whitewashed roof. His voice seemed dangerously loud in the silent, cavernous building. “It took the Harshini nearly half a century to complete it. You could stare at it for a lifetime and still not find everything there was to see.”
“There was a mural in my room like that,” she told him. “It was so full of detail I never tired of looking at it.”
He did not appear to notice she had spoken. “Along the gallery up there was a mural dedicated to the Incidental Gods. Their followers would come to the Temple of the Gods and add to the mural as part of their acknowledgment of their gods' existence. Parts of it were magnificent, particularly the panels devoted to the God of Artists. There were sonnets covering the walls devoted to the God of Poets, too. You see the marble balustrade? If you look closely, you'll find each pillar is drilled with holes. Open the windows in the arches at either end of the Hall on a windy day and the whole hall will sing to the God of Music.”
R'shiel wasn't sure what to say, or even if she should say anything. Brak seemed lost in the past. He walked further into the hall, his boots loud on the marble floor.
“See these twenty pillars supporting the gallery? They used to have alcoves set in each one, but they're filled in now. Each pillar was a shrine to one of the Primal Gods.” He frowned at some distant memory and glanced at her. “The Seeing Stone used to sit up there on the podium. It seemed bigger then, but I guess I remember it through the eyes of a younger man.”
“It must have been spectacular.”
“It was,” he agreed, with a frown at the stark walls. The wall at the back of the podium had been plastered over and whitewashed. R'shiel recalled the impressive Stone in the Temple in Greenharbour and tried to envisage a similar Stone taking pride of place in this Temple, but she could not imagine it. The Hall was filled with too much of the Sisterhood's history for her to really grasp what Brak could see.
“Do you know how much mischief Korandellan and I used to find as children, with the God of Thieves and the God of Chance for playmates?”
“You played with the gods?”
“It was a different world then, R'shiel. There were no Sisters of the Blade. No Overlord. Not much violence at all, to speak of, except in Hythria, but that was the God of War's province and it rarely impinged on our lives.” He shook his head and looked around with regret. “The Sisterhood has done much to be despised for, but I think this is the worst desecration of all.”
She stared at the stark, empty hall for a moment. She had seen Sanctuary and been overcome by the beauty of it, but she had a feeling it was a pale reflection of what the Citadel had once been.
Brak visibly shook off his nostalgic melancholy. “Come on. If we're going to do this, we'd better get it over with. The city will be awake soon.”
“Won't the priests feel us?”
“Not in here.”
“You neglected to mention that before.”
“No, I quite deliberately omitted mentioning it,” he told her. “I didn't want you getting ideas.”
“But they found me here the last time I drew on my power.”
“Only once they were inside with you.”
She scowled at him. “How many other little snippets of vital information like that have you deliberately omitted?”
“Quite a few. Now get a move on. We haven't got all day.”
This was the Temple of the Gods. To name a god here was to summon him. She hesitated for a moment, wondering if after all this time, the gods would still come to the temple if she called. She glanced at Brak and then shrugged.
There was really only one way to find out.
CHAPTER 38
Initially, Tarja survived his captivity because nobody recognised him. When he regained consciousness with a pounding headache, eyes glued shut by the blood that had leaked from the wound on his forehead, he found himself in a crowded cell with a score of other men rounded up by the Kariens. He was blue from cold and shivering uncontrollably in his damp clothes, but otherwise unharmed, which surprised him a little. Of Ulran and the others there was no sign. They had either escaped or were being held in a different location.
Tarja's anonymity was aided considerably by the fact that the Kariens had not thought to establish the identity of their prisoners. That was a job for scribes, and they did not consider scribes a necessary part of an advance war party.
The main Karien army arrived in Cauthside the day after he cut loose the ferry. According to his cellmates, who had witnessed the aftermath, the ferry had been destroyed by the river, which had thrown it against the bank like a piece of driftwood. It was now good for nothing more than kindling. The news gave Tarja some small measure of satisfaction. For the time being, the Kariens were stalled.
His good fortune did not last long. A week after he was captured he was reunited with Ulran, who spied him on the other side of the crowded cellar where they were being held and called out to him gleefully, loud enough for every Karien in Cauthside to hear.
Within an hour, Tarja found himself, chained hand and foot, facing Lord Roache and Lord Wherland.
With the discovery of the notorious Tarja Tenragan in their custody, the Kariens obviously felt that the Overlord had answered their prayers. He became the focus of everything that had gone wrong in their campaign: Cratyn's death, Lord Terbolt's death, the fact that their army was facing starvation because there were not enough farms or cities in northern Medalon they could ransack for supplies, that the Defenders had surrendered yet refused to be cowed - even that they still needed the Defenders to maintain control of the civilian population. They blamed him for the squads of roving deserters who harried their flanks and slunk away into the night before they could be captured, and they blamed him for the fact that they were immobilised on the wrong side of the river, a responsibility which Tarja didn't mind shouldering at all, considering he actually was accountable for that.
Everything became Tarja's fault and they intended to see that he paid for it.
The Karien dukes wore the frazzled air that surrounds men whose success comes at a very high price. Lord Roache did not accuse him openly of single-handedly hampering the Karien occupation of Medalon, but he came close. He had spared Tarja a contemptuous glance, then consulted the parchment in front of him.
“You murdered Lord Pieter, Lord Terbolt and His Royal Highness, Cratyn, the Crown Prince of Karien. You also murdered the priest Elfron. You are responsible for countless acts of sabotage, up to and including the destruction of the Cauthside Ferry. You are responsible for the kidnapping of Her Royal Highness, Adrina, Crown Princess of Karien, and for handing her over to the custody of the barbarian Hythrun, where she remains a hostage. You have consorted with demons and pagans and have actively assisted Harshini sorcerers. Do you have anything to say?”
“I think you left out the bit about eating babies,” he had said with the reckless abandon of a man who knows he is condemned and that nothing he said could make the situation worse than it already was.
“You will hang, Captain. Your crimes allow no other course of action.”
“Could you do it sooner, rather than later?” he quipped, enjoying the effect his insolence was having on the Karien duke. “The food in the cells is terrible.”
“You mock me at your peril, Captain.”
“I say we dispose of him now!” Wherland declared. He was a big man with a big voice and very little patience.
Roache shook his head. “These Medalonians need to see that even the mighty Tarja Tenragan cannot escape our vengeance. If we hang him here, in this isolated country village, the people will refuse to believe it. He has to die as publicly as possible. We will wait until we reach the Citadel. I want as many witnesses as I can get.”
“Then a little public humiliation will have to do. We'll put him in the stocks.”
