Vansen was struck by the young man’s almost feverish excitement. “A local woodsman, no doubt.” “He… he seemed strange to me.”
Ferras Vansen looked around. Work setting up camp had stopped and all were now watching him. He could feel their curiosity and discomfort. “Well, then, we’ll have a look.You come with me. Dyer? You, too. Perhaps we can all shelter somewhere a bit more comfortable tonight, if this old fellow lives nearby.”
The pair climbed onto their horses and followed the young guard along the road, past the point where it turned and took them out of sight of the camp. There was indeed a small, dark figure hurrying along ahead of them. Although the shape was bent,Vansen thought that if he was an old man, he must be a very spry old man.
They left the young foot soldier and spurred ahead, thinking to catch up to the cloaked shape in a matter of moments, but it was growing dark quickly and somehow even though the road curved again only a little, they could not find him.
“He’s heard us coming and stepped into the trees,” said Collum Dyer.
They rode a little farther, until they could see a clear stretch of road before them. Even in the poor light it was quite clear no one was hurrying ahead of them. They turned and made their way back, riding slowly, peering into the thicket on either side of the road to see if their quarry was hiding there.
“A trick,” Dyer said. “Do you think he was an enemy? A spy?”
“Perhaps, but…” Vansen suddenly pulled up in the middle of the road. His horse was restive, pawing at the ground impatiently. A little evening mist had begun to rise from the ground. “We’ve come back two bends of the road,” he said. “Collum, where is the camp?”
Dyer looked startled, then scowled. “You’ll frighten us both, Captain. A little farther ahead—we’ve just mistaken how far in this failing light.”
Vansen allowed himself to be led, but after they had been riding for a while longer, Dyer suddenly reined up and began to call.
“Hallooo! Hallooo! Where are you all? It’s Dyer—halloooo!” No one answered.
“But we are still on the same road!” Collum Dyer said in panic and fury. “It’s not even full dark!” Ferras Vansen found he was trembling a little, although the evening was not particularly cold. Mist twined lazily between the trees. He made the sign of the Trigon and realized he had been silently murmuring prayers to the gods for some time. “No,” he said slowly, “but somewhere, somehow, without even knowing it… we have crossed the Shadowline.”
19. The God-King
DEEP HOLE:
The sound of a distant horn
The salt smell of a weeping child
The air is hard to breathe
—from The Bonefall Oracles
As usual, the high priest did not enter the dark room until Qinnitan had already been led through an exhausting series of prayers and the steaming golden cup had been set before her. High Priest Panhyssir was another Favored, and was at least as large and imposing as Luian, but seemed to have studied the ways of real men as carefully as Luian had studied those of natural women. He also seemed to have kept his stones until after he had reached manhood—his beard was wispy but long, and he had a surprisingly deep voice, which he used to great effect.
“Has she completed the day’s obeisances?” he demanded When the acolyte nodded, the high priest crossed his arms on his chest. “Good. And the mirror-prayers—has she said them all?”
Qinnitan swallowed her irritation. She didn’t like being talked about as if she were only a child who couldn’t understand, and considering that the hours-long prayer rituals in this small, mirror-lined chamber in the temple never changed, and that she had never been allowed to skip even one of the dozens of intricate chants (those many-named invocations of the different characters of Nushash spoken into the largest of the sacred mirrors, praising the god in his incarnations as the Red Horse, the Glowing Orb of Dawn, the Slayer of Night’s Demons, the Golden River, the Protector of Sleep, the Juggler of the Stars, and all the others) Qinnitan thought it was a bit much for the priest to act as if during his absence she might have been doing something else instead.
“Yes, Great One, O treasured of Nushash.” The subordinate priest, also one of the Favored, had the voice and smooth skin of a young boy, although he was clearly full grown. He was vain, too. he liked to observe himself in the sacred mirrors when he didn’t think Qinnitan was looking. “She is prepared.”
Qinnitan accepted the cup—a splendid thing of gems and hammered gold in the shape of the winged bull that drew Nushash’s great wagon across the sky, worth more than the entire neighborhood in which she had grown up—and did her best to look solemn and grateful. High Priest Pan-hyssir, after all, was one of the most powerful men in the world and probably held her life in his hands. Still, she could not help wrinkling up her face a little as she took the first swallow.
It was lucky that the young priest always said his invocation so loudly— it made it easier for her to drink slowly, and not to worry about the noises she made as she forced the dreadful stuff down. The elixir, the Sun’s Blood as they called it, did taste a little bit like actual blood, salty and with a smoky hint of musk, which was one of the reasons Qinnitan had to force herself not to gag on it. There were other flavors as well, none of them particularly nice, and although it wasn’t spicy, it made her entire mouth tingle as though she had eaten too many of the little yellow Marash peppers.
“Now close your eyes, child,” Panhyssir told her in his deep, important voice as she finished draining the cup. “Let the god find you and touch you. It is a great, great honor.”
The honor came more quickly than usual, and it was no mere brush this time, no dreamy caress as in past days, but more like being grabbed and shaken by something huge. It started as a feeling of heat at the back of her stomach and then spread swiftly up and down her spine, both directions at the same moment like a crackle of fire through dry grass, flaring at last behind her eyes and between her legs so that she would have fallen off the chair if the younger priest had not grabbed her. She felt his hands as though they were far, far away, as though they touched a statue of her rather than the real Qinnitan. The rush of noise and darkness into her head was so powerful that for long moments she was certain she would die, that her skull would burst like a pine knot in a cook fire.
“Help me!” she screamed—or tried to, but the words only existed in her own thoughts. What came out of her mouth instead were animal grunts.
“Lay her down,” Panhyssir commanded. His voice seemed to come from another room. “It has well and truly taken her this time.”
“Is there anything… ?” Qinnitan could not see the young priest—she was in a night-dark fog—but he sounded frightened. “Will she… ?”
“She is feeling the touch of the god. She is being prepared. Lay her back on the cushions so she does not harm herself. The great god is speaking to her…”
But he’s not, Qinnitan thought as Panhyssir’s voice grew fainter and fainter, leaving her alone at last in blackness. No one’s speaking to me. I’m all alone. I’m all alone!
It grew thick around her, then—although she didn’t know, couldn’t even guess, what “it” was. She was having enough difficulty just holding what she was and who she was in her heart: the darkness threatened to suck it all away, all of what made her Qinnitan, just as winter nights of her childhood had yanked the warmth from her face when she ran outside in a sweat after jumping and playing with her cousins.