by NS Dolkart
They reached the Great Temple of Magor, where the priests and the other members of the Council of Generals were waiting for them. The crowd cheered them on as Narky and Ptera were marched inside. The bulk of Magerion’s men stayed outside to control the crowd while the general, his sons, and the others who shared the duty of guarding the prisoners entered the temple.
The Great Temple of Magor was a magnificent building, its walls covered in murals and painted friezes depicting victories for the God and His city over various enemies. Here, a band of soldiers led a jackal-headed Goddess in chains toward the throne of the Boar God. There, a young High Priest Bestillos rammed his spear through the chest of a mounted Dragon Touched warrior. Narky even spotted a corner where someone had recently added a scene of Laarna’s destruction, with Bestillos standing before the twin pillars at the entrance to the Temple of Ravennis, a flayed Oracle lashed to each. Above this scene, the boar of Magor trampled on a desperate-looking crow, its wings spread as if in an attempt to escape.
If everything went the way it was supposed to, Narky would have the privilege of watching these works of art destroyed. He would have that boar repainted as a corpse, with its eyes pecked out and the raven perched triumphantly on its back. He would tear down Magor’s statue at the temple’s center, behind the altar, and… and first he had to survive the afternoon.
The soldiers forced Narky and Ptera to their knees as a group of men came forward to meet them. These were the same five priests of Magor that Narky remembered from the Graceful Servant’s confrontation, and three other men who must have been members of the city’s Council of Generals. These were dressed formally, their armor polished and their swords hanging from their belts in ornate decorative scabbards. A boy stood behind them, near the altar, holding the priests’ barbed spears.
“Welcome back, General Magerion,” said Magor’s high priest, “and congratulations on your capture of Narky the Black. His sacrifice will be holiest to Magor, and send a message to his brother the Black Dragon that there is no escaping Ardisian might.”
“Perhaps,” said one of the generals, turning a critical eye on the two who stood beside him. “But if we wanted to send that message to the Dragon Touched, defeating them in battle would have worked better.”
“Quiet, Stellys,” said the older of the two. “You have not fought the Dragon Touched yourself, nor have you worked to suppress the cult of Ravennis as Magerion has done.”
“You let the Black Dragon rout you, Xytos. I’d call that worse than doing nothing. And Choerus didn’t even engage with our enemy before fleeing homeward.”
“Which is why Ardis still stands,” the one called Choerus retorted. “With Xytos’ army routed and the Dragon Touched between me and our home, our enemies could have easily stormed the city and burned you alive if I hadn’t outmaneuvered them and made it here first. Only fools criticize without thinking.”
High Priest Melikon ended their quarrel with a clap of his hands. “Save your arguments for later,” he scolded. “Ardis faces enemies both within and without. Today marks our victory against the former – defeat of the latter is bound to follow. The day is Magerion’s.”
“Thank you,” Magerion said. “I believe this day is getting better and better.”
Melikon nodded. “Today marks the end of the death cult of Ravennis. With them no longer weakening our people from within, Magor will once again bless His city with victory. The strength of Ardis will be restored.”
“No,” Magerion said, “not restored. Renewed. Ardis can never be what it once was. It must become something new and stronger.”
Every muscle in Narky’s body tensed. It was coming. Soon.
“I don’t follow you.”
“Then let me show you,” Magerion answered, and with a sudden leap forward he thrust his spear straight through Melikon’s stomach. The other generals cried out and drew their swords, but Magerion’s retainers skewered all three of them before they could do much more than that. The remaining priests of Magor scrambled to retrieve their spears from the boy by the altar, but Atlon hurled his spear into one of their backs while Magerion drew his own short sword and whistled for his men outside to join them. The priests of Magor and their young assistant were quickly surrounded and dispatched.
Narky looked over to find that Ptera had squeezed her eyes tightly shut. Narky would have loved to do the same, but his sense of self-preservation wouldn’t let him. What if one of Magerion’s men turned on him? What if he had to dodge a stray spear thrust or worse, an intentional one? So he watched the horror that unfolded before him and sighed in relief when all of Magerion’s former colleagues were dead.
When it was over, Atlon helped Narky to his feet and untied his hands while another of Magerion’s men did the same for Ptera. Magerion turned toward them. “Are you ready?”
Narky shook his head. High Priest Melikon was staring at him, clutching at the spear that had gone through his belly and was poking out the other side. He was trying to say something.
Narky approached him warily – he wouldn’t have put it past the man to have hidden a knife in his palm on the off chance Narky got close enough for a kill.
“It’s happened,” Melikon gasped, barely audible over the sounds of the agitated crowd outside the temple.
“It has,” Narky agreed.
“Just like she showed me,” Melikon continued, his voice getting weaker with each word. “Only she never showed me who. I only saw the spear, and felt… betrayed… surprised…”
“You should have expected it, then,” Narky said. “The Graceful Servant showed you the death Ravennis meant for you, and you didn’t even guard against it? You’re an idiot. I’d have spent the rest of my life suspecting everyone.”
Melikon blinked and looked up into his eyes. “I thought if I killed her… a prophecy is only…”
Narky nodded. “A prophecy is just a God’s boast, sure. But you didn’t kill Ravennis, you killed His servant. That’s not the same thing. Not even close.”
Melikon closed his eyes and said no more, waiting for death to take him. Narky turned away.
They stepped out into the sunlight, where the crowd stared at them all in shock. They had heard the screams, but the soldiers outside the temple had held them at bay until it was all over. Now they just stood, waiting for someone to explain away the sudden horror.
Magerion raised a bloodstained hand. “Magor has fallen,” he announced, “defeated by Ravennis, Keeper of Fates and God of the Underworld. The senior priests of Magor are all dead, beside our failed leaders Xytos, Choerus, and Stellys. A new age is upon us: the age of Ravennis. All will worship Him or be put to the sword.”
There were gasps, and muttered exclamations, but nobody was brave enough to object aloud. Magerion turned to his men. “Round up the families of the slain generals and tell them that they can pledge their loyalty to me and be named nobles, or refuse and be slaughtered. Narky, as high priest, I leave the conversion of the city in your hands. Wherever a worshipper of Magor refuses to give up the old religion, don’t hesitate to have him slain. Tell me or my men, or do it yourself – I don’t care, so long as the city unites under Ravennis and under me.”
Narky nodded, and the old general looked at the crowd and smiled.
“So begins my reign,” he said, aloud but clearly to himself. “Ardis has a king once more.”
32
Dessa
Dessa couldn’t believe Bandu and Vella had left her behind. Why, why would they have gone off together and not taken her too? They hadn’t even told her that they were going – they’d just disappeared one night without warning, leaving Dessa to cope all by herself. How could they?
She’d thought Bandu was so wonderful. She’d ignored Grandma’s warnings, and why shouldn’t she? Grandma had said Bandu and Criton would take Dessa’s father away, not her best friend!
Nobody knew where they’d gone – not Criton, not Vella’s parents, not Pilos or his awful parents. Dessa kept trying to think
back to what had happened over the last few weeks, what warning signs she might have missed, but there was nothing. Vella hadn’t even visited Bandu in days and days! Could they have planned this so far in advance?
No, she was sure they hadn’t. Vella knew that Dessa could keep a secret – if she and Bandu had been planning to leave together, she’d have said something. It was comforting to think so, anyway. Maybe it had been a sudden emergency, and they’d had to hurry off without any time to tell Dessa about it. That would have been almost excusable. Almost.
So what could she do now? Who was left for her to care about, now that the two people she admired most were both gone? That little girl Delika didn’t even care. Mother suggested that Dessa talk to Malkon about it, since he was sure to be missing his sister too, but that was such a grown-up way of looking at things. Having ‘things in common’ didn’t help anything, it was just an excuse to try to shove the two of them together. Dessa had just lost her two favorite girls – she didn’t want to talk to some boy about it.
Instead, she avoided talking to anyone. Mother found that distressing, but she didn’t push Dessa too hard because she also had Grandma to worry about. Grandma was getting worse and worse – she sometimes thought that rocks were mushrooms and tried to eat them, or else she would try to leave their tent without being properly dressed. Now when Mother said Grandma “wasn’t herself,” Dessa believed her.
She was still herself sometimes, though. Sometimes she would look at Dessa with such clarity and speak with such sense and purpose that it was hard to believe her mind was really going, that she wasn’t just pretending the rest of the time.
“I know I’m going mad,” she said once, when Mother and Father were busy and Dessa was alone with her. “I can feel it slipping away, Dessa. It’s horrible, just horrible. I’m sorry I can’t be like I was. Once…”
She broke off, sobbing. “I’m sorry.”
Dessa gingerly patted her on the back. That only made Grandma cry harder, but Dessa didn’t know what else to do, so she kept going. “You’ll be all right, Grandma,” she said.
“No, I won’t,” Grandma insisted, wiping her eyes. “Don’t lie to me, child. This never gets better, it only gets worse. I’ll lose more and more until there’s nothing left.”
Dessa didn’t know what to say to that. She had never considered what it would be like to go mad, and she hadn’t realized that you could know you were going mad, hate that it was happening to you, and be unable to stop it. She suddenly felt bad for having hated Grandma before. Mother was right: it wasn’t her fault.
“We’ll take care of you, though,” she said. “We won’t let you eat rocks or anything.”
“What?” said Grandma, looking up. “What rocks?”
“You try to eat rocks sometimes.”
“I do not.”
Dessa should have known better than to take the conversation in this direction. “Oh,” she said. “You’re right. I’m sorry, Grandma, that was a mistake.”
Grandma smiled. “It’s all right, child. We all make mistakes.”
We sure do, Dessa thought.
She told Mother about their conversation, and Mother nodded sadly. “It’s very hard for her,” she said. “It’s hard for all of us. I hope you’ll be kind to her, Dessa, and don’t take what she says sometimes to heart.”
“I’ll try,” Dessa told her. “But Mother?”
“Yes?”
“Why does she hate Bandu and Criton so much?”
“I don’t know, maybe they remind her of someone.”
Dessa didn’t think that was very likely. There weren’t any other Dragon Touched who were dark like Criton, and she didn’t believe there could be anyone in the world who was quite like Bandu. But then, there was no telling what was going on in Grandma’s mind. She called Dessa ‘Iona’ sometimes, and at other times she thought that Mother was her mother. For all Dessa knew, maybe the Tarphaeans did remind her of someone – someone who was nothing like them.
But it was Grandma who had called Criton the Black Dragon, so she had to have recognized that his skin was darker than any of the other Dragon Touched. And the fact that she kept saying Criton would kill Father didn’t have anything to do with her confused memories. That scared Dessa. What if Grandma was right? It was hard to believe – Father was so warm and solid, and he and Criton seemed to be the best of friends. But grown-ups could change quickly. There was a whole level to them, underneath the surface, that Dessa couldn’t understand. So she worried.
She would have liked to pretend that Grandma was just confused again, that she was mixing Father up with Grandpa, who really was dead. But then, she couldn’t have been mixing up their deaths, because Grandpa had died peacefully in his sleep.
Still, Grandma was going mad. Maybe she had just dreamt something, and thought it was real. That seemed likely enough. Just so long as it was a nightmare and not a prophecy, it would be all right. And it had to be just a nightmare. Why would God Most High give a prophecy to a madwoman?
33
Partha
That feeling of slipping, slipping. For Partha, losing her mind wasn’t a sudden snapping, it was a grueling ongoing process: an assault on her Partha-ness that raged on and on as she faltered and retreated, falling back from each position as it became impossible to hold. Her husband had been a soldier, a captain, so she thought of it in his terms. Her husband, her husband – oh God, what was his name? Belkos? Belkos! No, that wasn’t right, that was someone else’s husband. Shit!
At first she had thought it was simply her memories slipping away, but it was far worse than that. They were failing to form in the first place now, dying stillborn before she could catch hold of them and drag them into the light. This whole thing was like sleeping on a hill. Every day you woke up lower down than you remembered.
And it was infuriating, losing her mind. People thought she would do something crazy just because she couldn’t catch it, whatever it was. Her mother watched her day and night, told her what to eat and what not to – she was a nuisance, really. Partha could take care of herself, she was a full grown woman, except… had she just called Iona her mother? That was a mistake, a terrible mistake. She hoped she hadn’t made it out loud. She didn’t want Iona to catch on to the fact that something was wrong with her – there was no telling what would happen to her then.
Her eyesight was going too, along with her mind. Or not exactly her eyesight, since her eyes could still see, but her mindsight. The things she saw with her eyes made less sense to her now. She would say, “Careful, Iona! Don’t step in the hole!” and Iona would turn to her and say, “It’s not a hole, Grandma, it’s my black wool coat. I took it off while we were putting the tent up.” But Partha couldn’t trust her, of course, because Iona was always lying. Here she was, lying again, because she had called Partha “Grandma” when Partha knew damn well that Iona was her daughter, the insolent girl.
But while her ability to see and understand faltered, she was receiving visions in its stead. That should have been a holy thing, except she thought she might be stealing them. Or maybe not stealing, that wasn’t right – it was more as if she was standing on the wrong path, on their path, and intercepting them by mistake. Was that holy, or unholy?
She saw that devil, that Black Dragon, giving her little girl a mealy-mouthed apology for killing her Belkos. It was a fake apology, she knew. He didn’t even mean it, the liar! And that witch, the She-wolf, she had scurried off into hiding somewhere, but she was the one responsible for it all. Partha could feel her presence inside the Black Dragon, influencing him, sustaining him.
That was the only true thing she knew, at least until it slipped away too. She was afraid it might if she didn’t keep thinking about it. Sometimes the vision was blurry, the words indistinct, and all she could remember was that those two had betrayed her. They had killed her father, Belkos.
No! Damn her, that wasn’t right either! But it was close, close enough. The point was that they had done it to her, eith
er long ago, or later on. It was the betrayal that mattered. She had to sustain her fury, because someday it might be all that sustained her.
But more often than Partha was angry, she was frightened. There were times when the fear of losing herself pushed all other thoughts to the side and she wept out of sheer terror, unable to hold onto the parts of her that mattered – unable to even explain which parts they were. She clung to the notion of the Black Dragon’s betrayal like a reed on the edge of a cliff, not because it was strong or even important, but because it was all she could reach. The fear of falling governed everything.
Sometimes she prayed for her God to take her before she could lose any more. She didn’t know how old she was – seven, maybe? – but she knew she was old enough to die. They probably wouldn’t even weep over her grave, just say, “Too bad about that girl Partha,” and move on. They were all liars and false friends anyway.
This one here, this one who was pretending to be Partha’s daughter – Partha knew better than to trust her. She might pretend that she was a dutiful daughter, just looking after her poor aging mother, but it was all a game. She was after something – was it her money? She had hidden Partha’s real daughter away somewhere, and was trying to ingratiate herself.
“I know what you’re really after,” Partha told her. “You can’t fool me.”
Not-Iona sighed. “And what am I after, Mother?”
Partha didn’t know for sure – it might have been the money, but it might also have been something else, so instead of answering, she repeated herself. “You know what you did. You can’t fool me. You’re not really her, you’re one of them.”
“One of who?”
“You know who.”