As I hurried downward into the oppressive darkness, I cast my light again. It flickered feebly. I'd not be able to maintain it for long. I sped down flight after flight of broad steps, not daring to look anywhere except into the pool of light at my feet. When I at last faced the smooth black door that led into the innermost heart of Zhev'Na, I stopped to listen. The warning hammered in my head with the certainty of mortal danger. Go back! Do not come here !
But I couldn't change my mind because of some cowardly palpitations about cold stone and memory. Paulo had put himself in jeopardy to get me this far. I pushed open the door.
The walls and columns of the vast chamber showed gouges and great charred and jagged rents as if damaged in a cataclysm of fire. In its center lay the sculpture of a man resting on a bed of stone, very like those you see atop a coffin lid or carved in relief upon the face of a standing tomb. But before I could examine the sculpture or the damaged walls, a bolt of lightning flashed from the palm-sized ring of brass that hung spinning in the air above the sculpted man, drowning my handlight in such brilliance it forced my eyes closed. And when I opened them again, I was in a different place altogether. . . .
Chapter 25
Silver moonlight bathed the snowy forest. The pine trees' needles, sheathed in ice, tinkled softly in the frosty breath of the wind. My cheeks tingled with the cold, and the comforting scent of wood smoke lured me through the quiet to a lamp-lit cottage nestled in the trees. Merry laughter and the plinks of a harp being tuned drifted faintly on the curling smoke from the chimney. Imagining the Singers and Players readying their costumes and the feasting table laden with delights for family and guests, I thought to draw closer and peer inside to see who it was made merry on a winter's night. But from behind me came the soft crunch of horses' hooves in the snow. No jingle of harness. No hail of greeting. No sleigh bells. A silent coming.
Something wasn't right. Dread crept up behind me like a cloud across the moon, sending the merry harp strings out of tune again, and I opened my mouth to cry a warning. Too late. Across the snowy glade flew a lance—flame at its tip —that shattered the lamplit window, silenced the harper's music, and turned the laughter into shouts. Dark figures rushed out of the moon shadows and burst open the unlocked door, while more fire-lances flew from every side, striking roof and walls. The shouts turned to screams. The innocent lamplight burst into orange flame, and the merrymakers were dragged from the cottage and their blood steamed as it stained the pure white snow. Some were slaughtered. Some were hauled away in chains. Some turned, empty-eyed, upon their friends and family, laughing at their screams .
I cried out. But just as a pale-eyed warrior spun on his heel, sword raised, his blood-smeared face searching, an invisible hand clamped itself over my mouth and dragged me deeper into the trees. The one who held me would not allow me to move until the horsemen were gone and the wolves' eyes gleamed from the darkness —waiting. As the flames moved into the woodland to consume the trees, the house fire died into glowing ash. The wolves would finish what the evil had begun .
Released, I turned and ran through the forest. Others lived among the trees, homes and towers scattered in the most beautiful places, in dells and glens, by streamsides and waterfalls, families who welcomed long guesting and souls who hungered for solitude to grow their gifts. What need to crowd together when the whole of the world was welcoming and beautiful? I ran, but always too late, finding only ash, bloodstained snow, and the horrific echoes of death and captivity.
One after the other, hundreds of homes were hit on that winter night. I did not even question how it was I could see them all. The terror and pain grew into something huge, something awful, like a plague or a storm that lived inside me and spilled out into the vastness of the world. I was filled with it and revolted by it, and I wept because I could not make it stop. . . .
I clenched my fists and hammered at my head, fighting to return to my own thoughts, to dangerous reality … the ruins . . . the search. I blinked and the ring of dark stone columns took shape on every side of me. Yet the events that had unfolded before my eyes had borne the surety of reality as well, the truth of lived memory: the beginning, the Catastrophe, the night that terror and war had come to Gondai. On that night a hunger had been born whose feeding would ravage the world for a thousand years, for Three had lurked in that darkness and fed upon those screams.
I could not have warned them . The voice inside me was bent with pain. I could not have stopped it. It happened long before I was born. . . . Before I knew . . .
I hurried toward the center of the chamber where the lurid light of the spinning oculus shone down on the sculpted body of a man stretched out on the stone slab. No! He was part of the stone, yet not part of it . . . bolted . . . Vasrin's hand, he was fastened to the slab with bolts through his hands and his feet. Strips of iron across his wrists, ankles, and forehead were also bolted to the stone, fixing him in place. And the stone had molded itself about his body in thin brittle layers that over time would grow thick and solid until he was indeed a sculpture of a man. It had climbed up his sides and halfway over his shoulders and face. His arms, legs, and neck were already enclosed, every scar and sinew, every wrinkle in his torn shirt and breeches sculpted in delicate detail.
The lightning flashed and blinded me again. . . .
. . . and a crowd surged forward, carrying me with it. Never had I been in such a crush —stinking, ragged bodies, warm on the bitter winter's day, faces distorted with vices I did not know and hatred I did not understand .
"Burn him!" The cries were deafening, and as mindlessly angry as the roaring of beasts.
From above me came the insistent beating of banners flapping in the cold wind, red banners woven with a gold dragon stark against an ice-blue midday sky. The mob flowed from the narrow street into a wide open plaza fronting a squat fortress of gray stone. In the midst of the sea of jeering faces rose a high platform with a wooden post in its center and a man chained to it —a slender, dark-haired man clad only in rags, shivering in the cold, though he stood straight and calm while the storm of hate raged around him. His eyes were burned-out sockets, his face battered and bleeding, and in horror I watched as red-clad soldiers set torches to the wood piled at his feet. The crowd let out a monstrous cheer of satisfaction .
No, no, no . . . this was not me ! The voice inside me cried out in agony. Oh, gods, not this !
* * *
I couldn't understand it. The woman next to me, her teeth green and rotting, her breath foul with drink, grabbed my arm and pointed to the balcony high on the castle wall. "It's her! The witch what married the devil." And indeed a young woman dressed in plain white robes, her hair a ragged stubble, stood on the balcony watching the man. But as the flames grew, she sank to her knees and covered her eyes and ears until the man let go his agony in a single dreadful cry. The death scream echoed inside my head. . . .