by Lori Martin
The actual path was not a long one; he doubted that he had gone very far, but he had to guide the horse carefully, straining to see. Several times he looked up at the sky, uncertain if night had come already – in the gloom it was hard to tell. It became colder. He wrapped his cloak around his shoulders. A few moments later, he raised the hood.
That night thirst kept him awake, but he felt no hunger, and was thankful not to be dizzy or weak. He rinsed his mouth again and spat. The sound disturbed the horse and sent a shiver down its legs. When the light grew a little stronger he saddled it and mounted, but it would go no farther. It trembled and stamped its feet, blowing through its nostrils. He dismounted and patted its neck gently. Then he left it, and took the path on foot.
Every step was a struggle. From nowhere a high wind came up, ripping at his clothes. The trees beat their branches together; dirt and scattered leaves blew into his face and eyes. He strode forward, and the fear came upon him.
It settled like a freezing mist on his shoulders as he fought his way through the encroaching brush, his breathing coming hard. No, this is too soon! There’s too much still to face. His cloak caught on thorns. He yanked at it to get away, and pushed on.
He forced his way for a length of time he could not tell, but when he fell suddenly on bare ground the wind died. On his knees, he peered around him, and saw a landscape of insanity.
All life had ceased to grow, as if a boundary line of destruction had been drawn. The land before him was bleak and empty, running flat and open, and ending suddenly in a huge and threatening wall of rock. It obliterated the sky; he could not see what lay beyond it or around it. The very earth between his fingers felt unnatural. There was no sound.
With a slow aching effort he got to his feet. His eyes tried to make sense of it. They burned along the face of the rocks, searching. Then he saw it. The cavern rose towering from the ground high up the wall, cutting into it deep and black. His mortal eyes could tell him no more, but he knew it wound far inward, a long cold tunnel into overwhelming darkness, into the heart of the goddess. At the cave’s entrance a heavy stone arch stood out, framing the night within. It was the Arch of Sanlin.
Sanlin, his thought whispered, and the words came up from his memory. She is called Sanlin, but her real names are Pain, and Fear, and Sickness. She dwells in a dark cave beyond the Hills, on the edge of the unending Sea, and sends out her poisoned darts to strike men down... and once in a thousand years a man or woman will have the courage to seek out the Arch of Sanlin, and for the sake of another pass through –
To pass through. Terror whipped at him, as the wind had done before. His body was sick with it, sick with loathing, sick beyond words and beyond healing. He must not repent, he could not look back; it had to come completely and without doubting from his heart, this heart that was pounding and panicking so violently against the walls of his chest. Who had he thought he was, to do what Armillus had done? It was not a thing human flesh could stand.
There was a sudden movement to his left. He turned. Madness, he thought. I have gone mad, and have failed. Shuffling across the barren ground, as if she had sprung from it at the instant, came an old woman, but this he knew was impossible. He had seen old age, the venerable priestess perhaps the oldest, but these eyes told of an ancient time beyond the span of a mortal. The eyes were beady as a bird’s, piercing into him. As he drew closer he saw the rags of her clothing, filthy cloth hung on meatless bones.
A rasping sound came to him, hollow and eager. He realized she must be speaking. He stared, without voice. Impatiently she repeated it.
“I am the Watcher for the goddess. Do you come to make a sacrifice?”
A sacrifice. Someone had wanted to make a sacrifice. He had wanted to make a sacrifice. “Yes,” his mouth said.
The specter nodded its head, eyes growing keener. A claw of a hand reached out to touch him, but she thought again and withdrew it. “Come,” she said. He stumbled behind her.
Before the arch stood a chaotic assortment of stone and slabs of rock, as a kind of altar. From her rags the Watcher produced a candle and set it carefully upright at the top of the stones. He found it difficult to follow her movements; his eyes were blurring over and clearing, blurring and clearing. It occurred to him that he was crying.
The candle’s flame sparked up into the glowering sky. The wind rose up again, shrieking about his ears, but the flame only burned higher. A thick tunnel of air poured straight from the blackness of the cavern and sent him down again, scrambling on his stomach, his face pressed to the ground. Memories that seemed to belong to the very rock flooded his mind as his own, burning into his eyes images of torture, of bodies writhing in agony, mouths wide in unendurable pain; the stench of decay, of hot fiery blood and rotting flesh, the stink of disbelieving horror, invaded his nostrils; he heard the shattering and splintering of bones, muscles and nerves and sinews rent and bursting apart; he tasted cowering dread and a thousand endless nightmares. This she caused, this she was, know then the work of the goddess! Here are those who came before you, here are those who dared to try, the ones who faced what cannot be faced. Join them! Come and find thy long suffering.
The air was quieter. His hands ceased their frantic digging. He was able to turn his head and raise it, just a little, from the dirt. Something was on his chin and mouth.
He had been eating earth.
A sound of grief escaped him. He pushed up to his knees, his hood hiding his face. To go in – and look at what he was, just here on the threshold. If he could come, crawling, to the end of that tunnel, what would he be? An animal, a beast, a slobbering demon?
Please. Let me go as a man. Let me die as myself. He used the edge of his cloak to clean himself, and got to his feet. The arch was glowing, unearthly and bright, a halo of madness before the waiting dark. The Watcher stood before him. Her words were flung out into the air, and echoed down into the cavern.
“Who gives his life, that another shall not die?”
The man in the cloak straightened. His hands rose slowly, and cast the hood back from his face. He had discovered himself, and the sudden terrible strength to answer.
“I do. I Rendell Armasii, son of Boessus and Meyna. I give my life.”
The arch glowed still brighter. Holding the image of Dalleena to his heart, he stepped through it, and entered into the blackness.
CHAPTER 18
Another crowd kept watch now in front of the palace, filling the courtyard. The onetime relas of Lindahne still paused on the dark god’s threshold. On the Second Hill the priest of Proseras had sacrificed the best of the flock, but his prayers went unheard.
At a window overlooking the courtyard the King looked out and pondered the peculiarities of mortals. Marlos-An had come to a standstill; every corridor was a place of vigil. It disgusted him. “They named her a criminal, now they’re ready to weep.”
“Better than these priests and their sheep,” Boessus said. “They’re the ones who condemned them, with the council.” He did not say, “and I condemned them,” but he felt it. The two men were often together, preferring a double share of misery on two backs to a solitary burden on one. In his distraction, however, the King had not yet seen how strained and quiet Boessus had become just within the last few days. Raynii still kept from the sickroom, and did not always know what happened there.
Below him in the courtyard someone said, “I hear that coward of a lover of hers has gone missing.”
“May he stay that way, then,” someone else answered, but the voices did not travel up to the king’s window.
“My wife told her the new Nialian priestess is keeping prayers for her in the temple,” the king said. Dalleena had fallen into a deep coma, as if imitating the coming death. “She doesn’t hear, but perhaps it lightens her spirit.”
Boessus did not answer.
Raynii continued to gaze out of the window. As the afternoon came on more people joined the gathering in the courtyard. There was some jostling, and the pett
y sounds of annoyance, but on the whole they were quiet, keeping their conversation low. The two guards had to move them back, as they swung open the gates.
A rider was approaching the palace. A few curious heads turned to look. Raynii saw the guards make their challenge. The rider made an emphatic motion, and one of the men suddenly stepped back. The horse came into the courtyard.
As jammed as it was, the king saw with astonishment a clear path opening up before the rider. On all sides the crowd was backing away, leaving a large cushion of space around the horse.
“Look at this,” he said to Boessus.
Boessus came to the window. They exchanged puzzled glances. “Some old priestess?” Boessus hazarded.
“I’ve never seen her before.” They strained to see. “Look at the age in her face! She could be great-grandmother to both of us.”
“They’re letting her through.”
The horse had been reined in almost at the front steps. Two more guards stepped forward. There was some kind of discussion. A guard turned and gestured to a page.
“Well, we’ll know in a minute,” the king said. “He’s sent that boy up.”
The boy arrived flushed and breathless. “Please, Sire, they say you should see this for yourself. They don’t know what to do with her. Her eyes can go right through you!”
Raynii found the description accurate. Out of the lines upon lines on the face two orbits bored into him. She did not dismount or bow, a piece of rudeness that infuriated the guard. He began to speak, but the king cut in.
“Who are you?” He stood at the top of the wide entrance steps, Boessus behind him. Now that he was closer he understood the crowd’s reaction. Something emanated from her. He resisted an impulse to step back. “What do you wish?”
The courtyard was so silent that every word carried.
“I am the Watcher,” her creaking voice said. “I bring the healing.”
Raynii wondered why, in the midst of his troubles, he was now asked to deal with madness. He tried a more practical approach. “Where did you get that horse? It’s from the royal stables.” As he had opened his mouth he had merely recognized it as property, but by the time he finished speaking he knew it as Dalleena’s. How could that be? The black’s eyes rolled upward and down again. There was foam dripping from its mouth. It looked ill.
“It was brought by the one who sacrificed,” she said.
“Sacrificed?”
“He offered himself, in the place of the other. And the one he loved will be spared.”
There was something familiar about the words. Raynii’s tired mind tried to trace it. The crowd was murmuring. Behind him Boessus made a sudden movement.
The king said, “For whom do you watch?”
“I am the Watcher for the goddess,” the voice repeated. “I stand before the Arch of Sanlin.”
More than one person screamed. Other horrified sounds came from the frightened crowd. Those in the front pushed into the people behind them, trying to get farther away. The king stood, making the connection.
“I bring the healing!” Now she seemed impatient. She slid clumsily from the animal’s back. No one moved to help her. The wrinkled hands fumbled at the saddle, untying two leather flasks. “I will go to her, to the other who will live.”
With a dry mouth Raynii asked, “My daughter?”
“The sacrifice was accepted,” the old woman said. “So long it has been since any have offered. And longer still since the goddess accepted.”
They were Lindahnes all; they knew what they were hearing. It had not happened, in all the generations of the centuries, since the time of Armillus. On the sides of his vision Raynii saw a slow and rolling movement, like the bengrass of the valley bowing down before the wind. His eyes focused, and he saw that they had fallen, one after another, to their knees – even the guards. Only the two men on the steps remained standing.
He whispered, “Who would have love enough – ” and stopped. A half-stifled sob escaped from Boessus’s throat. The king turned and regarded the weeping man. Now he remembered, dimly, Boessus’s recent quiet.
“Boessus,” he said, and his voice echoed in the air. “Boessus, where is your son?”
The crowded courtyard waited. “He has not been seen, Sire,” he choked. “He has not been seen these few days past.”
Raynii put both arms around him and cradled the white head into his shoulder. When he could finally draw breath he shouted.
“When you speak the sound of courage,” the royal voice resounded, “speak then the name of Rendell Armasii!”
And they drew back, and the old woman entered the palace, carrying her heavy flasks.
Ayenna listened, bewildered, to her husband’s explanations. “Mother Nialia!” She was stricken. “Did he love her as much as that?”
The Watcher entered the sickroom and looked at the still form in the bed. “All shall leave this room.”
The king nodded. The servants who had come in with him turned to the door. “No,” the queen said.
“Ayenna –”
“I’m not going to leave my daughter alone with a mad-woman!” she hissed. “Even if it’s true – and how do you know that it is? How do you know you can believe her?”
“I don’t think this is something we can interfere with. She says she can heal her.”
“But how do you know it?”
“Look at her.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Just look at her. You can see it. You can feel it.”
“But –”
“Ayenna, she’s going to die. There’s nothing mortal to save her. If the gods will, don’t fight against them.”
“You stay.” The Watcher said it to Lilli, who started violently. She was terrified of her and of the flasks she held. She looked in desperate appeal at the king, but he shook his head. They left her, alone, in the closed room with the old woman.
The Watcher said, “Remove the bedclothes.” Her hands shaking, Lilli pulled the sheets back from Dalleena’s body.
“What are you going to do to her?”
“Shut out the sun.” The ragged arms motioned to the windows. Lilli complied hastily, pulling the draperies together. In the semi-dark the Watcher fumbled with the first flask. “Remove the nightdress.”
“But –”
“Remove it.”
Her sweating fingers slipped as she tried to undo the catches. She lifted Dalleena’s arms and slid the gown over her. She lay naked and pale against the white of the undersheets. The Watcher was pouring a dark liquid out onto the floor, drawing a wide arc around the bed. “Step away from the circle!”
Lilli moved away quickly, trying to see what it was as it ran across the floor. The Watcher reached for the second flask and stood over Dalleena. She chanted rhythmically, “In the name of Sanlin, daughter of Death, in the name of Sanlin, bringer of pain, in the name of Sanlin, bringer of sorrow,” and suddenly she poured the contents of the flask onto the naked skin. It ran like black fire across Dalleena’s face and shoulders, covering her mouth, splashing over her breasts, sliding across her rounded stomach, flowing down between her thighs. The smell of it reached Lilli’s nostrils, and with it came recognition and realization. Her mouth opened in a scream incapable of utterance. She fled into the far corner, smacking her face against the walls, her hands scratching at the marble as if they could claw through it. Her stomach retched and heaved. She was violently sick.
In the bed, the dark blood of Rendell’s body poured out.
“Herald! I’m afraid you’ll have to wake up!” Teleus stood over his cot and shook his shoulder. Nichos groaned. “Come along, now.” Teleus laughed.
He rolled over and sat up. “What is it?”
“Message came for you. It was left at the commander’s and he gave it to me this morning. I’ve been up since daybreak. This is an army, after all.”
“That’s nothing to me. I’m a civilian.” He yawned and took the letter. “It looks like it’s from my uncle.”
“The Third
Tribune? Summoning you back, I suppose, though in my opinion you can hardly have been here long enough to see how things are really going. Breakfast?”
“Thanks. It’s not every houseguest who gets waited on by the ranking of the Third Band.”
“Well, I could let guard Quienos do it, but you endeared yourself to him so much I think he just might poison you. He’s always rude, but you inspire him to new heights. Here you go.” Nichos accepted a bowl of thick broth and one hunk of bread, the standard morning meal of the army. He tore the seal and unrolled his letter.
Teleus crumbled his bread into his bowl, whistling tunelessly. Suddenly Nichos sprayed a mouthful of broth over the table. “What?”
“What’s happened? Don’t shower me with it.”
“He wants – they’re trying to – I –” Nichos’s usual calm had evaporated. He threw down the letter. “By the shrieking, screaming, howl of the wind!”
“What is it?”
He jumped up and began to pace about the room. “I refuse, that’s all, I simply refuse!”
Teleus clutched his bowl of broth threateningly. “Nichos, if you don’t answer me immediately, I swear I’ll throw this at you.”
“They want to put me –” He spluttered. “They want to put me in the army!”
“Put you in the – what?””
Nichos sat back down. “My uncle says that various Assembly members are concerned about the shortage of officers here. They’ve sent some out –”
“Not enough. There’s no one good enough to head the Sixth Band or the Fourth Archers.”
“Right. So they’ve taken it into their thick political heads to appoint me.”
“To what?”
“To ranking of the Sixth Band,” Nichos fumed. “But I won’t do it. I don’t believe in this war, Teleus. I’m loyal to my people and I’ll do my job but I won’t fight.”
“Nichos, pardon me for asking but – are you qualified for this?”
“Oh yes. Unfortunately. I was trained with gahls many years ago, and won a first garland.” Teleus looked impressed; it was a sign of high expertise. “I also studied three years through the Officers’ Guild. Originally, you see, I was intended for a military career of training. I moved up to herald only because my elder sister died. And when I found out they were actually going to form an army and put it to use, I was glad enough to be out of it. Now here I am again!”