Chapter 3 -- Nephra's World

3
Nephra's World

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“In the name of Our Blessed Mother,
we sanctify this holy ground as a beacon that shines the light of the Virtues for all.”
Dedication carved into the foundation plinth of the Temple of Dezirayh, 1st Century

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         Thirteen-year-old Nephra Malteese walked beside her mentor, Priestess Sarah Alkalone, along a wide cobblestone path, ruminating over the divinity of the gods and goddesses. A slight morning breeze stirred her white-blonde hair, and the sweet scent of hyacinth from a nearby cluster tickled her nose.

“What are the four aspects of the relationship between Dezirayh and Talas?” Sarah asked.

“They share the marriage of lovers, the agreement of shared parenthood, the kinship of siblings, and the bond of friendship,” Nephra answered.

“Which do you think is the most important aspect?”

Nephra pondered. After a moment, she made up her mind. “I would say the bond of friendship, Wise Sister.”

The young priestess clicked her tongue and stopped, looking down at Nephra. “Why do you choose that one?” she asked.

“Because the bond of friendship is the universal bond that binds all souls together,” Nephra said. “Marriage requires love, sexuality, and physical attraction; parenthood, a man and a woman; and siblings require the bond of blood. Friendship is the ideal relationship because it can be shared by all souls, regardless of biological sex, family heritage, or that it be bonded sexually. Anyone can enjoy the bond of friendship with anyone else. Unlike the other three, the aspect excludes no one.”

Sarah smiled approvingly and nodded. “Very good, Nephra.” She took a curving side-path toward the temple, and Nephra followed.

“Do you agree with my opinion, Wise Sister?” Nephra asked after a moment.

Sarah waved a hand in front of her as if to dismiss the question. “It matters not what I believe. Debating over the nature of the divinity is not a science, but a matter of personal faith.”

Nephra nodded and remained silent. She cast her gaze to the temple a few hundred yards away, its gold-painted bell-dome glinting in the sun over the treetops. The dome was an architectural marvel, constructed by Astic engineers during the reign of King Liam the Builder. It topped the bell chamber, a hollow cylinder of rose-colored marble. It was integrated into the original temple seamlessly, extending its eastern façade. Nephra often took solace in the stark grandeur of the structure. While the actual center of the capital had become the Citadel of the Oreskan King, the symbolic center was the Temple, and it was where she centered her emotional being as well. It was her sacred ground.

The campus that surrounded the temple was a landscaped masterpiece, to be sure. Gnarled oaks and scaly water maples contrasted patterns of light and shade during the day, reflecting along cobblestone walks and paths. Fountains and flower beds added sound and fragrance, while statuary of the patron god and goddess pleased the eye. Benches and recliners were grouped in strategic locations between buildings, whether in the cool shade or within the warm rays of the sun. On the most beautiful days, the campus was alive with outdoor meetings, discussions, and groups engaged in pleasant conversation. This was one of those beautiful days, and the campus was alive with activity like a mound crawling with scholarly ants.

Sarah paused, turned, and placed the thin fingers of each hand on Nephra’s shoulders. “I agree with you, though,” she said. “I also believe that friendship is the most important relationship and for the very reasons you do.” Her mentor was a tall woman, and Nephra looked up to meet her serene, blue-eyed gaze; in it was a strange mixture of affection and longing. Sarah continued in a softer voice. “I have known you all your life, since the day you were brought to us by Lord Xalvis after your mother died.”

“Yes, Wise Sister,” Nephra said, not catching the woman’s point.

“It’s as if you’re my own daughter, Nephra,” her mentor continued. “I've never wished to seek matrimony or parenthood although those paths may still be open to me. I’m content as your mentor, for the moment. You bring me such happiness with your intelligence, kindness, and beauty.” Tears clouded the woman’s eyes, and her arms clamped Nephra in a tight embrace.

Nephra was touched by the moment and returned the embrace. “I feel the same way, Wise Sister. You've always been kind to me.”

Sarah wiped the tears from her eyes and laughed. Her head swiveled back and forth as if she were surveying the west lawn for witnesses to her momentary loss of emotional control. After a moment, she seemed more composed. “Of the four aspects of relationship, Nephra, I can only share the bond of friendship with you. You are most dear to me next to Dezirayh herself. That makes that particular aspect by far the most important to me.”

Nephra took the older woman’s right hand in both of hers and held it in front of her. “Thank you, Wise Sister,” she said. “I cannot call you ‘mother,’ but know that I’ve always thought of you so.”

The priestess gave a half-sob, half-laugh, fresh tears in her eyes. They continued their stroll in the courtyard. For this day, at least, Sarah forgot how to be a mentor and Nephra happily discarded the role of pupil.

For this day, they were mother and daughter.

                        

         Under the temple lay a vast, multi-leveled labyrinth of classrooms, laboratories, and a massive library of books and documents, some more than fourteen hundred years-old. Nephra was ensconced in a plush reading chair near the center of the library, boots off and knees bent, a thick book on digestive anatomy open across her thighs.

She heard the Bell toll, marking the setting of the sun. Seated as she was under the Bell tower itself, she also felt the deep tone reverberate throughout the walls and floor. Sighing, she closed the book, placed it in a linen bag, and stretched like a cat awakening from a nap. She slipped her boots over her stockings and laced them up. She had a headache and was looking forward to a long, hot bath and sleep.

It had been another busy day.

The duties of an acolyte were many, especially for one striving to become a physician. She was currently enrolled in an anatomy class, the third of twelve six-month courses designed to train her for the demanding profession.

When she emerged from the temple’s vestibule, she was surprised at how chilly it had become. Autumn was still a couple weeks away, and the heat of late summer should have been at its peak. A cool breeze blew from the harbor, carrying with it overpowering odors of the seaside. Nephra shivered, shouldered her bag, and moved on toward her dormitory a few hundred yards to the northeast, anticipating the warmth of the water in the public bath-pool.

As she passed through the central plaza of the campus, she saw two of her fellow classmates, Stacia Pelrose and Yasmina Kerse, talking quietly under the large magnetic clock in its center. She approached them unnoticed.

“I don’t have any choice,” Nephra heard Yasmina say. “My father has made up his mind.”

“What does Freydia say?” Stacia asked.

“She will support me and will remain my mentor until I am sanctified next summer.”

Stacia noticed Nephra and smiled brightly. “Angelus! Did you hear that Yaz is withdrawing from the physician course?”

Nephra flinched at the news. “What will you do instead, Yasmina?” Nephra asked. She ignored the pet-name Stacia had given her. An angelus was a beautiful, winged maiden, an attendant to Dezirayh in the god-plane. In normal discourse, however, to call a woman an angelus was a mocking way of telling her that she was too perfect.

Yasmina rolled her blue eyes in irritation. “Are you ready for this? I’m to become a private liturgist. My father has the idea that he would like to build a large chapel at Stormcrest. You know, his inn near the wharf? I’m to be groomed to perform services there.” Yasmina was a tall, willowy girl who almost always wore her sandy-blonde hair in a tight bun on top of her head. Tonight, however, it was let down and swirled in the brisk sea breeze. At seventeen, she was the oldest of Nephra’s close friends. She was the only child of a wealthy inn-owner and the kingdom’s most popular vocalist, a regal and talented woman named Valerian, who sang the Hymn of Dezirayh during weekly services and gave occasional private concerts to wealthy guests in her husband’s three inns.

“That’s a good choice of professions,” Nephra said, trying to encourage her friend. A liturgist was a well-respected priestess-position and essential to the Temple’s reach throughout the city. She had no doubt that Yasmina, with her fierce intellect and commanding personality, would be well placed as a voice for the Virtues.

“Positive to the last, isn’t she?” Stacia said to Yasmina, nudging Nephra with her shoulder.

“You really don’t want to be a liturgist?” Nephra asked.

Yasmina laughed. “Nephra, you have seen how much I hate to read. And piety has never been one of my strong points. A liturgist? It’s probably the vocation I would least like to pursue.”

“Have you mentioned that to your father?” Nephra asked.

“I can’t,” Yasmina said. Her usually confident voice now sounded submissive and vulnerable. “I mean … I just can’t. He wouldn’t understand. I’m his only child, and sometimes I think he had wished for a son to pass down ownership of his property.”

“If he wanted you to become an innkeeper, why did he consent to enroll you in the Daughters?” Stacia asked.

“At the time, five years ago, there was still hope for another child,” the tall girl said. “But my mother … you know, she had to have that procedure and now she cannot conceive. It is left to me, now, to provide an heir so we can keep the inns in the family.”

Nephra felt sad that she would not see Yasmina in her anatomy class anymore. She had always held her in high regard, and, unlike Stacia, Yasmina never poked fun at her. “I’m truly sorry, Yasmina. I’ll miss you.”

Yasmina laughed and threw her arms around Nephra, squeezing tight. “I’ll miss you as well, Nephra. You have a good heart. It’s always pleasant being around you, and I can’t say that for too many people.”

“That’s why she’s Angelus!” Stacia said with a laugh, and Yasmina joined in.

Nephra smiled at her friends. “I can only be who I am,” she said. “Stacia, you must learn to deal with your jealousy and envy of me. It will get easier in time.”

Stacia gasped.

Yasmina threw her head back and laughed harder. “You deserved that, Stacia!”

                        

         At dawn the next day, Nephra washed her face, brushed her teeth, and pulled back her impossibly-straight hair into a purple ribbon at the back of her neck. She had not slept well. A tightness pulled at her abdomen, a dull ache that destroyed her usual generous appetite for breakfast. The stomach ache had begun just before midnight, intense enough to make deep sleep unattainable. She stared at herself in the small oval mirror atop an oak dresser, puzzled at the pain.

Her roommate Niwah stirred in her bed. Niwah was a dark-skinned Jata -- exotic, beautiful, tall and thin, with bushy, jet-black hair and big brown eyes.

“What’s the matter?” Niwah asked, sitting up in bed. “You don’t look well.” The older girl stood, yawned, and stretched, waiting her turn at the wash bowl.

“My stomach hurts,” Nephra answered. “It feels odd, like a muscle cramp. It’s been hurting all night.”

Niwah clapped her on the back. “It’s your first menstruation!” she said. “I told you it would be soon.”

Nephra’s mouth fell open. Still puzzled, she turned to face Niwah. “Are you sure?”

The older girl shrugged. “What else could it be? Here, get back into bed. I’ll make your excuses with Hildah.”

Nephra shook her head. “No, I’ll go.”

“Suit yourself.”

Nephra moaned at a sudden cramp, almost reconsidering her decision not to climb back into bed. No, she would go. There was much to learn and do.

An hour later, Nephra stared at a plate filled with spiced apples and wholegrain oatmeal, feeling much worse. As the pain in her midsection increased, she began to experience an anxiety that confused her even more, a sense that something just was not right.

“Maybe you should go see Priestess Wandah,” Stacia said from across the dining table, concerned. “You look very pale.”

“Maybe,” Nephra said. She began to feel feverish, and her mouth was dry. She took a sip of water, but it still felt like she had a mouthful of wool. She must have caught a sickness. These things came on quickly. She could have caught it from any number of people she had tended at the Sanatorium the day before. “I think I’ll go now,” she said, standing.

As she turned to go, a group of priestesses entered the dining hall. She noticed something very peculiar about their behavior. Moving in tandem like a flock of geese, they came to the center of the room and stopped. Some looked around as if confused or in shock. Priestess Neirah Ridgecraft, a large, motherly woman, cleared her throat to speak.

“An awful thing has happened,” she announced in a shaken voice. “The royal family has been murdered in the palace.”

Nephra took only a moment to process the information. Murdered. Her king and his beautiful family, murdered. She stumbled, barely hearing the gasps of horror and the shouts of denial that rippled through the dining hall. Steadying herself with a hand on the table, she felt her consciousness dim and her vision grow blurry.

Swooning, she collapsed to the hard stone floor.

                        

         Nephra had visited the Oresko Falls once as part of a three-day excursion with Sarah when she was seven years-old. On the west side of the main waterfall, several smaller falls careened from a height of more than sixty feet. The three westernmost streams, each no more than two or three feet wide, fell into a crystal-clear plunge-pool that was undisturbed by the main flow of the river. This cove was a popular swimming spot in the summer, the water’s temperature relaxing to the muscles and the roar of the falls soothing to the ears. It was in this pool, just outside the range of the falls, that Nephra now found herself, standing on a large slab of rock in her sturdy brown boots. She looked around her and then down at her white robe, soaked to just above her navel. She could feel the warmth of the water, but could not register its wetness.

She knew it had to be a bizarre dream. Her acknowledgement of the absurdity of dreams indicated that this dream was different. Although at the moment she felt mostly curious, with each passing second she could feel the approach of a dark cloud that would soon pass between her and the midday sun. It was like the fringe of fear.

The entire dream simply did not feel right.

Straight in front of her was the central stream of the three smaller falls. She focused on the translucent sheet of water and noticed beyond it a large hole in the cliff-face. A cave? The opening measured at least twelve-feet tall and half as many feet wide. She remembered no cave the last time she was here – or, the only real time she had been here.

The air darkened as the cloud passed overhead.

Fear had arrived.

The silver-white stream of water changed to a deep red, the line of change rolling down the cliff like the unfurling of a massive tapestry.

Nephra turned to the left and saw that the change was the same all along the cliff-face, through all seventeen individual streams of the falls. When the line of red reached the bottom, the water itself began to cloud. She watched, unable to move, as the red water approached ever closer. She wanted to back away, but could not. She reached out her hand and gathered some of the water, realizing to her horror that it was mixed with blood. The river at the top of the Oresko Falls was sending blood over the cliff, and the red liquid was quickly tainting the entire pool and the raging river flowing to the south.

Still unable to move, Nephra felt a searing pain in her midsection as if she had been stabbed. She pressed her hands to her stomach, but her feet still refused to move. The pain throbbed, like a heart, with each beat hurting a little more than the last. Tears flowed down her cheeks, her teeth clenched. She squeezed her eyes shut and began to scream.

Just when she thought she could take no more, the pain stopped.

Gasping, she opened her eyes and watched, mesmerized, as the head of a dazzling white horse emerged from the cave, an opaque blue horn protruding from its forehead. Once clear of the falls, the horse shook the water from its mane and spread two large wings, taking flight just enough to clear the befouled water. Nephra’s unbearable pain was now replaced with euphoric joy. The beautiful creature hovered close, extending its long white nose toward her face. Nephra raised a hand and touched it just above its nostrils, and it nuzzled her. She heard a female voice in her mind, a voice that did not pass through her ears.

The time has come.

Nephra closed her eyes, her cheek pressed against the equine’s soft, hairy muzzle. Consciousness of the dream faded gradually, the euphoric joy replaced by dreamless and restful sleep.

                        

         Nephra awoke in her own bed that afternoon, feeling no trace of the pain in her stomach. She smiled when she recalled the dream and the dazzling and beautiful creature that she had met. The time has come. Although its meaning was obscure, the statement gave her an undefined feeling of hope. But with each passing second, the pleasant memories diminished and were replaced by stark reality.

Like a pinging hammer on an anvil, her consciousness was jarred to now, and she remembered the royal family. And then the waterfalls of blood. These thoughts lingered and intensified until her smile was completely wiped away.

“Are you feeling better, Nephra?” a strained voice asked beside her. It was Sarah.

“Yes,” she said, trying to summon her will to smile. “What happened to me?”

“You had your first menstruation-cycle,” her mentor said, smiling.

“But I lost consciousness. Why?”

“Wandah said it must have been a hormonal imbalance and rapid change in blood pressure caused by a traumatic experience,” her mentor said. “That is just a very convoluted way of saying that you fainted and hit your head. Are you sure you’re all right?” The woman leaned over her and placed a hand on Nephra’s cheek, concern creasing the corners of her deep blue eyes.

Nephra sat up, yawning. “Yes, Wise Sister,” she said. Sarah sat back down and poured a glass of water from a pitcher on the dresser, handing it to Nephra. Parched, she drank the water in large gulps. “It really happened, yes?” she asked after a moment. “I didn’t dream it?” The question seemed necessary even though she somehow knew the answer.

“No, my dear,” Sarah said in a quiet voice. “You didn’t dream it. The royal family is dead. Except for the Crown Prince. He is missing.”

Nephra brightened. “Prince William? He’s alive?”

“Possibly. His body was not discovered in the palace, and it has been searched thoroughly.”

“Who? How?”

“All evidence points to the king’s brother, Jarvis,” Sarah answered. “He’s gone, fled.”

Nephra stared at her hands as they rested in her lap. Murder. The taking of a life, the most precious of Dezirayh’s gifts, the most precious thing of all. She reflected on the Tome of Living and its tenets concerning the act. According to the section called “Divine Law,” life taken as payment for a capital crime is the righteous judgment of Talas. Life taken in defense of one’s own is the privilege bestowed on all mortals by Orynh. The life of an innocent taken is an assault on the Mother of the Universe herself.

Nephra shook her head in confusion. “I don’t understand, Wise Sister. How can someone just kill like that?” She looked up at her mentor, tears in her eyes. “How?”

Sarah paused before answering, looking at her hands in her lap and sighing. “Good does not rule in this world, Nephra. Evil holds sway.” She raised her head and gave Nephra a penetrating look. “The person responsible for murdering the royal family is consumed by his own evil nature. It is no more difficult for him to harm an innocent as it is for you to care for one. We have talked about the dual nature of the mortal soul, remember?”

Nephra nodded.

“Each mortal soul has the capability for both good and evil. The gods and goddesses hold dominion over their own spheres of influence, and these spheres help to define the nature of good and evil in mortals. The two natures are constantly battling one another, not only in the soul of each mortal, but also within the wider world as well. An acceptance of the dual nature of the soul is all that is needed to understand such a seemingly unfathomable act of cruelty. Do you understand?”

“Perhaps, Wise Sister,” Nephra said. “I must reflect on it more.”

Sarah nodded. “Because I believe you are a shining example of the good nature of the mortal soul, I also believe your opposite exists, one as despicable and sinister as you are generous and virtuous. We must never forgive evil in the souls of mortals, but we also cannot deny it. The battle of good versus evil is an eternal struggle.”

Nephra was about to tell Sarah about her dream, but her mentor patted her leg and stood.

“I must inform the High Priestess that you are all right. She’s been worried.” She turned to Nephra’s oval mirror, straightening her cream-colored mentor’s robe across her shoulders. “I want you to stay in bed and rest until dinner-Bell.”

“Yes, Wise Sister,” Nephra said with a sigh. “If I'm not to get up, can you hand me my anatomy book?”

"Chapter 4 -- Desperate Politics"