Saia sat next to Aili on the floor of the temple, in one of the innermost circles of the crowd. It seemed to her that there were a lot more people than the previous two weeks, even if she knew that thought didn't make sense.
“I don't know if I can do this. We still have two months, right? Maybe I should prepare better and see more debates.”
“No,” Aili said. “Don't do this to yourself. It's not easy now, it won't be easy later, when we'll have to think of the new Koidan.”
Saia frowned.
“Why would that be a problem?”
But she immediately realized why: Dan could keep Zeles hidden from the monks, but not from another god.
She grabbed Aili's arm.
“We have to find a solution.”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“We don't have time!”
“I’m thinking about it,” Aili repeated, more forcefully. “I shouldn't have told you that. Focus on the speech. Do you remember every point?”
Saia nodded. She was about to list them, when she spotted Daira among the monks who were entering at that moment. She crossed the room, smiling and waving at the people sitting in circles, headed toward the abbot's chair. He stood, signaling to the priors to get closer, and he started talking to her in a low voice.
“Why is she here?” Saia asked, turning toward Aili. “What do we do if they found Zeles?”
“Don't worry, it's not that. I talked to her when she returned this morning: she’s just here to report how things are going in Lausune and to discuss the next steps. If they had found him, everybody would know it by now.”
But she was biting her lips, looking tense. Saia thought she either wasn't that sure of what she was saying and there was a possibility that Zeles had been found, or that she was very invested in her speech. She decided to let it go, for the moment, and repeated in her mind the main points she had to make.
After their brief discussion had concluded, the priors sat down among the crowd. Daira and Redus didn’t follow them, standing instead behind and to the sides of the abbot’s chair. He sat down.
“Friends, you all know why we're here today: we have to find our fifth candidate for the trails.”
Saia felt her heart pound inside her chest. Aili leaned toward her and whispered: “Go!”
She stood. Maybe the movement was too sudden, maybe it was the sea of monks staring at her, but she felt dizzy, as if looking down from a huge height. She had wanted to sit next to the wall, to have the comfort of something to lean on or shelter her from all of those people, but Aili had insisted to stay close to the center.
“Everybody can see you from there,” she had said. “They won't be able to ignore you even if they wanted. And it makes you look confident and in control of the situation.”
Saia clung to those words, closing her fists. She really hoped Aili was right and she wasn't making a fool of herself. Not that she cared about the monks' opinion of her, but she wanted them to listen to her words without thinking she was insane.
The abbot slowed down for an instant, giving her a puzzled look, but continued his speech.
“As usual, you can only nominate someone else, then we'll discuss why the candidate would be suitable for the role of god, and vote once we have examined all of the candidates. You can nominate people who were rejected in the past debates, but not in the last one. But I see we already have a nomination. Who do you suggest?”
And he pointed in Saia's direction. She saw the woman with the bag of stones and the man with the hourglass cross the room in her direction. She could gain some precious seconds if she started talking before they reached her.
“I want to talk about Vizena and her mistreatment of Suimer’s people.”
The heads around her looked at each other, then at the abbot. She kept her eyes on him, even if Coram had advised her to look at the priors too, and sometimes at the audience. She knew she was breaking a rule, changing the topic from the one the abbot himself had established. Another one of Aili's ideas: if she had waited until after a candidate was chosen, there wouldn’t be as many people in the temple, and the remaining ones would be too tired to give her words the proper consideration. The most important topic was the one discussed first, after all.
“Have you ever asked yourself why people never leave Suimer?” she said while the man with the hourglass sprinted toward her, only to stop abruptly once he was close enough and turn the instrument. “It's because we're not allowed to. Only a handful of people she has chosen can leave, and always for short amounts of time. Everyone else is under the threat of their things being destroyed and their families tormented until they come back, or even longer than that. Vizena knows that if she ever allowed someone to escape, any of us would tell the exact same things I'm about to say now. She sees and judges every second of our lives, every move we make, no matter how small or unimportant we think it is. She comments and criticizes everything she doesn't like.”
The girl caught up with them and extended the bag toward Saia. She took a red stone from her pocket and tossed it inside.
“And I know it doesn't sound too bad. That's what gods are for, after all: looking out for their people and prevent them from committing crimes or mistakes that could hurt them. But Vizena took it too far, to the point that we knew we could hear her voice in our heads at any moment. In the middle of a conversation, while eating, sleeping, or even having sex. She pressures us with her requests, no matter how unreasonable. And when we refuse, she'll punish us with her constant presence inside our heads. Imagine having someone that you hate and fear deeply always behind you, looking at what you do, listening to what you say, forcing you to do things you don't want to do in exchange for a minute of peace. Except this person is a god, and they have the power to kill you and destroy everything and everyone you know, if you make them angry enough.”
She glanced at the hourglass and saw that the thing moving inside was sand, or something very similar, falling fast toward the bottom chamber.
“Now I know that you monks would stop her and that she would never do that to risk angering you. But when I lived there, I thought she was the highest authority in my life. That she could decide everything about me, and the fact that I could still move freely was something I should have been grateful for, because I thought she could take that away too. But I didn't feel grateful: I was always tired, always alert, measuring every word and action, aware that even if I were the most careful person in the entire village, she'd have found some excuse to ruin my life just like she had repeatedly ruined everybody else's, and there was nothing I could do about it.”
She browsed the crowd with her eyes while she spoke, looking for a specific face. She felt emptiness in her chest for an instant when she realized the sand in the hourglass was all reaching the bottom and no hand was being raised above the crowd. Then, she turned around and saw it.
“Yes?” she asked, pointing at Haina.
“Could you give us some specific examples of what Vizena has said and done?”
Saia nodded. She glanced at the man at her side to make sure he was turning the hourglass.
“There are too many things to list, but I'll briefly talk about some of them. My aunt, for example. She had one kid, but Vizena wanted her to have another one because she liked the first. So she started to insist that she tried for another, even if she'd told her many times that she had no intention to and she was happy that way. But Vizena started to become more and more aggressive, to insist all day, and in the end my aunt gave in.”
She glanced at the hourglass, found that she'd used up a third of her time, and started talking faster, trying to list as many episodes as possible in that short amount of time. She looked at the people around her, searching for comprehension, for the same rage she felt even just by thinking about Vizena and what she'd done to her people, but all those eyes and faces seemed melted together. She felt her breath stumble on the words, so she focused on Haina again, pretending she was alone with her, Aili, Ebus, Cailes and Coram, practicing the speech in an empty classroom as she'd done for the past two weeks.
When Cailes’s hand shot up in the air, she understood the time at her disposal had ended once more.
“Next question,” she said, pointing at him.
“I get that this is bad and Vizena should stop.” She could tell he was trying very hard to sound natural, but something in his tone betrayed the fact that he had rehearsed his line dozens of times. “But your economy is thriving, and nobody is homeless or without a job or occupation of some kind. We've never seen traces of natural disasters, illnesses or other problems. By all accounts, Vizena is doing her job. So why should we intervene? Has she ever hurt you physically?”
“What you're seeing from here is very different from what we experience down there. Yes, everyone has a job, but often people don't choose what to do. If they chose something she didn't like, Vizena would start pressuring them to change, and very few can resist that kind of pressure. Remember that we didn't know, people still don't know, that she can't kill or hurt us openly. So every single threat we receive from her feels like the last one you'll hear before she punishes you. And she knows it. She has this image of a perfect village, and wants all of us to do exactly what she wants to make it come to life, no matter what we desire. It makes life terrible. And I know that it doesn't have to be that way, because I've been in two other villages, and the gods there…”
“I think this is enough.”
Saia turned to find the abbot standing.
“What you're talking about is clearly very important, and deserves the attention of the whole village. But it has to wait until after a new candidate is chosen. The rule is that we have to focus on the topic announced until it's been solved. Hasn’t somebody told you how the debates work?”
Saia saw the woman with the stones nod out of the corner of her eye.
“I know the rules for the debate, like I know the rules gods have to follow to take care of their people. There's nothing about the kind of abuse Vizena is perpetrating. The only thing gods can't do is insulting people, but the rules give them the right to spy and intrude all they want. So your law is wrong and incomplete, it has to change, and Vizena should be punished for what she's doing. That's all I ask.”
“You’re only been living with us for three weeks. You don’t have the knowledge to judge our rules.”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Saia stared at him. She felt a tug at her tunic.
“Ask for a vote,” Aili whispered. “Before he orders you to wait.”
Saia frowned. Voting usually closed a topic, and she'd only ever seen the abbot announce it. But Aili seemed sure of her words, and she didn't want to wait until evening to discuss Vizena’s punishment.
“Let's vote,” she said aloud. “Raise your hand if you think that we should keep discussing this now. That a goddess torturing her village is the most important issue for the people who are supposed to prevent it.”
And she raised her hand. Aili did the same immediately, and from where she stood, she could see the raised hands of Ebus, Cailes and Coram, knowing that Haina was doing the same thing somewhere behind her.
“This is not how it works,” the abbot said.
But some hands were tentatively raising. Saia met Daira's eyes. The prior looked at the people who had already raised their hand, nodded imperceptibly, and did the same.
Hands started to raise all around the temple. Saia lowered her eyes on Aili and saw her smile. She wanted to ask her whether she'd been the one to tell Daira to vote in her favor or the prior had been convinced by the speech, but everybody could hear her, so she focused on the abbot again. He was looking at Daira too, with a disapproving expression on his face. But in the end, he still grabbed the armrests of his chair and sat down.
“Do we have to count?” the man with the hourglass asked.
“Go ahead,” Laius said, crossing his hands in his lap.
The two organizers left the hourglass and the bag of stones on the floor, right where they stood, and headed toward two opposite corners of the temple. They were joined by two of their colleagues, and each couple started counting who had a raised hand and who hadn't, pronouncing each number aloud, first one couple, then the other. Apart from them, Saia was the only one standing. She felt weird, as if she was a sacred statue everybody was looking at, but she resisted the urge to sit down. She followed the count, echoing it in her mind, focusing on the slow, steady rhythm of the numbers that were repeated twice, once from a couple, once from the other. Some monks started to talk to each other in low voices, giving the counting a background of chatter.
After an eternity, the four organizers converged to the center, counted Saia and Aili's hands, the ones in the circle where they sat, made the sums and announced: “Two hundred and seventy-seven in favor, two hundred and sixty-eight against.”
The abbot let out a visible sigh, his shoulders rising and falling.
“I know the ultimate decision belongs to me, since this was a very irregular votation. And I should tell you to wait, because this is what the rules say, and choosing a new god is an important matter. But it's your decision, and I'm going to respect it.”
He stood again.
“Narmus.”
A monk emerged from the crowd. Saia recognized him as one of the scholars priors.
“What's the amount of Vizena’s residue?” the abbot asked him.
The prior breathed in deeply and raised his eyes to the ceiling. Saia could see his lips move, but couldn't decipher what he was saying. She turned toward the woman with the stones, who had returned on her side, leaving the bag on the floor.
“What is he doing?”
“Counting. He's calculating how much energy Vizena has left.”
“Interesting,” Aili chimed in. “How does that work?”
The girl shrugged.
“I have no idea. I know there are a lot of things to consider, like how much time she's been a goddess, the major disasters that happened in Suimer, how many years her predecessors lasted on average. I've studied this a long time ago, but I don't remember much. Sorry.”
“And they can't just go down there and find out how much it is with magic?”
“I don't know much about magic, so I could be wrong, but it's not really possible to know how much energy a sphere has unless you’re another god. Even by looking at it, the ones who are about to disappear and the ones who were just created look the same, up until their energy ends. That's why we need someone to keep track of these factors and know how to make the calculation.”
“Makes sense. Thank you.”
They waited in silence until the prior's lips stopped moving and he lowered his eyes on the assembly.
“Approximately two hundred and twenty units.”
“Units?” Saia repeated under her breath.
The organizer opened her mouth as if to begin another explanation, but the abbot started talking and she focused on him again.
“My dear priors, you don't need me to tell you that it's an enormous amount of viss. I'll let you discuss how we should proceed, but keep in mind this number during any decision you'll make.”
And he raised his hands to the sides, moving them a bit upward in an invite for the priors to stand. Daira and Rades stepped forward while the rest walked up the three steps and approached the well.
The woman with the bag of stones sat down, while the man with the hourglass sprinted toward the exit, followed by three other organizers. Saia felt Aili tug at her tunic again.
“You can sit, now. They've started a council.”
Saia gave an uncertain glance to the group of priors, who were now forming a semicircle. She slowly sat down.
“A council?” she asked Aili. “The debate wasn't enough?”
“The debate is for sharing opinions about the community, people don't need to know anything to contribute as long as they live here. But important decisions like this one pertain to the abbot and priors alone.”
“We should verify her claims,” the last one of the scholars priors said, a man that looked only a decade younger than the abbot. “Maybe we can send someone to investigate.”
“We already did, some months ago,” a sentinels prior said. “Routine controls, to gauge the state of the economy and the general satisfaction of the people. The sentinel who went there didn't report anything strange.”
“Who were they?” the abbot asked, looking at the crowd. “Can you share with us what you saw?”
After an instant, a woman stood, two circles of people away from Saia's spot.
“As I said, I didn't find anything suspicious. I noticed that the people seemed gloomy and don't tend to talk much to foreigners, but it didn't seem connected to anything specific.”
“Thank you,” the abbot said, and the sentinel sat down.
“Even the previous controls didn't suggest any misbehaviors on Vizena’s part.”
“What?” Saia whispered, but Aili shook her head.
“Let them talk, it's too soon to worry.”
“The problem is,” Daira started, “that she could have easily stopped tormenting people and hidden everything during the controls.”
“She didn't know we sent someone there,” the sentinels prior protested, cutting her off. “We're careful to enter the villages dressed like the inhabitants and from merchant routes. There was no way to suspect our sentinel wasn't just a foreigner on a trip.”
“Of course, but what I meant to say is that she could act that way around all the foreigners and we wouldn't know. The nature of the abuse makes it quite easy to hide.”
“We could send a consciousness scholar,” Rades said.
Daira hesitated, but it was the older scholars prior to answer.
“We only have two consciousness scholars right now, the rest is still in training. Sending one there for a thorough investigation would mean depriving our village of a fundamental service for an indefinite amount of time.”
“A sacrifice,” the abbot said. “Would it be better if we put a limit to it? Two weeks, for example, and then the scholar will have to be back no matter what they did or didn’t discover.”
There were various nods along the semicircle of priors.
“Okay, so... If she's innocent, nothing changes,” Rades said. “But if she's guilty, what kind of punishment should we inflict?”
“We should break her,” Maris said without hesitation.
Saia felt something roar inside her.
The priors exchanged glances.
“And lose all that viss?” one of the helpers asked.
“Two hundred and twenty units of it?” added the scholar who had done the calculation.
“Yes. We don't know when she started this abuse, so potentially all the people who lived in Suimer in the last hundred or so years had to endure it. Any punishment other than that wouldn't be enough.”
“The viss was gathered with suffering and sacrifice by our predecessors. Once she’s cracked, it will dissolve.” Daira said. “It's an enormous quantity. We should focus on studying magic well enough to be able to transfer it somewhere else before doing that. Only then we can start talking about cracking her. The temporary solution would be finding a way to ensure that she keeps using it for the village, without hurting anyone in the process. Certainly without doing what she's done up to this point, if Saia's words are true.”
“And how do you propose we do that?” Maris asked. “Can your magic force her to obey? Or should we wait until you finally find a way to?”
“Lower your tone, Maris,” the abbot warned.
The prior looked like they wanted to add something, but then relaxed against the chair.
“All I'm saying,” Daira continued, “is that losing that energy would be an enormous setback and we need to do everything we can to ensure we can use it in some way. We should start by sending her a warning. Maybe that’s all she needs.”
“It doesn’t solve anything,” Maris said.
“But it's a good first step,” Rades interjected. “And we could assess the situation more often, sending a consciousness scholar down there at least once every two months. And if nothing changes…”
He didn't finish the sentence, looking around for suggestions. Maris crossed their arms without answering, but there was no need for them to.
“We could anticipate the end of her service,” a helpers prior said. “We know how long it should last, right?”
“Seventy years more,” the scholar said.
“Then, instead of waiting for her to disappear on her own, we could shorten it by three years at every failed reassessment.”
“They can do that?” Aili whispered.
Saia shrugged.
“I like this idea,” the abbot said. “But I'd prefer two years, if you all agree. Only after the initial warning, and only if our consciousness scholar confirms that she's guilty.”
The prior agreed. Maris untangled their arms and nodded one time, sharply.
“If no one has anything to add, let's vote,” the abbot said. “Who's in favor of the decisions we have taken?”
All of the priors raised a hand. Saia closed her fists and got up. She felt Aili tug firmly at her tunic, but she ignored her.
“What does it mean?” she asked aloud.
The abbot and priors looked at her.
“I asked you to stop her from hurting people. I understand if you want to be sure that I'm not lying and that the situation is actually as bad as I described, but you should do something more than evaluate and give her warnings.”
“Her viss is precious,” Daira said. “We should try everything in our power to preserve it before coming to drastic decisions.”
“You're underestimating her.” Saia heard the chatter rise all around the temple and saw the monks look at her with disapproving faces. Aili tugged at her tunic again. “She'll find a way to keep hurting them without you knowing, and I won't realize it either, because I don't live there anymore. She'll understand immediately that you're trying to evaluate her, and find a way to deceive you. And people will keep suffering in the meantime.”
“Enough, now,” the abbot said, rising from his chair.
“And what if she actually stops hurting people, and you stop sending your scholars there because you think she's changed? She'll do that all over again, maybe hurt them even more because one of them has talked about her to the monks.”
She realized at that moment that Vizena would have guessed immediately that she was the only one capable of revealing the truth. She'd have targeted her family even more, and it would have been her fault.
“Say another word and I'll make you leave,” the abbot said, shooting a glance in the organizers' direction.
Saia didn't answer, but she straightened her back and kept staring at him.
“I’m grateful that you have brought this issue to our attention,” the abbot continued, voice getting a bit calmer at every word. “I know that you feel responsible for your people's fate, but this problem is out of your hands, now. You are a newcomer, you don't know enough about our rules and methods to decide whether our decision was adequate or not. We'll change our plan if we realize that the situation is more complex than we anticipated, but what we'll choose to do doesn't concern you anymore. Trust us and stop complaining. You won't obtain anything, except losing the right to participate in debates.”
Saia kept looking at him without answering. The abbot sat down and the priors stood, allowing the organizers to take the chairs away.
“We will focus on selecting the new candidate, now. As usual, stand if you want to nominate someone and explain why we should choose them.”
The priors returned to their spots near the walls, mingled with the other monks, except for Daira and Rades, standing at the abbot's sides. Saia looked at them, still standing, but now there were more people getting up around the temple. The abbot's gaze never stopped on her.
Daira stepped forward and turned toward the abbot. He nodded in her direction, but pointed at the first person who had stood, and she started talking. Saia knew that she could have kept standing all she wanted, but they'd ignored her for the rest of the debate. Still, she was ready to continue her silent protest that way, for hours if necessary.
But Aili tugged at her tunic again.
“What?” Saia asked.
“This isn't the moment to insist. You just risk alienating Coram, Haina and the others and not having anyone on your side next time.”
Saia glared at the abbot one last time, but sat down.
“You know I'm right, though. They're not solving anything.”
“They're taking a very careful approach. We should see how the situation develops and raise the topic again in a couple of months if nothing changes.”
“How do we know if something changes? We should go to Suimer and talk to someone to know that.”
“We'll find a way. But even if you think they're not being fair, you should at least acknowledge that it was a success. They've discussed it, they've realized it’s an issue, and Vizena will be punished. It's not bad, compared to how it was before.”
“It's not enough either.”
“We'll see. Maybe it is enough to stop her.”
“It's not.”
Aili sighed and looked at the person who was talking. Saia wanted to insist, but her words about not having anybody on her side made her drop the discussion.
The abbot listened to two more people before acknowledging Daira.
“Who do you nominate to take the role of Koidan?”
Saia found herself paying attention, even if reluctantly. Whoever the candidate would be, being nominated by the person everybody considered the next abbot was a huge advantage over everyone else.
Daira looked at the crowd as she waited for the man with the hourglass to reach her.
“I nominate Ailima from Lausune.”