Hi!

A bit of background before you dive in: This story takes place ten years after the events of the Last Battle. In that way it is canon. However, Narnia was captured by Calormen, and Aslan has not yet returned, and as a result the world hasn't ended. In that way it is AU. I understand it might be confusing, but the details will become clearer as time goes on.

I deviate from canon at the point in the book where Tirian is tied to the tree.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Chronicles of Narnia.

Chapter 1

It was very cold.

So close to the desert, the daytime was stiflingly hot; but the night was always bitterly cold, even in the warmest part of the year.

Clydia drew her cloak tighter around her shoulders and hurried across the cold floor. The outer temple of Tash was completely open, so that worshipers of lower castes (merchants, peasants, vendors, servants, even slaves) could still access their god, and the maidens of the temple were not allowed to wear shoes; so the cold marble stung Clydia's feet as she left the inner temple.

Clydia gathered the minims from the little bronze bowls beside every pillar, emptying them into her basket. Such were the offerings of the poor, and yet she knew how much these offerings cost them.

The sun was rising by the time she finished. The basket was now full of the little silver coins, and had grown quite heavy in Clydia's arms. She gripped it tightly and crossed the floor again. The outer temple was enormous; Clydia had been told that it could hold thousands of people at a time. She didn't know how to count such numbers, but every year at the autumn feast, she saw it filled with a great multitude of people - so many people that it seemed impossible they should all be in one place.

The doors to the inner temple were guarded by two of the Indre, the elite guard of the Tisroc. The few Indre that did not serve within the palace were relegated to protecting the temple's wealth and women. They were like masked, stone statues, their faces always covered by their armor, and they looked quite fearsome. But they were always silent, and Clydia had long ago learned not to be afraid of them. They opened the opened the great gold doors for her - silently as always - and let her slip in.

The gold doors actually opened into a narrow hallway that surrounded the inner temple, not directly into the inner temple itself, although they were called the Gold Doors of the Inner Temple. This hallway was made of wood and was called the hall of silence. It was said that the sacred silence, carefully preserved by anyone who passed through the hall, kept the cries of the common people from wearing on the ears of the god. Clydia's way took her all the way around to the hall's opposite side, where another set of double doors led into the receiving room.

The receiving room would have been better titled the temple treasury. The offerings of the people were kept here, until such a time as they could be taken to the palace treasury or disposed of as the Tisroc saw fit. This usually happened twice a year at the passing of the seasons. The doors to this room were always guarded by eight Indre, four on one side and four on the other, two on either side of the doors.

"May Tash guide the enlightened," said Clydia.

The guards opened the doors for her, and she passed through, repeating the pass word to the soldiers on the other side. Then she hurriedly counted the coins into their receiving bins.

The receiving room was not large, and on its opposite side was the Sacred Court. The priest of Tash lived permanently in the Sacred Court, as did the seventy pure maidens of Tash. Clydia had been brought here first when she was a scared child, perhaps of six or eight years - no one, least of all Clydia, really knew. Now, ten years later, Clydia was one of the oldest maidens of the Court. She knew her time to leave would come soon, but she hoped there would be lenience for the doubtful years that separated her from her coming of age.

The doors to the Sacred Court were guarded not by Indre, but by eunuchs. These men were not silent and faceless, like the Indre; they were not masked, neither did they hide the way they watched the maidens. They would have been burned alive in a slow fire if any of them were to be caught in an act of infidelity, but that did not stop them watching. They had been watching more lately, as Clydia grew older.

They knew her by sight, and she did not require a password to enter here. She pulled her cloak around her again, concealing herself as much as possible in its shapelessness, and passed under their stare into the Court.

The tenth Calormene Tisroc had been overthrown by rebellious priests. As a result, his son, the tenth Tisroc, after reclaming his father's reign, set up a new kingdom. Ever since that day, when he restored the rule of the Tisrocs and built the Temple of Tash in what would become the center of Tashbaan, there had been the Indre, and there had been the maidens of Tash.

By his decree, seventy pure maidens that had not yet come of age would live in the temple and perform the rites and duties, instead of full-grown male priests, who were capable of much more. There was only one priest, in fact, and he was called upon during the feasts and other high matters. The maidens were the gatherers, the incense-burners, the silent and beautiful faces of the temple. They were brought into service no older than six years, and they were expelled once they reached their eighteenth. No one cared what happened to them after that. Sometimes they fetched high prices in the streets or in the brothels. At other times, men came directly to the temple to take a maiden that had come of age into their harem.

When Narnia and her king, called Tirian the Young by the exiled Narnians, was taken by Calormen and Clydia's father was killed in battle, she, the only one left of her family, had been taken into the service of Tash. Her mother had died in childbirth, and she had no siblings. All that was a vague and distant, though terrible, memory, ten years in the past, and Clydia was used to her life as a maiden of Tash.

She was also used to hiding the secret that she, along with all the other Narnian maidens in the temple, still kept the sacred name of Aslan in her heart. Long ago, the Tisroc had abandoned the notion propagated during the taking of Narnia that the god Tash and the lion Aslan were one and the same. Now Aslan's name was forbidden, and Tash was said to be the one and only God.

But Clydia, raised in the belief of the great Lion after the manner of Narnian girls who were long gone from the temple, was thankful for the fact that she knew the truth. She did not have to worship a god who required the blood of children on his altar, or one who favored the wealthy and condemned the poor, one who made slaves of the humble and lords of the strong and wicked. If she had had to believe in Tash, like the Calormene maidens, then life would have seemed hard.

But she knew that Aslan favored no man above another, and that she was as dear to him as the greatest king that had ever lived in Narnia. And that was a great comfort to her.

Ahariel tasted dirt.

Finon drove his knee between Ahariel's shoulderblades, pinning him effectively to the ground. Grunting, Ahariel released his weapon. He refused, as always, to say the words that admitted defeat, but Finon understood. He stood, offering a hand to Ahariel, which he ignored as he struggled painfully to his feet.

To this day, Finon was the only member of the training class that Ahariel had never defeated. He had won against all the others (not that he won in every fight, but he'd had at least one victory over each of them) but however excellent Ahariel became, Finon was always a little bit better.

Finon was tall, broad-shouldered, and extremely good-looking, with smooth skin and heavy brows. He was loud-voiced and abnormally strong for his age, but he was said among the trainers to have a heart as soft as a woman's. Ahariel hated to admit it, even to himself, but it was true. Finon was Ahariel's only true friend among the trainers, and though he was brave and honorable, he had never displayed a warrior's heart. Ahariel was ashamed of him for this, but he still loved Finon like a brother.

"Mayhap next time thou wilt fare better," said Finon, slapping Ahariel on the shoulder. Ahariel refused to flinch, though his entire body was aching and Finon's laughter was grating on him. He only nodded, then turned to go back to the mess hall. It was nearing the seventh hour of the evening, and time for the trainers to eat.

Finon caught up with him as he shed his armor. "Thou art a stubborn one," he grunted. "Say that thou'rt hurt, and I would help thee."

"I need no help," Ahariel said through his teeth. Though he'd been training for years, a day like today was enough to make him, in the master's eyes, as weak as a child, a fact he greatly resented. He had been beaten severely that morning for walking onto the training ground late, and he had been sparring with first Akiel and then Finon ever since, on rough terrain, without being allowed to take a rest or any refreshment. It had been many hours, and though he could take the sparring and feel only tired, or take the beating and rise the next day with ease, taking both in the same day weakened him.

As both he and Finon knew, this was an unacceptable quality for an Indre. They must be the ultimate warriors. They could not be made into mere soldiers from a day's hardship. Ahariel knew that the master had been watching him all morning, and so he had fought harder than he felt able to fight, just to show that he felt no pain. He was the worse for it now.

"Seven days," Finon said, changing the subject abruptly. "Seven days, brother. I can hardly believe it."

"Believe it," said Ahariel tersely, bandaging an open wound on his shin. In seven days, the oldest trainers, those who had come of age in the last year, would be reviewed. In ten, they would receive word of the warriors chosen to become Indre. Those who did not were generally released to Tash's army and made to become common soldiers, instead of the high calling which they had trained for. This was the deepest disgrace, and generals to whom these soldiers were assigned were often detrimental, brutal, and abusive. Often, these were men who were jealous of the training that these men had received, and so they used their power to make the ex-trainers miserable.

The minds of common people, Ahariel thought. That is how they think.

"Hast thou heard a word of what I have said these past five minutes?" Finon demanded. "Thou art a dreamer indeed."

Ahariel glanced at him. "Thy tongue runneth on too fast."

Finon clapped him on the back, and they walked to the mess hall. To call a warrior a dreamer or a babbler was a great insult, but insults had become Ahariel and Finon's way of showing affection to one another.

In truth, though he tried to hide it from Finon, Ahariel was dreading the review. He had suspected for a long time that the only reason he'd been allowed to train all these years was because of his father's prominence. The trainers that were not strong and prodigious were all sons of Tarkaans, and though Ahariel was the best of the Tarkaans on the training ground, he could not hope to conquer the others in terms of strength. Generally, his quick wit aided him in a fight; no one except Finon matched him in that, not even the master himself. But Ahariel knew that one of the first things the scouts looked at were the strength and size of the young men they scouted, and he was sadly lacking.

Ever since he was tiny, Ahariel had known that he wanted to be Indre. His father, one of the noblest Tarkaans in Tashbaan, had cultivated this desire in him, and by the time he was old enough to be accepted, Ahariel had thought that there was no higher honor than to be Indre.

The tenth Tisroc had instituted the Indre as his own personal guard. They had to be the best trained of all soldiers in Calormen. In the years since, the training had not grown any less rigorous, but the roles of the Indre had diversified. For instance, some of the Indre guarded the Sacred Court of Tash's temple; the maidens of Tash were said to be one of Calormen's greatest treasures. But the majority of the Indre kept guard over the Tisroc, and when the Tisroc went to battle, they were the vanguard.

To be Indre was to be feared and admired by all, but more importantly to be great in the eyes of the Tisroc and in the eyes of Tash. And that was all Ahariel had ever wanted.

A/N: Thank you for reading. Please review!