Reddit Stories 2019

Gods & Kings

The thin man led Yiwe down a darkened hall. Ghosts of the past stared at her in silent judgment. The paintings were all the same. Portraits of old men with white hair and stern faces. Though they were dead - days, decades, and centuries dead - Yiwe felt the cold unease creep up her spine.

She was like them, but not like them.

The religion was steeped in years of tradition. The wisdom of the elders guided the regent and kept him in line. Yiwe was young and common. She had lived in the temple as a servant. She was not born from nobility or honor and had spent more time with her nose to the ground than to the heavens. No one would have considered that she could not just step into line, but to the front of it. Certainly no one expected such a breach of tradition. She had meant only to move the blessing stone. She had not meant to do whatever she'd done.

Yiwe was different.

The ghosts on the walls did not like that.

The thin man lead her to a room considered by many of the regent's circle simple chambers. A plain bed with two pillows and red blankets rested against one wall. On the other sat a desk, shelves, and wardrobe, filled with books she could not read and robes she could not yet wear. The centerpiece of the room was the window, open to the city below. The room - Yiwe's room - was not the highest point in the tower, but it was the highest she had ever been.

"You understand your role?" the thin man asked, though it was not a question.

Yiwe nodded. The lump in her throat caught her voice. She had worked the temple long enough to know what happened to the others. She struggled with aspects of the Anullos tradition, but three new ghosts adorned the halls since she arrived at the temple doors. And now hers.

She understood what that meant.

"Good," the thin man said, though he clearly did not think so. He bowed to Yiwe, straining as he did so, either from the damage to his bones or his pride. Then, quickly, he left Yiwe alone.

At twelve, she was the first high priestess.

By sixteen, she survived the first attempt on her life.

It was late at night when the assassin crept through the window. He covered his face with a red headscarf and wore the phases of the moon on his breast. Had he been any later, he may have succeeded. But Yiwe was at the top of the tower, meeting with the boy who had not aged since she met him, and explaining her displeasure with the regent's latest war. The boy was a good listener who asked little of her, but demanded she see his wishes realized.

That was not always an easy task.

The assassin opened the door to see Yiwe alone on her knees with her eyes closed. He did not see the boy sitting on the pillows in front of her nor did he see the blade in her hand. There was no moon that night, so there was no glint as she turned with the knife.

In another life, Yiwe would have been disturbed as the blood poured from his throat only to be hidden by the red rugs. But this was her life and such events were expected. She was only relieved it had taken the regent so long to make his anger known. She would be more careful with voicing her concerns.

Yiwe thanked the boy.

"There will be no war," he said with a smile. "Tomorrow, the rains will come and the island will be separate once more. All I ask is that once the land is dry, you will turn east and deliver a message to my brother."

As dusk fell the next day, the advisors whispered in the regent's ear. Yiwe still lived in her tower and the landbridge to the mainland was closed once more. There would be no conquest.

For the next several years, Yiwe learned to balance her dual duties. She never asked anything greater of the boy in the room or the man on the throne than the end to that war. Separate from the world, the island prospered. Yiwe did not question the nobility as their estates grew quicker and larger than before or as alleged heirs disappeared.

For five years, there were beautiful sunsets and there was peace.

Eventually, as all old men do, the regent became another dead man on the wall. He stared at her as she passed through the darkened hall with his rival's son. Rhuul was a kind man who cared more for theater than metalwork. Though Yiwe told the boy upstairs she did not favor any of the thirty-three potentials, her affiliation was known among the mortals.

There were thirty-two attempts on her life in the year that followed the regent's death. Yiwe survived each on her own.

Rhuul was crowned unmarried, despite the wishes of the court and the tower. Even when Yiwe urged him to take a wife, stating that it was the wishes of the Anullos god, Rhuul refused. And though it angered the boy in the tower and the men in the court, Yiwe was pleased. Anullos tradition was clear on the nature of relationship, professional and personal, so Rhuul and Yiwe kept it secret.

But the court had ways of learning the truth. So did God.

The drought that followed was the worst Annullos had ever seen, far worse than the year of ten prophets, and the strained peace Rhuul stitched together was shattered. Anullos succumbed to a violence worse than when the regent died. Worse than when he marched to war. With few allies, Yiwe turned to the one constant.

The boy in the tower gave her the same cold stare she had seen from many before. "The bridge is open. You must go to my brother. The regent must stay."

The boy did not say what Rhuul's fate would be, but the moon was red that night. Yiwe understood what that meant. As the booming sound of men storming the gate grew louder, Yiwe made her decision. She passed by the faces of dead men in the darkened hall. There would be no war. The rains would come.

Yiwe placed the blessing stone on the red cloth in the statue's hands and joined Rhuul by the throne.

She, too, would be a ghost.