The Dark Remains (39 page)

Melia’s expression was pained, but she did not argue.

Durge watched the proceedings with a mixture of interest and disdain. It was clear the bard was correct; this was no orderly moot, but more a great, chaotic melee in which words were the weapons of choice.

The tall, shaggy-haired priest on the dais, Durge soon learned, was named Medris, and he represented the temple of Zeth, who was clearly one of the most powerful and important gods of Tarras, for the emperor followed his mysteries.

The woman who stood on the dais was Vanhera. She was nearly as tall and proud as Medris, but she was cool silver to his hot iron. As he listened, Durge learned that she was the high priestess of the temple of Yrsaia the Huntress, a fact which made Aryn gasp when it was revealed. Durge knew Yrsaia was one of the more important goddesses in the Dominions, but here Vanhera represented only the middle tiers of the Etherion.

The third priest on the dais, representing the lowest tiers, was an emaciated man in a drab brown robe, yet he seemed somehow more compelling than those who stood beside him. He was Lyderus, priest of the temple of Gol, who, from what Durge could gather, was the god of a group of ascetic hermits. He supposed that explained Lyderus’s gaunt visage.

Durge knew the gods themselves were not present in the Etherion, only their priests, but there was a power on the air he could not deny. It felt like the air on the moors of Embarr just before a storm swept out of the north with
thunder and lightning. Wherever they were, the gods were watching.

“The circle is open,” Medris said, his voice again booming into the alcove. “Who would address the Etherion?”

All around, flags of different colors were unfurled and draped from various balconies.

Medris scanned the flags, then nodded. “The Etherion recognizes the right of the temple of Vathris Bullslayer to speak.”

He laid his hand on the golden orb that topped the pedestal before him. There was a faint whirring, like the sound of wings, and something rose from the shadows below. As far as Durge could tell, it was a huge crystal set into an ornate wood frame. It was like a window, but with no walls around it, and made with glass so thick that things seen through it were distorted. Attached to the frame were two more of the gilded horns.

The crystal was supported by some sort of mechanical frame of wood and iron, with multiple joints, gears, and pulleys that Durge could not fathom at this distance. The crystal began to rise toward the highest tier.

“Halt!” Lyderus said on the dais, the gaunt priest’s voice sharp and thin as a knife, but ringing into the alcove as Medris’s had.

Lyderus moved to the center of the dais. “The records show that at the last assembly of the Etherion, the final speech was made by the temple of Vathris of the first tier. Precedence must be granted to a temple of another tier, if one would speak. The Etherion will hear the temple of Ondo.”

Medris glared at Lyderus, his rage clear even at a distance. Both he and Lyderus looked to Vanhera, who stood apart from them on the dais. She glanced to one side, and Durge saw a hollow behind the dais he had not noticed before. In it a scribe wrote furiously in a book. The scribe flipped back a page, then nodded to Vanhera.

“The record is as Lyderus describes,” she said, her voice filling the Etherion. “The temple of Ondo will speak.”

Medris gave a poisonous scowl, but he stepped away from the pedestal. Lyderus placed his hand on the golden orb. At once the crystal began to move again, the mechanical arms carrying it down to the third tier, then moving it halfway around the Etherion. At last Durge realized the movements of the crystal corresponded to the motions of Lyderus’s fingers upon the orb; somehow he was using it to control the crystal.

The crystal came to a halt before the alcove whose priests had unfurled a golden flag. The purpose of the crystal became clear, for one of the priests stepped toward it, and the crystal enlarged the image of his face, so that it filled the entire frame, ensuring that all in the Etherion might plainly see his expressions. The priest spoke, leaning toward one of the golden horns, and his voice rang out in Melia’s alcove.

Durge began to understand. The horns on the frame of the crystal were like those the three Voices spoke into on the dais. Somehow the horns carried the voice of the one who spoke into them, redoubled it, and brought it through other horns into each of the alcoves in the Etherion. It was a trick, like that of the crystal. However, he had never known light and sound could be manipulated as if they were wood or metal. The Tarrasians were indeed great engineers. Or at least, they had been when the Etherion was built over a millennium ago.

The priest of Ondo was speaking in a shrill voice, his pinched face filling the crystal. Lirith was right; they seemed a rude lot.

“This is an outrage! How could another temple dare try to speak before us—we, the followers of Ondo, who are bereft of our god? By what precedent would the temple of Vathris usurp our right to be heard? Unless, perhaps, it was their god who did this ugly and violent deed!” Spit
flecked the crystal, magnified a dozen times over. “All know how Vathris Bullslayer craves the taste of blood!”

A roar went up from many of the alcoves, loudest of all from that belonging to the temple of Vathris, where a red flag waved angrily.

“Now will the temple of Vathris speak,” Medris said.

Lyderus started to protest, but Vanhera shook her head. Medris gripped the orb, and the crystal whirred up and across the Etherion to the highest tier.

“Lies and more lies!” roared a burly priest. His thick neck puffed out in rage, nearly splitting the collar of his crimson robe. “Everything that the temple of Ondo speaks is known to be a lie. It was so before their god perished, and nothing has changed since. Who here wasn’t promised gold, never to receive it?”

Shouts and catcalls echoed around the Etherion. Scores of flags waved in agreement. In their alcove, the priests of Ondo quailed.

Falken let out a soft whistle. “Ondo really didn’t make many friends in the Etherion, did he?”

Melia glared at him. “He didn’t deserve to die.”

“I’m not saying he did.”

She leaned back in her chair and sighed. “I suppose it’s true. Ondo always was a bit on the selfish side. But he was not a bad god.”

“It’s all right, Melia,” Falken said. “We’ll find the guilty ones.”

However, Durge was not nearly so confident as the bard. The morning wore on, and many more of the temples spoke. It seemed that flags were always waving, and the crystal always flitting back and forth across the Etherion as Medris, Vanhera, and Lyderus wrestled for control of the golden orb below.

Yet for all the speeches that were made, and for all the angry words flung back and forth, things only seemed more muddled by the time the Etherion disbanded for the
day. The temple of Ondo had accused a dozen more temples of conspiring in the murder of their god—even temples that had lost priests and priestesses to the murderer themselves. No one spoke for the Rat God, and the followers of Geb were nowhere to be seen.

Even before the discourse ended, priests and priestesses were streaming from their alcoves into the broad halls that ringed the Etherion. The only thing that Durge had learned for certain was that none of the temples seemed to have any idea what was going on in the city, and that all of them were deathly afraid. He was fairly certain none of the temples present had conspired in the murders. It wasn’t much, but he supposed it was something.

The others rose from their chairs to depart the alcove. Durge opened the door and stepped through first, to be sure the way was safe. The great, curving corridor was crowded. Priests and priestesses hurried past, robes fluttering, on their way out of the Etherion.

Something caught Durge’s eyes. Twenty paces away, a trio of priests moved quickly down the corridor. They moved opposite the flow of the other priests and priestesses, away from the entrance of the Etherion. The three priests wore robes of dark gray crisscrossed by pearlescent threads. Durge did not recall seeing any gray robes in the Etherion, or any gray flags waving. Who were these priests? The three moved hastily to an opening that led to a set of stairs, their hooded heads moving back and forth as if they did not wish to be seen. Then they ducked into the opening and were gone.

The others stepped into the hallway. Durge turned to ask Melia about the three priests in gray, but before he could she breezed down the corridor.

“This way,” she said. “I would speak with Orsith.”

They came upon the old priest not far from his alcove, holding on to the arm of young Landus for support. This surprised Durge, for Orsith had seemed so free and graceful as he drifted in the air at the temple of Mandu. But
now, forced to move by more mundane means, he walked slowly, his back hunched, his fingers as thin as twigs on Landus’s arm.

Durge saw Melia’s eyes grow bright with sorrow, and somehow he knew what she had just realized: that this trip to Tarras was the last she was likely to make in Orsith’s lifetime. What must it be like for a being such as Melia or Falken, both of whom must have left so many they cared about behind them? The thought left his heart heavy and cold. Who was he to dread ghosts?

“Dearest one,” Orsith said, a smile lighting up his face. “I thought I saw you across the Etherion, although I confess my eyes are not what they once were. Only Mandu appears clear to me now. And good, sturdy Landus here, for he is ever at my side. A fine priest of Mandu he will make one day.”

The young acolyte bowed his head, but his smile was still clear for all to see.

“I wanted to ask you what you thought of the discourse today,” Melia said. “I’m afraid it was not as illuminating as I had hoped.”

“And yet you mustn’t cease hoping, dearest,” Orsith said. “For it is all we have in the end.”

Melia opened her mouth, but what she was going to say Durge never knew, for at that moment a peal of thunder rang out in the corridor. Again the thunder came, and again. Only it couldn’t be thunder, not here inside a building, however vast it was. And the sound was strangely sharp.

Screams echoed down the corridor, and people came running from the direction of the sound, robes clutched up around their ankles. Durge exchanged looks with the others, then they dashed down the corridor against the flow of fleeing priests and priestesses, leaving Orsith and Landus behind.

The corridor curved to the left, following the circle of the Etherion. Durge pushed his way past a tangle of priests
in orange robes who were falling over one another in an effort to escape. Then he came to a halt, the others beside him.

Three forms lay sprawled on the white-marble floor of the corridor. Blood pooled around their bodies, as crimson as their robes. One stared upward, a corpulent man, his eyes bulging, his face a dead mask of astonishment. Durge recognized him; he was the priest of Vathris Bullslayer who had addressed the Etherion earlier that morning. By their robes, the other two were priests of the warrior god as well. All of them had been struck dead. Falken moved to the fallen priests; Durge followed. Acrid smoke hung on the air.

Durge and Falken both knelt to examine one of the priests. There was a small rent in the man’s robe. Falken tore the garment aside. The hole was not only in the cloth of his robe. A single small, red pit marked the center of the man’s chest; it was from this that the blood flowed. The hole looked not unlike an arrow wound to Durge. However, there was no sign of whatever it was that had pierced the priest.

Falken stood, his hand red with blood. “I don’t understand. What kind of magic could do this?”

Durge did not know, but as he knelt beside the fallen priest, he realized that they had learned one thing this day after all.

Even the Etherion was not safe.

Lirith made her way through the crowded, dusty streets of the Fifth Circle, past countless merchants selling silver rings, rugs, ripe fruits, veils, and roasted meat. This was the outer circle of Tarras, where the poor, the forgotten,
the outcasts dwelled. Again she shut her eyes, casting a thread out to the shimmering web of the Weirding.

Where are you, sisters? You must be here—you have to be. Show me how to find you
.

However, the only answer was silence and the faint hum of life that coursed ceaselessly along the Weirding.

She opened her eyes and saw an old man sitting on a carpet on the street, selling mysteries of wood. These were tiny idols, representations of the New Gods a follower of one of the mystery cults might keep in a pocket or knotted in a scarf. Lirith recognized some of them: a crude wooden bull with a needle in its side for Vathris Bullslayer, a man with the face of a horse for Jorus Stormrunner. There were far more she did not know: a goddess with four arms and a serene, painted smile; a god with snowy wings sprouting from his shoulders; and another god with the legs and horns of a goat, a leering grin, and a monstrous phallus.

Lirith moved past the seller of mysteries. Perhaps she was wrong; perhaps they were not here. Perhaps the New Gods had driven Her away from this place.

But you know that’s not true, sister. Sia is everywhere, even in this city where the New Gods hold court
.

She moved on. Faces of a dozen different hues passed by, some as dark as her own, some darker yet. It had been some time since Lirith had seen others of similar complexion to herself. There had been a few in Corantha, fewer yet in the Dominions. Was she kin to any of these people?

But she would never know. Nor would she ever be able to ask her parents about her heritage. All she knew was that Toloria had not always been their home, that they had traveled there from somewhere else before Lirith was born. And that was all she would ever know.

She came to a grimy plaza where rag-clad children ran from red-faced vendors and women filled clay vessels from a murky fountain. On one side of the plaza, a number of
men and women sat on the cobblestones, leaning against a wall. At first Lirith thought they were laborers taking a midday break. Then she drew closer and knew that was not so.