Misery's Child (The Cadian Chronicles) Read online

  MISERY’S CHILD

  By J. B. Yandell

  Text Copyright © 2013 J. Belinda Yandell

  All Rights Reserved

  As always, for my mother, Bobbie McMillian Yandell,

  who has been asking from the very beginning,

  “What happens next?”

  Foreword

  Excerpt from The Histories of the Realm by Cadia Kesava:

  The tale of tey Mysirrati has long since past into folklore, but it is the purpose of these volumes to separate fact from fiction. But where to begin?

  Let us start with the ill-fated Lillitha of Kirrisian, who was the consecrated shallana breda in the 150th Year of the Bear, chosen from among the eldest daughters of the realm to serve as the “wife” of the Shallan. While the practice of selective breeding seems barbaric by modern standards, in those days it was not only considered a sacred duty but also a privilege to which few families could aspire.

  The best noble families groomed one daughter—the consecratia or the “consecrated one”—in each generation for Offering. Only one was accepted every six years, during the Festival of the Single Moon, after scrupulous examination by both the Cadian sisters and the bene priests. The hoped-for result was that the shallana would bear a boy-child, who became the next shallan, thereby preserving the coveted bloodlines for the day when Belah, the ancient hero/warrior/prophet, would be reborn from the consecrated womb.

  The significance of the shallan has declined greatly over the last three hundred years. Today he is little more than a figurehead, but in Lillitha’s time, the shallan was part ruler, part prophet. His influence was greater than that of the twelve tribal kings—called vidors—who ruled their individual provinces. The title of shallan was (and remains) hereditary within the Shallani tribe, claiming descent from Belah, the ancient warrior credited with leading the combined Omani armies to victory over the Tors.

  If the shallana was successful in bearing a healthy male child, she was elevated to the highest status a woman could possess, higher even than that of a queen, of the shallanoma —”Path of Oman.” If she bore a girl, she and the child entered the Order of the Cadia. In any event, her life belonged to Oman.

  To be chosen was both an enormous honor and a sacred obligation. A young woman of those times could hope for little more than an amicable marriage to a much older man, and the cadia were the only access a woman might have to education and higher pursuits. The shallana was esteemed and sacred in the hearts of the people as a symbol of their unification with Oman Himself. She often enjoyed some measure of influence, particularly those who bore shallans, the best known of those being Shallanoma Brighid.

  But for all the comfort and security of the shallana’s life, it was a tightly proscribed and rigidly restricted existence with no room for romantic love. One can only imagine the conflict of loyalties that must have battled for the heart and mind of a young girl like Lillitha of Kirrisian.

  Chapter 1: Consecratia

  “I won’t give them back! I won’t!” Marta cowered against the wall, clutching the torn sack of paggies against the small swell of her chest.

  Ersala y’Kirrisian restrained herself from clapping her hands over her ears. Marta’s voice was thin and high even in the best of times, and it was a great deal less attractive when it took on the whine of a sullen fourteen-summers’ child. Instead, she clamped her hands on her wide hips and regarded her youngest daughter with impatience.

  “I’ll not be telling you again, girl. Give me that fruit this minute or you’ll be taking your supper standing up for half a fortnight.”

  “But it’s not fair! She gets everything! Why does she have to get the best of everything?”

  The older woman cuffed her daughter smartly across one cheek. Marta wailed, one hand flying to her reddened face. The sack fell, and the pinkish-gold paggies rolled across the wooden floor, their pungently sweet aroma filling the close, dead air of the holding pantry.

  Ersala’s flash of regret was extinguished as Marta took up her woeful liturgy once again.

  “You never hit her, do you, Muma? She gets everything and I get nothing and it isn’t fair—”

  Beneficent Oman, Ersala swore silently, wondering again how it was possible for this one to be so different from her sister when both had suckled at the same breast.

  “Lillitha never tries my temper the way you do.” The woman stooped with a sigh and began gathering the fruit into her long apron. “And you know very well why these must belong to your sister and not to us. It shames me that you take the law of Oman so lightly.”

  Marta slipped to her knees. She sniffled with a martyred expression, but picked up the fruit nearest her and handed it to her mother.

  Ersala pretended not to notice as the girl slyly tucked one of the paggies into her own skirt pocket. Inwardly, she sighed, feeling the weight of all her forty-two summers bearing down on her. She’s not just a thief; she’s a sneaky thief.

  “It’s not fair,” Marta insisted petulantly.

  “Child, life hardly ever is. The sooner you get that through that thick skull of yours, the better. To your eyes, Lillitha’s lot seems a bed of darma petals, but there are many things you take for granted that she can not do.”

  Marta snorted and plunked another paggie in the apron. “Like what?”

  “Like the way you roam all over the countryside like a gypsie child, mooning over the boys in the village—don’t roll your eyes at me, girl. Don’t you think I know where you go and what you do? You enjoy freedom that your sister will never know. You are old enough to understand these things. Must I send you to Cadia Yannamarie and have her explain to you again the sacredness of your sister’s consecration? What it means and why we must observe the holy laws so carefully?”

  Marta rolled her eyes balefully, stricken with fear at the idea of being sent to Cadia Yanna for any reason. The tall, stern woman with eyes as black as her robes frightened her. She avoided her sister’s chaperone and teacher as much as possible, for Yanna stared at her unflinchingly, as if she knew every thought in Marta’s head. Some said the cadia could read minds. After meeting Yanna, Marta believed it.

  “Please don’t tell Cadia Yanna,” the girl whispered. What might the cadia do to her? Marta did understand that what belonged to Lillitha as the consecratia belonged also to Oman Himself. But she had wanted just one of those sweet, deliciously juicy paggies. Lillitha didn’t even like them; Cadia Yanna was the one who insisted that they were good for the consecratia’s complexion and teeth. It wasn’t fair.

  “It’s sick with shame I am that I have to lock the pantry door against the thievery of my own daughter,” Ersala said, reading the change in Marta’s attitude with some relief as she struggled to her feet again. “Perhaps you can tell me, child, what happened to the sack of paggies on the household side of the pantry?”

  She gestured to the shelves that lined the left side of the room where the household stores were kept separately from Lillitha’s. Cadia Yanna made a careful accounting of the foodstuffs, seeing to it that Oman’s Tenth went to Lillitha as decreed. In such poor times it was sometimes difficult to make the household stores go far enough, when a tenth of everything must be dedicated to the consecratia, but that was the law. It was the same in every noble household where an elder daughter was being readied for the Offering.

  Marta said nothing, only glared. Ersala shook her head. The greedy child had already eaten every last one of the paggies she’d been saving to make Rowle’s favorite dish—a crusty paggie tart with thick cream icing—when he returned from his business on the far side of Kirrisian. At least Marta came by her sweet tooth honestly. Unfortunately, she had inherited none of her father’
s patience or good humor.

  “Get out of my sight for a while. Don’t let me catch you in here sneaking food again or I will be telling Cadia Yanna. Mark my words.”

  Marta shot through the door, gone with a flash of her skirts.

  As Ersala searched for a whole sack in which to store the loose fruit, she wondered again what she would do about her youngest daughter, only fourteen summers and getting worse every day.

  ***

  Lillitha sat in the window with her feet tucked discreetly under her as befitted a young woman of her station. In her dimpled white hands she held the Book of Belah, open to the Chapter of the Epiphany. It had always been her favorite chapter but today she couldn’t concentrate. Instead of meditating on the verses, Lillitha found her mind wandering to the anonymous cadia who had spent keels—possibly even summers—scripting this precious copy in a delicate hand. It made her sad to think of the time and effort that had created the perfectly formed letters, which managed somehow to be bold and fragile at the same time.

  Lillitha tried to imagine that unknown scribe. Had she been a handsome woman or plain? Had her family offered her to Oman or had she gone to the cadia of her own free will? Had she been happy to sit day after day, her hand cramping around the reed as she painstakingly formed those perfect letters? Lillitha’s own calligraphy was dismal. She copied the same lines over and over, but she wasn’t very good at it. She wondered if anyone would ever let her scribe a real volume.

  She shook herself guiltily. Daydreaming, said Cadia Yannamarie, was a foolish waste of time that could be better spent improving one’s knowledge. Her teacher was fond of quoting Belah: In killing time, one murders eternity.

  Lillitha closed her eyes, trying to summon the joy she’d felt when the book was first placed in her hands. She had been no more than six summers when her mother pulled her onto her lap and allowed the child to hold the small volume.

  “’Tis a beautiful thing, is it not?” Ersala had whispered tenderly. “Far away in Shallanie there are women who spend their lives copying the Book of Belah over and over so that we might know of his wisdom and devotion.”

  Lillitha remembered tracing the jeweled crest of the leather cover with a trembling finger, gasping in amazement that such a dazzling thing could exist. And the words—there were so many of them! The few storybooks in the nursery were slender things with crude wooden covers, the longest just ten pages; Lillitha had already read them to rags, hungering for more. Now this was truly a book! Story after story about the heroic Belah and how he saved his people from the marauding hordes of Tor, driving the fierce barbarians back over the Shumdan Mountains. The tales were filled with adventure and grand battles, saviors and villains, told in poetry so splendid that it took her breath away.

  But the intoxicated thrill Lillitha had felt the first time she gazed upon those marvelous pages eluded her now, for she had read them so many times. Each time she finished the book, the drill was always the same: Cadia Yannamarie would ask Lillitha to quote verses, not stopping until Lillitha missed one. Then Yanna would tell her to open it and begin again.

  She had only recently realized that Yanna meant for her to commit the entire thing to memory—all five hundred and forty pages! Was it even possible for any human being to accomplish such a feat?

  There were other books in the library, of course. Yanna carefully selected the ones for Lillitha’s study: the collected writings of Shallanoma Brighid, various volumes of histories by long-dead shallans and cadia, Meditations for a Daughter by Vidor Asalon. Shallanoma Brighid was her favorite; the Favored Mother had a plain way of speaking that quieted some of her fears.

  None of the other books were as ornate as this one. The others were bound in plain leather, some even in wood, bereft of gold and glittering stones. The Book of Belah was the most the precious thing her family still possessed. The volume was a relic from the days when House Kirrisian was strong and bright and filled with fine things, before her grandfather Baedon had gambled away everything but his name and this crumbling house at the gaming tables in Rica. No matter how carefully her mother might rearrange the library shelves to camouflage their dwindling numbers, the empty spots were mute reminders of other volumes sold to pay for seed, cloth or winter fuel.

  The Book of Belah belonged to her now. Even her father had to ask her permission to read it. Sometimes she blinked tears from her eyes as he rapped cautiously on the door to her chamber and waited for her to bid him enter. She missed the blustery, raucous father who used to bounce on her bed and tell her the gory calla-mundies he remembered from his own childhood, just to hear her squeal with delight and feigned horror. But he rarely came to visit her tower anymore. And no one but her maidservant, her sister Marta or her mother was allowed into Lillitha’s company without Yannamarie hovering in the background.

  She gazed out the window, resting her forehead against the cool, heavy stone of the casement. She loved the view from this window, so high above the rest of the house that she could see all the way to the main road. On a particularly bright and clear day like today, she could even make out the blue-green ribbon of the Far Sea on the horizon. And if she closed her eyes and imagined hard enough, she could see the tall masts of the ships in the harbor, ships that used to belong to her family.

  Now those same ships sailed under the flag of the Danaus, a lowborn family whose patriarch had been a better gamer than Rowle the Second.

  It was no use to dwell on such things, however. Things were as they were, as Yannamarie was fond of saying. Most of the time, Lillitha saw the sense of that attitude; oh, but sometimes it was difficult to keep her imagination from wandering down paths best left unexplored.

  A ramrod-straight figure strode across the courtyard below, her back to the window. Lillitha smiled; she would have recognized that figure even without the billowing black robes. Not even her father was as tall as Yannamarie, and not even her brother Jonil could have mustered one iota of the regal bearing of her cadia-techa. And Jonil had been proud, even arrogant. But it was not fitting to think ill of the dead. She prayed, almost at reflex.

  Leah, mother of Belah, please have mercy on my brother and guide his soul to the shores of Oman’s Great Isle.

  Before Yannamarie arrived, Lillitha would have prayed directly to Oman. But the Book of the Shallan which Yanna brought with her said a woman should pray to the mother of Oman’s most favored prophet, since it was through motherhood that a woman could hope to contribute to the greater glory of Oman.

  “Wouldn’t it be more expedient,” Lillitha had once asked timidly, “to pray straight away to Oman Himself? Won’t He hear me just as well?”

  She’d expected to be reprimanded for such a question, but couldn’t help herself. Being told she could only talk to Mother Leah made her feel somehow rebuked, as if she’d been forward at the dinner table in front of guests. Obedience, even subservience, came naturally to Lillitha, but she had always thought Oman heard everything, even her small voice.

  But Yanna did not rebuke her. For a long moment, the cadia said nothing. Her thin line of a mouth tightened until Lillitha was afraid she’d offended the woman beyond even speech. Then Yanna sighed and frowned.

  “The Shallan is the spiritual teacher of all Omani,” she’d said finally. “He is a wise man who speaks for Oman, but he is still a man.”

  Lillitha waited for further explanation, but none came. Yanna did not pontificate. Her wisdom was short and to the point. She expected Lillitha to figure it out on her own.

  The sight of Yanna crossing the courtyard was the sign she’d been waiting for. She closed the Book of Belah and laid it aside gently, then groped under the cushion of the window seat for the volume she’d hidden there last night.

  She’d barely progressed two pages before the door opened and startled her so badly that she dropped the book.

  Edlin jumped as well, startled by her mistress’ reaction. Both girls burst into giggles, Edlin covering her mouth with both hands as if to hold the sound inside
her.

  They were the same age, both just beginning to blossom in their fifteen summer, though it was clear that Edlin’s pert prettiness—the clear complexion, warm gray-green eyes and ready smile—was a gift of fleeting youth, the kind that faded with time. Edlin’s features, under the flush of innocence that now graced her firm cheeks, were coarse, a testament to her common lineage just as surely as Lillitha’s bespoke a noble birth. Having grown up together, inseparable since either could remember, the two girls were oblivious to the differences in their clothing and station, a fact that Ersala chided them about often enough.

  Edlin stooped and picked the book up from the floor, her laughter suddenly caught in a shocked intake of breath.

  “Ooh! Lucky for you I’m not Yannamarie! She’ll skin you alive if she catches you with this! Where ever did you get a volume of Gideon’s love poems?”

  Lillitha giggled. Edlin scooted into the window seat with her mistress and together they turned the pages, their shoulders pressed together.

  “I found it in the library—”

  “And Yanna let you take it?”

  “Of course not, silly goose! I hid it in my skirts while she was looking for something else.”

  “Have you read any of it yet? Is it as bad as they say?”

  “I read it through once last night after everyone went to bed. But I was so afraid someone would see the light burning that I mostly skimmed it. But Edlin! It’s so wonderful! Gideon’s poems are beautiful, they’re not coarse at all, listen—”

  Lillitha took the volume and jumped nimbly to her feet, spinning to face her companion. She cleared her throat just once as she dimpled in a kittenish smile.

  "Oh, my dearest love, your alabaster form

  Teaches the darma perfection

  As the softness of your sighs against my cheek