Jael bolted, and the demon screamed as it rushed to meet the paladin, the sound of steel crunching, yet she did not look back for there was but one thought in her mind not consumed by fear. Against the Tides of Winter. It stood hilt-end up, the sword in the corpse, like Æturnum from the Rock, she ripped the blade free and turned in time to see the demon looming over her—the legs of an elk and arms like talons, the blonde crown of a stag, the torso of a woman slender as a knife, her womb heavy with child sliced open and sewn. “Oh, Mother Merihem,” it whispered in weeping tones, “So cold. My babe is so cold. Why isn’t she moving? Give me a coat, a skin for my babe.” The demon sunk on it haunches, “Give it to me!” it screamed, lunging faster than Leonhardt could hope to react, knocking her onto her back beside the old woman whose gashed neck had saturated the mud. The demon leaped on top of her, the concussion enough to crack her ribs, to whip Jael’s head into a pool of blood. She gagged, drowning, her limbs pinned under the demon claws—then those talons jump up to either side of her face, digging in, tearing the skin. She screamed and heard the captain scream with her, cleaving heavy with his axe into the monster’s neck. And it writhed, still living, unbleeding, turning and smashing another dent in the Gildmane’s breastplate with its elken cleft. Then it returned to Jael, lunged for her blindly, and impaled itself on the squire’s sword. The frost-white blade sank down to the hilt.
Clouded eyes crying—the demon’s dying breath, “My babe! You killed my babe!”
Nineteenth Verse
The warm waters of the Vereringeks ran like liquid gold as they flowed through Iisah’s ancient temple, rushing beneath the idol—her holy throne—where Lilum lay lush on the whispered reverence of her congregation. Or is that his voice in the river, she smiled, teasing me like a maiden bride? The thought of the Father’s godly lips brushing nothings into her ear sent the Mother of old Iisah squirming in her chair till her restless bones could bear the longing no longer. It was time that the ritual had begun. With greatest pleasure, she tore herself from the Father’s seat and descended the stairs where her congregation awaited.
Nine titan sandstone slabs separated the idol from the altar floor. They were the first portion of the temple to be raised, set where the Vereringeks necked and narrowed, splitting the river into divine halves then joining them whole again. Lilum could still recall when the first blocks of sediment were cast into the water, when the idol was forged and the channels carved banking the sacred steps so that the river washed over them, the reunion of pairs blessing her naked feet. Three hundred years and ten thousand hands perished to bring it all forth, to lay the limestone for the altar floor, to sculpt the columns, to paint the glyphs which colored the walls with five millennia of Iisah history.
Lilum was loath to linger on those early days, though such was her duty to remember the Father’s covenant. She was old then, haggard and crippled, black and sagging and Mother to nothing but a band of refugees—the only tribe to escape the Traitor’s subjugation. It was the Father who brought them high, who split the desert asunder in reward for their faith in the pact made in the depths of their diaspora. He led them safe through the Tsaazaar, gave them the Vereringeks, and blessed their Mother with wisdom and youth. To be his bride, Lilum craved the day. Please, Father, let it be soon.
She landed on the final stair to the undulating rhythm—two close beats with a long pause between, the pulsing heart of the altar. They were the percussion of drums and the clatter of sticks to which she replied with a song of her own. She sung it in the old tongue—low, mournful tones—words to evoke the souls of men, to wake them from boyhood slumber. The blooding ceremony had begun. The congregation was in place, enshrining her as she strode to the center of the altar floor and worshipped before them. She danced for their Father, alluring him with her newly given flesh: taut, honey-brown skin and a woman’s hips and chest, her face and hair like a Messah maiden’s, her eyes like black pearls in the foam of the ocean. Only her clothes were those of her former self. For the sake of her children and their blindness of soul, she retained the formless white skirt and linen shawl and a heavy rope belt of bronze medallions. Forty of them polished bright as gold, one for each night they wandered the desert.
Lilum danced and the medallions tinkled. The congregation looked on, clattering their sticks and beating their drums to the quickening rhythm. Their blood was up, their Mother could feel rushing from her own eager loins to her lips, red and swollen. Let it be soon, she pleaded, prospecting the crowd. Her dark, helpless children—fodder for the kingdom to come.
“You,” she culled a vivacious youth. He’d been watching her every moment of the ceremony, beating his drum to her every move, perfectly formed for the dying of boyhood, his body long and wiry. On thew-rippled legs, he joined Lilum in her dance, and together they worshipped as servants entered the circle bearing knives hewn from bone like yellowed fangs cradled in their fingers. Each weapon was presented, and
