15.2
Leo nearly had to bite his tongue as the High Priests of the Pantheon set to work. He’d been nervous to discuss these matters with them, to be overshadowed by the skill and experience of the highest regarded diviners in the known world.
But from the first words from their lips on the matter of his proposal to the manner in which they were going about their own ‘divine summoning’ his respect for the three men had plummeted.
He should have expected it honestly, it was not like Keeper Bitta did almost any of the actual ritual preparations herself in his time in the temple. Most of her work was in dealing with guests and the richer petitioners to the temple.
It was the apprentices and other priests and priestesses in the temple that actually laid out the foundations of rituals, prepared the offerings, did the preparatory rituals to gather prerequisite divine attention or navigated the precise scheduling against the zodiac charts for the ideal windows for a given invocation of the stars.
Still he had thought that the highest of the high in the hierarchy of the Temples of the Pantheon would be better.
Yet here he saw the three High Priests of the Pantheon’s most esteemed ranks standing and doing almost nothing as a swarm of lesser priests and acolytes prepared the place that had been occupied by the High King’s feasting table.
Braziers were gathered, the scent of brimstone rose from the circles of carefully prepared salts, lines of white being gently and precisely sifted into place. Wreaths of Ashpodal, Mint, Lemon and glistening red bulbs of what he thought might be those dacian pomegranates were laid out awaiting the star’s torch.
He kept his face flat and still despite the fury that was rising in him watching the fifty different diviners and their acolytes set to motion with a clear and absolute precision for what he already could see was precisely the wrong sort of invocation.
There were no signs or preparation for a possession, no they were making ways towards a direct manifestation. Completely against every single record and note he had read or written regarding how gods interacted and engaged with the Lady Jewel.
Yes he’d made his own assumptions regarding direct manifestations to Jewel before but he’d since conferred with priests all over Viznove and beyond to correct that. But Leo was a Priest barely half a decade out of his apprenticeship!
Without Keeper Bitta’s assignment he should have been making his way as a journeyman diviner working in temples across the realm! It was, if not forgivable, at least understandable for him to have made such a mistake regarding his Lady’s peculiarities with the stars.
But the Council of the Zodiac’s members were supposed to be the greatest Diviners in the World!
And he was not alone in his judgement of them.
He could see a similarly blank face as his own upon the Archpriestess of Asherah. Devotees to singular gods were not necessarily as highly regarded as those that remained open to all the heavens. The limiting in scope and ability one paid to become sacred, owned by a singular god was often considered a lesser path.
But those that rose to the height of Archpriest, most favored of the property owned by a god? Closest to a divine and thus most intimately knowing of them? To dismiss such a perspective in the same breath as Leo had been?
That was arrogance beyond ken!
The preparations continued, and Leo felt a pit carving into his stomach, everything he had heard from the other Temples of the Realm, from the esteemed priests that had attended his Countess’ wedding to the humble temple workers in Valasect were unanimous about one fact.
Pure manifestations of the heavens couldn't see Jewel!
But the acolytes and lesser priests all moved with rigid dedication to the command of their High Priests. Three members of the Council of Zodiac had decreed an invocation of a god was to happen, and all the men and women under their command moved to that order.
It was a humbling sign of dedication. Not a grain of sand was out of place when the effort was done, not a single offering was any less than perfect. Seventeen diviners were set around the circle of invocation ready to begin, standing before each pillar of the chamber that had once been an Old Cantor Temple.
A structure not very different from Keeper Bitta’s own temple. But pristine where that one had been worn and overgrown by time.
It had been the work of an hour that had been as fascinating to behold coming together as it was distressing to know the entire effort would be doomed. Still as the three priests took up positions together at one end of the circle Leo found himself doubting.
Maybe he was wrong?
Maybe it was all a mistake made by every priest that had engaged with the heavens and Jewel?
Maybe the powers and knowledge granted by the highest rank of the Pantheon’s traditions could prove them all wrong. The thought curdled in his stomach making him worried he was going to heave up the overly rich food of the high king’s feast.
Father Evaristus took the lead in the ritual.
“Persephone, Daughter of Summer, Star of the dead, Mistress of souls. On my compacts to you and by your favor duly earned I call upon you to entreat with us in a matter of your charges.”
He spoke in the old cantor, not just in the words but in the rhythm, the cant as passed down through the temples of old.
Leo could hear the practice and assurance of decades, the exact stress and tension on every syllable. He was echoed by the other high priests in a round, with a final third echo taken up by the attending lesser diviners.
Each voice fell and rose with a precision that was humbling.
Nothing Keeper Bitta had ever led was so elegant, nothing Leo had witnessed had been uttered with such grace. His own rituals were rough and off-pattern compared to this, his improvisations wild fury compared to the way the words of the Pantheon’s diviners slid together with such purpose, it almost clicked like stone bricks into a seamless wall.
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The faces of the diviners he could see were stoic, flat and without a hint of fear or feeling.
The presence of a goddess was immediate, there was no fumbling nebulousness in the air that might leave any doubt of which star was descending to view them. From the south it came, assuming that the placement of the zodiatic pillars of the once temple were correct and they aligned with Bitta’s own temple as he’d been taught they should.
A horizon star, one which was lost to the night sky in this season by his guess.
That matched, Persephone was a queen of the underworld, she left the heavens for the deeps below the earth in winter.
From the depths of the earth he felt divinity manifest, a full embodying miracle, an absolute presence. He’d only witnessed Keeper Bitta call on Nerthus, but that was a goddess of harvests, chariots and fertility.
Persephone rose and Leo felt a cold wind flowing through him like his flesh was naught but air. His very soul trembling like a leaf on the verge of shedding in fall from the sheer presence of a queen of the dead. Her stature rose over the heads of all men present, toweringly tall, a form in black gowns so absolute it made his eyes cold to look upon it.
Her was a mask white as fresh snow, her hair as inky black as her clothing, framing that oval face like the star she was come down from the heavens, or in her case, rose up from the underworld.
There was no crown or circlet upon her brow, but the very presence of that face, as the eyes opened and revealed a darkness so absolute it forced Leo to turn away left no doubt in his mind.
This was Persephone, a queen of the underworld, a keeper of dead souls.
“Whomst dares to treat with me?”
The voice was the sound of the last breath going out, it was rich and elegant and almost motherly, like Keeper Bitta grown so vast and overwhelming as to be unfathomable, but it also rumbled with the hitches and clicks of dying men and women.
A rattle, a sigh, a final exhalation made into words.
“I have called you, daughter of summer, queen of dead.”
Father Evaristus did not even flinch in the wake of that voice, he did not turn from the gaze of absolute emptiness that fell upon him, he looked up into a face that made Leo’s heart feel like ice was closing around it without any sign of dread.
“Hail Persephone, Mistress of Souls, Keeper of the Dead.”
The other diviners in the ritual took up a chant to counterpoint their leading priest. But the other two council members remained silent observers now.
“Who dares to speak with me?”
The face of the goddess was placid, pure white, with lips the color of frozen corpse flesh.
“I call you forth to act as guide and guardian as Mistress of Souls, so we may converse with a soul recently passed from mortal life.”
High Priest Evaristus spoke alone then.
The two other high priests remained silent, moving back a single step, taking up the position of watcher, observers, interceders if needed. Involved only at the start to place themselves as parties with weight, it was a beautifully orchestrated ritual and Leo could not fault the craft, or the stillness they now held.
Not even the highly skilled diviners following Father Evaristus in this invocation were managing that level of stillness of body and face.
“Which soul in my care do you seek?”
Persephone did not kneel, but her posture leaned over the High Priests, the lips still placid, but brow now stern. Leo could still not even look at those eyes without feeling his lungs struggle for air and his heart start to thunder in terror.
“We seek the soul of Jonathan the Third of House Rochford, Once Baron of Rochford, Father of Alexander the Second of House Rochford”
Father Evaristus might as well have been a statue for how much he was bothered by Persephone’s presence, his voice was smooth, his words precise, but there was not a hint of trepidation or terror even as he looked up to the goddess and met her gaze head on. All of his attention solely on that pale white disk.
Persephone did not speak, in answer a delicate white hand, palm wider than Leo’s chest emerged from the blackness below her face. Delicate white fingers thicker than his thighs with nails the same blue he’d seen in the River Vah’s frozen surface, closed gently around something bright and shining.
The fingers unfurled, and the light flared bright.
Leo had to squint, though he dared not move to shield his gaze. He just barely saw and heard the motion of the High King and the Countess’ Husband flinch back more overtly.
And then there standing upon the Goddess’ palm was the late Lord Rochford.
His skin as pale white as Persephone, but whole and standing in a strange black leather outfit that tickled Leo's memory.
He heard a gasp from beside him as the Countess consort caught proper eyes on the man. The figure of the Goddess of the dead finally stooped, lowering herself into a crouch before the High Priests of the Pantheon, giving the Late Baron of Rochford a journey of a single step to descend from her palm to the marbled stone of the feasting hall.
The Count Consort’s whisper was stark in the quiet that had descended.
“Lord Rochford?”
Leo had barely met the man himself, but he was left rooted in shock and a slowly growing shamed relief in his heart. He’d been wrong, he’d been entirely wrong about the gods, jealous and spiteful and foolish.
The High Priests of the Pantheon had been right, standing before them was the truth.
When invoking contact with the dead the most Leo had ever witnessed was a voice in the dark, a face in the fire, or perhaps a shadow cast against a wall of the spirit contacted. It was enough for most people’s needs to reconcile with their lost loved ones.
But Father Evaristus had called upon the manifestation of a goddess, and here before them solid as living flesh was the very soul of the man asked for.
Undeniably present.
The dead soul of Lord Rochford turned towards his daughter’s husband, a pained smile rising over his features from the flatness that had been there before.
“Paul... Tell my daughter to not hold herself responsible for my death.”
Leo had heard that voice before, a sound and timbre vaguely familiar, but then he found his lips wanting to frown against his discipline as a diviner.
Why was Lord Rochford saying that when his daughter was right there beside them? Why did her father look right past the immensity of Jewel to single out her husband? Before the thought could settle the voice of the wyrm rumbled into the air, the sound itself making the figure of the dead man and goddess alike ripple as if reflections in disturbed water.
“I don’t know what all of you are seeing or hearing, but there is nothing here but the sparse cut of miracles and the glancing attention of the stars.”
Oh!
Leo actually sighed with that! His composure as a diviner and trained priest was briefly broken.
So, he wasn't wrong after all.