4: Witches' Blood

by Ginn Hale

  There, two small braziers stood about four yards in front of the aged building housing Parfir’s shrine. Other ushvun’im and ushiri’im had gathered outside the weathered wooden walls. John recognized Samsango and Fikiri among them. Samsango gave him a brief wave.

  Dayyid stopped just short before the open doorway of the building and turned, scowling at Hann’yu. “You’re sober enough to inspect her, I hope?”

  Hann’yu nodded.

  “Go on then.” Dayyid waved a hand at the shrine. “We don’t have much time, so try to be quick.”

  Again, Hann’yu only nodded. His lips were pressed closed in a hard line. His face looked pale even in the warm red firelight. John wondered if he was going to be sick. Hann’yu took a deep breath and then walked into the shrine.

  “My brothers.” Dayyid raised his voice, addressing the rest of the ushvun’im and ushiri’im. “It is time to begin our prayers.”

  Immediately, the gathered men knelt in rows along either side of the doorway. They filled the entire space between the shrine and the two lit braziers, only leaving a narrow path between the two. John wasn’t sure where he was supposed to sit. The ushiri’im seemed to have taken the spaces closest to the braziers. John guessed that he should be back farther with Samsango and the other ushvun’im. He began to go but Dayyid caught him by the arm.

  “Harvest wines affect Hann’yu more than they ought to,” Dayyid whispered. “When he’s done in the shrine, make sure he doesn’t come back out and embarrass himself in front of the ushvun’im. Wait for him by the door.”

  John strode quickly to the doorway and crouched down, leaning his back against the wooden frame. He had a terrible feeling about all of this.

  The small flames in the braziers snapped and flashed behind Dayyid.

  Dayyid remained standing, making sure that all of the men were properly spaced and solemn. Behind him, Ravishan also stood, waiting. When Dayyid turned and strode to the closest fires, Ravishan followed him.

  Dayyid raised his hand, signaling the prayer with a quick motion of his fingers. Instinctively, the words came to John, as they did to the priests surrounding him. The low, deep invocations rolled from them like a sudden flood. Their voices washed through the air, engulfing the cries of animals and drowning the noise of commerce.

  Behind him in the darkness of the shrine, John thought he could hear a faint sound, a whimper. He turned his head just slightly to look back into the dark chamber. Inside, five city guards stood circled around Hann’yu and the naked girl he knelt over. One of the guards absently toyed with the head of a sledgehammer. Another held a small lamp out over Hann’yu. Its light cast Hann’yu’s face in shadow but burned into girl’s features.

  She was young, probably still in her teens. Her head had been carelessly shaved. Dirt and scabs mottled her bare skin. She tossed her head and cried out, but a tight leather gag muffled her voice. Her scraped, bruised arms were bound back behind her. The guards held her legs apart as she struggled to pull them closed.

  “Well?” The guard’s voice hardly carried over the waves of chanting that enveloped John. “Has she got a whelp in her, or not?”

  Hann’yu glanced up at the man. His skin looked deathly pale as it caught the light. He lowered his face again before he spoke. “No, she isn’t carrying a child.”

  “Then it’s the fire for this bitch.” The guard holding the lamp grinned. “Ring the bell.”

  Hann’yu didn’t look at any of the guards, but simply walked away from them as if he were half-asleep. He reached the doorway of the shrine but didn’t come out. Instead, he slumped down to the floor and pressed his forehead against the wall. His eyes were clenched shut, but tears still dribbled down his cheeks. He clamped his hands over his mouth to cover the sound.

  John looked away as a brassy bell clanged overhead.

  Ahead of him, men and women from both fairgrounds were gathering. More city guards arrived, leading tahldi hitched to wagons bearing wood, kindling rags, and oil.

  He could hear the girl whimpering and moaning behind him as he watched the unlit pyre steadily growing in front of him. He tried to imagine what he could do to free the girl. But there were too many guards. Even if he could overpower all five of them, then what would he do? There was nothing.

  Women from the city threw bundles of dried herbs and flowers into the heap of kindling. Many of them knelt and added their voices to the prayers of the priests. The men seemed less solemn. Several youths passed drinks among themselves and exchanged jokes with the guards building the pyre.

  John closed his eyes and chanted along with the priests around him. He all but shouted the words out, drowning out the pathetic noises of the girl behind him and the laughter of the gathering crowds of men.

  “Let the flames shine,” he called out, “and this darkness will be consumed. It will not share your breath, holy Parfir. It will not touch your flesh. It will not taste your sacred blood. It will burn away from you and never have shape again.”

  The prayers went on. John had recited them before. He had practiced them with Pivan and Bati’kohl here in the shrine. He had recited them almost daily in the monastery. He had known them for years, but he had not understood them.

  A sacred fire, parting shadows from forms, it had seemed so abstract. But it wasn’t. A genuine pyre was being built in front of him and it was a real girl who they would strip of her living form.

  John glanced back to Hann’yu. He lay on his side now, his face buried in his arms. John guessed that he had passed out and envied him.

  Dayyid stood, overseeing the construction of the pyre. There was a focused intensity to his expression. The light from the two braziers gleamed over his long black braids and glowed in his eyes. He chanted, his low strong voice carrying over all the rest. He held an unlit torch in one hand.

  Ravishan knelt beside Dayyid with his head bowed, his loose black hair hiding his face. Fikiri sat a little further back among the rest of the ushiri’im. He stared out past the pyre into the gathered crowd of townspeople, tradesmen, and city guards. His mouth barely moved with the words of the prayers.

  John heard the squeal of a hinge from behind him and then the five city guards marched out of the doorway, dragging the girl between them. She sobbed and made pleading noises around her gag. The fingers of her bound hands were swollen, black, and horribly bent back. Her legs scraped the ground like broken branches as the guards dragged her past the line of priests.

  Dayyid held up his hand to end the prayers. All of the gathered ushvun’im and ushiri’im went quiet. The city guards stopped in front of Dayyid, lowering the girl to the dirt at his feet.

  “Unholy creature.” Dayyid glanced down at her for only an instant. “You have been found barren of even Parfir’s smallest blessing. Once, he fed you with his own flesh, quenched your thirst with his very blood. He brought you the abundance of summer and gave you shelter in winter. You knew only his kindness and yet made yourself like a poison to him. You gave yourself to his enemies as a whore gives herself to greed.

  “You have so defiled the blessings that he placed upon your flesh that even your woman’s womb is a place of desolation.”

  The girl’s mouth worked around the gag, making the motions of denials and pleas, but only choked animal sounds came out. Dayyid scowled down at her, then glanced to Ravishan. At first, Ravishan simply remained where he was, head bowed, arms hanging limply. Then he stood. He didn’t look at the girl. Instead, he stared at the small clay pot in his hand. There were markings on it, little gold suns and silver moons.

  “Unholy creature,” Dayyid began again, “you have fouled yourself beyond repentance or redemption. You have refused his love and now you can only know his wrath.”

  Dayyid stepped to the side as Ravishan spilled the glistening contents of the jar over the girl. It was lamp oil, John realized. The city guards heaved her back up off the ground and dragged her to the pyre. With a swing, they hurled her onto the low mass of oil-soaked wood, sticks, and flowe
rs. In a panic, she tried to get to her feet. Her broken legs collapsed under her. She flailed and jerked, trying to push herself off of the kindling. Her motions only seemed to tangle her further in the broken wood and slick oil.

  “Do not pity her!” Dayyid shouted over the girl’s howls. “Evil feeds on honest men with teeth carved from pity!”

  Dayyid turned and handed his unlit torch to Ravishan. “Look upon her and do not flinch. Her despair is Parfir’s triumph. Make yourself worthy of him.”

  Ravishan took the torch. His face was nearly expressionless. John could see the muscles of his throat working, swallowing back sickness. He lowered the torch into the brazier on his right and then into the one to his left. Flames immediately rushed up the torch. Ravishan stepped up to the pyre. The girl screamed at the sight of him, the sound coming out like the raw shriek of a crow. Ravishan lifted the torch. His arm trembled but then he steadied it.

  John clenched his mouth shut. His hands curled into tight fists. He didn’t want to see this and yet he couldn’t make himself look away.

  Ravishan leaned forward slightly and touched the flame of his torch to the pyre. It was a graceful motion, almost a bow. Flames gushed up over the oil-soaked wood. The girl screamed again. This time it was a purely animal sound of agony. Ravishan stepped around the pyre and lit it again and again, until it was engulfed in flames. Black billows of smoke churned up against the much paler night sky. Then the air began to fill with the smell of burning hair and flesh.

  Cheers rose up through the gathered crowd. Somewhere farther back, someone was playing a happy melody on a flute. People were laughing.

  Ravishan stood in front of the pyre as the flames gushed and hissed outward. His face was like a corpse’s. His dark eyes were wide, staring into the writhing fire. John could see droplets of oil spattering down from the torch in Ravishan’s hand. He didn’t flinch from them.

  Revulsion and sorrow welled through John. He wanted to be sick, to cry or rage. Anything to exorcise the horror in him. Anything to get it out. But none of those courses were open to him. He closed his eyes and simply dug his fingers into the hard-packed earth beneath him.

  Above them, the sky split with a massive crack of thunder. Then a heavy, hard rain began to pour down on them all.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Most of the ushiri’im and ushvun’im took shelter from the pounding rain in the shrine. Others fled with the crowds of men and women. All around, people scattered, rushing back to the cover of their wagons and stalls or running farther to their homes in the city. Lamps and small fires died out. But the burning pyre only snapped and hissed in the face of the rain. Flames floated on thin slicks of oil and dribbled down the heaps of wood. The heat of the pyre seared the rain to white steam.

  John felt the earth slowly softening beneath him. His fingers curled through the mud. Slivers of lightning splintered through the smoke-blackened sky. Thunder crashed. The music and laughter of a few minutes ago had changed to shouts and curses as lamps guttered and people tripped. Farther back in the blood market, John thought he could hear an old woman shouting. Someone had crashed into a pen and knocked the gate loose. John glimpsed escaping goats bounding between clusters of human bodies.

  In the midst of it all, Ravishan stood, still staring into the flames of the pyre. Rain beat down on him, plastering his black hair to his face and drenching his clothes. The flame of his torch crackled, spit sparks, and then went out with a hiss. He remained, the firelight of the pyre illuminating his dark form.

  John got up. He expected to slip in the mud, but the ground felt oddly firm beneath his feet. He walked, hunching against the pounding rain, to where Ravishan stood shuddering from the cold. His eyes were like black chasms against the bloodless white of his face. His jaw was clenched so tightly that John could see the muscles bulge and tremble.

  “You need to get out of the rain.” John gently took the dead torch from Ravishan’s stiff hands and let it fall to the ground.

  “We can’t just stand here all night,” John said firmly. He grabbed Ravishan’s hand and started for the city gate. Ravishan didn’t resist him, but he didn’t throw himself into action either. He followed John in clumsy, stumbling steps. The normal grace of his motions seemed utterly lost.

  John led Ravishan past floundering drunks, through the city gates and up along the now nearly deserted avenues of the Harvest Fair. John tried to think a place to take shelter. He certainly wasn’t going to turn back and join Dayyid and the other priests in the shrine. The church hostel in the middle of Amura’taye, where they would have slept, was too far. And in any case, John didn’t know if he could stomach any more sanctimonious exchanges with the other men who would be staying there. Briefly, John considered taking Ravishan to the Bousim tents, but he hadn’t left there under the best circumstances. The last thing he wanted was to get into another fight with Tashtu or the rashan’im who served under him.

  The surrounding tents and stalls were crowded with people taking shelter from the rain. Men bumped and pushed each other, trying to get further under the cover of eaves. Women huddled close, keeping the few children still awake protected between them.

  John headed for the city proper, but once they arrived he found that he had no more idea where to go than he’d had when they’d left the shrine. Dozens of streets shot out between countless hunched buildings. He looked to Ravishan for guidance.

  “You know this city better than I do. Where should we go?”

  Ravishan stared at him blankly, not seeming to understand his words.

  “I’m getting soaked here, Ravishan,” John prompted.

  “The hostel in the Carvers’ District.” Ravishan pointed to the road to their left.

  John nodded and started down the muddy street. He doubted that he needed to lead Ravishan by the hand any longer, but he didn’t want to let go of him, either.

  The hostel was a small wooden building with a reed-thatched roof and an outdoor toilet. Because it was the Harvest Fair, few rooms were available. The man at the door seemed relieved when John told him that he and Ravishan could share a room. John gave the man three wooden coins and a polished blessing stone. While the man didn’t look too pleased with the payment, he didn’t argue about it either. He accepted John’s quick blessing and handed him a cheap cut-tin key.

  The room was hardly more than a closet with several blankets and a straw-stuffed mattress on the floor. It was dark with a pungent scent reminiscent of a stable. There were no lamps or even candles. After John closed the door, he had to wait for his eyesight to adjust.

  Once inside, Ravishan just leaned against the door, wet and miserable and seemingly unaware of how violently his own body shivered.

  “You should get out of those clothes,” John said. He winced at the words as he said them. It sounded like some kind of cheap come-on. John supposed that if Ravishan hadn’t looked so pathetic and if the evening hadn’t been so utterly ugly, it might have been.

  As it was, John simply turned his back and quickly stripped off his own soaking clothes. He took one of the blankets and wrapped it around himself.

  When he turned back to hand the other blanket to Ravishan, he found that Ravishan still wore his wet cassock. Some color had come back into his face and a blush was spreading across his cheeks. His expression was a weird mix of arousal and misery.

  John sighed. “I don’t think your clothes are going to drip dry anytime soon, do you?”

  Ravishan flushed and then began pulling at his heavy cassock. His hands were still numb and clumsy from the cold. The sodden fabric slipped out of his grip. John stepped closer and took hold of the dripping wool, saying, “Here, raise your arms.”

  Ravishan quickly lifted his arms over his head. John pulled the cassock up and off him. He tossed it into the pile with his own clothes. He’d worry about getting them dry later. For now, he concentrated on Ravishan.

  The thin white material of the undershirt and pants was plastered to Ravishan’s body. The wet fab
ric did nothing to hide the deeply tanned expanses of Ravishan’s lean chest and muscular legs. Even in the dimness of the room, John could see the dark hair of Ravishan’s chest and the way it tapered into a fine line leading down to his groin.

  An instinctive flush of desire surged through John. His skin felt suddenly much hotter. John forced his thoughts past it. The night had already been too desperate and repugnant. Ravishan was a stunned, shivering mess. The last thing he needed was a seduction. John doubted he was up to it himself.

  He quickly untied the knotted laces of Ravishan’s pants. Then he straightened and stepped back. Ravishan could handle the rest for himself. Once Ravishan had undressed, John handed him a blanket, which he wrapped around himself. His black hair was beginning to dry and curl just slightly.

  He looked like he could have been some young, biblical prophet draped in shadows and flowing cloth.

  “Are you tired?” John asked.

  “I don’t know. I think I am but I don’t feel—” Ravishan cut himself off. “I don’t want to go to sleep.”

  “I don’t either,” John said. His own mind was in too much turmoil to sleep. Still, his body ached with exhaustion and hunger. There was nothing to eat, but at least he could get off his feet. John sat down on the mattress. Ravishan joined him. Despite the dousing of rain, the smell of smoke and roasting meat still clung to both of them.

  John didn’t want to think about it. And yet each time he tried to think of something to say, his mind was overwhelmed with the image of that girl, struggling, shrieking as she burned. He didn’t know if merely witnessing an atrocity could harm a man, but it seemed that way.

  Somewhere in him there had been a self-image of a man who was brave enough to suffer for his convictions. A man who would not stand by as a girl was murdered in front of him. Now revulsion and recrimination were eating that ideal away.

  He glanced to Ravishan. He knew it was a double standard of the deepest affection that kept him from applying the same expectation to Ravishan. He wouldn’t have wanted Ravishan to fight to save the girl. He wouldn’t have wanted Ravishan to die for her.