by Shel, Mike
Auric found his voice. “A human sacrifice? Are we no better than the Korsa, then? Savages who’d cut a man’s throat for bloodthirsty demons?”
The golden toad mask, flames from the torches that lit the natural domed chamber flickering in its eyes, tilted to Auric. There was a shiver in his heart when those shining orbs landed upon him. “And what is it the carnifexes of Marcator do, Auric Manteo, when they carry out the sentence of death on the condemned? Who do you think that blood nourishes? You are mistaken if you believe Justice has no thirst to slake.”
“Your theology is strange,” said Sira, standing beside Auric now, her mousy brown hair plastered to her forehead, slick with sweat. “I read no such foul doctrine in all my studies.”
“Sira Edjani,” said the Videna, voice cold and confident, “do you think all mysteries are revealed to every simpering acolyte of Belu? Much is hidden from sight. I possess wisdom secreted far from the feeble understanding of humankind. The blood of the living, animal and man alike, greases the gears of the universe. Pain fuels the great machine. This is truth.”
“Nevertheless,” said Bocca, voice leached of its customary irreverence. “You must answer their questions, Videna, regardless of your hatred for me.” Did Auric sense fear now, Bocca’s caustic humor fled?
“Must I, slippery thing?” the Videna retorted. “Yes, I must. But do not bother me with the questions you Syraeics have prepared. They are false and not what you really wish to know. Did you think your deceit would fool me, who has looked through the eyes of a god? Who has beheld the thread of time from above? I will sing for you a prophecy, yes. But then you will do as I ask and gut this serpent that walks like a man. Quill!”
The last word she shouted so that it reverberated off an icy white dome of rock above them, glowing in the torchlight. From behind the throne came a naked, filthy man. He was skinny, malnourished, his flaccid member dangling between bowed legs. An oversized representation of a frog’s head of baked red clay sat on his shoulders, and he pushed before him a small wheeled cart, upon which sat a fat tome, lying open. Like the Videna, there were no holes for eyes in the man’s clay helmet. Auric couldn’t understand how the fellow could see where he was going. But there was something wrong about him, his movements; his limbs jerked, blurred, seemed to be in two places at once. Auric found he had trouble focusing directly on him.
When the strange man and his cart reached the throne, he stopped. Auric could see his deformities now: his limbs were malformed, he hadn’t a full complement of fingers on either hand. With more weird, half-witnessed movements he picked up a black-feathered quill with the three fingers on his misshapen right hand and dipped the tip in crimson ink.
“Verses,” said the Videna as she removed her golden mask, her gestures slow, graceful, and deliberate. “I speak verses that shall be recorded here, as all prophecies spoken in this sacred space through the years have been recorded. Pember guide my tongue.” Her head was shorn of all hair, her eyebrows included, giving her an alien appearance. Her lips were thin and cruel, stained red, though Auric couldn’t tell if it was cosmetics or blood that made them so. She set the golden mask on the arm of her throne. Her eyes were big and dark, the pupils dialated so large only a sliver of the green irises remained. She blinked twice, then closed them.
The cave was entirely silent for a moment, though Auric thought he heard wind blowing behind the towering throne. Szaa’da’shaela trembled and spoke to him in a whisper: Listen, listen…
The Videna’s stained lips turned down in an exaggerated frown, and she stuck out her tongue—it was unnaturally long, so long that its tip finally touched the end of her chin: her face was now a fleshy twin of the toad mask sitting beside her. She let out a high-pitched, dissonant howl that summoned gooseflesh on Auric’s arms. Then she opened her eyes, and he watched them roll back in their sockets so only the whites showed. Her terrible howl ceased, and she didn’t so much speak as croak her words in a throat-rending drone.
“Know now that Pember speaks through me! These are not my words, but the very words of the god! All of these words are true or one day will be!”
She stood abruptly, back arched, arms outstretched to the dome of the cave, pelvis thrust forward as though offering her womb to the stones. She opened wide her crimson-stained lips, and another voice emerged from her mouth, as though the speaker sat at the back of her throat. The voice was high and sing-song, as though she was a child reciting a favorite nursery rhyme. As her prophecy emerged, the naked man beside the throne began scribbling away in the book before him, his movements distorted.
Seek ye the Trickster in his guise
To bring about great fraud’s demise
Unchain the world from promise kept
O martyr’s tears, all vainly wept!
Then trespass ye, first stumbling stone
At weapon’s whim, and his alone
Thou steely Djao, with blooming bud
Next sheath’d in Syraeic blood
There is no child, ‘tis but a ruse!
To slip the bond of lion’s noose
The way then opened, opened wide
Come taste the soured milk inside
Thou island in the Cradle deep
Thou hast grown fat at poisoned teat
Before thy final, joyless verse
O Coryth’s bride must sicken worse
The Videna released a bloodcurdling scream and collapsed onto her cold black throne, chest heaving as she drew in great gulps of air. The sounds of choking came from the clay toad helm of the naked man—he shuddered and staggered away from the book on its cart, vomit dripping from the edges of the clay collar down his quivering shoulders and chest. The words spoken seemed a coy riddle to Auric, but they carried with them a dreadful, ominous power. Szaa’da’shaela, still trembling at his side, seemed to grow cold. Auric hoped for a word from the blade. But it stayed silent, vibrating at his hip.
“Belu wept,” said Chalca. Auric turned and found the actor, Kennah, and the broken sorcerer Qeelb standing behind him and Sira. With great effort, the Videna reached for the golden mask on the arm of the throne. She strained to lift it, as though it was impossibly heavy now, and placed it again over her head. Then she sat back against the marble back, bare chest rising and falling, legs spread wide exposing her sex.
“Agnes Manteo,” intoned the Videna, lifting a shaking hand and pointing a finger at Auric’s daughter. “Do this thing I ask. Now. Take your father’s sword and gut this serpent. Spread his blood and organs about my sacred cave. Do this or none of you—none of you—will leave Gnexes alive.”
“She will not!” said Auric, drawing Szaa’da’shaela himself. “Nor will any of us! We won’t kill someone who has only served our purpose. And if you really are gifted with visions of the future, you should know our goal lies beyond here.”
The Videna chuckled, a tinny thing behind the gleaming toad mask. “Beyond here? For you, there is no ‘beyond here.’ You shall go no further.”
Auric heard the wind again, watched the lower edges of the colored tapestries hanging on the walls tremble like laundry drying on a line. “Behind your throne, Videna. We would go there. Our goal lies somewhere beyond you.”
“What?” shouted Bocca, incredulous.
The Videna’s golden mask lurched forward, tilted to the left, and then the right, a queer predator sizing up smaller prey that had puffed out its chest. “Arrogant mortal man,” she said, “the most sacred space of Gnexes lies there, my holy sanctum. None have entered save those consecrated to my Lord and Lady Pember. No one else passes beyond this throne but me.”
“I’m sorry, priest,” Auric replied, taking a step forward. “We act on the orders of the queen. My companions and I will enter your sanctum. We are told who we seek is there. I beg your pardon for this intrusion, but it can’t be helped.”
The Videna’s fingers gripped the arms
of the throne. She seemed to grow in stature, to fill the oversized seat. She leaned her golden head down and spoke in an icy, hateful voice. “If you approach my throne, Auric Manteo, all of you will perish. Do not test me.”
Auric’s hand tightened on the hilt of Szaa’da’shaela and he took in a deep breath. Kennah stood beside him now, his sword drawn as well. Agnes had unsheathed her rapier, too, and it filled Auric’s heart with pride. He let out a slow exhalation. “We act only as Queen Geneviva commands.”
Before Auric could take another step, the thin, naked man left his book and cart, shimmied on his knobby knees and bowed legs until he stood facing the throne. He drew in a deep breath, his ribs poking through his skin. Then he brought the clay toad helm he wore down against the marble with terrible force, a crack echoing in the cave. He did it a second time and the frog’s head broke into dozens of pieces that fell to the floor. His back to them, he pressed his palms against the throne to steady himself. Then he turned to face them. He was a survivor of terrible burns, the heat having taken away his lips, his ears, his eyelids. A long tongue emerged from his mouth and licked his lipless flesh.
“Perhaps Quill,” said the Videna, “can free you from your folly.”
Kennah stepped forward, pointing the tip of his sword at the scarred and skinny man. “Sir,” he said, his deep voice serious. “I have no wish to harm you, but you and your mistress must step aside.”
“You took an oath,” said the Videna, slapping the arms of the throne with the palms of her hands to punctuate her words. “A sacred oath not to shed human blood in this place, didn’t you? The gods hate a liar, Sir Kennah Rolenwy. But then, you are a teller of lies, are you not?”
The words seemed to freeze Kennah in place. Auric’s mind whirled. He had taken no such oath. Agnes had reported the oath the tall priest at the portcullis had demanded of her. Kennah acknowledged he had been asked to swear to the same. The others had nodded. At the time, Szaa’da’shaela trembled, as if to seal Auric’s lips. He had kept the words the priest had whispered in his ear from them, a serious sin for a Syraeic. Rather than speak the truth, he had made some comment about hoping they would have no need to draw their weapons in this place. Now, it was as though Auric heard the tall priest’s whispered words anew: “You may shed blood here but once, Auric Manteo. Make certain that when you do, it is dear.”
“Sir Auric…I have no wish to add ‘oath breaker’ to my list of sins,” Kennah said to him softly, the point of his blade drooping a bit. The young swordsman was asking for guidance. Auric hesitated, trying to make sense of what the tall priest had said to him, the Videna’s prophetic verses, and the aim of their mission. Did Timilis truly lie somewhere beyond the Videna’s throne? What blasphemy was he being asked to commit in the name of his mad, ravenous queen?
The burned man reached out and gripped the blade of Kennah’s sword, his speed that of a striking cobra. Kennah pulled it back reflexively, but the man hung on. Kennah looked again to Auric. The man let go of the blade then and held up a shifting bloody hand before them. Then he smeared it over the flame-scarred flesh of his face.
“I think we can say Quill was to blame for the spilling of blood for now, Sir Kennah,” said the Videna, golden mask seeming to smile again. “But the next time? Perhaps you should be called Sir Kennah Oathbreaker. How would dead Ruben like that, gnashing his teeth behind the Final Veil?”
Kennah growled something that rumbled in his throat, but Auric couldn’t make out the words. Szaa’da’shaela trembled and spoke to him. It is time for a bluff, Auric, it said. And the best bluffs are built on a truth.
Auric stepped up next to Kennah and held Szaa’da’shaela’s wicked point at the throat of the burned man. “I took no such oath, Videna,” he said. “The priest at the entrance made me swear something else.”
“Indeed?” responded the Videna. “A surprise, then! It is rare that I am surprised, and rare that one is permitted entry without swearing that oath. But know this, reluctant Syraeic: whatever oath you have taken will prove far more onerous to honor. But you will find that out, soon enough. Quill?”
In a blur, the burned man darted under the point of the Djao blade and leapt at him, touching Auric’s cheek with the three misshapen fingers left on his hand. That touch brought Auric to his knees as he was overcome by a wave of sickness. The contents of his stomach came up into his throat and spewed forth from his mouth and nostrils. He spilled forward, but caught himself with his left hand, retching more, gagging, tasting both bile and blood. An instant later, Quill touched Kennah, and the big man was violently ill as well, vomit dripping from his black beard.
Agnes danced away from the burned man’s touch with a feline grace that reminded Auric of Lenda, slapping at the man’s naked hindquarters with the flat of her blade. Quill cried out, his hands going to the long red welt that popped up on his flesh. Then Chalca was beside her. He had taken his scabbard from his belt and used the sheathed sword to push away the burned man, who wept tears like a child from his lidless eyes. Agnes followed Chalca’s example, sheathing her weapon and removing the scabbard from her waist. The two of them imposed themselves between the burned man and the rest of the party, using their sheathed weapons to hold his strangely shifting form at bay.
Sira was at Auric’s side now, one hand on his cheek and another over his stomach, whispering a fervent prayer. To his relief, the nausea receded, and he was able to sit back on the stone floor of the cave. Sira moved next to Kennah. Auric wiped the vomit from his mouth and chin before at last speaking to the Videna.
“This little trick won’t stop us, priest. We outnumber you. Sooner or later we’ll give this man of yours a knock on the head and be on our way.”
“Oh, do you think me defenseless?” said the Videna. “You do not understand my vocation, it seems. Time is a flame, Auric Manteo, a remorseless flame. It burns, it consumes all it touches. And its fire is always hungry, never sated. And this means I have powers at my disposal, less gentle than Quill’s touch. I can call that fire, and worse. I can call Time’s flame and maybe then it will be you who skitters about naked and malformed, writing verses for me in my book.” She snapped her fingers and a ball of fire, white hot, appeared in her hand. It shifted and blurred there, like the movements of the burned man. “I shall baptize you, sir, and my baptism will burn your folly and flesh away. No man threatens a Videna in her most sacred space.”
The Videna drew back her hand, readying to launch the searing flames at him. In that instant, Auric’s nausea returned and his vision became hazy. Then it seemed as though he floated above the scene, outside of time: he witnessed his first steps into the domed cave, minutes before, witnessed the Videna’s prophecy, the confrontation. Then he moved past that present and saw the fire as it left her hand, a holy projectile, hurtling through the air to catch him in the chest. It burned away his Syraeic cuirass, his hair, outer layers of skin. The stink of cooking flesh—his flesh—filled the air, and the fire engulfed him, unquenchable, his pain unspeakable…
But that didn’t happen. Instead, the Videna’s arm halted mid-throw, as though restrained by an invisible hand. She let out a cry of rage, but that too was halted, choked off in her throat. Auric watched then as bone-white patches crept up her skin. There was a high-pitched whine and the sound of stones grinding against one another as the powdery whiteness spread across her flesh. It was happening to the burned man, too, his red, scarred skin going stiff and ashy gray. The white shifting fire the Videna held burned for a few more moments in the profound silence of the cave, then flickered and winked out, a twirling wisp of smoke curling from her petrified fingers.
“Stone,” said Sira, her voice catching in her throat. “They’ve turned to stone.”
It was true. The Videna was one with her throne now, though the toad mask remained as golden as ever. The burned man too was a grim statue, rooted to the floor of the cave, like a humanoid stalagmite.
“I swore not to shed human blood,” said Qeelb, clapping the powdery residue of his sorcery from his palms. “And I take my oaths seriously.”
34
Holy Sanctum
Bocca, it seemed, was a changed man. Gone was the bravado, the wry humor, the arrogance, the cocky certainty. His brow was furrowed with worry, he paced the domed cave, and the words he spoke dripped with panic.
“Shit, shit, shit! What have you done? What have you fucking done? You’ve murdered the high priest of Gnexes, Pember’s own anointed! Bloody Saint Esha, we’re all hopelessly fucked!”
“Is it fair to assume you won’t be accompanying us any further?” asked Qeelb, casual and calm next to Bocca’s hysteria.
“You!” shouted the man, pointing a quaking finger at the broken sorcerer. “What kind of abomination are you? No bound sorcerer can do what you just did! And no! Fuck no! I’ll not take one step further with you bloody lot! You heard what the Videna said! No one but those consecrated to Pember can pass the throne! If I had known what you intended—”
“I preferred him cocky,” Qeelb commented to no one in particular. “No cutting comments of our private pain for us now, Candle Bocca? Well, look on the bright side, lad. At least now you needn’t worry about Master Weaver’s threat of having the Videna throw you off the Cusp.”
“The Cusp!” barked Bocca with a laugh. “Being hurled from the Cusp would be heaven compared to what’s in store for me now! They crucify for this sort of thing, you know! They’ll crucify all of us!”
Agnes wished she could share the broken sorcerer’s sardonic calm. But Bocca’s panic unsettled her even more than the sacrilegious act that had removed this obstacle from their path. She felt like a naïve girl. How had she thought they were going to get past the Videna? With courtesy? Clever rhetoric?