Children of Chaos

twenty

FRENA WIGSON

flew out into a yard darkened by the black tent of storm now pitched over the gorge. A deafening flash welcomed her, whirlpools of leaves danced across the stable yard, flights of black birds gyrated in panic, and a steady drum-roll from the stables told of onagers kicking their stalls. Three teams had been harnessed already and old Permiak was struggling to keep them all calm, which was an impossible job in this turmoil, even for a Nastrarian. One of the chariots was hers, all bedecked with ribbons and blossoms in celebration, with Dark and Night harnessed to the yoke. She boarded in a flying leap, holding her skirts up around her knees. She pulled the reins free and smacked the onagers with them in one wild move. The chariot seemed to spring clean off the ground. She hit them again before it came down.

"Mistress!" Verk screamed, sprinting after her.

"You follow!" Her yell was probably lost in another bellow of thunder. She took the gate on one wheel. Lavender fire streaked the clouds. Hauling the whip from its socket, she gave the onagers more hard whacks. They shrieked and went even faster.

The road was empty, of course. No sane person would be outdoors now. Thunder roared, and the first raindrops, big as grapes, splashed icily on her skin. The bridge to Blueflower was straight ahead. It came at her like an arrow, but even as it grew, it faded behind a gray gauze of rain. By the time she reached it water was falling from the sky in rivers, beating on her like sixty-sixty hammers.

Wheels growled as they raced over the timbers. Up on to Chatter Place, another big shipping island. Tearing down a street with not a soul in sight. She lacked her alms bag, her veil, the two lily blossoms, and several other things needed for the ritual. Not to mention the sad state of her dress, her hair, her makeup. These things mattered not to Fabia, because she wasn't going to the Pantheon. She was going to the palace to give Eide and Saltaja a piece of her mind. Two pieces, one each. She was driving under water, barely able to recognize the way from Chatter Place to Eelfisher. Huge swells were running, surging up almost to the bridge deck—indeed, she could see the bridge swaying ahead of her. That was ominous. She glanced seaward and saw only fog.

Where were those Werist swine? She had expected to catch up to them by now. Even if the satrap owned the finest onagers in the world, Dark and Night should have been able to outrun them when they only had Frena as cargo. The brutes might have gone by way of Lobsterclaw instead. She peered around but saw no sign of Verk and Uls behind her, or anyone at all for that matter, but she couldn't see far. Streets were brown rivers. The air was a sea, the train of her dress a mess of filthy tatters. Shivering violently and trying to remember the last time she had been cold, she took another one-wheel corner and shot out onto the bridge to Temple. The deck was empty, booming under the wheels.

Lightning turned the gloom milk-white; instant thunder struck like sixty-sixty sledgehammers. Night and Dark panicked and bolted. She dropped her whip and almost lost the reins; when she regained them she clung like death to the rail and screamed at the onagers to go faster. Under the roar of the rain lay a deeper, more sinister sound. Something that should not be there loomed up in the mist downstream, something advancing purposefully up the channel. Fabia howled and tried to rein in.

She couldn't see much, but there was a ship, certainly, and what looked like the remains of houses, and this wall of death rode relentlessly up the channel on a high gray wave. The bridge was doomed and so was she, unless she could reach the far side before that mess arrived.

"Faaaaaster!" She flogged the onagers with the reins. The car took several long leaps, veering madly from side to side, when one nudge against the paling would spill Frena out and very likely smash the chariot to fragments. The ship was above her now, tilted so she could see weeds encrusting the hull, riding a tumbling wall of froth full of gnashing timbers. The chariot's wheels spun along the deck, faster than they had ever gone before and still slow as nightmare, for the end of the bridge seemed to come no closer and death was reaching for her in that swelling mountain of water.

Fortunately, she made it out from under the ship and other flotsam before the wave hit close behind her, crumpling and burying the bridge. The onagers saw it or felt it, and seemed to redouble their speed. As the final span lifted and broke apart under their hooves, they reached land, but certainly not dry land. The chariot sprayed up the slope with the storm surge frothing at its wheels, then raced along a street with a smaller wall of water still pursuing. Frena no longer pretended to be in control, or even aware where on this rock pile of an island she was. They had missed the turnoff to the Pantheon. The onagers took a right fork, then a left, and came to an intersection where a muddy torrent raced across their path. Then she saw a door she recognized from her dreams.

"Whoa!" She reached for the brake just as one wheel dropped into a pothole as big as a bathtub. The river was cold as death and deep enough to break her fall. It lifted her, rolled her, and seemed to be carrying her straight back into the killer storm surge. Dazed and choking, she struggled to her knees and grabbed hold of the wall. She caught a glimpse of one wheel disappearing downstream, but otherwise her chariot and onagers had vanished.

She stood up, still clinging to the wall. Water sucked at her shins; mud slid away under her toes. She stumbled, bare feet finding all the sharpest rocks, but heading uphill anyway because there might be more waves yet. Although she passed a couple of doors, she never thought of banging on them to beg for shelter. The alley jittered in and out of sight, daylight-bright lightning alternating with utter, sepulchral dark. Between the clashing, clattering madness of thunderclaps, she heard another, ominous sound, the roar of hail. In seconds the torrent turned white with floating ice, and soon hailstones were battering the buildings all around her—big hailstones, the kind that could do serious harm.

But by now she was at the door, a curiously misshapen door in a corner between a wall and a rocky knob, just as she had seen it time and again in her dreams. She stumbled over to it, never hesitating, and when she reached it her feet were clear of the water for the first time. The fastening was a simple latch, but she had to struggle against the pressure of the wind to force the flap open. She squeezed inside and let it slam shut behind her.

♦

For a long while she just stood in the dark and shivered. It might not be much of a refuge, but it was better than drifting out to sea as a corpse. There were no ghosts, no voices, only strangely leafy, earthy smells. Thunder continued to rage and for a while hail rattled persistently against the planks behind her, then stopped as quickly as it had begun. The rain roared on—a storm like this might last for days.

Careful fingers found living rock on one side, rough-dressed stonework on the other, and a low roof of flagstones. Toes, even more cautious, located a step up. Then another. The air was not cold, but the waterlogged remains of her gown were. She was almost tempted to strip it off, but discretion suggested waiting until she knew where she was—she might lose it, and then what? Ten steps brought her to a level passage. She took stock again. The tunnel was now a true cave, or rather a slanted gap between two massive rocky slabs that leaned against each other; the roof was dangerously low on one side, too high to reach on the other. Someone had packed gravel in underfoot to make a level floor.

Soon the wall on her right disappeared. So did her nerve. The danger of becoming hopelessly lost seemed all too obvious. She sat down and hugged her knees in misery for a while. But obviously that was not going to help; she must go on or go back into the storm ... and either her eyes were playing tricks in the dark or there was a very faint glimmer ahead. The thunder's petulant rambles were coming from that direction. She rose and began feeling her way along the left-hand wall, testing every step.

Blood and birth; death and the cold earth.

That she had been brought here could not be doubted—but surely not by the Bright Ones! The Dark One was also known as the Womb of the World; the grave was a return to the womb. Had Paola come here sometimes, instead of going to the Pantheon? This was a well-traveled path, a prepared way. The Pantheon must be somewhere overhead.

Frena came at last to a grotto. The roof was lost far overhead, but in at least two places it was open to the sky, admitting enough light for her dark-adjusted eyes to distinguish the outlines of a huge, irregular chamber. When lightning flashed, wet rock faces twinkled like silver moldings. The floor squelched below her bare feet, but she could not tell how much was moss and how much just mud. The air felt soporific with fetid, humic odors, which she did not find unpleasant; and, yes, there was sanctity here, immortal timelessness. Water dripped everywhere in staccato irregular counterpoint, but also trickled serenely. She tracked that sound to its source, to drink and lave her muddy hands.

The altar was a wide flat slab against one wall, like a slightly tilted sleeping platform, and the image inscribed in the wall behind it was the outline of a very obese woman, styled in pillow shapes—head, breast, belly, buttocks. High Priestess Bjaria had mentioned traces of very old worship on Temple Island. The Old One. The Womb of the World.

Frena removed her dress, confident that there was enough light for her to find it again. Most of her ornaments and jewels had gone. She debated making an offering of the rest and then discarded the thought. Naked, aghast at her own audacity, she went to kneel before the altar and was not surprised when her groping fingers found jagged fragments of rock on the floor in front of it. She cleared a space for her knees. Blood and birth; death and the cold earth.

"Mother?" she whispered.

No response.

Louder, boldly: "Mother, I have come as you bade me. You saved my life in the Edgelands when I was a helpless infant, so it belongs to you. Only tell me what you want, of me and I will obey." She took up a sliver in her left hand and slashed her right palm. That hurt, but it was supposed to. She let the blood dribble onto the stone, then laid her hand there, bowing her head.

"By blood and birth; death and the cold earth, I swear to obey and endure." Pause. She sensed power seeping up through the rock like a welcome. Love and joy played a silent song, and she felt a strange warmth. It might only be her imagination, and she dared not look in case it was, but she had a strong impression that someone else was there with her...

"Not bad," Master Pukar said.

Frena cried out in shock and sprang to her feet, stumbling and banging her knee against the altar rock as she turned. He glimmered like an oversized white maggot in twilight.

"I wondered if you would find your own way here. The bond must be very strong already." He came closer. "But that is only the beginning, my dear. A dribble of blood from a cut hand? You expect the Mother to be satisfied with that?"

She detected his sour, fishy odor. His words were fishy, too. She backed up a step and almost lost her balance. The floor was treacherous for bare feet.

"Keep away from me! What do you want?"

"It is not what I want, child," he lisped, "but what the Mother requires. You really think a virgin can become a Chosen? You have more precious blood to offer, the sacred blood of maidenhood." He tugged, and his wrap fell away in his hand. It made almost no difference—he was still a great pale worm in the gloom. He was also much larger and stronger than she was.

"No!"

He sighed. "But you promised to pay the price and to endure. This is the sacrifice required of a maiden who wants to be a Chosen. Here, spread that out and lie down." He threw the cloth onto the altar.

"No! I will not!"

"What are you going to do? Scream?" He laughed sweetly. "No one will hear. Even if they did, you know what they would do to you, finding you in here." He grabbed for her.

She tried to run, but she was barefooted and he still had shoes. He caught her arm before she had taken three steps. "Come, my dear. You are required to sacrifice blood, dignity, and some pain. Shall we begin with a kiss?"

"No!" She squirmed as he pulled her into an embrace and offered that soft, slobbery mouth.

Hate!

Pukar released her and stepped back. "What did you do? That hurt!" He sounded more puzzled than worried.

Hate! Hate! Liar and procurer and blackmailer. Killer of unborn babies. Detestable slug.

"Stop!" Now he screamed, trying to shield his face with his arms as if she were an intolerable brightness. He reeled back faster.

She followed, still hating, wondering if she could frighten him away altogether—and, if not, how long she could hold him off with this strange power she had been taught. Hate! Hate! Hate!

Now his scream was piercing. Stones rattled away from his feet and fell, clattering down, down. "Mercy!"

"Mercy? You don't know what that means!" Rapist!

Hate!

He took one more step back and began waving his arms wildly to regain his balance. She could have saved him, perhaps, but without an instant's hesitation she stepped forward and pushed hard with both hands. He vanished. She heard his scream stop as he hit, starting a rush of loose stones. He hit once or twice more. The clatter of falling pebbles died away into silence.

♦

He was certainly not conscious down there, wherever "down there" was. If he was alive there was nothing she could—or would dare—do for him.

Trembling, she went back to kneel at the altar. She did not know what to say ... but that was just because she had not decided what she was thinking. Was she sorry? No. It had been self-defense. He had been prepared to use force on her because he thought he was the stronger. If one-twelfth of the stories about Master Pukar were true, then he deserved what had happened.

Would she do the same again under the same circumstances?

Yes.

"Holy Xaran, I, Fabia Celebre, give thanks for this deliverance. I offer the blasphemer Pukar as sacrifice to You. Accept his blood and death as my offering, I pray You."

After a moment she added, "Amen."