Smith Priestess of the Dragons' Temple

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-941334-23-2
Verlag: PublishDrive
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, Band 2, 294 Seiten

Reihe: Anamat

Once, Iola flew with a dragon. If she can become ambassadress to the dragons' realm, she might fly again, but first she must navigate life as an ordinary priestess. She's wholly devoted to the dragons, but some of her fellow priestesses are dragon-blind and corrupt. Worse, they think that Iola's devotions are actually just a sign of greed.

The ambassadress returns from the dragons' realm, too sick to fly again. Iola might have a chance to take her place, but her rival, Tiagasa, was raised in a prince's palace. Tiagasa thrives on political intrigue and gossip, and her lover is about to become governor of the city.

Iola's few friends and allies aren't much more savvy than she is. Still, they hope to persuade the new governor to make Iola ambassadress so that the temple cam be a true sanctuary of the dragons for a few years more.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Smith, Amelia

Leseproben

Chapter 1: The Rulers of Men
The novice priestess was kept inside the temple, to guard the purity of her intentions before her initiation. She was honored to be chosen, to be among the Blessed Ones. Iola reached over to stroke the warm sleeping body beside her, but found only cooling sheets and blankets where Myril had slept. Across the dormitory, Myril’s curtains settled into place. Iola lay back and looked up at the ceiling. They had been novices for four years now, four years of study and work, four years in which she had not seen a dragon, except at festivals and in dreams. A bell rang outside in some distant corner of the temple. Iola had never imagined that it would be so empty in the temple. She felt dry, abandoned, cut off. She should not have been, not in the dragons’ most favored temple. She’d scarcely seen a dragonlet, only glimpsed a few on faraway rooftops and in shaded corners outside the back courtyard, but only near crossing times and never inside the temple itself. Anara did not seem to grace the small part of the sky above the novices’ courtyard. Iola longed to speak with the dragon again. Soon, she would. In those barren years of training, Myril’s nighttime visits had been her one consolation. It wasn’t what they’d been told the rite could be, but together they could stir the dragon fires to life in their bodies and feel the sacred rhythm of the earth pulsing up through their veins. It had been enough to slake her thirst a little, but soon all of that would change. Another bell clanged, this time in the novices’ garden just outside. Sunna flung open the dormitory door. She was a young peresi, an initiated priestess who took petitioners, who also advised their group of novices. “Wake up, girls!” Sunna shouted. She was not as elegant and placid as Iola thought a peresi should be, but she was mysterious in her own way. The girls grumbled as they stirred awake and rustled their covers, dragging themselves up from sleep. Thinking back on the years in the temple, Iola realized that Myril hadn’t been her only consolation. She’d also learned to read and dance and to tend gardens far more complex than the village vegetable plot she’d weeded as a child. The other girls, the novices and young priestesses, accepted her as one of their own, even Tiagasa, who had seemed so unfriendly at first. Here, Iola was not so different from other girls. They all courted the dragons, or at least they aspired to. The others said that she was pretty, but they all were, even Darna – at least when she wasn’t scowling. People here didn’t gawp at her or shun her because she was different. And now it was almost time. Darna yanked Iola’s curtain open. “Come on!” she said. “You’re getting as sleepy as Myril.” Her red hair caught the dawn light coming in through the open door. It shone like fire. Iola reached out to take her hand. Darna pulled back. “I’m not getting in there with you,” she said. “I’m getting breakfast. It’s festival bread today!” Iola swung her feet to the floor and smoothed her hair back. Darna tossed her a tunic, averting her eyes. Iola looked at Darna. From the back, she could only just see the curve of Darna’s old lopsidedness. Her limp had nearly disappeared under a relentless barrage of tutoring from the temple’s best dancing instructors, but they had not been able to smooth out Darna’s impatience. Myril was dressed already. She was beautiful in a quiet way. Her hair was dark like Iola’s, but her eyes were brown and unremarkable in the daylight. No one else stopped to catch their breath when she was naked, as far as Iola knew. Myril joined the other two, taking Iola by the arm. They had almost reached the dining hall when one of the kitchen priestesses stopped them and handed them a bundle of thick towels. “Help unload the bread from the ovens, girls,” she said. “I’ve never seen so many scrapplings in my life!” Iola’s stomach grumbled, but there were a lot of scrapplings, and they looked even hungrier than she felt. The three of them went around to load bread from the oven onto enormous trays. Last year, Iola and Darna had carried one tray between them, but now they each took their own. Iola felt stronger, at least physically, though she was still so delicate-looking that no one would guess it. Darna was stronger, too, and Myril had always been a sturdy girl. She was also at least two years older than the others in their group. As Iola set down her tray for the swarming scrapplings, she paused to watch them and consider what their lives must be like, but she didn’t linger long. She did not want to go back outside the temple, even if Thorat was there. Especially not if Thorat was there. § To Myril’s ears, it seemed as though the temple’s population had doubled overnight. Visiting priestesses from the provinces chatted on the porch, with calls of, “By Anara’s grace, you look just the same as you did when we were novices!” and, in more concerned tones, “How have you been, dear?” They came at every Midsummer, meeting with the Aralel as the princes met with the Governor. Their greetings merged into a babble of gossip: news about their fellow priestesses, happenings in their temples and in the provincial keeps and farmlands. There was never much gossip about the mountains and when there was it came in guarded whispers, “Oh, no, she’s gone into the hills.” Going into the hills was a kind of death. It meant leaving the company of fellow priestesses and of men – except possibly for hill bandits. The hermit priestesses went to court Na, the dragon of wild lands, and to wait for death. But that morning, the talk was all of affairs, politics, and clothes. “Did you hear?” said one priestess. “Kaisa doesn’t want to leave Onarun, and she’s been there three years already.” “Do you think there’s a man? You know … ” “I’d rather come back here if I had the chance, man or no.” “Ha! That’s what you say now.” Myril hurried on to the relative quiet of the refectory, where conversation was forbidden at mealtimes. As they were about to go in, one of the gate priestesses ran over and handed Darna a note. Myril paused. “Go on in,” Darna said, shooing her on. Myril heard the crumple of parchment and Darna’s exasperated grunt. “Tell the messenger no, I can’t come to the palace. He should know that!” Darna told the gate priestess. “I’ll say I couldn’t find you, then,” the gate priestess said. “If you have to,” Darna said. With that, she came into the refectory, looking agitated. She sat on the bench beside Myril. “Your father?” Myril whispered. “He’s not,” Darna grumbled. Iola gave them a look. She bowed her head in prayer as one of the kitchen priestesses said the blessing. As they ate, Myril observed her friends. Except for the processions down to the harbor on festival mornings, none of them had left the temple since that Midsummer day four years ago. Darna chaffed at her confines as much as the rest of them combined, but Iola seemed merely disappointed by her life as a novice. She had always seen dragons best in wild places when no one else was around. In the temple, the novices were rarely alone and the sky was confined, walled. At times Iola almost lost the glow of dragonfire that had followed her everywhere in her scrappling days. Even without it, she was beautiful. Myril finished her bread and tea and waited to be dismissed. At last, the Aralel stood and rang the bell. “Our near-initiates will prepare to serve tea to the governor,” she announced. A beam of sunlight shone in through the clerestories, making her hair shine silvery and illuminating the green flecks in her eyes. Myril found the Aralel mesmerizing, whether she was reciting chants and prayers or only making a simple announcement like this. “His retinue is leaving the palace now.” She looked at Myril and the other girls who were about to be initiated. Waiting on the governor and his councilors would be their chance to be noticed by the governor. It was he who, in consultation with the Aralel, nominated the ambassadress to the dragons, the Most Blessed One. Myril’s stomach tightened. She wished she hadn’t eaten so much. She did not like men. Rather, she did not remember liking men much. Her father had died when she was very young and she scarcely remembered him. She’d only needed to speak to a very few men in her scrappling season and since then she’d only glimpsed them through the back courtyard gate or in the crowds along the processional way at crossing days. “Come on, Myril,” Ganie tugged her along. “You’ll be fine.” Ganie, a near-province scrappling, had entered the temple with them. Her freckles set off the deep cream tones in her skin in a way that caught the eye. She was also sensible, practical, and loyal. Myril took her hand. “Thank you,” she said. “It’s just –” “We’ll be all right,” Ganie said. “We wouldn’t still be here if the elders didn’t think we’d be able to do the work of the peresi.” Myril wasn’t so sure. The peresi brought in most of the temple’s wealth, and there had been fewer novices last year. She wasn’t sure she wanted a man to touch her deeply, more than Iola had done, and then there would be the burden of trance along with it. They would have to uphold the sexual rite that the temples of Theranis were known for. “I don’t think they would let us leave, even if they weren’t sure of our abilities,” Myril said as they skirted around the scrapplings’...