An Abyss of Light (The Light Trilogy) (7 page)

“Mommy, don’t make me.
Please!
I—I can’t touch …
them.”

Rachel followed Sybil’s gaze to the terrified faces frozen in death. Mouths gaped hideously, arms and legs twisting in pleading gestures from the butchery. She patted Sybil’s back, trying to soothe her fears. Dear God, had she forgotten what her daughter had been through? “I’m sorry, baby. Mommy’s sorry. I’ll try to carry you while I crawl. Can you climb on my back and close your eyes?”

“Yes,” Sybil whimpered. “Hurry, let’s go.”

Rachel got to her hands and knees and Sybil scrambled on top, wrapping her arms tightly around Rachel’s shoulders. Other people moved in the tangled mass of dead, all heading in the same direction. Feebly, Rachel crawled after them, knees squishing in the bloody clothing she crossed.

Sybil sobbed over and over into her hair, “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy …”

“Don’t cry, Sybil,” she tried to soothe, but her voice came out harsh, gravelly. “We’re all right.”

“What about Daddy? I saw other people from the temple here. Maybe he’s home waiting for us?’

Rachel felt as though her heart would burst. Cold sorrow drowned her. “Maybe, sweetheart.”

She braced one hand against the grisly leg of a dead woman who’d been cut in half by the beams, and scanned the square. Why were the guards gone? Had the Mashiah decided to let those still alive escape? To tell the story? To frighten others into submitting to his demonic rule?

Hatred welled up to choke her. She concentrated on it—encouraged it—hoping it would mask her terrible grief. Adom was a mad genius. An actor playing a role to perfection. She’d stood before him a dozen times to receive his soft words of castigation regarding her rebel activities. He’d always been kind, so kind, and gentle, forgiving. Or so it seemed, until the next day when he ordered the murder of hundreds of her followers. Punishing her … yes, he knew how to punish. Just as he did now. What would he do? Let them mass at the gate before he opened fire again?

Rachel’s weak arms gave out suddenly and she slumped down onto the blasted chest of a young girl. Maybe twelve, the dead child’s horrified expression seemed to beg her for mercy.

Sybil choked, “Don’t stop, Mommy.
Don’t stop!”

Rachel pushed painfully up, forcing her trembling body to move. “Shhh, sweetheart. I’m not.”

CHAPTER 4

Mist rolled down the tree-covered slopes of Kayan in visible undulating waves, sticking to the pea green leaves of spring like diamonds. Dark clouds billowed on the horizon, roiling over the jagged peaks. The cool air smelled richly of earth and pine.

Zadok twined through the underbrush, heart pounding. His brown woolen robe clung to his body in clammy folds, making it difficult to walk, yet still he forced his ancient legs forward.

“Where are you, Daughter? Ezarin?” The entire village had joined the search. Around him, the slopes crawled with movement.

“Zadok?” Rathanial called from somewhere through the trees to his side.

“Over here!”

“Macus thinks he’s found something.”

“Where?”

“In the meadow up ahead.”

“I’m coming!”

He shoved a berry bush aside and worked toward the meadow. It seemed to take forever to wind around the thorny bramble. He stepped over a rotting log and broke into the meadow. Shreds of mist curled through the tops of the trees. People huddled close against the chill, milling nervously in the thick wet grass. All eyes were upon him, and the knowledge that had been swelling in his breast for twenty hours grew larger until it became a certainty. A terrible certainty. Yet, still, he forced himself to ask, “What did you find?”

Macus lowered his eyes, staring at the ground, but not before Zadok caught the glimmer of tears. Over a hundred with a shock of red hair, he’d grown up with Ezarin, played with her in his own backyard for a dozen years. They’d been as close as brother and sister. Zadok’s heart thumped so loudly he thought it might burst through his chest.

“What is it?” he demanded, but his voice had weakened; it sounded more like a plea.

Before he could call again, Rathanial pushed through the crowd, hurrying toward him. He looked like an elegant Angel of Death in his shimmering silver robe and carefully trimmed white hair. A hush filled the meadow.

Rathanial blocked his path. “Abba, it might not be a good idea to—”

“Tell me.” He gazed into the man’s pained eyes. “Tell me!”

“It’s only a … It’s not a sight you should see. Let me take care—”

“If you’re not going to tell me, get out of my way, you fool!”

Zadok pushed him aside and forced his trembling knees to work toward Macus. As he approached, people cleared a path and he glimpsed the blood trickling down the small earthen channel, pushed and diluted by rain. His steps faltered. People shifted uncomfortably, some shaking their heads in disbelief, others grimacing in anguish and fear. He clenched his fists.

“I knew,” he murmured unsteadily.

“Grandfather,” Mikael called, “It’s not Aunt Ezarin. I know it’s not. She never wore a ring like that—”

“Shhh.” A ring? Her Jekutiel ring? She only wore it at festival. Mikael must not have noticed. Tramping slowly forward, Zadok smoothed the boy’s wet black hair, then bent to kiss him on the top of the head. His grandson stared up with wide eyes, hugging his mother’s leg. Sarah stood stiffly, eyes set imploringly on Zadok. The storm had drenched her long hair, turning it into a stringy black mass that clung in clumps to her face.

“Papa____?”

He laid a hand comfortingly on her shoulder and smiled weakly, reassuringly, into her round face. “I know. I’ve feared it for hours. I should have guessed long ago.”

“What do you mean?”

He met her eyes and saw the sparkle of terror there. Reaching up, he wiped the rain from her face and patted her cheek gently. “Let’s talk about it tomorrow, hmm?”

“You don’t think the Magistrates—”

“Later,” Zadok said grimly, noticing fear brighten in the eyes of those huddling around them. A hushed murmur grew. “Don’t worry. I’ll figure some way of stopping the madness.”

Turning, he stepped into the brush to examine the place from which the blood flowed. It wasn’t a body; only an arm. A woman’s arm, ripped from the shoulder and thrown carelessly into the deadfall of the forest. Zadok forced a swallow down his tight throat.

“Hurry,” he said, waving a hand at the woods. “We must find her. Maybe she’s still—”

“Fan out,” Rathanial ordered.
“Go!”

People raced away, snapping twigs and branches in their haste. Mikael’s muffled sobs carried on the cool wind. Zadok stood still, gazing absently at the tall pines covering the slopes. The trees highest on the mountains flailed wildly in the wind.

“You, too, Rathanial. Go.”

“Are you sure you don’t need—”

“I don’t.”

The white-haired man nodded in slow deliberateness and tramped away through the underbrush. Zadok sucked in a deep breath of the pine-sharp air and bent to remove the ring. Six hundred years old, it had belonged to his great-grandmother. A sacred gift from one of the Zaddiks, holy men, of old Earth. The sapphires and emeralds forming the triangle within a triangle sparkled in the dim light of the cloudy day.

He winced at the still warm feel of his daughter’s flesh, recoiling involuntarily. She couldn’t have been—dead—for more than an hour. He felt suddenly sick and dazed, heart stricken too sore for tears. Memories welled up like a flock of frightened birds, darkening the sky of his soul. He remembered playing dolls with her when she was five, and teaching her the ancient songs, her tinny seven-year-old voice screeching in his ears, holding her close when she woke up from nightmares in the darkness. She’d suffered so many bad dreams all her life. A portent? “Ezarin. My Ezarin.”

Forcing himself, he reached out again and gently removed the ring, then slipped it in his robe pocket.

“Who would do this?” With quivering fingers he tenderly stroked her arm one last time. “You know how much I loved you. Epagael will keep you until I get to Arabot.”

Shouts came from the forest ahead, echoing around the steep slopes. Zadok rose tiredly and looked up into the dark clouds roiling over the peaks. Cold mist sheeted his face.

“God?”

A roll of distant thunder answered.

“Is it me? Have I done something to anger you?”

Another shout twined through the forest, louder, insistent. As he tramped through the brush, he slipped into deep thought. Oh, there were endless possibilities of who the … the murderer might be. The Board of Galactic Magistrates hated Gamants. His people had always been fighters. No matter how hard the various galactic governments had tried to obliterate Gamant culture, the people remained fiercely loyal. And it forced the Magistrates to make examples of them, burning their planets to cinders, stealing their children, cutting off their trade routes.

“Our goal,” Zadok mouthed the Magisterial hard-line, “is to cleanse social wounds by breaking down the walls of cultural separation.” They meant, of course, destroying Gamant religion and lifeways.

“Fools.” Gamants would never willingly give up their heritage. Though, he admitted woefully, many had under threats of starvation or death. But that was different, unavoidable.

And there were other enemies, hundreds of them.

Movement caught his eye. He turned, searching the lacing maze of pines. “Macus?”

Like an echo in his soul, he seemed to hear the faint strike of glass against wood. A Darkness moved through the trees, casting a long cold shadow over him. He jerked around, searching.

“Rathanial? … Who’s there!”

Seconds later, a heavy thud sounded, and a faint cry climbed the slope on the wind, someone screaming, “A leg … dear God.”

Zadok clutched the brown fabric over his heart and squeezed his eyes closed. “Part of a pattern,” he murmured in anguish to himself. When he’d reached the age of thirteen and learned the truth about his mother’s and grandmother’s deaths, he’d thought they formed part of a terrible plot. But his father had sternly assured him his thoughts were fantasy.

“Abba?” Macus’ thin voice called. “We’ve … we’ve found her.”

Zadok stood paralyzed, tears welling in dreadful knowledge. He couldn’t force himself to move. His weak legs remained rooted to the wet earth.

“Grandfather!”

He started at Mikael’s shrill voice, turning an ear toward the origin point. Sarah’s wordless comforting of her son twined with the rising wails of agony. How could she sound so calm? Hadn’t she realized she stood
next
in line?

Zadok’s boots whispered through the rain-soaked weeds as he staggered down the slope. Stepping into the circle of people, he gasped. Ezarin’s head lay propped on a wet log, eyes staring vacantly at the interlacing branches overhead. Her torso rested a short distance away in a clump of weeds.

“Dear … God,” Rathanial murmured unsteadily, clamping his head between his hands. “They’ll kill us all! Don’t you see?” He swung around to Zadok, staring wide-eyed and near hysteria. Rain stood out in beads across his wrinkled face, soaking his white hair. “They’ve come for you!”

Zadok shook his head vaguely. “For my oldest daughter.”

“It’s beginning! Can’t you—”

“It began centuries ago.”

“What?”

Darkness seemed to spring from the forest, its shadow covering Zadok again, blotting the gray sky as it bent low to stare at Ezarin. He stiffened, eyes frantically searching the woods. Who or what could cast such a shape? Did no one else see it? He glanced around the group; no one saw anything but the gruesome sight before them. Zadok stepped involuntarily backward. The wrenching ache of his throat returned as he remembered his father struggling breathlessly under that same looming darkness to break through the mass of screaming relatives who milled around the remains of his mother. Even then he could see the shadow. The coppery odor of blood again made his mouth water with the urge to vomit. His brother Yosef’s wailing filled his ears, mixing eerily with Mikael’s.

Frantically, he searched the trees and the cloudy sky, feeling as though an ancient terror lurked only an arm’s length away, waiting.

“Who are you?”
he shouted into the misty heavens.

People around him shifted uncomfortably, following his gaze. A soft murmuring of frightened voices eddied through the wet woods: “He’s sick with grief. No wonder …” “You can’t expect sanity when something like this happens!”

“Who, Papa?”

“I don’t…” Then it was gone. Zadok’s voice drifted into nothingness.

“Abba?” Rathanial rasped. “Hurry, let’s take—her—back. We must talk. The Mashiah has gone too far this time.”

“The Mashiah?”

“Yes! This is surely his handiwork. Just like the drought.”

“Let’s discuss it later.” Zadok held up a hand to halt the tirade. He was too bitterly numb to endure it. Slowly, he walked forward and gently picked up Ezarin’s head, cradling it in his arms like he’d done when she was a child. A soft lullaby came to mind and he sang it hoarsely, stroking the long black hair that formed a web over his eldest’s blood-spattered face.