Galen sighed. “I just thought you would like it . . . I mean . . .”
“Well, what am I supposed to do now? The dance in the square is tonight!”
Galen gasped for words but nothing came out of his mouth. Berkita was working herself into a serious rage when her mother intervened.
“Well, I know a seamstress that may be able to help you out, my boy.” Hilna laughed. She stood next to Ansal, trying to stay in the crook of her husband’s arm. It was her protection from the jostling crowd pressing all around them. Hilna was a lithe woman from whom her daughter had taken her good looks. “The heralds have already finished and . . . are you sure you are quite all right?”
No, he thought, I am entirely not all right. He could feel the blood draining from his face, and a shiver passed through him. It was the voices, however, that were the worst of all. Their chatter and cacophony filled his head. His hands were wet with his own sweat.
“I’ll be fine, Mother Kadish,” he yelled over the roaring crowd. “It’s just the noise . . . and the heat. I’ll be fine in a few minutes.”
“Well, I’ve cooked a special banquet for us all,” Hilna replied. “I just want to make sure that you’re feeling up to—”
“Quiet, Mother.” Berkita spoke excitedly. “That’s not our priest! There’s someone else climbing up the Kath stairs. I don’t think I’ve ever seen . . .”
Her voice trailed off as the entire crowd fell into a hushed silence.
Ansal’s eyes suddenly went wide as he peered over the crowd. His whisper cracked with amazement. “By the claw! That’s the High Priestess!”
Galen looked up at Ansal. He could feel the panic rising inside. Calm yourself, he thought furiously. All you have to do is get through the next few minutes. There really is no reason to panic.
The masks in the crowd moved as their gaze passed over him. They laughed and cried. Each whispered dark noises, but he could not understand their words, so jumbled were their voices.
“The High Priestess, Father?” Berkita was thrilled. “Here? Are you sure?”
Ansal stood in awe. “I’ve seen tapestries in the Kath-Drakonis that depicted the High Priestess. She wore robes trimmed just like that. I . . . I think so, my dear.”
“Galen?” Hilna asked again, her brow now wrinkled in concern. “What’s the matter?”
Galen shook his head. He could barely stand up from the upset of his stomach and the dizzying whispered noises that whirled around him. A single voice suddenly caught his attention. He looked up.
“Good people of Benyn and all the folk of the Dragonback. I bring to you the grace and goodwill of Vasska. His eye sees you and his might watches over you. He has sent me, High Priestess Edana, to bring you his blessing personally.”
A thunderous roar of jubilation and thanks erupted from the crowd.
“Hail-oorah!” Ansal shouted.
Berkita grabbed Galen, shaking him. “Can you believe it? It’s Edana herself! Oh! I can’t see! I want to see!”
“Hold on to me, Ansal,” Hilna said, her eyes filling with tears. “I thought I would never know such a day! The Voice of Vasska herself—and right here in our own village! What ever is she doing here?”
“For you!” The masks shifted on the faces of the men and women who wore them. The jumble of voices was quickly resolving itself into a chorus. “She comes for you, Galen! She comes for you!”
Galen was ashen. “I . . . I don’t feel well at all. I really must get back to the shop . . . I need to lie down.”
“Oh, all right, Galen.” Berkita looked at him with a strange combination of concern and annoyance. “Just as soon as the blessing is over . . .”
Edana, standing at the top of the broad stairs leading into the Kath-Drakonis, held her hands up, quieting the crowd quickly.
“You honor me as I hope I honor you in Vasska’s name.” Edana pushed back her satin hood, the purple lining flashing in the morning sun. Her hair was iron gray and cropped short after the fashion of the priestesses. Her eyes, deeply set above sharp, high cheekbones, were piercing even at a distance. She looked slight, even in her robes, yet her deep voice carried clearly across the large square. “Since the time of the ancients, each fall we gather together in thanks to Vasska for his benevolence and his diligence in behalf of you, his children—the Pir. We remember in song and story the dark days of the Rule of Man. Death rode across the land and the towers fell. Blood flowed in rivers that the sea itself could not contain. Those are the woeful songs and tales.
“But we know also other songs since then: songs of peace and songs of security; songs of faith and songs of law. We sing the songs of the dragon that forged in his fiery breath a new hope. We sing songs of that great creature whose flame forged a new faith and a new hope among the people of a troubled and broken land! We sing songs of the magnificent being whose wings spread across the sky and hold at bay the evil that stalks us beyond the Forsaken Mountains! His breath consumes the enemy that lurks in the caverns of Khagun-Fel! His claw crushes the hordes on the Plains of the Desolation! It is his songs we sing and celebrate here today.”
The crowd erupted once more in cheering.
“No! Now! I’ve got to go!” Galen pleaded.
“But the Guardians! Galen, hold on.” Berkita clasped her hands to his, her face filled with concern. “It will just be a few minutes and then—”
“You are a part of the Pir Vasska,” Edana intoned, “and his Eye is on you in this Election! We begin!”
Edana turned to one of the robed assistants behind her. Galen vaguely noted that they wore robes trimmed differently than any he remembered seeing before, the robes of an Aboth. His head was throbbing but he held on to a single thought through the chorus of voices rattling around in his mind: just a few minutes more and everything will be right again.
The Aboth knelt down before a large trunk, opening it. In moments, he lifted a huge staff. The carving on the wide staff was worn smooth from use and blackened with the oil of uncounted hands that had wielded it. At its top, five long claws affixed a single, dull crystal globe. Galen saw something yellow or green flash inside the depths of the crystal, but he could not be sure.
Though he had never seen one, Galen knew the device at once—a dragonstaff. Each one held at its head a stone called the Eye of Vasska that was said to look out and discover the true souls of humanity. It was the central device of the Election.
The Aboth, still kneeling, presented the staff to Edana, who took it with deceptive ease and turned toward the crowd.
“Vasska calls to the Elect!” The sound of the staff’s metallic cap rang across the square as Edana jabbed it onto the stone step. “He commands that you make yourself known as his Eye falls upon you! Enter the Elect into the peace of Vasska!”
Far across the square, a voice screamed over the silence.
“Blessed be the peace of Vasska!” Edana cried, pointing off to her right.
The crowd turned as one toward the sound of the screaming, and then erupted once more in a thunderous cheer. The mob lifted a woman, who continued to wail, over their heads. Galen did not recognize her—she was probably from one of the outlying settlements upstream along the Whethril. Still cheering, the throng passed her writhing body toward the waiting monks on the west side of the Kath-Drakonis.
The crowd was still cheering when another voice cried out in the center of the teeming rabble.
Edana pointed at the man and yelled over the crowd, “Blessed be the peace of Vasska!”
The roar once more thundered across the crowded square as the man was pushed up by the hands of his neighbors over their heads. It was Haggun Harn, Galen realized, an older man who had worked the fishing boats most of his life. The entire town knew that he had been acting strangely of late. His Election would be a blessing to his family—they would no longer have to care for him or be embarrassed by his occasional ravings.
Galen suddenly realized that the voices had stopped. He glanced around. The masks, the carvings
, the ironworks—they were all silent and unmoving. More cries and more cheers filled the air, but Galen was no longer listening. He was going to be fine, he suddenly realized. The voices had stopped. He had nothing to fear from the Election. All those years he had hidden from this simple, harmless ceremony. Now he felt foolish for having avoided it—a child’s fright that he should have long shaken with his coming of age.
He put his arm around his wife’s shoulders.
She looked up at him.
He smiled at her as he spoke. “I’m sorry about the rose-colored—”
Sound exploded in his head.
He could not think about anything but the horrible keening in his head. It was the sound of a thousand death-cries at once, the outrage of uncounted spirits from the depths of torment. His hands instinctively came up to his ears, but the sound was not coming from outside and the action did nothing to diminish the pain.
He opened his eyes wide. Panic overwhelmed him.
The masks were all turned toward him. Their mouths were all open impossibly wide. They contorted horribly, shaking with their own resonance. The dragon carvings on the eaves of the buildings were turned toward him. They screamed.
Galen screamed, too.
The sound was drawn from him. He could not help himself. The noise in his head would not go away, wrenching a scream unwilled from his throat at the agony of it. He clawed at his head, trying to get to the pain that was inside, trying to pull it out, trying to do anything to make it stop.
He was only vaguely aware of the hands pushing him upward. The shouting mob was nothing compared to the shattering sound in his mind. He floated over the heads of his cheering friends and neighbors as though down a river. The pieces of his mind seemed to disintegrate. He was barely aware when the words rolled over the shouting crowd.
“Blessed be the peace of Vasska!”
Cheers, horror, laughter, terror . . .
The screeching noise in his head would not stop.
The more Galen struggled, the worse it became. Still, he would not give in to it—could not give in to it. He rode the crest of waving arms across the square, each one dragging him away from the life he loved. He fought against this human tide, struggled to tumble back into anonymity. In the end the tide was stronger than his desperate will. His strength failed him all too soon, sapped from him by the blaring voices in his own head and the well-wishes of his former neighbors and friends. Galen made a final desperate lunge. It was futile. At last, he succumbed to the voices. His mind collapsed into a deep and blissful darkness.
6
Blessed Coins
Berkita’s screams were lost in the roar of the crowd. It was impossible, yet there was Galen—her Galen—lifted off the ground and being pushed across the town square. Panicked, she searched the faces in the crowd for someone who might help her.
It was a terrible mistake—she knew this with her entire heart.
Berkita pushed against the crowd around her, desperate to reach her husband, but the mass of bodies yielded only a little. The square was so filled with people that it was impossible to move from one place to the next, and certainly there was no passage through to the other side.
Nevertheless, she fought against the wall of humanity, clawing madly at them in an effort to make them give way. Several turned toward her, their anger and impatience directed at her as if they thought she was just trying to get a better view. She gaped at the faces of friends as well as familiar patrons of the shop. Each in turn registered their quick, shallow sympathy and their impatience to get back to viewing the spectacle at hand, but no one would give way. With each moment her husband was being carried farther and farther from her.
Desperately, she turned to her father, tears streaming down her face. “Papa, what do we do!”
Ansal’s face had fallen. His eyes were fixed in the distance on Galen as the roaring mob cheerfully propelled him toward oblivion. His breath was labored. He could not bring himself to look on his daughter.
“I . . . I don’t . . . know,” he stammered. “He is . . . is one of the Elect. He’s been Chosen!”
“Papa, no!” Berkita screamed through the thundering noise of the cheering crowd. “It’s a mistake, Daddy! There’s nothing wrong with him! He’s . . . he’s not insane!”
Several others were being lifted up by the horde, riding a sea of hands toward their final destiny.
“Kita.” Ansal had not called her by his pet name in quite some time, and he spoke it now with an emotional rumble deep in his throat. “The ways of Vasska are not known to us. Sometimes we just have to accept the will of Vasska. I . . . I can only believe that this is all for the best . . .”
“No, Daddy! It’s a mistake! It’s just some stupid mistake!”
Priestess Edana was lowering the staff of the dragon’s eye now. The Election was over. Her words of blessing started flowing over the crowd. Everyone leaned a little closer to hear the High Priestess.
“Kita,” Ansal said, his eyes unfocused over the crowd as resolve fought against the unthinkable. “I’ve come to the Election since I was four years of age. I’ve never seen a mistake. Not once.”
Berkita looked back in anger and in shock. She glanced at her mother for some hope; some sign of support. Her mother, however, had turned away from her, burying her face in the dark safety of Ansal’s costume.
Somewhere behind Berkita, Edana had reached the end of her blessing pronouncement. Berkita heard none of this.
Her father looked into her eyes at last. “No one has ever come back. And no one who has ever gone looking for them has ever come back either.” Her father looked away from her once more. “Just accept it. As we all must.”
Thin, golden coins flew out over the crowd.
Berkita suddenly saw the people around her with new eyes. Her parents could not—would not—help her. Her friends and neighbors, those she had grown up with and trusted and loved, stood about her suddenly unrecognizable, distant and frightening. They stood and cheered and shouted and laughed at her life being torn from her. In the packed throng made up of everyone she had ever known, she suddenly felt completely alone.
There was only one name that came to her; one soul that might, somehow, help her.
The crowd was reaching upward toward the sky, toward the golden blessing being showered down on them. A blessing which Berkita had not understood completely before now: the blessing that they were not among the Elect.
Berkita turned and ran through the crowd. Intent on getting closer, they seemed perfectly willing to let her move backward, away from the square. She pushed aside anyone not quick enough to get out of her way. She no longer cared for the faces that had suddenly become as strangers to her.
As she ran, the coins of the blessing rained down around her like golden tears. They brushed against her wet cheeks, slid down her orange costume, and rang slightly as they were left for others to pick up on the cobbled street behind her.
Priestess Edana, Mother of the Vasskan Pir and Exalted Speaker of Vasska, stepped into the cool shadows of the Kath-Drakonis and sighed.
The Aboth-Sek—her personal contingent of guards—had long ago learned the quiet signs of her command. They quickly came to bow before her, their arms outstretched to receive from her hands whatever she presented.
She removed the holy crown of her office with no small relief, tossing the dreadfully heavy relic to one of her Aboths. It gave her a headache each time she wore it to ceremonial functions, but it served a crucial purpose greater than simple adornment. It was a symbol of the rule of law—the law of Vasska, she reminded herself with a smile . . . and as such it was important that everyone who saw her knew that it was she, alone, who wore it.
“Thank you, Brother,” she said with practiced humility as the monk gingerly handled the crown. Her words echoed slightly in the vastness of the main chapel. “See to its packing at once. Has all been made ready for the journey?”
“Yes, Our Holy Lady.” The Aboth never took his eyes off the
floor as he spoke. “The caravan is at your command as you requested. All is made ready.”
“You have pleased me,” she said, thinking the quicker they were out of this backwater fish-market the better. She longed for her own bed and the more mundane duties of her office. This trip had been a strain on her, but a necessary one, she had no doubt—no doubt at all.
Edana turned to another of her guards, speaking without preamble. “I would beg the presence of the Lord Inquisitor.”
“Holy Lady, I shall bring him at once.” The Aboth had heard such commands before and knew obedience was the better part of valor.
She glanced upward at the vaulted ceiling above her. Multicolored light filtered down through the stained glass of the dome. She had been told this Kath-Drakonis was quite striking at midday, when the light filled the dual transepts, nave, and apse with rainbows of light. She hoped with all her heart not to be here long enough to see it.
It was a smallish Kath-Drakonis, after all, and not terribly well appointed. She had seen better in the larger ports of the Dragonback, not to mention the truly magnificent structures in Hrunard. It was all a bit depressing, really, to think that this building should represent the vast grandeur of Vasska to these people. The local Guardians and priests of the Nobis had been beside themselves when Edana arrived the night before—a feat of timing that had required that they spend a night in some collection of huts calling itself Leeside about twelve miles down the coast. It was all Edana could do to convince them not to vacate their own rooms on her behalf. She had been politic, of course, insisting that they not go to such trouble. The fact was that she had no intention of staying in their drafty, flea-infested cells. Still, it was all they had, she sadly reminded herself.
The Aboth was returning from the back of the apse. Beside him walked a taller, thin man in overlarge black robes trimmed in purple. The thin man tugged at the front of his ill-fitting vestment, trying to straighten it out. Straw blond, wispy hair stood out from his head.
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