Sacred Fire

into a trance. This was a good man, the man he had sworn his life to, so long ago. This couldn’t be the same man who had let Losarcum die. Could it?

His eyes flicked to the grim shapes in the wall. Yes, he thought, it could.

“Lord Tithian,” said the Kingpriest.

Cathan roused from his daze, watched the Grand Marshal stride up, kneel, lay down his sword, and receive the healing light. His broken wrist fixed, he was still clenching and unclenching his sword-hand when sleep overtook him. The unhurt knights took him away, with even greater care than they had shown their brethren.

Only Cathan and his nephew remained. Beldinas looked out at them. “Rath MarSevrin.”

Rath stepped forward, one hand on the hilt of his Seldjuki saber. When he reached Beldinas, however, he did not kneel. Instead, he slipped his sword from its scabbard with his left hand and held it up to the light. For a wild moment, Cathan thought he was going to strike the Kingpriest down. Rath, however reversed his grip on the saber, and set its edge against his open right hand. With a sudden jerk, he cut open his palm.

“I will bear my own wounds, Lightbringer,” he announced, clenching his fist. Blood oozed between his fingers, dripped onto his sword and the pile of others. “I shall not let you heal me.”

Cathan’s eyebrows climbed up his forehead. He watched in surprise as Rath sheathed his saber again.

Beldinas was every bit as surprised. In nearly forty years, this had never happened before. “Do not fear, child,” he said. “It is not dangerous.”

“Holiness,” Rath replied, “it is not danger I fear.” And with that, he turned and walked away from the Lightbringer.

Cathan watched him go, but Rath wouldn’t meet his eyes. He was still looking at the doorway when Beldinas drew a breath and spoke again. “Cathan MarSevrin… called Twice-Born.”

Continuing as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened, Cathan turned back to face the Kingpriest and found his feet were moving unbidden. Suddenly he was in front of Beldinas, the silver aura narrowing his pupils to pinpricks. The man within was tall, majestic-nothing like the stooped, anxious man he’d set down the day before. He couldn’t help but kneel before this mighty lord, and before he knew it Ebonbane was on top of the other swords, the white porcelain on its quillons glistening.

He didn’t swear his life. He had already done that once, long ago. He only bowed his head, wait. The Kingpriest’s hands on his scalp in a strange feeling; gave the last time he had done this, he’d still had hair.

“Palado, ucdas pafiro…”

He counted heartbeats. One … two … three … four… five.

The great hammer surged past him, wreathed in flame. Burning furiously, it streaked down, down…

Cathan caught his breath, jerking as the vision plunged through his brain like a diamond arrow, even while the Kingpriest’s power spread over him in a torrent of silvery light. Then, all at once, his strength gave out and he was falling. With the suddenness of a thunderclap, the world went black and he knew no more.

Chapter 7

SECONDMONTH, 962 I.A.

Chidell was the oldest city in Istar’s heartland, the first place where men had risen above barbarism in the east, nearly two thousand years ago. Its walls had been already worn with age in the time of Huma and the Third Dragonwar. Now they were little more than a memory, a worn stub large enough to step over, ringing the tall ziggurat-palaces of the Old City, where only the lords dwelt any more. The people had pulled them down before the first Kingpriest took the throne, for once Chidell outgrew them, their only use was as material for new homes.

Beyond the Vanished Wall was the true city: a mass of white, square buildings with alabaster roofs, running evenly along arrow-straight roads. Except for the holy church’s temples, and a few inns catering to outsiders, these buildings were all virtually identical, indistinguishable except by size. There were no plazas, no gardens, no colonnades or statuary; the Chidell had learned to build from the ogres, long ago, and clung to that style with stubborn pride. Forbas Duid, outsiders called it: the Toothed Hills.

Only two things broke up the white sameness of the place. One was the Market of Dye-Makers, near the north gates, where hundreds of silken banners-each a different brilliant shade-fluttered in the breeze, brightly proclaiming the skills of Chidell’s artisans. The other was the people themselves, who wore flowing gowns and tunics of those same hues, in satin and samite. They flowed like rainbow-hued rivers among the looming, pale edifices of their homes.

Word spread that the Lightbringer was on his way. This was far from the first time Beldinas had come to Chidell, for he traveled about the heartland at least once each year, visiting all the old cities, but that mattered little to the people. They crowded along the road as they did every time he visited.

Riding at the fore, with Tithian on his left and Wentha and her sons on his right, Cathan felt his throat go dry at the sight of the multi-colored mob. He hadn’t seen more than a dozen people in one place in many years, and here were thousands, cheering, chanting, and waving brilliantly dyed pennants in celebration of the Kingpriest’s coming. He stiffened, suddenly wanting nothing more than to run back to Dravinaar and hide in his cave again. But that part of his life seemed over, and in his heart he knew he would never go back to Losarcum again.

Without realizing what he was doing, he probed his teeth with his tongue. He’d lost several, in his years in exile, and one had been going bad for months, its ache so familiar he hadn’t noticed it any more. Beldinas’s healing touch had cured the rot, and made new teeth sprout where the gaps had been. The inside of his mouth still felt strange … but every time he chewed without pain, he felt grateful.

The other pains were gone, too; his crippled leg was fine now, as limber as ever. The twinges he sometimes got in his back had stopped. The occasional throbbing in his joints … gone. He hadn’t had so much as an ache since they’d left the Tears. Hair had even begun to grow again on his bald dome-first thin and downy, but thickening day by day. He felt half as old as he had two weeks ago.

It had been all he could do not to bow down and worship the Lightbringer as the others did. Every time the urge came over him-and it had been happening daily, on the long trek north, over desert and grassland and downs- he had forced himself to remember the hideous, man-shaped bubbles in the glass wall.

He and Beldinas had spoken little during the ride. Actually, he’d hardly talked to anyone, even his sister. They seemed content to leave him to his thoughts, and he had little to say. The miles had slipped by slowly, his thoughts drifting without aim, from one question to the next. What would happen to him when they reached the Lordcity? What was his place there? Why did the dreams of the burning hammer come every night now? And what did Fistandantilus want of him?

There were no answers. Only more miles.

Now he heard the shouts of the throngs as the procession neared Chidell-Pilofiro! Babo Sod! He shook his head at their devotion. If Beldinas commanded them to tear one another to pieces, they would do it gladly. If he told them to rip down their homes, in two days the city would be gone. Once, when he had felt a measure of that fervor himself, it had comforted him. Now he found it frightening.

He wasn’t the only one. He also sensed Wentha’s discomfort, and glanced over to see her twisting the reins of her horse in her hands. Tancred and Rath-the ghost of a bruise still marking his side-shared her blank, thin-lipped expression.

He sidled his horse over to his sister, wary that Tithian didn’t follow. “What is it?” he asked.

“Them,” she said, nodding at the masses, close enough now that they could see the rapturous smiles on their faces. “They have no minds of their own, not any more. Their love for Beldinas has blinded them. He could tell them to stab themselves in the heart, and by sunfall there wouldn’t be a one of them left alive.”

Cathan grunted, surprised by how closely her thoughts matched his. “But not you,” he said, and saw her nod. “Is that why Rath refused the healing?”

“Yes,” she said. “People have grown addicted to the Kingpriest’s power, like the men of Karthay do to their dream-pipes. But it can be dangerous to reject it. I’ve seen men dragged away for less. Rath was foolish to act as he did.”

She said the last just loud enough for her sons to hear. They exchanged pained glances, shaking their heads.