As a heavy sunset began to consume Ylmeshd, King Yl entered in turn the temple of Zarduk, by its city-door.
It was already midnight in the cavern, but as Yl advanced—preceded by priests, followed by his kindred, his commanders, a tail of slaves, and a black-lacquered box, windowless and man-sized, borne high—brands burst into tall red leaf.
The last fire was uncovered as curtains of black hide were dragged away. Zarduk appeared, a carved stone, twelve feet in height, massively underlit by his own fiery intestines. He was finer than he had been, for they had gilded him recently with much melted gold, hung him with golden rings. It was his portion of the loot from Ankabek.
He did not have the ancient ugliness of Ommos, this engoldened fire god from the west. He possessed not only a head, but shoulders and a torso. His hands were sculpted flat against the skirt of his garment, seeming to grasp the furnace of his vitals.
They brought swamp leopards to him, ten of them, and ten men cut their throats. The blood steamed and stank.
Yl, himself clad in the pelts of black leopards, a collar of rubies, a pectoral with onyx and sardonyx, moved to the hewn step before the god. He took a knife from a priest, and slicing his own arm, the King let fall his blood into the hissing flames of Zarduk.
A growl of approval rose about the temple. Priests came instantly to stanch the wound.
Yl went to the statue’s side, and the priests brought him the mask of hammered brass that he must now put on. When he was adorned in it, had been amalgamated into it, he became an entity of the god, a priest himself. The gathering saw as much, and did him reverence. Yl pointed, and a slave approached, carrying an enormous topaz. It was dirty, the topaz, or obscured from within. It did not glitter in the torchlight or the glare of Zarduk’s guts, even when laid on the ground where the length of the god finished.
Yl poured wine now, over the topaz, as if to wash it.
It did not change.
Yl pointed again. The closed black box that had followed him in was brought forward and put down, and its hinged doors were lifted up.
After a few moments, a figure came from the box.
It was a youth, perhaps sixteen, slim yet strong. He was, at first glance, true Zakoris, velvet black of skin, hair and eyes. But there was a handsomeness in the features Zakoris had almost weeded out. The nose had never been splayed, the nostrils were proud and wide, winking with gold. His lips were full, a thing not racially usual; nor was he scarred.
There were golden circles round his ankles, arms, wrists. Otherwise he was naked.
His eyes, dreamy, almost blind—a narcotic—were fixed on nothing.
Drums beat. From behind the Zarduk, two girls emerged, fire on their hair and polished flesh.
They danced, invited, writhed. They ventured to the naked man, caressed him and drew him down, against the skirt of the statue.
The Zakorians looked on, soundless. This ritual too, was old as the Old Kingdom.
A girl lay under him, her hair across the Topaz, in the blood and wine. He parted her thighs, pierced her. As he strove, the red light of the oven of the god strove with him, along his back, buttocks, legs. The other girl stretched against him, her body moving with his, her fingers and her mouth urging him, pressing him to the brink, inexorable.
As he arched, both women arched with him, two curious shadows flung from his silhouette against the light. Orgasm, the magic energy. When he sank down, the women slid and rolled away, and like shadows still, faded through the light and were gone.
His seed was holy. The girl he had chosen to mate with would be examined in due course. If she were with child, this omen also would be propitious.
But now the priests came and turned him, so his face was toward the cavern’s ceiling. He stayed as motionless as if he slept.
Again, the priests had given Yl a knife, broader than the other.
Despite what they had fed him, as the knife went in, the sacrificial victim shrieked—but if with shock or pain was impossible to divine. The cries, oddly remote and unhuman, went on, for the first blow did not kill. This, like the rest, was ritual, old as the name of Zakoris. The viscera, disengaged, were flung into the belly of the god, a bizarre juxtaposition. The cries faltered, stopped.
The dying body still twitched, however, as they poured the oils upon it. It was proper some life should remain—Yl had been skillful and swift. A torch was cast. The image of the victim erupted in a gout of flame.
At last, the Free Zakorians shouted.
Zarduk had been honored and would remember them.
Beyond the burning sacrifice, against the burning statue, filmed now with smoke and gore, the topaz which had been the Eye of Anackire looked on.
In Karmiss, there were tiny golden flowers craning to drink the rain in the garden courtyard. Ulis Anet, bending to gaze at them, knew the harbor of Istris, now less than half a day away, would be open.
She had had a premonition Kesarh would come here today, perhaps tomorrow. He had ridden out one further time during the long snow. She had not expected him. She was given over to despair that afternoon, lying in her bed, unable to tolerate any physical evidence of self which arising would force on her. One of the attendants ran in first. And then he—like a storm from somewhere—moved into the room and filled it; electricity and darkness. “Stay where you are,” he said. He even smiled. “What could be better?” He was eager and clever and demanding, just as before. Her own hunger and its release seemed to obliterate her, the death-wish inherent in sex. In the night she woke and he was already gone. She rose and cursed him, true curses, Xarabian and coarse. He had sent her many gifts. She found the latest of these and dashed them all over the room. Some days after, when she failed to menstruate, she thought she was with child and was shaken by an unconscionable horror or triumph, unsure which. But at length, the blood began to come. She made plans to bribe and connive and somehow to get away when the thaw freed the land. She would go to the Lowlands, seek asylum in some obscure temple of Hamos or Hibrel. Val Nardia had been a priestess.
But then she predicted this return, today, tomorrow. Very strangely, she knew she was somewhat telepathically receptive to him, though he had stayed unaware of it, and unreciprocative.
There had been the macabre dream in Dorthar before his men took her—the sunset sea, the shore of ice, she in his arms. She heard much more now her Karmian servants were used to her. He had come back with his dead sister from Ankabek, some soldier had said, holding the corpse as if it slept.
When he arrived, she would welcome him cordially, with all the coolness that could mean. She would not lie with him. If he forced her, she would evince no pleasure even should her flesh condone.
It would mean little to him. Symbolically, for herself, it might redeem. Momentarily.
She had contemplated taking a lover during the long snow alone. Some attractive groom or guard. Kesarh would discover. He might be irritated. He might have the man punished or executed: She did not want the guilt of that.
Often she brooded on Raldanash. Or on Iros. Someone had let slip that Iros had died.
She had learned a great deal about Val Nardia. Ulis Anet was uncertain now if she had questioned so constantly, or if they had only constantly volunteered to inform.
Occasionally, she theorized to herself that she could attempt to murder Kesarh. But this idea was too melodramatic, like everything else, and vexed her.
She watched most of that day at the windows which looked toward Istris. The sky grew tawny, and she did not think he would come after all.