“Bring me one of the coffins out of the wall,” the lord protector told the soldiers. “There—one of the old ones. That will be our altar.”
His guards went to the dusty box he had chosen and extricated it from its niche, then carried it to the center of the vault with a marked lack of enthusiasm. Elan M’Cory didn’t speak, but her mouth tightened at the sight of it and she turned her face away. Tolly took the baby from Tinwright and laid him on his back atop the featureless lid with as little care as if the child were a sack of meal. Alessandros whimpered but remained asleep. Hendon Tolly then commanded one of the other soldiers to remove the mirror from its wrappings and place it on the stone floor beside the makeshift altar.
“Now read from the book, poet!” Tolly said. “The page is marked by a ribbon. Read!”
If he only looked at the page of the book Hendon Tolly had given him, Tinwright decided, if he only read the words that marched across the page, though they squirmed before his eyes like insects, he would almost be able to pretend that all was well. If he did not look at the hideous demons and monsters cavorting in the margins of the pages, drawn with too much gleeful indulgence to be the work of any gods-fearing scribe, if he looked at nothing but the words themselves and ignored the death that was all around him and the madness in Hendon Tolly’s every word and, worst of all, the knowledge that in mere moments he would be forced to do something so unspeakable that his soul would be damned to the deepest, darkest pits of Kernios’ gray realm for as long as time itself existed… well, then he could almost pretend that what he was doing made sense.…
“Curse you, you crawling peasant scum!” Tolly was almost jumping up and down with rage; a little bubble of white spittle had appeared at the corner of his mouth. “Read, curse you! Read it aloud! It is an invocation. It is meant to open the way to the land of the gods! Read!”
Tinwright swallowed. It felt as though something as large as a fir cone had lodged in his throat.
He gained a little strength as he went, not because his heart had grown any less leaden, but because the rhythm of the words themselves caught him up, a cadence as powerful as the pace of a marching army.
When he had reached the end of the passage, Tinwright stumbled on without realizing it, reading a few more words before Hendon Tolly angrily struck him on the side of the head, a stinging blow that almost made Tinwright drop the ancient book.
“Dog! Now take up the knife, and when I say it is time, make the sacrifice. The mirror must be smeared with the blood—that is what Okros said. But do not slit the creature’s throat until I say the proper words!” Tolly thrust the dagger into Tinwright’s unwilling hand. “Take it and hold it close. We are drawing near the hour when that cursed Xixian dog will be performing his own ritual. We must bargain with the gods before he does!” Tolly’s voice suddenly rose in a peal of laughter that was as frightening as anything else that had happened so far—a note of pure madness. “Oh! Oh! Can you imagine the autarch’s rage when he finds that I have broken into Heaven first—that I have stolen everything he coveted?”
“Don’t do it, Matt!” Elan’s voice was as ragged as Tinwright’s stinking grave-clothes. “Not the child! My life, your life—nothing is worth such a crime ... !”
He could not bear to listen to her. Each word felt like the sting of a whip. He lowered the knife until it touched the baby’s throat. At the feel of the cold metal, little Alessandros woke and began to cry again and Tinwright hurriedly lifted it so he didn’t accidentally cut the infant’s soft skin. He could not bear to look at the squirming baby, so he closed his eyes.
Nothing, he told himself. Nothing I can do. Nothing. It might as well not be happening. I could be asleep. All a dream. He groped for the child’s heaving chest until he found it, let the fingers of his free hand rest gently upon it. Nothing.
Hendon Tolly was reading now, more words from before history, last uttered in the days of the unmourned Shadow Lords or chanted over a rock tomb in the southern forests when Hierosol itself was yet to be.
It was more than an invocation they had been reading, Tinwright dimly realized, it was a challenge—a challenge to the gods themselves, the death-song of some heathen king who claimed that the grave would not hold him, that the gods themselves would not be able to restrain him.
He could hear something else behind Tolly’s words, a soft sound that nevertheless was coming from all around him, quiet bumping, scratching, as though in every box in the great vault something was stirring into movement.
Matt Tinwright opened his eyes. He could see nothing except the flickering of the torches, which bent in a sudden draft, but the soldiers were staring around wildly. The scraping grew louder, as though rats were gnawing their way out of the walls. Two of the guards suddenly bolted for the next chamber. Hendon Tolly watched them go, his eyes bulging with rage, but his chant was growing louder and it seemed he did not dare to stop.
And now Tinwright could feel something more than merely the restlessness of ancient kings disturbed in their moldering slumber. A hatefully familiar presence lurked somewhere just beyond the edges of what the poet could see and smell and hear, the same thing that had stalked him in the mirror. It was as close as it had ever been; he could feel its attention pinioning him as if he were an insect on a tabletop. It was old and strong and had as little interest in Tinwright’s mortal thoughts and feelings as he did in the hopes and cares of a stone. And it was drawing closer.…