by Tom Lloyd
‘Captain Fohl?’ Natai said to the commander of her guard, ‘lead the way, if you please.’
The captain saluted, while behind him the new sergeant didn’t bother to wait for the order as he started off, two squads of her guards falling in behind his horse. Natai felt a flicker of amusement at Fohl’s expression when he saw the men were already moving, his Adam’s apple bobbing as a rebuke went unsaid.
The captain was neatly turned out as ever, but today he looked comical to her, with his pale hair poking limply out from his gold-trimmed helm and pallid skin stretched over a weak face. Compared with the muscular bulk of Sergeant Kayel, Fohl looked fragile, almost pathetic.
It was reassuring to see Kayel at the head of her guards as they moved towards Hale. The man was a born leader - and more than a little intimidating. Natai knew that Fohl was easily offended, and would have had any other sergeant whipped for the impudence Kayel showed, but even the arrogance of pure Litse blood couldn’t overshadow the fact that Fohl was simply afraid of the man.
It was Prayerday morning, the day for High Reverence at the temples, and the duke and duchess had established a tradition of attending prayers at the temples of both Ushull and Death long ago. Now the eyes of the city would be watching them. The situation had not improved, and Natai knew it would take more than rain to change that - even the savage deluges that regularly scoured Byora’s streets - but she refused to hide from her people.
Hale was reportedly a boiling ant’s nest of activity and tension, a situation not helped by the fact that a band of penitents had decided to search two of her agents. The men had been carrying weapons, of course, and they had decided to flee rather than be arrested for impiety. A mob had stoned them to death and now their heads were on display at a crossroads Natai had to pass to reach the Temple of Death.
At her command the whole column of nobles and troops set out, Sergeant Kayel setting a brisk pace from the front with one hand resting on the hilt of his sword and his head constantly turning to scan the surrounding street. The duchess saw a range of reactions from the people they clattered past. Some scurried into their homes and barred the door while others began to follow the soldiers behind her. Natai felt a moment of irritation; she couldn’t see their faces as they followed.
‘Ganas,’ she called to her husband, and he immediately urged his horse closer and leaned over to better hear her. His ceremonial uniform and sword echoed those of the Ruby Tower Guards -prettier, but no less functional.
‘Do you think they’re following just to see a fight, or are they on our side?’ she asked softly.
When he shrugged she heard the clink of hidden metal. Most of her subjects assumed Ganas was simple, weak-minded even, because she ruled Byora rather than he. The Litse couldn’t comprehend his lack of ambition, any more than the foolish women from the White Circle had not accepted that she didn’t struggle against a husband’s oppression. She was simply better at ruling than he was, and few people gave him the credit for acknowledging that and accepting it. Few men were strong enough to do such a thing. They were a good team.
‘Given the choice, they’ll pick us,’ he said in the mellifluous accent of the city, ‘but I doubt many will follow us into Hale. Too dangerous.’
Sure enough, as they reached the religious district their escort hung back and watched nervously. There were three gates into Hale: two spanning the two largest roads from Eight Towers, where the well-off citizens lived in the shadow of the Ruby Tower, and a third in the wall separating Hale from Breakale, where the majority of the citizens lived.
The Queen’s Gate was the one she commonly used on Prayerday, following the road around in a long loop to visit the temples of Ushull, Death and Belarannar before a last quick prayer at Kitar’s temple that was her own small tradition, one that had continued long after she’d given up hoping the Goddess of Fertility would answer her prayers.
If the onlookers had been hoping for drama at the first confrontation, they were sorely disappointed. A dozen or so penitents were waiting by the gate, but Kayel completely ignored their efforts to block the path. Clearly they were hoping to get in the way and force the guards to either strike first or back down, but Kayel urged his horse on, oblivious to their presence, and the men had to jump out of the way or be trampled.
Once inside the district, Natai forced herself not to stare around at the faces watching them, but she felt a small flicker of fear when she realised how many grey-clad penitents of Death were congregated on the streets - and they weren’t the only ones. Hale was a community in its own right, a small, self-contained town perched on a ledge of high ground some two-thirds of a mile across. Not all of the inhabitants were clerics, but they were all connected to the business of worship, and if Natai was being blamed for High Priest Lier’s death, they would all side against her.
‘Ushull, Tsatach, Nartis, Belarannar, Hit - most of the major cults have been recruiting,’ Ganas commented so softly only Natai could hear. ‘Let us be glad the Temple of Karkarn here is too small to be of any real significance.’
She nodded and kept her eyes on the road, her unease growing with every passing minute. Threatening groups of hooded figures stood and watched them from the side-streets, some actually following the horses closely enough to provoke disquiet. The silence that followed her party as they continued into Hale was profound.
It reminded Natai of a dream she’d had as a child: surrounded by faceless figures as motionless as statues, the clouds racing past above them, while the leader of her tormentors, a giant swathed in white, pointed an accusing finger at her. No matter which direction she faced, she couldn’t escape the weight of that gesture. Now, with the clerics and their mercenaries watching her, Natai felt a similar oppression. The journey to the Temple of Ushull was a brief one, but to Natai it seemed to take an hour or more.
Like many of Ushull’s temples this one was open to the elements, but the builders had clearly tried to evoke Blackfang Mountain here, putting a thirty-foot-tall obelisk studded with crystal and obsidian shards in the middle of the oval temple, pushing up through the upper level, which in turn was supported by four great pillars that signified the quarters of the Circle City - Byora, Akell, Fortin and Ismess. Ushull was technically an Aspect of Belarannar, and as a result, the temple was exactly a foot smaller than the Temple of Belarannar in length, width and height.
Tradition dictated that Natai should kneel below the steady drip of the shrine dedicated to Kiyer of the Deluge first, letting water splash onto her forehead before offering a silver level and a prayer for another week without a flood.
Afterwards she would place a freshly picked flower before the shrine at the other end of the upper level, a gift to Parss, Ushull’s capricious child, who casts boulders down the slopes. The last of Ushull’s three Aspects had his shrine on the lower level, a squat lair made out of clay which was kept as hot as a baker’s oven. There she would need to add another lump of coal to the fire to appease Cambrey Smoulder, the dormant destroyer under the mountain. That done, she would speak a prayer with one palm placed against Ushull’s obelisk and leave a second silver level while Ushull’s priests maintained the drone of prayer from their aisles opposite Cambrey’s shrine.
Before Natai reached the temple she saw Kayel, who had gone ahead, had been stopped by a party of animated priests. There were faces watching them all around, most ominously from the temple itself, where no one was engaged in worship as far as Natai could see. The wind had been growing stronger during their journey and now it whipped across the district with an impatient ferocity, drowning out the conversation ahead. All around her Natai felt and saw a burning resentment; anger smouldered like Cambrey deep under the mountain.
Cambrey or Kiyer? she wondered as the column of troops stopped and her guards at last faced the penitents on all sides. Cambrey grumbles and blusters, but is slow to anger; Kiyer strikes with the fury and speed of an ice-cobra.
As though in answer to her question a boom of thunder rolled over t
he city, the distant rumble that all Byorans had grown up listening out for. For a moment, all faces turned east, towards the mountain.
Natai shivered instinctively. Blackfang was not a flat table-top, as most imagined, but a crazed mess of jagged rock and stagnant pools left by the rain. A storm might simply provide a soaking - or it might turn the uninhabitable wasteland of Blackfang into something entirely more frightening. When the rains were heavy enough, a torrent of water would sweep down, scouring the streets of everything as Kiyer of the Deluge claimed her sacrifices and dumped their remains in the fens a few miles past Wheel, the quarter’s most westerly district.
A sudden flash of movement made her turn back. She heard Ganas grunt in surprise and stare up at the mountain with a puzzled look on his face. Captain Fohl said something, but the words were jumbled and confused. Unbidden, her horse turned away from Ganas and a sudden pressure closed about her chest and throat, squeezing the breath from her body.
Unable to move, unable to speak, Natai sat rigid and horrified as Ganas slid unceremoniously from his saddle and to the ground, one foot still hooked in the stirrup. A black-fletched arrow protruding from his back snapped as Ganas fell onto it. Natai stared down at her husband’s contorted face in disbelief, paralysed by the sight as the Land exploded into movement around her.
Figures ran forward, a hand grabbed her reins and wrenched her horse around until the beast kicked out. Men yelled and swore on all sides, swords rasped from scabbards. Captain Fohl barged his horse into hers, barely raising his shield in time as another arrow thwacked into it. She saw Sergeant Kayel draw and strike in one movement, turning back towards her before the priest’s corpse had even hit the ground.
The ground started shaking, reverberating up through her horse’s body and into her own. Before Natai even realised what was happening, her horse gave a shriek and staggered. Beside her, Fohl slashed down at someone just as a spear appeared from nowhere to catch him in the ribs with such force he was thrown from his saddle, crashing into her horse before he fell under its hooves.
She couldn’t look down as her horse reared up. Everything lurched, and the cloud-covered sky seemed to reach out to her as Natai herself begin to fall -
Suddenly something smacked into her forearm and wrenched her forward. The sky wheeled and became a dark blur of buildings as the pressure on her arm increased, wrapped around it and wrenched her forward. Natai felt herself crash against the ground and almost bounce up with the impact. Her arm was almost torn from its socket as whatever was hanging onto her dragged her along, her feet flailing uselessly beneath her.
She heard a grunt of exertion as she was swung up and landed heavily on something, the wind driven from her like a punch to the gut. She was lying over a saddle. Now she recognised Kayel shouting above her; short, brutal words she couldn’t make out. Something clattered hard into her leg and fell away, and she felt Kayel lean over her body to hack down with his sword. There was the wet crunch of flesh and bone parting. Screams and roars came from all directions, but her eyes and ears refused to make sense of them.
Kayel’s voice and the hot stink of the horse were the only things she could recognise, until suddenly the uproar was behind them and she realised they were clear; they were safe. Only then did her mind catch up and the sight of Ganas falling returned, bright and vivid, and as sharp as a knife in her belly. When at last the soldier stopped and allowed her to slide from the saddle Natai didn’t feel the hands trying to help her to her feet. The buzz of voices came only distantly: questions, shouts, orders, all meaningless in the face of that pain in her gut. She crumpled to her bloodied knees and puked, and again, but the agony of loss remained.
High Priest Antil paused at the doorway of his personal chamber, peering around the jamb and feeling foolish as he did so. While he was Shotir’s chief cleric, the God of Healing’s temple in Byora was a modest one, and his room was appropriately small. Normally a wide window covering half of the north wall provided most of the room’s light, but since his patient’s dramatic arrival, that was covered in sacking. There was a tiny window in the side was which admitted a little pale winter sunlight, but Antil had still brought a candle.
Stop being such a fool, he chided himself, she’s your patient, for pity’s sake! The remonstrations had little effect. He still felt like he was intruding. He glanced behind him to check no priests or novices were watching him, but there was no one. People rarely came up to the top floor of the temple; they knew this was his personal space, where he could get his thoughts back in order and rest after working in the hospital below.
Antil was a middle-aged man of average height, with thinning hair and somewhat thick around the waist - a professional hazard for Priests of Shotir, those who could heal at least. Magical healing produced a fierce hunger, and only Antil’s vanity had kept that in check. Unlike most of his order, his belly was a modest bulge under his yellow robes, and a tidy beard hid his fleshy neck. There was nothing he could do about the worry lines.
He forced himself to enter the chamber, and once over the threshold habit reasserted itself. She was very sensitive to light, so he walked around the bed and crouched at her side. She wasn’t asleep; he could sense her wariness, like a wounded animal, and he was careful not to touch her yet. However badly hurt she might be, she was still touched by a Goddess, and he didn’t want to do anything to provoke alarm in her. Instead he just sat awhile and looked at her face, fascinated by the mystery she presented.
With a tiny whimper the woman turned her head to look at him and he saw those curious eyes focus on him. They were dark green, possessing an inner light that reminded Antil of the jade ring his mother had worn until the day she died. The woman’s face was bruised and covered in splinter-scratches, but the swelling had already gone down. He realised she would be arrestingly beautiful once the discolouration faded.
‘Well, my girl, and how do you feel this morning?’ he asked gently, not expecting a response. His ability with magic was as unremarkable as he, and healing was the only skill he’d ever worked on, but his latent senses recognised enough to be worried by her. The one-sided conversation was principally for his own benefit, helping him maintain a normal train of thought so he could focus on his healing - not that he’d been able to do much yet, partly because the divine spark in her was far stronger than a priest’s, and resisted Shotir’s workings, but also because replacing the ruined was beyond mortal skills.
Antil let a trickle of warm energy run into her body to sooth her, stroking her hand until she stopped fighting it. Once the fear was gone he pulled the blanket covering her down a little, but the mark was still there, as he’d expected.
‘Damn,’ he said, scratching at his beard and frowning. Around her throat was a clear hand-print of greyish shadow. The skin itself was not damaged, just tinted - as though an ash-covered hand had grabbed her - except it would not wash off.
‘Someone’s marked you,’ he told her, ‘you who have been touched by a Goddess as profoundly as one Chosen. They grabbed you and they beat you senseless. They broke your leg, a shoulder, an arm, ribs, a bone in your neck - and their very touch was enough to leave a permanent mark on your skin.’
He shivered. It wasn’t the only strange aspect of her neck: running his finger over it he could feel a series of lumps, for all the world like a necklace under her skin - and what magic he had been able to work had confirmed that was exactly what it was: a necklace she had been wearing had been driven completely into her flesh.
‘That’s not even the worst,’ he continued, looking down at the hand-print thoughtfully. ‘We all felt it, what happened in Alterr’s chamber. Every priest in Hale felt something terrible. Folk are saying a God died… but I wonder if it was not a Goddess?’
He found a cloth and almost mechanically began to wipe her face.
‘I went to the Temple of the Lady. It’s shut; the priestesses have not been seen outside the walls. Hale is in chaos, so no one else has really noticed yet, but that will change soo
n enough.’
He removed the blanket covering her body and stared down at her body. A small wrap protected her modesty for form’s sake, though the sheer number of bandages and wrappings meant almost half her total skin surface was covered. He saw to each one in turn, humming the mantras of healing as he worked. Without channelling magic they would do little, but the familiar sound was better than silence.
It was clear that she was healing supernaturally well. Antil was not so vain as to believe it was down to him. Perhaps I helped a little, he conceded, but no more than that. When he touched her tightly splinted leg the woman moaned and tried to reach out, but the effort of sitting up defeated her. She sank back down, her eyes rolling up as her lips moved fractionally. He placed his hands on her chest and channelled magic into her body, not focusing on knitting bone or flesh, which she would manage on her own, but on blanking out the pain. That at least he could manage: her mind was still human, and a mind could be fooled into ignoring pain, even if the substance of her body resisted any efforts beyond that.
After a minute he stopped to catch his breath, feeling like an old man. He’d left a small bag of willow bark pieces by her bedside. He picked it up and fumbled stiff-fingered with the tie for a moment before managing to get it open. As he did so the sacking nailed over the window fluttered under a rogue gust of wind and the movement caused him to flinch, dropping the little bag. But somehow his patient’s hand had slipped off the bed and instead of hitting the floor, the tie of the bag snagged on her fingers.
Antil looked down. Her eyes were closed, her expression one of restless sleep. There was no sign she’d even noticed what had happened.
‘Good catch,’ Antil muttered with a puzzled frown, ‘or should I perhaps say lucky catch?’
He didn’t know whether to wince or smile at that thought; luck was a fickle mistress - if the expression could endure after the Lady herself was dead. It would not be long before the bands of penitents began to ask earnest questions about the damage to the window. He had explained it away as a thrown fragment of stone from the explosion that had obliterated Alterr’s temple, but sooner or later someone would realise that was peculiar.
