Chapter 43 | The Queen Who Ruled by Herself

Macca was tired. She looked down from the ridge above Agrin Fields onto the scattered, useless stones of Marsury, and finally turned to the circle of men behind her. “Ammert, Lord Valmouth, Lord Kellen, Lord Whithorse” she said, “I leave the countryside to you. Secure the rebel duchies. Make sure all the petty nobility and landholders formally swear allegiance to us and repudiate their former lords.”

“The widows and children of the rebel lords, ma’am?” said Wallek.

Macca stroked her belly absently. “Turn them out, Valmouth, but make them swear allegiance to us before you let them go. If any of them refuse, kill them without hesitation. As for the duchies themselves, we will decide what to do with them in due time. For now, they belong to the crown and their incomes fall to us.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Wallek, unsurprised alone of all the gathering.

Macca returned to her pavilion, to the bier where Ilhovin’s body still lay, with Nowa and the Teacher standing watch. “Nowa,” she said as she entered. “Prepare to leave. The Teacher will take you to the Keep once he’s taken me to the Temple.”

Nowa kissed Macca’s pale and drawn cheek and embraced her. “I will do as you say, though it troubles me. Your majesty needs rest. Please, come home soon and let us take care of you.”

Macca smiled wanly. “I will. Now, Teacher,” she said to the black figure at her side. “Take us to the Bloody One’s Temple. I will attend to my husband.”

Teacher bowed, picked up Ilhovin’s corpse and stood before the small mirror the king had always carried. Macca quickly took up a chest on a nearby table, then took the Teacher’s arm. “What is in that chest, ma’am?” said Teacher suspiciously.

“None of your concern, counselor,” she snapped.

The Teacher sighed. “Show me the Temple of Harla in the capital.” The image in the mirror shimmered, and they stepped through into the underground preparation hall of the Temple of Harla.

The Bloody One’s Temple in Tremont was built into a series of hillside caves, much like Corharla Hill was in Deneen. And like Corharla Hill, the original caves had been connected and expanded by Her worshippers. Macca breathed in the cool, damp air, filled with the scent of clean, wet stone and incense; it was a smell she’d always associated with peace, but today it brought no comfort to her. The Teacher laid Ilhovin’s body down on one of the stone tables in the center of the room, then turned to Macca. “I will fetch the High Priestess, your majesty.”

“I know what to do,” she answered quietly.

Macca waited until she was alone, then donned one of the black robes hanging nearby. She opened Ilhovin’s shroud; he’d been dead almost three days, and though the body was no longer stiff, it hadn’t yet begun to stink. “I’m sorry I couldn’t do this for you sooner,” she whispered, trailing her fingers down his waxy cheek, “but we had to finish the fight. I love you, Hov. I will love no other as I loved you. I love you so much I will do this last thing for you, though my heart is breaking into a million pieces and will never, never be whole until my bones rest with yours.”

She opened the shroud so that it draped the sides of the table away from his body, then took a stone knife from its niche at the table’s head and began to cut away his clothes. “All this is fleeting, all this is lost, all this is unnecessary,” she began to chant softly as she worked.

“All this is ending, all this is beginning, all this is needed,” answered a gentle chorus of voices. Macca looked up to see a circle of faces, male and female, framed in the black hoods of the Bloody One’s priesthood.

Macca began to cry, but didn’t stop her work. “My life is fleeting, my life is lost, my life continues,” she choked out.

She could barely see through her tears and began to hesitate for fear of cutting the body; finally she felt hands on her own, helping guide the sharp stone knife through Ilhovin’s clothing, while other hands carefully peeled back the cloth and removed it entirely. “His life has ended, his life is beginning, all this is needed,” said the voices. Macca’s sobs redoubled, but she continued until Ilhovin’s body was free of its clothes. Many hands lifted the body from the stone table, and she helped clear the remaining rags and discarded shroud away before they set the body back down.

Macca felt a towel softly wiping away her tears, and she began the next part of the lament. “See, my tears are endless as the ocean. See, my tears make up your bath.” Able to see again, she watched as a priestess—-not a priestess, the Embodiment of Harla, she realized—-took the wet towel and dipped it in a basin, spreading her tears throughout the salt water in it. The Embodiment wrung it out and handed it to Macca, and she tenderly began to wash the crust from the corners of Ilhovin’s mouth and eyes.

She returned the towel to the water over and over, rinsing it and wringing it. And as she worked, she felt an increasing peace—-a dull peace, to be sure, but there was comfort in the familiar words and movements, the ritual she had performed for and with countless others since she had dedicated to the Bloody One so long ago in Corharla Hill. Some of them she had known; most had been strangers. Some of them had been surrounded by sobbing mourners; some had had no one to give tears to their funeral bath, and so the priests and priestesses had cried for them instead. This was the not the first time she had had to prepare someone who had died much too young; she had helped lay out children, even newborns, but never had she washed the dead body of someone she had loved so, so deeply. Her tears continued but slower, the gush slowing to a steady trickle.

She ran the towel down his chest, over his sex, down each leg, over every familiar inch of skin; she noted each freckle, each scar, so well known to her. The helpers turned him on his side and she washed his back; then they lifted him up, a fresh shroud was laid on the stone and they settled him back down on it. The Embodiment handed her the stone knife; she never hesitated, but cut her forelock with it, forming the harsh, choppy bangs of widowhood across her forehead. She lay the hank of red-gold hair on her husband’s chest before finding a piece of his hair long enough to cut for herself, putting the short lock of coarse brown hair in the pocket at her waist.

Macca began sewing the shroud shut around the body. “We are all of us merely arrows in Her quiver,” said the Embodiment as Macca worked. “She sends us flying from Her bow out into our brief lives. For some the target is far, for some the target is near. Few of us fly straight. But this man, this lover, this husband, this father, this king, his flight was true. He hit his mark, his flight is done. She has taken him back, and will make something new of him. And we are made into something new as well, both by his life and by his absence.”

Macca finished her stitching, cut the thread with the stone knife, and handed it back to the Embodiment. But the woman seized her hand and wouldn’t let go. “What will you make of yourself, Macca Harlasdaughter? How will you please me?” came an eery, familiar dry voice from the woman’s mouth. The other priests and priestesses fell back, startled; Harla rarely came into the Embodiment unless She was called.

Macca felt the cold radiating from Her hand but didn’t flinch. “I will make of myself a ruler,” she answered. “I will make of this kingdom a fit place for my son to rule after me.”

“As you must, daughter. You please me. Just know that though you have won, and though you will rule well, they will hate you for it,” Harla said. “He will hate you for it.”

“Who will? Who will hate me? Will Ilhovin hate me for it?” cried Macca. But it was too late; the Goddess fled the Embodiment, and the woman released Macca’s hand and sagged into the arms of the nearest attendants. The stone knife tumbled from the Embodiment’s limp fingers to the floor and shattered. Macca clutched her hand to her breast; it felt as if the Goddess had sucked all the warmth and life from her fingers, and she blew on them to warm them.

She turned to the remaining attendants and nodded; they all covered their mouths and took up the body, three to a side, lifting it by its sturdy shroud. She took up the chest she had brought from Agrin Fields and followed. As a group they walked deeper and deeper into the caverns. The ceilings and walls closed in; there was barely room for the procession, until they came to a widening lined with deep niches in the walls, wending farther back into the mountain than anyone could see. Bodies in various states of decomposition filled each one, and the procession walked to the empty niche prepared for Ilhovin’s body. They slid it into place, and the attendants began to walk back toward the preparation hall. Macca stayed behind. She searched for a moment to find a place to put the chest, finally settling on a tiny, neglected shelf tucked away in a bend before returning to Ilhovin's resting place.

“I will be back for you,” she whispered to the corpse, smoothing her hand over its shroud. “When you are nothing but bones, I wil be back for you. I will cap them with gold, and then I’ll put you in the royal chapel with your family. And when I am nothing but bones, I will lie with you again. I love you.”

Macca turned and followed the attendants back into the preparation hall, where she found the Teacher waiting for her. “What are you doing here?” she said curtly.

“I am here to bring you home. Nowa is waiting for you.”

“Home.” Macca looked around the high-vaulted cavern. “My home is with him, and his home is here now.”

“You have a son, ma’am. You must live for him.”

She turned sharply. “Don’t presume to lecture me, false counselor. I live for nothing but my son’s wellbeing.”

“As do I, ma’am—-it is my only purpose, to serve this family,” said Teacher.

Macca gave a bitter laugh. “Now that this is over, how you may best ‘serve’ this family will be my only thought, depend on it. Take me back to the Keep.” The Teacher gave a small frown and offered an arm; she took it, and they swirled through the mirror.