Naamah's Curse

TWENTY-EIGHT

I had begun to think the hellish cycle of confession would never end, but the next day, the Patriarch surprised me.

He came in the morning, instead of the afternoon as he was usually wont to do. I wondered if it meant Aleksei would not be reading to me anymore, but I was reluctant to ask, wary of showing too much interest in the lad. I hoped I hadn’t driven him into a full-blown retreat the other day.

I had to own, it galled me that I’d had so little success seducing a young man at the apex of his transition to adulthood, a young man so desperately starved for love. I’d lain awake for hours berating myself for it, convinced that a skilled adept like Jehanne would have had Aleksei eating out of the palm of her hand in a matter of minutes.

Then I would remember the lice, and think again.

I’d known it wouldn’t be an easy task, but I was still struggling to grasp the scope of the damage done to him. It wasn’t just the deeply ingrained strictures of his faith. Aleksei had been raised his entire life to believe he was the product of his mother’s sinful downfall, tainted with a foul curse. He was determined to redeem them both through this trial-and, I sensed, to redeem me, too.

I was no mere mortal temptation, oh, no. As Valentina had said, God had decreed my person a battleground.

Stone and sea, it surely felt that way.

For two hours, I endured another assault as the Patriarch questioned me, exhuming another batch of sins and false beliefs.

First, it was the dragon.

Pyotr Rostov was convinced it was a demon that had possessed the princess. I could not entirely blame him, since everyone in Ch’in had believed it, too, including Snow Tiger herself. She had only believed otherwise when I had summoned the twilight and shown her the dragon’s reflection in the mirror.

I could still see the wonder on her face.

The rest of Ch’in had come to believe after we succeeded in freeing the dragon, when he came arrowing through the skies over White Jade Mountain, silver coils shimmering, calling down rain and lightning.

Pyotr Rostov refused to believe, refused to accept the dragon’s nature as a celestial being of elemental magic. No, nothing would do but that it was a fallen spirit bent on wreaking havoc and harm in the world.

“You said yourself that the fallen ones took strange and fantastic forms, Moirin,” he pointed out to me. “That they liked speaking to you, that at least one wielded power over the elements. Can you not see that this is exactly the same?”

“But it’s not, my lord.” I turned the jade bangle on my wrist, agitated. “The dragon is a creature of his place. He wanted nothing more than to drowse on the peaks of White Jade Mountain, gazing at his reflection and guarding his pearl.”

“And yet he caused the Emperor’s daughter to tear her bridegroom from limb to limb,” he said sternly.

“He awoke trapped in her flesh! He was in a blind panic. It drove him mad not to be able to see himself.”

“You excuse the deed?”

“No! Of course not. I understand it, which is not the same. When the dragon understood what he had done, when he understood what had befallen him, he regretted it very deeply.”

The Patriarch shook his head with sorrow. “Child, have you learned nothing from your experience yet? Nothing of the lies unclean spirits will offer to tempt you? You of all people should know better.”

Around and around we went. I was fighting another losing battle, and I knew it. In the end, I would acquiesce. I was alone and scared, and I did not want to be stoned to death. I would betray the dragon’s memory as surely as I had betrayed Cillian’s, Jehanne’s, Bao’s… even Raphael’s, as much as he deserved it. Unless one counted the coach-driver, Snow Tiger’s memory was the only one I’d been able to protect. I couldn’t save the dragon’s.

But I would not surrender without a fight.

During the long, losing argument, I thought about a woman I had known in the City of Elua, Lianne Tremaine, the King’s Poet. She was the youngest ever to have been appointed to that post.

And she was good, very good. I heard her recite a poem about a man mourning the death of his beloved. It had moved everyone in the room to tears, including me.

Even so, she had been a member of the Circle of Shalomon, longing for gifts the spirits they summoned could bestow. When I asked her what more a poet of her stature could possibly want, she had replied that there were always further thresholds to cross.

I seek words of such surpassing beauty that they might melt the hardest heart of stone, she had said to me.

I hadn’t understood the hunger at the time, but I was beginning to. If one of those fallen spirits had appeared in my cell and offered to gift my tongue with words that would melt the Patriarch’s heart, I would have accepted it in a heartbeat and damned the consequences.

Of course, the King’s Poet had been driven by excessive ambition, not fear and desperation. Still, I did not think this business of forcing me to betray my fondest memories was teaching me to resist the temptation to sin.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

When I saw the Patriarch’s face begin to darken with frustration and impatience flickering in his eyes, I gave up.

“I’m sorry, my lord,” I whispered, bowing my head and gazing at the translucent jade bangle, apologizing in my heart to the dragon above his reflecting pool. “I do not mean to be so stubborn. It is only… it is hard to admit one has been so foolish as to be taken in by the same lies twice.”

“Well done, child.” Leaning over his portable desk, Pyotr Rostov reached out and lifted my chin. At least he didn’t have his creamy look. Apparently, the confession of sins that didn’t involve fornication, unclean acts, or blaspheming against Yeshua weren’t quite as delectable. “Remember, pride is also a sin.”

I nodded. “Yes, my lord.”

Having stripped that away from me and besmirched it to his satisfaction, he moved on to further acts of iniquity on my part-namely, my role as Emperor Zhu’s jade-eyed witch, the Imperial swallower-of-memories.

It was a gift of the Maghuin Dhonn Herself, the ability to take away memories.

Among my folk, it had a purpose. It hid the hollow hill and the stone doorway that I had passed through after Cillian’s death, that Bao had seen in his dreams since he’d held half of my diadh-anam. Those of us whom the Maghuin Dhonn Herself acknowledged as Her own kept the secret of Her sacred place. Those She did not accept surrendered it, giving unto the keeping of Old Nemed, who was the only one of us to wield that particular gift until I had discovered it within myself at a time of extreme need.

It worked only if the memory was offered freely and willingly. Old Nemed had said no one the Maghuin Dhonn Herself did not acknowledge ever, ever failed to consent to have her take their memory.

I believed it.

The memories I had taken in Ch’in were those of every soldier, engineer, and alchemist with knowledge of the workings of the Divine Thunder, those terrible bronze tubes and fire-powder that belched foul smoke and spat death across an impossible distance. I had seen firsthand the horrible carnage they wrought on the battlefield.

Tortoise…

Tortoise had been one of the stick-fighters who had accompanied us, a member of Bao’s old gang of thugs and ruffians. For all that, he’d been a loyal companion with a generous heart, the first to pledge himself to the quest to free the dragon and the princess. In my last memory of him, he had been hurrying across the battlefield to aid me, jouncing in the saddle, his homely face determined.

And then the Divine Thunder had boomed, and Tortoise was no longer there. There was only a smoldering crater with his unrecognizable remains.

“Why did you do it, Moirin?” the Patriarch asked in a gentle tone. Lost in my reverie, I looked blankly at him. “Why did you use witchcraft to steal men’s memories on the Emperor’s behalf?”

“Oh…” I rubbed my hands over my face, remembering the acrid taste of sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal permeating my awareness. Too weary to argue, I tried a different tack. “Is that what folk are saying? I fear it is but a fanciful tale spread by the Emperor’s men to explain his clemency.”

Pyotr Rostov regarded me in silence.

Beneath my head-scarf, sweat gathered along my brow. “Surely you do not believe me capable of such a dire thing.”

“I do,” he said soberly. “Make no mistake, Moirin. I do not underestimate your foul magics, bound though they may be.” His voice took on an edge. “Do you think I do not know your folk have the ability to cloud men’s minds? Your ancestor Berlik swayed the thoughts of Rebbe Avraham ben David, a great and devout leader, one of the greatest thinkers of his day; swayed him from the path of righteousness and discipline to a soft-minded tolerance of sin. By what dire magic was that done?”

I shook my head. “None that I know of, my lord.”

“You are lying again.” A note of sorrow returned to his voice. “Ah, Moirin! God cannot save you if you will not let me help you.” Behind his veneer of compassion, the threat of stoning lurked. He dipped his pen in the inkwell. “Now, why did you use witchcraft to steal men’s memories?”

My eyes stung with defeat. “I did not steal them, my lord. Every single one was offered to me.”

That made him pause. “But you did not have to take them.”

“No,” I murmured. “But if I had not, the Emperor would have put to death every man with knowledge of the Divine Thunder’s workings. It was an act of mercy on his part to allow me to take their memories instead.”

He was silent.

“That was the choice, my lord,” I added. “You will have to explain to me how what I did was a sin.”

“It was witchcraft,” he said simply.

“Aye, but-”

“Moirin…” Pyotr Rostov sighed. “Oh, child! I do not deny that this was a very difficult choice. But the choice Emperor Zhu laid upon you was a false one, based on a false premise.” He steepled his fingers. “He did not have to kill those men, did he? That was his choice.”

“Aye, but-” My voice faltered. How could I make him understand that the weapons of the Divine Thunder had been that terrible? That it was worth almost any cost to suppress that knowledge, even the cost of innocent lives? Although I lacked a poet’s words, I had glimpsed a future more dreadful than I could begin to articulate. The smoking crater that housed Tortoise’s remains was only the beginning. It led to a far, far worse place.

“You took this sin upon your head that the Emperor’s hands might remain clean,” he said firmly. “It is enough that you repent of it.”

I bowed my head. “Yes, my lord.”

“Moirin.”

I looked up at him. “Yes, my lord?”

His fingers were still steepled. “Understand, child. The scripture is very clear in places. In the earliest writings, it tells us that we must not allow a witch to live.” His velvet-brown eyes were warm and earnest. “Based on what you have confessed from the first day to the last, I would be justified in putting you to death. But I believe that God’s grace is truly infinite, and even one such as you should be given the chance to repent. Do you understand?”

I shivered involuntarily, huddled on my stool, my chains rattling. “I am trying. I am always trying.”

“No.” Pyotr Rostov smiled at me. “Mostly, you are still trying to defy me, still trying to find some way to escape. I know. But God and I have not given up on you, Moirin. Here and there, we catch glimpses of the truth, and it is the truth that will free you in the end.” He paused, contemplating me. “Have you anything left to confess?”

I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so.”

He put away his things, straightened his papers, and corked his inkwell. He stood and laid a hand on my scarf-wrapped head. “My child, you have made your confession to me. I, a mortal man and a lowly sinner myself, do not have the power to absolve you. This, only God can do. These sins you have confessed to me, and any you may have neglected, either through ignorance or forgetfulness, may God forgive you for them, in this world and the next.”

I wondered if I was supposed to feel any different. I didn’t feel much of anything, except a vague sense of relief that the process of confession appeared to have reached an end, and apprehension about what came next.

The latter was well placed.

The Patriarch removed his hand from my head. “I am satisfied with your progress, Moirin. I am willing to pronounce you ready for the next stage of your penance.”

“Oh?” My heart sank. “What is that, my lord?”

He gave me another smile. “Come, and see.”