Sacred Fire

by Chris Pierson

  He dined in the imperial manse most nights, but Beldinas spoke little to him. Other matters, of church and of state, occupied the Kingpriest, and when he was not paying ear to these, he withdrew to meditate in private. Quarath kept the Kingpriest close, watching Cathan with a rival’s suspicion whenever they were in the same room. And Beldinas declined Cathan’s requests for a private audience, while speaking to him little at those rare times when they were together. He didn’t understand why, but the Lightbringer would speak with him when he was ready, and not before.

  Sometimes, Cathan ventured out into the Lordcity’s streets. He never went far before he drew a crowd, the same sorts of open-mouthed gawkers who had driven him into hiding in the first place. They followed at a distance, staring, pointing, muttering to one another. When he went into the mudubas, the open-air wine shops—he was happily surprised to find the Mirrorgarden, one of his favorites, still open and run by the old publican’s widow. Everyone watched him drink with fascination, but no one would sit near him.

  It was on his fifth sojourn in the city that he found the slave market. On this day he was out by the waterfront when he came across a string of men and women, chained together with iron rings around their necks and ankles, and shambling toward the main marketplace. Curious, he couldn’t help but draw closer, trying to ignore the uneasy expression on the guard’s face.

  “What did they do?” he asked.

  The man chewed on some sort of leaf for a moment, then shrugged and spat a stream of rust-colored juice in the gutter. He shifted his grip on his halberd, prodding a straggler with the weapon’s butt. “Dunno, exactly,” he said. “Heretics, I’d say. It’s all heretics these days… no more good, strong minotaur and half-ogre backs to sell. Maybe they didn’t sacrifice part of their crops, or they think the local hedge-witch can tell their fortunes. Filthy thing to believe, some scabby old hag knowing more than a proper priest.”

  Cathan grunted agreement, and edged away. The guard shrugged, then muttered something to one of his comrades. He nodded at Cathan, and both of them laughed.

  The slaves said nothing—nor could they, their mouths held shut by the iron masks the church called Coi Tasabas, the Heathen’s Jaws. Cathan followed them as they made their slow, shuffling way through the streets, on toward the marketplace. There, tucked in the easternmost corner of the sprawl of tents and stalls and shouting, cursing buyers and sellers, was a simple wooden platform, the same type he’d seen in Chidell. Around it stood more shackled groups of miserable-looking slaves, unshaven guards, and a handful of merchants and nobles, haggling as if over fresh fish.

  He stopped where he stood, staring as a big trader dressed in furs spoke with an effete Seldjuki lord clad in bright crimson silks and a broad-brimmed hat to ward the sun off his powdered face. The pair waved their arms and shook their heads, a dance found in every market in the world. They called each other thieves, then a bag of gold falcons dropped from the lord’s pudgy hand into the slaver’s callused one. They laughed together, and the trader waved to one of his men. The guard went to a chain of young boys—none looked older than fourteen summers—and at the Seldjuki’s direction, removed a thin, dusky-skinned lad from the line and stripped the mask off his face. The lord inspected the boy, checking biceps, eyes, and teeth, then nodded in satisfaction. The trader gave him an iron key, and they clasped arms, concluding the deal.

  Cathan watched the swarthy boy as the Seldjuki led him away. What fate awaited him? Toil in some venture owned by the lord? Or would he be a house-slave, catering to his masters whims? The boy moved as if still chained to his fellows, shoulders hunched and face turned down toward his bare feet. Soon both of them were gone, melting into the crowds of the marketplace.

  Sighing, Cathan ran a hand down his face. Already the fur-clad slaver was speaking with another customer, an elderly matron wearing a fortunes worth of jewelry. A girl house-slave stood beside her, her face sullen and joyless.

  “What’s your pleasure?” growled a scratchy voice close by. Cathan turned, saw a man with a sapphire-studded eye-patch and a cape fringed with bright green feathers. “Say, you’re that Twice-Born, aren’t you? Are you looking to buy? Want a strong arm for protection, or maybe a girl for a lonely bed? How about a gladiator? I got that old Rockbreaker at the arena could whip into shape fair enough. What do you say ab—”

  The next thing Cathan knew, the eye patched man was lying flat on the ground, swearing in several languages; blood streamed from the man’s broken nose, and Cathan’s own fist hurt like the Abyss. All around the marketplace, folk stopped in mid-conversation, staring as the slaver struggled to his feet—feathers falling from his ludicrous cloak—and skulked away. The slavers and their customers edged sway from Cathan, avoiding his eyes.

  He stood still, glowering at them all, then turned and hurried away, across the market and down the street He didn’t walk with any conscious destination in mind, yet his feet carried him inward along the curving boulevards toward the Temple. The guards at the side gate nodded to him, then stepped aside as he swept through into the gardens, and the imperial manse behind it.

  Idar was right: Something had to be done.

  *****

  “No,” said Quarath, his face as imperturbable as ever. He rose from the velvet-cushioned chair where he’d been sitting, poring over a copy of Moriod’s Elegies of the Kinslayer War, and set the book aside. “I’m afraid you can’t go in, Twice-Born.”

  Cathan stood in the center of the Kingpriest’s entry parlor, for a moment too furious to speak. He didn’t glance at the elf, watching him with his infuriatingly patient expression. He didn’t look at the tapestries on the walls, depicting the triumphs of the church over the dark gods’ cults, nor at the fresco of the platinum dragon on the ceiling, nor at the busts of the six gods of light—Solinari, the god of white magic, having been removed long ago—arrayed in the corner. He stared only at the tall, golden doors at the room’s far end. They were closed, and two knights stood before them, barring the way.

  “You didn’t hear me,” Cathan said. “I didn’t ask to see the Kingpriest. I said must see him.”

  Quarath smiled, indulgent, and spoke slowly, as though to a child. “That may be, Lord Cathan, but it is not your place to say what His Holiness does, or whom he sees. If you wish, I might try to arrange an audience for you tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Cathan snapped, then shook his head and stepped forward.

  The elf made a small signal. The knights moved, lowering their halberds. Cathan came up short, startled. Once, the men of the Divine Hammer had followed his commands. Now they watched him suspiciously, faces hidden behind the visors of their horned helms. He could sense their nervousness. He had surrendered Ebonbane at the manse’s doors; even without it, he might have been able to fight his way past the guards, though, into the Lightbringer’s chambers.

  No, that would be stupid. Other guards would come, and he hadn’t come here to get arrested. With a dirty glare at Quarath, he pivoted on his heel and left the parlor, down the hall and down the stairs. Brother Flaro, the Kingpriest’s steward, gave him back his sword, and he buckled it on as he strode into the gardens again. He was angry, and his fury only kept building as he stood on the portico of the platinum-roofed palace. He wanted to throttle the elf, break his scrawny neck for keeping him from the Kingpriest, go back in and put Ebonbane to Quarath’s throat, threaten to kill him if he weren’t allowed in.

  He did none of these things. With an effort that made him shake, he lifted his hand from his blade’s hilt. He looked out over the gardens, a riot of color and scents. Off to one side, the tops of many moonstone obelisks jutted up above the bushes: The Garden of Martyrs, where the names of the god-blessed dead were etched. Many more of the white cenotaphs had appeared during his exile, each bearing more names than he could count.

  Before he knew he was doing it, he was striding toward the monuments. The crushed-crystal path crunched underfoot. He went to one obelisk in particular, and found the plac
e where a name had been removed: two names, actually, chiseled away. Tithian’s had once been there, and his own as well, when the church had believed them dead at Losarcum. He touched the gap in the list of names, let out a slow breath, and leaned forward, his head butting against cool stone.

  The ground rushed down, away from him …he saw his own body, leaning against the monument, a thing left lifeless as his spirit rose above the city. Istar gleamed in the sun, gold and silver and the colors of a hundred jewels. Above, the sky grew dark—not twilight, but a draining away of light. The stars glowed their cold sheen, diamonds and rubies scattered and indigo satin… and something else.

  The hammer.

  With a rush, he realized, the power of what was happening. He’d been keeping vigil in this garden, perhaps five steps from where his body was now, when the god first gave him the vision. It had felt real then, and it felt real now—no dream, but something more. Something he was meant to see.

  I should he higher, he thought. I should he up among the moons, looking down on the world. That’s how the dream goes, how it’s always gone. I’ve never been so close to the ground before.

  He could see the people, laity in the streets and wine-shops and markets, clerics on the paths and terraces of the Temple. He could see the knights sparring in the Hammerhall, and figures in the courtyard of his sister’s manor. He could see the slaves, and the men who bought and sold them.

  Some were looking up now, gazing past him. He knew what they saw: the mass of fire and stone, more than a league across, shaped like a hammer of war. It trailed a tail of flame as it got closer, closer…

  Cold horror dropped in his stomach, heavy and hard as stone. Gods, it was heading straight for Istar!

  “Run!” he cried to the figures below.

  He wanted to wave his arms, but they were back down in the Garden with the rest of his body. Everyone was staring at the hammer, pointing and bending close to talk excitedly with one another. He kept shouting at them, but they could no more hear him than see him. They only stared, and he knew that the empire was over, in Istar’s cities and towns and fortresses and abbeys, thousands—no, millions—of eyes were fixed on the stranger ablaze in the darkling sky.

  Palado Calib, he thought. This isn’t right at all…

  The hammer was close now, coming on with a speed he couldn’t imagine. Its trail of flame stretched across the sky. It made no sound at all—and so he heard the voices beneath him change, the wonder and awe rising to shrill terror.

  The hammer streaked past, down, down toward the shining dome of the Temple.

  *****

  Cool air rushed into his lungs, and he choked, falling first against the monument, then to his knees on the path. Around him, the world swung and spun, spun and swung … he retched, his breath hitching in his burning throat. When he was done, he rolled over and sat up, his back against the cenotaph’s foot.

  Now it was night, the red moon waning just above the manse’s roof, the silver not yet up. The black moon was up there too, but Cathan didn’t look for it. How long had he been here? Four hours? Six? And no one had even noticed.

  “You were looking for me.”

  The musical voice made him start. He turned, saw the shimmering glow of Beldinas. The Lightbringer sat on a marble bench, its arms carved into the likenesses of dragon wings. The Kingpriest watched Cathan from a distance, and for a long while, neither man spoke again, or moved.

  “Quarath told me,” the Kingpriest explained finally. “He should have let you in when you asked. It’s past time we spoke, my friend. I need your help.”

  “My help?” Cathan asked.

  Beldinas rose from the bench. “There are some things even I cannot do alone. I will tell you of my plans. But first … why did you come to see me, earlier today? Might it have anything to do with the trader you struck in the marker?”

  There was laughter in the question, and Cathan flushed, looking away. He sighed. “Not here,” he said. “I can’t talk here.”

  “Where, then?”

  Cathan looked back at Beldinas. “Take me to the Hall of Sacrilege.”

  Chapter 13

  The olive trees, laden with the green beginnings of fruit, whispered in the wind. They were a dense tangle, and the shadows beneath them lay thick. There seemed to be voices in the creaking of their branches, but if there were words they were muted, impossible to make out

  Cathan stared at the olives, his face as white as a priest’s vestment. “Here?” he asked.

  “Here,” the Kingpriest agreed. “I’m sorry, my friend. I forgot you know this place. But it is safe now—the wizards are long gone.”

  Cathan swallowed, glancing behind him. The people of the Lordcity had not built any houses near this grove, even now, and even the crowd that had followed him and Beldinas from the Temple hung back at the edge of the broad, open area surrounding the trees. The superstitions about the olive grove ran deep, and with good reason: There had been a time when magic flowed in the sap of these trees, an ancient enchantment to keep out the unwelcome. Anyone who wandered into the grove unbidden soon found his memory muddled, so that he had no idea who he was, or why he had come. Cathan knew those tales were true, for he had felt the olives’ sorcery himself. He’d been here before, in the months before the war with the sorcerers.

  The trees’ magic was still there; he felt a prickling that grew stronger with every step he took toward the grove. The spell had dimmed over the years, though. He looked up, above the spreading boughs at the Tower within.

  The spire of the High Sorcerers—once one of five in the world, now one of three—soared high, a column of white stone topped with five crimson turrets and black parapets. Men called it the Bloody-Fingered Hand, and forked their fingers against evil whenever they gazed at it. Once, the greatest wizards in Istar had dwelt within, and it had seethed with the power of the three moons. But the wizards were gone now, fled to their sanctuary at Wayreth, and the Tower was a dead thing, stone only, devoid of enchantment. The sight of it still made Cathan’s mouth go dry.

  “What better place to house the relics of heathens?” Beldinas said, leading the way around the grove. “There were no greater heretics than the wizards, after all, and none who did greater harm to our empire.”

  “Why house the relics at all?” Cathan asked. He said nothing about the wizards, though memories of Leciane flashed through his head. He knew he could not sway the Lightbringer from his belief that sorcery was an evil thing. “Why not destroy them, leave them lost to history?”

  The Kingpriest spread his hands. “We did that, when you were with the Hammer. But one can learn much from one’s enemies. The Dark One himself has taught me this. When light triumphs, the tokens of evil will lose their usefulness. Until then, though, it is good that those who fight the darkness have a place to see what it is they face.”

  “The clergy, you mean,” Cathan said.

  “And the knighthood. All who serve the church can benefit from this place, if they dare enter.”

  They stopped at the south edge of the grove. There had not been a path through the olives years ago, but there was one now, running straight through their midst. White stones marked with the triangle and the burning hammer lined it on either side. On the far end stood slender gates of gold and iron. Beldinas gestured down the trail, and after a moment’s hesitation Cathan led the way. He tried not to look at the trees around him as he walked, tried not to listen for the words they whispered.

  The Kingpriest reached to the throat of his robes and produced a medallion. With a nod to Cathan, he pressed it to the gates. There was a shimmering sound, a faint glow of a color Cathan couldn’t name, and the golden bars swung open, letting them pass. Beyond, the Tower soared above them: A sweep of broad black steps rose to tall doors of what looked like solid jasper, as red as heart’s-blood. Cathan’s heart thudded as he and Beldinas climbed the stair, the doors opening without a sound at their approach.

  “Solio Febalas,” declared the Kingpri
est as they stepped inside. “The Halls of Sacrilege.”

  The shadows were thick inside, and even with Beldinas shining beside him, Cathan could see nothing but blackness for a time. Then the doors boomed shut and his god-touched eyes adjusted. Dim shapes appeared amid the gloom, cold and colorless in the Kingpriest’s silver light: terrible shapes, some that he knew, and some he did not. Here stood a huge dragon’s skull, the brainpan emptied to make a sacrificial bowl that still retained a crust of rusty blood. There was a massive pair of merchant’s scales, wrought of bronze and bent so they would never weigh true. Beyond was the shell of a giant tortoise, and past that a statue of black onyx, in the form of a hooded man with garnet eyes glinting within the depths of his cowl. The idols filled the Tower’s wide entry chamber; they were tokens of gods dark and false. When Cathan was a knight, he had destroyed many such icons. Now they came here instead. Somehow, that seemed the greatest sacrilege of all.

  But there weren’t just the relics of evil. Among the foul artifacts, his eyes picked out objects that had been holy to other gods—an anvil of Reorx, made of cold steel set with glittering emeralds, and sapphires; a tree of Zivilyn, once a living thing but now gray and leafless; a fire-caldron sacred to Sirrion the Flowing Flame. These were faiths that had never done harm to any man, but had not striven against the darkness either. He had never understood them, how they could stand apart from both good and evil.

  Beldinas saw him staring at the tree, and bowed his head. “They would not join us in our struggle,” he said. “Some even helped the evil ones, giving them shelter from the Hammer.”

  “I remember” Cathan murmured. The purges of the gray faiths had been just beginning during his last days in the knighthood. “Was it necessary to wipe them out?”