Ch. 194 The New Pantheon

For a moment, no one spoke.

Maelin stared.

“Aurelia.”

“I know.”

“What happened?” I asked.

Aurelia looked down at her hands.

“For a long time, I thought I knew what was mine to tend.”

“Healing,” Evelyn said.

“Yes. I had made my care for people smaller than it was.”

She glanced at Maelin and Thesra.

“Compassion brought me to the sick. Forgiveness let me stay with people after we had hurt one another. Healing grew from both.”

The light settled against her skin.

She looked a little frightened.

Then Caldris held out his hand.

She took it.

Later, the Castellan examined the chapel, the wards, and Aurelia herself.

He found no damage.

“I can feel more of you in the stone,” he told her.

“Does it trouble the walls?” she asked.

“No.”

I leaned against the doorway.

“That is the first reassuring answer you’ve given without making us wait for a second sentence.”

“I have learned your preference.”

Evelyn laughed.

Aurelia stood beside the basin, turning the little bead of water between her fingers. She had tried healing a scratch on my hand. It closed at her touch, though she said the change in her power would take time to understand.

I hoped she would let me keep the next scratch long enough to decide whether it required divine attention.

Maelin and Thesra brought their proposal to us that evening.

They asked Mary to remain.

“We want to begin a new pantheon,” Maelin said.

Mary put down her cup.

“That is a large sentence.”

“It is.”

Thesra turned toward Aurelia.

“We have served in a court where Othellos speaks for everyone who stays silent. We want a place where each of us must answer for our own words.”

“And you want that place here?” I asked.

“We would like Greykeep to be our permanent home,” Maelin said.

I looked at Mary.

She was already opening her book.

Aurelia did not answer for the castle.

Mary called a council meeting the following day.

The discussion lasted most of it.

Eliza asked how many visitors might follow the goddesses. Eleanor wanted to know whether divine work could alter the foundations without anyone noticing. Ilyen asked whether a patient could refuse help from a god without offending the rest. Beatrice asked who would tell them when the kitchen was closed.

“I can answer that,” she said, before anyone offered.

Maelin listened to every question.

Thesra wrote some down.

Caldris answered the ones he could.

At the end, Mary read the terms back to us. They could live at Greykeep. Their rooms would be theirs to use. Work affecting the castle, its people, or its lands would be discussed with those responsible for them. Anyone could decline their aid.

Maelin signed first.

Thesra followed.

Caldris took the pen and added his name.

Aurelia signed beneath theirs.

They joined our lessons the next morning.

Caldris began by asking me to hold a small light at the far end of the chamber.

Maelin stood near me and made a second light.

Thesra moved between them.

“Tell me which one is yours,” Caldris said.

“That seems simple.”

Then he turned away.

Both lights shifted.

I reached for the nearer one and felt Maelin’s power answer.

“Again,” he said.

By the fifth attempt, I could find my own without looking.

By the eighth, Thesra began asking questions while I searched.

“Where are your feet?”

“On the floor.”

“Who is beside you?”

“Evelyn.”

“Where is your light?”

I followed the familiar current outward.

“There.”

“Can you return from it?”

I drew back slowly.

The light remained.

They taught differently.

Maelin changed the weight of a working so I had to notice how much strength I had committed before I tried to recover it.

Thesra showed me the point at which my attention narrowed around a task. She made me stop there, while I could still choose to.

Caldris listened for the moment I mistook a distant call for something I owed an answer.

Evelyn practiced beside me. Whenever I began answering a question too quickly, she gave me a look that meant the lesson was working.

Aurelia watched all four of us.

At the end of the week, I held three lights apart while Maelin pressed against one, Thesra called my name from outside the room, and Caldris asked whether I could hear the courtyard bell.

I could.

I also heard someone beyond the south road asking Aurelia for help.

I nearly answered.

Aurelia closed her hand over mine.

The lights went out.

The distant voice faded.

I stood still, listening to my own breathing.

“That was farther than before,” Thesra said.

“Yes,” Aurelia replied.

Caldris looked at me.

“Did you know whose call it was?”

“No.”

“Then there was nothing for you to promise.”

I opened my fingers.

My hands were steady.

That frightened me more than shaking would have.

Evelyn came beside me.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“In the training room.”

“With?”

“All of you.”

She took my hand.

“Good.”

Word of the new residents had already traveled beyond Greykeep.

So had word that Othellos had called me.

Eliza brought the reports to the council table.

Some villages wanted to send more guards. Others wanted Greykeep to keep its soldiers close. A few had heard that a divine army was coming and asked whether the roads should be cleared for flight.

“We have no report of an army,” Eliza said.

“Then we should say that plainly,” Mary replied.

Melody spread a map beside her.

“We also need to know who can reach the villages if the roads close.”

Eleanor marked the bridges.

Perrin marked the places where his construction frames could help move timber or stone.

Nobody marked the nursery.

I noticed all the same.

Eliza proposed a review of the defense force.

Not a parade.

An accounting.

How many trained guards we had.

How long they could remain at their posts.

Which villages had their own watches.

Where food and medical supplies would be kept if people had to shelter inside.

Melody would inspect the field companies. Eliza would oversee the whole defense. The Castellan would check every ward connection again, with someone present to record what he found.

“I have invited Mary,” he said.

“She invited herself,” I replied.

“She did.”

Mary kept writing.

Evelyn took charge of the infirmary plan with Ilyen. Eleanor would examine the lower gates. I would help where they needed strength and keep practicing the control that let me give it without emptying myself.

That evening, we told the household what had been decided.

People asked about their own work.

A kitchen worker wanted to know whether the stores would move. A guard asked who would relieve the outer watch if the roads flooded. Helena wanted a second route from the nursery that she could use while carrying both children.

The Castellan showed her one.

She walked it herself before she was satisfied.

Maelin stood at the back of the room. When a woman asked whether the goddesses would stay if Othellos came, Maelin answered before anyone else.

“Yes.”

Thesra looked at her, then faced the room.

“Yes,” she said too.

Caldris added, “I have already chosen my room.”

Someone laughed.

The questions continued.

Afterward, I found Aurelia in the nursery.

Carol had fallen asleep with one hand on the cloth book. Garrick was awake and considering whether to throw his horse from the cradle.

Aurelia noticed his expression.

“His grandfather made you smooth that horse four times.”

“He’ll make me do it again if Garrick breaks it.”

“He would be right.”

I sat beside her.

“Are you happy they’re here?”

“I am glad they came.”

“That sounds careful.”

“It is. I forgave them. We still have years to learn how to live beside one another.”

Garrick dropped the horse.

I picked it up.

Aurelia smiled.

“Years,” she repeated.

I carried the horse back to him.

For an instant, I heard the courtyard bell.

Beyond it, a cart on the western road.

Then a voice too far away to belong to the castle.

I held the rail of the cradle.

The voice passed.

I had not followed it.

Aurelia looked up.

“I heard it,” I said.

“I know.”

Garrick reached for his horse, impatient with both of us.

I put it into his hand.

From the passage came Evelyn’s footsteps and the sound of Mary telling Eliza that a supply list was not complete merely because the last page had run out.

The nursery door opened.

I knew exactly where I was.