The diorite columns and balustrades of Bramandin’s towering dark edifices seemed like a cyclopean stone forest; streaked with disrepair and imperfections in the materials, black and magnificent. Slabs of hewn malachite adorned with bas-relief and inscription asymmetrically lined the façade of Bram’s temple: some cracked or broken from neglect and unrest, others worn, others polished to near-translucency. Figures of gods and spirits lined the stuccoed walls, tapering to heavily ornamented domes at the structure’s zenith. Deities fornicated amongst each other, and animals frolicked in embossed flowering gardens in the green stone, in broad parallel rows. Between the viridescent reliefs were ancient wars, and kings, and dragons lining the walls: friezes of divine wrath, and demons, and death—though bleary with age. Icons of fearsome many-limbed divinities, in living pigment—with flashing eyes of onyx, carnelian, and brass—gazed down from their niches in the colossal black pillars, as if to horrify any wicked or impious thing that dared approach the holy house of Bram.
Jadis and Finis looked up at the monumental temple with awe in their young eyes—the sisters admiring hand-in-hand while their father and brother gave alms to beggars loitering on the steps. Lord Tujur and his heir apparent, Alor, returned to Jadis and Finis with verve and cheer; passersby gawking at the lord’s fine garb and his three handsome children, similarly attired in chintz and silks. The mother of the children, Tujur’s consort, Jamäis, was praying passionately at the door of the temple in some kind of ecstatic trance, as the incenses around her wafted up into writhing stone serpents and angels that made up the lintel and tympanum above her swaying head. Jamäis’ prayers clashed midair with dozens of others’ chanting and weeping in similar religious fervor: a holy din droning ceaselessly in the environs of the shrine.
Entering the Bramand Fane was a genuinely transcendent experience. Pillars like veritable towers—inlaid with innumerable precious stones, metals, and bas-reliefs of incomprehensible, bewildering intricacy—rose to a vaulted ceiling emblazoned with a thick, vast tapestry meticulously depicting the sky in all its majesty: all hours of the day and night coexisting simultaneously on its fabric, every star placed exactly right. Rumor had it that the stone ceiling itself, above the tapestry, was inscribed with so many ancient tutelary spells and divine names that the old kings of Bramandin set a dense cloth over its entirety: so as not to set instantly ablaze the eyes of any creature insufficiently holy that dared lift its head. A competing rumor had it that the vaults and rafters had become unsightly with age, and being hard to renovate on account of their elevation, they were quite simply swept away behind that great celestial rug.
Jadis had been to the Fane but twice before this: she was especially gleeful at this occasion, as it was her little sister Finis’ first pilgrimage to the house of Bram. In what seemed to be less than a second, Finis had collapsed—prostrated—on the block-patterned velveteen floor. Tears streaked her face as she incanted a hymn as best she was able into the maroon-colored textile; Jamäis was elated at her youngest child’s display of public piety. Finis had been reared in Bramandism, but this was her first pilgrimage to the Fane: Jamäis was glad to see her instruction had not been wasted.
A pair of huge guardian deities defended the holy sanctuary on either side of its inner entrance: beasts—tiger-like, with vertical wings and upper bodies of stern-faced, round-breasted maidens placed where a head might usually belong—gilded in ornately-designed leaf, and wreathed with untold thousands of talismans, and sacred ropes of fabric woven and dyed in every color imaginable, left as tokens of gratitude to the protective spirits. Finis stood, her face still roseate and glistening, and kissed her sister and mother repeatedly in excitement. She was—for the first time—truly, and quite literally, in the presence of her god. Jamäis beamed in pious pride.
At the end of the immense hall, crowded by a mass of worshipers and svams, was Bram—in all his glory. A colossus of rock and metal garbed in the finest textiles and embellishments, the god loomed over his disciples on a throne of polished gem and gold, his every feature illuminated from all angles by a battery of sacred lamps of brass, forged in the shape of hands. Bram’s three opal eyes gleamed fiercely, their brilliance juxtaposed with the matte red ochre of his body; arabesque embroidery on his huge variegated clothes kept in a state of remarkable immaculacy, considering an heirloom ripped or cut from the robes of the great god would always be quite easy to sell as a periapt among the relic merchants and hawkers of charms and amulets. The five faces of Bram—like his five arms—were each distinct: a joyous face corresponding to the arm wielding a sistrum, a mournful face with its arm clutching a skull, a fierce face wielding an iron cudgel, a slumbering face with an open palm, and an austere face holding out a sacred flame as a symbol of his supreme might and benevolence.
Finis tore into the cacophonous mob of congregants at the feet of Bram with a fiery devotion, shouting half-melodious intonations between short breaths. Jamäis, zealous as she was, took—surprisingly, even to her—a greater delight in her daughter’s exultation than she did in her own. Tujur clapped and summoned his manservant, who upon instruction escorted in a procession of slave-drawn carts, each veiled in a drape of fine cloth and ceremonial cords. As was tradition, it was the time of year for lords of the dominion of Charn to offer tribute to the gods of the Bramand Fane—mighty Bram chiefly, of course—so as to simultaneously appease the heavens, invite blessings, and reinforce the oft-capricious alliances of the realm’s dynasts and landowners.
Lord Tujur’s votives were especially charitable this year: choice meats and salt with spices and incense and perfumes and oils leading the sacrificial procession, and rare jewels and fabrics and ingots of steel and bronze and silver together with hordes of grains and herbs in beautifully-painted jars of faience and alabaster at the tail. The faithful soon quieted their prayers as the procession of the lord of Pesul Qur’s impressive array of sacred gifts made its path directly towards Bram—though none of the myriad slaves transporting the offerings were permitted to look up at the deity’s face as they did so. Lords whispered among themselves in the corner of the temple that was reserved for them and their entourages—presumably quite indignant that one of the lords of Charn’s lesser estates had so grandiosely upstaged them all with his largesse.
The annual sacrifices seemed to come and go in a frenzied haze of chanting and smoke—Jadis had never especially appreciated the rituals: it was Finis and their mother who sang most passionately as the fires were kindled on the heap of votives. Kingdoms’-worth of valuables immolated at Bram’s feet upon a massive slab of solid granite—seared from untold years of such burnings; young Jadis had often wondered how many needy could be fed or how many cities could be made to prosper were such bounty not routinely incinerated. She cared deeply for Bram, as every Charni did. Yet she could not escape the notion that perhaps Great Bram, the Omnipotent, wouldn’t mind so very much if one year the vast riches on his altar might be allowed to feed the common people. She thought of it every year. But she said nothing.
Wines and meads and fresh water were spilled as libation on Bram’s feet, his hymns incanted in unison by hundreds of congregants. Smoke still lingered in the Fane, even as the cloud thinned and drifted out the lofty windows, casting odd foggy shadows across the tessellated gardens and frescoed fauna of the interior walls.
“Jadis,” Lord Tujur called out from across the nave, “go with Finis and your mother to the cloister courtyard at the eastern minaret. Alor and I will meet you after lords’ summit, at gloamingtide.” Tujur and his son’s turbaned heads vanished into the assembly in moments. Jadis detested being left as the secular manager over her mother and sister, but as Jamäis’ quite doctrinaire judgment was not wisely left unattended for long, and Finis was her junior, she had no choice but to obey her father’s wishes. She felt obligated—not out of obedience, but responsibility. She not infrequently felt as though she were the only sane girl in the world—though she was far too shrewd to believe such a thing literally. That would be fanatical, she scoffed.
Finis charitably gifted her supper to a mendicant, so the three women were forced to share only two; Jadis had her fill, while Jamäis arbitrarily chose to abstain, and was imitated in kind by Finis (though Jadis persuaded her to eat a little, after an hour’s persuasion). Jamäis often fasted, for mortification of her gustatory sense; her daughters often worried for her, as her physique was not infrequently gaunt—though she concealed it well enough in public beneath her copious conservative robes. Finis and Jamäis sat rhythmically lilting in praise of the Bramand gods and maharišis with the crowns of their heads pressed uncomfortably into the colonnade pillars on the perimeter of the eastern courtyard; Jadis sat recumbent on a bench in the afternoon sun, absentmindedly keeping a watch over her kin; glancing at some silent cenobites walking past; a gardener pruning the courtyard’s shrubs; a mueddin busying himself in the minaret with bells and incense, readying for the evening call to prayer.
The minaret was quite beautiful to Jadis: murals at its base, with statuary and elaborate embellishments spiraling up to its vaguely phallic peak—the sun striking it at an oblique angle that illuminated only its upper half, the lower left in shadow by the colossal body of the main sanctum a few minutes’ walk westward. The courtyard was less attractive to Jadis’ tastes than the one at Pesul Qur’s secluded hillock where she spent most of her summers; but then, she supposed, it was probably meant to be relatively modest. The east wing of the temple grounds was not commonly visited during festivals and the like; cenobites meditating in inaccessible recesses and ledges were its primary attendants, and the odd svam catechizing postulants.
Jadis disentangled knots in her long raven hair with a nephrite comb, deities seeming to change expressions on the upper parapets as the sun’s light shifted across their sculpted faces with the passing hours. The mueddin in his minaret did finally signal evening prayers with a string of peals and lusty chants, as twilight fell. Jamäis seemed asleep, lying on her breast—though Jadis knew it to be another of her rituals. She was no doubt chattering away to the gods in her head, as usual. Finis had grown tired of mimicking her mother’s intense devotion for one day, and reclined at Jadis’ thigh on the bench, waiting for Tujur and Alor to return from the yearly congress.
The sisters’ warm caramel complexion seemed preternaturally rich in tone in the day’s last light, heavens cast in shades of violet and carmine over them. Tujur and Alor arrived moments after the women had begun to wonder what was keeping them—as if by clockwork. Jamäis leapt up at once from her somnolent posture, startling her son; Finis similarly arose from Jadis’ lap, though with less verve (as she was genuine in her drowsiness). The lordly family from Pesul Qur collected its waiting slaves and retinue, and set out for home: moonrise above them like an opalescent eye of Bram. Jadis did not sleep—the stars captivated her, and she watched them all night long.
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