Storms of Destiny

by A. C. Crispin

  “How can that be? If I look out any window, the world is flat, save for the mountains surrounding us here in Verang. If I look out through the pass, to the sea, it is flat. If the world was shaped like a ball, the sea would pour off it!”

  He’d smiled at her, his big white teeth flashing in amusement. “Not only curious, but intelligent,” he said, and the approval in his voice made the girl flush with pleasure. “Would you like me to teach you to read, little one?”

  Thia could only nod, struck dumb with the enormity of his offer. Young as she was, she’d known it was forbidden for the novices to read, but she wanted to learn so badly that she’d convinced herself that she could do her job better, copy better, for the glory and worship of Boq’urak if she knew what she was copying. So they’d met, secretly, late at night, for months, then years, while Varn taught her … first to read, then about the world as he knew it. Her Mentor had traveled as a missionary priest in his youth, and he told her all about his journeys as he’d preached Boq’urak’s scripture and doctrine.

  Thia had learned to be circumspect, to never reveal that she and her Mentor had a relationship outside the ordinary one of Mentor and novice. She knew that revealing their mu-tual transgression would result in both of them being thrown out of the temple, or worse. And she’d treasured every minute they spent together. Her Master was the wisest, kind-est man in the world.

  Master Varn had made it possible for her to achieve her dearest wish—to learn, to understand, to accumulate knowledge. He’d even arranged for her to leave the temple complex on several occasions, to accompany some of the lay workers when they went to buy provisions or other goods.

  Unlike her sisters, she knew what money was for, and how to count it. The novice had watched the townspeople at work and at play, had witnessed staggering drunks and rowdy fights between street urchins, seen lovers holding hands and embracing …

  Of course, Thia had averted her eyes quickly from such sights. She was a Sacred Vessel, soon to take her final vows.

  Such carnal pleasures were not for her.

  Thia would not even allow herself to recall the dreams that had come to her after seeing those lovers. Dreams where Master Varn touched her face, her hand, even, once, her breasts …

  Realizing where her memories had led her, the novice blushed violently. What is wrong with you? Be careful, or you’ll make a mistake! Do you want to wind up Chosen?

  Memories of the daily sacrifice performed before dawn each morning to ensure that the Sun would rise made the novice shiver, her chest suddenly tight. To have a huge hole punched into one’s breast, so that the entire living heart could be removed …

  But she knew it was necessary. Boq’urain needed the Sun for the crops to flourish and the people to thrive, but …

  But sometimes the Chosen would remain conscious for a long minute as they beheld their own dripping, pumping hearts. Usually they lost consciousness and died quickly, but not always. Thia had learned to look at their hearts, rather than their faces, since it was a transgression to look elsewhere than at the High Priests and their victims.

  All of the scrolls were now safely stowed. Thia closed the cabinets, slid the bolts into place, and activated the locking bars with urgent haste. Seconds ticked by in the novice’s head as she extinguished the candle and darted out the door, carefully closing and locking it behind her. Then, holding the skirt of her gray habit high, she began to run.

  The corridors around her were whitewashed, nearly fea-tureless, and spotlessly clean due to the ministrations of the acolytes and postulants. Thia’s bare feet pattered against chill stone as she ran, but she was used to it and never noticed the cold hardness. Verang was a city built in the mountains, surrounded by peaks on three sides … even the summers were chilly. Winters could be deadly for the unprotected.

  Swish-slap, swish-slap … the sound of her feet striking stone warred with the pounding of her heart. She rounded a corner, darted down a flight of stairs so timeworn that a faint depression hollowed the center of each step.

  Down … down. Around another corner. So far she had not met another soul, and that was a bad sign. That meant the community was gathering in the eastern ziggurat, where the refectory was located. Acolytes and lay priests and priestesses would be moving among the rows of tables and benches, handing out bowls of barley-lamb soup and thick chunks of bread for sopping up the broth. Thia had not eaten since the noon repast, six hours ago; her stomach rumbled loudly at the thought of food.

  She hesitated but a bare instant at the tapestry near the end of an otherwise bare corridor, then lifted it and slid through the door beyond into darkness. Fumbling with her cold fingers, she lit her tiny travel-candle, shielded from drafts in its protective cylinder of metal.

  No time to run down the ten tiers of steps that led down from the western pyramid, cross the cobbled courtyard, and then up the ten tiers to the eastern ziggurat. Instead she would take the secret way, the way Master Varn had first shown her all those years ago. It was forbidden—but taking it would save her so much time that it was worth the risk.

  The corridor here was more like a tunnel; the blocks of gray granite were bare of whitewash. The novice kilted her habit up into the knotted scarlet scourge that served as her belt and set off again. The flame from her tiny lantern threw barely enough light for her to see ten paces ahead, but she knew these secret ways well; she had been traveling them for years.

  There were crypts down here, and that was not all. Secret conference rooms hidden within mazes, ancient altars and confessional cubbies … even abandoned prison cells and places of torture. It was in the first level beneath the western ziggurat that she and Master Varn had conducted their clan-destine lessons, hunched together over a single flickering flame as Thia pored over reading scrolls or laboriously worked out the sums the High One set her to ciphering. Varn had warned her sternly against venturing below the first level, but over the years, Thia had explored on her own, becoming braver as she translated the guiding symbols that marked each tunnel.

  Each branching tunnel was marked with secret signs, combinations of letters and numbers. Some were in script so old that no one alive could translate it. But overlaying the ancient runes were modern letters and numbers that provided an infallible guide to one lessoned in its use. Even though she had been this way many times before, Thia was careful to check the symbols. All of the tunnels looked alike, and a mistake could mean a slow and torturous death, wandering these hidden ways without hope of being found and rescued.

  Forty-two, Sun sign, overscribed with the letter kay, she read, scarcely pausing in the swaying light to dart down the leftmost branch of a triad of tunnels.

  She was now far, far below the level of the ziggurat, deep within the foot of the mountain itself. It was so cold that her nipples tightened, and she hugged her arms across her breasts. Her steps came quicker in the chill dankness. This place … she had never traversed this section without the sense that someone was watching. The walls were clammy, the floor sloped down, steadily down.

  Despite her urgency, Thia came to an abrupt halt when the sounds of chanting mixed with the rush of water reached her ears. Oh, no! One of the Hidden Rites! It has to be …

  Her mouth went dry. She had never seen one of the secret ceremonies. She was only a novice, and it was forbidden for her to even stand here and listen to the chanting. And yet …

  her path led through a gallery that ran along the top of the

  huge chamber where the rites were held. There was no other way she could go.

  For a moment she hesitated, half turning to look back up the tunnel. Dare she try it? Or should she go back all that long, weary way to the western ziggurat? If she were caught in the vicinity of a Hidden Rite … She had no idea what would happen to her, and did not even want to think about it.

  On the other hand, the stone parapet lining the gallery passage was low but thick, with small ornamental patterns cut into the stone. If she stayed low and crept along, the High Ones
would not see her. And she was over halfway to her destination …

  With a sudden squaring of her shoulders, Thia began to run again, down the tunnel, toward the huge, echoing chamber. The chanting sounds grew louder and were now mixed with other sounds, low and muffled, with an occasional loud shriek or wail rising above the rest of the cacophony.

  Reaching the huge archway that led into the gallery above the enormous chamber, Thia extinguished her light, dropped to her hands and knees, then began inching along, careful to stay below the level of the ornamental pattern cut into the parapet. The stone of the gallery floor was smooth and chill against her hands. Her robe caught her as she tried to creep, until she kilted it up to mid-thigh. Her feet were toughened by constantly going barefoot, but her hands and knees began to ache almost immediately.

  When she reached the first hole in the parapet, she could not resist putting her eye to it and gazing down at the rite that was under way.

  The chamber beneath her had been hollowed out over ages by an underground branch of the River Ver. The water rushed through the chamber, cold and dark as the mountains in winter. The chill of the black water reached the novice even in her high perch. Great stone icicles hung from the ceiling and thrust upward from the floor, glistening in the light of dozens of torches.

  Beside the rushing river stood a huddled group of children, a full score of them, ranging in age from perhaps ten to a few that could barely toddle. All were dressed in the white flowing robes of Boq’urak’s Chosen.

  Thia made a low sound in her throat, even as her hands went up to cover her mouth. Children? Babies? Dressed for the sacrifice? By all that was sacred—no!

  But there they were. Most of them were crying, and the ten High Priests moved among them with alabaster bowls, carefully collecting their tears, encouraging them with pokes and frowns to cry harder. One youngster, a lad of perhaps nine who stood scornfully tearless, suddenly broke and ran for the entrance, but was roughly dragged back. He began to weep, and the High Ones scurried to catch his tears, as though they were to be treasured above all.

  Thia had lived with sacrifice as a daily part of her life since she had first come to Verang. She’d been taught to think of the Chosen as fortunate, because as soon as they died, they would be with Boq’urak in the Paradise Beyond the Sun. It helped that the Chosen were usually enemies of Amaran, either outlaws, captives, or enemies of the state.

  They were not innocent, they were being given a wonderful opportunity to redeem themselves and to enter Paradise.

  But to sacrifice children? Innocent children? It was unthinkable! How could Boq’urak demand this? How could anyone do this?

  Now she knew why the Hidden Rites were shrouded in such secrecy, concealed in the bowels of the mountain. It was only because of Master Varn’s illicit teachings that she’d learned the codes that had allowed her to ferret out the tunnels leading to this place. He’d warned her against going down to the lowest tunnels, and now she knew why.

  The chamber contained a huge obsidian altar-stone, a solid square block of blackness that seemed to draw the light of the torches as it lay gleaming and ready.

  Ready for what?

  Not for the children, it seemed. Thia tried to make herself crawl on, away from what she knew must be coming, but she was frozen with horror. She tried to close her eyes as the

  High Priest, in his scarlet robe, raised a stone knife to the first little one’s throat. But she could not look away.

  A quick slash, a hideous, gurgling moan, and the little girl collapsed, twitching, her white robe spattered with scarlet even more vivid than the High Priest’s robe. Carefully, the High Ones collected a generous dollop of blood, then poured it into the rushing river, chanting loudly all the while.

  The remaining children screamed and wailed, and a few of them struggled to break past the line of priests, but to no avail.

  Quickly, one by one, each child was sacrificed. They saved the boy who had tried to escape until last. The child kicked and shrieked, bit and fought like a wild snow-cat from the heights, but they held him hand and foot and head, and the knife moved, slicing slowly through his pulsing throat until finally he was still.

  Thia bit down on her finger until her own blood flowed sickly sweet into her mouth, making her chapped lips sting as she fought not to be noisily sick.

  All thought of dinner and why she had come down here had vanished. The novice knew she was doomed. Boq’urak saw everything, was All-Powerful. Surely He could see her now. Surely any moment a blast from the heavens would strike her, reducing her to a charred heap of flesh and blackened bone. But that would be better than living with what she had learned, Thia thought, blindly wiping away tears.

  The children, the children … those poor little ones …

  But the expected smiting did not come. Thia watched dully as one of the High Ones made a summoning gesture, and two more entered, half supporting a swaying figure between them. The novice recognized the young woman …

  Narda, a first-year priestess. She’d been a year ahead of Thia throughout their postulancy and novitiate.

  Narda was a pretty young woman with dark eyes, hair the color of winter snow-roses, and a full, womanly figure. Thia did not know her well, but she remembered what an expert cook she’d been while they’d served together in the kitchen.

  Now Narda’s dark eyes looked twice their normal size.

  She was smiling, an ecstatic, wide smile of complete bliss.

  Drugged, Thia realized.

  One of the High Ones threw a handful of dust onto a brazier that was burning near the collapsed bodies of the children, and coils of reddish smoke began eddying up from the coals. Thia pressed herself against the floor, trying to breathe shallowly, lest she lose consciousness from the intoxicating fumes.

  Narda’s Mentor, a High One whose name Thia didn’t know, approached the young priestess, and her smile widened even further as she gazed at his familiar features.

  The chanting, which had subsided to a throbbing back-ground murmur, picked up tempo and grew louder, increasing in intensity until it made Thia’s head pound even worse than the fumes from the smoldering brazier.

  Waves of something began to fill the air. Thia could not see it, could only sense its presence. It was like sensing the place where lightning had struck only moments before … a prickling of the downy hairs on her body, as though some unseen hand had tipped a sacrificial bowl filled with cold, congealed blood and allowed it to engulf her spirit. The novice struggled not to scream aloud in protest against that unseen presence.

  When she glanced through the hole in the parapet again, she saw that the High Ones were stretching Narda out on the huge block of black stone, securing her wrists and ankles to rings embedded in the rock. Narda’s Mentor bent over her and with one fluid motion, tore the priestess’s white robe from neck to ankles, rending it in two. For the first time, Narda’s smile faded; her expression of dreamy contentment vanished.

  The priestess shook her head, her gaze focusing on her Mentor as he stood at her feet, his voice rising above the others in the chant. She shook her head again, then cried out in fear.

  Thia could not see the Mentor’s face, but she was aware, suddenly, that he was Changing.

  Changing …

  At first it was as though his shadow had gathered around

  the outlines of his body, gathered and rippled in the torchlight. The shape of his head altered, grew broader, more domed. His hands … they curled, and ridges of scaled flesh sprouted upward from the backs. The fingers were engulfed, turning to talons like those of a lizard.

  By all that is holy—he is becoming Incarnate!

  Thia knew that Boq’urak could transform Himself into the bodies of his High Priests for brief periods of time, there to work miracles. She knew that from her illicit reading. But to even reveal that she knew of the Incarnation Rite, Master Varn had warned her, would mean her death. To actually see it … she stifled a whimper of utter despair.

  The ch
anting intensified, but all of the priests had fallen back against the walls, as though they did not want to be too close to the god when He became Incarnate.

  With a muttered growl, the transforming Mentor threw off his robe. He had nearly doubled in size, and was half again as tall as his human height. Tentacles sprouted from his sides, two on each side, flexible tentacles tipped with a sucker at each end. In the depths of each sucker was a viciously curved claw or tooth. His skin darkened, darkened … It was now a smoky violet, now a brownish purple …

  Scales erupted from beneath his skin. A ridge of frilled flesh poked up from his back, ran down to a tail that suddenly extruded, whip-thin. His body seemed to constantly crawl and shift, as though it were somehow fluid, mutable.

  Thia felt her mind reel, and fought to stay conscious. She couldn’t afford to faint.

  The Incarnate’s breathing intensified, changed rhythm, and He growled again, louder, as He bent forward. His transformed “hand” came up to rake His talons along Narda’s bared body.

  The priestess, who had closed her eyes as though she could not bear to see what was happening, opened them. Her mouth opened, and Thia’s throat ached in sympathy. Narda was trying to scream, but like one caught in a nightmare, she could not force any sound to emerge. Narda began to thrash and struggle as the Incarnate fell on her, between her parted thighs.

  Thia saw His body plunge downward, and finally Narda’s scream burst free and rang in the air, rising even above the sounds of the chanting. For a moment Thia wondered if the Incarnate was going to devour the young woman, then she blinked in horrified realization. The novice had been only six when she’d left the farm, but farm children grew up quickly, and no effort had been made to keep her away from the sight of the animals mating.

  Mating …

  Thia gagged, choked, and time seemed to slip sideways, away from her. She did not—quite—lose consciousness.

  Some shred of self-preservation made her cling to a thread of reality. She returned to full awareness to find herself lying with her cheek pressed against the floor, her eyes tightly shut. She had to force herself to open them.