“Making or unmaking, we cannot stop the world now.”
They held together in silence for a long while. The Voice grew stronger as his God rose above the horizon; The Shadow seemed to fold inward, waiting.
“Well?”
He had no doubt as to what question she asked.
“I…don’t know. I could speak myself, and you, into either position. As the wind blows, I think one or the other. She might be end of the prophecy. She might be something else.”
“A Child of Home will come, light and dark in equal measure, and take the place of the ruined queen.”
“And it terrifies me to think of her sitting on that throne. Our…sister went to her fate heartbroken and will-sapped. To have a vigorous and vengeful mind sitting in Emptiness, plotting?”
“Who is to say she would not take up her holy duty with a clear heart?”
He looked her full in the face, and did not conceal that he wept. “Because she loves, Shadow. She loves as honestly as I have ever had the privilege to see. It turned her from darkness; it would rot within her in less time than it took a child to grow to a man. In a generation, Ressen would be a bad place to live indeed. And then the kingdom. And then the world.”
She took his hands in her own and despite that the dawning God became his strength and her weakness, her mere touch soothed him. He held her fingers to his drying tears, and she took the pain in benediction.
“Dearest brother, I do not think this is our choice. We must work in concert with Their will. They will move the paths as They desire. Perhaps it is best that this place is destroyed; perhaps it is holy that it be unmade.”
He kissed her fingers gently, and felt the God lay Himself on his tongue again. “We could kill her. It would take nothing more than a pillow and a moment’s pressure.”
Truth, ever his gift, could fall as hard on himself as on others. The living symbols of the Great Pair sat and contemplated the riddle of the small, shattered creature on the adjoining room.
Would her death be an obscene mercy or a holy murder?
~ * ~
The Goddess had risen and set twice since the devastation of the clerics on the roof. Three of the worst afflicted—two of them from the capitol—had died. Terriance still lived, to Sequa’s great regret. If she’d had the strength, she would have staggered down the stairs a flight or two and smothered him like a newborn. She spent most of the time in a dull-witted daze, eating and drinking a little, relieving herself and otherwise lying with her eyes closed since they still hurt. The Shadow sat with her sometimes, teasing her gently about putting an old woman out of her bed. Once Anem had come and assured her Cur remained safe but other than that she had been blessedly alone.
They still had time before the killer would strike again. Somehow, she could not bring herself to care much anymore.
On the third day, The Voice of the God inched into the room, his feet tapping a soft, nervous rhythm. Sequa turned her head to look at him, squinting. The God bowed in the west and the mellow, golden light felt like spikes being driven into her skull. He stopped within touching distance and studied her face.
It must have been more horrific than usual since when she went pale with injury the scars stood out as though freshly drawn. Still, he only looked at her and smiled slightly.
“Come, Sequa. The Shadow and I need to have speech with you, and it is time you rose from your sick bed.” He held out his hand, and she found herself taking it without hesitation.
She had voluntarily touched no man since…
Her fingers clenched around his for a moment. Only by force of will did she not fling his hand from hers as though it were on fire. He winced himself and then grasped her hand firmly in both of his, pulling her up to her feet. She had dressed herself earlier in a soft tunic and breeches, plain but well made. Anem had brought them, saying she’d had them made up by a tailor in the city.
Swaying unsteadily, Sequa stretched a moment and then tested her legs. Weak but she thought she could walk; blood loss and lassitude, not injury.
The Voice made an abortive movement, as though he sought to support her shoulders and then thought better of it. But he did not let go of her hand as they walked together out of the Shadow’s rooms and into a Temple that echoed empty and still.
Sequa pulled at his grip. “Where is everyone?”
“It is a Dark Night tonight. The Shadow sent them out into the city. We three are the only ones here. The injured clerics went to the hospital in the Noble’s quarter. Their injuries were like yours, mundane in consequences, no matter how the cause.”
“At least no one can argue against the idea of a wild mage anymore,” she muttered.
The Voice gave her a dry look. “It is a gift to find the good in every situation.”
She didn’t even respond to his mockery this time.
He led her to the roof stairs, unsurprisingly, and she made a slow, hitching assent, each step more reluctant than the last. Every time her knees bent and unkinked she flashed to the sounds of fear and pain, bodies striking the stone, the smell of blood. The remembered scent brought her thoughts back around to the last night she had slept in a room with windows, and then she would have to stop and shake her head and fight to continue again. The Voice held patiently behind her, seeming in support but more so that she could not turn and flee.
Though even in her weakened state she could probably have knocked him back down the stairs fairly easily.
The Shadow waited for them on the roof, looking pale and frail in dim glow of the coldlights at the corners of the building. Sequa started forward in concern before her body betrayed her and she stumbled to one knee. Wisely, the Voice kept his hands to himself.
The Goddess had already risen and set and the sky had been obscured from horizon to horizon with clouds. A Dark Night, without even the Feathers to dapple to sky with their lights. A Darkest Night came when even the Goddess had not been in the sky—both ill-omened for holy work but fairly safe. They had time before the next Fullness. Sequa let her eyes adjust and flexed her limbs a moment. Movement came easier now as she forced blood back into her muscles. She would not have liked to fight anyone in her current state but she would not collapse into a puddle either.
When she raised her head again, breath coming hard, the avatars both stood next to the little stone altar laid in mimicry of the one below. The soft light barely reached them; Sequa could only tell them apart by the height of their shadowed forms.
A little wind kicked up, making her shiver; she masked it in her rising. Ressen had a warm climate most seasons but the clouds above threatened rain and chilled the air; they came to the crowning of the end of the God’s Measure, the three times four Turns that counted out His dance around the world. A bleak night, whatever their purpose here.
Politely, Sequa came up to the avatars with her hands clasped, bowed her head, and stood silently.
“Welcome, Champion. Welcome, my brother. Welcome those who stand with us unseen on this Dark Night.”
The Voice picked up the next lines of ritual. “The Eye of the Goddess is closed. The God lies in mute slumber below Her.”
They both stopped and stared at Sequa, she could see them as she looked up from under her lashes. They waited her to speak, and she could feel words hovering on the tip of her tongue. She clamped her lips down on a smile and stood silent.
The Voice made an annoyed noise. “I believe I told you she would do this.”
“Indeed.” The Shadow’s voice grew icy. “Sequa, do not game with us this night. We have holy purpose here, and this may be our only chance.”
“Holy purpose?” Sequa raised her bare face and frowned a little. The unspoken words blurted themselves out, using her mouth. “The Son rests His Wings, tired from battle; the Empty fills the world with darkness.” She hissed and snarled in protest.
The Shadow matched her expression, then reached over and picked up a bowl from the altar. “There is little time to explain. Here—” and she drank from
the bowl, handed it to the Voice who did the same. He passed it to Sequa and she drank too.
Cool water, tasting of flowers and dirt, of smoke and blood.
The most profound blasphemy to spit it out and she still nearly expelled it.
Coughing, the Voice had to snatch the bowl away from her before she dropped it.
“I have had…more than enough…of the Gods using me…as a mouthpiece,” Sequa hacked out, sounding petulant even to her own ears.
The avatars each reached out and grabbed one of her hands, pulling her over to the altar. The Shadow spoke again, her voice commanding.
“Let the Eye of the Hawk turn toward us, our brother unseen save in war. Let the way through the Darkness be revealed. Show the path. Show the way.”
Sequa started to pull her hands out of their grips, determined now to get away when there came in the unnatural stillness of the world the noise of stone scraping on stone.
She saw desiccated flesh blossoming away from a young woman’s finger bones.
The bottom of this little altar swung open onto a thick, black space.
The Voice reached down and placed a true lantern next to the opening, released her hand to drop to one knee and strike a firelighter. The spark caught and the warm glow of the light revealed…a chute in the stone, wide enough for a person to slide inside and beyond that…
Sequa dropped to her knees beside him, followed slowly by the Shadow.
Beyond the constricted opening, a stairway seemed carved into bedrock, spiraling into nothing.
Directly below this section of the roof was the main chamber of the Temple. Empty space.
Impossible.
Sequa sat back on the stone, her head spinning drunkenly. “What? What?” she gasped, unable to catch her breath.
“You are found worthy to be our emissary to the fourth avatar,” said the Shadow, audibly crying. “You must go and return before the Dark Night is over. You must ask for her aid in this crisis.”
“Fourth avatar? There is no avatar of the Empty!” Sequa’s voice rose to a childish shriek, nearly hysterical. “And why me, why me, why me, why me?”
“We cannot go,” continued the Voice, his sweet, silver tongue clotted and thick with his own weeping. “It must be you. Please, Sequa, take the lantern and descend. We have no other way to seek her aid. Please.”
He asked her so sincerely, with such love and strain in his voice. Anyone but him, the Voice of the God and she would have refused.
Taking the lantern in her right hand, Sequa slipped into the preposterous opening in the altar feet first, moving as though in a dream. Haze filled her thoughts even as she ducked her head and passed under the edge of the stone to be able to straighten up on the top step.
The door in the side of the altar closed then as the Shadow and the Voice looked upon her anxiously, their faces wet with tears.
At least not blood this time.
And so she went down and down, into the bones of the city, down so far the eternal thrumming of the great river sounded from above her. Her dark eyes had grown weak in the Measures she spent living in the light, but the small lantern in her hand unfailingly illuminated the next step and the next.
It grew drier the farther down she went; drier and colder. Cold until she could feel her breath almost coalesce to vapor before her, her bare feet tingling. The walls to either side faded from rough rock to packed earth; they should have long since caved to the relentless pressures of the river and the weight of the city, obliterating the stairs. Perhaps they would fail now as she walked and she became the newest interred sacrifice.
Mellow lassitude filled her limbs, drew curtains of muted color over her thoughts. There had been something in the water, after all.
No next step. She stumbled, rhythm broken. At the bottom of the cramped stairwell, a small landing spread out, space for perhaps four bodies to stand. At the other side, a narrow discolored patch in the earth wall.
Stepping closer, holding the light high, Sequa saw it was a door, made of smooth black stone. It had no handle, but a faint hinge showed along one side. The master mason who had constructed the altar above showed their hand here now, for as her fingers brushed the surface, it swung inward on a silent pivot, leaving just enough space for her to insert her slim body into the opening beyond. The air rushed about her face, eager to explore this new space.
The clear, steady light of the lantern showed a roughly circular room, perhaps thrice as large as the one at the bottom of the stairs. It held a block of dark earth, like a sacrificial slab, twice her height long and an arm length wide. At the end closest to her, stood something that might have been a chair encased in mud.
At the far end, nearly lost in the gloom, sat a corpse.
Without conscious volition, Sequa set her lantern down in the precise middle of the table and took her own seat in the empty chair.
She studied the figure at the far end carefully, what she could see of it. It appeared to be the desiccated body of a woman, tall and queenly, dressed in garments so rich that even after countless centuries in the cold, dry dark their colors and textures were gorgeous. What was left of their human occupant had not fared so well, brown mottled flesh drawn down and down onto bone as the muscles withered and died. The haggard flesh of the murdered woman in the altar above flashed before her eyes, an inevitable comparison.
The ragged dark hair fell straight to the floor, though hanks had fallen away to bare patches of the skull. In the twilight, it might unspool behind her in an unbroken cascade for another body length. It was bound at intervals with gold bands set with jet; similar jewels hung from her throat and snaked up each bare arm in whorls of bright and dark.
Her posture remained unbending even in death, shoulders square, head up, hands folded in her lap. She had come to this fate unresisting and kept her dignity intact. Even in this mockery of her living form, her beauty shone.
Freely given sacrifice, her life and whatever message she carried with it shot straight to the Gods like an arrow.
Sequa settled herself into a like posture and waited. The fuel in the lantern consumed itself at some point and plunged the room back into the darkness that had nurtured it for so long. She supposed she should be afraid now.
Fear did not come, not then. Not when she felt the flow of air from the stairwell falter and fail as way out silently closed itself. Not when that air became slow and thick with poison in her lungs.
Not even when the dead woman opened her sunken eyes and smiled.
How she was aware of that, Sequa never knew. Perhaps in the perfection of the blackness she had felt a breeze as the long eyelashes flicked upward, the cracking lips parted.
When the queenly woman spoke, it was the sound of ashes slumping on a pyre, leaves falling dry and dead to the ground, rotting fruit tumbling from a shelf.
“Come thou now to me, after these long Measures?”
“I have a question, Most Exalted Lady.” The respectful title rolled from Sequa’s throat easily. Odd how her own harsh voice sounded nearly liquid against the speech of the dead. Sequa had no doubt that whatever this woman had been, she was of royal birth.
Silence pooled around them. Sequa sat comfortably, in endless patience. She could feel the attention being paid to her from the dead woman like the breath of a predator on the wind, the length of a blade on the neck.
Dead leaves and ashes whispered again. “Thou…hast already eaten from the bounty that sustains me.” The rotted melody of her voice held consternation. For a moment it had seemed that different words lay on her tongue than what had emerged. “No other of thy like have come to me full fed.”
“This is not the question I came to ask, but others, Most Exalted.”
“In time, they have come. In time, they have…gone. Though none have left this place. They did join the dust of ages and so become my court in the darkness.”
Something—not wind—caused a brief susurration in her ears, the sound of screaming from throats clogged with dirt.
Despite the serenity that had engulfed her when the lantern went out, Sequa’s hands jerked into fists for a moment. The actions of the Shadow and the Voice coalesced into reason for the first time, in especially their imperfectly timed tears.
One weeps not for the living, but the dead.
They had sent her down those stairs to die.
A chuckle like dry bone snapping echoed against the walls.
“So, I am not forgotten as I feared. Indeed, bright sister, they sent thee to death when they sent thee to me—but forget not this truth. If none have ever risen from my table before does not hold none will ever take their leave.”
Again came that broken chuckle. “Thou buried thyself in earth to ask a question, bright sister. Ask now and I swear I will answer in all honesty. For the Empty may be the source of all lies—but is that not also pregnant with the knowledge of truth? The very air here vibrates still to the music of the First Heartbeat.”
She spoke baldly then, stung by perceived betrayal and growing apprehension. “Most Exalted Lady, am I become the avatar of the Empty?”
“No.” If an icy wind could hold the memory of warmth, so now did the dead woman’s voice hold the memory of regret? “That is mine own doom, not to be given over till my penance be done. Ever and always, till the end, I am the Heart of the Empty.”
Tension she had not even been aware of dropped out of her shoulders and back. From the moment she had entered this room, she had known what the consequences would have been had the answer been yes. She knew she sat on what would become her throne eternal.
“Thy penance, Most Exalted? What sin deserves this fate?”
“Ah.” Grief now ghosted through the air in a sullen breath. “Ah, bright sister, that tale would burn thy soul to ashes, if even I had the means to tell it. Or the right. I have rested here, in dark and silence, since before the city above had even existed. Alone with my crimes and my regrets, whispering like rats in the voices of the living I am doomed to hear. Even the dead can feel pain, if it be the Gods’ will.”
Moved more than she could have imagined, Sequa murmured without thought, “What could be done to take this burden from you, Most Exalted?”
As A God Page 23