The debate continued for a while after dinner time, when some of the monks went to eat in small groups. Saia thought about doing the same, but she was too overwhelmed. She kept staring at the bas-reliefs, this time the ones on the opposite wall, and saw several scenes about monks and spheres that were only slightly different from each other. Every monk had an object near their feet that probably represented what job they had before becoming a god. The background was also different: sometimes there were trees, sometimes tall buildings, sometimes the sea, and other details she was too far away to see clearly. She came to the conclusion they were a way to represent the village they were becoming the gods of. She looked for one that could represent Lausune, but the bas-reliefs with the sea could be connected to any of the villages. She wondered which one of the images was dedicated to Zeles, and which one to Vizena.
She tried one more time to follow what was being said, but it was just an endless list of names and good qualities. After that came an even longer debate about which one of the nominated monks was the best candidate. She stayed seated until they gave a red sash to a woman with a long braid of hair who worked as a scholar. Then the abbot announced that the next topic was about the traditions that they deemed useless and Saia decided to leave. Nobody had stopped Aili, after all, and she was pretty sure a lot of monks had never even entered the temple that day.
She wanted to go straight to her room, but felt her stomach grumble and headed toward the dining hall instead. She hoped to find Coram, or Haina, or even the chemist, someone she could ask explanations to. She was pretty sure they were all still inside the temple, and she didn't feel like bothering someone she didn't know with questions everyone knew the answer to.
She took a bowl from the cart next to the entrance, filled it with soup from the pot, sat down next to a stranger and ate as fast as she could. She left, thinking about having a walk outside, but a glance out of a window told her it was already getting dark. It would have been difficult to justify her departure to the sentinels, and there wasn’t anyone out there to protect her from boars.
So she headed to her room. The best thing about debates was that her schedule was empty from lunch to the next day. And probably everybody else's, if the number of people inside the temple was of any indication.
The room was empty. Not that she'd really expected to find Aili there; she was probably in the library, as usual, researching the gods and their origins.
Saia fed the snakes and made a mental note to ask for more food for them. Her hands wrapped in the gloves, she moved the earth on top of the mound to look for eggs, but didn't find any.
She sat on the bed. She had at least one hour before bedtime, and there was nothing she could do to escape thinking about her future speech about Vizena and what she’d done to her village. There was too much to say in five minutes, or even an hour. She needed to organize her memories in some way, cut out what wasn't necessary even if everything seemed important.
She stood and crossed the room. She stared down at Aili's bed, at the piles of books on the floor and nightstand. The titles changed from day to day, but now that she looked at them closely she saw they were mostly about botany and medicine, with some history books and a very old one about the basics of magic. She picked it up and opened it on the first page, careful not to let the leaf Aili used as a bookmark slip.
She’d expected them to be written by hand, since the monks didn’t have gods to copy texts into books, but they looked identical to the ones that could be found in the villages. She guessed the monks brought the originals to the gods to be copied, or had some magical technique to do that themselves.
She tried to read the first words, but the language was very technical and she had too many things to think about at that moment. She put the book down and moved the whole pile, looking under and around the bed. Finally, she found what she was looking for: her notes about Vizena, a stack of paper and a cylinder of graphite sharpened on one end. She put the rest back where she found it and sat on the floor, shoulders against her bed.
She reread what she’d written, scrapped two things that didn’t seem important enough to be included in the final speech, and thought about what to add next. She started from a small thing: the goddess trying to prevent her mother from bringing her to the lake. But then she'd have to explain why she was going there, so she scratched the sentence she'd begun to write and thought some more.
After writing down the first episode, everything came in, wave after wave: Vizena commenting when she didn't dress in a way she liked, keeping up his brother Lassem all night to ask him over and over why he was late at the function that day, pressuring her aunt to have a second child. And in the midst of it all, the thought that Vizena wasn't a goddess at all, but a person that someone had chosen and made into a deity.
The bedroom door opened unexpectedly, not giving her time to recompose herself. Aili looked down to see her crying face and her expression went from determination to concern.
“They could have chosen someone else,” Saia sobbed, wiping her face with the rough sleeve of her tunic.
Aili closed the door softly, left the three books she was carrying on her bed and sat down next to her. She put a hand on Saia's shoulder.
“I know. We'll organize your speech to the second. I'll do the first question to give you more minutes and I'm sure I can convince Coram and the others to do the same. If there's any value at all in what they believe, they'll listen.”
Saia took a series of deep breaths to calm down. Aili glanced at the notes balanced on her knees, but didn't say anything.
“Did you find out something?” Saia asked.
“Yes, and I have a lot of questions. But we can talk about it tomorrow, if you prefer.”
“No, I want to know. And I'll reveal what I can.”
Aili nodded and went to sit on the bed. Saia did the same on her own, facing her.
“All the gods are monks,” Aili said. “Or better, they were. Technically they aren't considered monks anymore after they change.”
“How it happens? How are gods created, exactly?”
“There's a whole book about that, but it's unavailable for now. Some of the scholars who specialize in magic have to prepare for the rite that will transform the chosen monk into Koidan. I'll try to get my hands on it as soon as possible, but I think they'll need it for the next months.”
“And nobody knows what's written there?”
“It's advanced magic, not many people can understand it. But I can ask one of the scholars' priors, they probably were present when the last transformation happened.”
Saia nodded. It didn't even matter that much, for what she wanted to accomplish. She was just curious about how a change like that could even be possible in the first place. She wanted to know what Zeles had experienced before becoming a sphere.
This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
“They only last about two hundred years, by the way,” Aili continued. “It changes from village to village, and a bit from monk to monk even if they impersonate the same god, but nothing relevant.”
“So you were right.”
She smiled a bit.
“I mean, it's pretty noticeable once you get all the data. But I haven't told you the best part: they have a physical form after becoming gods, and it isn’t a statue.”
Saia thought about the spheres and tried to look surprised.
“Oh, really?”
“They're spheres of glass filled with viss. You know, the energy we can manipulate through magic.”
Saia didn't know what to say. Aili's eyes were fixed on her.
“Spheres?” she repeated, her voice rising in pitch.
Aili snorted from her nose, like the beginning of a laugh, but she returned immediately serious.
“I know that you already knew that, you don’t need to pretend.”
“No. What? It's impossible” Saia desperately searched for the right words to use, but she felt her voice and expression becoming less and less convincing the longer she waited. Aili's eyes were unwavering, not a single sign that her attempts to conceal the truth were having any kind of effect.
She sighed.
“How did you find out?”
Aili folded her legs against her chest and hugged her knees.
“I started to piece it together when we were in the tent. You said that you couldn't tell me who taught you to use magic, so at first I thought it must have been an exiled monk. But I couldn't think of anyone, there aren’t many foreigners in Lausune. The monks had talked about killing whoever revealed something, so I didn't believe Koidan would have let that pass without stopping them. Not necessarily by killing them, but making them shut up in some way before they revealed too much. But you seemed to know what you were doing, you must have practiced for a long time, there was no way he wouldn't have noticed.”
Saia shrugged.
“Maybe Koidan just didn't agree with everything the monks wanted.”
“Then I thought,” Aili continued, apparently ignoring her comment, “that the only way somebody could have broken so many rules without being stopped by a god was by... Well, being a god. And you certainly didn’t practice with the statue in the temple, since the monks could see you.”
“There’s a spot in every temple that the monks can’t see. Not entirely, at least.”
“Oh. Well, still. A smaller form would have been practical, and when I learnt of the spheres it all clicked together.”
She hunched forward to get the book about basic magic from the stack near the bed.
“Here, one of the manipulations described toward the middle is the one you use to make your snakes fall asleep.”
She turned the book toward her. Saia saw the graphite drawing of a monk touching the side of a kicking horse, dust of dotted energy flowing from him to the animal.
Aili pointed at a paragraph.
“Here it briefly mentions that gods are similar to tanhata, so it’s easy to make them fall asleep if you have a piece of their bodies.”
Saia looked up from the book.
“Similar to what?”
“Tanhata. Do you know what they are?”
She thought about how Zeles had called the people on the ship.
“No, but I’ve heard it somewhere. What are they, exactly?”
“I have no idea, the book takes for granted that the reader already knows. I've asked around, but nobody seems to have ever heard of them. And if the scholars don't know anything, I don't know who else to ask.”
“The sentinels?”
Aili stopped, mouth half-open.
“Good point. I'll ask Coram.”
“No, you won't. He'll wonder why we know of something that obscure, and I don't think I can handle any questions from him. Or Maris.”
“Who can I ask, then?”
“Nobody. It doesn't matter right now, we'd just get unwanted attention.”
Aili didn't look satisfied with her answer. They stared at each other for a bit, then she sighed.
“You're not going to tell me why he taught you all that stuff, right?”
“No.”
“It has something to do with Zeles fading. The timing is too precise for it to be a coincidence.”
Saia stared at her.
“How did you call him?”
“Zeles. It was Zeles, right? Or am I confusing it with someone else?”
She opened another book from the small stack she had brought from the library.
“Yeah, Zeles was the last monk to impersonate Koidan. He didn't tell you his name?”
But her eyes were smiling.
“Stop playing with me,” Saia said. “What's that book?”
“It's a list of all the monks who have become gods in the last six hundred years. It's just a copy, or I don't think they'd have let me take it away.”
“Let me see.”
Aili smiled openly and handed her the small book.
“You do admit you know him.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
She started turning the pages furiously, glancing at the names at the top.
“They're organized by village,” Aili said. “Zeles is just after the middle.”
Saia turned the pages faster. She almost skipped him, her mind processing his name some instants after she read it. She went back, almost holding her breath.
There was a drawing. The description reported the name of the monk who had made the original drawing in charcoal. It was the portrait of a man in his thirties, smiling with full lips, a gentle gaze directed somewhere at Saia's right. The contours of his face weren't clearly traced, but the dark gray hues of his skin faded until they meshed with the gray-yellow of the recycled paper. She stared at his face, trying to imagine him speaking with Zeles’s voice.
“I don’t know if my opinion is worth something,” Aili said. “But he looks quite handsome.”
Saia had to agree: even if the statue was similar enough to resemble him, in the drawing he looked real, as if she could have met him while turning a corner.
She carefully passed the index on the lower edge of the drawing, expecting it to smudge, but she only felt paper. When she raised her finger, it was clean.
“They use magic to copy drawings,” Aili explained. “It's actually quite fascinating, but…”
“But it's not the time, now,” Saia concluded.
“Yeah. Just something to keep in mind.”
Saia started to read the text below the drawing. It talked about Zeles’s life. She'd expected him to be a scholar, since he was so good at understanding people. Maybe someone who specialized in conscience study, like the monk who had examined her before they entered the village the first time.
But no, he was a helper like her. He sew tunics and other clothes when needed, but his main occupation was cleaning tunics and delivering them.
“It says…” Saia brought the book closer to her face to read the words at the scarce light of the candles. “‘He was one of the only ones who could repair the pattern when it frayed.’ What does it mean?”
“It’s referring to the purple string on the inside of the tunics. It’s fascinating, but I’ll tell you more later.”
She gestured for her to continue and Saia did, this time reading the words out loud, in case Aili had more observations to make.
“Zeles had been noticed by the community years before becoming a god because of his habit of putting small gifts inside the tunics he delivered. He kept it a secret for as long as he could, but was discovered after only two months by one of his priors. After that, putting the gifts in the tunics became an occasional event, every time he knew that someone in the village was facing some hardships. He teamed with his fellow helpers to produce the gifts, like carefully wrapped food, flowers, levigated rocks, small wooden statues, and so on. He was nominated as a potential substitute for the god Koidan because of his attention to the needs of the people around him and his dedication to the wellbeing of the community. He was later described by his friends and family as a melancholic but friendly man, with a warm personality and never-ending fascination for human nature.”
The text continued, but Saia had to stop. It sounded too much like an epitaph.
“He's good,” she said. “And I’m not saying it just because of what's written here. He doesn't deserve to disappear.”
“So you are keeping him hidden from the monks?”
“They would kill him!” Saia realized that someone could be listening at the door and lowered her voice. “He's my friend, I can’t allow that to happen. So please don’t tell the monks anything.”
“Don't worry, I won't. But I'm really curious, how did you become friends with a god? I would never be able to treat them like a normal person. Even now that I know they were monks at some point, I wouldn't feel at ease. Not after worshipping them for all my life.”
“To me it was the opposite. I've always seen them as a sort of enemy. More of an obstacle than a help.”
“It's understandable.”
"I know. But you can imagine how good of a god Zeles is, if he managed to make me change my mind about him.”
Aili hugged her legs closer and rested her chin on her knees.
“It's obviously fine if you don't want to talk about it, but it sounds like it would be a pretty cool story to hear.”
Saia passed a hand on Zeles’s portrait. She really wanted someone else on his side.
“Only if you promise you'll help me find a way to save his life.”
“I will need a lot more details about the situation to do that.”
“Come on, you’ll find them out on your own quicker than I can explain them. So?”
Aili raised her head a bit to nod.
“Sure. I'll do my best.”
“And no questions. There are things that I don't want to talk about. You can guess whatever you want, even be a hundred percent right about everything, but I won't discuss it.”
“I think I know what you are referring to. I won't ask.”
“Good.” Saia closed the book and put it aside. “I guess I need to give you a little bit of context, first. Some weeks before I met him, I was exiled from Suimer…”