[Fic] "Finding Marea," part 1 -- original
The hard copy still hasn't reached Cat, but I am going to post this anyway, just so I can stop worrying about it. It's divided into three sections, with a separate post for an author's note. This is only because the story is 16,000+ words long, and wouldn't fit in one post; it's really a very long one-shot.
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Finding Marea: Truth and Change in the Circle of Kemar
Harai Inosikae
Sister of the Order of St. Allea, Convent of St. Ithigea
Associate Scholar, College of St. Larach
In the year of the Lord 1186
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"Listen, and I will tell you a story. Do not write the story. Writing will freeze it; writing will kill it. Everything always changes; what does not change is dead."
This is the way formal storytelling begins in the Circle of Kemar. The idea of a deliberately oral culture, in which perfect continuity with the past is regarded as dangerous and undesirable, was nearly unthinkable to me when I first encountered it. Decades later, I still find it difficult to understand why people willingly allow their past to distort.
And yet, the idea of change has a certain power and fascination. People change, the Circle says, and if stories did not change with us, they would no longer hold any meaning. They would not be the same stories. Change keeps them constant.
In one sense, this is true. It is, of course, also nonsense, and many storytellers acknowledge that not all changes are good or useful. Still, the Circle continues to tell stories, and the stories continue to change, subtly, inexorably, down the generations.
"A story is a way to say what can't be said in words alone," one woman told me many years ago. "How can you trap something that delicate in writing, without breath to give it life?" She may have had a point.
So. Here at the end of my life, I have something to say that cannot be said in words alone. Therefore, listen, and I will tell you a story. I write the story, so perhaps it is dead before you read the words, but it is my story and I will tell it as I see fit.
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Laila Tolemeus was born in the year 675, which adds to nine, the number of understanding and answers. It is also the number of endings. She was the daughter of Haramis Tolemeus, the provincial governor of Cesta in the Bannerry Hills, and was therefore of old patrician lineage, the kind of connection eagerly sought by the appointed officials of the Doran Empire. Haramis and his wife had six children; the first five were sons. After Laila was born they had no more children, having produced a daughter to care for them in their later years.
She was left to the care of tutors; they taught her to ride, to sew, to make music, and to manage a household. They also taught her to read, whereupon she taught herself history, literature, mathematics, and all branches of philosophy: natural science, politics, ethics, and theology. And she decided that, far from marrying, bearing children, and offering her husband's home to her father in his age, she would give her life to knowledge and to God.
It seemed to her an obvious decision. She was not beautiful, being short and sturdy with a long, narrow jaw, a slightly crooked nose, and a dour cast to her face. She found her suitors somewhat distressing, as they assumed her to be only too grateful for their attention and willing to set aside her life to obey their whims as the law of God. And she had no particular concern for her parents, since they had never shown much concern for her.
When he learned she had rejected the suit of Arrim Tasca, eldest son of Senator Aemon Tasca and a rising general in his own name, Haramis Tolemeus looked at his daughter with open eyes for the first time. He did not like what he saw. Laila was confined to her rooms until such time as she set aside her books and agreed to marriage. Her brothers and mother supported this decision, or remained silent.
After several months of isolation had failed to change his daughter's mind, Haramis removed her extensive book collection and threatened to burn one a day until she submitted. Eight books later, Laila agreed to consider offers of marriage if her father would let her visit a monastery to seek a blessing and to dispose of her library, which she no longer trusted in his hands.
Had she asked to visit a convent Haramis would, perhaps, have refused, but he could see no possible escape in a monastery. He agreed, and in the spring of the year 694 -- ten, the number of dominion -- Laila rode east from his seat in Gantheum to the abbey of St. Amil at the edge of the riverlands, accompanied by a maid, three legionnaires, and a small wagon heavy with books, which she hoped to preserve from any whims of her future husband.
She came back -- there was no getting around that -- but she left her books with the monks, who, grateful for the doubling of their library, agreed to hold and preserve even the interdicted works. Then Laila invited Arrim Tasca to Gantheum, apologized for spurning him, and asked him to re-extend his suit.
Their marriage was calm and unremarkable. Arrim spent his days with the southeastern legions, maintaining order in Rimaspa, pressuring the mountain kingdoms for tribute, and watching for Jenjani raids from across the Great Mother River. Laila maintained order in his household in Dora, overseeing the servants and hosting sumptuous dinners for generals, artists, politicians, and the favorites of the three emperors who ruled from the year 694 to the year 719. Arrim returned once a year to pay audience to the emperor and speak with his father. He rarely stayed more than a month.
Over the years, Laila bore two daughters and a son. They interrupted her scholarly habits even more than her duties as a general's wife, but they brought laughter into her life, and she became known among Doran aristocracy for the unusual time and attention she lavished on her children. She named her son Aemon, after his grandfather, and after one of the ten legendary kings of ancient Dora. She named her elder daughter Alaia, meaning 'God's love,' which was the name borne by Miria, Mother of God, before she was purified and chosen to bear the Lord. Laila named her second daughter Marea, meaning 'bitter,' which is also a name from the Holy Land, but one less auspicious in the Book of Days.
It is tempting to read a message into her daughters' names, but anyone who knew the truth is long dead.
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There have been three notable women named Marea. The first to bear the name was Mareah, daughter of Jachal of Zai Inonal. She was the second wife of Ahomaal, and was driven into the desert beyond Ezippah by Ifira, his first wife, who accused her of usurping Ahomaal's affection. The Book of Jisa tells that an angel guided Mareah through the wilderness to haven in the utmost east, where her daughter married a king and spread the word of God along the shores of the Broken Sea. But that book is apocryphal and the people of Tuvia in the east are pagans -- Jenjani sacrificers and Calaean symbolists. If they ever knew God, time has erased that knowledge.
The second to bear the name was Marea Imiret of Minrocheh. She was a harlot, afflicted with sores and a wasting sickness, who was kind to the Lord in his wandering years. She offered him water and shelter, thinking him a beggar with less than she herself had. He blessed her for her kindness, whereupon her disease left her. Thereafter she accompanied him on his travels and was said to be as close to him as his disciples. She wept at his funeral.
After the Resurrection, Marea vanishes from the Book of Days. The Book of Marea, which purports to chronicle her journeys bringing the Word to the people of Nalus, is both apocryphal and heretical. The Church teaches that Marea lived with Miria until the latter was taken living into heaven, after which Marea returned to Minrocheh where she lived as a nun, inspiring others to similar virtue and dedication. The convent of St. Marea still stands by the sea at Minrocheh.
The third to bear the name was Marea Shouja of Ochre Varos.
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When Alaia and Marea were married, and Aemon was newly installed as an officer in the legions, Laila Tolemeus Tasca visited each of her children one last time, and asked them not to look for her. She ordered her servants to keep the house ready for her husband's return and left a brief note on Arrim's pillow. She had gone to seek God, she said, and trusted he would be well and consider the children. She thanked him for twenty-five years of marriage -- seven, the number of change, shadowed by eleven for the unknown and the soul -- and wished him joy.
Arrim Tasca read the note a month later, shortly after the summer solstice in the year 719. He paid his respects to the emperor as quickly as possible and rode south to Gantheum to speak with his brother-in-law. Doranis Tolemeus sent legionnaires to the abbey of St. Amil, where Laila had left her books twenty-five years before, but she had come and gone and the monks refused the soldiers entrance.
So Laila Tolemeus passed from the records of the Empire and the Church, and into the hands of the Circle of Kemar.
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The Circle of Kemar, vulgarly known as the Horse-cult, appeared during the second century of our Lord and is in many ways a violent rejection of the Church's moral and cultural philosophy. However, the Circle also appropriates and twists much of the Church's theology, and has a similar evangelical bent.
Though Circle members claim to be the heirs of a much older tradition, reputable scholarship places the Circle's birth in Rimaspa and the southwestern reaches of Jana, where the bloody rites of the Jenjani sacrificers mingled with the theology of the Church and the contemplative, goddess-oriented paganism of the mountain peoples. While the Circle incorporates elements from all three of its parent religions, it is a radical enough departure from all of them, and so distinctive in its teachings and practices, that any claims of a more ancient origin can be disregarded.
The first fundamental teaching of the Circle is the goddess Kemar, Mother of Horses, Lady of the Corn. The second fundamental teaching is sacrifice. The third fundamental teaching is the circle.
Kemar herself seems easy enough to understand -- a variation of both the earth-mother goddess of the southern pagans, and of the savior figures from the mystery-cult traditions that flourished along the Great Mother River from Rimaspa to Minrocheh. She takes the place of God as the creator, and of the Lord and Miria as a comfort to the wretched and afflicted. Like the earth and natural cycles she represents, she does not judge. She simply provides the gift of life, and gathers souls into her embrace after their deaths.
Sacrifice, as understood by the Circle, must be voluntary. It has two forms: sacrifice that lends weight to prayers and rites, and sacrifice that preemptively detaches a person's emotions from the worldly things time will inevitably carry away. Sacrifice reminds practitioners of the world's impermanence, and of their inability to halt the cycle of time. Of sacrifices, the highest is the sacrifice of a life. Of lives, the ones with most weight are human.
The Circle has not officially sanctioned human sacrifice since the Emperor Aratis IV issued the Decree of Toleration in the year 787 -- four, the number that signifies the world. Nevertheless, rumors persist, and numerous religious riots have started over the suspicious suicides of Circle converts.
The concept of the circle may be unique to Kemar's tradition. In many religions, the circle symbolizes the world, or continuity. In the Circle of Kemar, the circle also symbolizes change. Though a finger moved in a circle returns to a similar position, it does not return to the original position. Time has passed. The sun has moved in the sky. The world has shifted. Therefore, the circle is a gyre. But, say Circle members, in time even spirals curve and return to the source. The end is the beginning, and time turns again.
The Circle of Kemar believes life passes through endless cycles; the world treads a circle with new variations each year, and souls pass from life to death to life in an endless dance. Like life, truth also cycles and changes. To define an absolute, singular truth is to stop the circle, deny the possibility of change. And what does not change is dead.
Change is, perhaps, the heart of the Circle.
But theology plays a limited role in the everyday life of Circle members. The Circle of Kemar is above all a participatory religion, creating a close-knit community of worshippers. This sense of community has been fostered by the centuries the Circle spent underground, suppressed by the Church, by the Empire, and by the rulers of many border kingdoms, until the Decree of Toleration. The stories of those years, of that persecution, bind the Circle together, much as the Book of Days, and the history of the apostles and martyrs, bind the Church.
The Circle of Kemar is built on stories.
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The heart of the Church lies in three cities: Dora, capitol of the Empire and seat of the High Archbishop; Ezippah, where the Lord died for our sins; and Kos, home of the College of St. Larach and the most eminent theologians. The convent of St. Ithigea, while largely dedicated to charity and ministry to the poor of the city, allows nuns to study and teach at the neighboring college, under the supervision of the abbess, the deans, and the Archbishop of Kos.
When I began to study the Circle of Kemar, I was fresh from my novitiate and proud of my admission to the college. I chose to study the Circle in order to learn what made it so seductive a temptation from the Church, and so resilient a religion that the Empire and the archbishops had finally surrendered the fight to stamp it out, or even to confine its adherents to segregated villages and city ghettos. I wanted to understand so I could expose its flaws and bring people back to God.
I put aside my habit, walked to the nearest meetinghouse in Kos -- it stood a cautious half mile downriver from the college, at the edge the harbor district -- hoping to present myself as a potential convert. The meetinghouse seemed to have begun its life as a lumber warehouse, and, despite its whitewashed walls and the intricate, swirling designs painted on the floorboards, it seemed cheap and shabby in comparison to the soaring chapels and cathedrals of the Church.
The door was unbarred, and a group of young men were mopping the floor while two girls lowered the brass ceiling lamps to trim candle wicks. One of the men asked my business with the Circle. When I said that I was curious about their beliefs, and asked if they could direct me to a priestess, he smiled indulgently.
"We don't have priestesses. What you want is a storyteller," he said. "You just missed Sister Ifira -- she's gone to the market -- but if you have an hour to spare, you can wait at her house. She'll answer all your questions, and ten you didn't ask as well." He then gave me directions to a shop on the street of the weavers.
The Circle of Kemar has no institutionalized clergy. Until I met Ifira Burosca, the implications of that had not fully struck me. Her husband, a cloth merchant, listened to my explanation, shrugged, and allowed me through the door that connected his shop to his home. I first saw Ifira perhaps ten minutes later, as she opened her kitchen door: bright cotton skirt swirling around her legs; brass chimes swinging from her ears; vegetables, bread, and a greasy packet of chicken bones weighing her arms; and her two children squabbling behind her as they carried a bucket of coal for the stove.
To someone whose expectations of clergy were formed by the Church, and by the scholars of Kos in particular, this scene was nearly unthinkable. How could a woman caught up in business and family mediate between the sacred and the profane? How could she manage a religious congregation without dedicating her life solely to her faith?
I asked Ifira those questions. She laughed.
"Kemar doesn't need our faith," she told me. "We give it to her as a sign of love and respect. Kemar wants us to be happy, to live right. We're her children, you see -- she gave us life and gave us the world -- so we try to honor her gifts. If we shut ourselves away from life, what sort of gratitude would that show?
Over the next several months, Ifira invited me to watch Circle rituals: group dances, labyrinth meditations, hand games, candle prayers, marriages, and funerals. She told me about their missionary efforts, which had helped her circle grow from three families to over two hundred people, enough that they had spun off a daughter circle with its own meetinghouse on the other end of the harbor district. And she told me the history of the Circle.
Ifira told me stories.
"What is written is dead; I speak these words, and they live," she said one afternoon as she diced onions in her kitchen. "Now, back when the Circle was young, in the days of the Emperor Rumis Iorigaleus, King Mechved ruled in Ochre Varos. He was a strong king and kept his lands free from the Empire, but he had one great problem. He couldn't keep the six faiths from clashing, and much blood was spilled on the sand.
"Finally he threw up his hands and declared that unless the priests could make and keep peace in seven months, he would choose one faith and drive the others from the city. But none of the priests could bear to speak with their rivals, so the fighting continued for the seven months. At the end of the seventh month, Mechved called the priests, the storytellers, the sacrificers, the southern pagans, the symbolists, and the Amaalite preachers to his palace, and spoke with each about his faith. Then he withdrew to his rooms for seven days.
"When he came out again, he spoke this law: the only faith in Ochre Varos would be the Church, and all others were banned. Anyone caught practicing a banned faith must convert, leave, or die. Since the Church was the strongest faith in the city, it seemed to be the least costly way to bring peace to Ochre Varos.
"Naturally many people were upset, but so long as they practiced their rites in secret, the king made no great effort to discover them and turn them out. And so the peace was kept, with grumbling, for seven years, until the arrest of Marea Shouja.
"Have you heard of Marea?"
I shook my head.
Ifira shrugged, slicing another onion in half. "Some people have -- this story speaks to many of us, and we tell it often -- but we try not to remind the Church of what we renounced under the Decree of Toleration.
"You see, Marea was a woman raised in the Church, who found the Circle and Kemar and stepped into the light. She danced one of the Great Rites, to unite her circle in prayer and call Kemar's blessing on the city and the Circle. The Rite was held in secret because of Mechved's law, but that night, Marea's father followed her to the meetinghouse. He heard the drums and the singing, and he ran to tell the priests. Before Marea could finish the Rite, soldiers seized the drums, snatched the knife from her hands, and took her to prison."
Ifira tipped the onions into the soup pot and set a cabbage on her cutting board. "In those days, you see," she said, gesturing with her knife, "anyone who danced a Great Rite was sent on to Kemar, since the dance calls the Goddess into the soul, and it can hurt to live without her once she's touched your heart. It also lends weight to the prayers. This is the chief reason the Church hated the Circle. They called the Rites an abomination, as if their Lord hadn't sacrificed himself the same way.
"Normally there were three options for someone caught practicing a faith banned in Ochre Varos: convert, leave the city, or die. Marea wouldn't convert -- why should she, since she had carried the Goddess in her soul? She wouldn't leave, because Ochre Varos was her home. And she wanted to die, wanted to complete the Rite and return to Kemar. The Church priests wanted to stamp out the other faiths, wanted to stop the Rites, even more than they wanted to uphold the law. So they shut Marea up in a convent, under the watch of nuns.
"The nuns cared for her for seven months, always watching her so she couldn't die. They wanted to save her life, you see; they didn't understand about the Goddess in her soul. They also tried to convert her back to the Church. At the end of every month, the priests examined her, to see if she had turned her back on Kemar.
"After seven months, Mechved had Marea brought to his palace, to ask why she refused to convert or leave -- she was causing unrest in the city and people were grumbling about the laws.
"'I won't convert because the Goddess has lived in me,' she told him. 'I won't leave because Ochre Varos is my home and your law is unjust. If you kill me, I welcome death; Kemar has touched my soul and I know she waits for me past the end of this circle.'
"King Mechved put his head in his hands. 'Woman, change your mind,' he said. 'The city is restless. If I kill you, knives will be drawn and blood will stain the sand again, but if I leave you in the hands of the Church, nothing will be solved. Convert or accept exile, for the sake of the people.'
"'I won't change my mind,' Marea told him. 'Lock me up or let me die.'
"So the king took her by the arm and led her to his balcony. 'Look at the city,' he said, waving his hand. 'My laws keep order here, keep these people alive and at peace. You disrupt that peace. But I'm not God, and I can't control everything. I wash my hands of whatever you might do. Do you understand?'
"Marea bowed to the king and thanked him. And when he left, she kicked her guard aside and jumped from the balcony, plunging to her death from the palace walls.
"Mechved was happy because his problem was solved. The people were happy since they could forget her. The priests grumbled, but since they thought she had gone to fire and torment, they soon forgot as well. But we in the Circle remember Marea, who never faltered, and who won her death from the king of Ochre Varos."
Ifira tipped the heap of sliced cabbage into her pot and set her knife aside. "That's one of my favorite stories," she said. "I always like telling that one."
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When she collected her books from the abbey, Laila Tolemeus had no clear idea of what to do with her newfound freedom. She had no family to support her as a scholar and she had little remaining desire to join a religious order. Her faith had waned during her marriage, eroded by the venality and imperial aggression of Dora in those days, and she felt no particular respect for a God who allowed his followers to condone oppression, overlook vice, and ban knowledge.
Her most immediate need was for money, since books do not provide much by way of food or shelter. After traveling southeast into the riverlands for several weeks, she stopped in a farming village near Lake Nacoma, whose priest was semi-literate at best and was attempting to serve several outlying hamlets as well as his main parish. Laila offered to take over his duties as a teacher, accountant, and scribe; he accepted gratefully, and offered her his spare room in return. He also asked her to read from the Book of Days on the Sabbath, since his slow reading pace had limited him to single verses and extemporized stories to illustrate his homilies.
Several families were surprisingly upset at their children's enthusiasm for Laila's books. Others began to grumble about the Sabbath readings.
"How will learning about mad emperors help us plow our fields?" one man asked when his daughter borrowed a history of the Doran-Corsinni wars and spent an afternoon reading instead of doing laundry and minding her younger brother.
"Why should we care how far away Calaea is?" a woman asked when her son drew a map of the continent on the kitchen wall. "Why don't you teach him something useful instead?"
And one day, after the Sabbath service, Laila heard a small knot of people talking about the Book of Days. "Why don't the stories change anymore?" one weather-beaten man asked. "They're not about us, not the way the teacher reads them. Maybe writing is no good, like the Horse-dancers say."
He fell silent as Laila approached. "There's nothing bad about writing," she said, "unless the words you write are already dangerous. All writing does is help people remember. Who are the Horse-dancers?"
"Circle-folk," the man told her, "the ones who follow Kemar instead of the Lord. Three families out by the eastern fields converted last spring when the missionaries came through, and one missionary married Zakal Medaeo's daughter." He hesitated, and then said, "Don't tell the priest -- if nobody tells him, he can pretend not to notice. The Horse-dancers don't cause trouble, and we don't want the bishop and the legions down here."
"I see," Laila said. "I'll keep silent -- I don't want attention, either." Then she tucked the Book of Days under her arm and returned to the priest's house to think.
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Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Story Notes
(For the curious, an early draft of Ifira's version of Marea's story is posted here.)
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Finding Marea: Truth and Change in the Circle of Kemar
Harai Inosikae
Sister of the Order of St. Allea, Convent of St. Ithigea
Associate Scholar, College of St. Larach
In the year of the Lord 1186
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"Listen, and I will tell you a story. Do not write the story. Writing will freeze it; writing will kill it. Everything always changes; what does not change is dead."
This is the way formal storytelling begins in the Circle of Kemar. The idea of a deliberately oral culture, in which perfect continuity with the past is regarded as dangerous and undesirable, was nearly unthinkable to me when I first encountered it. Decades later, I still find it difficult to understand why people willingly allow their past to distort.
And yet, the idea of change has a certain power and fascination. People change, the Circle says, and if stories did not change with us, they would no longer hold any meaning. They would not be the same stories. Change keeps them constant.
In one sense, this is true. It is, of course, also nonsense, and many storytellers acknowledge that not all changes are good or useful. Still, the Circle continues to tell stories, and the stories continue to change, subtly, inexorably, down the generations.
"A story is a way to say what can't be said in words alone," one woman told me many years ago. "How can you trap something that delicate in writing, without breath to give it life?" She may have had a point.
So. Here at the end of my life, I have something to say that cannot be said in words alone. Therefore, listen, and I will tell you a story. I write the story, so perhaps it is dead before you read the words, but it is my story and I will tell it as I see fit.
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Laila Tolemeus was born in the year 675, which adds to nine, the number of understanding and answers. It is also the number of endings. She was the daughter of Haramis Tolemeus, the provincial governor of Cesta in the Bannerry Hills, and was therefore of old patrician lineage, the kind of connection eagerly sought by the appointed officials of the Doran Empire. Haramis and his wife had six children; the first five were sons. After Laila was born they had no more children, having produced a daughter to care for them in their later years.
She was left to the care of tutors; they taught her to ride, to sew, to make music, and to manage a household. They also taught her to read, whereupon she taught herself history, literature, mathematics, and all branches of philosophy: natural science, politics, ethics, and theology. And she decided that, far from marrying, bearing children, and offering her husband's home to her father in his age, she would give her life to knowledge and to God.
It seemed to her an obvious decision. She was not beautiful, being short and sturdy with a long, narrow jaw, a slightly crooked nose, and a dour cast to her face. She found her suitors somewhat distressing, as they assumed her to be only too grateful for their attention and willing to set aside her life to obey their whims as the law of God. And she had no particular concern for her parents, since they had never shown much concern for her.
When he learned she had rejected the suit of Arrim Tasca, eldest son of Senator Aemon Tasca and a rising general in his own name, Haramis Tolemeus looked at his daughter with open eyes for the first time. He did not like what he saw. Laila was confined to her rooms until such time as she set aside her books and agreed to marriage. Her brothers and mother supported this decision, or remained silent.
After several months of isolation had failed to change his daughter's mind, Haramis removed her extensive book collection and threatened to burn one a day until she submitted. Eight books later, Laila agreed to consider offers of marriage if her father would let her visit a monastery to seek a blessing and to dispose of her library, which she no longer trusted in his hands.
Had she asked to visit a convent Haramis would, perhaps, have refused, but he could see no possible escape in a monastery. He agreed, and in the spring of the year 694 -- ten, the number of dominion -- Laila rode east from his seat in Gantheum to the abbey of St. Amil at the edge of the riverlands, accompanied by a maid, three legionnaires, and a small wagon heavy with books, which she hoped to preserve from any whims of her future husband.
She came back -- there was no getting around that -- but she left her books with the monks, who, grateful for the doubling of their library, agreed to hold and preserve even the interdicted works. Then Laila invited Arrim Tasca to Gantheum, apologized for spurning him, and asked him to re-extend his suit.
Their marriage was calm and unremarkable. Arrim spent his days with the southeastern legions, maintaining order in Rimaspa, pressuring the mountain kingdoms for tribute, and watching for Jenjani raids from across the Great Mother River. Laila maintained order in his household in Dora, overseeing the servants and hosting sumptuous dinners for generals, artists, politicians, and the favorites of the three emperors who ruled from the year 694 to the year 719. Arrim returned once a year to pay audience to the emperor and speak with his father. He rarely stayed more than a month.
Over the years, Laila bore two daughters and a son. They interrupted her scholarly habits even more than her duties as a general's wife, but they brought laughter into her life, and she became known among Doran aristocracy for the unusual time and attention she lavished on her children. She named her son Aemon, after his grandfather, and after one of the ten legendary kings of ancient Dora. She named her elder daughter Alaia, meaning 'God's love,' which was the name borne by Miria, Mother of God, before she was purified and chosen to bear the Lord. Laila named her second daughter Marea, meaning 'bitter,' which is also a name from the Holy Land, but one less auspicious in the Book of Days.
It is tempting to read a message into her daughters' names, but anyone who knew the truth is long dead.
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There have been three notable women named Marea. The first to bear the name was Mareah, daughter of Jachal of Zai Inonal. She was the second wife of Ahomaal, and was driven into the desert beyond Ezippah by Ifira, his first wife, who accused her of usurping Ahomaal's affection. The Book of Jisa tells that an angel guided Mareah through the wilderness to haven in the utmost east, where her daughter married a king and spread the word of God along the shores of the Broken Sea. But that book is apocryphal and the people of Tuvia in the east are pagans -- Jenjani sacrificers and Calaean symbolists. If they ever knew God, time has erased that knowledge.
The second to bear the name was Marea Imiret of Minrocheh. She was a harlot, afflicted with sores and a wasting sickness, who was kind to the Lord in his wandering years. She offered him water and shelter, thinking him a beggar with less than she herself had. He blessed her for her kindness, whereupon her disease left her. Thereafter she accompanied him on his travels and was said to be as close to him as his disciples. She wept at his funeral.
After the Resurrection, Marea vanishes from the Book of Days. The Book of Marea, which purports to chronicle her journeys bringing the Word to the people of Nalus, is both apocryphal and heretical. The Church teaches that Marea lived with Miria until the latter was taken living into heaven, after which Marea returned to Minrocheh where she lived as a nun, inspiring others to similar virtue and dedication. The convent of St. Marea still stands by the sea at Minrocheh.
The third to bear the name was Marea Shouja of Ochre Varos.
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When Alaia and Marea were married, and Aemon was newly installed as an officer in the legions, Laila Tolemeus Tasca visited each of her children one last time, and asked them not to look for her. She ordered her servants to keep the house ready for her husband's return and left a brief note on Arrim's pillow. She had gone to seek God, she said, and trusted he would be well and consider the children. She thanked him for twenty-five years of marriage -- seven, the number of change, shadowed by eleven for the unknown and the soul -- and wished him joy.
Arrim Tasca read the note a month later, shortly after the summer solstice in the year 719. He paid his respects to the emperor as quickly as possible and rode south to Gantheum to speak with his brother-in-law. Doranis Tolemeus sent legionnaires to the abbey of St. Amil, where Laila had left her books twenty-five years before, but she had come and gone and the monks refused the soldiers entrance.
So Laila Tolemeus passed from the records of the Empire and the Church, and into the hands of the Circle of Kemar.
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The Circle of Kemar, vulgarly known as the Horse-cult, appeared during the second century of our Lord and is in many ways a violent rejection of the Church's moral and cultural philosophy. However, the Circle also appropriates and twists much of the Church's theology, and has a similar evangelical bent.
Though Circle members claim to be the heirs of a much older tradition, reputable scholarship places the Circle's birth in Rimaspa and the southwestern reaches of Jana, where the bloody rites of the Jenjani sacrificers mingled with the theology of the Church and the contemplative, goddess-oriented paganism of the mountain peoples. While the Circle incorporates elements from all three of its parent religions, it is a radical enough departure from all of them, and so distinctive in its teachings and practices, that any claims of a more ancient origin can be disregarded.
The first fundamental teaching of the Circle is the goddess Kemar, Mother of Horses, Lady of the Corn. The second fundamental teaching is sacrifice. The third fundamental teaching is the circle.
Kemar herself seems easy enough to understand -- a variation of both the earth-mother goddess of the southern pagans, and of the savior figures from the mystery-cult traditions that flourished along the Great Mother River from Rimaspa to Minrocheh. She takes the place of God as the creator, and of the Lord and Miria as a comfort to the wretched and afflicted. Like the earth and natural cycles she represents, she does not judge. She simply provides the gift of life, and gathers souls into her embrace after their deaths.
Sacrifice, as understood by the Circle, must be voluntary. It has two forms: sacrifice that lends weight to prayers and rites, and sacrifice that preemptively detaches a person's emotions from the worldly things time will inevitably carry away. Sacrifice reminds practitioners of the world's impermanence, and of their inability to halt the cycle of time. Of sacrifices, the highest is the sacrifice of a life. Of lives, the ones with most weight are human.
The Circle has not officially sanctioned human sacrifice since the Emperor Aratis IV issued the Decree of Toleration in the year 787 -- four, the number that signifies the world. Nevertheless, rumors persist, and numerous religious riots have started over the suspicious suicides of Circle converts.
The concept of the circle may be unique to Kemar's tradition. In many religions, the circle symbolizes the world, or continuity. In the Circle of Kemar, the circle also symbolizes change. Though a finger moved in a circle returns to a similar position, it does not return to the original position. Time has passed. The sun has moved in the sky. The world has shifted. Therefore, the circle is a gyre. But, say Circle members, in time even spirals curve and return to the source. The end is the beginning, and time turns again.
The Circle of Kemar believes life passes through endless cycles; the world treads a circle with new variations each year, and souls pass from life to death to life in an endless dance. Like life, truth also cycles and changes. To define an absolute, singular truth is to stop the circle, deny the possibility of change. And what does not change is dead.
Change is, perhaps, the heart of the Circle.
But theology plays a limited role in the everyday life of Circle members. The Circle of Kemar is above all a participatory religion, creating a close-knit community of worshippers. This sense of community has been fostered by the centuries the Circle spent underground, suppressed by the Church, by the Empire, and by the rulers of many border kingdoms, until the Decree of Toleration. The stories of those years, of that persecution, bind the Circle together, much as the Book of Days, and the history of the apostles and martyrs, bind the Church.
The Circle of Kemar is built on stories.
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The heart of the Church lies in three cities: Dora, capitol of the Empire and seat of the High Archbishop; Ezippah, where the Lord died for our sins; and Kos, home of the College of St. Larach and the most eminent theologians. The convent of St. Ithigea, while largely dedicated to charity and ministry to the poor of the city, allows nuns to study and teach at the neighboring college, under the supervision of the abbess, the deans, and the Archbishop of Kos.
When I began to study the Circle of Kemar, I was fresh from my novitiate and proud of my admission to the college. I chose to study the Circle in order to learn what made it so seductive a temptation from the Church, and so resilient a religion that the Empire and the archbishops had finally surrendered the fight to stamp it out, or even to confine its adherents to segregated villages and city ghettos. I wanted to understand so I could expose its flaws and bring people back to God.
I put aside my habit, walked to the nearest meetinghouse in Kos -- it stood a cautious half mile downriver from the college, at the edge the harbor district -- hoping to present myself as a potential convert. The meetinghouse seemed to have begun its life as a lumber warehouse, and, despite its whitewashed walls and the intricate, swirling designs painted on the floorboards, it seemed cheap and shabby in comparison to the soaring chapels and cathedrals of the Church.
The door was unbarred, and a group of young men were mopping the floor while two girls lowered the brass ceiling lamps to trim candle wicks. One of the men asked my business with the Circle. When I said that I was curious about their beliefs, and asked if they could direct me to a priestess, he smiled indulgently.
"We don't have priestesses. What you want is a storyteller," he said. "You just missed Sister Ifira -- she's gone to the market -- but if you have an hour to spare, you can wait at her house. She'll answer all your questions, and ten you didn't ask as well." He then gave me directions to a shop on the street of the weavers.
The Circle of Kemar has no institutionalized clergy. Until I met Ifira Burosca, the implications of that had not fully struck me. Her husband, a cloth merchant, listened to my explanation, shrugged, and allowed me through the door that connected his shop to his home. I first saw Ifira perhaps ten minutes later, as she opened her kitchen door: bright cotton skirt swirling around her legs; brass chimes swinging from her ears; vegetables, bread, and a greasy packet of chicken bones weighing her arms; and her two children squabbling behind her as they carried a bucket of coal for the stove.
To someone whose expectations of clergy were formed by the Church, and by the scholars of Kos in particular, this scene was nearly unthinkable. How could a woman caught up in business and family mediate between the sacred and the profane? How could she manage a religious congregation without dedicating her life solely to her faith?
I asked Ifira those questions. She laughed.
"Kemar doesn't need our faith," she told me. "We give it to her as a sign of love and respect. Kemar wants us to be happy, to live right. We're her children, you see -- she gave us life and gave us the world -- so we try to honor her gifts. If we shut ourselves away from life, what sort of gratitude would that show?
Over the next several months, Ifira invited me to watch Circle rituals: group dances, labyrinth meditations, hand games, candle prayers, marriages, and funerals. She told me about their missionary efforts, which had helped her circle grow from three families to over two hundred people, enough that they had spun off a daughter circle with its own meetinghouse on the other end of the harbor district. And she told me the history of the Circle.
Ifira told me stories.
"What is written is dead; I speak these words, and they live," she said one afternoon as she diced onions in her kitchen. "Now, back when the Circle was young, in the days of the Emperor Rumis Iorigaleus, King Mechved ruled in Ochre Varos. He was a strong king and kept his lands free from the Empire, but he had one great problem. He couldn't keep the six faiths from clashing, and much blood was spilled on the sand.
"Finally he threw up his hands and declared that unless the priests could make and keep peace in seven months, he would choose one faith and drive the others from the city. But none of the priests could bear to speak with their rivals, so the fighting continued for the seven months. At the end of the seventh month, Mechved called the priests, the storytellers, the sacrificers, the southern pagans, the symbolists, and the Amaalite preachers to his palace, and spoke with each about his faith. Then he withdrew to his rooms for seven days.
"When he came out again, he spoke this law: the only faith in Ochre Varos would be the Church, and all others were banned. Anyone caught practicing a banned faith must convert, leave, or die. Since the Church was the strongest faith in the city, it seemed to be the least costly way to bring peace to Ochre Varos.
"Naturally many people were upset, but so long as they practiced their rites in secret, the king made no great effort to discover them and turn them out. And so the peace was kept, with grumbling, for seven years, until the arrest of Marea Shouja.
"Have you heard of Marea?"
I shook my head.
Ifira shrugged, slicing another onion in half. "Some people have -- this story speaks to many of us, and we tell it often -- but we try not to remind the Church of what we renounced under the Decree of Toleration.
"You see, Marea was a woman raised in the Church, who found the Circle and Kemar and stepped into the light. She danced one of the Great Rites, to unite her circle in prayer and call Kemar's blessing on the city and the Circle. The Rite was held in secret because of Mechved's law, but that night, Marea's father followed her to the meetinghouse. He heard the drums and the singing, and he ran to tell the priests. Before Marea could finish the Rite, soldiers seized the drums, snatched the knife from her hands, and took her to prison."
Ifira tipped the onions into the soup pot and set a cabbage on her cutting board. "In those days, you see," she said, gesturing with her knife, "anyone who danced a Great Rite was sent on to Kemar, since the dance calls the Goddess into the soul, and it can hurt to live without her once she's touched your heart. It also lends weight to the prayers. This is the chief reason the Church hated the Circle. They called the Rites an abomination, as if their Lord hadn't sacrificed himself the same way.
"Normally there were three options for someone caught practicing a faith banned in Ochre Varos: convert, leave the city, or die. Marea wouldn't convert -- why should she, since she had carried the Goddess in her soul? She wouldn't leave, because Ochre Varos was her home. And she wanted to die, wanted to complete the Rite and return to Kemar. The Church priests wanted to stamp out the other faiths, wanted to stop the Rites, even more than they wanted to uphold the law. So they shut Marea up in a convent, under the watch of nuns.
"The nuns cared for her for seven months, always watching her so she couldn't die. They wanted to save her life, you see; they didn't understand about the Goddess in her soul. They also tried to convert her back to the Church. At the end of every month, the priests examined her, to see if she had turned her back on Kemar.
"After seven months, Mechved had Marea brought to his palace, to ask why she refused to convert or leave -- she was causing unrest in the city and people were grumbling about the laws.
"'I won't convert because the Goddess has lived in me,' she told him. 'I won't leave because Ochre Varos is my home and your law is unjust. If you kill me, I welcome death; Kemar has touched my soul and I know she waits for me past the end of this circle.'
"King Mechved put his head in his hands. 'Woman, change your mind,' he said. 'The city is restless. If I kill you, knives will be drawn and blood will stain the sand again, but if I leave you in the hands of the Church, nothing will be solved. Convert or accept exile, for the sake of the people.'
"'I won't change my mind,' Marea told him. 'Lock me up or let me die.'
"So the king took her by the arm and led her to his balcony. 'Look at the city,' he said, waving his hand. 'My laws keep order here, keep these people alive and at peace. You disrupt that peace. But I'm not God, and I can't control everything. I wash my hands of whatever you might do. Do you understand?'
"Marea bowed to the king and thanked him. And when he left, she kicked her guard aside and jumped from the balcony, plunging to her death from the palace walls.
"Mechved was happy because his problem was solved. The people were happy since they could forget her. The priests grumbled, but since they thought she had gone to fire and torment, they soon forgot as well. But we in the Circle remember Marea, who never faltered, and who won her death from the king of Ochre Varos."
Ifira tipped the heap of sliced cabbage into her pot and set her knife aside. "That's one of my favorite stories," she said. "I always like telling that one."
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When she collected her books from the abbey, Laila Tolemeus had no clear idea of what to do with her newfound freedom. She had no family to support her as a scholar and she had little remaining desire to join a religious order. Her faith had waned during her marriage, eroded by the venality and imperial aggression of Dora in those days, and she felt no particular respect for a God who allowed his followers to condone oppression, overlook vice, and ban knowledge.
Her most immediate need was for money, since books do not provide much by way of food or shelter. After traveling southeast into the riverlands for several weeks, she stopped in a farming village near Lake Nacoma, whose priest was semi-literate at best and was attempting to serve several outlying hamlets as well as his main parish. Laila offered to take over his duties as a teacher, accountant, and scribe; he accepted gratefully, and offered her his spare room in return. He also asked her to read from the Book of Days on the Sabbath, since his slow reading pace had limited him to single verses and extemporized stories to illustrate his homilies.
Several families were surprisingly upset at their children's enthusiasm for Laila's books. Others began to grumble about the Sabbath readings.
"How will learning about mad emperors help us plow our fields?" one man asked when his daughter borrowed a history of the Doran-Corsinni wars and spent an afternoon reading instead of doing laundry and minding her younger brother.
"Why should we care how far away Calaea is?" a woman asked when her son drew a map of the continent on the kitchen wall. "Why don't you teach him something useful instead?"
And one day, after the Sabbath service, Laila heard a small knot of people talking about the Book of Days. "Why don't the stories change anymore?" one weather-beaten man asked. "They're not about us, not the way the teacher reads them. Maybe writing is no good, like the Horse-dancers say."
He fell silent as Laila approached. "There's nothing bad about writing," she said, "unless the words you write are already dangerous. All writing does is help people remember. Who are the Horse-dancers?"
"Circle-folk," the man told her, "the ones who follow Kemar instead of the Lord. Three families out by the eastern fields converted last spring when the missionaries came through, and one missionary married Zakal Medaeo's daughter." He hesitated, and then said, "Don't tell the priest -- if nobody tells him, he can pretend not to notice. The Horse-dancers don't cause trouble, and we don't want the bishop and the legions down here."
"I see," Laila said. "I'll keep silent -- I don't want attention, either." Then she tucked the Book of Days under her arm and returned to the priest's house to think.
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Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Story Notes
(For the curious, an early draft of Ifira's version of Marea's story is posted here.)