-1- An Elvish Hymn

245 7 5
                                    

The song began with a single note, almost too quiet to hear in the fog and the silence of early morning. The voice was a woman’s, soft and lilting. Another note lifted out of the mists beside her, then more, each one adding depth and harmony. When all fourteen notes had been held for at least a solid minute, a final voice began to sing the hymn that praised the gods.

The words were Deliri, the language of elves. Rhen didn’t understand them. No one except the Delerin priests themselves were permitted to learn or speak the sacred tongue. Even the women who sang the hymns were only privy to the order of the words and the way in which to pronounce them properly. The language of magic was a right reserved for greater persons. As a child of only six winters, Rhen didn’t care anyway. The words were lovely even without meaning and her mother’s voice was clear and sweet when she sang them.

Rhen waited at the bottom of the stair that led into the minaret where her mother sang. There were no children here, only her, and so she had no real place. She attended her mother when she could and waited alone in their room when she got in the way. “Do not let them see you too often,” her mother would remind her. When Rhen asked her why the priests should care, she only shook her head. Anytime Rhen asked questions she always noticed how sad her mother looked afterward.

Being the only child in the temple was often lonely, but the servants and the other nessari doted on her when they could. They gave her flowers for her hair and pinches of red pigment for her palms so she could dye them like her mother and the other temple sisters did when the moon was dark. Rhen enjoyed these special treatments but took caution, as her mother often warned, not to overstep her bounds. Children had no place in the Forest Temple.

When she had finished her mother took Rhen’s hand and led her into the gardens. The summer air was thick with the scent of sweet flowers and herbs. The brilliance of colors and scents made Rhen dizzy in the heat of the morning. The temple itself was built of whitewashed stone and blue-green slate that shimmered when the sun was high. Elaborate scrollwork reliefs had been carved into the walls, for there could be no likenesses of any living creature hewn into the stone here. Rhen had never been beyond the outer walls, but dark, gnarled trees could be seen from every side. Low buildings that served as simple homes to the nessari lined either side of the central square courtyard that led to the high steps of the far building that held the priests’ living quarters and the ritual houses. Opposite that were the kitchens and storerooms that stood to either side of the great white iron gate that only opened twice in a year.

Beneath all of this was another set of rooms that lay underground, accessible only through the priests’ rooms. These rooms were for the recently conscripted. Their only source of light was through small ornate grates set into the cobbled paths of the gardens. Rhen could see faces behind the grates sometimes if she looked at the right moment. Last year she had seen one of the conscripted enter the temple – a girl of about fifteen, small and frail with hair like a raven’s feathers. She had hoped that they might become friends, but Rhen hadn’t seen her since that day. She heard her, at first, in the chambers beneath the gardens. The girl screamed for days, calling out in some language Rhen had never heard before. She remembered how she couldn’t sleep and wondered why the girl would not stop, but when she asked her mother or one of her aunts they would not answer. She was still down there, but she didn’t scream anymore.

“If you eat them all there will be nothing for the cakes, Sweetling.”

The voice shook Rhen from her thoughts. She sucked the purple juice from her fingertips and tried to focus on getting most of the blueberries into the basket instead. Her mother hummed while they worked, her voice soft against the buzz of insects and the loud chirping of a nearby flock of birds.

Aunt Celane raised her hand in greeting as she approached, joining them on the damp grass. Rhen called everyone aunt, though she understood that the women here were not actually sisters. Celane told Rhen once that she and her mother had been conscripted together. Though they acted like sisters, they could not look less alike. Celane was dark, her mother fair skinned and yellow haired. Eevry nessari of the Forest Temple had the same geometric design tattooed in blue on her left hand, but Celane’s was long faded while her mother’s still looked fresh and bold as the day it was given to her.

“Good morning, you sounded beautiful this morning Asara.” Celane smiled at Rhen and wiped a smudge of purple from her cheek with the side of her thumb. She placed her hand against a patch of soil where the grass had been worn away by footsteps and gave Rhen a pointed nod. Rhen watched with a small gasp of delight as a vine twisted upward through the woman’s fingertips and across the grass, then sprouted tiny blossoms as purple as the juices on her hand. Rhen squealed and clapped her hands together in praise.

Asara pursed her lips and stared hard at Celane, covering the vine with her hand. “You should know better.”

“I should, and I do, but see how she loves it so.” Celane only smiled. Asara sighed her compliance and continued with her task.

“Anything of note today?”

Celane peered into their baskets and picked a choice few berries into her palm, then popped them into her mouth one at a time. “The Edran returned last night. Alone.”

Rhen saw her mother frown. “Alone? That is - unusual.”

The priests left on the first full moon of spring and returned during the summer months. This was the only time anyone ever left or entered the temple. Each time they returned they would have someone new with them – women and older girls who had been conscripted into the service of the gods. There were no men, save for the Deliri priests, but elves and humans did not mingle. Only Rhen had been born here. Rhen asked once whether there was another Forest Temple for men, but that was something else she learned not to ask questions about.

Celane nodded, affirming her words. “They brought no one with them. Few and far between, we are these days.”

Rhen’s mother leaned forward and placed a hand on Celane’s knee, shushing her. “You speak too freely.”

Rhen looked over to them. “Could the elders find no one who wished to serve in the Temple this year, Mama?”

Her distress melted into warmth as she smiled at Rhen. “It would seem so, Sweetling. Will you help me carry these inside?”

* * *

The forest sent mist and with it a chill in the middle of the night. Rhen woke, groggy, to find that her mother did not share their cot as she expected to find. A light burned in the corner of the room. Rhen blinked and later was almost sure that she had seen Aunt Celane holding the flame in her hand without lamp or torch, but she had been tired and her sight blurred with sleep. She closed her eyes and listened.

Her mother was crying. She heard the soft, stifled sobs and Celane’s gentle words of comfort. They whispered together for some time, too quietly for Rhen to make out. At last she heard both women rise and the footsteps as one left the little room that was their home and the other returned to the cot in the far corner. Rhen’s mother settled in beside her, stroking her hair, still weeping. Rhen kept her eyes closed and forced herself to breathe normally, hoping she would not get into trouble for eavesdropping. Asara kissed her forehead and whispered to her before turning over to return to sleep.

“I wish I didn’t have to leave you.”

The Sight of Blood: Rhen's StoryWhere stories live. Discover now