The Wings of Ashtaroth

Chapter 5: Mazna: Section V: Iridescia

Iridescia: Indas: Ipsis: Adonen's Temple

"A young girl should know better than to ask such things," signed the young Ashqen of Adonen.

Despite his protest, he handed Iridescia the scroll case. She smiled at him, reaching inside the dusty canister to remove its contents and lay them out on the table in front of her. The light from the tall square windows shone bright across the papyri, the tables in the library at the temple of Adonen arranged to catch the light throughout the day and diminish the need for papyrus-destroying fire within its walls. The tables stretched on and on, as though an army of Ashenqa might descend upon it to study ancient texts, but Iridescia was alone save for a cougher in the far distance.

She licked her lip, frowning at the papyri before her. The Onion Lady had told her she could learn about the shadows in the Haven from the Great Buqqus's writings, and if Iridescia learned about the shadows, she'd know whether she could trust their promise to help her defeat Star and Hadrianus. She could put an end to the arrests and save Tobi and his family.

The Ashqen grumbled to himself as he ambled away down the line of mostly empty tables, and Iridescia smiled to herself. His name was Buqqus, like all priests of Adonen. When Adonen's acolytes underwent the ceremony representing their rise to Ashqen, they took the name Buqqus in honour of the Great Buqqus, who had wandered the country converting its lowly tribesmen from heathen paganism.

Ashenqa could be funny sometimes, but she did like them. And they knew her hand signs and could talk to her, thinking her good luck. In the past, Miqipsi had told her, children like Iridescia had been granted magical powers and could commune with the gods. Nowadays the Buqquses of Adonen's temples claimed not to believe such things, which was all for the better, since Iridescia did have magical powers, or magical something at least, and she had a feeling today's Ashenqa wouldn't like it so well as they had before Melqan's conversion.

Surely only cursed girls talked to ghosts.

When Iridescia came here, she usually asked for fables, and her request to see Buqqus's accounts of his travels in southern Indas had raised eyebrows. The eyebrows had raised even higher when she'd told him she wanted to learn about his conversion of southern Indas. The old ways weren't spoken of much, mythologies rich with meaning relegated to hollow, childish stories. West of the Waoidat lay the lands of the dead, and into them Buqqus had travelled like a sacrifice sent out to Hazzan.

In the old tales, the gods married and killed one another and raped each other's sons and rewarded the devout with kingdoms and treasure. The wildest, nastiest, scariest stories came from beyond the mountains and in the deep desert beyond Indas's cities. It was to these places that Buqqus had been sent by the heq-Ashqen, a minor priest ordered to deal with the problem of Indas's wayward tribesmen. The way the Ashenqa told it, Buqqus had dealt with more than unfaithful, violent chieftains; he had come face to face with the demons themselves, spirits of the dead conjured through dark, exotic magics, there to harry him on his quest.

Iridescia shuddered thinking about the horned god, and whispered a prayer to Adonen. In the stuffiness and solitude of the archives, it felt as though Hazzan himself might jump out from beneath a table, or that she might spy his glowing goaty eyes peering at her from the shelves of scrolls further back. She shifted into a better reading position, drawing inward as though if she were smaller, Hazzan might not bother with her.

A pigeon cooed just outside one of the high windows, and Iridescia turned toward it. It was a warm, sunny day, and there should have been lots of time to read, but Miqipsi had walked her here, with the promise of returning once he was done with his errands nearby. She didn't have long.