Hearts in Zenith (Four Husbands and a Lover)

77. Lose a Pearl, See a Divine (1 of 2)

I forgot that Nirav promised to take me to the old temples on the first day we'd met. The memory surfaced when I scaled the narrow trail with Xenophonta. It was a mysterious place, certainly worth exploring with a fiery man. Regret tugged at my heart—this wasn't to be.

A wide, paved road used to run straight up the river terraces. Mudslide washed it out, but foot-treks wound around debris. Sometimes, it went around the buried statues of the Divines and the Bhutas. Other times, it veered away for the sake of the surer footing. The place still attracted devotion. The offerings of flowers, beads and incense burners lay everywhere.

The clouds thinned out to cotton-like fluff after the deluges of the rainy season. Sun, however, was yet to bake the moisture from the mug. It was ankle deep in places, turning our sandals into lumps of reddish clay and sucking our feet down.

I couldn't rid myself of the illusion that Nirav accompanied us. I hallucinated him around the bend of the trail, leaning against the other side of the upturned stone head or following in my wake. I swatted away these fantasies like horseflies.

Next to me Parneres was solid flesh, but he walked as if he were a ghost. He didn't even ask why I had asked him to come or carry Basilissa this far from the camp, just obeyed out of habit.

I forced my gaze away from his staring eyes, focusing on Xenophonta's slim shoulder blades ahead of me. They moved with the purposeful rhythm of a predator's fangs. I had no doubt she was rehashing our argument in her head.

Mother, this has never been done. You'll anger the Divines.

That's your father talking.

You'll burn for it and your soul will never rise again from the River Vash.

Then I shall burn.

We approached an outcrop of the familiar brown gold-speckled stone capping the river terrace. It was about two human heights thick. With the multitude of shrines cut into it, I had trouble spotting a narrow archway that led into the ancient temple.

Xenophonta marched straight to a gap barely wide enough for one person to squeeze through, but very tall. She traced the decorative border surrounding it. Symbols were cleverly hidden between birds, flowers and raindrops carved into the stone. She turned and impatiently waved for me—as if I was slowing her down.

I didn't say anything and followed her inside.

Musty smell hung in the air. The stone walls of the cave temple were plastered, then painted floor to ceiling. Year by year, the nameless artists added new devotional scenes. Some of them made a story that snaked all around the hall, its beginning and ending lost in the darkness. Some stood alone, focusing on a singular moment of glory or torment. Moisture stained the stone, and the paint peeled off, but it was still sublime in the flickering light of Xenophonta's torch.

"Are you sure the Divine presence remains here, Xenophonta?" I whispered.

"Yes," she said. Her voice echoed eerily, hushing other inquiries.

Parneres crouched in the corner, singing something under his breath to Basilissa.

I circled the room, from fresco to fresco telling the story of Yansara's Exile to the end of the world during the Primordial Strife. In one of the paintings, They walked on glowing water, reminding me of Nirav's secret pool. I whirled away from it to check on Xenophonta's progress.

She held up a crystal goblet to the torchlight, swirling the wine, then added some potion to it. The wine boiled to the top. Between her thumb and forefinger, she held a pearl. A blood-red pearl, so familiar...

"Wait!"

"It's alright, Ismar," Parneres called softly from his corner. "The time has come to return our pearl to Mansoora."

Xenophonta let the jewel drop into the foaming wine. Red like the wine, it was invisible, save for a trail of fine bubbles fizzing upwards as it dissolved.

A few more swirls and the pearl I had found inside a monstrous barracuda was gone. The wine turned clear like tears. When Xenophonta poured it out of the goblet, the elixir came out in strings, as if the liquid was freezing in the air. Strangely, it still ended up as a wet puddle on the ground. A puddle worth a farmhouse.

Xenophonta backed away from it on her knees. I took my cue to kneel behind her. Parneres crawled over and passed Basilissa to me. An invisible hand squeezed my heart as it always did whenever I held my youngest daughter. She was so small and so light for her age, nearly insubstantial.

"Mansoora," Xenophonta called with just a touch of forcefulness. She could have been rebuking a friend for taking the last bit of a sweet cake from the tray with that tone of voice. I thought she was frightened and backed out of the summoning, but a golden slit, floor to ceiling, cut the air. It started sliding apart like the bed-curtains...

I beheld Nirvana. I can't describe how it looked, because I also beheld the Divine who stood at the threshold of light.

The statues and paintings in the temples capture what the words of those who witnessed say, and what the imagination of the artist adds. Sometimes They appear cumbersome, sometimes—sublimely perfect. The artists attempt to render the precise number and shape of limbs and heads, fangs and tails, hair and wings, all that which makes a Divine whole. But only seeing a Divine one can truly grasp that They are neither male nor female, neither beast nor human, yet harmonious in look, movement, and presence.

They who appeared to us in the cave temple were magnificent. They looked upon us with benevolent golden eyes set in their five fiery heads.

'I can ask,' I thought. 'If Lukka could, I can too! I'm strong, I'm valiant, I am afraid of nothing!'

And even with me sitting on my heels, my knees turned to wet mud. I dropped my weeping eyes to the floor, to the brown stone speckled with gold, cold and moist, not sun-warmed to the touch like it was on the Piazza Divina. I could not bear to look at the glory of the Divine, let alone speak.

I felt like I might never rise from my trembling knees.

Despite the absence of owl wings and tears, my heart told me that this wasn't Mansoora who stood before me, but Gala. Gala, at whose bosom I was raised after my mother's death. Gala, whom I abandoned in adolescence. Gala, I had forsaken for Mythra.

How could I plead with Them, when my conscience paraded my imperfect words and deeds before me?

If I didn't move before the light of the portal faded, gone would be my last and only hope for Basilissa. For my plan wasn't to seek a congress with a Divine to birth a half-divine child. My intention was to ask for healing.

All I had left to do was to stand up and walk. And I couldn't. I came so close only for my past to wall me off. My sins forbade me to approach the shining goal within my sight.

I stole a guilty glance at Xenophonta. She had no trouble devouring Gala with her eyes. The girl's lips parted, her cheeks turned to flames. None of the crushing guilt that pressed me into the floor showed on her features.

"Xenophonta, I erred," I whispered. "My strength is second to none, but it's only good in mortals' battles. I'm useless for spiritual quests."

Xenophonta turned her eyes on me. They glowed with the reflected green-gold of the Divine's gaze. "I'm glad you know yourself at last, Mother."

A long shadow fell across me.

"Please, Ismar," Parneres begged in a quivering voice. It was his shadow.