Saber and Shadow

by S. M. Stirling

  “Oh?” the woman above drawled with studied disinterest.

  “Oh yes! She tried to teach that the Divine Effulgence was nothing more than a ball of glowing rock—and that it went around the earth, rather than the Ineffable Truth’s teaching, that we circle about the God.”

  “Oh,” came the reply. The Zak could feel both the gaaimun shift as they drew the suncircle on their breasts.

  Ignorant foreigners, Megan thought impatiently. Koru, Guardian of Lives, makes the sun shine and we do circle it. If it were glowing rock, the Dark One would have put it out. Silly thing to get burned for.

  She craned her head out from under the litter and looked ahead. The road broadened before her, fanning out in a delta shape as it joined the square.

  “Ah, Jaabno, run over to that vendor and get me a cup of ... What’s this under your litter, Maahgli? A new pet?”

  Glancing out, Megan met the gaze of her shade’s occupant, their faces inches apart but reversed; she noted how the Fehinnan’s silver-wound hair trailed in the dust as she knelt on the cushions and peered with bafflement under her conveyance.

  “What,” she said in outraged tones, “are you doing under there, taking ...” She groped for a word. ‘Taking my shade without permission?”

  She really looks very much like a sheep, Megan thought. If sheep wore silk ribbons and jewelry. Nice piece of silver and turquoise.

  “Enjoying my road,” the Zak replied. “If you must come and put your litter on it.”

  The Fehinna’s puzzlement was giving way to real anger. Megan reached out and tweaked her nose sharply, then scuttled out crouched, weaving through the crowd at knee height. Given nimbleness, small size, and a ruthless willingness to hurt, it was possible to move with some speed, much faster than a search party of tall standing officials, even with the weight of authority behind them.

  Behind her, outraged shrieks told of disorganization spreading. That had been childish, but then a childhood spent stealing buckles in the River Quarter was far from the worst training you could have for a time like this. It will give that dull person something to entertain her tedious friends and relations with.

  The interior of the temple was almost as bright as the square, where the gilded dome had left phantom afterimages dancing across her eyes. The contrast with the darkness of the entrance runnel was dazzling, and calculated. All four of the great lenses in the dome were uncovered, sending beams stabbing down through four hundred meters of air blue with incense to break blindingly off the circular gold-and-crystal sunburst Holy of Holies atop the central altar. A hand bell silenced the congregation as they crowded to the barrier, keeping the central dome free. There was no sound but the sighing of their breath and the deep, rapid chanting of the choir grouped around the balcony that girdled the dome one hundred meters above their heads.

  The great jeweled sun-shape began to rum, smoothly, soundlessly, on jeweled bearings. The fierce light was thrown back in huge swirling patterns, through the hazy air, dappling the stem faces of the onlookers and the glossy interior of the vast building. A long-drawn AAAAHHHHHHHHH broke from twenty thousand throats.

  From the eastern door, the entrance of the rising Sun, came the procession of the priests. The Reflection of the Beneficent Light himself was there, about him the gold-colored robes of the Inner Circle, each with a globe of purest crystal in one hand. They moved into the clear space about the altar, their sandals whispering in a swaying rhythm on the yellow marble, their left hands flashing up to stretch toward the sun, their right hands reaching to the floor.

  The sound 01 their chanting rose, clear and deep: “Continuance of life! Continuance of Life! On High, on High, the Sun grants Continuance of Life!”

  Behind followed younger priests, whirling about the procession. There were a thousand of them; half gripped hand bells of brass in their right palms; half rang bells of crystal and silver, an eerie tinkling resonance under the deeper tone of the metal. Their left hands swept tall unlit candles of deepest red through the air as they danced; the young faces were blank, ecstatic, as they traced an intricate pattern across the floor around their seniors.

  Behind came red-robed priests, men and women who walked with a long measured stride alive with the consciousness of power: they were the Hands of the Effulgent Light, the ones asking the Question; they wrung answers out of heretics. In their midst, they carried the recanted heretic among them, roped under the arms and suspended on long poles to twist above the heads of the crowd. She wore a white robe with a stylized pattern of flames rising toward her face. The victim was unmarked; Megan could even see that all the finger and toenails were intact. But she was ... not unconscious, for her eyes were open, and she moved. It was the pattern of movements that was strange-odd jerks and twitchings as if the human’s limbs were trying to flex in directions not allowed for in their design. The priests set her down before the altar with a jar, and she gave a single scream.

  Megan felt the overflow from the woman’s mind and recoiled, even before the knowledge of what she felt seeped through. There was familiarity to the touch, like the Sniffer. Once, as a child, she had seen the ants at a nestful of hatchlings; a swarm cutting apart everything that had made her human.

  The sacrifice writhed against her bonds as the red robes fastened her to the central spine of the altar’s disk. That rose, now, from the spinning gold, and showed itself to be plain, hard steel, black and smooth. The robe was ripped away, and the crowd fell to their knees, heads bowing like a ricefield in the evening breeze. Megan did not glance down; she had full opportunity to see the changes that had begun in the other’s body. The victim’s head rolled back, and she howled. Not a scream, but a thin screeching keen, and the skin bulged out in the beginning of a sack beneath her jaw as the spike bearing her rose.

  A ripple went through the crowd. The Zak raised her eyes with theirs to the apex of the dome, smelling the fear-sharpness of her own sweat over the sickly musk of the incense. Half an hour ago, she might have convinced herself that she played a dangerous game. That was then; here, there was no escaping truth.

  It took a moment for the significance of the shapes she saw to snap into a picture behind her eyes. Slowly, slowly, a massive lens was lowering from its niche at the very summit of the dome. Gilded chains thicker than a man’s arm supported it, as it dropped with fluid precision to the center of the great space, then it intersected the four beams from the fixed lenses, and a fireburst of light sprang into being below it. Brighter than the sun; Megan’s eyes averted themselves by reflex to the corona of trembling air that surrounded the point of focus. The chanting of the priests slowed; the young acolytes stood quietly in their ranks, swaying, their bells chiming with infinite softness, like leaves in a glass forest. The chanting rose and fell in harmony with the (inhuman cries of the heretic as she was raised gradually into the region of fire.

  Megan wrenched herself free of the growing swell of fascination and dread washing at the edges of her mind. This was not what I came to do, she reminded herself grimly. But there could be no better time.

  She sidled over to one of the junior priests stationed at the barricade between populace and hierophants. She tugged at his sleeve, gently, then more forcefully, as his rapt face remained locked on the scene above their heads. “Elder Brother—”

  “Pay heed and do not disturb the light!”

  “But, Elder Brother, I feel the need to bare my sinful thoughts ...”

  “Not now,” he said, his voice still vague with the blankness of the drugged. His hands made small fluttering gestures, but he did not look away from the rising pillar. It was far from the spot of incandescence, but there was a new note in the screams, and the bells of the acolytes rose to complement it. What the priests had strapped to the altar might not be human any longer, but it could feel pain.

  Megan seized a hand, dug her thumb into a nerve cluster, and pressed the scrap of paper into his palm. The man started violently. The Zak was amazed; with that grip he ought to be twisting pa
ralyzed on the floor.

  “Outlander, if this is not important ...” he began, glancing down at the writing. His eyes snapped wide; Megan could see the pupils swell and shrink to dots as a twitch of fear ran through his body. Screwing up his eyes, he averted them from the script as if to deny they had ever lain there.

  “Stay here!” he gasped, panting, and blundered off across the floor of the altar space. At any other moment, swift murmurings would have followed swifter action from his superior. Now there was no reaction, even when he nearly blundered into a bell-ringer in panicky haste.

  Megan showed a shark’s grin as she watched the young priest repeat, more diplomatically, her efforts to arouse attention. The upperpriest responded well, once his junior waved the message before his eyes. He staggered, and would have fallen but for a strong young arm to hold him upright. The Zak was tempted to stay and watch the progress up the table of ranks; there should be increasing terror with every step upward, as those who might be genuinely feared if they knew too much were reached.

  She turned and began her rapid squirm through the crowd. Resolutely, she kept her face turned from the point above. The screams of agony were shriller now, and on each the upper choir came in faultlessly, one octave below, the deeper tone prolonging and carrying the sound of pain across the echoing chamber. Woman and trembling light met; there was a moment of silence, then a steam-driven fuff as the moisture exploded out of the body. The pure carbon that remained burst into flame, and the pillar sank back toward the altar. The acolytes chimed their bells in a relaxing dissonance and danced forward to light their candles from the body, before sweeping out in a flower pattern to hand them to the waiting congregation.

  Megan could feel the huge tension release the crowd, letting them sink back into themselves. Still, she reached the doors before the crowd itself could begin to move. Even slowed by shock, the temple security forces should be moving soon.

  But by then I’ll be in the alleys, she thought. And the Reflection will have troubles of his own.

  The Second Priest, Kayhri, mounted the steps to the High Priest’s level with the strangest mixture of haste and reluctance. The chancellor had finished the major ceremony and had left for his apartments before the Sunforsaken message had reached her. The great doors of the temple had already been ordered open to allow the minor ceremonies of the Seven Nights of Exultation Unhindered by All Tedious Ordinance to continue.

  Great Light, she thought, I would be the one to have to bring it to him. The faster I do so the safer... and also more dangerous. Divine Sun guide me. Her thought trailed off as she tapped on the first door of the Inner Sanctum, nodding to the young orange-robe who opened the door. That idiot Ehlvaio didn’t even think to have the bearer of this detained. Perhaps he could see the justice in being kitchen staff again.... She stood on the mat before the door, genuflected to the image of the Sun at eye level, and entered quietly.

  This was not the audience chamber, but one that had a balcony looking out into the dome itself. Below the main platform ran another walkway that the guard-priests alone had access to. Cubilano sat at the exact center of the opening in the wall, surveying the crowd that drifted to the doors not yet open.

  She bowed at his back and waited, then cleared her throat nervously. Cubilano did not turn from his contemplation of the scene below the balcony, but his voice was chilling. “You disturb my Communion with the Sun after such an occasion?”

  “Reflection of the Divine Light, forgive this one that is less than the shadow that creeps ...”

  “Enough! Forgiveness is given to those who come to the point!” Very slowly, he turned his gaze on the hapless replacement of his chosen successor.

  Fascinated, the Second Priest stretched forth the hand with the scrap of paper in it, her eyes locked on her superior’s. “Brightness ... the message of the Guild of the Da—”

  Struck speechless by the sudden motion, she froze as the paper was snatched from her. He scanned it and his face, which had been still before, hardened to stone. “So, treachery. Where is the purveyor of this?”

  Kayhri swallowed and thought or the condition of her soul. “She was not ... not detained, Brightness.” The rest of the words came in a rush that died away awkwardly. “I will see personally to the lower ones discipline, Brightness; he really should have ...” Her words lay in the thick silence on the floor. Dimly she could hear the counterweights creak as the great doors began to swing open in the temple below, and the renewed crowd mutter as it shifted forward toward the outside. She braced herself for what was coming. She had never seen the High Priest move so fast, without the deliberation that was normally his, as when he had snatched the message from her.

  There was the small sound of paper crumpling. She opened her eyes and saw that his were no longer fixed on her. He leaned forward over the edge of the enclosure and signaled to one of the red-robes.

  “Younger Brother, there is another heretic in the temple. I trust that you will do much better than the last time.” His voice rose just a fraction, and the icy edge was enough to make the guard-priest blanch.

  Less than two days ago ... No, Kayhri, stay. He turned back to the red-robe. “Send another of the Hands to me. Go! And stop the doors, now.” The crushed message was cast down without a second look. He knew what it said, and that was enough. Kayhri was not going to like her penance.

  Megan looked out from behind one of the pillars by the doors. They were just starting to swing open, and she had to restrain herself from being among the first to leave. That would have silhouetted her between two groups of Fehinnans, the worshippers leaving and the next batch awaiting their turn.

  Fishguts, she thought with disgust as the uproar began behind her. Not altogether surprising, but she had hoped for a longer period of disorganization. Someone in this pile must be competent.

  Priests were trying to herd the congregation into order as they streamed toward the opening portals; they stopped midway through their arc, and murmurs of irritation broke out, almost loud enough to drown the amplified call from the corridor roof above their heads.

  “Hearkening and Obedience!” The traditional shout of a temple herald brought slow silence. “Hearkening and Obedience! The Divine Light has revealed to Her Reflection that among our faithful ones lies a Shadow, an outcast of the Dane. This one takes the form of an outland woman, smaller than most, black of hair but fair of skin. All faithful, look about you! Examine your neighbor! If it is the one in need of Purification, draw apart from her. Touch her not! Point to the Darkness, that we may restrain it!”

  Fresh tumult broke out. Megan drew deeper into the shadow of her pillar and watched the crowd break up into circles in the corridor and down the temple steps. Any short woman with fair skin seemed a fair target; she saw one blond ringed, and several men. Megan was not surprised, being familiar with the ways of crowds. Her eyes darted about.

  A thin trickle of worshippers was still threading out the door, the heedless and impatient. There were not enough to provoke more than a quick scanning glance from the Hands who had begun to fan out through the mass of humanity. One was a prosperous merchant, spare and thin; his wayservant held a priest in argument as the master halted briefly before sweeping out. A young girl held the trailing end of his feather cloak from the floor, just in front of the pillar. Megan was careful to keep the razor-tipped ends of her nails clear as she clamped the carotids.

  The servant woke a few minutes later, sitting propped against a temple pillar, with a splitting headache, wondering what the commotion was.

  Megan busied herself arranging the fall of the cloak quite carefully as they passed the ring of priests into the heat of the square. The merchant had not noticed his change of servant, except for an irritable growl when Megan had jerked the cloth as the servant fell. They proceeded down the steps to his litter. Megan’s neck prickled, and she expected to hear the shout of discovery any second. She kept her pace slow, matched to the dignity of the merchant, who turned to step into his conveya
nce.

  “What? You’re not ...” he sputtered.

  “Did you know that several threads are loose here?” Megan said. She leaped forward from the steps above, going right over his head as he ducked reflexively, the cloak flung completely over his head. “See for yourself,” she said, and burst through the litter, scattering cushions into the crowd. She heard laughter begin as the man struggled to right his clothing, waving his arms in the air, hindering the attempts of his entourage to help him.

  She reached the center of the crowd, and rather than continue running and drawing attention to herself, stopped and edged around, craning her neck and asking taller folk what was happening, all the while unobtrusively moving them forward while she moved back. Now ... the alley should be around here somewhere....

  The Hands of the Effulgent Light surged out of the temple. The slow, steady surge of purposeful movement in the crowd was giving way to eddies of disquiet; the security priests clubbed and pushed their way toward the center of disturbance, hindered by the clumsy help of the pious crowd. The square locked tight into a straining mass of flesh, grilling in the heat, misted by white dust. Noise rose to a shrill, bewildered roar. Over it rose the slithering multiple crash of shod hooves on slick stone pavement as a squadron of lancers cantered into the square from the southeast entrance.

  The horses were nervous, with a contagion caught from their riders. An expert might have seen a slight raggedness in their ranks, but the priests were not experts and busy besides. One broke free of the press and ran to grasp the bridle of the commander.

  “Fellow Servant of the Light,” he began. “We have to seal off—”

  The lancepoint from the second rank took him high in the chest with a hard snapping sound as the four-sided pyramid-shaped head punched through a rib. The priest looked down incredulously, then staggered back off the point. He was still staring at the spreading stream of blood down his chest when the squadron commander spurred close and cut twice. The second drawing cut was across the back of his neck; the sword caught between two vertebrae, and the body hung for a moment until the weight pulled it free. The crowd, seeing a repetition of massacre, tried to burst away from the troopers crushing itself against the walls.