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Unlike the city of Ifarsadh's other citizens, who migrated aboveground as soon as the first rays of sun lightened the sky, the clergy of Shagul spent the entire turning in the labyrinthine glass-walled caverns Below. I dreaded the coming Dark season when the cold of the Waste would force us back into torchlit tunnels.
But none could survive for long in the frigid Dark. Even the brief hunting forays of youths seeking to impress maidens with the skins of fierce, wooly, Dark-stalking beasts did not always return.
The priest who was my guide turned from the thoroughfare I knew and led me down a winding passage unfamiliar to me. Well so. Few were wont to bother Shagul in his lair.
The darkness and the oily torch smoke were stifling. The thick veil which covered my face below my eyes made breathing more difficult. The ceremonial collar, a fantasy of silver wire set in the shape of cobwebs, and bristling with gems and polished bones and woods, bore down my shoulders.
Yet the silver ring on my finger was an even heavier weight.
I had not wished to wear it. My mother's nenfari had insisted. "True, not all harani wear their rings at all times. The better to go unknown. A ceremonial occasion such as this demands it. Do you wish Lord Sulios to suspect that you are not yet harani? Wear it. The High Assassin commands."
In the torchlight, now, I could see that the hand that bore the ring was too small and square and puckered with the scrapes and scabs of combat practice to look regal beneath its gleaming burden. I had not earned this ring. My wearing it was a travesty.
Why did I covet it? Covet the rank that it symbolized? Were I to truly gain the ring, Illistanirda would be relieved, vindicated. Might begin plotting to see that I succeeded her.
For my father, the Khalji, it would be an opportunity to at last arrange a marriage which might benefit him. He could have seen me wed before now, certainly, but with my rank uncertain, found it prudent to wait.
But I was not one to seek political power. How would attaining the rank of assassin benefit me?
Had I ever considered such a question before? I had been brought up to believe it was something I was. The fulfillment of my heritage. The requirement of my blood. I had been raised on tales of my harani forebears. Zemala, rescuer of the rightful Khalji from an usurping uncle. She raised him, restored him to rule. Yanil and Tezeria, infiltrators of an attacking army. Zarta the Wind-binder, who had sacrificed herself for the Khalji she loved. But did I really seek to be a heroine? Might it not be better to live long and simply? To watch my grandchildren and Aldrar's play together?
I stopped. Leaned against a wall. Forced myself to take calming breaths. I did not wish to see Aldrar's son die this waking.
I pushed away from the wall and caught up with my escort.
The priest's torch sputtered in a chill breeze. I shuddered. The thin black silk of my blouse, trousers and knee-length skirt were meant for the heat of the city above. Below, the furnaces had not yet been stoked. It seemed the priests of Shagul did not need them.
The tunnel opened into a great cavern, the glass of the walls tinted in swirling red and gray patterns. In a pit before the distant altar, flames danced. I could not make out the figures clotted about it.
The priest stopped at the edge of a huge chasm spanned by a bridge no wider than the breadth of my spread hand. Ropes webbed back and forth, forming a handrail on either side.
"The chasm represents the gulf between this world and the next," the priest said, his first words since he had met me outside Illistanirda's chambers. "The bridge is the thin thread which connects those worlds. For you and the others, we have strung a handhold. The initiates of Shagul must learn to cross unaided."
I allowed the priest to precede me across the bridge. It was slick underfoot, and below me the chasm spiraled into dark nothing. Years of combat on surfaces from tiled rooftops to the pier in the arena, kept me from gracelessness. The priest did not use the handholds, but kept his arms folded across his chest.
The blackness beneath me was absolute. I wondered that, having forbidden me heights, my mother would order me across this bridge. Perhaps she counted on the ropes to keep me safe. Perhaps her reason for being absent from the sacrifices was dire.
On the other side, Sulios presided over the altar. Its stone was carved into upswept arms framing the roiling smoke from the fire pit. He looked like a carrion-bird, with his beakish nose and the sagging wattle of skin hanging from his long, regally held neck. His head was nearly hairless. Veins spread a tracery beneath the pallid skin.
He bowed to me, soot-stained sleeves dragging the floor. I smiled with grim satisfaction. Sulios's answering smile mocked, he bowed to the Ru'al Harani's emissary, and not truly to me.
A tall, slim man wearing a clipped beard and the saffron of the Khalji stood to one side, holding an infant. This must be Faru and his new daughter. Faru took after our father, his features feral-sharp as my own. The last time I had seen my half-brother he had been a gangling boy. Then, his face had been twisted with disdain at my temerity in challenging him to wrestle. He--a warrior and a prince! If he remembered, or even recognized me beneath the veil, his casual glance and nod gave no sign.
Other, lesser noblemen clustered together, farther off, where their view would not be so vivid, but I was led to the altar, opposite Faru.
Sulios clapped his hands. A wet nurse, the only other female present, stepped forward. The woman's eyes were red rimmed. She moved like one no longer alive. She carried a second infant, this one drug-limp, naked, male. She passed the infant to a lesser priest who laid the boy on the altar slab. The gray stone was mottled and stained by splotches of rust. I shivered. Not from the chill this time.
The priests set up a chant from their places in the shadows.
"A child has been born to the Lord Faru, son and confirmed heir to the Khalji--may he rise eternal--and the lady Jia, daughter to Lord Cirtel." Sulios's voice echoed in the huge chamber. "A girl child. A harani child, perhaps. Only Shagul All-Seeing knows. We beg you accept this male-child in sacrifice, O Shagul. This nenfaron, born of the herb-seller Nis, born for Lord Faru's daughter, yet nameless."
The child of Nis. I would not have to tell Aldrar that her child had died this waking. Not yet.
"In return, write prophesy in the entrails. Give her a name!" Sulios clapped his hands again. A priest presented the High Priest with a hooked knife which Sulios passed over the leaping flames of the pit. In a moment it was done.
The priests ended their chanting. There was no sound save the keening wail from the altar.
Sulios leaned forward. After a long moment he dipped his finger in the infant's blood and turned to Faru, who held out his daughter and allowed the High Priest to paint her forehead and shoulders with blood. "The child's name is Tivarsa, the pollen-laden breeze," Sulios announced.