The Dark Remains (42 page)

“I can see how she might have thought that, seeing your charm,” Melia said. “Sif is the arachnid god. Spiders are sacred to him.”

Aryn glanced at Melia. “Was the temple of Sif represented at the Etherion the other day?”

“No, they weren’t in attendance.”

Falken snorted. “Like half the temples in the city. I suppose they’re as afraid as—”

“By the steel of my greatsword!”

As one they gaped at Durge. It was unusual enough for the solemn knight to interrupt another, but for the Embarran to utter an oath was nothing less than astonishing.

“What is it, Durge?” Lirith managed.

The knight’s mustaches twitched. “Melia,” he said, “tell me, what sort of robes do the priests of Sif wear?”

Melia’s expression was puzzled. “They wear robes of dark gray, with pale gray threads woven into them. They’re meant to look like spiderwebs, I believe. But why do you ask?”

“Because now I know who the murderer is.”

Despite the balmy night air drifting past the curtains, Aryn felt cold. Durge’s statement had struck them all like a slap in the face. She cast a glance at Lirith, then spun a quick thread along the web of the Weirding.

What on Eldh is he talking about, sister? Neither Melia nor Falken has managed to discover who killed
Ondo and Geb. Durge can’t possibly know who the murderer is
.

Lirith’s reply crackled back across the Weirding like lightning.
If that is what you believe, then you underestimate him. Durge has seen much in his life, has endured much that you cannot even imagine. He is a wise and intelligent man, as well as a philosopher of science, and you do both him and yourself a disservice by so carelessly doubting him. Sister
.

Aryn gasped. The sharpness of these words stung her like cold needles. What had she done to provoke such a rebuke? She never said Durge was stupid. She pulled her gaze from Lirith. Falken stood behind Melia’s chair, hands on her small shoulders. Both bard and lady regarded Durge seriously, and Aryn winced. Perhaps Lirith was right, perhaps she was horrible to doubt Durge. It was clear that Melia and Falken did not.

As if by a spell, memories came to Aryn like a bundle of small paintings she could hold in her hand, each one depicting a moment when she had been cruel to Durge, or had laughed at him. Or, perhaps worst of all, had simply ignored the knight.

No, not like small paintings. Like cards.

You have forgotten about one who bore pain for you
.

Was Durge the one the old woman had meant? Aryn recoiled but could not cast down the hand of memories she had drawn. What was wrong with her? No man could be kinder, stronger, truer than the craggy-faced Embarran. Why was it so hard for her to see good in him?

Perhaps it is simply that you do not want to see it, sister. After all, he is more than old enough to be your father
.…

“Who is it, Durge?” Melia said, her voice tight.

“It was only just now that it all made sense to me,” the knight replied in his rumbling voice. He glanced at Lirith. “It was the spider, my lady.”

“What does this have to do with spiders?” Falken said.

“Everything,” Durge said. “I cannot speak to your dreams, Lady Lirith, or of the visions beheld by the witches of Tarras. However, I do know what I have witnessed with my own eyes. Three days ago, as we departed the Etherion, only moments before the priests of Vathris were slain, I glimpsed several priests who I had not seen participating in the discourse. They were moving quickly, as if they did not wish to be seen. And they wore dark gray robes woven with pale gray threads.”

Melia stood up, and the kitten fell with a yowl to the floor, extending its feet only at the last moment to catch itself.

“Priests of Sif.” Her amber eyes flashed. “You believe Sif is the murderer.”

Durge nodded. “From all we have learned, it can be the only answer. We know from Lirith’s visit to the goldsmiths that Ondo had refused to make the amulets of gold the arachnid god desired for his priests. We also know that, recently, the followers of Ondo were robbed of some of their gold. It is my belief that, thwarted in his desire, Sif determined to gain the gold by any means possible. First he murdered Ondo, casting the goldsmiths in disarray. Then he murdered priests of various temples in order to sow chaos and confusion, to make sure the Etherion would not work together to discover him. Finally, he plotted with another god to steal from the guild of goldsmiths.”

“Geb,” Aryn said, the pieces falling into place in her mind. Lirith was right; she should not have doubted Durge. “That’s why you found the gold coin in the sewer.”

“So I believe,” Durge said. “Only it was not a coin that I found, but a slug. I should have known it immediately, given its smooth faces. I use slugs made of lead in my alchemical work. But gold slugs are used in the making of jewelry. Geb’s followers must have stolen the gold and
transported it through the sewers beneath the city, dropping the slug in their haste.”

Falken ran a hand through his silver-shot hair. “Wait a minute, Durge. If Sif made a deal with Geb to steal Ondo’s gold, why did he turn around and murder Geb? It wouldn’t make any sense to murder his partner in crime.”

“No, it wouldn’t,” Durge said. “Unless Geb betrayed Sif and kept the gold for himself. After all, Geb is the god not just of beggars, but of thieves as well.”

Falken slapped his gloved hand to his forehead. “Of course! That’s why Geb’s followers are in hiding. They should have been out in force, using the death of their god to gain sympathy and charity, but instead they’ve hidden themselves deep in the sewers. They don’t want the guild of goldsmiths to find out they were in league with Ondo’s murderer, and they don’t want Sif to take out his revenge on them as he did their god, or to find out where they’ve hidden the gold.”

Melia paced before the window, her small hands clenched into fists. “I should have seen it! Sif ever was a spinner of webs.” She moved to Durge. “Thank you,” she said simply, and the knight bowed low before her.

“There’s still one thing I don’t understand,” Lirith said. “You told us yourself, Melia, that in all the history of Tarras one god has never slain another. So how did Sif manage to murder both Ondo and Geb?”

“I don’t know,” Melia said, her eyes glittering like sparks on copper. “But I intend to find out. Let us go to the temple of Sif at once. I’m going to give those priests—”

A sharp knock at the door interrupted Melia. Falken opened it, and a gangly young man rushed through, stumbling as his toe caught the hem of his simple white robe.

“Landus!” Aryn blurted, then winced at her rudeness. But while Landus wasn’t the last person she might have expected to come tumbling through their door, he certainly had to be near the bottom of the list.

Durge steadied the acolyte with strong hands. The young man hastily untangled his robe and looked up. As he did, Aryn sucked in a breath. The last time she had seen Landus, his broad face had been full of good cheer. Now his visage was strangely hard, his kind brown eyes glassy and sunken.

“What’s going on, Landus?” Falken said.

The young acolyte struggled for words. He must have run from the Fourth Circle all the way here. “It’s … it’s Orsith.”

Melia lifted a hand to her throat, the blood draining from her face. “Landus, what is it? Tell me at once that Orsith is well.”

“I’m … I’m sorry, Your Holiness.”

Melia slumped back into her chair, limply, like a piece of cloth cast down.

“I felt a chill come over me a short while ago,” she said softly. “I thought it only the night air. But it wasn’t the air, was it?”

She looked up at Landus, and the young acolyte’s face was a mask of sorrow.

“No, Your Holiness, it was not.”

The countless temples of the Second Circle glowed in the pearly light of the moon. To Aryn, they looked like houses of bones shining in the night.

The streets of Tarras were not so busy as during the warm hours of the day, but even in the coolness of midnight they were far from empty. Torches lit the way for drunken revelers to stagger from one feast to another. Music and laughter drifted out of glowing windows, although somehow the sound was more sinister than
merry. From time to time cries echoed through the city, but whether they were made in pain or ecstasy was impossible to tell.

Just before they left the Fourth Circle, a man in fine clothes had stumbled before Aryn. He vomited onto the street, laughed, then staggered on. Durge started to move after the man, to rebuke him, but Aryn tugged his arm. Melia had not stopped moving.

The Third Circle had been quiet, for it lay under the watchful eyes of the Tarrasian military. The temple district through which they passed was neither silent nor as raucous as the lower circles of the city. Still, it was clear that many gods favored the shadows of night to the bright sun of day. Incense rose on the air, along with the murmur of chanted prayers.

They passed one temple whose doors stood wide open. Light spilled down the steps like molten gold. Above the door, a frieze depicted a leering, goat-legged god. In one hand he held a naked maiden, in the other a pretty young man.

Aryn’s gaze drifted past the doors. The temple was filled with the smoke of braziers, so that it was hard to be certain what it was she was seeing. But the floor of the temple seemed to writhe as if alive with serpents. Then a night breeze spun the smoke in circles, and she saw not serpents, but arms and legs, tangled together into a living, undulating knot. Moans rose on the air like fractured prayers. They were sounds of pleasure. Or torture.

This time it was Durge who pulled her arm. “No, my lady. Do not look within that temple.”

Through great force of will, she managed to wrest her gaze away and let the knight pull her after the others.

Landus led them quickly through the shadowy streets. The young acolyte’s face was solemn, and perhaps it was a trick of the moonlight, but even his large, crooked nose seemed far less comical than Aryn remembered. It seemed once again she had underestimated someone.

By the time they reached the temple of Mandu, the mourning had already begun. The stark interior of the temple was lit by a pale, sourceless radiance, so that the white stone seemed almost translucent. A dozen priests and priestesses stood before the temple’s altar, beneath the serene, smiling statue of the Everdying God. Something rested on the stone slab.

Except that wasn’t quite right. Whatever the object was, it hovered above the stone surface. At last Aryn realized that it was the form of a man, wrapped head to toe in a shroud of white. Only his face remained uncovered: gaunt and wrinkled, yet in death as peaceful as that of his god.

“Oh, Orsith,” Melia whispered.

The priests and priestesses parted as she rushed to the altar, as if they had been expecting this. Melia caressed the old man’s face. She bent to whisper to him, but whatever she said was lost as a song rose on the air. Aryn could not understand the strange words the priests and priestesses sang, but there was sorrow in it, and a vast, endless joy that was almost too much to bear.

At last Melia turned from the form floating above the altar and returned to them.

“If it is not too much trouble,” she said to Landus, “I would see where he spent his last moments.”

The acolyte nodded. “Of course, Your Holiness. It is no trouble. This way.”

He led them to a small antechamber that, unlike most of what Aryn had seen of the temple of Mandu, was anything but stark and empty. The walls were lined with wooden shelves and cabinets, stuffed nearly to bursting with tightly rolled vellum scrolls. In the middle of the chamber were a table and a stool, and on the table were baskets of pens and jars of ink, as well as a sheet of vellum. One of the ink bottles had spilled across it, obscuring most of what had been written.

“This was … this
is
Orsith’s study,” Landus said, struggling for words. “He was always so diligent in setting down
the records. Orsith loves … that is, he always loved histories so.”

In the dim candlelight of the study, Landus appeared suddenly frail and thin, old beyond his years. But then, it was plain he had both loved and worshiped Orsith. Aryn hesitated, then moved to the young man and laid her hand on his arm.

“I’m so sorry, Landus,” she said.

He looked at her, his eyes containing surprise, then he nodded, a grateful smile touching his lips. “In the end, the circle goes full round for all of us, and Orsith lived a long, prosperous turn. While we all tried to deny it, his health had been failing this last year. It is a shock, but perhaps not quite a surprise.”

Falken approached the table. “Was he in here when you found him?”

Landus nodded. “Several of us heard Orsith cry out. I was just down the hallway, so I was the first to arrive. Yet by the time I reached him, he was already gone, slumped here at the table. I fear his heart gave way. But his cry was short; I do not believe that he felt much pain in his passing.”

Melia folded her arms over the bodice of her kirtle. “I should have come to Tarras sooner. I could have spent more time before he passed on to the next circle. I wish I had known his heart was so weak.”

“That knowledge would have done you no good, my lady.”

All of them turned toward Durge. The knight had been kneeling in the corner and now stood.

Melia stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

“It was not Orsith’s heart that killed him,” the knight said.

Falken scowled at him. “Durge, this is no time for jests.”

The Embarran raised an eyebrow at this, and Falken winced, evidently realizing the foolishness of his words.

Aryn moved forward. “You found something, didn’t you, Durge? What is it?”

The knight held out a rough hand. On his palm, gleaming in the candlelight, was a spider fashioned of gold.

Falken sat at the table, studying the stained piece of vellum. Melia stood stiffly, silently behind him, having refused the chair herself. She was as rigid as the statue of Mandu in the main hall of the temple. However, right then there was none of Mandu’s serenity in her eyes. Instead, they were hard and haunted.