'I call it a thin chance. The whole thing's more than risky. And if we're caught -'
'Well, if you now feel that you'd prefer not to take part, my dear Mollo, by all means say so. But you said you'd risk anything to harm them. As far as I'm concerned, I haven't kept my skin whole these five years just to come here and risk nothing. Santil wants a resounding crash -1 must try to provide one.'
'Suppose, after all, I did kill the woman, couldn't we simply dive into the crowd and pretend complete ignorance? No one would be be able to identify us, and the fire might have been an accident -blown sparks on the wind.'
'You can certainly try that if you prefer, but they are bound to find out that the fire was no accident – I shall have to rip up the roof to get it to take properly. Suspicion will certainly fall on me – do you think it won't on you, after the motive you've been given today? Can you trust yourself to resist suspicion and enquiry convincingly for days on end? Besides, if the bear dies, the Ortelgans will be beside themselves. They are quite capable of torturing every delegate in the city to get a confession. No, on balance, I think I prefer my postern.'
'Perhaps you're right. Well, if we succeed and then manage to reach Erkcdis -'
'You will certainly not find him ungrateful, as no doubt you realize. You will do very, very much better for yourself than you would as governor of Kabin.'
'I believe that, certainly. Well, if I don't turn coward or think of any other stumbling-block before nightfall, I'm your man. But thank God there isn't long to wait.*
29 The Fire Festival
As dusk fell along the terraces of the Leopard Hill, with a green, yellow-streaked sky in the west and flutterings of bats against the last light, the new moon, visible all afternoon, began to gleam more brightly, seeming, as it moved towards its early setting, so frail and slender as almost to be insubstantial, no more than a ripple of the surrounding air catching the light like water undulating over a submerged rock. Small and lonely it looked, despite the nearby stars; fragile and fine as a greenfinch in spring, assailable as the innocence of a child wandering alone in a field of summer daisies. All below lay in silence and star-lit darkness, the city quieter than midnight, every fire extinguished, every voice silent, not a light that gleamed, not a girl that sang, not a flame that burned, not a beggar that whined for alms. This was the hour of the Quenching. The streets were deserted, the sandy squares, raked smooth at close of day, stood empty, ribbed and void as wind-frozen pools. Once the distant howl of a dog broke off short, as though quickly silenced. So still at last grew the moon-faint night that the sound of a boy's weeping, in a barracoon of the slave-market, carried as far as the Peacock Gate, where a single guard stood in the shadows, his arms folded, his spear leaning against the wall at his back. Above this expectant quiet, still as the spring fields outside the city, the wan crescent of light moved slowly on, like one compelled to travel towards a dark destination, of which he knows only that it will end his youth and change his life beyond foreseeing.
High on the Serpent tower Sheldra, cloaked against the night air, stood gazing westward, waiting for the lower horn of the declining moon to align itself with the pinnacle of the Bramba tower at the opposite corner. When at last it did so, the mile-wide silence was broken by her long, ululant cry of 'Shardik! Lord Shardik's fire!' A moment after, a streaking, dusky tongue of flame leapt up the thirty feet of the pitch-coated pine-trunk erected on the palace roof, appearing from the city below as a column of fire in the southern sky. From along the walls dividing the upper from the lower city, the priestess's wailing call was answered and repeated, as five similar but lesser flames rose, one after another, from the roofs of the equidistant guard-turrets, like serpents from their baskets as the reedy note of the snake-charmer. Then, from the lower city, there followed in appointed order the flames of the various gates and towers – the Blue Gate, the Gate of Lilies, the towers of the great clocks, the tower of Sel-Dolad, the tower of the Orphans and the tower of Leaves. Each flame soared into the night with the speed of a gymnast climbing a rope, and the poles burned in long, blazing waves, the fire rippling like water along their sides. So for a little they stood alone, indicating the length and breadth of the city where it lay upon the plain like a great raft moored under the steep of Crandor. And as they burned, their crackling alone breaking the silence that returned upon the ceasing of the cries from the towers, the streets began to fill with growing numbers of people emerging from their doors; some merely standing, like the sentry, in the dark, others groping slowly but purposefully towards the Caravan Market. Soon many were assembled there, all unspeaking, all standing patiently in a moonset, flame-flecked owl-light almost too dim for any to recognize his neighbour.
Then, far off against the Leopard Hill, appeared the flame of a single torch. Quickly it moved, bobbing, descending, racing down through the terraces towards the Barb, through the gardens and on towards the Peacock Gate, which stood ready open for the runner to enter the street of the Armourers and so come down to the Market and the reverent, waiting crowd. How many were gathered there? Hundreds, thousands. Very many men and some women also, each one the head of a household; justices and civic officers, foreign merchants, tally-keepers, builders and carpenters, the respectable widow side by side with Auntie from the jolly girls' house, hard-handed cobblers, harness-makers and weavers, the keepers of the itinerant labourers' hostels, the landlord of The Green Grove, the guardian of the provincial couriers' hospice and more, many more, stood shoulder to shoulder in silence, their only light the distant glinting of the tall flames which had summoned them from their homes, each carrying an unlit torch, to seek, as the gift of God, the blessing of the renewal of fire. The runner, a young officer of Ged-la-Dan's household, honoured with this task in recognition of courageous service in Lapan, carried his torch, lit from the new fire on the Palace roof, to the plinth of the Great Scales and there at last halted, silent and smiling, waiting a few moments to collect himself and to be sure of his effect before holding out the flame to the nearest suppliant, an old man wrapped in a patched, green cloak and leaning on a staff.
'Blest be the fire!' called the officer in a voice that carried across the square.
'Blest be Lord Shardik!' replied the old man quaveringly, and as he spoke lit his torch from the other's.
Now a handsome, middle-aged woman stepped forward, carrying in one hand her torch and in the other a yellow-painted wand, in token that she was deputizing for a husband absent at the war. There were many such in the crowd.
'Blest be the fire!' cried the young officer again, and 'Blest be Lord Shardik!' she answered, looking him in the eye with a smile that said, 'And blest be you too, my fine fellow.' Holding her lit torch aloft, she turned and set out for home, while a rough, heavily-built man, dressed like a drover, took her place before the plinth.