by D. J. Butler
He focused on his steps, making them solemn and steady. He focused on his hands also, willing them to bear the rock, small as it was, without fatigue or complaint. Maltres thought of the crowd below—how were they receiving this? Zadok Tarami had anointed and crowned Sarah Queen of Cahokia, and they had cheered. As Sarah included the Metropolitan in a sacrifice to the city’s ancient goddess, would they cheer again? Was the city ready for this?
At the top of the Great Mound, Sarah stopped, turned, and waited. Alzbieta reached her first. Sarah touched the priestess’s forearm and said, “Here.”
Then Sarah walked twelve paces—Maltres counted—toward the Temple of the Sun. When Zadok Tarami reached her at that spot, she again said, “Here.”
Alzbieta and Zadok stood waiting in the places assigned them, at compass points east and west. Sarah assigned Maltres himself a spot to the north. As the bearers arrived, she placed them on the points between the cardinal directions. Finally she herself stood at the southern spot.
“Place your stone!” she called.
Maltres stooped to place his stone on the earth. The others, except Sarah, did the same.
“Mother of All Living!” Sarah cried. “Hear our prayer! We consecrate these stones and the earth within to Thee. All that we place on this altar, we give to Thee. Amen!”
“Amen,” the other eleven said.
Sarah placed her stone.
She walked to the edge of the mound. “Swords of Wisdom!” she called to the old men waiting below. “Bring the sacrifice!”
One armload at a time, the men carried up the last of the city’s food. Squash, corn, beans—staples of the Cahokian diet. Dried fruits, green vegetables. A very small amount of cheese, beef, and pork.
One man at a time, the Swords entered the delimited space of the altar, set down the food, and returned.
Three trips up and down the mountain by each man—with the crowd silently waiting and watching—and all the food had been transferred. The Swords of Wisdom arrayed themselves in a circle around the compass-altar.
Sarah addressed the crowd below the mound. “People of the city of the goddess, join me now in prayer!”
She knelt. Below, the entire city knelt. She faced them and they faced her, and beyond her, her altar and the Temple of the Sun.
“O Mother of All Living,” Sarah cried, “O Serpent of the Sun, O Unfallen Eve!”
The crowed repeated her words.
“We have life from Thee in three worlds, O Goddess. The world before, the world now, and the world after. We would unite the worlds in one, O Virgin of Eternities! We offer this sacrifice, the blood of all our lives, to Thee! We ask Thee to cleanse this mount of all pollution and sin, that we may offer the mountain itself to Thee, amen!”
The crowd repeated every line in turn, including the last. “Amen!”
Sarah returned to her stone at edge of the altar of earth. There, she knelt and pushed the cutting blade of the Heronplow into the soil. “Sacrificium damus.”
The blade moved. Maltres was unsurprised at the motion, but he hadn’t expected the tingling feeling that ran up and down his spine at the sight. The Heronplow cut a perfect circle around the uncut stones, and as it came around again to the first stone, it cut inward and continued, making a spiral.
As the moving plow touched the piles of food, the food evaporated into blue light. The light rose into the sky, a blue curtain of splendor that trailed behind the Heronplow and visibly marked the city’s sacrifice.
Below, Maltres heard the crowd gasp.
The Swords of Wisdom broke into a wordless song. Was this spontaneous? Were they following some traditional sense of liturgy Maltres didn’t know? Had Sarah agreed to this in advance?
The Heronplow touched the center of the altar and the light changed. It grew more diffuse, washed out, but at the same time it spread. As the blue glow expanded out from the altar and encompassed Maltres, he felt it as warmth.
And love.
He took a deep breath, his heart full of blackberry brambles and the sound of water running past his home.
The light spread until it covered the entire top of the Great Mound. The crowd below began to hum, not the same melody the Swords sang, but oddly, one that harmonized with it. Maltres felt as if he were flying.
The trees atop the Great Mound sprouted leaves and burst into flower.
Sarah knelt to pick up the Heronplow, then carried it to the southeast corner of the Temple of the Sun. Kneeling again, she placed the plow against the foundation stone of the building.
“Magna mater,” he heard her say, “maxima mater. Rogo ut hoc aratrum pelleas.”
He knew the words; he’d heard her use them to revive the Treewall, and to consecrate the Sunrise Mound. Now, they sent the Heronplow into the stone of the Temple of the Sun.
Sarah staggered. Maltres wanted to run to her aid, but he’d been set into place by her, and didn’t dare. Two Swords of Wisdom evidently felt no such limitation; the old men caught her before she fell and held her by her upper arms.
The universe stood still. Though it was late afternoon, Maltres looked up and thought he saw both the sun and also a full field of stars in the sky. Breath passed in and out of his lungs like electric ice, invigorating him and shocking him at the same time.
Sarah stooped to recover the Heronplow.
“Alzbieta Torias,” she said. Her voice rang like a deep bass. “Zadok Tarami. It’s time.”
Alzbieta stepped out of her place. Together, the queen, the priestess, and the priest entered the Temple of the Sun.
* * *
Sarah’s own muscles had already failed her. What held her up were the two Swords of Wisdom at her side and some force that came directly out of the earth, stiffening her legs and pushing her forward.
She stepped into the Temple of the Sun. Through her mortal eye, she saw the same mosaics she had always seen before, the long nave, the elevated apse, the empty throne.
Through her Eye of Eve, everything had changed. The dark mists she had seen around the throne before had dissipated. The mosaics seemed to have sprung into three dimensions, so that she saw the Serpent Throne across a long and rugged landscape. Between her and the high mountain on which the throne rested, she saw forested hills, a bleak desert, and a storm-shattered ocean. The sky overhead shone with stars, spinning around the plane of the ecliptic.
The Swords of Wisdom, Alzbieta, and Zadok all stepped out of their shoes. “Hallowed ground,” one of the Swords murmured.
“Your father would be proud,” the other whispered into her ear.
“I know.” Sarah sobbed once, and then took a deep breath. “I know.”
“My God,” Zadok Tarami murmured. “Was it always like this?”
Sarah, too, stepped out of her coronation shoes. “Is the Lady Alena here?”
It was Alena’s day of tendance. The priestess with the vow of silence appeared from Sarah’s left; she held a primitive clay jug, which Sarah knew to contain the goddess’s sacred lamp oil.
“I’ll follow you,” Sarah said.
They crossed the length of the nave. Sarah half-closed her Eye of Eve—it was distracting, to swoop at lightning-like speeds across the strange terrain, but she couldn’t shut it out entirely, either. It was too beautiful, its colors too vivid, its details too perfect. Stepping across the ocean, she climbed the steps to the apse.
At the top, she halted. She looked back over her shoulder at Alzbieta, Zadok, and the two Swords. All four of them knelt and faced her. She turned to face the Serpent Throne—it rose enormous before her, dwarfing her with its sheer physical presence.
Sarah cracked open her Eye of Eve. Did she see the flicker of a person sitting on the throne? Just the hint of an image?
She couldn’t be sure.
She knelt, too, before the Serpent Throne. She nodded to the Lady Alena.
Alena moved forward alone into the apse, holding the jug of oil.
Sarah hesitated, uncertain of the right order. Close the v
eil, then light the lamps? But the lamps were ordinarily lit only behind the closed veil.
Curiosity won.
“Fill the lamps,” she said.
The Lady Alena nodded. She poured oil slowly into the seven bowls, starting with the lowest and rising to the highest. Through her Eye of Eve, Sarah saw the bowls as planets that with their anointing began to spin and sing.
She took a deep breath. The Lady Alena stepped to one side and waited, jug in her hands.
Will and the strength of the earth alone held Sarah up, even on her knees. She gripped the Orb of Etyles tightly. Reaching into its depths, she found the green glow of the Mississippi River and tapped into it. “Septem lucernas accendo!”
The lamps burst into bright flame. The planets revolved, ignited, and became seven salamanders, all dancing in their golden bowls and looking intently at Sarah. The light of the seven lamps struck the Serpent Throne and caromed off greatly amplified—the throne itself shone like an enormous light, like the sun for which the temple was named.
Someone sat on the throne. A woman. Sarah found she couldn’t look at Her; the Woman Herself shone like the sun, Her brightness stinging Sarah’s eyes and the tears blinding Sarah. Sarah looked away.
She heard a voice she knew, a voice she had heard in Eden.
You are my Beloved daughter. I await you on my holy mountain. Come to me.
The words had physical force that shook Sarah’s frame. A warm wind smelling of cinnamon and citrus blew from the Serpent Throne, warping through Sarah’s hair and clothing and filling the nave.
It was too much. She couldn’t handle the power of standing directly face to face with the goddess, even looking away. Her body trembled and burned. And what of those who were not as prepared and defended as she? Zadok Tarami? Alzbieta Torias?
“Velaman occludo,” she incanted, reaching one more time into the Orb of Etyles.
Power flowed through her again and struck the veil. With a hissing sound like a thousand singing snakes, the veil slid shut, drawing from both sides and meeting in the middle, closing the Lady Alena inside.
Through the curtain, with her Eye of Eve, Sarah could still see the seven dancing salamanders and the burning blue outline of the Mother of All Living.
She retreated backward down the steps to the floor of the nave. Weakly, she stood and turned to see her priestess and priest. Alzbieta’s face wore an expression of sheer joy, but the joy in Zadok’s eyes was woven through with terror and surprise.
“Was it always like this?” he asked again.
Sarah took a deep breath. “Believe it or not, that was the easy part.”
The Orb of Etyles made a loud clang as it struck the floor. The sound caught Sarah by surprise; she hadn’t realized she’d dropped it. Then the floor rushed up to meet Sarah and struck her in the face.
* * *
Luman Walters watched the coronation from the shadows of the Basilica. He wore the linen tunic the priests offered him, and found himself standing beside the Cetean, Mother Hylia.
They said nothing, but as the ceremony finished and Sarah strode slowly out of the Basilica in her royal garb, Hylia laid a gentle hand on Luman’s arm and smiled.
He watched the building of the altar and the sacrifice of the city’s food from the top of the Treewall. The Cavalier Sir William Johnston Lee allowed him up and then joined him in watching, together with the queen’s confidant, Cathy Filmer. From their height, they could see the proceedings reasonably well—they were still a little below the Great Mound, but high enough that they could tell roughly where people atop it were standing.
They watched without comment.
After the great flashing blue spiral that launched light into the sky with the diffuse blue glow, the Treewall itself seemed to hum.
“You’re the wizard, suh,” Bill said to Luman. “What do you make of this?”
Luman scanned the city and then examined the wall. He saw leaves sprouting here and there, shoots of plants rising tentatively from the snow-covered earth. As each leaf unfurled, though, and as each tender sprout tried to open a flower, it died. The leaves dropped brown and lifeless to the snow. The sprouts withered into yellow-brown wisps and blew away.
The Treewall, too, sprouted leaves, but each reached maturity and died, drifting away from the city’s wall in a slow cloud of dull, dead brown.
“The goddess seems to be again attempting to bestow Her bounty upon the city,” Luman said.
“The city could certainly use it,” Bill grumbled.
“It would be a remarkably direct miracle,” Cathy added. “We surrender our food, and She immediately returns it.”
“Only something is in the way,” Luman said. “Something is stopping Her.”
“Hell’s Bells, no,” Bill cursed. “The miracle isn’t being blocked, it’s being stolen.”
All three of them turned in the same moment to look at their besiegers. The circle of black flame that surrounded the city throbbed.
And grew.
“Heaven’s footstool!”
“Sarah fuels her enemy,” Cathy said. “Did she know? Did she expect it?”
“Does she know now?” Bill asked.
“I’ll tell her,” Luman said. “I know she intends more, she…has asked me to be part of it. I’ll tell her she’s feeding the Sorcerer Robert Hooke. Perhaps that will make her accelerate her plan, or change it.”
He turned to descend the nearest steps, and a loud BOOM cracked the air.
The Treewall shook again, this time not from a magical attempt to grow or bear fruit, but because a cannonball had struck it. Luman’s knees buckled; he fell onto all fours and nearly tumbled off the wall.
Bill threw himself to the edge of the Treewall, pressing his eye to a spyglass. “Is it just one gun they’ve unspiked?”
As if in answer, a second BOOM split the air.
“Go,” Cathy said to Luman Walters. “Go quickly.”
“You shouldn’t ought to overestimate my kin, though.
Most of ’em don’t know how to take orders.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“I don’t like this place, Prince-Capitaine,” al-Muhasib said. He spoke in Arabic; was he trying to keep his words secret from the witch, or was he afraid of their guides?
“I didn’t bring any cowards with me from Paris,” Abd al-Wahid responded.
“Thank you,” Ravi said. “I’ve been waiting for you to say that.”
“I did, however, bring a nitpicking Jew.”
“Because you know excellence in a man when you see it,” Ravi said. “And perhaps because you are covered in nits.”
They rode through a forest unlike any Abd al-Wahid had ever seen. Trees he didn’t know rose like stately columns, their higher boughs interlaced almost densely enough to form a pavilion, despite the fact that winter had stripped the trees of their foliage.
The fallen leaves lay in humps on the ground, flashes of orange and gold showing through gaps in the snow cover. The snow lay two feet thick in places. Only a large traffic of hooves and feet had worn the track they walked to frozen dirt.
One of their guides, the man with the badger’s head whose name sounded like “Fftwarik,” looked back over his shoulder at them. “We are arriving imminently,” he said in clear French.
The other guide, a man with a crab’s claw for one hand and a snake’s head in place of the other, grunted.
A dozen howling beastkind had met the mamelukes and their charge when Abd al-Wahid was aimlessly trying to cut a road through the wilderness of Shreveport. When told the mamelukes bore a message and a gift for the Heron King from the Chevalier of New Orleans, the beastkind had quickly placed them on this path, and then introduced them to Fftwarik and his companion, Croom.
They had been walking for two days since. Abd al-Wahid guessed, from his occasional glimpses of stars overhead, that something about the path itself caused them to move unnaturally fast.
In the forest to either side, Abd al-Wahid had heard an extra
ordinary range of sounds, all along the journey: hoots and howls, shrieks and whispers, cries that sounded like the distant screams of men. Tree branches rustled, piles of leaves erupted beneath the snow, and occasionally he spied paw- or hoofprints that crossed the track, but the road itself was undisturbed.
A building hove into view. Not a building but a stone pyramid, stepped like the pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, but much larger. The trees around it gave way to a clearing as the mamelukes approached; smoke rose, as if the clearing had only been created by burning the trees away that same morning.
“Are these the great mounds of the Ohio?” Abd al-Wahid asked. “We have structures like these in Egypt.”
“You’re not in the Ohio,” the mambo Marie said. She carried a broomstick in one arm and a basket on the other, as she had all the way from New Orleans. A snake hissed in the basket now, accenting her words. “You’re on the Missouri side, somewhere in the Great Green Wood, if you are even any longer on earth at all.”
The thought sobered Abd al-Wahid, but he persisted. “Then like his neighbors across the river, the Heron King enjoys towers.”
Croom laughed. “It is a very old style of architecture. It was old when the pharaohs of your Egypt adopted it.”
Abd al-Wahid resisted the temptation to respond. He wanted to point out that the pharaohs were dead, that his Egypt began with the prophet, and that mankind had created many wonders since that were much greater than the simple pyramids, including the glory that was Arabic calligraphy and the writings of the poet.
Mindful that he did not know what lurked in the forest, he said none of those things.
The mambo sat upright in her saddle. “The Heron King will see us.”
Fftwarik spat yellow saliva into the snow. “Wishing it won’t make it so.”
A deer with a crocodile’s head atop its neck and the face of a woman protruding awkwardly from it, bounded to a stop. “The King will see you.”
Fftwarik grunted in surprise.
Abd al-Wahid stared at the strange messenger. “Truly the poet says, the garden of the world has no limits, except in your mind.”