They filed across the narrow bridge and vanished into the shadows of the platform. A near-silence fell across the amphitheatre. A few feet shuffled, a few shell ornaments clicked, a sibilant whisper several rows back was instantly hushed. Nothing else, beyond the constant bubbling murmur from the lava pit. The moments stretched; the growing tension of the tight-packed multitude began to express itself as a sweaty stench of fear that almost overwhelmed the insidious masollar. I found myself counting the seconds—if Valsoria was the showwoman I took her for, she'd recognize the proper moment when it came, and it was coming up fast. Now, I said to myself, and a broken second later the altar burst into flame.
I nearly applauded. Behind me, a vast chorus of breaths was indrawn with wonder. Valsoria seemed to be floating above the altar, enveloped in a golden cloak and ringed by flickering tongues of fire; she towered above the three dark silhouettes of the surpliced Daughters who were stationed in front of the altar. In her clear, powerful voice, she began to chant in the Naarhil tongue, causing a movement in the back of my brain like something uncoiling from an uneasy sleep. The rhythms of Valsoria's chant were soothing and compelling, almost hypnotic, and I was so preoccupied with those curious uncoilings in my skull, that I almost didn't notice when she broke into Vassashin.
"The evil has lingered," she cried in that oddly penetrating voice. "The towers of the warcourt lie fathoms deep in salt water, and seawrack grows in the gardens of Iklankish, and fishes travel the desert in shoals like the caravans of old, but still the evil lingers. Did you think, Vassashinay, that the weight of so many years could be thrown off so lightly? Did you think that Raksh and his minions could be quenched by the mere waters of the sea? No!"
"No! No! No!" The chorus began to swell behind me, a few voices here and there; a few more; many more.
"Water!" Valsoria cried scornfully. "Water! Such an ancient evil cannot be washed away by water. For how many centuries did the barbed heel of Iklankish grind the face of Vassashinay? For how many centuries did we suffer? How long, how long? And now the evil gods of Sher have returned from the deep with this filthy sickness, to murder us in our own country, to cause us to suffer again—how long, my children, how long?"
She paused and took a deep breath, necessary because she shrieked the next words at the top of her voice.
"Blood, my children! The fire-gods of Vassashinay demand blood! A tide of blood! A tide of blood to sweep Raksh and his plague-demons away on its crest and drown them in the darkest reaches of the furthest hell! Blood! Blood! Blood!"
And so forth. She went on for some time along these lines, apparently blaming the plague on some unexorcised spirits of Iklankish, while I reflected that a great deal of blood had been spilled already, including much Sherkin blood, and where was she going to get enough suitable blood for a tide of the magnitude she described? There weren't that many Sherank left alive in the entire known world, and certainly not in Vassashinay.
Then I felt as if a cold hand had slid its fingers around my heart. She had Calla—half-Sherkint. Shree—half-Sherkin. Verolef—fourth-Sherkin. The blood in their three bodies would hardly fill a decent beer cask, but it was a start. But there was Calla, safe on the platform in performance of her normal duties; and Verolef, surely Verolef was safe, he was the Kalkissann, the Great Saviour, and deeply revered by the Vassashin for some peculiar reason. That left Shree. Did Valsoria have the rhetorical skill to talk one bodyful of blood into a sweeping tide? Of course she did, but that was beside the point. She wanted me to save him. And I certainly couldn't save him without calling on the Harashil. Clever Valsoria.
By Fathan, that woman could talk! It took her about ten minutes to get the crowd stirred up into a frenzy of fear, vengefulness and bloodlust—Sherkin blood by preference, of course, but she gave a strong impression once she got going that any old blood would do, so long as it was still warm and spilled in the name of the fire-gods, may they never go hungry. I began to wonder if she had a bit of Vassashin blood in mind, and if she intended to warm the crowd up for the main event by sacrificing a few of its members. There was still no sign of Shree.
I sat quietly between my two minders, letting the hateful clamour of the mob wash over me. I was listening for something else, and finally it came: a small voice, thin and distant but very clear: command me.
No.
I saw Valsoria glance down at me, frowning as if she'd overheard and was disappointed, but not really surprised; she looked towards one side of the platform and nodded.
Then the Lady spoke again, and the amphitheatre faded as a picture began to build in front of my eyes: in the distance were the towers of a great white-and-gold city, rising in a broad verdant valley; below me was an expanse of golden cornfields cut by a wide straight road, which flowed like a river with high-piled wagons, fat herds of sheep and cattle, glittering battalions of troopers who sang as they marched. The golden sails of a great fleet shone at the entrance to the city's white, high-moled harbour.
The Great Nameless Last. Command me, man of the Naar, and this is what we shall build.
I sighed. Very pretty, Harashil. But watch. This picture was under my control, and was not so pretty. The white walls and towers of the city darkened to sombre grey. In the cornfields, stubble rotted around a forest of metal spikes; I descended slowly, slowly, so that their glittering points rose to meet me, and I saw that on each spike a sun-blackened body writhed. On the road marched a grim army in black and silver armour, not singing, and the lowering sky was supported on a thousand pillars of smoke. I moved without effort over the blasted fields and across the grim ramparts of the city to the highest of the dark looming towers, into a dark room where a young-old man sat brooding on a high dark throne. He had my face.
This is how it would end, Harashil. I will not command you, because that would give it a beginning.
No answer, and the picture vanished. I was back in the amphitheatre, slightly dazed, trying to focus on a dozen or so Vassashin scraggers as they hustled two vigorously resisting figures out from the side to the centre of the platform. The crowd, which was noisy enough already, exploded with outrage. When my eyes started working well enough again, I understood why.
Sherkin and Sherkint. Clever, clever Valsoria. She'd saved up a complete suit of high-quality Sherkin armour, boots to helmet, and it gleamed as if its wearer were on full-dress parade in front of the Princes of Iklankish and the entire imperial warcourt of Sher. The woman's garb was not quite so grand, but it was very much in the tasteless, overdecorated and lethal Sherkint style, including tier upon tier of metal-sprung flounces and a long-fringed headdress that must have been half the height of the unfortunate female underneath it.
The Sherkin's gauntleted hands were bound behind him, but he managed to shake off the helmet and glare around at the mob, snarling his defiance. Through the blood and bruises on his face, I recognized Shree. His eyes widened as he recognized me in turn; he lunged for the bridge and was pushed back and surrounded by a wall of his captors. "Keep hold, Tig! Keep hold!" He only stopped shouting when somebody shoved a rag into his mouth. It took four of them to hold him.
Command me.
I shut my eyes, but the pictures I saw there were so fearful that I decided on the whole I preferred the amphitheatre, and opened my eyes again. The Sherkint's headdress was now being removed; the black-surpliced Daughter (whom I silently congratulated on her sudden and very recent promotion) was working away at the system of buckles and straps that held the horrible object on, while the Sherkint—while Calla, that is—held her head high and disdained to struggle; but when the thing was off, Calla struck like a snake to wrench it from the Daughter's hands and raised it high over her head and flung it straight into the lava well—although I'll wager she'd intended it to go further and damage a few heads in the crowd.
Command me.
The mist was gathering; I was powerless to stop it. Frantic, I leapt to my feet and plunged towards the bridge—or the lava well; I forgot I was chained between t
wo heavy and immovable Vassashin until the fetters on my wrists jerked me to a halt. Like a fish on a line, I was hauled back to the bench.
You can save them. Command me.
The Divinatrix was watching me expectantly, Calla was watching me without expression, and Shree was not watching anything at all, because he was sagging in the arms of his captors with a fresh stream of blood pouring down his face. The mountain began to shudder. One after another, the pottery lamps ranged along the edge of the lava well flickered and went out, and then exploded into clouds of dust.
Command me. Affirm the two are one.
The crowd was beginning to notice that the floor was shaking; shrieks of hatred turned to shrieks of terror.
Command me.
For some reason the Lady was now speaking with Valsoria's voice. I raised my eyes wearily to check whether Valsoria was still bodily where she had been before, whatever the evidence of my innermost ears, and saw that Calla had now been pushed forward to the very lip of the lava well. The two Vassashin who were steadying her by her shoulders looked quite capable of pushing her over the brink instead. Her face was contorted with rage and when she caught my eye, she began to shout.
"No, Tig! Give her nothing she wants! Let me die first!"
I groaned and bit my lip, hard, until I felt something wet and warm coursing down my chin. Even so, with a sound like a crack of lightning, the great stone altar split down the middle and collapsed into a heap of smoking rubble. Valsoria teetered and tumbled, arms whirling, through the flames to the floor—landing unhurt but furious beside the ruins of the tall black-painted stool she had been perched upon.
Command me.
"Tig! Keep hold! Don't give in!"
Command me. Affirm the two are one. Command me, Scion, command me—
"No!"
I shouted it, and then I shouted it again, and again, inside my head, outside my head, until the mountain was still and the golden haze had vanished and the Harashil's voice had receded to a distant whisper. I kept on shouting it until one of my guards, at a signal from Valsoria, clouted me on the side of the head. Then, also at Valsoria's beckoning, the two of them hauled me to my feet and dragged me across the bridge to the platform, where Valsoria was waiting with a face like thunder. Shree was nowhere to be seen; Calla, looking straight at me with a proud smile on her lips, was being dragged into the shadows behind the ruined altar. For me, it was too soon to think of smiling—this wasn't over yet. What if they resorted to torturing Shree in front of my eyes? What if they dangled Calla over the edge of the lava well? How could I resist?
The knowledge came to me then, aching and cold: whatever happened, I had to resist. Even if it meant losing Calla; even if it meant losing Shree. Most especially if it meant my own destruction.
The Divinatrix, who was indeed furious and had a minor nosebleed from her fall, seemed to realize this as well. "I had hoped these two would be enough," she hissed, "but you leave me no choice, Tigrallef. I will have the Harashil. Over there with him—keep him quiet!"
I was pulled to one edge of the platform, which afforded a far better view of the amphitheatre than I really wanted. The mob was a surging sea of wild eyes and brandished fists, lit like a crowd-scene from a Lucian hell by the surviving oil-lamps. They wanted blood—and I rather hoped that Valsoria would offer them mine, which shows how I was still underestimating her.
Somehow, simply by lifting her arms and starting to talk in a soft persuasive voice, she achieved the impossible—as efficiently as she had whipped the mob into frenzy, she soothed it into silence. And when the only sounds were the incessant bubbling of the lava well and a few muffled sobs from the benches, she threw her arms wide as if to embrace the whole congregation.
"The time has come," she shouted, "for the blessed fire-gods to reclaim the talisman they sent us! Here, my children, is the salvation of Vassashinay! Here is the blood that will drown the demons of Sher!"
I saw them then for the first time, in an alcove on the far edge of the platform, hidden from the crowd: two white-gowned figures, one large, one small. The tall one was bent over the other and seemed to be embracing it; then he seemed to be urging it forwards, out of the alcove. Valsoria beckoned.
My heart froze.
Looking puzzled, but rather interested in these queer adult proceedings, Verolef strolled onto the platform and faced the mob. The sudden tumult appeared to surprise him, but he showed no sign of being afraid. Trustingly, he crossed to Valsoria and took the hand she held out to him.
"Behold the Kalkissann!" Valsoria cried. "Behold the salvation of Vassashinay!"
The mob howled. Verolef watched them calmly, a small frown starting to crease his forehead; but Valsoria turned her head to watch me, and she was grinning.
Command me.
I bowed my head. I had no answer for this.
* * *
40
COMMAND ME.
They were holding me flat against the wall, so that I was unable to move or to turn my head. I tried to close my mind, but I could not even force my eyes closed.
Command me.
Dimly, I heard Calla scream—once. Verolef heard her too. I saw his head snap around as he searched for her; he pulled his hand out of Valsoria's. Valsoria smoothed his hair fondly (my teeth ground together) and took his hand again.
I heard him say in Vassashin, "Where's my mother?"
She answered kindly, "Never mind for now. Go with Lorosa, Verolef. You must be a brave little man for me now."
No fool, my son. He looked at her with suspicion. "But where's my mother? Why was she crying? Is someone hurting her?"
"Of course not, darling. We'll find her later. Don't you want to help your dear granna now, my pet?"
"No," he said, with admirable directness. "I want my mother."
"Now, Vero—"
"Let me go! I want my mother!"
He was fighting her grip now. He managed to pull free and made to run around the rubble of the altar, where Calla's scream had come from; Valsoria snapped a command and four scraggers dived for him. He neatly dodged the first, went through the legs of the second, bit the hairy hand of the third as it came within range—his mother's child; but the fourth scragger scooped him up and pinioned the little body tightly in his great hairy arms. The mob hooted with excitement.
Valsoria glanced at me over her shoulder, as if to say: you can stop this happening, any moment you choose. Out loud, she said, "Bring the brat to me. And hold him." And when Verolef was set on his feet beside her, with the scragger's arm still locked around his little chest, Valsoria smiled and said in a gentle voice, too low to carry to the crowd on the other side of the lava pit, "You were right, Vero, someone is hurting your mother. And we will have to hurt you too, unless that man over there" (she pointed at me) "does what I tell him to do."
Vero's first look at his own natural father was dark with reproof. "Why won't he?"
"Because he's wicked and stubborn and he doesn't care about you," she answered evenly, "and it will be his fault if anything bad happens to you or your mother. Do you understand, Vero?"
He looked dubious. I could feel my control snapping, string by string, like a harp in the dry air of some scorching desert.
"She's lying, Verolef," I said quietly.
"I know that."
That surprised Valsoria as much as it surprised me. She raised her open hand as if to strike him on the cheek—and checked herself when the mountain started to tremble again, an ominous thunder heard through the soles of our feet, and started back sharply when a dusting of golden light began to flicker into existence in the air around us. This was a sight I was accustomed to having all to myself, so it was a shock to realize that, this time, others were seeing it too. Verolef watched it with wonder, his lips apart. The Vassashin on the platform were unnerved by it, and murmured fearfully, but gasps and ooohs of appreciation came from beyond the lava pit, where the crowd seemed to be under the impression that this was another of Valsoria's famous effects,
or even an actual effulgence of the blessed fire-gods, may they for ever go hungry and be not in the least exalted.
Valsoria surveyed me anxiously for a broken moment, as if she and I had taken a wrong turning in the dark labyrinth of events we were treading together. Then she pulled her shoulders up and became urgent and brisk and businesslike again, summoning the red-surpliced Daughters to her side with a quick gesture.
"Hurry now—take the child—and the Sherkin warlord, and that ungrateful traitress Carrinay. Quickly! Quickly!"
One of the women lifted Verolef and carried him past the smoking wreck of the altar, followed by the other. The child went with them peaceably, watching the gathering golden mist with rapt eyes over the Daughter's red-surpliced shoulder, glancing once at me with not much interest.
The great doors opened. I saw Shree and Calla, both of them limp and bleeding, tossed like sacks into the darkness. I saw Verolef pushed inside, gently but firmly, a lonely little figure in white with his back to us; but as the doors swung shut, he turned and looked straight at me. His mouth was turned down with what looked like disapproval. Then the doors hid him.
Meantime, the Divinatrix had flung her arms wide and was again addressing her congregation. Blood. Sacrifice. Deliverance. The words punched their way through the thickening mist and the mindless bloodlusting roar of the crowd.
I bellowed at them myself, trying to drown out Valsoria's notable voice. "She's using you, you idiots! She doesn't give a snap of the fingers for you, or for the plague! She won't care if you all dance yourselves to death, if only she can get what she wants. Murdering the Kalkissann is not going to save you. Don't listen to her . . ."
Gil Trilogy 2: Scion's Lady Page 31
