Chapter 44: The Silent Sisters

Kai didn’t sleep at all that night, because every time he shut his eyes, he could feel the Lady of the Silver Moon weeping somewhere above the city, and it didn’t stop until the moon finally set below the horizon.

By morning, he looked so wretched that Hale’s cook felt sorry for him and gave him an extra piece of bread without even glaring at his vest.

[You look like a dead fish]

"Thank you," Kai whispered.

[That was not a compliment. You are also still at 4 divinity points, and there are eight days until the Conclave. I thought you would like to know]

"No, I really wouldn’t," Kai whispered.

Mira took a seat across from him at the table, and she took one glance at the dark circles under his eyes before quietly sliding her own cup of tea over to him without a word.

The Temple of the Silver Moon stood at the top of the eastern hill, in the oldest part of the city, where the streets were so narrow and the buildings so tall that the homes on either side nearly touched at the top. The temple itself was a tall white tower with no windows at all on its lower floors, only a single round window at the very top facing up at the sky, and its silver doors were sealed so tightly that there wasn’t even a crack between them.

Kai had brought Mira, Elowen, Sunny and Princess Seris with him, while Garrick had gone to the Forge District to help Brannoch fix the hollow hammer. Before he left, he had told Kai to send word if anybody needed him to punch a moon priestess.

"I don’t think we’re going to punch a moon priestess," Kai had said.

"You say that now," Garrick had said.

As soon as Kai knocked on the silver doors, they swung open, as if someone had been standing right behind them waiting. A woman in a long gray robe stood in the doorway with a silver veil covering her entire face, so that only the faint outline of her features could be seen through it. She didn’t speak, and instead, she pulled out a small slate and a piece of chalk and began to write.

THE LADY DOES NOT RECEIVE FALSE GODS.

"I’m not here to be received," Kai said. "I’m here because your goddess has been crying all night, and I couldn’t sleep."

The priestess went rigid, and the chalk slipped from her fingers and fell to the ground between them.

Elowen stepped forward and turned her blindfolded face towards the veiled woman, and her voice dropped low.

"Her light is very dim," Elowen said quietly. "Dimmer than I have ever seen in a priestess, like a candle that has nearly burned down to nothing."

The priestess picked up her chalk with shaking hands, wiped the slate clean with her sleeve, and wrote a single word.

HOW?

"I bought a skill that lets me hear gods, if they’re talking," Kai said. "Yours is talking. She just isn’t using words."

The priestess studied him through her veil for a long moment, and then she stepped aside and held the door open to let them in.

The inside of the temple was one enormous round room that rose all the way up to the window at the top, and a single beam of light shone down through it and landed on a wide pool of still water in the middle of the floor. Silver lanterns hung from chains along the walls, and seated around the edge of the pool were at least twenty women in gray robes and silver veils, sitting on the stone floor in complete silence.

Not one of them made a sound, not even a cough or a whisper, and the silence in the room was so heavy that Kai could hear his own heartbeat.

[It is very quiet in here]

"I noticed," Kai whispered, and every veiled head in the room turned towards him at once.

An older woman rose from the edge of the pool and walked towards them. She was wearing a white robe instead of a gray one, and her silver veil was trimmed with tiny stars. She stopped in front of Kai, took the slate from the first priestess, and wrote on it in small, sharp letters.

I AM THE HIGH SISTER. WHAT DOES SHE SAY?

"She isn’t saying anything," Kai said. "She’s just crying. It started last night when the moon rose, and it’s gotten quieter now that the sun is out, but it hasn’t stopped."

The High Sister wiped the slate and wrote on it again, and this time, her hand was shaking.

THE LADY CHOSE SILENCE. SO WE CHOSE SILENCE WITH HER.

"When?" Princess Seris asked, opening her notebook.

The High Sister hesitated for a long moment before writing two more words, and the moment Kai read them, his skin began to crawl.

FORTY YEARS.

Mira looked at Kai, and Kai looked at Elowen, and none of them needed to say anything, because they all knew exactly what it meant. They were remembering the High Priestess sitting in the tunnel under the arena, telling Kai that the Mother had not spoken to anyone in the Cathedral for forty years.

"How do you know she chose silence?" Elowen asked.

The High Sister wrote for a long time, filling the slate from top to bottom with words.

THE RADIANT CHURCH. THEIR HIGH PRIESTESS CAME TO US AND TOLD US THAT THE LADY HAD SPOKEN TO THE MOTHER, AND THAT SHE WANTED HER SISTERS TO STOP SINGING. SHE TOLD US IF ONE OF US EVER SPOKE, THE LADY’S LIGHT WOULD DIE.

"That wasn’t the current High Priestess," Kai said. "She would have been a child forty years ago."

THE PREVIOUS HIGH PRIESTESS, the High Sister wrote.

Elowen’s sword rested at her hip, and while she couldn’t question someone who didn’t speak, she didn’t have to, because everyone in the room could feel the truth sitting in the silence like a stone.

"You used to sing," Sunny said slowly, looking up at the beam of light falling through the window. "The moon hymns. My teachers spoke of them when I was a boy. They said the whole city could hear them on the night of the full moon."

The High Sister didn’t write anything in answer to that, but she lowered her head, and a single tear rolled down from beneath her veil and fell onto the slate, smearing the chalk.

[Kai, the crying is getting louder]

"I can hear it," Kai whispered.

Kai looked around the room at the silent sisters, and then up at the blank white walls, which were far too blank. There were no decorations anywhere, nothing but a single bronze plaque hanging on the wall across from the door with a crescent moon engraved on it.

He didn’t have a plan, but he had never had one to begin with, so he held up his hand and aimed at the pool of water in the center of the room.

"Minor Light," Kai said.

The orb flew from his hand and skimmed across the surface of the water, and then it turned sharply to the left and hit the plaque on the far wall with a loud clang. The plaque broke off the wall and crashed to the floor like a gong, and every sister in the room flinched.

Where the plaque had been hanging, a piece of white plaster had cracked and fallen away, revealing rows of words carved deep into the old stone wall beneath it.

Mira walked over to the wall and brushed the dust away with her fingers, and then she read the first line out loud.

"Sing to me when the night is long, and I will answer with my light," Mira read.

"It is a hymn," Princess Seris whispered. "They plastered over it."

The High Sister walked towards the wall as if she was sleepwalking and placed her hand flat against the carved words. Then she turned to face Kai and slowly shook her head, because even now, she was still too afraid to speak.

[She thinks that if she speaks, the Lady will die]

"And the Lady is crying because no one does," Kai whispered.

Then one of the younger sisters stood up from the edge of the pool. She was no older than sixteen, and she was shaking as she reached up and removed the veil from her face. She had silver-gray eyes and freckles across her nose, and she looked terrified, but she didn’t sit back down. She looked straight at the words on the wall, and her lips moved silently over the first line, as if she was learning it by heart.

The High Sister reached out to stop her, and the whole room held its breath. The girl opened her mouth, and for the first time in forty years, a sister was about to speak inside the Temple of the Silver Moon.