The dark-haired boy makes a gesture with his hand and they ride back onto the dry sand. For a moment they look at each other, grinning. Then together they dig in their heels and urge the horses on again, faster and faster, galloping madly along the beach. Birds scream and start up as they thunder past, the horses neck and neck, perfectly matched. On and on, like they could ride forever, crashing through the mist, splashing back into the sea and then up onto the sand.
‘Amrath! Amrath!’ the dark-haired boy shouts jubilantly as he rides.
‘Amrath!’ the fair-haired boy echoes, laughing.
You will wonder, perhaps, whether I enjoy my life. I suppose I do. And I have known no other with which to compare it. But then, we can all say as much. All us mere mortals, anyway: I suppose the Emperor must remember his previous incarnations. Although, as he is always the Emperor, there may not be much difference between them.
I am the High Priestess of the Lord of Living and Dying, the most powerful and most sacred woman in all the Sekemleth Empire, second in importance only to the Asekemlene Emperor himself. I preside over the most sacred of the great ceremonies in the Great Temple. I, and I alone, am permitted to shed blood in the Temple. I, and I alone, may touch the High Altar. I, and I alone, know the true will of the God.
But sometimes my life seems very small, and the world around me even smaller. I have never left the Temple since I was brought here, so new born I was still marked with my mother’s blood. I will never leave it, even in death. My body will be buried in the great pit beneath its precinct, and my bones lie where I lived. The confines of my life are so small, so narrow, walls and corridors and closed doors that I know so well I can walk them with my eyes closed.
The Temple itself is huge, of course. But most of it is holy rooms, or storerooms, or imposing empty space. Ten priestesses, five novices and three girls too young to have drawn their lots live here beside myself, and there are servants and guards and such to accommodate. So there are not then many places to go. I have a bedroom, small and clean with a large window and a balcony and stairs down to the gardens and the bathing house. I have a little dining room, in which I eat alone. When I can eat: often, I have to fast. Two days, before a killing. Three days, before the killing of a child.
The killing. You will wonder most about the killing, I suppose. How I can bear to do it. But it is what I was chosen to do. What I have been trained to do since I was a child. What I am and what I know. Life, and death, and the need for dying. It must be done. I must do it. As well ask a man if he enjoys the act of being alive.
Once, in the great days of Empire, a sacrifice was made to Great Tanis every evening, in the moment the light fades and the world is neither day nor night, alive nor dead. A man for the waxing moon, a man for the waning moon, a woman for the full moon, a child for when the moon is dark. How the High Priestess then did not die of hunger, I do not know. Perhaps she lived on water and the scent of blood. Or perhaps she did not have to fast. Perhaps the fasting only came later, as the Empire shrank and its people were less willing to die for their God.
Now, a sacrifice is made only every ten days. I am glad of this, I suppose, I do not think I would like to do it every day, even if I did not have to fast between times. Always the eyes look at me and beg me not to do it, always the victim realizes, at the last, that their choice was a wrong one, that they do not after all want to die. That they do not believe in the God they are dying for. Maybe it is in my eyes too, or will be, when one of the little girls draws the red lot. It has not been drawn yet: even if it were drawn tomorrow, I would have ten years of living left to me. A good while. But a while is never enough. I see that in the eyes of every sacrifice too. They would burn half the world for a few more moments of life.
I especially do not like the killing of children. They are so small, some of them.
But I have lived in the Temple all my life, been trained as High Priestess since I was five. It is all I have ever known and all I will ever know. For all my fine clothes and titles, I am a servant of the Temple, as surely as the women who scrub the floors. I am a tool of Great Tanis Who Rules All Things, His hands, His knife. You do not ask the women who scrub the floors whether they enjoy what they do. You do not ask your hand, or your knife. You see that they are necessary, and that they do what is needful of doing. You would not ask a soldier whether he enjoys his work. You would simply accept that in a war men must die and someone must kill them. If it is this man or that man who lives and this man or that man who is killed – well, that is war. Some must live and some must die. So I lived, and so others die. Another draw of the lot, it would have been reversed. Who am I to say it is wrong, or right?
There are two ways to die in Sorlost, if you seek death. The first is the white silks and the knife in the street, a brief glory of fighting and an unmarked grave. The knife-fighters are the heroes of the city, though they are nameless and forgotten as soon as they die. They walk the streets like corpses, already dead, waiting for someone to kill them, stealing women’s hearts. That is the way of young men, brave men, fools. The second is the Small Chamber and the altar stone, a noble sacrifice and the city’s gratitude that we may live and die for another few days without fear. That is the way of old men, sick men, women, children. Many that I kill are dying already, eaten up with disease or simply bored of their lives. They choose something good and noble in their dying. Or so we say.
My life is not all blood and sacrifice, besides. Most times, it is quite pleasant.
Four days out of ten, I officiate at the ceremony of the dawn. Helase hates it, for it means waking in the dark of the night to prepare, but to me it is worth the waking. I wear a robe of silver, that shimmers as I walk. The priestesses sing a hymn of praise so beautiful it makes the heart weep. I carry fresh flowers and place them before the High Altar, and the scent of them clings to my arms and my hair, the weight of them in my arms smears my skin with pollen and crushed petals and dew.
Other times I walk in the gardens or play with the children. They make me laugh, the little ones training to be priestesses; they look upon me with such awe. Only the very young ones, who have not yet drawn their lots, I avoid.
There is a fine library in the Temple: I read anything I wish. Poetry I especially enjoy, and histories. I have read several histories of the Temple and the High Priestess, which is curious. Reading about myself, it seems, for their lives can have been no different to my own.
Twice a year, at Year’s Renewal and Year’s Heart, we celebrate the Great Ceremony. Year’s Renewal is more sombre, Year’s Heart wilder and more joyful. The Emperor and all the great families come to the Temple shining with gold and jewels; the ceremony lasts for hours; the people of Sorlost dance and sing in the streets, gather outside the Temple to light candles and offer flowers. Afterwards, there are parties and banquets all over the city, and no one sleeps until the sun has risen the next day. Even we, in our cloister, have a fine meal and stay up to see the dawn, though we pray and sing rather than drink and dance. It is the one day of the year I am allowed to dine with the other priestesses. I wear a dress of cloth of gold for the ceremony, like the one I was dedicated in. It is heavy and stiff, but so very beautiful it pains me to take it off. I look like the High Priestesses from the old poems, Manora or Valdine. I look like a queen from an old book.
I have people I think of as friends: Helase, Ausa, even Samnel in her way. The woman who tends my rooms and helps me dress is kind and I talk to her of little things. I have people I suppose I would count as enemies, were I not what I am – Ninia, who talks of the old High Priestess-that-was as if everything I have done for the last five years has been failure and uselessness, as if the very way I kneel before the altar is wrong when compared to the way Caleste the High Priestess-that-was knelt; Tolneurn, the Imperial Presence in the Temple, who loathes the fact I do not have to do as he commands me, though he has never tried to command me and never will; one of the servants who serves the meals, who looks at me with hatred despite the fact I have never