Moths to a Flame

by Sarah Ash

  ‘Our first charge is that you did summon the moonmoths by means of chants and sorceries.’ The priest on Ophar’s right read the accusations from a parchment. ‘Our second charge is that you did seek by use of the drug boskh carried by the moonmoths on their wings to enchant the Arkhan and to bend him to your will.’

  ‘Our third and most serious charge,’ Ophar said, ‘is that you did then persuade the Arkhan to renounce the faith of his fathers and adopt the pagan ways of your Goddess – an act which has had grievous consequences for the Arkhan and the city of Perysse. How do you answer these charges?’

  ‘Grievous consequences?’ Laili forgot her own plight in her fear for Melmeth – what could have become of him?

  ‘How do you answer?’ repeated Ophar in a voice of stone.

  ‘I deny them all,’ she said, raising her head and staring him directly in the eyes.

  A derisive murmur ran through the crowd; they were against her already, they would not take any notice of what she said.

  ‘Let us proceed to the first charge.’ Ophar sat back in his chair, folding his hands together. ‘Bring in the witness.’

  Lerillys was ushered into the arena. She glanced once at Laili and then, with a demure expression, declared her name and her position in the Memizhon household.

  ‘Describe to us what you saw the night of the feast last Mithiel’s Day.’

  ‘I was passing through the courtyard below the Torella Sarilla’s apartments when I heard singing. Strange singing … It made my flesh creep. The moon was rising and as I looked up, I saw that woman,’ and she pointed accusingly at Laili, ‘at her open window. She had stretched her hands out to the moon – like so – and was murmuring words in a tongue I did not recognise. Magical words. And then she brought out a flute – and began to play. Such weird music …’

  The muttering of the crowd grew louder.

  ‘Is this true? Did you sing at your open window the night of the feast?’ Ophar asked.

  ‘It is true,’ Laili said softly. They were going to twist the truth their way, no matter what she said.

  ‘Summoning the moonmoths?’

  ‘On my island we sing to greet the moon in spring. And yes, we of the adept, do try to charm the moonmoths to dance in the Grove—’

  ‘We of the adept!’ Ophar interrupted. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I am – was – a priestess. On Ael Lahi both men and women serve the Goddess. And I served the Goddess of the Grove.’

  ‘Make sure every word is set down,’ Ophar said to the priest at his side who was scribbling busily in a ledger. ‘And for what purposes do you summon these moonmoths?’

  ‘To celebrate the Goddess.’

  ‘And to take the dust from their wings?’

  Ophar’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly; Laili knew she must phrase her reply with infinite care.

  ‘Only the Elder Ones know how to use the dust. I have not been instructed in its secrets.’ Her milk-heavy breasts had begun to ache; Dion would need feeding soon. She wished she could ask to sit down – and yet she wanted to appear strong before her accusers. She wanted them to know that they did not frighten her.

  ‘Even though you deny summoning these moonmoths, nevertheless they appeared in Perysse the very next night! I put it to you that this must be more than coincidence.’

  ‘I don’t understand how they could have crossed the seas in a night and a day,’ Laili said, beginning to falter.

  ‘Yet they came! And with them came blindness, plague and death. Worse than death! And meanwhile you worked your spells upon the Arkhan, inducing him to divorce his lawful consort Clodolë and banish her.’

  ‘What proof do you have that I was in any way involved in that?’ Laili cried. ‘Where is the Arkhan? Only he can answer that accusation!’

  Ophar rose from his chair, one finger pointing at her.

  ‘The Arkhan does not have to answer any accusations. He is beyond inquisition. He is the law.’

  ‘Then why is he not here to judge me?’ Laili gazed imploringly around the arena at the impassive faces; nowhere could she see the slightest flicker of compassion or even concern. They had judged her already; this trial was merely a formality. She was guilty.

  ‘This is an ecclesiastical court. Here we deal with matters of the soul.’

  ‘Who saw me plying the Arkhan with boskh? Who heard me persuading him to take the drug?’

  ‘Our proof is that the Arkhan is blind!’

  ‘Blind!’ Laili dug her nails into her hands, willing herself not to break down. Her dreams. Sweet Goddess, all her dreams had been true—

  ‘And we are still in the midst of this devastating plague. The looms are silent, the ships are held in port to prevent the spread of the illness. The city is dying. And these cursed moths breed and multiply in the flesh of our citizens—’

  The mutterings became a rumble of discontent. A single voice rose above the others.

  ‘Burn the witch!’

  ‘Tell us how we may end this plague. You summoned the moonmoths – now you will send them away.’

  ‘But I can’t. I don’t know how.’

  ‘Oh come now, a powerful witch who can call these creatures from across the seas can just as surely send them away again.’

  Laili felt the milk leak out from one breast, staining her dark prison gown.

  ‘I – I’m just an ordinary woman.’ She turned to the blur of faces in the tiered seats. ‘I gave birth a few weeks ago. I have not caused this plague. And I cannot stop it. Believe me – I would, if only I knew how!’

  Ophar was not even listening; he was conferring with the two priests who sat beside him.

  She let her mind wander far from the arena, longing to hold Dion in her arms again, to feel his soft cheek against hers; he was the only constant left to her in this crazily shifting world. And how long would she be allowed to keep him with her?

  Ophar rose to his feet.

  ‘Laili Dhar. You have been accused of grievous crimes. This court finds you guilty.’ Laili felt her legs begin to tremble; she willed herself to stay upright. ‘In order to appease the god whose anger you have incurred in bringing these creatures to our city, you are to face the fate of those found guilty of witchcraft. Death by fire.’

  ‘Death!’ arose the echo from the watching crowd.

  Faces staring at her; impassive faces, triumphant faces; Lerillys, a little smirk of a smile playing at the corners of her lips.

  ‘Death by fire.’ Laili repeated without expression. She had gone numb, she felt nothing. Her mind was a blank. Any moment now she might begin to shout, to rage at the injustice of this farce of a trial – but for now she could only think of Dion.

  Had they expected her to shriek, to faint? They seemed a little disappointed at her apparent lack of reaction, these venerable priests. She would not give them the satisfaction of seeing her despair. She would walk to her pyre, her head held high.

  CHAPTER 26

  Lai positioned himself at the foot of the pyre, his head bowed, the hierophant’s hood covering his face.

  Gongs dinned; the shouts of the crowd grew louder, more frenzied.

  Laili was coming towards him. She walked steadily, almost unseeingly onwards, her head still held high, her blue eyes fixed on some distant horizon.

  Her courage in the face of imminent death brought stinging tears to his eyes. But tears would not help her. He must stay alert. And pray that Azhrel’s plan would still work.

  As she began to climb the rickety ladder, she slipped and lost her footing.

  He put his arms out to steady her. She glanced around – and recognised him.

  ‘Lai?’ she murmured.

  ‘Hush.’ He pushed her up the last rungs towards the stake.

  ‘Burn! Burn! Burn!’

  Lai looped a rope around Laili’s waist and pretended to secure it. All the time he was speaking to her in their own language.

  ‘When the pyre goes up – jump. I’ll be here to catch you. Or you’ll
be suffocated by the smoke. Understand?’

  She nodded.

  He climbed back down from the pyre, offering one last, fervent prayer to the Goddess, lips soundlessly moving.

  Hierophants surged forwards. Their bright torches dripped flaming pitch onto the oil-soaked timbers.

  Ymarys’s pyre rekindled in Lai’s mind, the pungency of the terebinth and pine oils, disguising the reek of burning flesh—

  The pyre blazed up into the night; flames began to crackle and roar.

  ‘Jump, Laili!’ Lai cried.

  In the sudden billowing of smoke, he saw a swirl of movement as she threw herself towards him, the hem of her crude gown already afire. The gust of heat almost burned his breath away.

  They collapsed onto the sand together, Lai smothering the flames with his body.

  Torches in the Grove …

  ‘Quick!’ He pulled her to her feet. Once before they had fled from these barbarians. But this time they would escape. This time—

  Ophar barred their way with his torch. Lai fell back, his eyes seared, half-blinded by the brightness.

  ‘You will not stop it now,’ Ophar snarled. ‘She must burn—’

  A thunderous explosion cracked the air asunder; the earth shook underfoot, even the stones of the arena trembled. Ophar lost his balance; his torch dropped into the sand.

  An incandescent bursting of sizzling, blinding lightning followed, setting the air crackling with whitefire. Fountains of dazzling stars erupted around the perimeter of the arena, until the sand seemed awash with silver light.

  Azhrel had kept his word.

  The crowd seemed bemused, distracted by Azhrel’s artifices, uncertain whether the brilliant display was part of the ceremony – or divine intervention.

  ‘Over here, Lai!’ a strong, dark voice cried. Azhrel came into the arena, pushing through the ranks of hierophants as they broke up in confusion.

  ‘Sarafin’s Gate. Quick.’ Azhrel put his arm around Laili’s shoulders and, between them, he and Lai began to hurry her through the milling hierophants. As they ran, white flakes began to spiral down, snowflakes falling from a clear, star-studded sky.

  ‘Snow–so early?’ Ophar whispered. ‘Impossible …’

  They came, a blizzard of whitewings, tumbling out of the black sky, drift upon drift of moonmoths, falling like wintersnow onto the arena.

  ‘Not snow—’ someone cried. ‘Moonmoths!’

  Panic broke out on the tiers and terraces.

  Jhafir signalled to the tarkhastars to sound the tarkenhorns; the fanfares rolled across the arena but still the moths swirled about the torchlights, settling in women’s hair, swarming over the clothes and bodies of the spectators, filling the air with the beating of their velvet wings.

  Lai pushed open Sarafin’s heavy fang-toothed gate; Azhrel looked back at Lai as the last of his artifices sputtered and died, his eyes burning with a wild elation.

  ‘It’s worked. Look – it’s worked, Lai.’

  Down they fluttered, a ghostly leaf fall blown by an invisible wind straight towards the pyre flames. Alight, moonmoths dropped like fiery hail-stones as their wings burned to ash; the hot air whirred with the last frenetic beating of their singed wings.

  ‘Down with Memizhon!’

  Lai hesitated on the threshold of the gate, glancing back over his shoulder into the arena. Just below the dais a group had overpowered one of the Tarkhas Zhudiciar and were hacking at his bleeding body with his own blade. Fighting broke out amongst rival clan groups.

  ‘Down with Memizhon! Down with Memizhon!’ The chant grew ever louder.

  ‘For god’s sake, Lai!’ Azhrel cried. ‘Come on!’

  Lai … help me …

  He saw Clodolë raise her skeletal hands to protect her eyes, the flameglow colouring the pale veins red, like fiery blood.

  They cannot resist the flames …

  And in that instant he knew in his heart he could not let her die.

  Amidst the comet-hail of burning moths, Clodolë was drifting helplessly towards the pyre, a frost-rimed skeleton leaf, sucked inexorably by the fire’s hot breath towards the heart of the flames.

  ‘Help me …’

  ‘Lai!’ Azhrel was holding him back. ‘They’ll cut you to pieces!’

  ‘I’ve got to go back.’ Lai wrenched himself free from Azhrel’s restraining grip. Running into the mêlée, he almost tripped over the body of one of the Tarkhas Zhudiciar; bending down, he seized the man’s razhir.

  ‘There’s the Arkhys!’ A hoarse howl of triumph arose.

  All those around stopped to stare.

  ‘Djhë! Look at her!’

  ‘Obscene!’

  ‘A freak!’

  Lai struggled back through the crowd towards Clodolë – but Ophar reached her the first. He saw Ophar put his hands about her shoulders as though to protect her, he saw her turn her head to face him, he heard Ophar cry out as he saw what she had striven to hide from him for so long.

  ‘Not you, Arkhys – not you—’

  Clodolë’s eyes, fireglazed, stared into his.

  ‘One with the Undying Flame, Ophar.’

  Ophar seemed to steel himself; he took her hand in his own.

  ‘One with the flame,’ he repeated. ‘Yes. I see it now.’

  ‘NO!’ Lai shouted above the cries of the stampeding crowd.

  ‘Ultimate oblivion of fire,’ Ophar said, his eyes fixed on hers. Together they moved forward as one. ‘Ultimate consummation …’

  Lai grabbed hold of Clodolë’s arm as the fire caught Ophar’s robes alight and dragged her back from the pyre.

  ‘Clodolë!’ cried Ophar, a howl at once crazed – and ecstatic.

  And then the fires roared up, whiter than molten metal. Clutching at his fire-seared face, the High Priest toppled forwards into the pyre – and the flames devoured him.

  Lai could see nothing but smoke swirling about a world peopled with milling shadows.

  ‘This way, Lai!’ Other voices were calling him, urging him away from the flames, Orthandor’s stentorian parade ground voice bellowing over the rest. ‘Hurry! Hurry!’

  Arms reached out through the smoke, hands caught hold of him, caught hold of Clodolë.

  Dank air, moist and chill, on his hot face. They were winding deeper into the hill, slowly going down, down – and the angry roar of voices was diminishing, fading to a distant ominous rumble until there was no sound but their halting breathing.

  Rho Jhan paused in the tunnels, listening to the distant screams and cries in the arena.

  He had not abandoned his men, leaving them to the mercy of the mob. No, he had taken it on himself to end matters his own way.

  The people had risen against the House of Memizhon. Clodolë had gone to the flames. Now only Melmeth remained; weak, half-crazed and blind.

  It made sense.

  He would be hailed as the hero of the revolution, the man who had freed the city from the tyranny of the House of Memizhon.

  He drew his razhir in the dark and tested the keenness of the blade against his thumb.

  It would be a clean, swift kill. A Razhirrakh’s deathstroke.

  Dion had fallen asleep at last in Melmeth’s arms. Melmeth laid the baby gently down on the bed and moved to the window.

  ‘Goddess,’ he whispered. ‘What’s happening?’

  He had heard that wild roar the night he had lost his sight. Then it had led to riot – and his imprisonment. This time imprisonment would not be enough; they would be hungering for his blood.

  ‘We’ve got to get you out of here, Dion.’

  He fumbled his way to the door. Suppose … just suppose Clodolë had left it open? He tugged at the handle – but it was securely locked.

  If only there were some implement with which he could try to pick the lock. His fingers moved across the table, searching in vain for a spoon, a comb even …

  His sharp ears caught the sound of footsteps outside. He stopped, listening. His tarkhastars come to protect him,
or the mob, intent on assassination?

  ‘Who’s there?’ He had no weapon with which to defend himself– or the baby. They could kill him if they must – but Dion, they must not find Dion.

  He heard someone insert the key in the lock, the key begin to turn.

  Even here, so deep below ground, the smell of the fires singed the moist air, a taste of ashes that clogged the mouth and stung the eyes like flakes of windblown sea-salt.

  Lai put his arms around Laili and hugged her close.

  ‘Where’s Dion, Lai?’ Laili said in the darkness. ‘Where’s my baby?’

  ‘The baby,’ Lai repeated, stricken. In the chaos of the arena he had forgotten Dion altogether.

  Lai threaded his way through the ranks of silent, staring effigies; the baleful glitter of jewelled eyes seemed to follow his progress across the drifting charneldust on the floor.

  And then he heard a cry – saw a splash of light from Melmeth’s open door. Someone had reached the Arkhan before him.

  He shifted his grip on the razhir hilt as he crept forwards; his flame-blistered hand was still sore and the unfamiliar blade felt unwieldy and awkward.

  Melmeth was on his knees, arms flung up to protect his head; Rho Jhan loomed over him, razhir in hand.

  Even in the dusty darkness, Lai could see the gleam of Rho Jhan’s white teeth, bared in a predatory, feral grin. And the glint of a blade upraised to strike.

  ‘Hold!’ he cried with all the strength of his smoke-choked lungs.

  Rho Jhan spun around – and his blade came shrieking down out of the darkness.

  Lai parried. Sparks, brighter than firedust, spiralled into the shadows.

  ‘Lai Dhar,’ Rho Jhan said with a hint of dry laughter. ‘Well, well … I’ve waited a long time for this.’

  A thud shook the ancient timbers of the mausoleum door. Lai heard a buzz of voices outside, angry as wasps swarming from an overturned nest.

  ‘You have visitors, lord Arkhan,’ Rho Jhan said, still smiling. ‘Shall I let them in?’

  The mausoleum juddered again as axes and blades hacked at the door.

  ‘Stay where you are!’ Lai lunged at Rho Jhan, but the Enhirran neatly sidestepped the thrust, leaving Lai’s blade slicing empty air.