Lyrec Page 9

  Below, the same two guards as before stood conversing in the middle of the rampart.

  Cheybal leaned out of the window. “You men there!” They both started in surprise, raised their heads. “That’s right. Up here. Both of you stop idling or I’ll have you scraping moss off the walls with your teeth!” He withdrew back into his room and began to pace. His fingertips flicked against his thumb.

  Kobachs. Ghosts. And whispers of violence, possibly even of war.

  All on his head; all to be transferred to a child. Ronnæm could dominate the boy, push him into bloody decisions, and even break apart the country he himself had assembled.

  Perhaps he had been too quick in his judgment. Maybe he should have let Ronnæm lead the armed party back to Ukobachia—if only to get rid of him. He would have to decide that before Faubus reported back to him. In the meantime he was expected to sit here and judge trifles as if nothing extraordinary had occurred. He slapped the side of the table in an explosion of frustration. The container of ink tipped onto its side. Thick black fluid poured out across the table. Cheybal looked about for a cloth or blank sheet of vellum. There was none.

  He stood and pressed his hands into his armpits as the ink dribbled slowly down and spattered on the floor.

  *****

  The low sun cast Lyrec’s shadow the length of the rope that stretched out before him like a lifeline. If that was his destiny, he did not have to look far to see the abrupt end to his future. Every few steps he stumbled and the rope jerked taut and pulled him forward again. His wrists were swollen and raw, the skin had been chafed away long ago. Marsh gnats swarmed like a simmering black bandage over each wound. Both hands were swollen. The ground had become spongy hours before, and there was a smell of sulphur in the air. His boots were sodden and his feet slipped within them at each step. His legs ached from maintaining balance.

  At times throughout the day, he had fallen into fevered fantasies in which he became his original self who merely observed the plight of this unfortunate humanoid. At any moment he would withdraw from this world and return to his homeworld of splashed crystal and faceted blue sun.

  He drifted into a dream where his body swelled and changed until it was colors and filaments within the confines of the globular crex. He thought then of Elystroya and began to weep, though he was unaware of doing so or of the odd looks the soldiers ahead gave him. He pretended to unite with her again and to tell her of all the wondrous worlds he had seen. Their membranes joined and they became one creature, sharing all consciousness.

  But as he spoke to her, the lies disintegrated and he found himself telling her the truth: He had found no such living worlds except for this one where he had been beaten and tied and dragged behind an animal. The other worlds had been dead or dying, the creatures who had once populated them obliterated, and he was powerless to undo the destruction. The vision of Elystroya broke apart in darkness.

  He remembered Caudel then. Caudel, of a race of tall, spindly humanoids not unlike these but having hard shell-like patches over their bodies. Caudel, the last of his kind, lying in the last hour of his life upon an asteroid of his former world. They found him, Lyrec and Borregad, before the final wisps of atmosphere drifted away. And, as Caudel died, they lived inside his thoughts and saw his world reassemble to be destroyed again; saw gods take form and descend from the skies with armies of nightmarish things out of legend. The war began. War. Had Caudel been risible then, he would have mocked the term—it hadn’t been war, it had been genocide. People of his race devoured one another in chain reactions of animal violence, ripping one another apart into a stew of unrecognizable flesh. The gods, having marshaled all sides to their deaths, did nothing but watch. The demonic armies hovered above the fields of battle like seabirds awaiting the leap of a fish. Their world trembled and the ground opened up. Mountains collapsed to be thrown back into the sky by massive explosions as the molten core of the world blasted to the surface. The entire planet burst apart, though it had already died. Only Caudel remained, on a chunk of rock whose atmosphere fell away like a shroud from a corpse, and, moments later, he, too, was gone. Lyrec and Borregad left him, carrying with them his last impressions of the war—a memory of the many gods rising up, merging, individuating into a new being who somehow resorbed the wasted energies of the battles and grew with the deaths. It was this being who had destroyed their world. No gods had ever been there at all. This Caudel had known in his heart, though how he knew remained a mystery to him. He despaired at how easily his race had been tricked, how quickly they had taken arms and gone to battle for no reason. This most awful of memories did not die with him. Lyrec carried it with him now, knowing as he did that the ghoulish being had been Miradomon.

  Soon a god would descend from the skies into this world—or had he done so already? From Caudel they had learned something of Miradomon’s method—but that was not enough for them to know where next to look for him.

  It hardly mattered now, Lyrec thought. He, the great survivor of an extinct race, had been reduced to the level of these creatures—an animal, a killer. The notion made him close his eyes and hang his head.

  He would never find Miradomon. Elystroya would never be avenged.

  In his misery, he lagged behind. The rope jerked tight, snapping him out of his self-pitying dream and into a reality of raw-ripped flesh. The captain, feeling the sudden tension on the rope, began to laugh and looked over his shoulder with cruel joy. Lyrec concentrated on hating that man, promised himself one more death before they slew him—then was repelled by the desire. He had indeed become human. The mind of the minstrel tainted his every thought and word and deed. The great serene being he had once been was gone, corrupted. It had stayed on the other side of that monstrous hole that had opened between his dead homeworld and an infinity of universes where Miradomon walked a chain of realities in which he didn’t belong, erasing all matter, all life, before moving to the next. Lyrec wanted to know why, but knew now with leaden certainty that he would never find out.

  *****

  Not far behind him, a large black feline listened to these thoughts and considered that his friend had much to learn about accepting change. Such introspection was fruitless and destructive. What did he have to complain about, anyway? Things could have been far worse for him.

  He could have been a cat.

  Chapter 8.

  The patterned floors in the outer galleries of the temple of Chagri had been swept earlier in the day. The colored tiles were large and smooth, and feet walking across them made a soft, padding sound. But in the central chamber, around the altar, the floor was strewn with large pebbles. It was supposed to be painful to approach the war god. Slyur hated the uncomfortable stones under his own feet, and the way that every movement, every shift of weight from one foot to the other, ground the stones into the tiles with a noise that seemed to scrape at his very bones.

  He made the family wait in the antechamber while he went alone into the altar room; even so, he could hear them shifting their stances nervously, scared, helplessly handing themselves over to the powers of a god—an incomprehensible god to them, he was sure. Right then he hated them for their stupid, absolute trust, which he lacked.

  In the center of the room, flanked by torches, the altar stood at the top of three steps. It was a twice life-size statue of Chagri carved from the purest white chidsist, what must have been the largest block ever found. The figure of the god held its shield like an enormous inverted bowl in its hands. Filled with a small pool of water, the shield acted as the altar stone.

  Slyur cast a queasy glance at the statue and noted as he had often done that its expression lacked the loathsome sneer that perpetually adorned the god in person. Nevertheless, the Hespet moved about beneath it with his body hunched up as if the statue were glaring down at him and might at any moment castigate him. He climbed the three steps and looked down into the shield. He dipped his hands into the dark water. This act was supposed to grant one the power of decision—anothe
r of Chagri’s attested attributes: God of Decisiveness. Slyur admitted to a mild hope that some kind of strength would be imparted to him—strength of will most of all. Just once he wanted to make his own decisions and not have circumstance or some demonic being forcing him to turn this way and that. His life was not his own, but he did not truly expect to gain power over it from the very being who at present manipulated him.

  He half-consciously muttered an invocation, then a few prayers by rote. He shook his hands out of the water. It rippled across the bowl of the shield. The reflection of the god’s face from above took on a series of cruel smiles. The eyes glowed orange for a moment. Slyur looked up in terror.

  No. It had only been the torches reflecting in the polished convex eyes. A trick of light.

  Slyur wiped his hands on his robes as he returned down the steps. Arriving in the antechamber again, he dismissed the attending priests, who bowed out of the room and went about their various assigned duties. He had told them nothing of what was happening here, and he was certain they would all go off and gossip about it. The large, moist eyes of the child’s father drew Slyur’s attention. He motioned the farmer to enter the altar room with him, but could not help looking at the girl again, lying unconscious on a cover one of the priests had thrown down for her. Her sister watched him warily, knowingly. Turning away, he practically shoved the farmer through the arch. They crunched to a halt at the base of the three steps. The farmer stood crouched as if expecting a whipping and would not look at the statue.

  “Now make your offering to the god,” Slyur said.

  “What—what do I offer?” the farmer asked.

  “Your daughter is worth what to you?”

  The farmer looked back at him with pleading eyes. “She is my life.”

  “Then you should offer—” No! He would not say it, knowing how Chagri would delight in taking the poor simpleton’s life in exchange—especially if he could goad Slyur ever after with the knowledge that he, in his priestly role, had actually recommended it. Damned be his white empty soul! “Offer up a calf. Promise to gut it. Bring the blood here for Chagri to drink. Your best calf it should be.” The farmer continued to goggle at him. “Well, go on, man. Every moment, your daughter falls deeper in death’s well.”

  He pointed up the stairs and the farmer steeled himself to approach the statue. He started up. Hespet Slyur thought he heard a deep deep moan, as if something far beneath the floor had begun to awaken. Above him, the statue’s smooth eyes watched the farmer bend over the shield and place his hands in the water. Slyur heard the whispers of his prayer. The farmer quickly descended.

  Slyur said, “All right. Bring her to me now.”

  The farmer went out and, after a moment, returned with his daughter held in his still dripping hands. Her head hung back. She might have been dead for all Slyur could tell. The smell of her was awful, like a piece of raw meat that had been forgotten for days in the sun. Her father’s face was seamed with misery and despair.

  He doesn’t dare to hope, thought Slyur, and questioned himself if Chagri intended to make good his promise.

  Without getting any closer than necessary, the Hespet reached out with stiff fingers and began unlacing the girl’s dress. The farmer had to assist him in removing it, but she weighed practically nothing and he could support her with one hand. Slyur looked askance at her protruding ribs and the hollowness below them. She did breathe, he saw—she was no more than the length of a finger from death, but she did breathe. The Hespet reached out and carefully took the girl from her father. The man immediately turned away and fled through the archway to be with his wife and family. The girl’s life no longer belonged to him. For a moment, Slyur was overwhelmed with pity.

  He turned toward the altar. Torchlight fell across the girl, allowing Slyur to see her wound more clearly. He scowled at it. White maggots crawled within the purple gash. He looked away, and he could feel the worms wriggle onto his arms and move toward his elbows. He bounded up the stairs and nearly hurled the child into the shield before reaching the top. The tickling on his arms became unbearable. He leaned over the rim of the shield and dropped the naked, squalid body into the black water. Then he flapped his arms wildly, but saw even as he did that there was nothing clinging to them: the sensation of maggots had been in his imagination.

  The water in the shield grew turgid with the girl’s filth. One leg stuck out—the wounded one—and Slyur pushed down her knee, submerging it. The water was cold. The girl had not reacted at all to its chill. Her head lay to one side, a string of drool spilling from between her lips.

  From the other room came the echoes of a sudden sob.

  Slyur turned. He knew the girl was dead now, but he would refrain from saying so. Let them have a little hope and hold it for awhile before easing them into the inevitable outcome.

  He went down the stairs and into the antechamber. Everyone scuffled away from him. Could they read what he knew on his face? He ignored the painful stones underfoot and tried to pretend that everything was fine. The little twin sister stared up at him, reprehending him silently; he could not lie to her, so he concentrated on her father, opened his hands as if revealing that he was free of deceit.

  From behind Slyur came a noise. His head snapped around. His breath stopped as he listened. In the altar room, someone spluttered and splashed in water.

  Slyur turned and dashed back into the room, kicking up pebbles, ignoring how they bruised his soles. As he took the first of the steps, the child’s head appeared above the edge of the shield.

  Slyur drew up in awe. The girl looked at him, then at her parents and brothers and sister. She began to cry. Her mother and father edged past the Hespet, who had become like a statue, part of the altar itself. The farmer lifted his daughter out of the water, handed her to her mother. Her shivering body was pink and shiny with water. The thighs of both her legs were smooth; not even a scar remained to show where the wound had been. They hugged her and rubbed warmth into her as they descended. The farmer lingered on the step beside the priest. “Hespet, I—I…oh thank you, Hespet. I’ll bring the calf this afternoon and bleed it here on the steps. I swear I will. Thank you.” He saw his daughter below and hurried to be with her.

  Slyur continued to stare at the altar. Slowly he climbed the last two steps and dared to look into the shield. The water was dark but clear. Ready for the next supplicant.

  Someone crept into the room. Slyur turned to find the twin sister at the base of the steps, her large cloud-pale eyes upon him as if he were all the world encapsulated. Her worship made him sick. He wanted to slap her face. He started down. His legs had become weak and his knees barely held him. The burden of her adoration dragged on him. He wanted to sit, but with great effort descended the remaining steps.

  The child bowed her head at his nearness and the pressure of her worship lifted.

  The Hespet shook his head. “Stop it.” He meant to command her, but the words came out in a weak rasp. He cleared his throat, massaged it at the same time. “Don’t honor me. Do not.” He grabbed her shoulders with trembling hands. “And I don’t want your family honoring me, either. It’s not me, do you understand. Not me!” He pushed her away, toward the arch. She stumbled in the stones, and looked back at him, eyes brimming with tears of confusion. She ran away.

  Slyur listened to her retreat. He could not tell if she had begun to cry. She could not possibly understand why he had grown angry and rebuked her.

  He still did not believe. A child had been healed miraculously, as promised. The fact made him hate himself. Why? he asked. Why? “She was dying, she’s been saved,” he whispered and raised his head to the statue again. “But why, when none were saved before?”

  *****

  If the Hespet doubted Chagri’s powers, he was alone in all the kingdom. The word spread faster than a fire through Atlarma. By the time the evening torches had been lighted, every crippled or afflicted person in or near the city was on his way to the temple of Chagri. They camped out
side the gates and, when the yard had been filled up, spilled out across the road, clogging it for coaches and other normal traffic. Soldiers came but could not make the people leave. At first they did not know why these people were here, but word quickly came to them as it was spreading across the kingdom like ripples across a pond.

  “A little girl was brought back to life here.”

  “No, it was a woman and she had her severed leg reattached by drinking the altar water.

  “She was ugly, too, and it made her beautiful.”

  “Not so! It was her head that was severed and replaced.”

  “Then how did she drink?”

  “It’s a miracle.”

  “Yes, a miracle.”

  When they found the aspect on which they could agree, and had quieted down, no one went away. Whatever the truth might be, something miraculous had happened. They would not leave. The soldiers finally gave up and went off to re-route traffic onto other roads. In the morning the poor deluded fools would find out that there were no miracles to be had, and then they would go home. A few would discover that their pockets had been picked, but as far as the soldiers were concerned that was just punishment for harboring such notions.

  In the morning when Slyur arrived at the temple, he would have jumped from his coach and escaped into the alleys if the crowd had not seen him first and rushed out to surround the coach. He pressed back against the cushions as dozens of dirty hands, some of them deformed or maimed, reached in through the windows on both sides and a hundred voices shouted prayers and supplications and promises of absurdly fantastic rewards if he would let them accompany him into Chagri’s temple. The hands stretched in further as people climbed onto the coach. They wanted to touch the Hespet, to make contact with his magic and have it act on them. Slyur slid down and curled up on the floor.