A/N: Chap 29 review responses are in my forums as normal. And now we have a conflict hinted at in Martin's expanded world fleshed out.
Chapter Thirty: Of Hue Dark Red
Khatoom and his attendants led her through the platform and down a series of ramps out of the tree city and into a narrow road of very familiar, black cobblestones. Like those she saw entering the city, she could detect no demons in the stone, just age.
Awaiting them was an open wagon made of gold and gem studded wood harnessed to a team of six zebra. Not zorses like in the Shadowlands, just small zebra.
Khatoom offered her a hand with a genteel smile. His massive fingers easily encompassed her whole hand as she stepped up onto the carriage. He followed, causing the contraption to move like a ship at sea. They began to move forward down the cobblestone road at a sedate pace.
The four attendants walked on either side. It did not take long before they emerged from the dense forest of primitive scaled-bark trees and Taylor saw the interior of the giant island for the first time.
Having never seen the maps, she heard Thoros and Ser Gerion speak of Leng as an Island. Neither ever never mentioned how large an island. The silver light of a newly risen moon shone down over a vast, green canopy of forested mountains and deep river valleys stretched out before her as far as her eyes could see. Mountains rose on the far side of the island, protecting the interior from the storms of the Jade Sea.
Spread in small clumps of cleared land across the lowlands, she could see farms where the bulk of the Lengii lived.
"It saddens me that you cannot see this land in the glory of the sun," Khatoom said expansively.
"My eyes see all things," she said. "Night or day. I can see the mountains across the island; the villages where you grow your fruits and rice. It is a beautiful land, Mighty Khatoom."
"Just so," he agreed. He studied her openly, without shame or inhibition. "I have never seen an outsider woman stand so tall or strong, nor have such beauty. You must have many suitors."
"I honor my father, Mighty Khatoom. And he told me no courting until I have lived at least one hundred years. I have a few years to go, yet."
This set the giant to laughing. When he'd quieted, she asked a question she'd been holding on to when she saw that none of the other Lengii villages were built in the trees. "May I ask why Turrani was built in the trees?"
"The Lengii have faced many invaders. The lizard tree does not burn easily, and from height we can easily rain down death on those who would harm us. For centuries the YiTi emperors attempted to conquer us, and only when they came with a million men did Leng fall. Four centuries later, it is ours again." His expression fell. "In part."
He rode facing her, with his back to the front. So Taylor was the first to see the palace that emerged from the forest of 'lizard' trees.
Black stone rose in grim majesty from the forest floor. The walls surrounding the main keep were easily twenty feet tall, and these walls, unlike those of Asshai, showed no seams. It was the same fused black concrete-like material she saw in Stygai. Did the colonists actually make it to Leng before the collapse? Her impression was that things started falling apart almost as soon as the first colony city was built.
Despite the dark buildings and structures, within the walls Taylor saw an extravagant garden with sculpted shrubs and fragile trees that looked almost fake in their perfection leaning over a stream that followed a perfectly paved path through the grounds. The keep within looked almost like a black stone Taj Mahal, with spinnerets topped with gold-leaf domes that undoubtedly shone brightly against the black rock during the day. Banners of silk depicting scenes of lovemaking or war adorned the walls, adding color where the stone itself had none.
Large, stunningly colorful birds that looked like a combination of eagle and peacock flew across the gardens, which were easily as large as the entire grounds of Arcadia High School, gym and football field included.
The carriage came to a stop in a round, cobble-stone driveway lit by long torches that led up to a massive double door that stood twenty-feet tall. It appeared to be made of a deep, hard wood and riveted with iron. Khatoom stepped down, and like before offered her a hand to climb down with him.
"She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed has sent handmaidens to see to your wants and refreshment," Khatoom said.
As he spoke, a group of four of the most breathtakingly beautiful supermodels Taylor had ever seen stepped out of the door. They wore nothing but gauze silks that they'd positioned in strategic places. It left their long, flat stomachs and even longer legs bare. Golden eyes stared inquisitively at her from behind coy veils. Their tightly coiled hair had a uniform rusty brown color, bordering on earthen red, and they styled it in a series of braids and coils that made each of their heads look like a work of art.
Each of them stood as tall or taller than Taylor herself, and moved like a ballet dancer. Their souls spoke of intense interest and curiosity, but also veiled violence. One seemed to be the leader of the others and bowed.
"This way, Honored Guest." She spoke YiTish perfectly.
Khatoom didn't mention to the handmaidens that Taylor could speak their language.
Taylor followed behind the beautiful woman through the doors and into an atrium larger than the house where she was born and raised. In the flickering torchlight, she saw bright tiles laid down over the underlying black stone. Columns rose up twenty feet across the span to reveal an open-air garden similar to the outer gardens, but with a long reflecting pool.
The individual rooms of the palace straddled a central colonnaded hall that ran alongside the long interior garden. Broad stone stairs led up to the second level that had more of the same.
Everywhere she looked, Taylor saw statues carved not in marble or stone, but the same dark wood as the door. The statues all captured various Lengii in elegant poses, all were nude, and all were just as beautiful as the four women escorting her.
They turned into a room filled with brightly colored silk tapestries. Candlelight shone in from lamps set high above and then directed down by clever bronzed mirrors that cast a golden glow over the room. Despite being on the second level, the center of the room held a sunken pool.
Oh.
The Taylor of Brockton Bay would have been mortally embarrassed when long, elegant hands began removing her filthy, partially ruined clothing. Telos of the Trees relaxed. She sensed no ill intent around her, nor attraction. Rather, just a fascination over her pale skin, her markings and her scars. One of the women commented on the permanent burn scar on her lower back, or the slashed scars on her shoulder blades where her wings used to be.
"Come, we shall bathe you," the lead handmaiden said in YiTish.
The other three expertly stripped her down before the leader led her into the warm water.
More than at any point since she arrived in his land, Taylor felt completely overwhelmed by the alien culture. The handmaidens were all easily her age, but unlike most 40 year-olds, they still looked young and strong. Each spoke at least three languages, and if she wasn't misreading their souls, each had killed in defense of their queen. These weren't just pretty ornaments; they were actual guards and warriors.
She took a deep breath and relaxed in the luxury of the water as the handmaidens climbed in with her and began washing her admittedly filthy hair.
"Her hair is so soft and long!" one commented in Lengiii.
"These scars on her back are fearsome," another said. "The burn looks recent, but the long ones on her shoulders are old. Her tattoos look like powerful spells."
"Her eyes are very pretty," a third said softly. "They have a light to them, do you see?"
Long, powerful hands began kneading her shoulders and back, careful of her old burn, which she hadn't given much thought to since it didn't hurt very much any more, and Taylor suddenly felt herself melt. But with the contact, Taylor felt something within the woman masseuse herself. A small pocket of wrongness nestled against her ovaries. The woman's soul remained strong, but her body had been weakening. She hid her weakness from her fellows, fearing dismissal or death.
There was no retirement plan for handmaidens, it appeared.
Bathed and rubbed into jelly, with a subtle scent of fruit in her hair, her hosts guided her from the pool and sat her on a large velvet cushion where they styled her hair. Deft hands curled, combed and shaped it until they created a hive of braids on her head with long curls hanging down on either side of her face. It startled her how much the style changed the shape of her face in the bronze mirror.
They made her clothing right there from spools of silk and cotton. She feared for a moment that she'd have to walk around mostly naked, but they opted for more of an ornate two piece bikini style not so very different than what she wore on her arrival. The silk over her chest was thick and studded with precious gems, and it was no more scandalous than the belly-dancing outfit Emma's mom wore one Halloween.
They made a strange skirt that had a fitted around her waist and thighs, almost like a pair of bloomers, which then blossomed out into sheets of gauzy silk like the petals of a flower around the back of her long legs. As three of them worked to make her clothing, the fourth followed Taylor's now defunct rune work on her arms, legs and back.
"What do these mean, I wonder?" the woman said. She spoke to herself in Lengii.
"They are prayers of protection to the gods of my people," Taylor answered.
All four women froze. The leader stared with wide, golden eyes. "You speak our tongue?"
Taylor couldn't help but smile. "I speak all languages. Yours is one of the more beautiful I have heard."
"Why did you not tell us?"
Taylor shrugged. "You did not ask."
The eldest blinked owlishly before she began laughing. "She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed will like you, I think. Come, Telos of the Trees. The God-Empress awaits you."
~~Voluspa~~
~~Voluspa~~
They went back down the way they came. No one else was visible in the high ceiling walls. But as they turned back into the beautifully decorated front atrium with the columns that let light in from the open courtyard, she saw her first hint of people.
Lots of people.
The courtyard garden was filled with Lengii. Men with ornately carved bronze arm bands with long dark wood spears with ornate bronzed blades stood on either side of the reflecting pool, facing each other. Beyond them, hundreds of Lengii in their gauzy silks, men and women alike, stood and watched curiously as the handmaids escorted Taylor to the lip of the reflecting pool. The approaching cloud cover that obscured the moon dimmed the effect, but even so it was a striking scene. Every one of them looked at her with oddly cat-like golden eyes.
On the far end of the long pool, a woman sat on a throne of black stone inset with hundreds of bright, glistening rubies. Khatoom stood at her right, and more handmaids stood in a semicircle behind. A position to her left was conspicuously empty.
"It is said that you walked upon the waves at Turrani when you arrived," the eldest handmaid said. "It is said that you swam under the waves for many hours with the water children. The God Empress would see this miracle."
On the one hand, it felt like Taylor was expected to perform like a circus animal. On the other hand, she'd been stabbed and arrowed enough to know that her weakened mortal form could not easily take on an army. Especially not an army of giants. If it came to a fight, the fact that they were as strong as powerful as they were meant she would have to kill them. And the truth was she was enthralled by the powerful souls she saw around her.
She glanced at the water, and saw that the pool was actually very deep-enough so that underwater plants were growing within it, with a variety of brightly colored fish. Some looked like sharks and barracuda. The spirits of the water felt placid, fed by natural springs and circulated sufficiently to keep down algae.
The God-Empress wanted a miracle, she would get one.
Looking up at the moon, Taylor sensed the myriad gods and goddesses that had held dominion over it in the thousands of years humans had lived on the world, and the more alien gods from before. I greet you, my sister. Thank you for sharing the sun's light with us.
The moon answered by piercing the clouds with a single, bright beam of moonlight that bathed Taylor in its reflected glory. Around her, the Lengii whispered as she took on a silvery glow.
She was not above theater, and it was theater that the God Empress asked for.
The spirits of the water exulted in the flow of her power as she firmed the surface to support her steps. She moved onto the surface of the deep pool to the roaring approval of the Lengii spectators, and walked calmly down the long pool as the beam of moonlight followed her.
The Lengii soldiers slammed their spears to the floor and shouted in a sing-song fashion, calling out "She-Who-Walks-On-Water" like a song lyric. In YiTish, it sounded like "Azhu-Huthan". The collective faith of the people flowed through her like a strong breeze, filling her in a way she hadn't experienced since the faithful of Brockton Bay. It felt joyous, beautiful and uplifting.
When she reached the far end and left the water, her bare feet did not touch the earth. The faith of the Lengii elevated her steps above the ground for several long seconds as she faced the God-Empress.
The girl was twelve. Taylor felt each of the young empresses' years like a weight upon her soul. She could see the girl's fear and worry about when her ceremonial marriage to Khatoom, who was twice her age, would have to be consummated. She felt the girl's anger at a pending second marriage to a YiTish prince she despised. But over it all, Taylor saw in the girl's soul a desperate hope.
"I am Telos, beloved of the Gods of the Trees, kin to the sea, the sun and the moon," Taylor said in Lengii. She cast her voice across the room. "You have asked to see me."
The so-called God-Empress stood. She had the rail-thin body of pre-adolescent youth, but still stood as tall as Taylor. Her silken gowns left her stomach bare like most of the other women, and her navel glistened with a large ruby. Despite her youth, she moved with an innate grace.
"We are Lengii," the girl said. Her voice was low for her age, and powerful. "Lengii Jhaniara, God-Empress. We greet you, sister, and welcome you to our home. You shall dine with us, and receive all honors."
Behind Taylor, the hundreds of Lengii in the courtyard roared their approval.
~~Voluspa~~
~~Voluspa~~
Taylor was expecting a massive banquet with laden tables and hundreds of lords and ladies. What she got was a private, modest dining room that looked out over the courtyard through painted columns, with a very low table and cushions on the floor for seating.
The god empress sat upon her cushion with her long legs folded lotus-style. The eldest of the handmaids removed the young ruler's veiled headdress of gold and silk, revealing a girl with large golden eyes, a long nose and a too-broad mouth that reminded Taylor of herself when she was twelve. Her teak-colored skin was flawless, while her long ochre-colored hair hung in loose, silken curls about her shoulders.
Khatoom settled down elegantly on a pillow to her right, and then began collecting food from the various trays on the low, u-shaped table on a silver platter that he placed before her. He radiated a fierce protectiveness about the empress. The four handmaidens also settled down to eat once they had the trays of sliced, fried fish filets, sticky rice balls mixed with mango and peppers, and roasted pheasant with mango-cilantro sauce.
"How do you walk on water?" All hint of the divine god-empress was gone. Instead, an intensely curious twelve-year-old leaned over her ceramic plate and stared intently at Taylor.
"I ask the spirits of the water to support me, and then I share my power to give them the strength to do so."
"Is this something you could teach?"
The girl had no magic in her that Taylor could sense. "My power is innate, God Empress. My walking on the water was not a spell to teach. I can see and speak to the spirits in all things, and I can make them stronger with my power. It is a power I inherited from my mother's people. Not even my father, who could lift mountains and throw down giants, could do as I do."
Rather than be disappointed, the young empress glanced at Khatoom. "You knew this from the little man captain?"
"I did not," Khatoom said. "But the captain spoke of a tall tale, of this girl riding on the back of a mighty dragon, and scouring the evil of Asshai with fire and wind. It was one of our own who saw her walk on the waters of the bay."
"A dragon?" The queen's golden eyes widened to almost animated width. "Do such creatures still live?"
"It is true I rode on a dragon," Taylor said. "I traveled across the world to find the source of evil corruption in the world, and I encountered it in the Shadow Lands. While I was there, I encountered the last of the dragon gods, Voxtchtatrcka. The god of death for dragons. We spoke, and I healed his wounds and told him of those who sought to hurt me. He kindly carried me down the mountains to Asshai, and helped me reap the soul-fires of those who hunted me. He did not serve me, but only did me a kindness."
The empress sighed, in that moment reminding Taylor very much of her twelve-year-old self. "What I would not give to see such a thing!"
She regarded those around the table as they watched her in turn. "God-Empress, why am I here?"
The girl sobered. She glanced at Khatoom, then her handmades, before allowing herself a deep frown. "The Azure Emperor of YiTi, Bu Gai, has commanded that I marry Xu Pham Fang. This was my own mother's little husband. This was the man who poisoned my mother and true-father. He will do the same to me. YiTi seeks to again conquer Leng, this time through guile and murder."
Khatoom nodded angrily as he picked food delicately from his golden plate. "Jhaniara's ancestor, Khiara the Great, drove back the Little People. But she could not drive them wholly from our lands. The north of Leng is now a colony of the Little People, who drive us continually south until we have no land at all. The Little Husband is always appointed over the fleet, which is always manned by the YiTi, and so the native Lengii are lessened and dispossessed. And the Azure Emperor always looks to our lands and our riches to fill his coffers."
"It wasn't always so, though," Jhaniara said with a fierce gleam in her golden eyes. "The gods of the Lengii were powerful and wise. In times past, they spoke to those of the royal blood and guided us. The Little Men feared our gods, and blocked the cities below where they dwelt. Until now."
As they spoke, the meal continued to be eaten. Every bite was a rich mixture of sweet and spicy. The texture was rich and filling, and the taste as good as anything Taylor had ever eaten. She found she'd eaten her entire plate and refilled it twice as the leaders of Leng spoke of their struggles against the vast empire to the north.
"We have found a way to the City Below," Jhaniara declared proudly. "For the first time in centuries, we have stepped among our gods. But they do not answer. I have gone four times now, and the gods do not speak to me. I fear I am not worthy."
Taylor realized now why they wanted her. "You hope I can speak to them."
"Yes!" The young empress shouted the word, but at a glance from Khatoom moderated her tone. "Yes, honored sister. If what you say is true, and you can see and speak to the spirits of things, then surely you can speak to the spirits of our gods?"
Taylor considered those around her, and the feeling of welcome she felt when she first arrived. "I have sensed the gods of this island since I arrived," Taylor said. "The gods of the Lengii love their children, more so than most gods I've known. But even being made welcome, I cannot promise you anything. I cannot say things here are the same as my land. But in my land, there are…conventions between gods. One god could not enter another god's domain without permission and blessing. I can ask your gods, but if they deny me, then I will not be able to enter their domain."
Jhaniara blinked her large golden eyes in confusion. Khatoom stared at her intently, his mouth a flat line of pensive was. "It is true, then? You are a god?"
Taylor touched her eyes. "These crystals were formed from the heart of dead stars millions of years ago. If they were placed within the skull of a mortal being, they would burn that person to ash. In my land, I was a god born of gods. My mother was the goddess of magic and fertility. My grandfather was the ocean. My father was the god of war, and his father the god of the sky and storm. I was the goddess of hope, but I held dominion over many things. I had wings that could carry me through the air faster than sound itself."
The eldest handmaiden gasped. "The scars. Great-Sister, Telos bears scars on her back of a size and shape, as if for wings."
"I fought the Destroyer of All things to save mankind," Taylor said. "I won, but paid a terrible price. I lost my wings and my father's great strength. All I retain is the magic from my mother's people. I still wield divine magic, but I am no longer the queen of gods I was before. I tell you this because if your gods are powerful, and reject me, I will not be able to assist you."
Jhaniara nodded intently, eyes wide. "I will come with you. The handmaidens will come, for only women may commune with the gods. Even if they reject you, at least we will know if the Lengii gods have abandoned us or not."