by D. J. Butler
The look on all three of her advisors’ faces was one of surprise, fear, and anxiety.
“What sacrifice?” Maltres Korinn asked.
Sarah’s heart was heavy. “I hadn’t considered the…Jock of Cripplegate option. But perhaps I should.”
“I regret that Sherem and his fellows didn’t wait a day,” Maltres said. “Perhaps then you could have availed yourself of the energy they freely gave, to perform the sanctification you plan.”
“Your Majesty could…ask if there are others,” Alzbieta said slowly. “Who are willing. Maybe who are sick or dying.”
“No!” Zadok Tarami’s voice thundered in the small room. “Please, no, Your Majesty. I beg you to see the difference between someone who voluntarily gives up his life to save his fellows, and someone who is ordered to commit self-murder.”
“It doesn’t have to be an order,” Maltres murmured. “It could be a request.”
“That is a blurry line at best,” the Metropolitan said.
“All the lines here are blurry,” Sarah said, “even to me, and I’m famous for my sight. When I ordered a sally to protect and send out messengers, I knew some of them would die. Show me the line between that order and the query whether someone might be willing to sacrifice herself, like Isaac, like Christ.”
“When you sent out soldiers to protect your messengers,” Zadok said fiercely, “you hoped they would all live.”
“That’s true.” Sarah remembered their deaths and her chest was cold.
“To me, that is a clear line.”
Sarah nodded slowly.
“You would offer sacrifice,” Tarami continued, “because you must sanctify your…the goddess’s enclosure. You would clean the throne of the taint that blocks you from accessing it. Do you need mana, or do you wish to offer sacrifice for sacred, priestly reasons?”
“Both,” Sarah said. “Mostly, the latter. I think I have the power I need to run the plow. Hell, I’ve done it before.”
“Please, then, do not make your sacrifices with the blood of men.” Zadok Tarami lowered himself to his knees and clasped his hands in front of himself. “I will not stop you from worshipping the goddess. But make Her a goddess indeed, and not a demon. There are enough old stories of blood spilled to thirsty monsters living on mountaintops—let us not make a new story in the same vein.”
Zadok’s words lightened Sarah’s heart. “You’re right, Metropolitan. But if we are not to sacrifice our comrades, what can we give the goddess to show our devotion?”
“Our food,” Maltres said.
There was a moment of silence. Then Tarami nodded.
“There is little enough of it left,” Maltres continued. “Mostly in storehouses owned by Your Majesty and guarded by my men.”
“If we burn the last of our food, we give all our lives entirely to the goddess,” Alzbieta said.
“We risk revolt,” Maltres added. “I could not do it. I have the people’s respect, I think, but I do not have their love.”
“You are the Beloved,” Alzbieta told Sarah. “They would do it for you.”
“Some of them would,” Sarah agreed. “Others would be reluctant. But they might do it if the Metropolitan helped.”
She looked at Zadok Tarami. His face was impassive, but through her Eye of Eve she saw coils of doubt and fear, hard kernels of hatred, and murky pools of pride.
And then, suddenly, a spring of hope, welling up within him.
“I will help,” he said.
“Thank you,” Maltres said.
“Yes. Thank you,” Sarah added. “I need more than just your approval. To undertake this sanctification of the mound, I need to be crowned and anointed. By your hand, naturally. And I want to do it in the Basilica.”
Zadok hesitated. “Will my flock still follow me, if I anoint you?”
“Don’t be foolish,” Maltres told him. “Sarah isn’t asking you for a concession, she’s giving you one. Your public crowning of her will be seen as essential to her ascension of the Serpent Throne. Your stature grows, because you become a gatekeeper to the kingdom.”
“I’m not offering any kind of concession at all,” Sarah disagreed. “Nor am I asking for one. The time for bargaining is past. I need to be crowned queen so that I can approach the goddess in Her home and repair its damaged walls. Will you help me or not, Zadok Tarami?”
* * *
“I offer you the use of my men,” Sir William said.
“Specifically, Sarah’s beastkind?” Maltres asked.
The two men stood at the door of the Hall of Onandagos. Maltres had been emerging with his chosen detail of soldiers to go collect the city’s remaining food and transport it to the Great Mound, and he’d met Sir William at the door. At the general’s side stood the coyote-headed beastman Chikaak. Behind him in a tight file waited the remainder of the beastkind.
“You are asking people who fear death from cannons and enemy bayonets to also face imminent starvation.” Sir William’s voice was hard, but Maltres saw compassion in his eyes. “It would be reasonable on their part to resist.”
“That’s why I have chosen these men.”
Sir William looked at Maltres’s force and sighed. Maltres knew what the Cavalier saw—old men, spry and determined, but not vigorous, not in their flower.
“Are they Freemasons, then? Will they give their neighbors the grip in exchange for the surrender of a loaf of bread or a rasher of bacon?”
“Or a baked squash, or a pot of beans?” Maltres smiled faintly. “Some of them are, in fact, brothers. And if they have to, I expect they may turn to the persuasive and reassuring tools of the Craft. But no, I’ve chosen these men because they are Swords of Wisdom.”
The general’s mouth hung open.
“You rode with Kyres Elytharias,” Maltres said. “Do you know—”
“I know he was one of the Swords of Wisdom,” Sir William said. “I hadn’t heard of them in recent years.”
“They still exist,” Maltres said.
“You are giving the requisitioned food an honor guard,” Sir William said.
“It’s to be a sacrifice. I send consecrated men to collect it.”
“Very good, suh.” Bill hobbled to his horse, mounted, and rode away.
* * *
Bathed, her hair neatly combed, and clothed in a white linen dress, Sarah felt like a person again. To the exhaustion that dragged at every limb she now added a mouth full of sand and a rumbling belly, but she felt that what she had to do today should be done in a state of fasting.
If this had been a strictly political act, she would have liked to give her people longer notice. Perhaps there was additional pomp and further spectacle that could have been incorporated to give people more joy and confidence. Maybe she could have thought through a rite that would include more actions by her people.
Still, they were involved.
Sarah walked on bare feet to the Basilica Mound. The winter wind gnawed at her flesh until it was numb. The steps up the eastern face of the mound were lined with the people of Cahokia, each holding a branch of an evergreen tree. Standing at the foot of the mound was Gazelem Zomas, the dark-skinned prince of the schismatic kingdom on the other side of the Missouri. To Sarah’s surprise, Gazelem raised his evergreen branch and shouted.
“Hosanna to the Daughter of Onandagos! Blessed is she that cometh in the name of Heaven! Hosanna to the Beloved of the goddess! Hosanna in the highest!”
At the end of each phrase he paused, and the crowd shouted his words. The hosannas rippled up the mound, and with them rippled the waving evergreen branches, giving the mound the appearance of being alive and moving.
Sarah began to climb. Gazelem continued shouting.
“The earth is the Lord’s, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? Or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not
lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna!”
“Hosanna!” The crowd shouted and waved its branches.
The pumping action of her legs moved Sarah’s blood and warmed her, but the hard stone of the steps bit into the soles of her feet, and she stubbed a toe.
Gazelem followed her. He had good strong lungs, to be able to walk up the steps and shout at the same time. As she neared the top of the mound, Sarah saw Alzbieta Torias. The priestess stood in the open door of the Basilica holding the Sevenfold Crown, the Orb of Etyles, and the Heronplow on a large, silk pillow.
“He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation,” Gazelem called out. “This is the generation of them that seek him, that seek thy face, O Jacob. Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in.”
Sarah entered the Basilica, hearing the hosanna shouts behind her.
She walked the length of the nave slowly. She didn’t know most of the faces in the church, but she saw the Lady Alena, Maltres Korinn, and Cathy. She saw old men she understood to be the Swords of Wisdom, the knightly order to which her father belonged, and which had gathered up the city’s food for the sacrifice that would shortly take place. She saw people she knew were generally dressed in velvet and silk, but everyone in the hall today wore white linen.
Except Zadok Tarami. The priest was arrayed in his full liturgical garb, with shawls, scarves, aprons, and a tall hat that looked somewhat like a crown. He stood waiting beside a seat that had been placed for the purpose near the altar and the seven-armed treelike candelabrum on the apse. The Basilica was lit with candles; the gold thread and gems in Tarami’s clothing sparkled and made him look angelic, more than mortal.
His face showed concentration and humility.
Alzbieta followed at Sarah’s right shoulder, matching her step for step. Gazelem continued at her left, and was still shouting.
“Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory. Hosanna! Hosanna! Hosanna!”
The crowd within the Basilica shouted the hosannas with Gazelem. Through her Eye of Eve—was she perhaps deceived by her fatigue and hunger, and by the staging and the light?—Sarah saw the crowd for a moment as an angelic host. White, winged, and singing, they waved their branches from the tree of paradise and ushered her onward.
Sarah reached the front and stopped. From this position, she saw priests—clothed in white linen like the ordinary attendees, but also wearing turbans that marked their special status—standing to either side of the altar. One held an elaborate brocaded and gem-covered robe. The other held a basin of water and a towel over each arm.
The echo of the hosannas died away. Slowly, Zadok Tarami stepped out of his sandals and seated himself on the chair.
The chair was wood—acacia, Sarah had been told—and covered with gold foil. It was tall, sturdy, and unadorned, other than a leaf-and-branch motif in its carving that ran up all four legs and in a braid around the seat back.
Sarah knelt. The priest with the basin knelt beside her and offered it to her. She took it, and also one of the towels.
“Lady, dost thou wash my feet?” Tarami asked.
In truth, his feet were already clean. But the point of the liturgy was not actually to clean one’s feet. Sarah took water in her cupped hands and poured it first over one foot, then over the other.
“What I do thou knowest not now,” she recited, “but thou shalt know hereafter. If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.”
“Lady,” Tarami said, “not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.”
Sarah took one of the towels and dried the Metropolitan’s feet. “He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean.”
She stood and stepped slightly back; not too far, because her father’s people stood close to each other at all times.
The Metropolitan arose and stepped back into his sandals. Sarah sat and the priest knelt. Without words he repeated her actions, washed and dried her feet.
The basin-priest left and Sarah remained sitting. Zadok Tarami—with Luman Walters listening, eyes keenly focused—had walked her through the ritual beforehand. He had assured her that he’d give her any promptings she needed, and she had assured him in turn that she wouldn’t need any.
The garment-priest handed Zadok a pair of gold-threaded slippers. The Metropolitan placed them on Sarah’s feet. She stood, and Gazelem Zomas began to recite again.
“The Lord reigneth, he is clothed with majesty; the Lord is clothed with strength, wherewith he hath girded himself: the world also is stablished, that it cannot be moved. Hosanna!”
“Hosanna!” the crowd shouted.
Zadok took the robe from the garment-priest and hung it over Sarah’s shoulders. The sudden weight of the gold and gems nearly knocked her to the floor. She staggered, and Zadok grabbed her forearm to steady her.
His wiry arms were surprisingly strong, and his smile was warm.
“Thy throne is established of old: thou art from everlasting. Hosanna!” Gazelem cried.
“Hosanna!” the crowd cried with him.
Zadok took a white, gold-stitched stole from the garment-priest and laid it over Sarah’s shoulders.
“The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their waves. Hosanna!”
“Hosanna!”
Zadok took the Orb of Etyles and the Heronplow from Alzbieta and placed them one at a time into Sarah’s hands.
“The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, than the mighty waves of the sea. Hosanna!”
“Hosanna!”
The basin-priest returned and held forth an ivory horn, bound in gold. Zadok took the horn and walked around to stand behind Sarah, so they both faced the crowd.
Through her Eye of Eve, Sarah saw angels. Angels stood on the floor in white linen, glowing blue and white. Angels hovered above the floor in the same garb, shining the same shades. The word hosanna rang from the stones of the Basilica’s pillars and floods, as if the building itself were celebrating the moment.
Oil poured onto Sarah’s scalp. She felt it run down both cheeks and her jaw. Then Zadok took the Sevenfold Crown from Alzbieta Torias and settled it onto Sarah’s head.
“Thy testimonies are very sure: holiness becometh thine house, O Lord, forever. Hosanna!”
“Hosanna!” the crowd cried.
“Hosanna!” the angels shouted.
“Hosanna!” roared the Basilica itself.
Zadok Tarami walked around Sarah again to stand in front of her. “Your Majesty.” He knelt and touched his forehead to the floor.
The crowd knelt, as did Sarah, Gazelem, and the two assisting priests. “Your Majesty!”
Sarah helped Zadok to stand. “Thou shalt know hereafter,” she whispered to him.
* * *
The gathered food stores of Cahokia stood heaped in a pile at the foot of the great mound. Looking at what there was, Maltres experienced a moment of doubt.
Had his people in fact refused to surrender their stores? How could there be so little?
But no, the answer to that question was that the divine-magical abundance Sarah had produced a few days earlier had been consumed. The city was its own plague of locusts. Without a countryside to produce its food, or a goddess to fill the deficit, it would starve.
The crowds standing around the plaza at the foot of the mound, though, were not looking at the food. They were looking at Sarah, who stood on the lower steps, facing them.
The Swords of Wisdom had performed another duty for Sarah while they were gathering food. At Maltres’s order they had gathered all the silver they could, and that silver had been cast into bull
ets.
Also, the Swords had found and collected twelve stones. Sarah had specified that the stones must never have known chisel or dressing; they must be natural and uncut. This would have been easy enough, if the Swords had been able to go the riverbank, or out into the flat land of the Cahokian Bottom. As it was, the stones were of unequal size, some as large as a man’s head and others as small as his fist. But Sarah had examined them each carefully and pronounced them all fit.
Maltres wasn’t exactly sure what she intended. God had commanded Moses not to use “hewn stone” in the altars of ancient Israel, so Sarah must mean to build an altar. On the other hand, if she intended to burn the mound of collected food on a heap made of those twelve stones, it would take days, perhaps weeks.
Sarah had walked to the Great Mound directly from the Basilica, with the crowd following. She still wore her coronation robe and crown and carried the regalia in her hands. Per her instructions, Maltres and Alzbieta and the eight former bearers who were her other witnesses had gathered at the foot of the Great Mound with her.
Maltres thought of Sherem, remembered the glories of Eden, and felt a pang of loss.
“Zadok Tarami,” Sarah called.
Her voice rolled like thunder across the plaza. Tarami, who had just arrived, once again dressed in a simple woolen tunic, looked surprised.
“Step forward, Zadok,” Sarah called again. “Join my witnesses.”
The Metropolitan looked at the assembled ten, hesitated, and then moved to join their number.
Sarah shifted the Orb of Etyles into the same arm that carried the Heronplow, then stooped and picked up the smallest of the twelve stones. “Witnesses,” she said. “Take up the burden of your witness.”
Maltres picked up a stone. The bearers took the largest of them so his was small, roughly rectangular, and jagged. It still bore dirt on one side, showing it had been pried from the earth just hours earlier.
“Follow me.” Sarah turned and walked up the Great Mound.
Alzbieta Torias followed first. Then Zadok Tarami, with a look of wonder on his face, and then Maltres. Behind him came the bearers.