“You—” in a whisper, in a whisper for Elad’s ears alone “—you will take the throne, and none other after you, and you will rule to see everything precious destroyed, every hope ruined, every man and woman crying out in torment. You will rule Athadia, and the world will die in anguish.”
He held himself still for one heartbeat; he held himself still sufficiently to see tears rise in the gray eyes beneath the mask. Then the fumes worked on him, and the horror, the future—and Elad leaned into his sword.
The point met no resistance in the soft throat. The oracle coughed. Screaming, then, Elad sliced with the blade. Blood flew in an intricate pattern, and the bronze-covered head slid to one side, lolled, then fell free altogether and dropped onto the earth. Blood from between the shoulders poured down the simple white gown as the neck made sucking noises. The body slumped forward in the umhis position, the arms relaxed, and all of the oracle went still.
“Gods!” Dursoris shrieked. “Gods! Gods! What have you—”
“Silence!” Cyrodian growled, holding him still.
Elad backed away, blood dripping from his sword.
“The hole!” Cyrodian called out to him.
He remembered, pivoted on the edge, almost fell in, reacted and jumped, landing on the brick path.
“What have you done?” Dursoris shrieked. “What have you done? Gods, gods, what have you—”
Elad dropped his sword, rose to his feet, and stared at the bloody trail he had made.
“Outside!” Cyrodian grunted. “We must begone!”
Dursoris broke from him and staggered on weak legs, staring at the bloody corpse on the dais. “What…? What…?”
“Elad, pick up your sword, and let us begone!”
Elad sank to his knees again and reached for the wet blade.
“Pick it up!” Cyrodian bellowed. “Damn you, pick it up and let us—”
“What have you done?” Dursoris shrieked. “What have you done? Gods! You have damned yourself!”
* * * *
Dawn was breaking as they returned through the forest. The horses’ hoofs crushed pine needles; their saddles creaked; birds called, and small burrowing animals, scampering undercover, left trails of noise within the carpet of morning mist.
Elad’s hands, red, were still shaking. His sword, in its scabbard, remained bloody; dried gore crusted the scabbard where the wet blade had been put. Blood on his sword. Elad, the virgin murderer.
As the three fled the forest beneath the dawn, Dursoris looked upon the muted greens and browns of wide-flung farmlands and said, “This must be reported to the council.”
Creak of saddle. Look of horror. “What the hell are you talking about?” Elad demanded.
Dursoris stared at him, giving Elad every benefit to appreciate the seams of pain in his face. “I mean what I say, brother. Such a crime cannot go unpunished. When Yta arrives at the oracle’s cave and sees what has been done, she’ll know one of us did it. Either you or Cyrodian. The murder of anyone connected to religious office carries a heavy penalty. It is a High Moral Crime, as Code Seventeen—”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Elad repeated.
Beyond Dursoris, he saw Cyrodian darken with anger.
Dursoris reined his horse still; his brothers did the same. Facing Elad, his back to Cyrodian, Dursoris explained himself. “The fact that I’m against your taking the throne doesn’t enter into this. That will have to come later. For the present, you’ve committed an inexcusable crime. It must be reported, and you—”
“Nothing will be reported!” Elad yelled at him, a grin of fear on his face.
Cyrodian moved. Elad saw him and instinctively jerked back, pulling his horse so taut that it reared. Arms thrown wide, Cyrodian hurled himself from his mount. Dursoris half-turned in his saddle; then his horse bucked as the giant crashed into him. Wrapping his arms tightly around his brother, Cyrodian held on as they fell to the ground. They landed heavily, Dursoris pinned, and he groaned, the wind knocked out of him.
Elad quieted his horse and dismounted, stumbled, and got to his feet again. He wanted to run but, instead, he yelled, “Cyrodian!”
Wordless, with a fierce expression, Cyrodian pulled free his side knife and, with the heavy handle, struck Dursoris across the side of the head. His brother groaned.
Cyrodian didn’t look up at Elad. “Build a fire.”
“What?”
“Build a fire, damn it!” Sweating, growling, he turned his knife in his hand and, bending over Dursoris, forced open his brother’s mouth, reached in with thick fingers, and pulled up on the slippery tongue.
“No, Cyrodian! No!”
Swiftly, displaying the mastery of a craft that had silenced many traitors and informants, Cyrodian slipped the sharp point of the knife into the mouth and sliced. Blood ran out. Cyrodian stood and pulled the unconscious Dursoris over onto his belly, so that he wouldn’t choke to death, and threw the fresh tongue meat into the grass.
“Gods!” Elad whispered, backing away.
Cyrodian roared at him, “Are you going to build a fire? Or are you going to let him bleed to death?” Wiping his side knife on the grass, Cyrodian sheathed it, then pulled out his sword. Holding Dursoris’s left arm to the ground, he set the edge of his blade a little back from the wrist, pushed down, and yanked back. His great biceps rose beneath his tunic; bones squeaked; and the silver blade cut down into the muddy earth.
Elad turned away, beginning to vomit.
Cyrodian shook his shaggy head, held down Dursoris’s right arm, and removed that hand.
Elad stumbled to a tree and embraced it. He pressed his wet cheek against the bark and stared at the world through hot, teary eyes as his stomach folded upon itself.
Cyrodian got to his feet, bent to wipe clean his sword, then gathered branches and scrub and put flint and steel to them. “I’m a man of my word,” he said, fanning the sparking fire. “If he can’t tell what happened, he can’t take it to court. You’re going to be king. I haven’t put in a lifetime of planning to have you back down now, damn your woman’s stomach!”
A short time later, far down in the river valleys, farmers awakening to their chores heard anguished screams from Mount Teplis—awful, tongueless screams that cut through the dawn with untellable agony.…
CHAPTER TEN
Approaching Mount Teplis from the southeast, Yta and her train did not meet the three princes. At dawn, when Dursoris’s screams rent the quiet of the morning, Yta leaned from her wagon, pulling back the drapes, and ordered her horsemen to halt. The screams continued—piercing, eloquent, full and deep in their anguish.
One of the courtiers with the queen made the sign of the gods before his face and spoke humbly to his mistress. “Perhaps it is some miller—trapped in his grinding wheel.”
“No,” Yta replied.
She knew the voice. How could she not know?
And how could she not intuit those screams as the first of many yet to come?
* * * *
The blood was still fresh on the dais steps, still gummy on the cloth of the white robe. Yta herself, helped across the fissure by servants, examined the blood.
The servants were fearful—murder of a voice of the gods was a crime unthinkable—but some of them were moved more toward immense sorrow. “How could this have happened? Oh, Queen Yta! How could this have happened? Who could have done such a thing?”
Not averting her eyes from the corpse, not shielding her eyes against the glare of the bloody bronze mask, Yta inhaled the stench of death and the aroma of incense. “Bury the body,” she whispered. “Bury the head. Both in one grave. Here.” She crossed the floor of the cave and tapped her foot on the ground where there was but earth and loose stones.
Uncertain, but using their swords as spades, the armed guards of the train bent to the task and within a short while had dug an adequate trench.
Yta, standing all the while in a dark corner of the cave, now strode forward and removed her
brilliant gold and crimson cape. “Lay the body in this,” she instructed. And when her servants had done so: “Place the head upon the breast. Yes. Now move the arms so that they embrace the head.”
The arms were not yet stiffened; it was done.
“Cover her with the cape. Lay her to rest.”
Yta returned to her place in the shadows and watched, her expression unchanging, as the fresh earth was returned to the grave and tamped down with boots.
She ordered one of the servants, “Bring me wine from your saddle. And the rest of you—remove yourselves now, please. Wait outside in the sunlight for me.”
They backed out as her man returned with the wine. “Leave me now,” Yta told him. “The oracle will yet speak with me. I will be but a short while.”
When the last of her people had gone, Yta stood above the freshly turned earth, unstoppered the wineskin, and poured a slow libation. As she did, she whispered an old prayer, one she had memorized in her girlhood on Hea Isle, one she had not spoken aloud since the day her feet left that place. She pronounced it now, summoning old spirits, old guides, as the wine ran out. Then the queen lay on the damp overturned earth, stretched out on her back, clasped her hands upon her belly, and closed her eyes to rest, to meditate.
She had been awake for a long time, for days full of tension, and she was exhausted. The darkness of the temple and its incenses filled her and lulled her spirit into an effortless slumber. Dreaming, suspended, Yta continued to repeat the prayer she had pronounced with the libation.
She did not stir when the ghost of the oracle came to her. Flowing white, in Yta’s dream, with gray eyes shining beneath the mask of bronze, the oracle spoke truths as her spirit hovered in the gulf between old life and new death.
“You have committed no sins willingly, and your life has been good, your sins forgiven. Queen Yta, Hea herself forgives you.
“Your thread is nearly run, and you are no more responsible for the children you have brought into the world than are the gods for bringing evil into the world. This is in the nature of all things, and Fate runs its course.
“You will live, Queen Yta, in your purity and goodness, without sin, one with the goddess, when you return to the capital and renounce your throne. Abdicate forever to your eldest, for he will have the throne by blood or not.
“When you have abdicated, leave Athadia and the empire for Hea Isle. Your work is done. The goddess awaits you with warm breast and spread arms. What remains for you is short. This is also in the nature of things. Rejoice that life is not endured forever.
“Crimes have been done; they are not yet completed. My body was slain by Elad, your eldest. Your youngest, Dursoris, was injured by Cyrodian. When you return to court, inquire; these truths will bare themselves. Yet give Elad the throne.
“Know this in the name of the gods, and in the name of Hea, and in the name of all gods as one god: you are purged, Yta of Athadia.
“Fearless as you have been in life, a strong woman, honest with yourself and honest with others, a queen, you must know that this world, your world, has nearly run out its own thread. New gods wait, new worlds aspire, and new lives groan, waiting to be born. All this you will be spared, the end and the new beginning. Upon your death, Hea will welcome you across the river. You are purged.
“You are purged, Yta of Athadia.”
When she awoke, she left the temple, entered her wagon, and ordered her people to return her to the capital.
The words of the oracle’s spirit lingered, and Yta considered them in silence.
The screams that had swept down the mountain no longer pierced the morning and no longer pierced the mother’s heart.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The temple bells on the near side of the capital clearly rang out the first hour of dusk as night came down. Adred had just finished eating alone in his palace apartment. Orain had convinced him to move from the Indura, his lodging house, to some of the empty rooms in the enormous state palace, and he had done so, eager to be close to her and Galvus and others, as well—to be of assistance however he could.
Now he paced and nervously tugged at what was becoming a fairly strong beard. Opening a window, he restlessly tapped his fingers along the sill. He leaned out, looking for any sign of the three princes, but his view gave upon one of the palace gardens, and he could not even see the street or the eastern courtyard. The myriad of lights burning in every building in the city cast a halo high against the starry darkness, like a crowd of candles in a black room.
Sighing, Adred closed his shutters—just as a commotion came from somewhere in the palace. He hurried to his door and pulled it open. Down the corridor, a crowd of servants had gathered near the stairs that led to the first floor, and Adred saw Cyrodian’s large, crested helmet coming up the stairs, rising above the heads of the servants.
“Call Sotos!” came Prince Elad’s voice. “Quickly! One of you get Sotos the physician!”
Adred hurried toward the crowd. Behind him, he heard Orain’s door open; he turned and saw her.
“What’s happened? Adred?” She hastened toward him.
Adred looked back at the stairs. Cyrodian, pushing his way through the servants, supported the head and shoulders of a man in his arms, while Elad struggled with the feet.
Orain’s sandals slapped on the polished marble. “What’s happened?” she nearly screamed.
“Out of the way!” Cyrodian warned everyone in the corridor.
“Prepare his chamber!” Elad ordered the servants. “Go on! Prepare his—”
The crowd was moving down the hall. Orain, reaching Adred, clutched his arm as her husband and Prince Elad came past, carrying the bloody figure slung between them.
Orain gasped.
Adred reached to press her face away, even as he himself stared in shock.
“It is Dursoris!” Orain screamed, digging her nails into Adred’s arm.
“Get…Sotos!” grunted Elad, as he and Cyrodian shambled past her. “Get water and clean cloths! Hurry, damn it!”
“Oh, gods, no, no,” Orain whispered. “No…no…no…!”
Adred held her. Orain struggled weakly and stared.
Dursoris. A ruin. Blood caked on his mouth and cheeks and throat. Blackened stumps of wrists—charred flesh, hacked bone—dangling from his sides. Body swaying like some broken buck’s between his brothers as they carried him.
“What happened?” Orain shrieked at them.
“Bandits!” Cyrodian called back, glimpsing for a moment the burning intensity of his wife’s stare. “Bandits!”
“Gods, I—” She fought to go, but Adred’s grip was tight.
“Wait,” he told her in an awed, low voice. “Wait. Let Sotos look at—”
“But it’s Dursoris!” Orain cried, straining now, with her arms pulled behind her, to run after him.
“Orain! Or—”
Halfway down the corridor, as hovering servants held back, Elad and Cyrodian hauled the body into a chamber from which the orange glow of torches seeped. Sotos, the court physician, bald and overweight, dressed in his blue and gold robes, came huffing up the stairs; he hurried past Adred and Orain, not saying a word.
Orain, shivering, stood.
Adred felt the tension in his arms weakening. He released his hold on Orain, touched her shoulders, and turned her around.
She faced him silently with a wet, damp face, golden hair in disarray.…
And such a look of personal horror in her eyes.
The chamber door closed.
“Wait,” Adred whispered, watching where the orange glow had vanished from the floor.
Such a look of horror in her eyes.…
Now Galvus came up the stairs, confused. “What’s happened? Mother? Adred? What is it?” Boots shuffling, robes whisking by. “What—?” at the stare of his mother’s eyes.
* * * *
Beneath the covers of his bed in the center of the chamber he lay, white and damp, flesh waxy in a ring of candle flames. Or
ain was standing at his side, staring at his mouth, his nostrils, his closed eyes. The stumps were hidden beneath the covers. The mouth, cleansed, was partially open and gasping in air.
Sotos had gone. Four Khamars in full armor guarded the closed door. Elad was gone—to his own chamber. Cyrodian yet remained in a dark corner of the room, watching Orain as she watched her silent, dying lover.
Adred, with Galvus, stood behind Orain, in the shadows, away from the half-circle of bright candles above Dursoris’s bed.
A servant girl knelt, wiping Dursoris’s wet brow with a damp cloth. Periodically, the only sound in the room was the tinkle of water in the bowl as the girl dipped the cloth, rinsed it, wrung it, and applied it again to Dursoris’s hot forehead and cheeks.
Orain looked up. Adred watched her. He could not see her eyes, but her golden hair, caught in the candlelight, glowed with a nimbus, and her robe, pale pink, bound with a silver cord about her waist, rippled with movement.
Orain was staring at Cyrodian, whose eyes burned in the gloom. “You slew him.”
The servant girl stopped what she was doing.
The Khamars looked up, alert.
Cyrodian’s armor, bronze and leather, creaked in the corner. “What?”
Voice of shadows, voice of candles. “You slew him.”
Adred’s stomach began to twist.
“You slew him—” in the same unchanged tone, flat, hollow, true “—because you knew we were lovers.”
A moment of eternity. And sudden cold in the room.
Adred felt himself beginning to step forward.
Cyrodian’s voice came across the room with such force that the taper flames bent beneath the roar of his anger. “What are you saying?”
“You slew him because you knew we were lovers.”
Huge footsteps, crushing the stone. Huge arms, reaching out as if to burst from their sleeves. Terrible eyes, white with rage. Cyrodian hulked to the bedside and stared across at his wife. “What are you saying?”
“You’re not my husband. You never were my husband—not in your heart. You slew Dursoris because you knew we were lovers—we loved one another, and you knew it. The oracle was only a pretext because— Elad must have known it, too—” The words, tumbling.
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