The Shadow of Tyr

by Glenda Larke

  A collective gasp rose up from the devotees. The rush of emotion that followed broke through Ligea’s defences. She felt it all—fear, awe, delight—a plethora of conflicting sentiments spilling into the golden glow that permeated the building in place of the dying twilight. Someone called out, ‘We are saved!’ Antonia looked up at the statue and her face shone, her ecstasy a palpable touch in Ligea’s mind.

  Moondaft woman. Rathrox must have warned her, but she still wanted to believe in the Goddess. And this a priestess who’d cheated believers for years with her damnable doggerel.

  Giving one last glance behind to make sure the whirlwind was still obeying her touch, Ligea turned her attention to the lamb splayed out on the altar. She didn’t know what question the High Priestess had asked to have answered in the entrails, but it didn’t matter. Without moving from where she was, she tugged the lamb innards onto the floor with power from her sword. Worshippers scattered to avoid the splash of blood and guts as it hit the marble tiles. The gasp of the devotees was one of awe.

  Deftly, she rearranged the intestines to form the symbol of flight, an arrow. It pointed away from the statue towards the North Gate. She opened her mouth to cry out, but the words she wanted to use were already on someone else’s lips.

  ‘The Goddess bids us flee! Look at the entrails. Tyr is doomed—we must leave the city!’

  Antonia and her augur stared at the entrails in horror. ‘It’s true,’ the priestess whispered. ‘It’s telling us to leave.’

  But few waited to hear her. They were already abandoning the temple as rapidly as they had sought its illusion of safety, shouting the news as they ran.

  Ligea snorted, and let them stream past her on either side before following. Along the Pilgrim’s Way, she stopped near Gayed’s tomb, the whirlwind still bobbing in her wake. She was tempted to blast the statue of him to oblivion, to obliterate his name on the plinth. She could do it so easily…but Antonia would report it to Rathrox and that might give him an idea of just who was responsible for what was happening. He might guess as soon as Favonius returned from the Mirage, but she still hoped not. And the more time Arcadim had to reinvest her money and cover the trail before the Brotherhood started to investigate her, the better.

  ‘Gayed Lucius,’ she said, staring at that chiselled face, once so loved, ‘you are going to be obliterated from memory in Tyr.’ One day she would return and blast the statue into a shower of splinters and dust.

  She moved on. What she had achieved in the temple was beyond her expectations, yet it wasn’t enough. Few of the highborn had deigned to be present in such a huge, undisciplined crowd, and she needed the highborn to be just as frightened as everyone else. Their slaves had to have a chance to slip away…

  She walked to the edge of the temple grounds on the northern side. From this vantage point, she was high enough to look down on the roofs of the quarter known as the Abundantia. This was the heart of the more prosperous area of the city, where many of the richest families had their villas. Her cabochon beckoned the whirlwind and sent it out over the houses, but not before she had strengthened its colour, quickened its spin, increased the violence of its incandescence.

  She had no wish to pit the strength of a wind against the walls of a solid building; instead, she simply dropped the base of the whirlwind straight into the open atrium of one villa after another. The spinning air picked up little more than water and fish and a few lily pads, or the odd piece of furniture, cushion or drape from an adjacent space, but the roar of it, the greedy force of it, the sparking fiery colour—it would frighten.

  She stirred uncomfortably as she watched it do its work. Once I was one of them…living as they do, believing in the same things, counting them as friends.

  Ten minutes later, she had to stop. The houses as yet untouched by the whirlwind were now all too far away, and she was too tired. She had done as much as she could there.

  Goddessdamn, she thought as she walked wearily through the crowds down the Forum Publicum towards the Marketwalk, pushing the whirlwind in front of her, how in all Acheron’s mists did I end up like this?

  And then, This is madness…She was one person. In such a crowd a single arrow or even a dagger thrust could so easily turn all her dreams to dust.

  The timing for the whirlwind had been well chosen. Most of those in charge of city administration had gone home for the day. By the time they knew something was wrong, the streets were clogged with people and Tyr had disintegrated into chaos. The Prefect Urbis wasn’t even in the city; after his traumatic experience with the Oracle, he had removed himself and his family to his country estate.

  Rathrox did his best, returning to the Magistrium to order his compeers to search for and kill any Kardi woman they found in the vicinity of the whirlwind, but he knew he may as well have asked a farmer to find a particular stalk of wheat in a grain field.

  He grabbed Clemens and his personal guard and headed for the Meletian temple himself, guessing that was where the whirlwind had started. Clemens, as usual, was chattering in his ear, something about having received a message from Getria and someone called Favonius. In his worry, Rathrox took no notice.

  The whirlwind had become a gyration of colour and flame and showering sparks, all the more spectacular now that the dark was closing in. Although they hurried, by the time they arrived at the temple the wind had moved and was halfway down the Forum Publicum heading towards the palace. To Rathrox’s barely suppressed fury, no one was able to tell him who had been responsible. Grim-faced, he surveyed the wreckage around the temple. Much of it, as Antonia pointed out, had been caused not by the wind, but by the press of people trampling the herb gardens, or sending some of the smaller urns and statues tumbling.

  Antonia was in her element, dealing with distraught citizens seeking information and guidance. Her advice was the same to all: leave the city until the whirlwind was gone. Melete had commanded it. Only in flight was salvation ensured. She herself was going soon too—she was just waiting for her acolytes to finish packing up the more valuable of the votive offerings for transport. They would wait out the crisis in the Meletian temple along the paveway to Otus.

  Rathrox was furious with her. ‘You should be setting an example, not encouraging people in this foolishness,’ he snarled when he heard her telling all this to a portly wine merchant leading a deputation from the commercial quarter.

  To his utter amazement, the wine merchant turned on him. ‘I don’t know who you are, Dominus,’ he said, ‘but you shouldn’t be talking to the High Priestess that way! I’m just a simple merchant, but I know we should respect those who serve the gods. And if the Goddess tells me to leave the city, then I shall put my faith in her advice. The High Priestess is setting an example—of obedience to Melete!’ He turned back to Antonia. ‘May the Goddess bless you, Reverence.’

  Fortunately for the merchant, Rathrox was distracted at that moment by the arrival of Legate Valorian and a squad of men on horseback. The Legate managed to look remarkably cool and unflurried. ‘Magister,’ he asked, ‘what the Vortex is going on? I was told the whirlwind started here, and one of my two snipers is now lying in the portico of the treasury over there with a broken leg. The other says the whirlwind deliberately targeted them. Forced them to jump off the roof!’

  Rathrox frowned. ‘I don’t know, Legate. But I think you should be following the whirlwind to find out who is controlling it. Look for a Kardi woman and kill her.’ He pointed at the gyration in the sky. ‘Get after it, man!’

  ‘By all that’s holy, Magister, it took me all this time just to get here! The Forum is packed with every blessed handcart in the city and half the wagons, and every confounded one of them trying to head for a different city gate. The Exaltarch ordered all the gates closed, but I doubt that order got through in time. I advised him to stay put, by the way. I can’t be responsible for his safety in all this.’ He turned to his legionnaires with a theatrical sigh. ‘Men, looks as if we are heading back down the Forum again—tr
y not to trample any citizens along the away, eh?’

  Impossible man, Rathrox thought. How ever did such a perfumed peacock get to be Legate of the Tyr Legion?

  Valorian, about to ride away, paused. ‘Oh, Magister, that legionnaire who brought you the message from Getria today says the Stalwarts were wiped out in Kardiastan. Is that true?’

  Rathrox straightened up, glaring. ‘Get on with it, Legate!’

  Valorian shrugged and rode away. Rathrox turned his fury on Clemens. ‘Why the Vortex didn’t you give me the message?’ he roared.

  Clemens knew better than to remind him he had tried. Wordlessly he dug in his tunic and pulled out the scroll in its tube, and handed it over. Rathrox snatched it from him. As he read the contents, he felt all the blood leave his face. Favonius Kyranon, he now remembered, was the name of Ligea’s lover, and his message was one of treachery.

  ‘Clemens, I am going to go back and have another word with the High Priestess.’ He waved Favonius’ letter. ‘With this, at least I might be able to open her eyes now. In the meantime, I want you to take a squad of heavily armed Brotherhood men—with whirlslings and rip-discs, some archers too—and go to the Villa Gayed on Senators’ Row. If anyone uses magic on you, kill them. If there are any Kardi there, kill them. Otherwise, I want you to arrest anyone in the house, anyone at all, and have them taken under heavy guard to the Brotherhood cells. Not to the Cages, mind, but to the Magistrium. I want you to search the villa from top to bottom and bring me every piece of parchment and scroll and wax tablet that it contains. Any account books. Anything at all that seems interesting. Bring any women’s white wraps that you find and look for a blonde wig.’

  Clemens looked thunderstruck. ‘You—you don’t think Ligea Gayed is the woman we are looking for, do you, Magister?’

  ‘No, no. She knew this letter would be written, so I don’t think she would risk coming back to Tyr. Why should she?’ He could have added, ‘when she is the rightful ruler in Kardiastan’, but Clemens knew nothing of that, so he refrained and said instead, ‘But Favonius does offer proof of her treachery. We’ll see if anyone else from Kardiastan has been using her villa.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘I’d love it if she returned. I’d like to see her crucified at the gates, begging to die.’

  Clemens’s eyes widened. Ligea Gayed? Crucified?

  The night darkened, but the whirlwind supplied plenty of light. It towered far above the highest building and must surely have been visible all over the city. Apart from the occasional burst of power from her sword to maintain its glow, there wasn’t that much Ligea had to do. The whirling maintained itself: sometimes sucking in debris, sometimes winding itself tight, sometimes opening up wide like a gigantic maw on a rampage in search of more fodder. Rainbow flames flickered within as debris burned; the sparks cascaded free like burning raindrops, yet when they brushed the skin of those underneath, they burned only with a touch as cold as ice.

  The light the spiral cast was enough to illuminate the chaos its presence wrought. People were indeed fleeing the city. Many tried to take their wealth with them—the streets were choked with laden handcarts and horses, even a few oxcarts spilling goods like soldiers’ plunder. To avoid the carts, some of those without wheeled transport took off their sandals and walked down the paved water channels that ran along either side of the Forum.

  Although Ligea had hefted the whirlwind up high to avoid harming anyone, the sight of it coming closer was enough to turn the chaos of the crowded streets into rampant pandemonium. People fled, leaving their goods behind. Children were separated from parents, wives from husbands, slaves from masters. The wild wail of the wind obliterated the screams of terror or any rational voice. Tiles were ripped from the roofs as the gyration passed, and flying debris became a danger to those beneath.

  Someone clutched at Ligea’s arm. A boy of fourteen or so, wearing an artisan’s garb. ‘What’s happening? Where should we go?’ he asked, his eyes wide with uncontrolled terror. ‘Is it the end of the world?’

  ‘No, of course not. Don’t panic,’ she said, striving to calm him. ‘Leave the city by the North Gate, and wait outside till morning.’ Then people pushed between them and he was swept away. She walked on, trying not to absorb the pathos of lives reduced to a few belongings, not to hear the misery of fear around her, not to be seared by the pain filling the air. You knew, Ligea. You always knew it would lead to this.

  When she arrived at the square in front of the palace at the end of the Forum Publicum, city guards—Legate Valorian’s men from the Tyr Legion—were trying to block the four main streets: the Marketwalk, the Via Pecunia that led to the North Gate, the Via Thelassa that ran along the river to the docklands and the Via Dolce that led to the Snarls.

  ‘Go home!’ a centurion was shouting. ‘Stay indoors and nothing will happen to you!’ His men seized a handcart from a pair of burly brothers wearing the insignia of the Wheelwrights’ Guild and deliberately overturned it in the roadway, to form part of a barricade. Enraged, the two wheelwrights attacked the legionnaires. Fortunately for the former, the fight was overwhelmed by a surge of people from the Forum, frantically pushing their way forward to escape the approaching whirlwind. A group of highborn men on horseback with their womenfolk in a covered oxwagon added to the confusion. Surrounded by their slaves and personal armed guards, they forced their way down the Via Thelassa heading for the Via Pecunia. Ligea recognised the man riding in the lead by his hawknose and close-set eyes: Devros Lucius, the head of the Lucii, one of the powerful families who eyed the Exaltarch’s seat for one of their own.

  The centurion in charge tried reasoning with him. ‘Dominus,’ he said, ‘it is the wish of the Exaltarch that the highborn set an example and do not leave the city!’

  ‘An example?’ Devros cried. ‘And where is the Exaltarch? I don’t see him! Why have we been given no guidance? Where is the Prefect Urbis? Where is the Magister Officii? This is disgraceful!’

  His wife poked her head out from under the wagon covering. ‘The High Priestess sent her acolytes to tell us to flee, Centurion. Melete herself sent warning…’ The sound of the whirlwind overhead drowned her out. She screamed.

  Devros signalled his guards and they edged their horses towards the legionnaires. The centurion glanced fearfully upwards at the blazing whirl in the darkening sky, then back at Devros glowering at him with his eagle-like glare, and decided that it would be unwise to pit his men against one of the Lucii. Especially when it seemed likely they were all going to be swept up into the wind any minute. He pulled his men back. Ligea snatched the opportunity to slip past.

  She took the access lane around to the back of the palace area, where the palace guards and the city guards had their barracks. As she expected, all was quiet. Most of the guards had long since been called out to maintain order.

  Those few left on duty fled as the whirlwind dipped towards them. She dropped the whirlwind into the roof of the barracks and removed all the tiles, stripping the rafters clean, sucking up everything she could from inside the rooms. She dumped it all in the centre of the parade ground and set fire to it with her sword, stoking the flames from a distance till it was an inferno. Spears, armour, weaponry, saddlery—it all melted or burned to ash. Slaves came running, but there was nothing they could do. No one noticed the drab woman in a cloak who slunk by along the wall, heading for the gateway once more.

  Outside in the streets again, she passed the palace—splitting off part of the whirlwind to send it careering through an upstairs window—before entering the wealthy merchants’ quarter along the Via Pecunia leading to the North Gate. What happened inside the palace, she had no way of knowing and didn’t much care. Instead of doing the same thing to all the merchant houses she passed, she just dropped tiles and other debris on the roofs of all the villas. The noise was enough to make the occupants cringe with a fear she could feel through the walls.

  It was enough. No, it was too much. She allowed the whirlwind to die. The spiral loosened, the fires dimmed
, the colours faded, the burden it carried vanished. She released her last hold on it, and it blew away, dust and ash and leaves drifting in a night breeze. She felt as if part of herself had also wafted off, leaving behind only a shell of what she could have been, of what she had once been.

  Goddess, but I am tired.

  Overwhelmed by the press of terrified people, the legionnaires at the North Gate had given up trying to close the gates to stop people from leaving, or checking those who did leave. They stood to one side, talking urgently among themselves, exuding their anxieties like quivering rabbits.

  She enhanced her hearing and listened.

  ‘You can’t close a gate when the roadway is packed full of people!’ one was protesting. ‘If I’d carried out the order when I got it, I would have had to squash half the rich merchants of the Via Pecunia, not to mention their fat wives.’

  ‘Their guards would have killed us anyway,’ another soldier added morosely. ‘But I think we’d better close it now. The crowd is thinning.’

  ‘It was an order from the Exaltarch. We are going to be scourged over this.’

  There were several bodies lying on the edge of the road, hastily covered by some cheap matting. Soldiers? People they had killed? Accidental deaths? Ligea had no idea, and didn’t want to know. She dragged herself past them and out into the night, her gait that of an old woman crippled in the joints. It was no act; she felt ancient, exhausted by her own longevity. Yet she had one final deed of defiance left to carry out even now; she turned and melted the hinges to the left-hand gate, just to make sure the legionnaires could not close it.

  People had collected not far beyond the gates, as if they didn’t know where to go now that they had left the city. The night was moonless, but bright enough. Stars spilled from the horn of the Cornucopia constellation like glistening wet crystals strewn across the sky. Even the cloud of red dust that formed the shape of the horn cast a ruby glow as groups of city people settled down on either side of the road to wait out the night. They huddled together, steeped in their bewilderment, without purpose, or even hope. Their lassitude, washing over her with the pull of an ocean tide, made her stumble and she might have fallen if someone had not reached out and caught her by the elbow. She should have sensed him sooner, would have done so in normal circumstances, but nothing was normal now. There was too much assailing her for the more mundane to reach her core.