ake up, you fool,” said a familiar voice followed by a playful nudge.

“Radha?”

“Who else?” she taunted, “You’re already forgetting me.”

“I’ve missed you,” she sighed and she rose from the blanket she had set out on the grass and the two of them embraced. Maeve never wanted to let her go and when their minds met she was awash with joy and laughed through her tears. Once a month when the sun and moon shared the noon sky, the two of them were allowed to meet, sometimes spending the day making music or merely talking in the garden.

“I’ve missed you, too,” Radha said. The two of them sat down in the shade, a small relief from the sultry heat of early summer. The high walls of the sacred garden shielded them from the eyes of the uninitiated. While the rest of the temple bustled with visitors, it was peaceful here.

“How have you been?” Maeve asked, although she had no reason to fear for her sister. Neither of them wanted for anything and they were accorded the highest respect and kindness.

“It’s alright, I guess,” Radha sighed, “but I am alone a lot. And you? Still getting to play all day?”

Maeve frowned, sensing her sister’s jealousy. It seemed neither of them was enjoying their lives now that the carefree time of childhood was behind them. Still, at least Radha had a higher purpose. Maeve felt aimless and frustrated much of the time. Her sole source of amusement was sneaking off to watch boys and the few times she had been caught it was even more frustrating to discover none of the Cantors seemed very troubled.

“What are you doing now?” Radha asked even though the question was awkward. Her twin liked to pretend that they were equals when the holy people clearly saw it otherwise. Maeve blushed and looked away.

“In the morning I learn sacred songs and the harp. In the afternoon, I learn court etiquette and Canthan. In the evening I am bathed and there are more lessons.”

“I wish my day were that interesting,” Radha grumbled, “I get to dream and meditate until my butt falls asleep.”

Maeve chuckled and they held one another again, glad simply to be close.

“I’ve always been jealous of you,” Maeve confided.

Radha snorted and giggled.

“Whatever for? You get to have fun. They’ve always let you do whatever you pleased.”

Maeve frowned, wondering what Radha was on about.

“Remember that day we sneaked down to see those boys?”

Maeve shrugged, she only remembered her sister coming with her once and they had both been caught. As always, Maeve had been locked in the room of lamentations for an hour of isolation in which to contemplate her naughtiness. It was a small price to pay given she could just nap on the plush cushions strewn about the floor. It had never occurred to her that Radha had been treated differently.

“What happened?”

“Vivane told me that if the boys had gazed upon us unmasked, it would have been my duty to put out their eyes. She made me perform some cleansing ritual and then she had some woman put a horrible hex on me that made me think my eyes had been clawed out. It gave me nightmares for weeks.”

Maeve was puzzled by this revelation. It certainly explained why Radha refused to join her on some of her escapades.

“Have they ever told you that if you kissed a boy he would burn up and die?”

Maeve stared at Radha in bewilderment.

“No… In my evening lessons I have learned that there are eight places where it is a joy to be kissed,” Maeve mumbled, blushing painfully, “The boy I kissed didn’t die.”

“You kissed a boy? You’re insufferable,” Radha complained, “If I so much as think about boys I get screeched at for losing my focus. You’re so lucky.”

Maeve lowered her face, ashamed that she was happy that just for once she had it better than Radha. She had always envied her for all the special attention. Then she sighed, feeling her sister’s misery as if it were her own. The bell tower’s plangent tones rolled over the temple grounds. Soon it would be time for the midday meal followed by two hours of meditation or rest. Even the animals were put away in their stalls to enjoy a respite from labor in the sticky heat.

“I have to go,” Radha said and they hugged for a final time before her twin hurried away as if afraid she would be caught. Maeve sat there for a moment longer considering what her sister had told her. Up until now she had always been secretive in her visits to the places where she could gaze upon boys unobserved. While no one had warned her that people would lose their eyes if she were seen unveiled, she had somehow figured out that only those specially anointed and selected by the priesthood could do so without repercussion.

She tarried a while longer in the garden until she grew bored. It was a day of rest and contemplation, but she sensed this was more for the convenience of the temple than for sacred reasons. When the moon was new, the temple threw open its gates to bless new endeavors. In the summer this was often in the form of wedding engagements and other love vows. Now that her nation was at war, it meant guild leaders and nobles seeking luck on the field of battle. Danger increased devotion, as Cantor Imbril was fond of saying.

Maeve headed to a secluded corner of the parapet that surrounded the temple’s inner sanctum on the off chance that her favorite young man would be practicing his pipes away from the bustle of the temple grounds. Now that he wore the bright robes of a newly initiated Cantor, she saw less of him. She was in luck that day for she heard his voice as she reached the top of the stairs and glanced over the lip of the low wall.

The young blonde boy that traveled with the circus was with him. He had grown since the last time she had seen him but his frame was still willowy and graceful. The two of them were arguing about something, although it was difficult to tell if it was adolescent hassling or something deeper. It was obvious by the way Mog kept scanning the secluded area that he was worried about being seen away from his normal duties. Maeve sank down behind the low wall and rested against the cool stone to listen.

“Stop making stuff up, Army, I never said that.”

“Did too.”

“Did not.”

“Why are you bothering me? I thought you had something important to tell me.”

“I did but you’re being a yak’s rump about it.”

“I don’t care what my parents do, and if they wanted to tell me they would write.”

“Belenus told me your father wrote you out of the will.”

“I don’t care, and you know my brother is nothing but a troublemaker and a cheat. I’ll run away with the circus before I go back to them.”

The blonde boy snorted.

“I don’t think anyone would pay to see you mope around.”

“Shut up!”

“I guess I could ask my mom if you could leave with us. I still don’t get why they want you to leave.”

“They don’t want me to leave, they want me to go to Nolani.”

The blonde boy shrugged.

“Sounds boring.”

“I’m not going. My father would never pay for it and… I’d rather stay here.”

“Maybe you could do the noisiest man sideshow with your pipes,” the boy teased, grinning.

“I have to go,” Mog said bitterly, “I was stupid to expect any sympathy from you.”

The boy looked stricken as Mog stalked away from him.

“I’ll ask my parents. I’m sure they’d let you come with us. My mom thinks you poop rainbows and flowers as it is.”

Mog stopped and glanced back at the boy and chuckled.

“Thanks.”

“Put in a good word with Lyssa for me!”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to let her know what a scoundrel you’re turning out to be.”

Maeve peered over the low hall to see the golden haired boy laugh and turn a cartwheel before scampering back to a distant cluster of wagons and caravans. A pang of longing blossomed unexpectedly within her. What lay beyond the shelter of these walls, she wondered. There was an entire world she had never seen and would never see now that she and her sister had accepted their vows to remain as the temple’s Lyssae. She imagined what it would be like inside one of those colorful caravans and her thoughts strayed to Mog leaving her behind.

His name is Armand. That’s the man who lives with Mog in the cottage next door. He went with the others back to the island..

Maeve shuddered, the distant past fading away before the vulgar darkness of a strange place. The air bore the overpowering reek of putrid flesh and filth. Others lay near her, she could feel their terror and despair pounding against her delicate senses. Her body struggled to rise in a spasm of animal fear and failed miserably.

“Mog!” she cried without thinking, his name bursting like a sob from her throat. The part of her that had loved him was frantic, afraid that she had lost him again after all these years.

“Maeve, is that you?” croaked a gruff dwarven voice. The last moments of the battle returned to her and she remembered the dwarves battling the Dryders beside them.

“Yes, Ryllan. Are the others here?”

“Kantah is in a bad way. I know they took Hrul but he has not responded to me. I don’t think he’s here.”

Typical dwarf to sound so calm in a terrible situation. A ghostly blue light shafted through the thick ice walls. Pale webbing and bone fragments resolved from the acrid gloom. She had been suspended against a wall ten paces above the thickly littered floor. Her body was immobilized by thick sheets and coils of fibrous silk. She was warm within the thick wrapping even as the biting chill of the ice cave cased her breath to curl in the air before her face.

Gazing down, she saw the floor was nearly entirely covered in what at first glance appeared to be guano and certainly smelled as strongly. Gradually it resolved into the shapes of skulls and bones held together by mats of silk and blackened freeze-dried flesh. Discarded husks of blood-drained corpses were mounded in the tangle of offal. Panic roiled her stunned calm and she bucked and heaved against her bonds. Her breath curled around her in frightened gouts.

“Mog?” she called, searching the shadows for him. Had the dryders already devoured him? Maeve had no idea how long she had been unconscious. It might have been hours, even days.

“I think the dryders are sleeping off the feast they made of our animals,” said Ryllan gloomily, “I don’t know how often they eat, but they haven’t been back since they made us comfortable in their larder.”

She followed the sound of the dwarf’s gruff voice and squinted, realizing that there were several pods of silk dangling by wrist-thick lines of silk from the ceiling. His voice was coming from one of them.

“Did they poison you?”

“It would take a bit more than weak dryder venom to put a dwarf out,” Ryllan replied, “I hope I don’t live to regret that, or at least not for very long.”

Maeve heard a faint groan above her and an oblong silk-encased form stirred. It was the young ranger women, Matilde. She was suspended by a tangle of thick strands from the domed arc of the ice cave’s ceiling. Ice gleamed through the sheets of web that spanned the cave’s natural vaults and whorls of ice. There were other shapes tangled amid those layers. If Mog was among them, he was unconscious. She could not find his mental imprint among the teeming mental chatter of her frightened comrades.

“Enfys!” Matilde cried into the darkness, her panic bringing tears to Maeve’s eyes. Despair weighed heavily upon them all. Though no one said it, they all knew they were doomed if someone did not come looking for them soon.