A Dark Sacrifice Read online

  They followed her from the temple to the south gate, then outside the walls and along the shore. For a time, rounding the promontory, the footing grew rocky and difficult. While Ouriána flowed on ahead, unscathed and oblivious, those who followed stumbled often, scraping toes and knees, bloodying their palms on the shingle in their eagerness to rise and not lose sight of her. At last they came out on an isolated stretch of beach where pearls, old coins, and bright bits of jade sometimes washed up, offerings from the sea to the Empress-Goddess.

  The moon was a great ivory globe veined with crystal, hovering just above the silvery water. From the perspective of those watching, it looked as if the gap between moon and sea had narrowed to inches, that any of the larger breakers coming in might drench her pale face with spray. With exquisite timing, the Empress had arrived at the precise moment for the rite to begin.

  A hush fell over the crowd. One slow step at a time, Ouriána waded out into the water until she stood knee-deep in the little wavelets, her linen skirts soaked in brine and her long red hair floating like kelp behind her.

  Just as the rim of the moon touched the ocean, the Empress lifted her arms and called out three words in a thrilling voice. The sea turned as clear as glass from horizon to horizon, then the waters went roaring out with a terrible rush and hurry. They reached the lowest tidemark and still continued to sink, until it looked as though the moon were drinking down the sea.

  Those watching felt a shock of horror, never doubting that the moon would swallow the ocean dry without their goddess’s intervention. And Ouriána, standing aloof and implacable, looking out over acres of wet sand, allowed them to experience that terror to the fullest. She inhaled their fear and awe like incense, she drank it in like wine.

  A sense of great forces striving for mastery crept over the waiting throng. The earth seemed to pant beneath their feet, the cosmos to reel around them. At any moment, they believed, the stars might go out like windblown candles, the foundations of the earth crumble and send them all tumbling into the void. And still the sea retreated, farther and farther, until none could see its nearer edge. Some wept or cried out for mercy; no few threw themselves facedown in the sand and lay there shuddering.

  Then Ouriána raised her arms again. It was impossible to hear what she said over the distant noise of the waters, but for a timeless moment the night went utterly still. Then the tide came rushing back as quickly as it had gone out, crashing on the beach in a froth of white foam and a cloud of spray—not one eyelash farther than the previous tideline.

  The people set up a quivering but enthusiastic cheer. The rite had been successful, their prayers and offerings had been found acceptable, and by the grace of Ouriána they were spared for another year.

  By the time the Empress finally waded back to shore, day was breaking in the east. The crowd parted reverently to let her pass. Her bath in the sea had changed her profoundly. No less beautiful, she had such a freshness about her that she might have been born that very morning. Her face was bright with a savage innocence; her eyes had taken on an astonishing luminescence. And all along the beach, men and women reached out to touch the sandy hem of her gown, a damp tendril of her hair—hoping to be renewed as she had been renewed, to be lifted above the sorrows and the cruelties of their daily existence, if only for an hour.

  On the other side of the city, Maelor woke with an aching head, a dry mouth, and a queasy stomach, after a typical night of little sleep and feverish dreams. Bleary-eyed, the old astrologer shuffled about the shabby attic room with its dusty clutter of mystical odds and ends, preparing himself for the day ahead. For all that he was such an abstemious man, it was not surprising if people sometimes mistook him for a drunkard.

  He splashed water on his face, nibbled a hard rind of cheese, finger-combed his straggly hair and beard. Squinting sideways, first out of one eye and then the other, it seemed to him that the strands of hair dangling to either side of his face had grown thicker and darker, that his beard was less wispy than it had been the night before. Reality had become fickle of late, constantly shifting and reshaping itself, capable of endless permutations. Unfortunately, the changes never seemed to last very long.

  Despite his pounding head and ringing ears, today of all days seemed touched with magic, a day that offered amazing, even miraculous possibilities. He was at a loss to explain it, not even certain whether these new sensations were symptoms of further mental deterioration or of returning sanity. Indeed, the question had perplexed him for many years, whether he had been mad all of this time, or if it was the world around him that limped and hobbled along utterly disjointed and disconnected.

  But as the morning was already well advanced, he shrugged off these speculations as fruitless, shoved some small items into the capacious pockets of his tattered robe, and left the room. First locking the door behind him, he descended, by way of a rickety staircase, six long flights to the street below. On every landing, armies of cockroaches scattered at the sound of his footsteps. Once outside, he set off at his usual ambling pace for the marketplace, where he spent the better part of each day juggling balls, performing minor tricks of conjuring, and (when circumstances favored him) scribbling the occasional horoscope on scraps of paper.

  The neighborhood where Maelor lived was all dirty, narrow streets coiling uphill and downhill like angry snakes, and even more squalid alleys that wriggled and squirmed between rows of aging houses. Bits of ragged laundry hung drying from upper-story windows. Cats of all colors prowled in the refuse below. Half wild and half domesticated, most of these cats were more bone than fur—but lean and feral or sick and lethargic, the one thing they all had in common was hunger.

  As the old man walked, the air trembled and objects shifted. Sometimes he thought he could see right through the eroding stonework and into another, fairer Apharos, a city gracious with gardens and filled with birdsong. In that city there were many cats, too, but so sleek and well fed it was unlikely they ever bothered the fat grey mourning doves strutting on the roofs. And everywhere he looked there were statues: glorious winged figures in marble and alabaster, poised as if ready to leave their weight of stone behind, spring into the air, and take flight.

  He had not walked much farther when the vision faded, leaving him stranded in the Apharos he already knew, the city of dingy houses, crumbling stone, and parched earth. Another man might have wept at the change. Maelor simply ambled on.

  After about another quarter of a mile the street began to skirt the edges of another district, known as the Thieves’ Market or Under-City—though in point of altitude it was no lower than most parts of Apharos, and more elevated than some. It had earned that name by virtue of its shady commerce and unsavory dealings, its business mostly conducted in a complicated warren of cellars, tunnels, and caves, under the ruins of what had once been villas of the high nobility and the ancient Temple of the Seven Fates. Only a few broken walls, the foundation, and the cellars of that imposing edifice remained, and it was said that Ouriána’s malice had hastened the process of dissolution; there were many still living who could remember when the temple and the houses were still in use. The present inhabitants were thieves, smugglers, pirates, and rogue magicians, whose occupation of the ruins the Empress appeared to tolerate, if not actively encourage. Yet none of those violent and predatory men had ever accosted Maelor, and today they allowed him to pass, as they always did, unmolested. His reputation preceeded him: everyone knew that he never carried anything worth the effort of stealing, extorting, or swindling.

  At intervals, his visions continued. Some of them were terrifying, like the imps and hobgoblins he saw dancing on the roofs or gnawing with sharp teeth at the foundations of buildings. Other things were clearly hallucinatory, as when sounds became solids and all the colors sang, or the sky turned to glass and a single enormous eye peered through.

  But most of what he saw and experienced that day struck him with all the force and poignancy of memory. So far as he knew, he had lived in the city
for only ten years. There was, however, a large portion of his life about which he knew nothing at all. Had some part of that life been spent in Apharos? Should he know some of these people he saw drifting by him, as insubstantial as ghosts? Those redheaded twin princesses, who looked hardly old enough to sit in the saddle, riding along together on identical fat white ponies caparisoned like chargers? That dignified old lady on a grey palfrey who stopped at nearly every corner to distribute alms? If he did remember them, those memories were incomplete, devoid of names and a common history.

  From the Thieves’ Market the old man came into a more prosperous part of the city. In that neighborhood the buildings were considerably newer, but no more pleasing: all flint, granite, and limestone, all hard angles and pointed roofs, no softness, no comfort, no grace anywhere; it was all just as hard as Ouriána’s heart. The only touches of beauty were in the dozens of statues and fountains bearing her likeness.

  Indeed, it was a setting deliberately fashioned for the Empress to rest in like a rare jewel. Her architects, masons, and stonecarvers created nothing beautiful that was not in her image, while every icon of the older religion that preceded her cult had been decapitated, mutilated, or hammered into dust.

  Maelor paused where two streets crossed while a procession passed. Although they were only a straggling line of limping, dazed-looking worshippers, just now coming home from the early-morning ritual, the magic that was on the day transformed them: they became acrobats and maskers of an old-style samhrad celebration, clattering through the streets with all the noise and good-natured merriment that bells and pennons, streamers and tambourines, could possibly provide. The old man watched them, his head swimming and his heart thumping like a drum, until they were out of sight. He waited until his mind grew quieter and the dizziness passed, then staggered on his way.

  Where several lanes ran together like the spokes of a wheel, something loomed up: a statue in white marble, a magnificent winged woman with a swan’s great pinions and a crown of light, rising in splendor to scatter blessings over the city. For one heart-stirring moment, she was the reality, everything else illusion. Maelor’s pulse pounded so hard, it seemed that his veins must burst—but then he blinked and the figure changed. After all, it was only another statue of Ouriána, this time in the guise of a siren, with the leathery wings of a bat and a slippery mermaid’s tail.

  And so, in his slow and meandering fashion, the old man came at last into the great market square down by the docks. On any other day, odors of fish, salt water, and rotting garbage mingled with scents of oranges and lemons, spices, boiled sweets, and sizzling meats served straight from the skewer; today, however, was a day of fasting from sunrise to sunset, and the food stalls were deserted.

  Yet the square appeared no less crowded and busy. On the contrary, carpenters hammered at temporary stages; merchants of the cloth guilds erected tents; and everywhere Maelor looked, extra stalls were being squeezed in between the more permanent booths already there. All this in preparation for the more riotous festivities that would begin at nightfall and continue on through the following day.

  The old man hunkered down in his accustomed spot and sat dreamily watching the activity around him, at first too engrossed to set out his conjurer’s props and astrologer’s tools. He took everything in with equal delight, from the knife grinder pushing his wheeled grindstone across the square, to the card readers and crystal-gazers in a blue silk pavilion directly opposite him, for he was as curious as a child and just as easily amused. Leatherworkers, potters, and glassmakers were already hawking their wares. A cohort of temple guards marched by in their sinister dark armor, and palace officials moved from booth to booth and tent to tent, collecting fees. Over by a dry fountain, a group of penitents in coarse black homespun was preparing to walk barefoot over burning rocks.

  But as the sun rose higher and the day grew hotter, things began to mutate again. Maelor blinked and one of the female penitents became a rope dancer in gaudy satins and velvets; across the way, a one-legged blackbird perched on the fortune-tellers’ tentpole transformed into the phoenix of legend, brilliantly feathered and wreathed in gorgeous flames.

  The old man wrinkled his narrow brow. If this went on much longer, anything might happen: dung change to gold or cobbles to carbuncles; a wretched old mountebank be translated into a genuine magician. And with that thought, just for a moment, the old fire tingled in his veins. Runes and charms rioted in his brain; patterns, symbols, strictures, spells to chain the elements and calm the raging winds, all these were his. A name—possibly his own, lost these two decades—struggled to take shape in his mind.

  Then the bells in the New Temple began their midday clamor, and the bright, entrancing images rapidly faded. The knowledge went out of him like a smothered flame. He was only Maelor the mad astrologer again: a dirty, hapless, bewildered old man, sitting in the dust of the market, hoping to earn a handful of coppers by juggling balls or performing a trick or two.

  Yet a faint memory of power still surged in his blood, and all that long day he carried off his illusions with remarkable panache. He conjured butterflies and flowers out of the air. The balls that he tossed glittered like silver moons and golden suns. He even stole fire from a fire-eater and swallowed it down, scarcely singeing his beard in the process.

  Finally, drunk on those dregs of power, he made a pageant for the people in the square, a story acted out by phantoms he crafted out of light and shade, color and air.

  It was an epic tale of knights and maidens, kings, queens, and princes, in the great city of Apharos long ago. They had been noble and courageous, those lords and ladies of another age, and after Ceir Eldig in Alluinn foremost in learning in all the Empire lands. They loved bright colors, rich fabrics, strong wines, and all things beautiful and finely crafted. They were impulsive, magnanimous, high-handed; they could be dangerous when provoked. But if their virtue was no greater than their pride, at least it was no less, and none of their faults were mean or petty ones.

  Then Maelor went on to tell of the lesser folk who lived in that long-ago city—common by birth but extraordinary in their attainments. They had been wizards, scholars, and alchemists, merchants, craftsmen, soldiers, and poets. They fought wars; they built great ships and sailed in them to all the lands of the known world; when they sinned they sinned largely, then regretted and made their amends afterward with much the same fervor. And if their aspirations had been larger than their hearts, at least their hearts had been large enough to aspire so nobly. When he had finished, there was not a man or a woman in the marketplace he had not moved to tears, not one in whom he had failed to awaken a hunger for past glories.

  And it was his most successful day ever. When he left the market in the late afternoon, his pockets jingled with so many small coins that he should have been a target for every footpad and pickpocket in the Under-City, had they only known.

  But unknown to Maelor himself, reports of his afternoon conjuring would begin to reach the temple in another day or two, and his name inevitably come to the attention of the Empress.

  7

  All things were well ordered and well founded at the Heldenhof. Wooden floors had been polished to a sheen like water, walls were bright with murals and woven hangings; there was a wholesome smell of beeswax, of stillrooms, and of rose leaves set out in open jars to keep the air sweet.

  Yet Sindérian could not help noticing, as a pair of aged manservants led her and her companions through dim, cool rooms and up two and a half flights of stairs, that the palace was strangely quiet. She thought she could hear muffled voices and footsteps coming from other chambers—and once the click, clack, thump of a loom, faint with distance—but they met no one along the way except for an ancient harper. It was emptier here, perhaps, than it had been in happier times.

  As they climbed, the broad wooden staircase grew narrower and narrower, steeper and steeper. At last the servants brought them into a sunny room at the top of the house and left them there alone. Sind
érian felt a sharp twinge of disappointment. Had she really expected the King would be there? Clearly, they were meant to wait in this room until he granted them an audience.

  She studied her surroundings. Wide casement windows, thrown open to catch the breezes, flooded the room with northern sunlight and brought with it the sounds of stable-yards and mews, the fresh scent of gardens. There were two small tables cluttered with maps and sheets of parchment, a rug of woven grasses, and some elaborately carved oak chairs and benches; these were the only furnishings.

  Walking over to one of the windows, she gazed down on a rambling landscape of shingled roofs. Far below, pigeons were feeding in a stone-flagged courtyard. Directly opposite her window, a lightning rod with green glass globes swung back and forth in the light breeze; otherwise there was nothing else on the same level. That last half-flight of stairs had brought them up to the highest room in the palace. It came to her then that this might be a place where King Ristil conducted the private business of governing his kingdom, far from prying ears.

  Yet, there was no telling how long it would be before the King arrived. Maddeningly, Prince Ruan declined to take a seat (which kept Aell standing, too), but Faolein perched on a rack of antlers over the door, and Sindérian defiantly chose one of the chairs and sat down to wait.

  Hours later she was still waiting. She divided her attention between watching the Prince pace the floor with an increasingly violent and restless motion, and keeping her eye on a stream of sand trickling through an hourglass up on the mantelpiece. Already, she had risen from her seat twice to turn the glass over and start the sand moving again.

  “After all,” she said, throwing herself back down in the chair a third time, and making a mighty but ineffective effort to mask her own impatience, “if it were not for an amazing stroke of luck we might still be waiting outside the palace. Here, we know that King Ristil will see us eventually.”