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Sestia (Five Queendoms, The) - Softcover

Buch 3 von 3: Five Queendoms, The

Macallister, G.R.

 
9781982167967: Sestia (Five Queendoms, The)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1982167963 ISBN 13: 9781982167967
Verlag: Saga Press, 2026

Inhaltsangabe

Return to The Five Queendoms series with the final book in this “ambitious and engaging” (Rebecca Roanhorse) epic fantasy trilogy, in which a centuries-long peace is shattered in a matriarchal society when a decade passes without a single girl being born.

While a fragile peace has begun to settle across the Five Queendoms of the known world, trouble brews beneath the smooth façade. The first gate between the Underlands, where Eresh rules over the shades of the dead, has already been opened—and the scheming shade of a dead sorcerer has evil plans he hopes to unleash on the world. In the world Above, the Scorpicae struggle to find a path forward in defeat, the embattled regent of Paxim gets more than she bargained for, and a young woman who barely survived the Sun Rites finds herself the indispensable right hand of a priest-queen whose sanity appears to be slipping away.

As living women across the Queendoms take desperate action to stay alive, and dead women plot to regain what they’ve lost, the time for the next Sun Rites nears. When five queens gather in the Holy City of Sestia for the most important ritual of their lives, who will be left standing?

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

G.R. Macallister, author of the Five Queendoms series, beginning with Scorpica, and also writes bestselling historical fiction under the name Greer Macallister. Her novels have been optioned for film and television. A regular contributor to Writer Unboxed and the Chicago Review of Books, she lives with her family in Washington, DC. 

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Chapter 1: Priest CHAPTER 1 PRIEST
Autumn, the All-Mother’s Year 501

The Holy City, Sestia

Concordia

Every twenty years, the Xaras who ruled Sestia cast lots to find their successors, looking to the Holy One to show Her hand in the casting. Five girls were chosen: one to reign, three to serve in wisdom, and one, at the right moment, to die.

But like any ritual in any queendom, the system did not always proceed exactly as planned. Of the five girls chosen by lottery to serve the Holy One in the All-Mother’s Year 480, only two remained twenty-one years later: the High Xara Concordia and the Xara Veritas.

Now, one held the life of the other in her hands.

The High Xara Concordia remembered well the first time she’d met the future Veritas. She’d been a slip of a girl, all elbows and knees. Concordia herself had been a sturdy child, thinning as she aged, while Veritas filled out and rounded. The rule was that when girls were brought to the capital to enter service, they left their childhood names behind. But on that first day, as they mounted the steps of the Edifice, the stern-faced old Xara Victrix turned her back on the girls. When she did, the one who would become Veritas whispered her name hastily into the other girl’s ear, Norah, and too stunned to do anything else, the future Concordia traded her whispered name in return, Olivi.

For a long time after, the future Concordia broke no rules. She had been a devoted rule follower before she’d been taken from her family to join the class of future Xaras, a natural choice for the role. She threw herself into learning all that the Xaras had to teach her. But as one descended more deeply into centuries of sprawling Sestian edicts, statutes, and regulations, one couldn’t help but stumble over the occasional paradox—exactly the situation in which the High Xara Concordia found herself now.

While the penalty for deserting the God’s most sacred tenet was death, the law also stated clearly that killing any Xara was forbidden, no matter how grave her sins. When young Concordia irreverently pointed out to the Xara Victrix two rules in conflict and asked her which she would follow, the older woman first slapped her for speaking out of turn, then smiled.

“You will learn, child,” said Victrix, “that most laws are like green saplings. They can be bent a great deal without breaking.”

The Xara Victrix had been neither a good person nor a good servant to her god, thought Concordia, but she was also rarely wrong.

Today Concordia would decide how to bend. In a situation much like this, a few reigns ago, the High Xara Necessitas had ordered a disobedient Xara paraded to the tombs, handed a lamp and three apples, and sealed inside. The older stories were only rumor, but Concordia knew those, too. They said one sinning Xara was buried up to her neck in the dirt at a busy crossroads. A Xara who neglected the sacred flame was forced to lie down upon the hearth and sing hymns while the fire was rebuilt atop her body, then lit. They were the most powerful women in the nation, but precise laws constrained their behavior. Veritas had broken the most important law. Consequences must follow. The only choice was what shape those consequences would take.

“My queen,” came a familiar tenor voice from behind her.

The High Xara turned from the window. “Xelander.”

Her servant bowed his head, clasping his hands delicately in front of his narrow waist, which was cinched with a wide decorative belt denoting his station. He was the highest-ranking of all the servants in the Edifice, allowed in any room of the vast temple-palace except the holy lacrum. Xelander was capable of any duty, and he performed every one of them with grace.

“Where is she now?” Concordia asked.

“She was hungry,” he replied, his slight shrug speaking volumes. “I took her to the kitchens.”

“That is not a long-term solution.”

“I am your most humble servant,” he said. “I would no sooner tell you how to punish her than I would swan about in your vestments.”

She smiled at that. “You’d look better in them than I do.”

“Not so, my queen. No one else could wear the saffron to such advantage.”

It was a polite lie, but a lie all the same, thought Concordia. Xelander would look splendid in her ceremonial saffron robes, had he been allowed to wear the color. The men who served in the palace of the God of Plenty were beautiful, and they took great care with their beauty. They wore their dark hair well past their shoulders, cinched their waists tight, and lined their eyes with precise rings of kohl. Some wore short robes and some long, but all their garments followed the curves of their shoulders and thighs, clinging everywhere the priests’ robes were flowing and loose. Their forms were not intended to tempt the virtuous women of the priesthood to carnal delights; they were decorative, pleasant, like exquisitely carved urns or long-stemmed poppies. Only men who found their pleasures with other men were allowed to serve in the Edifice. Priests should have men to tend them but not touch them, or so went one of the thousands of platitudes the young Xaras-to-be had learned.

Still. High Xara Concordia had dozens of servants who dressed like Xelander, who might even be mistaken for him at a distance, but none other with his inborn elegance. He was also whip-smart, far and away her favorite. As soon as the rumor about Veritas had reached her ears, he was the one she’d dispatched to investigate. He’d brought her the truth, and the woman, within hours. Now she needed to handle both.

She said to him softly, “Is there no… natural solution to the problem?”

He caught her meaning. “You’re thinking of the pulegone tea?”

“Yes.”

“Much too late, I’m afraid.”

The High Xara Concordia didn’t curse, at least not out loud. She looked out the window again. The Edifice was a marvel, towering four stories above the city and gleaming like a new-laid egg. From the fourth story she could see leagues beyond the city’s gates into the vast countryside. Most days, the view soothed her. Today, as she searched the rolling green hills where the sacred rams and their mouflon mates were pastured, she saw no answers there. The answer would have to come from her. Or from the Holy One Herself, should She see fit to speak to Concordia for the first time.

“What would you do?” the High Xara Concordia asked Xelander.

Startled, he lifted his head. His expression was one of concern.

“It’s all right,” she said. “I truly want to know.”

“It’s not my place, my queen.”

“You have any place I choose to give you,” she reminded him. “If I ask for your thoughts, you do me disrespect to refuse.”

“I apologize,” he said, though his voice was not apologetic. She suspected his protest was mere form. He was smart enough to have opinions. She should be smart enough to benefit from them. She wasn’t aware of any past High Xaras who had been counseled by their servants, but then again, she differed from past High Xaras in ways no one alive knew.

“And so,” she said. “Tell me. If it were your choice.”

There was no pause before his answer. “I would make the choice hers.”

“How so?”

“Her body was not hers to use as she did,” he said, his dark gaze so steady it...

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Verlag
Saga Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2026
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1982167963
ISBN 13 
9781982167967
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
496
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande