“I have here a video that I need played.” Tymar holds a miniature digital chip into the air. “It’s an Eqtoran datatooth. Can we—thank you.” The cleric hands the chip off to a temple attendant who hurries into a curtained-off booth.
One of the wide bolts of cloth hanging from the vaulted ceiling lowers, and spreads itself into a rectangle as it does. There’s no projector that Grant can see; the image just spreads forth from the banner’s center in fiber optic dots.
They resolve into the image of a couch, its toasty-looking furs and its wide slotted tail-hole along the backrest marking it as Eqtoran make. Grant seeks and finds the maze carved across the headboard. Tymar was right; they’re everywhere.
Atop the couch, a dewy-eyed Taiikari woman with a wavy wolf cut sits with two towering Eqtorans, like a chihuahua between two great danes. She’s dressed in the sturdy and fur-trimmed Northern Ocean style and her tail’s double-wrapped around the Eqtoran woman’s, whose hand sits protectively on her thigh.
“Greetings to the Harok Temple,” she says, in Eqtorish—her accent is significantly more stilted than Tymar’s. “It is my—um.”
“It is my honor,” the Eqtoran woman whispers, with an indulgent grin.
“It is my honor to come before you as Lady Nirien-mek-Daltuqa, once of Ramex. I am a confirmed and vested disciple of the Daltuqa Diocese, and I. And I, uh—”
She lets out a little squeaking sob like a puppy getting its tail treaded on and covers her face. The Eqtoran man’s grip tightens around her waist.
“Pardon me,” she says in Taiikari, and takes a deep breath. “I’m a little emotional. Um…”
She raises her head and switches back to Eqtorish.
“This is Miqi and this is Puraq, my wife and husband. We met during one of the first union festivals. And they have been so patient with me, and they have shared the teachings of the Library Sacrosanct. They have welcomed me into their way of life and I have fallen in love with it. In keeping with the Songs of Returning, I have chosen to live as a Child of Eqt. My keeper bond was confirmed twenty turnings ago in the Daltuqa city temple. Our family god is Roqin of the Change. I am their keeper. And I’m—um.”
She breaks down over the course of her speech, further and further, and barely gets the last few words out through the palm she presses over her mouth: “I’m pregnant.”
Her composure cracks; her shoulders shake. Puraq’s head dips into frame and plants a kiss on the top of her head.
“I’m pregnant,” she sobs, “with our child. And I am so, so full of joy, and I sing praises to Eqt for the kindness of Her children in taking me as their keeper, and for the baby boy She’s given us. And we swear to raise him as a Child of Eqt should be raised. And I’m—sorry, I—”
She’s overwhelmed again; she breaks into hiccuping sobs and buries her face in her cooing wife’s arms. Grant’s cold shock at the subtitled sorry fades. She isn’t speaking Taiikari up there, after all, is she?
“Take your time,” comes Tymar’s patient voice on the recording.
“I beseech the Ecclesiasts of Harok Temple to recognize the decision of the Daltuqa Diocese,” Lady Nirien says, once she’s recovered her breath. “I don’t know if I’ll set foot on your world, but I want to live the rest of my life in the Paas System, with my new family. All my new family. All of you. And it would be so beautiful to come to you a century from now when the terraformation is complete, and show our children and our grandchildren the world their father was born on, made new by the efforts of the Council and the Empire. Together. And I hope I can do that. And I promise my Eqtorish will be better by then.”
The rumbling laugh of her husband and wife at that statement put a smile on Lady Nirien’s tear-streaked face.
The video clicks off. The silence that follows is so unnatural in a place as song-drenched as the Eqtoran temple.
“That…” Multraq’s murmur drops like a pebble into the still surface. “That is unnatural. That female is not a keeper.”
“Ecclesiast Liuriuq of Daltuqa disagrees.” Tymar’s arms fold tight. “As does her second, who signed it, as does Governess Qilik-mek-Eqtor, as does Princess Sykora of the Black Pike. As do her grateful tears in praise to Eqt. By the sacred songs of the Library Sacrosanct, a keeper is the wellspring of the sacred seed of life, and shepherd of the Children of Eqt into being.”
“Keepers do not bring the children to bear within themselves.”
“That is a fundamentalist argument, Ecclesiast, and you know it. Have there not been maleborn and femaleborn Eqtorans who have declared and been recognized as keepers? Is that not a recognized path through the Maze? That child in her belly is the genetic son of Miqi, Puraq, and Nirien. It is her egg, quickened by her bondmates, sworn to Eqt. All that a keeper must do, she has done, and all that’s expected of a keeper she has sworn to do. Whose belly the child grows in is inconsequential. This is settled and sacred.”
The words drip from Multraq’s toothy maw like venom: “It’s a Taiikari.”
“He’s a Taiikari, yes,” Tymar says. “A Taiikari child of Eqt. And Nirien is a Taiikari keeper. She is not a fighter, not at all. But she has fought and fought to be recognized as the first. And to ensure retrograde ecclesiasts like you have no power to take that away from her. Eqt, in Her wisdom, has given my people the choice to bring forth life with yours. The books and the laws agree. A Taiikari may be made keeper; therefore a Taiikari may be made ecclesiast.”
Tymar tightens the golden robe’s drawstring. Grant sees the maze design on it, shiny gold on matte gold, subtle in the jeweled light of the temple’s stained glass.
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“I am an ecclesiast, confirmed and embraced into the faith by Ecclesiast Munaq-nai-Highstep. Just as your people wove yourselves into the tapestry of the Children of Eqt, so now do mine. The Golden Maze is in my mind just as it is in yours. The Holy Choice. I stand and speak and Choose. I invoke by right of my cloth the holy choice to stand before the ivory altar in opposition to you, to be heard and made a sacred alternative to your interpretation.”
Multraq lets out a harsh, disbelieving laugh. “This is blasphemy. This is gruesome blasphemy.”
“Show me where.” Tymar slaps his hands onto the altar surface—to stop them shaking, maybe. “Show me in the Library where I’m blaspheming, or those words are air. Find within the Books of the Library Sacrosanct the gate that would prevent me.”
A held breath. Multraq stares across the black-and-white floor with hatred on qer face. Then qe spins around with a billow of golden robe and hurries to the bookcase.
Tymar pumps his fist and hurriedly gestures Grant, Ruaq, and Ipqen into a huddle. “Okay, people. Spear’s in the hide. Now we just lean on it.” He digs into his satchel and pulls out a stack of thickly stacked and stapled folios. “This is… mine, and this is yours, Grantyde, and Ipqen and Ruaq, you can share this one.”
Grant leafs through the folio as Tymar straightens back up and hurries to the altar. “Hope he knows what he’s doing.”
Ruaq nudges Grant and gestures to the cloth around Tymar’s shoulders. “What qe’s doing. The cloth.”
“Right.”
Multraq has returned to qer position on the ivory altar with a book in tow. Acolytes swarm around the altar, turning pages, whispering in Multraq’s ear, marshalling into a choral row.
“Now I see your game, sibling.” Multraq drops into a grinning patter as the acolytes tune up. “Saying that deep-dark-abyssal place you come from has the light of Eqt shining through it. But you come from beyond the stars.”
A growing echo of qer words from the gathering acolytes.
“Beyond the demimonde,” Multraq continues. In the oval rows a frowning family edge toward the temple’s ivory half. “Siblings, siblings. You all know what it is already. I know you do. Book of Far Seeing, siblings. Let me hear you!”
A fervent surge of song from the ivory altar Eqtorans. The baritones grow brassy and bruising.
“Grantyde,” Tymar hisses. “That’s Far Seeing fifteen-six. Get me that counterharmony we practiced.”
Grant rifles through his folio’s pages. He casts a panicky glance to the stands, where the watching crowd has gravitated toward Multraq’s ivory side, adding their voices to qer chorus. “God. We’re outnumbered.”
“Maybe we are right now.” Ipqen tucks a xhurr leaf into her cheek. “But they’re hitting us with the music. That’s already ground lost. Tyme’s right. Spear’s in the hide.”
“And we knew Multraq was gonna go for the Far Seeing stuff,” Ruaq says.
Ipqen nods. “It’s you, Majesty. Remember. Find the gap, find the harmony…” Her hand, out and low, like she’s preparing to signal an ambush. “Here it comes on this next line…”
Grant takes a deep breath into his diaphragm and lets his voice ring. Ipqen and Ruaq lock in above him.
“Where then does it stop?” Tymar cries. “By what moon or star did Eqt and Her siblings stop, and lay down their tools and let some slouching beast begin? That song you sing was different, before Harok and Taiqan and the Deep-sky Propagation. It will change again in the turning of time.”
They catch Tymar on the last line, link their voices in a chant that ensnares Multraq’s leitmotif in a forceful major-key modulation. Fringes perk up and voices quaver in the oscillating audience.
“That’s right!” Tymar roars it. Grant had no idea the softspoken little cleric could get so loud. “The temple is not a fossil or a mausoleum. The temple changes, and changes again. Because it must change; because it lives.”
Suddenly there are voices joining Grant’s, like a bolstering wind in his sails, and his baritone voice interlocks with theirs. His heart soars with the melody.
“Because the Gods live,” Tymar cries. “Eqt tells us this hall is alive! Not Harok stone, not Eqtora bone, not ebony not ivory but you are the temple. All of you—all of us. The Book of Turnings, siblings! Sing it loud! Bring it up!”
And suddenly the counterharmony has enmeshed Multraq’s song and pulled it away into Tymar’s orchestration. The cleric’s face is alight with sacred revelation as the song veers like an ornery stallion.
“It will change, Multraq. Life changes. The ancient song is the new song and the cycle is the singers and we are all of us turning together.” Tymar holds the Book of Turnings aloft, its pages fluttering in the billowing sound. “And I’ll sing it with you, and if you don’t sing it then by the Gods of all our people I will sing it for you.”
Multraq laughs unkindly and yanks another songbook from the Library. “All you’re gonna do for me,” qe says, “is buckle.”
Two hours.
Two hours of soaring songs and blistering invective. The Library Sacrosanct’s shelves empty as Multraq and Tymar pull book after book, spreading the pages of the Eqtoran holy writ across sacred stone. Tymar isn’t buckling, but Grant’s coming close. About a quarter of the congregation now stand by the ebony altar, so he at least has time to gulp water now and then from the font at the temple’s center, thank whichever God is currently in custody of him.
Multraq has been forced back, step after step. Confirming that Taiikari can call themselves keepers, but surely Tymar isn’t one. Allowing that Tymar might be one, but insisting that the Qarnaq II forewomen are fomenting blasphemy by ordering the Children of Eqt into proximity to nonbelievers. Admitting that okay—the beasts of burden and the leviathans of the deep don’t believe in the Gods per se, but they are born from the sacred flesh.
And onward and onward, each position gripped with white-knuckled force, towards—not a cliff edge, not at all, they’re still in the deep minority, still barely holding onto their place in the temple—but perhaps towards a t-juncture in the Golden Maze.
“An Eqtoran working under the boot of a Taiikari will always be an unholy thing. An Imperial thing.” Multraq’s breathing is ragged, but qer voice is still smooth as silk. “Deny the blasphemy, dress it up and dance it around how you please.”
“You speak with strength, Ecclesiast.” Tymar wipes the sheen of sweat from qer anticomps. “But in this place we speak for the Gods. Whether or not you agree with it, whether it’s the step forward I claim or the stumble you call it. None of that is what we are here to decide. Not the right choice but that the choice is. That the Children of Eqt might make it and remain in the ecclesiastical light. Here that’s all that counts. The rest goes to them. Do you deny that?”
The singing has softened into an uncertain hum around them.
“Do you deny it, Multraq?” Tymar repeats. “Swear now in the unassailable word of Eqt, in front of your congregation and your world. Swear that you honor the diverging branch.”
Multraq sets qer book down, face an illustration of hate. “I swear nothing to the Taiikari. That’s my choice.”
Qe turns and descends the altar. Ruaq lets out a long held breath and droops into Ipqen’s arms.
Grant takes a shaky step forward as Ipqen strokes her fiancee’s fringe and Tymar loosens the robe about his shoulders. The golden cloth drapes downward over the altar once again. “Is it done?” Grant asks. “Did we—is that good?”
“It’s good, Grant.” Tymar tugs his sleeve excitedly. “It’s so good. You see how many people we’ve turned over?”
Grant looks to the pews. Their side of the crowd is still patchy; a third at most made the trek to their side, and have fallen now into whispered conversation as they return to their previous seats and gather their things. “It doesn’t seem like enough.”
“It’s far more than enough.” Tymar wears a grin of triumph. “We win.”
“Why doesn’t it feel like that?” Grant asks.
Before Tymar can answer, the explosion outside, which shatters the stained windows on one side of the temple in a coruscating shower of jeweled shards, does.
