From his vantage point in the lofty tower, the Kingpriest watched a meteor plummet through the distant sky above the Tower of High Sorcery, dropping out over Lake Istar, where it crumbled and collapsed into the water like dust sprinkled from the heavens.
Like dust.
The ruler of Istar turned from the window.
His private chambers were as spare as a novice monk's. So he insisted, despite the flattery of the attendant clergy and the growing temptation to sur shy;round himself with beautiful things. A single cot and a threadbare rug lay in the center of a vast and
vaulted room.
By day, the chamber was austere, but lovely in the subtle light that shone through the opalescent win shy;dows.
But it was night now in Istar, and by night the Kingpriest saw shadows. At night, if he gazed too long into the graceful garden below the tower win shy;dow, he saw the trees as things with daggers, and the streams and fountains blackened and thickened under the silent moons.
No. He would not look into darkness, would not think on his … transgressions. Better to sit here by a cheery fire, to sift the dust-the opal dust-that would eventually bring his joy.
The windows had told him about the opals long ago as he walked in private meditation along the outer passageway, the huge, encircling hall of the tower.
Alone, his white hood raised above immaculate white robes, the Kingpriest had been praying, but the prayer passed into a curious reverie in which he remembered his early days of priesthood, a candlelit chamber in the novices' quarters. .
A girl. An auburn-haired chambermaid.
His hands trembled at the memory. So lost was he in a dream of ancient lust that he did not hear the win shy;dows speak at first. But the words intruded at last on his thoughts, and, startled, he looked toward the sun- struck clerestory, where the surface of the pink, opalescent windows whirled with unnatural light.
Like calls to like, they told him, each window speaking in a voice of different pitch and timbre, until it seemed as though a choir sang the words into his baffled hearing.
'Like calls to like, indeed,' he whispered in reply, when the corridor had settled into expectant silence.
'Water to water, and stone to stone.'
He did not know why he had thought of water and stone.
Furtively, he glanced up and down the hall. Per shy;haps someone was weaving deceptive and illegal magic to make him seem the fool…
Seem unsuitable.
Two windows at the bend of the hall widened and darkened, as though the corridor itself were watching.
Like calls to like, they repeated, strangely and absurdly, as the great scholar ransacked his memory of ancient scroll and codex for any mention of speak shy;ing windows, of omen and sign and portent.
His memory returned to the girl, to the candlelight pale on her bare skin. In the corridor, the windows promised him that auburn-haired girl. Her, or another just like her.
It was time, they urged him, to take a bride.
She was approaching, the windows told him. The Kingpriest's bride. Soon the time would come, in ceremony and ritual, when he could call her forth, anchor her errant spirit in a new, lithe body.
When the time was right, they would teach him the chant, the arcane somatic movements. But for now, he should gather the material components.
The dust of a thousand glain opals.
It seemed an obscure command, and yet, lulled by the prospects of the young girl, he vowed to comply, to gather. There in opalescent light he took a firm, unbreakable oath, and twenty years later, when he ascended the throne of the Kingpriest, he set about fulfilling his duty to the swirling, disembodied voices.
The stones would house his approaching bride, some god had promised him, through the translu-cency of opals.
The sounds of the city faded into the darkness and the approaching morning. Sleepless and eager, the Kingpriest sat on the edge of his cot, black dust sifting and tumbling through his pale, anticipatory fingers.
The young man slipped through the dark Istarian alleys, his movements silent and veiled.
Twice he lurched into shadowy doorways, stand shy;ing breathlessly still until a squadron of soldiers rattled by on the moonlit street, Lunitari spangling their bronze armor with a blood-red light. Winding his way through the intricate streets of the city like a burglar, he passed the School of the Games.
Silently, anonymously, he continued past the Ban shy;quet Hall and the Welcoming Tower, once festive buildings now muted with night and the recent news of an Istarian defeat. He stepped into the moonlight here, and the red glow tumbled onto his dark skin, his green-gold eyes, the short, well-kept beard. His hair was cut in the dark roach of Istarian servitude-the topknot extending from nape to widow's peak. His wide mouth fell into a secret mocking smile.
They said Fordus had put it to the Kingpriest. Put it to him well in the grasslands to the south. Who shy;ever Fordus was.
Now those vaunted legions, decimated and lead-erless, camped by Istar's outer walls with their backs to the cold stone, their garbage piling up around them, had orders to defend the city at all costs.
It was ludicrous. They heard the march of rebels in the wind and confused the low stars on the northern horizon with a thousand rebel campfires on the plains. They saw Fordus's face under every lackey's hood.
Still, Istar was far from beaten. The army that this Fordus had crushed, though formidable, was not a tenth of the Kingpriest's power. Already the city echoed with new tidings, with the rumor of military movement in high places, of counterattack and reprisal.
When the young man was halfway across the Cen shy;tral Court, a third patrol approached-slowly, with a clatter of gruff voices and new, ill-fitting armor. The young man crawled catlike beneath a broken wagon abandoned not a hundred feet from the main entrance to the Great Temple. He held his breath again until the last of the soldiers passed, muting his thoughts in case a cleric traveled with them. When the courtyard was once again clear, he peered through the cracked spokes of the wagon wheel at the dome of the Great Temple glittering in moon shy;light, red as the helmets and breastplates of the patrolling soldiers.
As he watched, the bell in the lofty tower swayed and tolled the fourth hour since the turn of night- the last hour of darkness.
Vincus was somewhat early; the call to First Prayer was not for several minutes. He would have to wait until the clerics began their silent, ritual movement toward chamber and candlelit chapel. Then, when most of the residents' thoughts wool-gathered in peasant rite and pretty ceremony, he could cross the open courtyard undetected.
Vincus crawled up into the tilted bed of the wagon and, lying back in the sour straw, lifted and then settled his seamless silver collar so that it did not clank against the wood. The bright heavy circle was marked only by the common lettering of his name.
Vincus was a temple slave, and not a contented one.
For a year now, he had served as silent go-between in the usual tower intrigues, and in one case, he abetted the out.-and-out treason of an eccentric, superstitious priest from the west-a man strangely attuned to weather and seasons and growing things, more pleasant to him than any of those mush-faced, white-robed sycophants.
But in the end, all sides were the same to Vincus. All sides but his own. Daily, patiently, he awaited an opportunity either to steal enough to pay off his father's debts or somehow to break the silver collar, the sign of Temple slavery that neither smith nor armorer would dare loosen. If he were free of that collar, he could flee into the city shadows, let his hair grow back and lose himself among the narrow side streets and alleys and winding sewers he knew so well.
His chance would come. Not tonight, but soon, he knew.
Meanwhile, this hiding place was odorous, but at least it was comfortable. He had waited in far worse surroundings: in the dark rat-infested cellar of an ale-house, in the cobwebbed rafters of a foul-smelling tannery, once even neck-deep in oily har shy;bor water, clinging for his life to the treacherously barnacled side of a moored
