Oleander

XVII. Legacy (part one)

 Yalira returned to the altar with the ascending sun, the bound prophecies safe in her arms.

Like waking from a dream, brief and strange, Andar had let her go. No argument, no threats. He had simply let her collect the book and fade back into the last shadows of night. Well, not precisely without a threat.

Tomorrow's dawn. I will not stop it. If you do not return, you die with them, he had whispered. The hissing danger chased her steps through the slums.

Dark humor, that touch of hysteria, resurfaced. Escaping Andar of Tyr was not so hard.

It only required the most final of surrenders.

And death, it seemed, was inescapable. The altar reeked with its stench. The corpses they had not yet wrapped filled the rooms with their choking miasma. Toxic fluids drenched the floors that the priestesses fought to keep scoured. Uneven breaths and rattling moans sounded each time the steady bustle of the priestesses grew too quiet. It was not a tomb, for there was a peace in death did not rest here.

With a nod, Yalira asked after each patient, each priestess. As if touched by new warmth, they brightened. She did not make them promises, but the hope that burned in her was contagious. Each healer adopted the steadiness of her hand, the firmness of her voice. Each patient breathed easier in her confidence. It did not matter she was stained with the efforts of healing, pale and shadowed with lack of sleep—all recognized the spark of hope.

For that was all that was left, and Yalira would follow it to the end.

Against the simple altar, the room where the priestesses had taken to sleeping, Yalira opened the leather cover that bore her name.

Ends of beginnings, beginnings of ends! Pray to the winds! Or else drown in the ashes.

Her first prophecy. She had wept, the morning after, and had been chided for her girlish tears. The priestesses had rejoiced—an end to the wars, they surmised. Aid for Orvalle would come by sea, they had decided. But no aid had arrived, and Andar had razed Alispo to its foundation. Her prophecy, after that, had been forgotten. It was the way with most of the new moons: only the prophecies that came to pass were celebrated.

Yalira turned through the pages.

Her last.

Serpents in a garden, dripping poison. Beneath a pomegranate tree, a child sits with a mouth full of blood. Outside the crumbling wall, a woman with a broken lyre plants laurel in a meadow of ash. A golden sun rises.

It had seemed so important, moon after moon, and yet there had been no conclusion on its meaning. The elders had discussed more war, threats against the innocent. Rebirth, change. Vague interpretations that eased curiosity while never giving specific answer.

Yalira traced the words, waiting for inspiration, for wisdom, to find her now. She followed her thread, the end of the prophecies she fought herself to believe in. These were the last words of Antala, the last fragment of hope.

She whispered the words, ignored the temptation of oleander. She didn't need the herb to understand, she didn't need to surrender, she could figure out the riddle, she—

No, Yalira realized. Her thoughts buzzed. There had been another. A prophecy on a hillside sanctuary. Andar had claimed she had not spoken, only suffocated.

But did he lie?

Could she have spoken? Could Antala have broken the rules and tradition of ceremony to give her the wisdom she sought?

Yalira remembered the sounds, a relentless cacophony of suffering and dying.

She remembered the smothering taste of oleander.