The boy’s name, Teela learned, was Bemil, and it turned out that he was rude and impatient. He said things only once and didn’t like to repeat himself, and he judged Teela harshly the whole time that he sat beside her on the coach’s front seat explaining how to command the horses to walk or stop, how to steer them and how to urge them to speed up. By the end of his rushed and reluctant lesson Teela felt no less prepared to put his teachings into practice, but she was grateful to have gotten even that. She extended her hand to him as she’d seen Leroh sometimes do with new acquaintances, “Thank you for helping me, Bemil. It was a kind gesture. Sorry that I have no money for you.”
He only looked at her hand in befuddlement for a moment and then scoffed, seeming mildly amused. “You’re a strange person. Good luck with your carriage,” was all he said, and with that, he jumped off.
The coach, as it turned out, wasn’t more difficult to maneuver than riding a horse would have been. Of course, Teela only thought that because she didn’t know how to do either thing competently. Perhaps to a person whose only experience with transport was riding, the new knowledge would have presented a complex and confusing translation of skills, but to her it was only another thing she’d never had a chance to do—and so it was somehow less intimidating than it should have been.
Teela summoned the confidence of someone who knows how to do something effortlessly, and cued the horses to begin walking with a brusque shake of the reins and a vocal command, trying her best to imitate Bemil’s inflection from when he’d demonstrated the basic vocal cues. To her delight, it seemed Mantis’s horse and Clover had become accustomed to the contraption and its ways, for they understood her inexperienced command without issue and started obediently walking ahead at a slow pace.
Teela led the carriage out of the long stables and past the mouth of the sturdy wooden construction adjacent to the Restful Doe, and immediately upon turning down the street spotted Yilenn—or her hexed followers, more accurately. The siren wasn’t visible from any angle, as she remained entirely surrounded by the dozen men from before, all facing inward into the human circle they were a part of to its precious and mesmerizing core. They were drawing a lot of attention from the rest of the people on the street.
A man and a woman had approached them and were seemingly trying to communicate with one of the entranced men to no avail. A group of children were standing only a few paces away watching and whispering to each other, and at least a score of other people appeared to be regarding the spectacle apprehensively or expectantly from varying distances, understandably intrigued.
After reaching up with a hand and ensuring that her hood was securely drawn over her head, Teela cued the horses to approach the bizarre melee of men and then to stop. “Yilenn,” she said aloud, and immediately felt the discomfort that came with calling attention to herself. But there wasn’t a better way to inform the siren that she was ready to pick her up and flee, so she only lowered her head to better hide her eyes and hoped that the one word from her mouth wouldn’t arouse enough suspicion to redirect anyone’s attention to her. There was too much commotion elsewhere for that to be likely, anyway.
Upon Teela’s call, Yilenn seemed to stop doing what she’d been doing, for the men around her began to look around, blinking and moving as if awakening from slumber. “What was that?” one said. “What happened?” asked another.
“Stand back!” Yilenn shouted, and as a few of the men closest to her raised weapon stepped back and away from the blade, Teela finally sighted the siren in the flesh. Her eyes were wide and full of terror. “Back! Get back!” She looked as ill at ease with the knife as she’d claimed she felt, and Teela thought then that she herself had not been so upset to wield it when it had been her turn. She briefly wondered what that might say about her as a person, and didn’t like the answer that mentally followed.
The men who had been under her spell were giving Yilenn looks of outrage and affront, asking questions or spitting insults at her as they slowly came to the realization of what had been done to them. Teela broke into a sweat just watching the scene unfold. Then, faster than she’d ever seen the siren move, Yilenn pushed past the Sunmen and found her way inside the coach, slamming the wooden door behind her and effectively getting out of sight of her angered pursuers.
Teela didn’t wait for them to approach her carriage or for any other unforeseen problems to arise. She hastened to get out of there, to leave a sizable group of indignant and disoriented people behind rather than a murderous mob, and with her questionable and awkwardly new skills started the coach forward and into a bumpy trot.
It was a Sunny day, and Mantis’s eyes had become acclimated to the blinding glare of midmorning by the time she and her charges crossed the colossal doors to the castle. The sudden dimness of being indoors shocked her senses almost as much as the heavily perfumed air that smacked her in the face. Sun servants believed lyhirr, a fragrant resin extracted from a type of evergreen tree, to have holy properties, and so they utilized it in every given opportunity, making entering any of their places of worship unbearable for any with a strong sense of smell and a lack of affection for the pungent, sanctified extract. Mixed into a thick concoction of scentless oils and other less benign ingredients such as piquant roots and seeds whose names and origins Mantis was ignorant of, they burned large quantities of lyhirr in metal trays above braziers in every corner, successfully fouling every last drop of breathing air Mantis might have hoped to enjoy for the immediate future—or worse, for the remainder of her life, if things didn’t go her way.
A boorish man had blocked their way as they’d first approached the castle to question them regarding their intentions with less real intent than mindless hostility, but regardless of that minor altercation, everything seemed to be going according to Mantis’s more optimistic expectations. She’d only needed to succinctly explain who she was and what her intentions were, and the brute had grudgingly relented, wisely deciding to relay the information to someone better suited for the task: a ropey older man with a face like a slab of dried meat whose eyes glowed more intensely than any Mantis had ever seen—enough to greatly brighten up the path ahead of them as they wended their way through ornately decorated white corridors and up flights of stairs for what seemed an unfeasibly large distance, headed to the Sun’s infamous throne room.
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Leroh was breathing in strangled pants at Mantis’s side, clenching his fists nervously and looking around like a rabbit looking for the source of a crunch on the forest ground. It was a reasonable reaction, if he’d grown up hearing murmured tales of the Sun God. He knew he’d soon be standing before the very worst thing for one of his kind to face, with no means of survival beyond Mantis. He had everything to lose. The boy feared death more than anyone Mantis had ever met, and he was sure to face probable death once again now. His behavior was no shock to anyone. But his friend was just behind him, looking astonishingly even worse, and Mantis found herself wondering about the young man, Tem. Perhaps, she mused, knowing what awaited them and having first-hand experiences to envision in his current state was enhancing his sense of fear past the normal levels expected of someone in his situation.
But still, Mantis couldn’t help asking herself what the boy even had to be so frightened of, having lost nearly everything already. He’d been the only one among his circle of loved ones to choose servitude over death. He’d been left stranded in a situation much worse than a quick and dignified end… What was this to that? Surely, for him, theirs had to mean a gamble with no losing outcome, one with either result presenting an improvement to his current circumstances.
Mantis was briefly awed by the fact that she could not comprehend this stranger’s reasoning whatsoever. Then she decided to abandon the useless line of thought.
Following a few steps behind her was Fala. The golden-haired Sungirl had not spoken at all, choosing to let her communicative eyes do most of the talking on her behalf. She’d kept her head lowered, and only looked up sparingly to take in her surroundings with little interest. Her demeanor showed skepticism; or utter indifference, it was difficult to determine which.
Mantis decided that the girl was fine, for a Sun servant.
The walls and doors dashing past them were all very much the same, and at some point Mantis wondered how the residents of the castle could get around such a labyrinth on a daily basis without becoming lost or insane. White bas-reliefs depicting royals in their robes celebrating the Sun or making merry watched them pass with golden-painted irises and unnervingly lifelike faces. Doors on either side of the corridors were sporadically opened and closed by unthinking, stone-faced guards who would accurately and unfailingly pass along every detail of what occurred in their presence to a relevant middle man, who in turn would move the sifted facts of his selecting to the next pair of hands, and so on until the right knowledge reached the right hands at the top of the chain of command.
The Sun had a good system of delegation in place in which he needed only concern himself with the matters of his choosing. Far from intruding in every servant’s day to day life, he preferred to leave his people to rule themselves and, more often than not, fend for themselves. He offered support in the form of subsidies and monetary aid, and beyond that, he allowed his followers to do what they wanted—as long as those wants aligned with his own, which they usually did.
The person in charge of the most immediate and engaged ruling was Archbishop Gajdel, the original leader’s eldest son. Achedel had held the position for several decades after the Sun’s initial ascent to power before finally giving in to old age, and it seemed he’d done a lot with his post in the time he occupied it. His image was rendered everywhere, from walls to vases to door handles, always with his arms extended in veneration of the skies. Or perhaps some of those were intended to depict Gajdel, his son and the current acting leader. There were scarce defining characteristics by which to tell them apart from the images on the decorations, after all.
Gajdel was an old man now, but far from senile, Mantis knew. He still commanded in his master’s name, taking on the role of what would be a king in different circumstances, and he did so with diligence and a firm hand. If he ever failed, he could swiftly and easily be replaced with one of his sons. It was said he had dozens of them; so it would be no issue to put another man of his line on the post if at all necessary, which meant it must not yet be.
Like his father before him, the current Archbishop oversaw all duties pertaining to the throne, from land grants and taxes to private disputes and castle staffing. His word was the word of the Sun in all things, excluding the rare eventualities for which the God chose to use his own judgment and represent himself. It was Gajdel who would have been consulted regarding Mantis’s request for an audience with the highest ruler of the kingdom, and Gajdel who would have procured an answer from the Sun himself. He was the only flesh and bone emissary for His Holy Majesty on all terrestrial matters.
When they reached the long hallway that led to the throne room, Mantis was doused by a wave of blood-stilling power that almost stopped her in place. She immediately recognized, deep in her soul, the living being who resided behind the gargantuan iron doors taking up the tall wall at the end of the corridor, still a good distance away—despite never having met him. He had a smell, a feel to him, a vibration that traveled through every inch of her body. Already she knew him, just from his aura alone. He was in that power, alive, aware, and watching.
A dryness at the very back of her throat made Mantis choke for a moment and swallow. She perceived the instincts inherent to her human body flaring up regardless of her having suppressed them for years to the point of atrophy. She was suddenly reminded of the long-forgotten taste of fear, and the notion made her cackle with amusement, just once. Leroh turned to her with horror in his gaze, and forced Mantis to picture Teela waiting indefinitely and helplessly at Pirria’s safehouse for a brother who would never return. That succeeded at quickly erasing the wild smile from her lips. Mantis almost resented the terrified little boy for it.
The overwhelming sensation of magical strength only got worse as they neared the room, and became outright intrusive when they stood just outside waiting for his guards to draw open what had to be the heaviest set of doors in all of Yriaa. It took six men to achieve it, and the monstrous hinges on either side of the archway creaked with exertion as the metal was pulled outward, sweeping into the corridor and gently gliding over the polished marble of the floor with the unnerving sound of something very large moving fast.
Just inside and in the very center of the farthest wall facing the entrance was the throne, a huge structure built of some strange foreign metal that could withstand unimaginable levels of heat, and sitting atop it, looking at them through black holes in a face with no other discernible features, was the Sun God.
