by Anne Perry
They had gone down into it in silence together. He remembered a moth fluttering lazily past his cheek on silken shadow wings. The colours had deepened, turned to the violet of night. They had chosen not to sleep in the ruins, but rather in a hollow in the summer grass near the top of the cliffs.
Now in the dawn light he gazed at the crumbling mortar, the cracks where the scarlet lichen and the velvet-soft, creeping mosses covered the marble and the limestone. Tendrils pushed up through the ancient floors, lifting the tiny coloured mosaic pieces a hair’s breadth a day, until they lay like so many bright, random pebbles on a shore.
Here was the forum and the great state buildings. Sadokhar stared around him at the rows of columns, the flights of steps, the arches. There to the left were the military headquarters, the courts of justice and the libraries, the embassies of foreign princes ...
He did not hear the soft footfall behind him, no more than the rustle of night wind in the weeds. It was the voice that jerked him back with a stab of fear.
“There’s little here except ghosts and rubble,” it said. “But perhaps if you listen at twilight you will hear the echoes of a hundred thousand marching feet that have trodden the battlefields of the world.”
Sadokhar swivelled and stared at the man before him. He could see little but the dim orb of his head and the outline of his robes. He was even thinner than he had been twenty years ago, almost wraith-like, and his feet made no sound whatever on the pavement.
“Orocyno?” Sadokhar whispered, his heart pounding.
Orocyno peered at him in the broadening light. “I remember you,” he said softly, his voice like a sigh in the wind. “You came here before, with the woman.”
“You told me you were the last priest of the Light Bearers.”
“So I am.” There was the suggestion of a smile on his lips, of pride in him.
Sadokhar looked around at the decaying stones. “There’s no one here.”
“Oh, there are people!” Orocyno assured him. “Not here, not now—but one day.”
“When?”
The smile was certain, secretive. “The future ... the past. Time is not what you think. But I cannot tell you—it is forbidden.”
“The gateway—”
Orocyno shivered, moving back a step as if Sadokhar had threatened him in some way. “You can’t use it! I found it and it is mine alone.”
“Into the past ...” Sadokhar said gently. “Into time.”
Orocyno nodded, the widening light silver on the folds of his cloak, as if it were formed of mist. The dry skin of his cheek seemed almost translucent.
“One door?” Sadokhar asked.
Orocyno shook his head. “Two.” His voice was barely a sigh. “I have not the key to the door beyond, nor do I want it.”
“I have it. Open the first for me, and I will open the second myself.”
“I can’t!” Orocyno took another step back, fear making him waver like an image on ruffled water. “Every time I use the portal it weakens it!”
“But you do use it!” This time Sadokhar stepped towards him.
Orocyno shuddered violently. “I can’t help it! It pulls me! I fight but I lose. I swear I won’t, but always one day or another, I go through.” He drew in his breath.
Sadokhar closed his hand over the black key in his pocket. “Take me.”
“I can’t!”
“Yes you can—and you will.”
Orocyno shrank away.
“You want to be part of the Light Bearers?” Sadokhar challenged him. “Do you want to be remembered in the history of the worlds as the last and the greatest of them?”
Orocyno’s eyes shone as if the fire of the dawn had been lit inside him. The sky was brimming with light spreading a path of silver shivering across the sea. “What must I do?” His breath sighed from him in words barely audible.
“Open the first door for me,” Sadokhar answered.
“It will weaken the portal!” Orocyno said again.
“I know. Do it.”
His head high, Orocyno turned towards the light and seemed almost to float across the pavement floor between the thistles, and Sadokhar followed him. Whatever Armageddon was, and he did not know, it was better to be beaten than to have died without ever facing the Enemy and fighting with all the energy of his soul.
It was over an hour after the door was locked that Sardriel and Ardesir managed to open it, and Tathea rode after Sadokhar.
She knew evil as he never had, right from the night over five hundred years ago when she had awoken to find her child dead and the palace in Shinabar overrun. That had been prompted by Tiyo-Mah, her mother-in-law, who had purchased the murder of her son and her grandson in order to keep her own power.
Tathea had been exiled, and years later returned as Isarch herself, but she had had no vengeance on Tiyo-Mah. She remembered with a chill, even here safe on the Island, how she had gone to the ancient palace in Thoth-Moara to face the old woman, and found her there with the golden dwarf, and the room filled with the suffocating spirits of the dead, unrepentant and unforgiven. She had taken armed men with her, but Tiyo-Mah had gone down into the underground chambers, and there, in the treasure store-house, had turned and walked into the wall ... and through it.
The golden dwarf had said she had gone into time, and would one day return for her own vengeance on Tathea, who had deposed her, not once but twice. He had taught her the arts of necromancy, a raiser of the spirits of the merciless dead, those who had looked upon the light, and chosen the darkness.
Had Tiyo-Mah gone through the portal in Thoth-Moara to bring back her terrible army? Was that what lay beyond it—not time, but hell?
And in Sylum, what had the wraithlike Orocyno found through his gateway? Eternity, or simply the past with its angels and demons, its good and ill?
She had seen Sadokhar pick up the key from the floor and she knew he had taken it to open the doors of hell and let it loose in the world—to force Asmodeus’ hand in the beginning of Armageddon.
She had no need to think. She took the way eastwards towards the ruins of Sylum, and the portal Sadokhar knew.
It was dawn as she found the fork in the road and followed it across the soft hillside, down the incline, then over the last rise, and saw the city ahead of her as the light streamed on to the silent, weed-strewn pavements.
Her eyes searched for sight of Sadokhar. Could she be too late already? The wind moved between the pillars with a sigh, stirring the honeysuckle that twined corrosive fingers deeper into the marble columns carved to honour battles long since forgotten. In the evening it would send a web of fragrance into the air as sweet as wine. Now it was scentless in the cold sunrise.
Her eyes sought for movement. Surely at least Orocyno would be here?
But it was twenty years since she and Sadokhar had first seen him. Perhaps he was dead?
She was ashamed for the thrill of hope that surged up inside her. If he were no longer here, then Sadokhar would not find the door. Or if he did, it would take time. How long had Orocyno been here before he had stumbled on its secret? Decades?
She started to move down the hill swiftly in the broadening light, travelling easily. She was almost at the first outlying villa, its walls crumbling outwards, thistles spearing through the courtyard stones, fountain filled with dust, when she saw Sadokhar’s dark figure fifty yards to her left, and below her, in the sunken amphitheatre. He was walking slowly, head high and stiff. His fists were clenched at his sides. She knew as if she could feel it within herself how the fear choked him.
She dismounted, looped the horse’s rein over the remains of a pillar, and started forward.
There was a movement to her left, little more than the shifting of a shadow across the stones. She turned, staring. She could barely make out the shape, the figure so insubstantial it could have been a curtain blowing in the wind, without flesh or bones inside it ... except for the head. There was no hair, only a gleaming skull with deep-socketed eyes and fle
shless lips: Orocyno, the priest who had found a deadly secret, and used it until it consumed him.
Sadokhar was closer to her than he was. She could call out to stop him. She drew in her breath and the cry was half strangled in her throat. Orocyno made no sign of hearing her.
But Sadokhar turned, staring directly at her.
“Sadokhar!” The word was a whisper swallowed in the wind. The sun was above the horizon now, a rose-clear light over the shattered stones.
He stared at her, waiting. The question was in his face—was she going to stop him? Was that what he wanted? To be relieved at the last moment from his terrible mission?
And what if she did not? Had he come trusting she would follow? If she now let him do this irrevocable thing, would he understand? Or would the child in him feel betrayed?
She knew the fear in him as if he had spoken it aloud. Failure! It was the unknown beyond the doorway, the monsters of soul.
Her voice choked, and yet she found the words. “You won’t fail,” she said with certainty. “You know yourself this time.”
His eyes lingered on hers for a moment, then he turned and started to walk forwards again. Ahead of him Orocyno moved soundlessly over the stone steps as if his feet did not touch them.
Tathea watched and did not speak. She must not take the choice from him.
Orocyno was at the bottom of the steps. He cast no shadow. The sun poured into the amphitheatre like fire filling a bowl. It caught Sadokhar’s robe and edged it with flame. The dust at his feet was gold.
Sadokhar stopped. He did not turn to Tathea again. She watched his face, the angle of his body, and the wraith of Orocyno yielding.
She felt the warmth of the sun on her face and the grief freezing her heart as Sadokhar and Orocyno turned and walked together to a great archway carved with laurels and lilies, and passed into its shadows.
She waited. The sky was blue overhead. The birds still sang. The air smelled sweet and dry.
Orocyno came back. The wind blew his robes and there was nothing inside them. He was alone. Sadokhar did not return.
Tathea stood still for long minutes, as if waiting could somehow change what would happen. Would he find Asmodeus and lure him into starting the great and final war, or might he simply be lost in hell for ever? To lose him to that would be the end of laughter and peace in the heart, and a kind of love which was torn out of her as if from her own body.
Then she heard it, far away, beyond the stones of the portal, a thin, raucous screaming, a fury of voices that had once been human, as if for an instant the door of hell had opened.
Sadokhar walked slowly through the archway in Sylum, staring around him at the carved stone. It was cracked in places where ivies had eaten it away, dark-stained with the rain of centuries. Ahead of him he could see a higher dome curving upwards. The floor was smoother, protected under a still unbroken roof and the years had not marred it so deeply.
Orocyno took a silver key from a pocket in his robe and fitted it into the lock of a great, coffered door, its panels rubbed satin-smooth. It swung open and Orocyno stepped through. Sadokhar followed and came into a long chamber.
The air was warm and a little dusty. It smelled very old. The wall beside him now was archaic sandstone carved with signs, and painted with terracotta and white, little pictures of figures like sticks. For a moment he thought he heard voices to his left, as if he were close to a vast room filled with a babble of sound. He saw massed people in rich and muted colours, bright sunlight through glass, then it dissolved. Orocyno was drawn towards it, his step quickening until the distance swallowed him and Sadokhar was alone.
In front of him was another door, darker, heavier than the first, its surface mirroring changing images as if some grotesque parody of life were playing out in front of it, and yet there was no one there but Sadokhar, and he stood motionless, the black key in his hand.
The lock was plain, unscarred as if it had never been turned. The decision was made. There was nothing to wait for. Fumbling only a little he put the key into the hole and turned it. It moved without the slightest effort, the door swinging open at a touch.
There was light in front of him—flat, white light, unlike the sun. There was something in its lifeless glare which made his step falter. The air was still warm, and he was not touching the stone, yet inside he was chilled. There was no sound at all. Even his own feet were utterly silent. They hardly seemed to carry his weight on the smooth tiles.
He stood in the harsh glare of shadowless light. He raised his head, putting up his hand to shelter his eyes, but there was no sun, only a white sky stretching to the horizon without change.
Ahead of him the land sloped away, dry and sterile. As far as his eyes could see there were outcrops of rock in the rubble and dust, and piles of broken stones as if they had once been buildings. The air was motionless, clammy on the skin and it had a peculiar, stale odour as if it had been long closed in a dead space.
He could see no trees, no plants, not even any driftwood or bones. It was as if nothing had ever lived here. There were no footprints of beasts of any kind, no birds, not even insects.
At least half the rocks seemed cut and piled by art, long ruined now and holding not even memory of beauty. But there had once been life here, human life, at least. And human life did not survive without herbs, trees, grasses of the field.
Where should he look for Asmodeus? He could be anywhere! There was nothing to indicate in which direction even to begin.
Sadokhar glanced back at the portal and for a moment an infinite yearning filled him. He choked it back, put stones against the door to wedge it open, and started to walk, not with purpose so much as to give himself the illusion that he still had some mastery of himself. He was not here in a wasted sacrifice, although the fear of that had already entered his soul.
He had been moving only a short while—the shattered columns and the portal were still visible—when he heard a great shout, as if a thousand throats were roaring some tremendous cheer, but it was wordless, a senseless exultation.
He started to run, floundering in the dust, sending up clouds which clung to him, choking his breath, clinging in his nose and throat. He tried to sweep it away with his arms and staggered against an outcrop of rock, tearing his skin and feeling the sweat sting.
After a moment he started to climb a little through the defile in the rock, and had gone forty or fifty yards when suddenly the passage widened out. Ahead of him in a sunken amphitheatre stood a mass of beings, men and women crowded together so tightly their arms and legs seemed almost tangled. All their faces were lifted as one towards a single figure who stood high on a natural platform on the rock jutting out above them, only feet away from Sadokhar. She was an ancient woman, scrawny and almost bald, her black hair pulled tight across her high skull. Her nose was prominent, like the beak of some gigantic bird of prey, and her narrow shoulders were hunched like wings.
“I will lead you to be great again!” she told them. Her voice had no power, no timbre, yet it carried in the motionless air as if she had whispered in the ear of each one of them. “Take the courage of your wrongs and I will give you revenge upon those who have injured you!” she cried. “Think of all that you could have had, all that was justly yours!”
Again the roar went up and she lifted her arms as if she would ride the wave of sound as a vulture would ascend on the currents of the air.
She began again, whipping up their anger, their sense of self-pity and blame, their passion for vengeance to collect payment for every slight, every defect and failure of life. Again and again they returned the great cry of adoration for her.
Sadokhar knew who she was. The certainty of it crystallised within him with edges that cut his mind. This was Tiyo-Mah, Tathea’s enemy from the birth of time to the end of it. She was promising these unpardoned dead some prize on the earth she could never give them. Unless she had foreknowledge that one day someone would open the portal? Perhaps time had no meaning here, and wheneve
r he had come through he would have found the same thing happening?
The wave of sound filled the amphitheatre again, buoying up the old woman as if it physically carried her. With a smile of triumph on her mouth, soft like perished silk, at last she turned away, and in facing back from the platform she saw Sadokhar.
Her surprise was unmistakable, though she masked it as soon as she could.
She walked through the cleft in the rock towards him, still just within sight of the mass of her followers, like a pale sea behind her.
“So you are going to lead them back into the world?” Sadokhar said quietly.
“Fool!” she spat under her breath. “No one leaves hell till the world ends ... and perhaps not then. But there is a doorway into the past and I can take them one by one. It is enough for their dreams.” She was staring at him, amazement growing in her eyes and a shadow that looked like fear.
“The past?” he said derisively. “Is that all?”
Now the amazement was certainty. Her lips parted in a smile of infinite cruelty. “Sadokhar! So you are dead! You failed! Five hundred years in the waiting, and after all that you are dead—and you fought no Armageddon!” She started to laugh, a dry, hideous sound gurgling in her throat, incomparably coarse.
“No, I’m not dead,” he said very clearly. “I came here through the portal—as you did. Except I chose it. No one drove me here.”
Tiyo-Mah’s face flickered briefly with rage at the memory of Tathea’s victory long ago, but Sadokhar had seen the place to taunt her.
He put a little swagger into his stance. “There is no Armageddon, nor will there be,” he said. “Tathea is too strong. Asmodeus won’t win this world—in my lifetime or any other. There is peace in the Island at the Edge of the World, just as Iszamber foretold. The light still burns there, and it always will. We have wine and fruit, timber and grain, silk, precious gems of the earth. Travellers sit at our tables from all over the world and listen to her wisdom.”
“So you have left all of that to come here?” Tiyo-Mah said with grating disbelief.
“I’ve come to find Asmodeus,” he replied, smiling.