by Dave Dobson
Brand raised an arm and pointed at Marron, his finger stabbing the air as he spoke. “No, Count Marron,” said Brand, his voice cold as ice. “Faera has no more need of you." He waved at the circle of warriors. “Take him and bind him. He will see Faera awaken, and then he will be sacrificed. Consumed with the other heretics. The flames shall burn him to purity.”
Marron let out a snarl and drew his sword, but Brand was faster with his wand, and Marron stepped back, not wanting to be turned to dust. The ten soldiers all closed on Marron, threatening him with swords or crossbows. “I pay your wages,” shouted Marron to the guards. "Kill him! A thousand sovereigns to the one who cuts him down!” he cried, gesturing at Brand with his sword.
Brand laughed. “They have no more need of coins, Marron. They are about to become gods.” Three guards closed on Marron, their swords threatening. Marron dropped into a fighting stance, but then he looked around at the guards, saw his hopeless odds, and lowered his sword. "You’re all mad,” he spat, “Lunatics, every one.” The guards grabbed him and marched him roughly over to the base of the stairs. One dug through a bag to produce some leather straps, and they bound Marron’s hands and feet tightly, leaving him sitting on the steps facing the center of the chamber. He struggled against his bonds, but he seemed quite expertly immobilized.
I realized I had longed to see Marron crushed, defeated, captured, bound. But not like this. He’d been the only one down there talking sense.
59
Prophet and Loss
We retreated behind a wall of crates and began a rapid-fire discussion in whispers. The events below had changed course drastically, to be sure, but we realized that our situation hadn’t changed much. It was most important to disrupt the ceremony, and Marron’s predicament had little to do with that. If anything, it helped us. With Marron incapacitated, we only needed to take out one of them – Brand. I wondered if Clarice was a good enough shot. She surely seemed it in our attack on Novara's house, but despite my faith in her, I hoped the fate of our city didn’t come down to one arrow.
We returned to our observation of the situation below. A change came over the proceedings. The preparations seemed complete. Many of the subordinate workers crossed to the side below the moon and sun, across from the statue and the four objects in their holes, taking up positions in rows. The ten soldiers, too, moved over to that side, and all of them stood quietly together. Brand and the robed woman stood together at the top of the symbol by the statue of Hrogar, and they carried on a discussion in low tones, gesturing occasionally at various parts of the room, and more than once, at the room’s ceiling. I wondered what that was all about.
Finally, Brand clapped his hands with a flourish and raised his arms. Imperious as ever, I thought. I really didn’t like the guy. “My friends,” said Brand, his voice clear and loud. “The day is upon us. The hour is upon us. In a few short minutes, Faera will be reawakened. He will rise again, free from his bonds. You, my brothers and sisters, you who have served him so faithfully and so well, will be the first to see his rebirth into the world. You will be the first to feel his power, to be granted his reward."
As Brand spoke, Clarice gave the signal. It was time to act. Now, or not at all. The four of us retreated to the back wall of the ledge and moved quickly but quietly around the curved ledge, heading for the staircases leading down. We could not see the floor below, so we hoped they could not see us, though perhaps a stray shadow or sound might betray us. They all seemed to be fixated on Brand, though. He continued.
“We will now begin the ritual. We must open the temple to the sky, so that the power of the eclipse can be felt down here, where Faera lies imprisoned. The legends tell us that Frosthelm itself will be pushed aside by the power of this place. There are far too many who have joined our path to fit down here, so we have told our companions to meet us up above, in the market square, where we have calculated that the city will open up to reveal Faera’s prison. They, our brothers and sisters, will join us in bearing witness to Faera’s release, Faera’s freedom."
We reached the staircases. This was the tricky part, because we would be far more exposed running down the stairs than we were on top of the ledge. Clarice held up a hand. Wait, she signed. Wait for open. She pointed up. I could see her logic. Brand had implied that the ceiling opened up somehow, but I didn’t know how that was possible. When that occurred, the attention of those below would presumably be focused solely up above, not at us on the stairs, and we would have our best chance to get down there undetected.
But that might not be good enough. I caught Clarice’s eye. We down, I signed, you here. If we fail, you shoot? She furrowed her brow and slid over to take a quick look over the edge.
She returned, looked me in the eye, and nodded once. Good luck, she signed back. She pulled her bow off her back, checked the string, and popped the cover off her quiver.
Down below, Brand was wrapping up. “This, my brothers and sisters, is Faera’s time. This is our time. For thousands of years, Faera has seethed and raged down here, below our very feet, waiting for release. Release that is now within our grasp! Today, we, my friends, will do what no others have been able to do for centuries. We will grant Faera freedom, and with that freedom will come our reward! Immortality, boundless power, and dominion over the non-believers, the weak, those who do not share our glorious truth!”
He grew quiet for a moment, then folded his hands over his chest. “My brothers and sisters, our time, Faera’s time, is now.” He raised a fist into the air. "Whom do we serve?” he cried.
“Faera!” shouted the throng of believers. Either they somehow were uncannily synchronized by chance, or this was a call-and-response that they had done before.
“Who is life?”
“Faera!” shouted the crowd again.
“Who is strength?” cried Brand.
“Faera!”
“Are you with me?”
“Until Faera is free!” The believers broke into applause and shouted prayers.
“Now,” said Brand. “In the few minutes remaining until we open the temple to the sky, Sister Colette has asked to perform a song of praise she has composed to commemorate this great day. Please, center yourselves within Faera’s benevolent presence, prepare for our great destiny, and listen.”
The robed woman bowed her head and moved from the statue to the base of the stairs. We couldn’t see Marron down there, nearly directly below our position at the top of the staircase, but I heard his voice, loud, mocking, and full of indignant exasperation. “Oh, PLEASE," he said. “Really?”
I worried that she would come up the stairs, but instead, she quickly came back into view carrying a lute of golden-brown wood with a wide dangling strap. She shot an angry glance back at Marron, then advanced to the center of the room, placing the embroidered strap about her neck. She bowed her head to the gathered worshippers again and gave the lute a strum. Frowning, she adjusted one of the lute’s tuning pegs and strummed again. She adjusted a second peg, then played several twangy notes that bent up and down as she turned the pegs. Then again another strum. And another small adjustment of the pegs.
Brand cleared his throat loudly. She looked over, and he smiled broadly and made an exaggerated beckoning motion with his hands. The woman blushed, adjusted her square cap, plucked each string once more from high to low, then took a deep breath. And then a second deep breath. Finally, she swung her hand up high, gave the lute a mighty downward strum, and began to sing.
The song began all right, recounting a version of the imprisonment of Faera by a band of wizards which more or less matched what Gora had told us. The melody ran a little bit high for her voice at times, though, which made it sound a bit screechy. Brand kept his broad smile serene, but some of the worshippers began to look at each other. After an unfortunate rhyme of “Faera" with “terror,” there was an intricate lute bridge strain, and she slowed down a little as it got harder to play. Then she sped up again and launched into the second verse, which t
old the tale of Faera's long slumber. Sister Colette was again not quite up to singing the higher parts, but she pressed gamely onward. This verse closed with “his power to share-a!” She got stuck in the bridge strain this time and had to restart it, her fingers twitching as she frowned, blushing. Brand’s smile had faded a bit now, and some of the congregation hid smiles behind their hands. Boog tapped my shoulder and looked at me, a quizzical expression on his face. I shrugged back.
The third verse spoke first of how hard Faera’s current followers had labored to bring him back. Then it shifted into an extended metaphor in which Faera played the part of a tomcat, fighting off all the other cats in the street where he lived. One of them was not-so-subtly called Blood Mother, and she met a terrible end. The feline version of Faera then granted life and leniency to the mice upon which he’d formerly preyed. It ended with a rousing rhyme, repeated twice, about the “bloodstains on his furr-ah!” This time, she nearly got the bridge strain right, and as it ended, she slowed to half-pace and chanted “Faera” in a deep monotone three times, all the while strumming a steady cadence on the lute. I thought she must be done, and so did Brand, who stepped forward to take charge again. But then Colette started up a fourth verse, this one about Faera’s illustrious future as a king of the sky.
As her voice rose in shrill praise of Faera’s cloudy palace, Brand shouted “Thank you!” and started clapping loudly. There were scattered echoes of applause from the assembled listeners. Colette halted, mid-syllable, and looked flustered. “Thank you, Sister Colette,” said Brand. “Powerful words of praise." She played one more faltering note, then stopped. She bowed her head and walked back toward the stairs. I heard Marron murmur something and laugh, and then she reappeared, this time without her instrument.
“Sister, it is time,” said Brand. “Have you the Eye of Hrogar?” We tensed up, ready to move. Colette fished a white stone out of a pouch at her belt. She approached the statue and placed the stone in the statue’s empty eye socket. Nothing happened. Boog started down the stairs, slow and silent, followed by Lucianna, and I crept along after them. The worshippers flanked the statue, watching Colette work. I hoped they would not turn toward us, although we were partially hidden by the giant glass disk and its metal arms. I felt terribly exposed.
I couldn’t see the statue well from the stairs, as it faced mostly away from me, but it looked like the eye she put in was pointed sideways, surely leaving poor Hrogar wall-eyed. She waited for a time, watching the statue, her lips parted. Then she crossed over to Brand and spoke to him. He muttered back, pointing at the statue.
I was struck by a sudden realization. Brand and his followers had never done this before. They couldn’t do a trial run – there was only one eclipse like this in a lifetime, and the ritual had never been completed, or Faera would be free. They had never opened the temple to the sky. If it was under the city, people above would surely notice if the city was split asunder or swept apart to reveal this room. They were feeling their way through a ritual engineered centuries ago, described to them in a host of documents that had likely been translated and retranslated, lost and damaged, and subject to questionable interpretation. Unless Faera was somehow down there telling them exactly what to do, they were working through this blindly.
It was even possible, I thought, that the ritual was nothing but the ramblings of fanatics, that there was no Faera, or that whatever Faera was, it had long since escaped, starved, or died of boredom. But Marron had seemed genuinely concerned that whatever Brand was doing would work. And then I remembered my vision in the pool so long ago – balls of fire, raining from the sky. That was real enough. If that came to pass, and the Augur said the pool’s predictions always had, it was likely that whatever Brand was doing would succeed.
Sister Colette went back to the statue and adjusted the eye stone she had inserted, pushing on it, then rotating it around in the socket. She looked nervously back at Brand, then pushed on it again. He came over to have a look, but as he neared the statue, there was a fearsome clanking noise, and a hail of dust and gravel fell like rain from the ceiling. The whole chamber vibrated, and a wide circular area of the ceiling, some seventy feet above the floor, began to shift. As the clanking and rain of pebbles and dust continued, the ceiling split apart into seven sections, each shaped like a slice of pie. Between the sections, black cracks widened, and more and more material fell to the floor below, bigger pieces now, including bricks and cobblestones. Brand and the others backed up, staring at the ceiling, moving to safer spots around the edges. Boog and Lucianna and I resumed moving down the stairs, but the going was difficult with the room shaking and with the noise and dust.
There was then a groaning and grinding noise as two of the sections of ceiling shuddered to a stop. The other five continued, and I could see thin blue slivers of sky showing through in places, growing as the sections separated. Tremendous cracking and popping sounds resounded through the chamber, and the two stuck wedges split apart and moved again. Where they split, a curtain of water rained down to the floor, and several of the nearby cultists were swept to the ground by the spray as it struck them. As the cracks above widened, more and more water spilled through, until the deluge finally slowed, and the curtain of water broke into dripping streams. There was a full inch or two of water soaking the floor amidst the ritual items and the debris that had fallen from above.
Through the grinding, clanking, and splashing, I could sometimes hear the frantic cries of the cultists below as they tried to dodge the falling stones and water. I could also hear shouts and yells from above us. As we reached the landing, halfway down the stairs, I could see a seven-pointed star of sky widening in the center of the ceiling as the seven sections retracted. I could not tell from what showed through what part of the city we stood under. But then a basket of apples tumbled through one of the cracks, the fruit pouring out, and the apples smashed into the floor with loud splats as the basket bounced and broke into pieces. After that came wooden boards, two melons, and a piece of gaudily painted awning advertising a fruit stand. More and more goods fell through the cracks – a rack of shirts on wooden hangers, a tray of jewelry, an entire kebab cart with skewers and fiery embers. Three wooden cages full of chickens fell through in quick succession, and they smashed apart into clouds of twigs, straw, and feathers. Though most of the birds did not appear to have survived the fall, some of them fluttered or limped about the temple floor in new-found freedom, screeching and cawing.
We reached the bottom of the stairs. Marron lay there, covered in dust and grime, feathers stuck to his face. He struggled with the straps holding him. Boog struck him hard with his staff, and Marron slumped over, moaning. I wanted to do something, anything to him, ideally something of the fatal or painful varieties, but there was no time. We had to reach the statue and try to halt the ceremony. All around us, objects crashed to the ground. They were nearly impossible to dodge, falling fast from seventy feet above. I was struck by a round loaf of hard bread, which was surprisingly painful, and I saw Lucianna stumble as a basket of rolls grazed her shoulder on the way down.
Most of the soldiers and cultists cowered along the edge of the room, their arms raised up over their heads for shelter. Some lay limp and still, limbs splayed about, unconscious or dead from the rain of articles from above. The air was hazy with dust, feathers, and debris, and the floor was slick and treacherous. I stared wildly about, looking for Brand. He and Colette were huddled next to the statue. I shouted to Boog and Lucianna and pointed.
Boog charged across the temple floor, pulling his staff back to strike, but three of the soldiers scrambled to their feet and ran to intercept him, drawing their swords. Far above us, the sections of ceiling had almost completely retracted. They were small triangles now, poking like sharp teeth out of the edges of what was otherwise a circle of blue sky. I didn’t see the sun directly, but it shone in a bright band on one side of the upper wall. I knew it should be at an angle in the sky to the south of us, so the lit wall mus
t be the north side.
Boog swung his staff at the first of the soldiers to reach him, connecting with the man’s helmet with a resounding crack. The man dropped to the ground and lay still. The second one reached Boog before he had recovered, and I shouted out a warning as the soldier swung his sword down at Boog. Boog lurched back from the swing, but his foot slipped on the wet floor, and he fell onto his back. The soldier raised his sword again, this time holding it point down with both hands, poised to drive it down into Boog’s chest. I did not see how Boog could escape, although he scrabbled back along the wet ground. But then the soldier’s grip loosened, and he dropped the sword and fell over on his side. I was mystified at first, but then I saw the red feathers of an arrow protruding upward from his chest. Clarice.
I drew my warding rod from its holster at my belt, and I slapped the end, causing it to buzz to life, but I was too far away to help Boog. The third soldier reached Boog as he was scrambling to stand. She had her sword out, ready and deadly, but Lucianna got there at the same time. Lucianna was a flurry of black hair and steel, screaming guttural syllables in her language with each blow, and the soldier soon went down clutching her belly. Lucianna yelled and pointed behind me, and I spun around, getting the rod up just in time to knock aside a sword strike from another temple guard. As she pulled back to swing again, I thrust my rod straight into her stomach. It discharged, and she fell to the ground, her arms flung wide.
I spun around in a full circle, looking for more danger. We’d taken out four of the soldiers. Two of the others were down and not moving at the edge of the room, probably struck by something from above. The other four were up on their feet and approaching. There was a monstrous clang from above, and the clanking and grinding stopped. The ceiling was fully retracted. Debris and soil still clattered down around the edges, and water still dripped down along one side, but the flood from above was much reduced.