The Roses of Airon Read online



  The Roses of Airon by Casia Schreyer

  Dedicated to

  My grandmother, her sisters, and her sister-in-law: Thea, Maria, Yvonne, and Betty.

  The world was changing. More and more people were coming over the Narrow Water to the Island. They were different, these people. They did not worship Airon, the god of the sun. They were not blessed by any of the five great spirits of the world. Aden, the High Priest of Airon, did not like these changes and so he called the five kings of the Island together for the first Great Council in two hundred years.

  The council was held in the Great Temple of the Sun near the heart of the Isle of Light. The five kings, King Adam of the Stone Clan, King Kenneth of the Metal Kin, King Gavin of the Animal People, King Florence of the Ever Growth, and King Celio of the Sun Temple, along with their wives and their five adolescent daughters gathered in the temple before the Altar of the Sun.

  “Thank-you all for coming,” said Aden once the traditional prayers had been said. “Arrangements have been made to make the ladies more comfortable while we discuss the problem plaguing our lands. Queen Sera will lead the way. I believe there are refreshments in the garden, as well as musicians.”

  The ten women filed out leaving the men to their politics. The garden was in full bloom and alive with vivid colours and smells. Birds sang in the ornamental trees and tall hedges provided shade in the small flagstone courtyard. In one corner a table had been set with delicate sandwiches and sliced vegetables, in the other corner stood four young men with instruments. As the ladies entered they struck up a soft but cheerful tune.

  Lady Sera, the Queen of the Sun Temple, watched her guests with distress. They had helped themselves to food and found shady seats but they were seated mother with daughter, each pair separate and not looking at the others.

  Sera nudged her daughter, the Princess Vonica. “You should go speak with the other princesses.”

  “I don’t want anything to do with them. They follow other Spirits besides the Great Airon.” She shook back a wave of sun-blonde hair. “I don’t like them.”

  “You’ve never met them, and they’ve never met you. Someday the five of you will be ruling together. You must learn to get along.”

  “We don’t need them.”

  “Vonica, you are the hostess. You must learn to entertain guests, even guests you don’t think you like. Now go. Take them on a tour and get them talking.”

  Vonica crinkled her nose and paused to smooth her skirts before making her way to the first pair of guests. Princess Rheeya of the Stone Clan sat near the garden wall with her mother, Queen Georgia. Her dress was grey but finely embroidered, her hair was dark, and her shoulders were broad. Even with her fancy clothes and hair pin Vonica thought the other princess looked more like the peasants out in the fields than a member of a royal family. Still, she put on her polite smile and said, “Princess Rheeya, would you like to join me for a tour of the temple complex?”

  “I don’t know,” she replied, staring at her shoes.

  Her mother nudged her. “You should go. Many great masons and sculptors worked on the temple. Consider it part of your cultural education.”

  “Yes Mother.”

  Vonica smiled. “Let me just ask the others.” She made her way over to the next pair of guests who were seated by a flowering hedge. They were gently handling the blooms and talking softly. “Princess Betha, I am doing a tour of the temple complex, would you like to come?”

  “It’s so nice out here. I don’t really like being indoors,” said the willowy girl. Her lighter brown hair was tied back in a plain and practical braid.

  “That’s too bad …” Vonica started but Celyn, the Evergrowth queen cut in.

  “Now Betha, you can spare the time. Princess Vonica is being very kind, offering to take you on a tour. I’m sure you’ll find it interesting. It will be rare that you get to return to the Great Temple.”

  “Yes, of course Mother,” Betha replied.

  Vonica’s cheeks were starting to hurt from smiling. “We’ll begin shortly.” She moved on.

  The next princess at least looked like a princess. Her silky black hair was adorned with a jewelled hair clip and her dress was trimmed with cloth-of-gold. Her mother, Queen Orabel, was dressed all in cloth-of-gold and her hair, also a silky black, was twisted up with gold and jewelled pins. “Good afternoon Princess Ashlyn, you look lovely today.”

  Ashlyn smiled back but Vonica could see the same forced tightness that she felt in her own cheeks. “Thank-you, Princess Vonica. You look, er, lovely too.”

  Vonica’s mother always said the Metalkin were a vain clan and Vonica could hear the haughtiness in the other girl’s voice. “I’m leading a tour of the temple complex and I hoped you would join us.”

  Ashlyn feigned a yawn, covering it daintily with her hand. “There’s nothing else to do so I guess I might as well.”

  “We’ll meet by the archway in just a moment.”

  Vonica made her way to the final princess, Taeya of the Animal People. Like Rheeya, Taeya didn’t look much the part of a princess but the soft leather cincher she wore over her dress was exquisitely worked with finely detailed horses. “Princess Taeya, would you care to join us for a tour of the temples?”

  Taeya smiled. “I would love to. I am so tired of just standing around.”

  Vonica fought not to roll her eyes. “If you’d come with me?” Vonica led the way to the arch that led into the gardens. The other girls made their way over, eyeing each other with open curiosity. Vonica could see her mother rounding up the queens, starting with Taeya’s mother, Queen Karnia. “You’ve already seen the Great Temple of Airon,” Vonica said, “So why don’t we start in the scholarly wing?”

  She caught Ashlyn’s eye-roll but smiled and led the way down one of the many winding garden paths.

  The scholarly wing housed the library, the scholars’ dorms, and the professors’ dorms as well as classrooms and study halls.

  “This is the heart of our people,” Vonica said proudly as they stood in the foyer of the library. “It was the Spirits of Knowledge who favoured our people and we are proud to store the knowledge, history, and legends of all the provinces here.”

  Vonica expected the other girls to marvel at the sheer size of the room and the shelves that stretched, row after row, from one end of the great room to the other. The shelves stretched to the height of four men and nearly every one of them was full from top to bottom and from end to end.

  Rheeya wasn’t looking at the books at all; she was studying the pillars on either side of the doorway. The Stone Clan Princess’s fingers traced the carved vines as high as she could reach. The other three girls just looked bored.

  Vonica forced a diplomatic smile. “Moving on, you can see that the scholarly wing connects to the central temple building through there.” As she walked through the foyer she gestured to a set of wide doors further down a side hallway. “The dorms are through there,” she gestured down another side hallway, “The scholars’ on the lower levels and the professors’ on the upper levels. And this last hallway leads to the classrooms, conference rooms, and the illuminators’ workrooms.”

  The only indication Vonica had that the other princesses were still following her was the sound of their shoes on the stone. There were no gasps of amazement at the vaulted ceilings or the books or anything that Vonica’s suitors had found so fascinating when she gave them the same tour. Occasionally she’d hear a sigh and then a set of hurried steps as Rheeya scampered to catch up, a sign the Stone Princess was lingering over the pillars that lined the room.

  Vonica led the way through an ornate set of doors and down a wide set of steps. “Through here is the Chapel of the Guardians where we house the shrines to
the Spirit Guides from all five provinces.”

  The girls spread out around the room, each drawn to their own shrine.

  “Pilgrims who come to seek out the wisdom of Airon at the High Temple stop here to make offerings to their Spirit Guides,” Vonica explained.

  Before each shrine was a large altar and each altar was piled with gifts: pottery and pretty stones on the Stone Clan altar; hawk feathers, braids of horse hair, and smoked meats on the Animal People’s altar; fresh and dried flowers, shafts of wheat, and a bowl of fruits on the Evergrowth’s altar, books and scrolls on the Sun Temple’s altar, and fist sized chunks of iron ore, jewelry, gold coins, knives, and shields on the Metal Kin’s altar.

  Ashlyn flipped her hair back over her shoulder with a haughty shake of her head. “It certainly shows you where the true wealth of the Island lies.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Vonica snapped.

  “Just look at what our people have to offer compared to the rest of you,” Ashlyn replied.

  Rheeya was poking around the Metal Kin offer and came up with a dusty iron horse shoe. “Yes, because farm implements are so glamourous.”

  Taeya snickered as Ashlyn went red in the face.

  “Knowledge is just as important as wealth. Without the knowledge of my people the whole Island would be doomed to these strangers,” Vonica said.

  Betha