Chosen of the Gods

Chapter Twenty-Three

It snowed the eve of Lady Ilista’s funeral. It was the first of the season, blowing in on bitter winds off the Khalkists to the west. A light dusting that sparkled the air around the street lamps and filled the cracks between the cobblestones, it was the sort of snow that would be gone by midday, only a herald of the coming winter.

The snow kept folk inside, save for the watchmen on the city’s high walls, who shivered as they huddled around smoldering braziers, and so the weather helped prevent the riots that might have transpired in the wake of the slaughter in the Patriarch’s tower. There was worse on the way, fiercer storms that would howl down from the mountains and bury Taol’s roads, as had happened last year. Some of the bandits’ leaders looked on the coming snow as a boon. If the passes were clogged, after all, it would thwart the Kingpriest’s troops. Tavarre, however-who had taken command of the city’s defenders after Ossirian’s death-scoffed at the notion, his scarred face sour.

“We didn’t have enough food for last winter,” he noted. “Another season like that, and half of Govinna will starve. When the spring comes, the Scatas will attack anyway, and by then we’ll surely be too weak to hold against them.”

He didn’t mention what else troubled him. If the outriders’ reports were correct, and two full Dromas were marching through Taol, it didn’t matter when they came. Even with those who had pledged their swords to the Lightbringer since his arrival, the city’s defenders were too few to stand against such a force. Govinna’s gates might be impregnable, but that would make little difference when such a mighty foe started scaling her walls.

True to form, the snow turned to drizzle when dawn came, and fog settled in, filling the streets with gray murk. The city became a ghostly place, full of muffled sounds and eerie glows where lanterns burned. The mourning cloths outside the houses and shops hung limp, soaked through, and when the mourners made their way to the Pantheon, thousands strong, they seemed like phantoms in the gray. Unlike the wailing, pottery-smashing masses in the lowlands, the folk of the highlands were somber in the face of death, chanting in low voices, their hands ritually smeared with soot. Those who could afford to wore blue, but dyes were expensive in the highlands, so most came dressed in drab grays and browns, their faces daubed in crushed woad instead. The fog made them seem an army of drowned corpses, gathering in the courtyard in the foredawn cold.

The worship hall was dim, its vaulted ceiling lost in shadow without the daylight to illuminate it. What was strange, though, was the number of candles the clerics had set out. There were thousands of them, on shrines and in wall sconces, on silver candelabra standing throughout the room, and covering the dais where the god’s altar stood. Of all the tapers, however, only one in ten were lit. The rest stood whole and dark, no flames dancing upon their wicks. Folk remarked at the strangeness of it, whispering and wondering. Somehow, it seemed wrong.

The bodies lay at the head of the hall, atop three wooden catafalques smothered in smoke from nearby censers. Clad in the chain hauberk he’d worn when he’d stormed the Pantheon months ago was the hulking body of Lord Ossirian, his hands clutching his broadsword upon his breast. On another side, Durinen lay shrouded with a blue cloth to hide the ghastly wound that had killed him, but it was the figure in the middle, clad in full vestments, the sacred triangle painted upon her forehead, that drew the most looks. The former First Daughter had been in Govinna for the briefest time before her death, but the townsfolk grieved for her more than for the two men who flanked her. She had forsaken the church, the empire, and the Kingpriest to help the borderfolk and to bring them the Lightbringer’s healing touch. She had given her life for him, it was said. Ilista had become a martyr, and they wept as they signed the triangle for her.

By the time the Pantheon’s bells tolled the dawn watch, the worship hall was filled with people, pressed shoulder to shoulder on the pews and packing the aisles and apses as well. Still they came, spilling out into the vestibule and down the steps to the courtyard outside. Tavarre and the bandit chiefs stood near the front, their faces hidden by deep hoods, and the folk of Luciel held a place of honor nearest Ilista’s bier. Wentha stood among them, and Fendrilla, and aU the rest who had fled north to Govinna, brigand and villager alike. Only Cathan was absent, and a few folk glanced at one another, wondering where the young stalwart was-until a door opened at the room’s far end and he entered, armored and hooded, his sword hanging by his side. He rested his hand on its pommel, looking over the crowd, searching for signs of danger. Finally he nodded, though his eyes remained narrow as he turned to speak a word to those in the anteroom behind him.

A gong sounded, and a hush fell over the crowd as the procession entered. It began with two young acolytes, dressed in gray and bearing lit torches. After them came an elderly cleric, one of the Little Emperor’s men, swinging a golden thurible that trailed blue smoke in zigzagging arcs as he walked, into the room. Following him were four priestesses, singing a dirge, their voices echoing across the vast chamber. Then two more acolytes, and then the Lightbringer, and the mourneTs gasped as one.

The funerary rites in the Istaran church were clear and had been for centuries. They were specific about many details, among them the garb of the priest conducting the ceremony. He was to wear vestments of blue, unadorned and unhooded, and all the jewelry of his position. Beldyn, however, wore no rings or bracelets, no circlet on his brow. Only his holy medallion, glinting in the candlelight, hung openly around his neck. His robes were white, heretical at such a solemn occasion. It was neither of these facts, however, that made the folk of Govinna stare and murmur in shock.

It was the blood.

The stains were dried now, the color of rust. They covered the front of Beldyn’s robes, stiffening the cloth, and smeared the cuffs of his sleeves. Bloodstains were even on his face still, a smudge on his chin and another on his temple. The clergy had taken pains to clean and prepare the bodies of the dead, but the Lightbringer had not washed since the attack. His long hair hung greasy down upon his shoulders, and the smell of the incense did not fully mask the whiff of uncleanness that rose from him. The silvery glow that shrouded him when he used his powers was a bare flicker now, yet his eyes blazed like blue stars as he took his place by the altar-Cathan by his side-and looked out upon the masses. Folk shifted beneath that terrible gaze, and many had to look away, bowing their heads. His were the eyes of a madman, flashing like lightning in a storm.

When the dirge ended, the stillness that fell over the worship hall was thicker than the fog outside. Beldyn held that silence for several minutes, raking the crowd with his eyes. Then he drew a breath, and his voice rang out like thunder across the hall.

“You have come,” he said, “to hear a requiem, a memorial for the three who lie cold before you, cut down in the night.

You want assurances that they died fulfilling their purpose and therefore served the god’s greater good. You want to know that, even in this dark hour, all will be well.

“You shall not have it. It is not true.”

Again, gasps echoed around the hall. Some signed the triangle, murmuring warding prayers, but the Lightbringer silenced them with a glare.

“For centuries,” he went on, “the church has told you such lies. The time has come for this to stop. I saw the thing that slew Lady Ilista and the others. It was a beast of purest evil, murderous and heartless. I will not simply accept her death was what Paladine intended.

“Some of you, no doubt, are thinking of the Doctrine of Balance that the church has held dear for millennia. We are told that without evil, good cannot exist. Even at midday, when the sun shines brightest, shadows remain. This has always been, the canon says. It always must be.

“Lies! In ages past, the Balance had its uses. It kept Paladine’s power alive in the world, when the dark gods and their minions threatened to overwhelm all. Those days are past. The Queen of Darkness is gone from the world, her dragon hordes fled a thousand years since. We have hunted the servants of evil-the goblin, the ogre, the monster of nightmares-until they are all but destroyed in Istar. We have beaten back the cults that worship sin, yet Lady Ilista is still murdered by a thing of evil sent from the very Lordcity where the god’s light shines brightest!

“Yes,” he went on, as the folk of Govinna stared. “The author of this wickedness is the Kingpriest himself, Kurnos the Usurper. If you doubt it, ask yourself this: who else would send an assassin here? He fears me, fears the righteousness of my claim to the throne, so he does all he can to destroy me- even if it means truckling with darkest sorcery and demons from the Abyss itself!”

He opened his arms, displaying the bloodstains for all to see. “Look! See what the precious Balance has wrought! As long as we lack the will to destroy evil altogether, innocent blood will flow! The time for the old ways is over. We must kindle a new light, one that surrounds us, burning so brightly that the darkness and those who serve it flee forever!” He flung his hands up, reaching to the heavens. “Sifat!”

The light poured out of him then, spraying forth like the jets of some great fountain, arcing high into the air with a sound like the ringing of a great crystal bell. The glow hung in the air, bathing the mourners’ open-mouthed faces, then it dropped again, raining down all over the room. Wherever it fell, it touched a candle, and that candle burst aflame… scores… hundreds… thousands of them, filling the room with their glow. As they did, the shadows they cast grew dim, until at last there was nothing but light, surrounding everyone, swallowing the gloom.

It began with just one man, surging to his feet halfway to the rear of the hall and thrusting his fist in the air. Then it spread, more and more folk jumping up to add their voices, until finally the whole Pantheon rang with the cry, and the city outside as well, a roar that cut through the morning air as the fog burned away in the sunlight.

“Death to the Usurper!” the folk of Govinna cried. “Life to the Lightbringer! An end to the Balance!”

Amid it all, his eyes twin suns, Beldinas smiled.

The catacombs held the smell of the old dead, a musty, spicy aroma that permeated the air and the stones alike. They were dark, close, and silent, older than the Pantheon, older than Govinna itself, a place harking back to the days when the Taoli were savages, scouring the wild hills with bow and spear and sacrificing their enemies to pagan gods. Missionaries from the church of Istar had dug them as a hiding place, where they could bury their fallen so the barbarians could not defile their bodies.

Times had changed. The church ruled now, and the barbarians had become civilized highlanders, but the dead remained, lying in niches mantled with dust and cobwebs. Each body was meticulously wrapped, from neck to feet, in strips of linen, but their heads remained uncovered, revealing bare skulls with scraps of colorless hair clinging to them. Their eyes stared sightlessly in the dark, teeth bared in rictus grins.

Cathan tried not to look at the bodies as he and Beldyn made their way through the cramped passages. The light of the torch he carried made the shadows leap in the corners of his vision, and that made his fevered brain-already edgy from the darkness deep beneath the earth in the cellars of the temple-see things that weren’t there… or that he fervently hoped weren’t there. Surely the corpses didn’t stir as they passed, their skulls turning toward him, their bony fingers twitching. Surely he didn’t hear the rustle of wrappings being shrugged off or the scrape of bone against stone. Even so, his heart leaped every time he brushed against a niche or stepped on a bone that had fallen from its resting place. He was terrified to think that if he looked back, he would see ghosts shambling after him, staring at him with dark holes whose eyes had long ago turned to dust.

“This door you’re looking for,” he whispered, his voice sounding horribly loud. “We’re almost there, right?”

Beldyn peered through the gloom, then down at the scroll in his hands. He slowed down as he did so, which made Cathan even more afraid. If you stop, a childlike voice said in his brain, you’ll give them a chance to catch up. They’ll get you…

“Yes,” Beldyn said after a moment. “Pradian’s writings say it’s close.”

“Good.”

They went on, Cathan wishing someone else had come with them… like about one hundred armed men. Tavarre had offered them before they set out, though he couldn’t afford to lose that many swords, but Beldyn refused. The scroll he held, the one Durinen had given him moments before the demon attacked, had something to say about the matter. The door would only open to Pradian’s true heir and would let him and one other pass, so long as that other was faithful.

“I would have you, my friend,” Beldyn had said that afternoon, after Ilista and the others were entombed. Cathan objected, saying there were better warriors among the bandits, but the Lightbringer shook his head. “You were the first to swear to me, and you have been true ever since.”

Cathan sucked in a breath, caught a lungful of dust, and fell into a coughing fit.

The noise of his hacking and wheezing was still echoing back through the dark when the tunnel opened up before them into a burial chamber. It was not a large room, perhaps five paces on a side, but compared with the catacombs it felt as vast as the Pantheon’s worship hall. A single pillar stood in its midst, carved with reliefs of twining dragons, and stone sarcophagi lined the walls, their lids sculpted to resemble long-bearded men in clerical garb. The high priests among the missionaries, Cathan guessed. The lid of one had crumbled, spilling out a tangle of bones and moldering robes. The skull that leered up at him from those leavings was still covered with leathery flesh. The image of Tancred, wasted and gaunt on his deathbed, flashed through his mind, and he had to shut his eyes to make the memory go away.

When he looked again, Beldyn had crossed to the chamber’s far side. Cathan hurried after, torch held high, and when he came around the pillar he saw what caught Beldyn’s attention. There, in the far wall, was the door.

It was hewn of stone, the same living rock as the walls, and intertwined roses snaked around it, carved into its frame. Perched high upon its lintel, looking down on them, was an alabaster falcon, wings half-spread, a triangle clutched in its talons.

They stared at the door in silence. Cathan felt no surprise when he saw it had no latch.

“What now?” he asked.

Beldyn studied the scroll a while longer, then nodded and tucked it into his belt. “Now we open it.”

Cathan snorted a laugh, then stopped. As he watched, the monk pushed back his bloodstained sleeves-he still had not changed clothes-and studied the door.

“The Miceram lies in an ancient fane beyond this,” he said. “Pradian put it there, then sealed the door shut. The geas he laid on it will be broken when one fit to wear the crown comes to claim it So it is written. After that, we have only to face the guardian.”

“Guardian?” Cathan asked, his voice rising. “What kind of guardian?”

Beldyn spread his hands. “The scroll does not say.”

“Of course it doesn’t,” Cathan muttered. Gritting his teeth, he checked his sword to make sure it was loose in its scabbard, then, thinking better of it, drew the blade. “Well, we’ve come this far.”

Smiling, Beldyn reached out and pressed his hands against the door. It was smooth, marred only by a small crack near its top. Licking his lips, he bowed his head and murmured a prayer.

“Palado, ucdas pafiro,” he intoned, “tas igousid fo. Lob tis foro polam bidein unfifid, to Ceram ibin torpid. So polo fat cifir. Bebam anlugud!”

Paladine, father of dawn, I am thy chosen. Long has this door awaited the time foretold, when the Crown is needed again. That time is come. Let the way open!

He squared his feet on the floor, closed his eyes, and pushed.

Nothing happened.

Cathan watched, his heart falling, as Beldyn tried again and still a third time. He leaned into it with all his might. His face grew red, cords of muscle bulged in his neck, and sweat beaded on his brow, but still the door refused to budge.

“Damn it,” Cathan muttered. “Don’t tell me we’ve come this far, only to-”

“Cathan!” Beldyn hissed through clenched teeth. “Help me!” Cathan stepped forward, eyeing the door suspiciously. “What-what do I say?”

“Nothing! Just push!”

Setting his sword down on the dusty floor, he stepped forward to take his place beside Beldyn, who was heaving with his shoulder now, grunting with the effort. Holding his breath, he set his hands on the door as well, and shoved as hard as he could.

All at once the air around them shivered, and sparks of red and gold poured out of the cracks where door met frame. With a deep growl the stone gave way, pivoting of its own accord and sending Cathan staggering to his knees. Beldyn stumbled too but stayed upright as, still streaming sorcerous cinders, the door rumbled open.

Snatching up his sword, Cathan sprang back to his feet. Images of dragons flashed through his mind, and the guardian became a black wyrm with fangs bared and flames leaping up its throat.

Several heartbeats later, after nothing had attacked them, he let the tip of his blade drop. There was no monster on the other side, only more cramped tunnel, winding out of sight. Seeing more niches carved into the walls, he sighed. At the very least, he’d hoped to get away from the dead.

Smiling, Beldyn stepped through the opening into the passage beyond. Cathan paused, took a deep breath, and followed.