Part 18 (1/2)

Eleven Gra.s.shoppers regarded her with those round pale-blue eyes beneath her tufted brow. Foxfire would have sworn they glinted with irony.

”You know what I mean,” she said.

Eleven Gra.s.shoppers only blinked and bared her teeth good-naturedly. Beyond her, the other teyn slept huddled together in each other's long arms, scratching and now and then snuffling in their sleep.

She knew they didn't understand. Nevertheless, Foxfire whispered, ”I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”

And closed and barred the gate.

Though she was shaking with fatigue and hunger-and running the risk of being spotted by Red Silk in her torn dress and wild, dust-covered hair, if her grandmother was still awake and prowling-Foxfire climbed one of the pine-pole ladders up to the battlement. She stole along the compound wall, pa.s.sing unseen within inches of the guard on that side, and made her way back to the western wall, the direction from which she and Eleven Gra.s.shoppers had returned to safety.

For some time she stood in the darkness at the corner of the parapet, gazing out at the hills in which she'd stumbled, searching for some glimpse, some hint to what it was that had frightened away the wildings. For whatever scared the teyn in the compound so badly that they'd risk certain death by remaining.

Had one-or some-of the djinni in fact survived?

She didn't think so. She'd felt none of the jangling, horrible electricity in the air that she'd experienced near the djinn Ba, the djinn from whose blind hunger Shaldis and the king had rescued her last spring. The tingling sensation she'd sensed like a whisper across her skin in the shut-up Temple of Nebekht.

And she'd never heard anyone mention the djinni in connection with greenish mists or lights.

Only where the westering moon threw inky shadows did she see that the dust, all along the feet of the hills, glowed in patches, a faint but distinct green, as if a low-lying vapor were very slowly exuding from the earth. Now and then it seemed to her that the mist stirred, though the night was profoundly still. Once a stream of it, no thicker than Foxfire's finger, appeared to drift toward the compound walls-she could hear the guards calling to one another, pointing and asking-only to dissipate as it drew near.

If she were a better person, a truer Craft woman, Foxfire thought, she'd remain, to watch it and see what it did. Shaldis certainly would. But she was trembling with hunger and fatigue, and her cuts were smarting as if her skin had been filed. Moreover, the longer she stayed away from her room, the greater grew the chances that Opal would be discovered as a conspirator in her absence.

So Foxfire tore herself away from the sight of that strange glimmering phosph.o.r.escence and ghosted down the ladder again and along the colonnade to her room. There she let Opal bathe her cuts and brush her snarly hair, and while she devoured her now-cold dinner like a starving wolf they devised a tale of an expedition to the walls (”Because we heard the guards calling”), a fall from the ladder, and selfless a.s.sistance from Eleven Gra.s.shoppers (”What was she doing out of the pen?” ”You knocked over a water jar and let her out to help clean up.”).

But though she knew she'd have to wake at dawn and face another day of exhaustion and horrors, once she lay down, Foxfire could not sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the faint glow of green mist, curling across the sands.

When she dozed, she heard it sing.

TWENTY-NINE.

Oryn was sitting beside Summerchild's bed, where he had been since they'd brought her back at midnight, when word came to him that the priests of the Veiled G.o.ds were waiting for him before the palace gates.

The thick sweet-scented night had seemed endless, like a dream from which he could not wake. Now and then throughout the small hours, Moth or Pebble would tell him to go get some sleep, and he'd politely agree that he needed it and would do so presently. But he knew-and they knew-that he would not and could not leave her side.

He literally could not imagine continuing to live if Summerchild died. He supposed he must-and supposed he must make the attempt to do so, serpents, crocodiles, and poison notwithstanding. Rainsong. He was far too well acquainted with what befell the underaged children of deceased kings to entertain even the slightest hope that his daughter would not perish in the mess of rebellions, power grabs, and infighting that would follow his death.

So he knew in an academic sort of way that he had to go on living. He had to survive the ordeals of consecration somehow.

And when he thought about it, he shuddered to contemplate the mess Barun-or Mohrvine-or whoever did succeed-would make of the realm for the short time before the lakes dried and everyone perished of thirst.

But without Summerchild it all seemed pointless, like trying to make a song after one's tongue and heart had both been cut out.

”Lord King?”

He looked up. Moth was standing beside him again in the speckled light of the lamps in the niches, her beautiful brown hair braided back like a servant girl's. She'd been saying something to him. He replied, ”Yes, my dear, I'll go along to bed in a moment.”

Fear and grief had wiped away the brisk bossiness that usually so amused him, but she wasn't a girl to lose her head. With great gentleness, she said, ”Sir, they're asking for you. They say the priests are here from the Sealed Temples, and you better go out and see them.”

Oryn whispered, ”Ah,” and got to his feet. He almost staggered. His whole body ached from having been in the saddle since daybreak. He realized only then that he was still in his riding clothes, his face and hair covered with dust.

But one did not keep the housekeepers of the Veiled G.o.ds waiting.

Ever.

Pebble handed him a wet towel. He wiped his unshaven face and smiled his thanks, but his eyes remained on the woman who lay within the golden ring of the lamplight. The two Raven sisters had done what they could for her body, but her eyes were already sunken from the dehydration of a day in the baking desert heat. After what had happened to Shaldis, neither Moth nor Pebble had dared go seeking her mind in the gray world of trance-bound dreams. Nor would Oryn have permitted them to do so, had they asked.

Death was one of the Veiled G.o.ds, to be sure, but no one prayed to those strange archaic deities for favors. No one even recalled these days what their rites had been, if any, or how their servants were chosen or trained. They were not, strictly speaking, true G.o.ds at all. It did not matter to them whether a man was reverent or rude.

Still, reflected Oryn as he crossed the gardens toward the lamplit gate beneath the Marvelous Tower, it was self-evidently not a good idea to even consider the possibility of not being scrupulously polite.

Even Geb, trotting faithfully at his heels, was silent.

At this blue hour the first vendors of ices and fruit were usually setting up their pitches in the Golden Court outside the palace's gate, and the shutters were being taken down from royal workshops around the court. Housewives of the neighborhood, slaves, and occasional well-trusted teyn would be making their way with water jars through the dark streets to the great fountain house at one side of the square. Lights glowed deep within the Temple of Oan Echis, and on its steps the horoscope ladies would be setting out the day's wares. There were few hours of the day or night when the Golden Court wasn't a cheerful buzz of talk, movement, life.

It was empty now, as if in a continuation of his nightmare vigil at Summerchild's side. Lamps burned in the colonnade which surrounded it, and the dim amber outlined the crowding shapes of vendors, housewives, horoscope ladies, and teyn, all pushed together behind the pillars, watching. In the center of the square, just beyond the glow of the gate's lamps and just outside the circle of brightness from the sconces on the fountain house, the seven Veiled Priests stood, black robes seeming to drink up what little illumination there was.

Ean of the Mountains, greatest of the G.o.ds, had created the world and had devised the laws by which the world existed. All the other G.o.ds-Darutha of the Rains, Rohar who protected women, stingy Niam, and cheery BoSaa the Lord of Cattle, and all the rest-were Ean's children, as humankind was his grandchildren.

Those things that dwelled in the Sealed Temples were not G.o.ds as mankind understood G.o.ds.

Death.

Change.

The desert that stretched in all directions and did not end.

Fire that was both life and destruction.

The sightless abyss of the mind, from which both wisdom and madness spring.

Time.

At least they'd stayed out in the court this time, reflected Oryn as he stepped through the gateway to meet them. Twelve years ago, in the time of the waning moon immediately preceding his coronation, he'd woken in the deeps of night to find them standing in a circle around his bed.

The rite was a silent one, quickly performed. The six priests of Khon, of the twin G.o.ds Pelak and Drenan, of Kush, Zaath, and s.h.i.+bathnes, came forward in turn to touch Oryn on the face, shoulders, and hands; the nameless representative of the nameless G.o.d of Time did not move. As with most matters pertaining to the Sealed Temples, no one really knew the purpose of the rite, though Oryn suspected that it was so the priests could get a good look at the candidate and make sure the prospective king didn't send in a subst.i.tute drugged to the hairline with powdered coca leaves. When they turned away, still in silence, and melted into the final shadows of the dawn streets, he remained kneeling for a long time, fearing that if he tried to rise too soon his knees would not support him.

It was one thing to think, I cannot live without Summerchild.

It was quite another to realize that without her a.s.sistance, he would die a terrible death in ten days.

And his daughter and his brother would die, too, very shortly thereafter.