The Priory of the Orange Tree (The Roots of Chaos)

Ead lay in her eyrie, glossed with sweat. Her blood ran hot and swift.

This had happened before. The fever. A fog had been around her for eight years, dampening her senses, and now the sun had burned it away. Each breath of wind was like a broad stroke of a finger on her skin.

The sound of the waterfall was crystal-clear. She could hear the calls of honeyguides and sunbirds and mimics in the forest. She could smell ichneumons and white orchids and the perfume of the orange tree.

She missed Sabran. With her skin this tender, the memory of her was torture. She slid a hand between her legs and imagined a cool touch on her body, silken lips, the sweetness of wine. Her hips reared once before she sank into the bed.

After, she lay quiet, burning.

It must be close to dawn by now. Another day that Sabran was alone in Inys, circled by wolves. Margret would only be able to do so much to keep her safe. She was quick-witted, but no warrior.

There had to be a way to convince the Prioress to defend the Inysh throne.

The servants had left a platter of fruit and a knife on her nightstand. For a time, she would burn through enough food for three grown men. She took a pomegranate from the platter.

As she cut away the flower, her hand slipped, made clumsy by her fever. The blade sheared the other wrist, and blood brimmed from the wound. A droplet leaked down to her elbow.

Ead looked at it for a long time, thinking. Then she shrugged on a robe and lit an oil lamp with a snap of her fingers.

An idea was taking form.

The halls were quiet tonight. On her way to the dining chamber, she stopped suddenly next to one of the doors.

She remembered running through these passageways with Jondu, carrying a squeaking Aralaq. How she had feared this corridor, knowing it was where her birthmother had drawn her final breath.

Zāla du Agriya uq-Nāra, who had been the munguna before Mita Yedanya. Behind this door was the room she had died in.

There were many legendary sisters in the Priory, but Zāla had made a habit of being legendary. At nineteen, in the second month of her pregnancy, she had answered a call from the young Sahar Taumargam, the future Queen of Yscalin, who was then a princess of the Ersyr. A Nuram tribe had inadvertently woken a pair of wyverns in the Little Mountains. Zāla had found not two, but six of the creatures harrowing the nomads and, against the odds, she had slain them single-handed. Then she had dusted herself off and ridden all the way to the market in Zirin to satisfy her craving for rose candy.

Ead had been born half a year later, too early. You were small enough to cradle in one hand, Chassar had once told her, chuckling, but your cry could have brought down mountains, beloved. Sisters were not supposed to involve themselves too deeply with their children, for the Priory was one family, but Zāla had often slipped Ead honey pastries and cuddled her close when nobody was looking.

My Ead, she had whispered, and breathed in the baby scent of her head. My evening star. If the sun burned out tomorrow, your flame would light the world.

The memory made Ead ache to be held. She had been six when Zāla had died in her bed.

She placed a hand on the door and walked on. May your flame ascend to light the tree.

The dining chamber was dark and silent. Only Sarsun was there, his head tucked against his chest. When she set foot on the floor, he woke sharply.

“Shh.”

Sarsun ruffled his feathers.

Ead placed the oil lamp beside his perch. As if he sensed her intention, he hopped down to scrutinize the riddlebox. Ead took hold of the knife. When she lifted the blade to her skin, Sarsun let out a small hoot. She sliced across her palm, deep enough for blood to flow generously, and placed her hand on the lid of the box.

it closed in clouds of salt and steam—it opens with a golden knife.

“Siyāti uq-Nāra once said that mage blood was golden, you see,” she said to Sarsun. “To possess a golden knife, I must draw blood with it.”

She would never have believed that a bird could look skeptical until she saw his face.

“I know. It isn’t actually golden.”

Sarsun bowed his head.

The engraved letters gradually filled, as if they were inlaid with ruby. Ead waited. When the blood reached the end of the final word, the riddlebox split down the middle. Ead flinched away, and Sarsun fluttered back to his perch as the box opened like a night-blooming flower.

In it was a key.

Ead took it from its bed of satin. It was the same length as her forefinger, with a bow shaped like a flower with five petals. An orange blossom. The symbol of the Priory.

“Faithless creature,” she said to Sarsun.

He pecked her sleeve and flew to the doorway, where he sat and looked at her.

“Yes?”

He gave her a beady-eyed stare, then took wing.

Ead shadowed him to a narrow door, down a flight of winding steps. She had a caliginous memory of this place. Someone had brought her here when she was very small.

When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she found herself in a vaulted, lightless room.

The Mother stood before her.

Ead lifted her lamp toward the effigy. This was not the swooning Damsel of Inysh legend. This was the Mother as she had been in life. Hair shorn close to her skull, an axe in one hand and a sword in the other. Her dress was made for battle, woven in the style favored by warriors of the House of Onjenyu. Guardian, fighter, and born leader—that was the true Cleolind of Lasia, daughter of Selinu the Oathkeeper. Between her feet was a figurine of Washtu, the fire goddess.

Cleolind had never been entombed in the Sanctuary of Our Lady. Her bones slept here, in her own beloved country, in a stone-built coffin beneath the statue. Most effigies lay on their backs, but not this one. Ead reached up to touch the sword before she looked at Sarsun.

“Well?”

He tilted his head. Ead lowered the lamp, searching for whatever she was meant to find.

The coffin was raised on a dais. At the front of this dais was a keyhole with a square groove around it. With a glance at Sarsun, who tapped his talon, Ead knelt and slid the key into place.

When it turned, sweat dampened her nape. She took a deep breath and pulled on the key.

A compartment slid out from beneath the coffin. Inside was another iron box. Ead rotated the orange-blossom clasp and opened it.

A jewel lay before her. Its surface was white as pearl, or fog trapped in a drop of glass.

Sarsun chirruped. Beside the jewel was a scroll the size of her little finger, but Ead hardly saw it. Entranced by the light that danced in the jewel, she reached out to catch it between her fingers.

As soon as she touched its surface, a scream leaped from her lips. Sarsun let out a scream of his own as Ead collapsed before the Mother, her fingers bound to the jewel like a tongue to ice. The last thing she heard was the skirr of his wings.

“Here, beloved.”

Chassar handed Ead a cup of walnut milk. Aralaq was lying across her bed, head on his front paws.

The jewel sat on the table. Nobody had touched it since Chassar, alerted by Sarsun and finding her insensible, had carried her back to the sunroom. Her fingers had only released it when she woke.

Now she held the translation of the scroll that had been in the box. The seal had already been broken. Written on brittle paper with an odd sheen to it, the scholars had deemed the message to be Old Seiikinese, interspersed with the odd word in Selinyi.

Hail honorable Siyāti, beloved sister of long-honored and learnèd Cleolind.

On this the third day of spring in the twentieth year of the reign of all-honored Empress Mokwo, I with Cleolind bound the Nameless One with two sacred jewels. We could not destroy him for his fiery heart was not pierced with the sword. One thousand years he will be held and not one sunrise more.

I send to you with sorrow the remains of our dear friend and this her waning jewel to keep until he returns. You will find the other on Komoridu and I enclose a star chart to lead your descendants there. They must use both sword and jewels against him. The jewels will cleave to the mage who touches them and only death can change the wielder.

I pray our children, centuries from now, will take up the burden with willing hearts.

I am,

Neporo, Queen of Komoridu

“All these years the warning lay with the Mother. The truth was right beneath our feet,” the Prioress said, voice scraped thin. “Why did a sister in the past go to such lengths to conceal it? Why did she hide the key to the tomb and bury it in Inys, of all places?”

“Perhaps to protect it,” Chassar said. “From Kalyba.”

Silence rang out.

“Do not speak that name,” the Prioress said very softly. “Not here, Chassar.”

Chassar dipped his head in contrition.

“I am certain,” he said, “that a sister would have left more for us, but it would have been in the archives. Before the flood.”

The Prioress paced back and forth in her red bedgown. “There was no star chart in the box.” She stroked a hand over her gold necklet. “And yet . . . we have learned a great deal from this message. If we can believe this Neporo of Komoridu, the Mother failed to pierce the Nameless One’s heart. In her lost years, she damaged him enough to somehow bind him, but it was not enough to prevent him rising anew.”

One thousand years he will be held and not one sunrise more.

His absence had never been anything to do with Sabran.

“The Nameless One will return,” the Prioress said, almost to herself, “but we can determine an exact day from this note. One thousand years from the third day of spring in the twentieth year of Empress Mokwo of Seiiki—” She made for the door. “I must send for our scholars. Find out when Mokwo ruled. And they may have heard legends about these jewels.”

Ead could hardly think. She was as cold as if someone had pulled her from the Ashen Sea.

Chassar noticed. “Eadaz, sleep for a little longer.” He kissed the top of her head. “And for now, don’t touch the jewel.”

“I’m a meddler,” Ead muttered, “not a fool.”

After he left, Ead curled against the furry warmth of Aralaq, her thoughts a morass.

“Eadaz,” Aralaq said.

“Yes?”

“Do not follow stupid birds into dark places again.”

She dreamed of Jondu in a dark room. Heard her screaming as a red-hot claw raked away her flesh. Aralaq nosed her awake.

“You were dreaming,” he rumbled.

Tears wet her cheeks. He nuzzled her, and she huddled into his fur.

The King of Yscalin was said to have a torture chamber in the bowels of his palace. Jondu would have met with death there. Meanwhile, Ead had been in the shining court of Inys, paid a wage, and decked in finery. She would carry this grief to the end of her days.

The jewel had stopped its glinting. She kept a cautious eye on it as she sipped the sapphire tea that had been left for her.

The Prioress came sweeping into the sunroom.

“We have nothing about this Neporo of Komoridu in the archives,” she said, without ceremony. “Or this jewel. Whatever it is, it is not our sort of magic.” She stopped by the bed. “It is something . . . unknown. Dangerous.”

Ead put down her glass.

“You will not like to hear this, Prioress,” she said, “but Kalyba would know.”

Once again, the name stiffened the Prioress. The set of her jaw betrayed her displeasure.

“The Witch of Inysca forged Ascalon. An object imbued with power. This jewel may be another of her creations,” Ead said. “Kalyba walked this world long before the Mother drew her first breath.”

“She did. And then she walked in the halls of the Priory. She killed your birthmother.”

“Nevertheless, she knows a great deal that we do not.”

“Has a decade in Inys addled your senses?” the Prioress said curtly. “The witch cannot be trusted.”

“The Nameless One may be coming. Our purpose, as sisters of the Priory, is to protect the world from him. If we must treat with lesser enemies to do that, so be it.”

The Prioress looked at her.

“I told you, Eadaz,” she said. “Our purpose now is to shield the South. Not the world.”

“So let me shield the South.”

With a sigh through her nose, the Prioress laid her hands on the balustrade.

“There is another reason that I think we should approach Kalyba,” Ead said. “Sabran dreamed often of the Bower of Eternity. She did not know what it was, of course, but she told me she had seen a gateway of sabra flowers and a terrible place beyond. I would like to know why it haunted an Inysh queen.”

The Prioress stood by the windows for a long time, stiff as a turret.

“You need not invite Kalyba here,” Ead said. “Let me go to her. I can take Aralaq.”

The Prioress pursed her lips.

“Go, then,” she said, “but I doubt she can or will tell you anything. Banishment has embittered her.” She used a piece of cloth to pick up the jewel. “I will keep this here.”

Ead felt an unexpected stirring of unease.

“I might need its power,” she said. “Kalyba is a stronger mage than I will ever be.”

“No. I will not risk this falling into her possession.” The Prioress slipped the jewel into a pouch at her side. “You will have weapons. Kalyba is powerful—no one could deny it—but she has not eaten of the tree in years. I have faith that you will overcome, Eadaz uq-Nāra.”