Free Golden Daughter by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

unkempt appearance. Weeds grew thick, and trees spread untamed limbs crawling with parasitic vines. No reflecting pool lay in sight to catch the moon’s smile as she passed overhead.
    Instead, all that lay in the midst of this wreckage were large white stones. Foundation stones, Sairu thought, thickly crusted with black fungus so that she would have missed them had not the moon shone upon them just so and made them shine.
    In the shadows of the vine-draped trees, a bird sang suddenly. Its silver voice rose, the sound of moonlight itself.
    Sairu was transfixed like a spotted fawn caught suddenly in the hunter’s torchlight. She stood thus for no more than a moment, but in that moment felt a sudden rush of timelessness stretching out from those stones below, reaching up to touch her face. She thought she saw a tall building, of humble work compared to the temple yet boasting two great sets of doors swung open, one facing east, the other west. Between them, high in the rafters, hung a lantern filled with light more brilliant than the sun and the moon combined.
    For that moment, as the beauty of the songbird’s voice washed over her, Sairu thought she heard the glory of eternal music.
    Then it was gone.
    She stood on the darkened path, breathing in the perfume of the priests’ fine garden, black-cherry and golden-pear blossoms in full bloom. Below her lay only an untidy patch of earth and ruts and weeds with a few half-buried stones jutting up from forgotten darkness.
    Sairu had been prepared all her life to encounter wickedness. But no one had prepared her for what she had just witnessed, and she could not make it fit within her realm of understanding or expectation. Her brow creasing in a small frown even as her mouth forced a smile, she hastened on her way, determined . . . well, not to forget what she had glimpsed, but merely to think upon it later.
    Now she must hurry on and meet her new master.

    The Besur, High Priest of the Crown of the Moon, sat in an inner chamber within Hulan’s Throne and waited. Patience was, after all, one of the Twelve Mighty Virtues. And should not a high priest be well versed in all virtues, mighty or otherwise?
    One nervous finger tapped out the passage of time on the arm of his chair as he tried to remember Brother Yaru’s exact words. Did the old fool receive an approval from the Golden Mother? He had implied as much, but Brother Yaru was not as sharp as he had once been. The Besur’s finger increased its tempo, and he cursed himself for not sending a younger priest. But then, whom could he trust more than Brother Yaru, simple though the man might be?
    “I should have gone myself,” he muttered.
    His voice caused a slight stirring across the room. The Besur raised his gaze quickly, startled by the movement. She had been so still. So very still. Three days now, and she scarcely did more than breathe on her own. She moved when they moved her, sat where they placed her, ate what they put in her mouth; otherwise she might have been no more alive than a wooden puppet.
    But when he spoke, he thought she tilted her head to one side. The jeweled pendants on her headdress swung slightly even now. But her eyes remained closed, her hands quiet in her lap.
    It was no use, the Besur thought. They could not wait, not with her in this state. Rumor would spread, if not from the priests themselves then from the temple slaves. And the Besur hated to order deaths, especially when the crime was no greater than a little gossip. No, they must make arrangements quickly, with or without—
    A soft knock at the door. It must be Brother Yaru come to explain himself. The Besur glanced again at the still form across the room then hurried to answer the door. Not a task he was used to doing for himself, surrounded as he always was by slaves. But no slave could be permitted this far into Hulan’s Throne.
    The door whispered in its grooves as he slid it back. The passage beyond the chamber was lit by a single