feet. The great towers and domes of the palace loomed above her, gold and silver, the only other building she had ever seen. The pethe birds called and whistled, higher pitched than the ferfews, less melancholy. The Small Chamber seemed very far away now. It is necessary, she thought. So that the living remain living, so that the dead may die. A good life and a good dying. And the things beyond either kept back. The world is a good place. Even with pain in it. Even with death.

Somewhere in the shade beneath the trees, a slave of the Temple would be digging a tiny grave.

I was handed over to the Temple when I was three hours old. I am told that my mother cried, although why she should have done so, I do not know. We are born and bred to it, and whatever comes of us is decreed by fate. I was lucky beyond all things, for the lot I drew was that of High Priestess.

It is a curious thing, when I think of it. It is not the first thing that I remember – that, strange to say, is simply a blurred image of an old woman Temple servant, entirely insignificant to my life or any other’s, who died when I was three or four – but it is the first thing I can hold before me with any meaning, understand all that took place and render the events clearly from my recollection of them. Unwanted girls, girls whose parents cannot afford to keep them, girls who have been promised, girls who should not have been born … they are handed over to the Great Temple, dedicated to Great Tanis Who Rules All Things. At five, each child is taken into a dark room at the back of the Temple, to draw a lot from a silver box. The room is briefly illuminated and the lot examined before being replaced in the box. If it is black or white, it means death by drowning. If green, death by sacrifice. If yellow, the child is dedicated as a priestess of the Temple. If red, the child is acknowledged as the new High Priestess, holy beyond all things. Needless to say, there are a great many black and white lots, but only one red. It had not been drawn for forty years, before it was drawn for me.

You will ask, I suppose, what happens to the High Priestess-that-is, when the red lot is drawn. A simple thing: the High Priestess-that-will-be kills her. There is a great deal of training and suchlike first, of course, for there is a great deal to learn and to know. And five is rather too young, for killing or for learning. But when the High Priestess-that-will-be reaches the age of fifteen, she stabs a blade into the heart of her predecessor and takes her place. It has been fifteen years now, since I drew my lot, and I have not yet seen the red lot drawn. Perhaps it will be drawn tomorrow. Perhaps it will not be drawn for a hundred years, and I will live until I am an old woman, and die quietly, and be without a successor.

The poets sing all the usual things of my divine beauty. As she is described in The Song of the Red Year , the High Priestess Manora had skin like white satin and hair as golden as the dome of the Summer Palace at dawn. The High Priestess Jynine, according to the Book of the Moon , had eyes the colour of emeralds and a face like the bud of a rose. As to myself, my hair is like trees against the evening light; my skin is like rainwater in a garden; my eyes are like the sky after a storm. Which is to say, I have black hair, brown skin and blue eyes. I am tall, a good thing. Caleste, my predecessor, was so short she had to stand on tip-toe to reach the High Altar. I was taller than her as a girl of thirteen.

The day of my dedication was grey and hot. I spent the night before in prayer, fasting. I was not even permitted a drink of water in the heat. At dawn slaves came to bath me, dressed me in a robe of gold and a veil of silver net sewn all over with golden flowers. It was so heavy I could barely see through it; my reflection in the mirror when they showed me was distant and blurred like a figure seen through thick glass. Two acolytes had to hold my arms to lead me where I walked. On my feet I wore shoes of copper, raised up on wooden pads so that I did not touch the ground.

I was sat on a high-backed bronze chair with a curtain drawn around me while the priestesses and guests filed in; I could hear the chatter of voices and then the silence when the Emperor arrived. I sat hidden for a long time while the ceremony went on around me; priestesses chanted in high, sad voices, calling down the blessing of the Lord of Living and Dying upon me. After what seemed half an eternity, the curtain around me was pulled back and Samnel called upon Great Tanis to behold His servant in all her glory. More prayers, more singing, then, finally, slim cool hands lifted the great veil and revealed me to the assembled multitudes. The lords and ladies wore their best clothes, shining red and green and purple and white. So beautiful, they looked.

I looked first for the Emperor, of course, whom I had never seen. He sat at the front in the middle, flanked by his guards, young and striking in his black but disappointingly plain with a fat face. He looked bored, fidgeted with the clasp of his robe. Helase said later that it is because the Emperor must remain a virgin: it is harder for men to remain that way, she said.

More prayers, then Samnel approached me and raised me to my feet. It was strange to see her like that, masked in silver with lapis inlays around her lips and eyes, like the tiles on my bedroom floor. I stood awkwardly in the copper shoes. She helped me across to the High Altar, and two priestesses helped me to kneel before it. I’d been told to keep looking straight ahead, but the one on my right pinched my wrist and I glanced up into pale blue eyes: Helase, laughing at me behind her mask. I hadn’t known, before, that she would manage to get a role in the ceremony.

Samnel’s voice came lisping through the mask. I bowed my head and said the words after her. My voice was very loud. I had been afraid that it would stick in my throat. I was raised up again, a cup placed in my hand. Bitter in my mouth when I drank, salt water mixed with the tang of blood. The faces stared at me, a multitude of faces black and brown and white, bright eyes and golden jewellery. I rose and stood tall before the altar, in my robes and my crown, and I was the High Priestess, the Chosen of God, the Beloved of Great Tanis the Lord of Living and Dying, she who gives light and darkness and life and death and mercy and pain.

They would be in Sorlost the next morning.

The last few days had worn their patience, sleeping rough without tents, so close to their destination. Emit had argued with Alxine and Rate, Rate had snapped at Alxine, Marith had wandered along a few paces behind not speaking until Emit swore at him for nothing in particular except being alive and good-looking and not swearing at him first. The last of the bread had gone mouldy. Rate had found a scorpion in his boot.

And it had been the birth night of Amrath, two nights past. That was going to make a man edgy, even if he wasn’t sleeping on stones with nothing to eat but green bread. Emit had made a libation. Alxine had rolled his eyes. Rate had muttered words against ill omen, refused to watch.