Aisha ran until exhaustion forced her to stop. She leaned against the rock wall and put the lamp down on the floor, keeping herself and the treasures she brought with her in its small circle of light. The flame fluttered, bending back towards the footprints she left behind in the thick dust.
Someone could follow me if they knew where to start looking. This is a fool's errand, running off alone into the dark. But who would tell them? And who would look for me? They don't know who I really am. They think I am a poor orphan, taken in by the grace of Holy Mother. To them I am the librarian, the little bookmaker. No one will care I am gone, because I am unimportant.
Why would they bother to look for you?
She watched the flame dance in front of her for a moment, her eyes becoming heavy with exhaustion and grief. She jerked herself awake as the lamp's wick made a popping noise. How much oil do I have left? If the lamp ran out, she might never find a way out of the darkness. The catacombs were graves after all, and they would hold her bones just as they held those of her ancestors if she was not careful.
When I first came to the catacombs with Manah, he took a torch from the wall and used it to light the way. She looked to the right and left along the walls, seeing nothing but empty sconces where torches once were. Panic rose in her throat as she realized she did not remember anything from her mad dash through the catacombs.
She thought back to her first visit to the storeroom with Nasreen and their small feast with the Lord Prince, and the hopeful plans they laid for another life where they would raise Nasreen's baby far away from the Swarm and the horrors of the city. Grief rose up and joined the panic, blinding her with tears of frustration and anger.
"It's not supposed to be this way!" she screamed into the darkness, her voice echoing back to her. "I was supposed to be Queen, like my mother and her mother! I should not be fleeing through the bones of my ancestors! Nasreen should be with Takri and their baby! My mother should not be dead! My Papa should not be dead!"
Tears she had not allowed herself to cry at the loss of her mother and father flowed down her cheeks as she gave voice to the rage and fear and sadness of everything that had happened since the Locust King set his sights on Adyll. Here among the dead she could mourn in safety.
"What have we done, Goddess? What have we done that You would desert us when we needed You most? When the strigoi-viu came where were You?" The forbidden words fell from her lips, for the first time questioning what she was told about an all powerful Goddess. "A mother protects Her children! You brought us here to protect us, to keep us safe. And then You left your own daughter to fly away to the heavens. What mother leaves her children alone?"
The flame of her lamp leapt upward, sending off a cloud of black smoke and sparks as if in answer to her accusations. "You had no choice, did You? Just like my mother. She gave herself for us, and still I suffer, and her people starve."
She sat back on the floor and wept until she had no more tears. Wiping her eyes, she opened her bag of rations and took a drink from a water skin inside while she took a quick inventory of the items in the bag. Dried strips of meat, flatbread, a wedge of cheese wrapped in muslin, a container of dried fruit, some apples, a flint, and a small flask of oil she could use for the lamp.
She held the oil in her hand and took a deep, shuddering breath. It might be enough. But it might not. I am not going to chance dying in the dark far underground. I must go back and find the torches. Even if it means going all the way back to the storeroom.
"This is the last time I will come here." Aisha gathered her things back into the bag and followed her footprints back towards the storeroom. "I will see the city burnt it to the ground before I serve the Locusts or the Holy Mother again."
It did not take long to find the torches she sought lining the walls. She put as many as she could carry into her bag, shoving them on top of the other supplies with their ends protruding through the opening at the top of the sack. She lit another torch from the lamp, which she extinguished.
"At least I won't die in the dark now," she reassured herself before heading back down the way she had come.
She was far enough away from the temple the walls and floors no longer held neatly stacked and sorted bones in carved niches. These walls were rough hewn into the rock. Occasionally she passed a few more torches set into the walls, but they became fewer and father between the further she progressed. She continued to keep to the wall, determined to walk until she knew she was inside the relative safety of the cave system far beneath the city.
Her shoulders and back hurt from carrying the rations and scroll case, and she realized that months of steadily shrinking meals had left her weakened. Her life behind the walls of the palace did not lend itself to physical activity, but she was well fed and cared for, sleeping soundly knowing she was safe with her mother and father. She had not slept soundly since she learned of the fall of the Narim listening behind the council room door. In the weeks prior, she sat at her mother's side with the Council of Grandmothers as emissaries from beyond the desert begged for Adyll's assistance against the invading forces of the Swarm. Despite their please, they were all turned away empty handed. Adyll was protected by the Goddess, She had set them above other lands ruled by men. How could an army cross the great desert? The old women laughed behind their hands as the ambassadors recounted the atrocities committed by the strigoi-viu. Such things were old men's tales after all.
And then he came for them. And there was no one left to help.
The echo of water dripping broke the silence of the tunnels and brought Aisha out of her reverie. The walls around her bore fewer markings of the stonemason's axe, and droplets swirled in the air around her torch. Ahead of her, the passageway widened into a cavern larger than the entire temple complex. She realized she could see beyond the small circle of torchlight as she took her first step into the cave, and a wave of warm, moist air hit her. Below, a lake of steaming luminescence rippled under a ceiling of dripping stalactites. Manah showed her water like this once before in the cave below the temple where she chose the name she wore now. Aisha. Life and Hope.
The Holy Mother never wanted her to live up to this chosen name. She wanted to hide her and control her. Just as she had Aisha's own mother, Queen Mila. Aisha remembered the old woman's voice leading the call to banish the foreign ambassadors and her whispers in her mother's ear as they begged for help before the Council. How she told her mother to not listen to her own military advisors even as the Swarm advanced across the desert. The Lady will provide, not foolish men or their violent ways.
And then the news of the slaughter of the Narim and Irinya's shy betrothed. Just as well, said the Holy Mother. It is best she marry one of our own men. The Narim are half wild after all. No need to pollute your pure blood with that of a desert nomad.
Aisha took a step forward into the cave, her feet slipping on the damp rocks. She caught herself and tightened her grip on the sack of rations and the scroll case. A few minutes later she was standing on the shore of the glowing lake, surrounded by steam and the familiar sulfur smell of Adyll's hot springs. The lake stretched as far as she could see through the fog, bright yellow and green at the edges melting into deep blue and purple the deeper the water became.
A quiet sense of awe came over her, washing the dark memories back into the depths of her mind. From the corner of her eye, she saw the figure of a woman through the steam, and then another larger figure. The steam again closed in about her, obscuring her vision. She swallowed back her fear and stared again through the vapor. Surely, this was a trick of the light playing in the fog and rock. No one would be here in this long forgotten place.
Again, the figures swam into view. More than just the woman and her companion. Before Aisha could recognize the forms they were obscured again in the vapor. She waited, but they did not reappear.
It can't be real. They can't be real.
Silently, she picked up the bag of supplies and the scroll case and crept forward towards the figures, hiding behind towering stalagmites as she went. A few feet further, and the figures became clearer. Stone statues of a woman with a man behind her holding a small child. A few steps more and she could see the woman's broken wings on the floor before her, and the carved bas relief behind them showing eagles rising to the heaven with their mother's feathers in their talons. These were not the finely sculpted marble of the palace and temple above, but Aisha knew the story well enough to recognize them as the Lady with Her husband Thought holding their only surviving human child.
She scrambled forward, eager to see the images and feel their stone under her hands. This was a place older than the Temple, older than the palace, older that the city above. She imagined the hands that carved the images so long ago, the care and love taken in crafting them. The baby in Thought's arms reaching towards her broken Mother who had sacrificed everything for the life of Her child.
She did not notice the bag slipping from her shoulder as she reached out to touch the hand of the Goddess, or the torches she had so carefully gathered slipping free and rolling downhill into the steaming water below, barely making a sound as they sank beneath the glowing layer of silt into the lake.
