You have heard it said, ‘A prayer of gladness is received with gladness.’ But I tell you that the heart of Eloei is more boundless than the deepest sea. The prayer of the widow and the prayer of the newlywed are equal in the ears of the Most High. Lift up your troubles to Him and He will surely hear you.
-The Testament of Kahlo Hadrizeen, First Prophet of Eloei, Chapter 67, Verses 29-32
Palace of the Hierophant, Rayyaq Raleed, Qarda
Beneath the opulent palace home to the greatest power in the known world was a network of underground dungeons. These dungeons were even bleaker than the austere condition of Castle Muadazim. The pale yellow bricks cracked and crumbled in places; iron was the only metal in sight, black bars secured by black locks, and all of it lit by sparse torches in drab black sconces. The corridors were littered with cobwebs and the desiccated skeletons of rats. Everything was meant to break down a prisoner’s morale.
For Lanor, it was working.
She paced in her windowless cell. It was a maddeningly narrow alcove that was many, many strides long, and yet she was able to scrape the wall with one hand as she walked and drum the iron bars with the other at the same time. That on its own was enough to drive her mad in due time.
But she was not alone.
Her cellmate was a mousy woman of middle age. She sat alone on the cell’s backless wooden bench. Her hair reminded Lanor of Dhasherah, reddish brown with streaks of light gray like troughs of snow in the mud. The woman passed the time by biting her nails down to nubs, folding and unfolding her arms, shaking her leg so that her sandal squeaked underfoot at all times. She never spoke. She never dared to look at Lanor.
For almost every crime in the great land of Qarda, there existed only one punishment. From the most hardened burglars, wifebeaters, false witnesses, disobedient children, sorcerers, adulterers, kidnappers, perpetrators of incest—all of them down to the pettiest thief and minor slanderer were punished the same. They were imprisoned. The nature, severity, and duration of their crime all played a role in the length of their imprisonment. Severe or repeat offenders were banished to the desert island prison of Jal Hakhan to the south. First offenders in Rayyaq Raleed were usually housed in the dungeons below the palace.
Lanor, however, was a special case.
Two crimes in Qarda were treated especially harshly: murder and apostasy. Anyone guilty of either of these crimes was automatically put to death. The murderer was killed quickly by beheading.
For the apostate, the manner of death was unfortunately much more creative. Qarda was infamous for its executions of apostates. The methods used to put them to death were so gruesome, so unpredictably inventive, that there was perhaps but one trial of apostasy in Rayyaq Raleed each year, and in other regions it was even less common.
Lanor festered in this knowledge. She wore a plain gray gown and, beneath her drab headdress, her hair stood pinned in a tight bun that hurt her scalp. She was itchy, having gone days without a bath—how had she managed to go so long after her father’s death? She didn’t know.
She didn’t know what would happen to her. Nor when. The not knowing was a torture all its own.
Days slugged on in bread meals and the paladins’ patrol rounds in total absence of the sun, stars, even the tiniest little shard of celestial blue. She’d lost all sense of time. Each day, any lingering suspicions that this was all some sick joke or perhaps an elaborate political stunt on Ghamal’s part grew thinner and thinner. It was all real. Lanor felt like the world’s biggest fool for not piecing it all together until it was far too late.
On the fifth day of her imprisonment, Lanor’s curiosity overwhelmed her—who was this woman, and what had she done to find herself behind bars? The woman’s prison gown and headdress were tattered at the edges and coming apart at the seams; she smelled foul and oniony, and what would be a thin mane of hair if it were clean was a tangled, oily mess atop her head. Lanor wondered if the woman had had any white hairs when she’d first arrived.
The highborn girl approached the woman and said, “Are you—” and the woman jumped. Lanor jumped. The woman gave her an incredulous, horrified look, and not another word passed between them. The girl resumed her routine of pacing back and forth through the wingspan-thin cell.
Lanor began to neglect her prayers again. It was impossible to tell the time of day in the first place, but she would have withheld her prayers anyway. I have kept your tome all my days, she thought bitterly. What have you done for me in return? Now I’ve truly lost everything. She swallowed hard.
Well... not everything. Not yet.
Some days, Ghamal’s betrayal still didn’t feel real. She searched her mind for any clue that this still might have been part of Ghamal’s plan to help her, but she found none. The only thing that made sense was his betrayal. In hindsight, all the pieces of the puzzle seemed so painfully obvious that she hated herself for letting all this come to pass.
The opportunist sees weakness and strikes. Do you understand? If only she’d heeded her fathers words more carefully.
Her uncle had never sired a child. Ever since the Sixty-Year Schism just after the dawn of the Eloheed, it was crucial for a hierophant, or an heir, to have children, ideally before their coronation. Disputes of birthright had caused a sixty-year war that almost spelled the end of the Eloheed. So when Ghamal failed to have children, his birthright to the throne was revoked, and Lanor’s father was installed instead.
How could she have thought that he would just let that go? Had Ghamal fooled her father, too? Then there came the sinking suspicion that tied everything together, one so unassailably logical that Lanor couldn’t deny it, no matter how much it chilled her to the bone.
You killed my father, she realized. Your own brother. This was all your doing.
Now she saw a huge swath of her memories in a different light. All those times when her father gave her uncle a hard time, poking fun at him, rebuking him from his seat of authority, even issuing orders to his elder brother... Ghamal had seemed to take everything in stride. But she knew differently now.
Ghamal had been one step ahead of her from the beginning. He sowed the seeds of her incompetence in the very path that he laid out before her. Her bungled responses to the supplicants. Her hasty, imprudent invasion of Grackenwell's capital city—Eloheed died by the hundreds because of that. The way she conducted her part in the congregation, falling asleep in plain view of the entire Synod, and how she’d left without a word. Even that stimulant tea must have been laced with a sedative of some kind.
All of it painted her as an incompetent child who couldn’t be trusted with the highest seat of power in the world. And all along the way, Ghamal painted himself as the competent, sagacious, long-suffering but dutiful servant of Eloei, and he made it so that his ascension to the throne was the only viable alternative to Lanor or another civil war.
And still he had the gall to claim that everything he did was the will of Eloei. Having his brother killed. Betraying his own niece, looking the other way as she was imprisoned and would soon be put to death. What kind of monster, what kind of mahjeen could do what he did and still hide behind the mysterious ways of a benevolent god?
Then again, maybe it was Eloei’s will after all. If He even cared about human affairs. If He even existed at all.
Maybe I am an apostate, Lanor thought. Maybe this is where I belong.
“The time has come.”
Lanor flinched. A pair of paladins waited at the locked gate of the cell. She looked to her cellmate, who sat there and shook her legs and stared at the floor like normal. The guards trained their eyes on the ex-hierophant.
“Follow us, Lanor Sanzeen,” said the other paladin. “The Synod awaits.”
The young Sanzeen drew a shaking breath, sure of only one thing anymore—no good could come of this.
***
The Dome of the Synod looked orders of magnitude larger this time. Lanor walked, head down, stripped of all her power, shuffling to her place on an unpolished wooden bench rife with slivers. The paladins’ irons were heavy, bruised her at the bones of her wrists. Her skin crawled with every pair of eyes in the room.
Sitting in the small royal alcove alongside her vizier, standing to lead the daily prayers—that all felt a lifetime removed now, cast away to some distant island where dwelled Eloei, guarding her joy and the sound of her father’s voice. It was all beyond her reach now. She’d become a spectator of her own fate.
“The Synod congregates,” said the archelder Rhadiz Tal. He held up the ceremonial goatskin drum and hit it once. The elders were seated.
Ghamal, wrapped in royal robes and wearing the Crown of Hierophany, held out his hands like a cleric addressing his own throng of worshipers. “Thank you for your presence here today, esteemed members of the Synod,” he said in a booming voice that Lanor had never heard. He was a wholly changed man now. “The great nation of Qarda calls upon you this day to begin the trial of Lanor Sanzeen, the deposed hierophant. The charge against her is heinous apostasy.” He paused, let the gravity of the charge press upon them all one by one. The chamber was stone silent until he spoke again. “It has been many centuries since a hierophant was brought before you on such a charge. I pored over the historical texts and commentaries dating back to the Sixty-Year Schism. I understand, as I’m sure you all do, that the first phase of this trial is the Hearing of Merit.
“I’d like to take this opportunity to render my testimony.” He cleared his throat, folding his hands behind his back. He looked at home on the podium with a rapt audience before him. “As Lanor Sanzeen’s closest confidant and vizier during her brief stint as hierophant, I believe I qualify as the primary witness to the merit of her charge.” He lit his etafir at the podium and proceeded. “Perhaps the most striking evidence that she has long since abandoned the faith is her record of religious service. Or should I say the lack thereof? Time and again, she has shirked her religious duties, and her spotty record of leading worship in the Temple of Eloei serves as one small proof. We made concessions in the immediate aftermath of her father’s death, Eloei grace him, and she milked our sympathy like a goat.” A few Synod members snickered among themselves. “Leading worship is one of the chief duties of the Hierophany. Forsaking this sworn obligation alone is grounds for scorn. But I let this slide. And, Eloei forgive me, she took advantage of my patience.
“Only after much coaxing, begging, bribing, and appeals to the memory of her father could I convince her to leave her bedchamber, to answer even one of the faithful supplicants outside the Temple door. But even this simple task was fraught with complications. Lanor’s poor veracidin deployment allowed a number of manipulators and plunderers to slip through undetected among the legitimate supplicants; answering their requests proved quite deleterious to the royal coffers. This all came despite repeated pleading and earnest urging to employ the services of her veracidins.”
The room buzzed with a comment here, a murmur there, flies sprouting from the rotting carcass of Ghamal’s body of lies. It was all a farce, a nightmare. Lanor’s head spun.
“After the Hierophant,” he went on, “the Synod member, and the paladin, the veracidin is the most exalted position a Qardish man can hold in the eyes of Eloei, more so than even a cleric. The duty of a veracidin is to thresh away the lies and so harvest the truth. Curious, then, that this most incompetent Hierophant only ever deployed them at my repeated urging, and often not even then. Like the rest of my advice to her, it went largely ignored.”
“That is a lie!” Lanor blurted out. “Every day you would—”
“Contain yourself!” Rhadiz Tal interjected, banging his goatskin drum again. “Now is not the time for your defense. You will not speak again unless spoken to, just like any other criminally accused person.”
The girl sat back and seethed, silent.
“And look at her now,” said Ghamal. “My heart, Qarda’s heart, is broken. I would venture to say that Eloei’s is as well.” His tone was somber and dramatic; it made Lanor wonder how much he’d rehearsed for this, if he’d been practicing since the night her father was killed or if this kind of serpentine deceit came naturally to him. “Is this the demeanor of a Prophetess? Lazy? Reclusive? Bitter? Flighty and unpredictable? The truth is clear as the tributaries that feed the River Shureh. Lanor Sanzeen has lost the Sanction of Eloei. It is unclear if she ever had it at all.”
“With all due respect, Interim Hierophant Ghamal,” said Rhadiz Tal, “it is up to the Synod to pass that judgment.”
Ghamal waved an apologetic hand. “Of course, archelder. Of course. Far be it from me to think myself an expert on the finer details of the Testament.” He sent a cold glare in Lanor’s direction. “I can only speak from the heart. From the truths that Eloei reveals to me personally. As He always has. I wonder if Lanor has had the same visions, the same visitations from the Lord Above Lords.”
“Very good, Interim Hierophant Ghamal. That will be all at this time.” Ghamal extinguished the etafir. He took his seat in the larger of the two thrones in the royal alcove, looking pleased with himself. Rhadiz Tal, for his part, lit a separate etafir at his mahogany desk; this candle was short, thin, and its wax softened immediately beneath the wavering orange flame. “Now the accused will be permitted to speak in her defense.”
A paladin guided a chained Lanor to the podium and stood next to her. Now is my chance, she thought. She deduced the short duration of her etafir was a deliberate choice.
“Everything my accuser has said today is a lie,” she began. Except for the parts that weren’t. “Well, some of it was true. I neglected leading worship in the Temple for a time. I have been less than perfect in my...” She surveyed the crowd, feeling that they loomed larger and larger, and she shrank, with each word she said. “The supplicants—I wasn’t sure how to deal with them, since it was my first time answering them. Ghamal never told me what to do! Except for the times that he did... But then, weren’t the mistakes his fault?” She could feel herself floundering. It was like her botched duahr at the Circle of Kings all over again, except now her father wasn’t there to save her. “I have not been a perfect hierophant... but this does not make me an apostate! I do pray to Eloei. I still believe in Him, and if I believe in Him, then how can you—”
Rhadiz Tal banged his drum again. “Control yourself, Lanor. Emotional outbursts are not permitted in this sacred congregation.”
She swallowed her paralyzing fear. “Looking at your faces now, I can tell that you don’t believe me. But you must. He’s lying. He’s been jealous of my father since the beginning and this is his revenge. Can’t you see that? It pains me to say this...” Her heart raced, and her sweat ran cold, when she met the eyes of her uncle, her uncle by blood alone. “...but I believe Ghamal had something to do with the death of my father. He’s a snake! He’s deceiving all of you like he deceived me! He was my vizier, and everything I did from the day I ascended the throne—”
“Your time is up,” said Rhadiz Tal. Sure enough, the wick of her etafir drizzled gray smoke up to the chamber’s gilded dome. “Thank you, Lanor, for your testimony. That concludes your rebuttal.”
She wanted to start throwing her fists. She wanted to rip out her hair and scream until the vibrations shook the pillars of the Dome of the Synod and it all came crumbling down around them. Her teeth ground together so hard her jaw hurt. The world was red.
“Synod, the floor is now yours to debate the merit of this charge,” the archelder continued. “Paladins, please escort the accused back to her cell.”
Lanor glared at the Interim Hierophant on her way out. He brazenly returned her glare, though while hers was a challenge, his was a threat—a threat that would likely come to pass. Ghamal had sown his alibis and hedged his falsehood perfectly.
From this labyrinth, Lanor feared there was no escape.
***
On the seventh day of her stay in the dungeon, the end of the Sanzeen bloodline resolved that she would not spend what short time she had left in silence. She was going to have a conversation with that cellmate of hers. After their breakfast of bread and water, and after the paladins completed their subsequent rounds, Lanor spoke from the far end of the cell in a small, gentle voice.
“Don’t be afraid,” she said. The woman still flinched, but her reaction was milder this time; her eyes didn’t bulge quite so much at her fellow prisoner. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to talk to you.” The woman looked away slowly, as if trying to ascertain how best to escape a prowling jungle cat. “Will you talk to me? Let’s just start with our names.”
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A long silence elapsed. The woman looked at her again, squinting, like she was seeing her for the first time all over again. “Nashee’a...” Her voice was raspy with disuse.
“Nashee’a?” Lanor echoed. “That’s a lovely name. My name is Lanor. I’m—”
“I know who you are.” The woman furrowed her brow like a frustrated child. “My name is Yazneem. I don’t want any trouble. My side, my line, my bench.” She picked at the nubs of her fingernails. “My shoes. My clothes. You can’t have them. I’ve been here. That’s how it is and will be.”
“I don’t want anything from you but a conversation,” Lanor replied. Another prisoner somewhere distant in the women’s wing of the dungeon wailed incoherently. “How long have you been here?”
“Nashee’a. She was supposed to visit me today. Eloei bless her, she’s just a little girl. She has no place here.” Yazneem looked at Lanor, clarity in her eyes again. “Longer than you.”
The Sanzeen girl smirked. “Well, of course. You were here when I got here. How many days before my—”
“No.” Yazneem bowed her head. “Longer than you.”
The realization hit Lanor like a fist. “My word... I’m so sorry to hear that. May I ask what your charges are? I’ve never heard of someone staying in the dungeon that long. Usually they’d send you to Jal Hakhan, or so I thought.” No response. Another prisoner laughed somewhere down the corridor, then broke down in hacking coughs. “I wish my father had known. I’m sure he would have done something to help you. Or I could have, if I still had the throne.”
Yazneem shook her head. “It’s all right. I’ve gotten used to it here. I just hope Hierophant Ghamal is merciful when he hears my plea.”
Lanor bristled at the casual juxtaposition of that title with that name. Her sympathy sharpened a little around the edges. “At least you’ve lived this long. I doubt I’ll see Qarda’s next season.”
“Why are you here? Does it have anything to do with your dethronement?”
Lanor folded her arms. Leaned back against the cracked wall and tapped her foot. “Apostasy.”
“Heinous or simple?”
“What?”
Yazneem sighed. “Heinous apostasy or simple apostasy? It makes a difference.”
Lanor scratched her itchy bun of hair through her headdress. “I... I don’t know. They didn’t tell me. Or, if they did, I don’t remember. I just remember apostasy. What’s the difference?”
“Well, heinous is worse, as you could guess. I’ve seen a few of those executions. Horrid stuff. Simple apostasy, it usually goes quicker.” She mimed slitting her own throat. “You know?”
Lanor lifted a hand to her own throat and winced. “What happened? What were the executions like?”
“Well, it all depended on how exactly they earned the charge. One heinous apostate claimed that anyone who believed in the existence of Eloei should ‘broaden their reading.’ He was crushed under the weight of hundreds of copies of the Testament of Kahlo Hadrizeen. I believe the final count was over three hundred... Another one was guilty of burning the Testament, and they roasted him in a metal pot. Took the better part of a day. I didn’t stay until the end, but I heard stories about it for the rest of that year. Many of them receive the Thousand Wounds. Clerics from all over Qarda bring their ceremonial knives. Everyone gets a turn.” Yazneem shook her head. “Once in a while, a merciful cleric comes along and drives his knife into the apostate’s heart. Less suffering that way. But I hear that’s been forbidden.”
Lanor’s mind swam with blades and gushing blood. Her mouth went dry. How could her father, the gentle and kindhearted man she knew, condone these executions? She imagined her father at war, swinging his sword through some Myrenthian soldier’s belly, spilling his entrails everywhere, maybe lopping off a man’s head, all while letting loose a battle cry to empower his fellow Eloheed. It was barbaric.
She’d never seen him in this light. She’d always pictured him as the hero astride the horse, not the killer down in the muck and gore.
“Did they ever let any of the apostates go?” Lanor asked.
The older woman shook her head again. “Never. An apostate would have to prove their innocence, like any other criminal. But no one wants to weigh the words of an apostate. They’ve already made up their minds.”
Lanor raked her fingers down the sides of her scalp. She didn’t want to die, but if she had to, she yearned for it to be quick.
No. I won’t die at all. Not now—not like this. Think! There must be some way out of this. Some way to prove I haven’t abandoned the faith...
Or have I? Did I abandon the faith a long time ago, even before my father’s murder? Have I been going through the motions of my daily prayers this whole time? Maybe this is what I deserve...
She longed for the closeness she’d felt to her god and her father back in the Temple. She’d felt so sure of it all then, so at peace. Her fickle faith was subject to the winds of her fate, blowing this way and that, and if Eloei did exist, perhaps this was all His punishment for her hubris and indecision. The Temple... If only she could return to those last four days of peace.
The note!
How could she have forgotten? Her frenzied mind flashed back to the scrap of paper that Ghamal had slipped her during the congregation. Take a leave of absence. The paper had been with her in the Temple, and she’d tucked it between the cracks of two insignificant tiles, a place where no one would have thought to look—or so she hoped.
It was the one physical proof of Lanor’s innocence. It proved that Ghamal had lied during his testimony about Lanor stealing away across the city to shirk her religious duties—it proved that it was his bidding all along. It might not be enough to have her trial thrown out entirely, but it would tarnish Ghamal’s credibility, and possibly earn him Synod charges himself for his deceit.
Had he been a step ahead of her yet again? Had he searched the Temple for any signs of his deceit, or had his paladins find and destroy the note for him? Would he have thought to take such extra measures? There was only one way to find out.
She needed to get back into the Temple of Eloei.
***
“Thank you for your presence here today, esteemed members of the Synod,” said Hierophant Ghamal. “We now begin the second phase of the trial of Lanor Sanzeen, the deposed hierophant. Yesterday, the merit of the charge of heinous apostasy was affirmed. Today begins the Hearing of Evidence. Today we will call witnesses to testify, and you will have the opportunity to examine the evidence, such as the Palace treasurers’ records of the accused’s irresponsible spending. I defer to the Synod’s judgment, as ever.” Ghamal took his seat on his throne.
The archelder Rhadiz Tal banged his goatskin drum. “The second phase of this trial begins immediately,” he said. In unison, a flurry of quills flitted upright in the hands of the Synod and their scribes, pecked the ink in their wells, and posed on their parchments. Another grueling day began.
The morning’s proceedings were dense and unhurried. The Synod started by interviewing a great litany of witnesses, firsthand and secondhand, and Ghamal was called again to testify in support of his claims. Paladins, veracidins, attendants, supplicants, and scribes marched, formicine, in and out of the chamber’s podium. There was never a moment where there wasn’t at least one quill bobbing back and forth somewhere in the chamber. Lanor sat and festered, shook her leg like her cellmate Yazneem.
By the time the sun had already passed overhead and the shadows were lengthening again, the line of witnesses finally came to an end. “Now,” said Rhadiz Tal, “the time has come to permit the accused a rebuttal. She is free to call forth any witness she so chooses or otherwise present evidence.”
The paladin again led Lanor to the podium. The irons rattled heavily on her wrists. The whole Synod laid eyes on her once more, and she knew what she had to say, but had no idea how to say it. She didn’t have her father’s confidence. She didn’t have her uncle’s deceitful gift for rhetoric, either.
She could only speak from the hart.
“I can prove that Ghamal is lying,” she said. Silence, save for quills scratching parchment.
Rhadiz Tal looked up from his desk. “I’m afraid you misunderstand the nature of a rebuttal in this phase of the trial. Now is not the time for testimony. You must either call a witness or present physical evidence. Hierophant Ghamal’s evidence today was considerable. What have you to present?”
Lanor was prepared to blurt out everything, but a still and sober voice in her head held her back. Revealing everything in this moment out of the desperate need for vindication would be her downfall. Ghamal would send his henchmen to the Temple and turn over every tile to find that note. They would burn it on the spot. Nothing would come of it, and Lanor would meet her gruesome end to a backdrop of cheers and sanctimonious malice. No, she had to proceed with caution—it was her only hope.
“I do not have the evidence here,” she said. A few Synod members shot dubious looks at one another. “But I promise I can take you to it. The evidence is across the city. Take me in chains if you must, but please... take me there. Grant the daughter of Hierophant Drakhman Sanzeen a say in her own life and death!”
Rhadiz Tal met her gaze, then turned to his fellow elders. They conferred quietly with one another. Lanor saw the very instant when Ghamal pieced it together himself.
“This will not be necessary,” said the interim hierophant. “Cornered in such a way, a person goes to absurd lengths for a way out, or at least to prolong their judgment. ‘Take me and I will show you’ is not a defense. Hieratic law—”
“With all due respect, Interim Hierophant Ghamal,” said the archelder, “these proceedings are not within your jurisdiction, and for good reason. Final judgment falls to the Synod. We must hear out the accused, even someone accused of heinous apostasy, lest we stain our hands with the blood of the innocent.”
“And with all due respect to you, archelder,” said a member of the Synod audience, “what does the accused propose we do?” He was a plump cleric with a double chin and a heavy brow that made him look angry at all times. Lanor remembered his name was Nawsef. “Shall we traipse out into the jungle until we eventually realize her deceit?”
“We will hear her out,” said Hasjal, and she recognized him as one who had defended her during the last congregation. “As hieratic law states. As we are bound to do. Does a life that Eloei created mean so little to you that you would rush these proceedings along?”
“I agree wholeheartedly,” said the cleric Zumhir, another of Lanor’s supporters. “We cannot overlook any evidence. What’s the harm in humoring the Sanzeen girl for a short time?”
“What constitutes a short time?” Ahdazi scoffed.
“Let my etafir burn, then!” Hasjal rebuked him.
“If I may explain myself,” Lanor said shakily. “I’m afraid that giving the details of my evidence before you can see it with your own eyes... will risk its destruction.”
Just as she said that, she noticed Ghamal muttering something to a paladin at his side. The paladin nodded once and made for the chamber door in his clanking, gold-plated armor. The archelder took notice as well.
“Belay that order,” said Rhadiz Tal sternly. The paladin froze. “The paladins in this room shall go nowhere until our return, or risk charges of their own. Clerics, scribes—take notice. The same applies to you all.” He stood from his desk and pocketed his bronze-rimmed eyeglass with an air of methodical neutrality. “Lanor Sanzeen, Interim Hierophant Ghamal, and twelve paladins shall accompany us to this undisclosed location, along with the following clerics: Mufair, Nawsef, Hasjal, Zumhir, Ahdazi, and myself.”
In the Dome of the Synod, Rhadiz Tal’s word superseded all others. It was done as he commanded.
Lanor walked ahead of two paladins who prodded her along with the dull ends of their spears. She led the way, and she despised all the attention as ever. Her heart pounded louder in her head than any drum could.
They marched down the crowded streets of Rayyaq Raleed, the paladins brandishing their spears to clear a safe path and to make distance between the procession and the onlookers. The sun was overbearing. Lanor led them across the holy city toward the Palace of the Hierophant and Rhadiz Tal asked her, in a hushed tone, where to go next.
“The Temple of Eloei,” she whispered. “I can retrieve the evidence myself.”
The closer they drew to their destination, the more Lanor could feel herself sweating, her breath quickening. Something would surely go wrong. Ghamal would think of something—deceive the others somehow. The opportunist sees weakness and strikes. But was Rhadiz Tal finally in league with her now—did his commitment to the truth surpass his distrust of a female hierophant?
Please, Eloei, Lord Above Lords, she prayed silently. Guide my footsteps that I might not stumble... Intercede for me...
Their journey was at an end. They passed through the threshold and Lanor felt the cool stone tiles on her bare feet, a welcome comfort. She found the frayed threads of her hope and clutched them for all they were worth.
“Here we are,” said the archelder. “Now, where is this evidence you promised us, Lanor? It will bode poorly for you if you’ve tested our patience in vain.”
“It’s around here somewhere,” Lanor answered him. “I promise.” With that, she fell uneasily to her knees, awkward and clumsy with the added weight of the irons that bound her. She crawled along on her hands and knees on the floor, dragging her fingernail through the little canyons between the tiles. Rhadiz Tal stepped aside, sighing.
“I apologize on her behalf,” said Ghamal, “for wasting the Synod’s time like this.”
Lanor felt her way along the floor, but the paper was nowhere to be found. Something like ice water ran down her spine. Has he already been here? Was he one step ahead of me again? No... He couldn’t have been.
“What is the meaning of us?” Rhadiz Tal asked. “Tell us now, plainly, or you will be sent back to the dungeon, and you will have forfeited your right to a rebuttal.”
“She means to elicit some sympathy from you, I’m sure,” Ghamal added. “This makes a mockery of hieratic law and Eloei’s justice. I implore you, suffer it no longer.”
A quiet passed. Lanor felt like she might cry or start shrieking. She wanted to tear out her hair. She’d been so sure of this one last escape that she hadn’t bothered to consider what she would do in its absence. Die, she thought bitterly.
“I don’t know what you meant or mean to find here,” said Nawsef, who was still wheezing quietly from their walk across the city. “The Hierophant is right. You had your opportunity for a rebuttal. If this is it, then the Hearing of Evidence is as good as over. Accept your fate with honor and begin pleading to Eloei for salvation in the Hereafter. You will find none here.”
And then she found it.
“It’s here!” Lanor exclaimed. “Wait! It’s here!”
From between two tiles, next to the place she’d rested against a pillar, she drew out the little slip of paper that would change everything. Rhadiz Tal, Nawsef, Hasjal, and the other Synod clerics surrounded her like curious monkeys from the jungle marveling at some trinket.
She unfurled the note and read it aloud. “‘Sadly, the omen of your victory in Holcort did not come to pass. I have prepared the way for you. There are four carafes of water in the Temple of Eloei. Take a leave of absence and meditate on the Testament for four days. Your presence is not needed here, and a show of faith will go a long way for these clerics. You will remind them that you are the cleric above all other clerics. You will atone for your slothfulness and prove to them how seriously you take the throne. Say nothing, stand up, and leave now. I will explain your decision to the Synod. When you are alone, destroy this note.’”
“Let me see that,” Rhadiz Tal snapped. Strangely, his anger was a comfort to her in that moment—it didn’t feel aimed at her.
“It’s in his own handwriting,” said Lanor. “Compare it to anything else he’s written.”
“His list of witnesses,” Hasjal cut in. She admired his quick thinking.
The archelder’s eyes narrowed as he reread the note. “I have that on my person. Let me see...” He fished into his robes. “If nothing else, I will have expert veracidins compare the two scripts.”
“Brothers in Eloei,” said Ghamal, slithering into the first break in the conversation he could find. “I’m sure there’s been a misunderstanding. Let us return to the Dome of the Synod and present this evidence together. We can discuss this there. It’s only fair that the rest of the Synod should bear witness to this as well.”
But his forked tongue failed to save him this time.
“In due time, Interim Hierophant,” said Rhadiz Tal, comparing the note to the witness list penned by Ghamal. “I’m afraid this does change things. We may very well have to revert back to the Hearing of Merit. It will take discernment to sift through the genuine evidence from the lies we’ve been given thus far. But the Synod and its veracidins are up to the task, as we are ordained to be. We are also up to the task of bringing charges against anyone who would conspire to deceive us or the nation of Qarda—especially the likes of a usurper hierophant.” His tone was gravely serious, and for once, Ghamal had nothing to say in the moment.
Lanor knew that she was not saved yet, but a great weight still lifted from her shoulders. She thought that perhaps she could present more evidence the following day. Perhaps she could talk the Synod out of her charge of apostasy—this piece of evidence was her foot in the door to their good graces. Perhaps now they would lend more credence to her arguments. It was a start.
She would bring justice to her uncle, that much was sure. But she knew what it meant to fear death, and a painful one at that, and she resolved to defend him against any sentence of execution the Synod might try to levy against him. She would fight with every fiber of her being to give him a fair punishment, a life behind the iron bars that she herself knew and endured. For his treachery that nearly ended her life, she decided that this was both mercy and justice.
She envisioned the day when she returned to her throne a better Hierophant than ever, buoyed on by the reassurance of her father’s memory and the wisdom of Eloei. She and Hasjal traded a friendly smile. She was grateful for men like him who let her have this opportunity to clear her name.
“Usurper,” Ghamal repeated after a long silence. His tone, too, was gravely serious, and eerily quiet. “Is that what you think?”
“Paladins, I ask you to escort both Lanor and Ghamal back to the Dome of the Synod,” Rhadiz Tal said, unbothered. “We have an even longer task ahead of us than we initially suspected. In the meantime, they will both need to be housed in the dungeon until we arrive at the truth. Let us begin at once!”
Ghamal jumped back. Cried out a word that Lanor missed. Then he shouted, “All glory to Eloei!”
It happened so fast, and then time slowed to a crawl. A flash of metal caught the sun. Lanor saw Rhadiz Tal’s head arcing slightly through the air before crashing against the floor, his body following a moment later. A paladin stood over the separated parts like a golden scorpion; his red-edged sword still hovered high in the air like a stinging barb.
Lanor thought of the pet scorpions she used to keep. Her mind flashed elsewhere. She wasn’t entirely sure what had happened, but she felt herself transplanted back to the night of her father’s murder, that sensation that something was deeply, ineffably wrong, and yet her mind hadn’t caught up to what her tensed body already knew.
Then everything happened all at once.
“Behind me, Hierophant!” cried a paladin. Seven of them took up formation in front of her. Hasjal and one of the other clerics ran and stood at her side. Someone vomited.
Ghamal, the other Synod members, and the remaining paladins fled the Temple of Eloei. The Temple was quiet for a moment. There was a wet gurgling sound.
“My house,” said Cleric Hasjal. “W-we can—”
“No,” said one of the paladins. “We must give chase while we still can!”
Hasjal shook his head. “No. Follow me.”
“Cleric Hasjal, they murdered the archelder! They must stand trial! They must be put to—”
“There will be no one to bring them to justice after today!” Hasjal cut him off. “Do you understand? There will be no trial. No retribution. There will only be more of the same for us. It’s already been decided.” He ran toward the archway on the opposite end of the Temple. “We must go! Now! We’ll be safe behind my walls!”
Suddenly, the irons dropped from Lanor’s wrists and hit the floor. They cracked one of the tiles. A paladin had unlocked her chains and now led her along by the wrist in Hasjal’s wake.
The reality of the situation fell into place for Lanor piece by piece, the head of it and then, a moment later, the body. Her mouth was stunned silent but her mind screamed with the horror of it all. She thought of her father. Of Eloei. Of her mother, strangely enough. She thought of all her grand plans for the future that all lay dashed at her feet.
For the first time in her life, she truly envied her father, even despite the horrible fate that had befallen him. At least his pain was over. At least he was in the Hereafter, free from all this.
At this rate, soon I will be, too.