Ashwalk Pilgrim (23 page)

“Your value, Mara,” he repeated. “What do you believe it is?”

“I do not know.”

“Yes you do. I know you do. Think a little harder.”

She hoisted her son against the base of her neck and bit her lip. No one had ever asked such a question. Truth be told, Mara never really considered what her value might be beyond a few coins for a night of pleasure in the House of Sin and Silk.

Or have I?

Mara’s chin dipped as she thought. “They say I am the Maiden of the Moon who serves patrons for coin, the Ashwalk Pilgrim cloaked in ashen burlap, the Sorceress of the Second Sun, and the Killer of Kings who reach for the heavens. But really, I am none of them. They are titles given by others, and depending on the one I’m wearing, my value changes.”

Mara lifted her chin. Despite the milky cloud curtaining his eyes, Galladus focused intently on her. “Go on…”

She pursed her lips and pulled the burlap from her son’s face. “Yet none of them are me, and none I wish to be. I am a mother, that is all, and is everything I’ll be. That is the title I wear and the one that can never be taken from me. You ask my value, but it is not a question I can answer. Ask my son’s spirit when this night is done. He will tell you a mother’s worth by the sacrifices she made for him.”

Galladus reached for her. His rough hand clasped around her wrist. He smiled, a tear sliding down the weathered cracks of his cheek. “Yes, you are a true mother. Thank you, Mara. I thought I had seen all the wonders of the world. I did not know that all my life the greatest treasure Urum had to offer lived within my horizon. There is no doubt in my mind you will reach the Ever-Burning Flame.”

“I hope so.”

“You will, you will. A new sun will rise soon, my child. Stay strong, and do not forget what we have given to bring you hope.”

The cracks lining his cheeks deepened. They spread and multiplied like mud drying beneath a relentless sun.
 

Mara caught her breath. She backed away from the man and watched his skin crack and peel. His flesh and bones flaked to the ground and gathered in shifting piles. Galladus turned to ash before her, the last thing remaining his bleary eyes and bright smile.

A breeze pierced the protective wall of urns and teased the pile of ash that seconds before had been her friend. The ash took flight, each flake turning into the silky wing of a pale moth fluttering skyward.

“Goodbye, Galladus. May you dine with the Six tonight and ever after.”

She turned from the wall and faced the perimeter of flowery urns. Beyond the marble vases, the crowd was thick as coral shark soup. Soldiers had erected a platform at the base of the Mother’s temple. They surrounded the building with tall lampposts studded with glowing orbs.
 

Mara hid behind an aloe plant’s broad leaves. The soldiers planned something. They had erected a stage, but for what, she could only guess. None of her guesses brought any comfort.

All sounds in the crowd quieted. Movement disturbed the mob. A path opened like some horrible beast disturbed the calm quiet of the ocean’s surface.
 

Two familiar figures appeared in the path. One wore a mask pale as milk crowned by gold and a serpent coiled loosely around her neck. She led the cult of the Serpent Sun and called herself Sister Ialane Donra.
 

The other hid his form behind straps wrapped around his body like some half-made mummy. The daggers glinting from his straps sent a sickly shudder down Mara’s spine. He called himself Brother Caspran Bilshabel.

A third figure trudged behind them, dragging heavy chains in their wake. The links clinked against the plaza’s stones. Noble and soldier alike looked with disgust at the prisoner. Mara leaned into the curtain of leaves, but so hunched was the poor prisoner that she could not make the figure out through the crowd.
 

The two priests of the Serpent Sun reached the platform. They scaled it, strolling casually to its center. Brother Caspran twisted to the prisoner. He snapped his fingers, and the chains wrapped around the figure lurched toward the priest like snakes lurching for a mouse.

The prisoner tumbled onstage with a sharp cry. The figure huddled there, hunched like a frightened, trembling child at the feet of the king’s priests. A sickening feeling gurgled in Mara’s stomach, and she began to tremble.

Ialane motioned at the lampposts, and their lights blazed brighter. They washed the stage in brilliant gold, chasing every shadow beneath them to the edges of the crowd.
 

The serpents had captured a woman. Blood stained her temple. A cut scarred her lip. Her left eye was a swollen plum that freely shed its tears. Around her neck hung a brass collar, and she wore loose silks that bore many tears and bloody stains. Like all women from the East, she wore her hair in oiled braids.

Mara stumbled back. Her own tears coursed down her cheeks. “No, Gia!”

The Mother’s steps suddenly seemed so very far away.
 

Never before had Mara seen her one and only friend gripped in brutal torture. It twisted Mara’s heart into a painful, throbbing stump. Behind the two serpent priests and their captive, the Mother’s temple rose like some unassuming lord above the heresy before it.

Only a precious few stars shined in the deathly sky. Soon, the sun would rise and bring light to the dying embers of Harvest Festival. With its rise, her son’s fortunes would fall. His soul would be forever trapped within his lifeless body, a feast for the alp demons and a curse for whatever few moments remained of Mara’s life before the king clapped irons around her wrists or shoved a blade through her heart.

Ialane Donra surveyed the crowd through her pale and angry mask. Her two swords hung loosely at her side while the snake around her neck flicked its pink, forked tongue toward the people beneath it.

The priestess grabbed Gia’s chains. Sister Ialane yanked the irons, throwing Gia to the ground. “Moon maiden Mara, we know you cower in the shadows.”

Mara stepped back, and the aloe leaves swept like a quiet curtain over her face. Glittering eyes glanced her direction, searching for the sorceress the people of Sollan believed came to kill their king.

“You are a heretic and a whore,” Ialane continued, “you are nothing. You seek to slay Good King Sol. You seek to bring an end to his peaceful reign. You will fail. The Serpent Sun stands against you. The people of Sollan stand against you. The kingdom of Eloia stands against you. All the lands of Urum stand against you. You are alone.”

I am not alone
, Mara thought.
I have never been alone.

Gia lifted her chin, her dark eyes searching the crowd. “Don’t listen to her, Mara! You’ve made it.
You’ve made it!
” She laughed, a tear running from the unbruised eye. “We are at the Mother’s steps, just like I said. Just like I dreamed. Don’t let this serpent witch draw you out when you’re so close. She’s nothing to us. She’s nothing to you!”
 

Gia’s smile darkened. She turned to the priestess and spit. A glistening glob lopped against Ialane’s mask. It dripped from the porcelain visage and landed on her snake’s pale scales.

Brother Caspran balled his fist. He whipped around, striking Gia in the jaw. She screamed, her head flying backward.

Mara pressed her cloak against her mouth to mute her sobs. Tears wet her cheeks and stained the burlap. Gia suffered for her. Gia bled for her.
 

Ialane wiped the spit from her mask and flicked it at Gia. “Your kind are all the same. You think yourself special. You think yourself strong. You are neither. You are cattle that escaped the pen and think you can rule this world. Look at your friend. You are the cause of her pain. We could end it at any time…”

The priestess opened her palm. Her serpent slid its head over her fingers, its beady, ruby eyes observing the crowd. “…Or we could make her scream until her hair grays and her teeth have all rotted out of that pretty mouth. Is this what you want, Mara? I will make her beg for death. I will bring her to the edge of oblivion, and just as she stares gratefully into the void, I will yank her back into the light. Every day will be a new torment. Every sunrise a new lesson in pain. Give yourself up, or this will be the whore’s fate.”

Gia struggled to lift herself. She glared at Ialane with a swirling cyclone of hate in her eyes. “I don’t care what you visit on me. Make me suffer until I am a thousand times on the edge of death. Torment me. Torture me. Mara will not give herself up to you, you serpent. We may be moon maidens, but you are the whore.”

Ialane tickled her serpent’s jaw and turned her back to Gia. “It wasn’t difficult finding the House of Sin and Silk. Men’s mouths flap so easily, you see. Word of a woman on her ashwalk spread quickly through the streets. First, I came to a beggar…”

The priestess reached inside the folds of her robe. She produced a tin cup stained with dried blood. “Galladus was his name if I recall correctly. He was some poor, broken soul who belonged to the old king. Once, he may have even been a mighty warrior. No longer. To think, his years of service earned him nothing more than a grave in a puddle of piss and shit in a dark alley.”

Mara’s jaw tightened. She glared at the woman from behind the curtain of leaves.
 

Ialane crushed the tin and tossed it to the platform. “He refused to cooperate as well, so I cut his manhood from him and fed it to my serpent. I thought it a fitting end for such a dedicated warrior. He died screaming. His body rots in an alley as we speak, a feast for rats and feral cats. Now I ask you again, give yourself up. Do not let your friend suffer. It is pointless, and she will suffer greatly if you don’t do as I command.”

Mara squeezed her eyes shut. The image of Galladus burned in her mind. He lay in a pool of his own blood, flea-infested rats gnawing at his dead eyes. She opened her eyes and bit her lip, shaking her head.
No,
I will remember him better.

“Don’t let her sway you, Mara!” Gia searched the crowd with her good eye. Her braided hair fell over her shoulder and swung beside her bruised and battered arm. “You are strong, I know you are. Remember that.”

Ialane laughed a light, tinkling chuckle. “You are not strong, Mara. You never were. You were obedient. You were pampered. You even let a little beggar boy trick you out of the one possession you had worth any coin.”

Sister Ialane prodded her robe. Her fingers clasped an object. She produced Mara’s collar. Dried blood stained the plated brass, and the ring bent in an odd direction. “I took another finger from the boy before I took his life. It’s an awful thing when one so young is snuffed from Urum, don’t you think? Luckily, he was scum of the lower city, a parentless thief who deserved the punishment I awarded him. But unlike your steely friend Galladus, the boy squealed like a stuck pig. He told me everything I asked. He told me of a beautiful moon maiden on her ashwalk. He told me of her home, a place on the Floatwaif called the House of Sin and Silk. His death came quickly for his compliant words.”

“No, Tag, not you too.” Mara bit her lip to keep from crying. She cupped her son’s head and shook her head. “I am so sorry. You should not have died because of me.”

Mara’s heartbeat quickened. Her eyes shot straight to the priestess. “The House of Sin and Silk,” she rasped. “No…”

“I crossed the calm waters of the bay,” Ialane continued. “I made my way to Floatwaif. Filthy place, those rotted barges overflowing with wart-riddled whores and eunuchs. It has always been a disgusting mark upon this city. For what reason Good King Sol lets it persist, I will not know. But tonight is a new night, Mara, and tomorrow we will be in a new Sollan, a clean Sollan. It will be a Sollan without the Six, and it will be a Sollan without the Floatwaif.”

Ialane reached into her robes. Mara’s tears poured down her cheeks as her arms wrapped tighter around her son. The priestess produced a thin net of gold chains. In it, bits of burgundy hair shimmered in the links. Mara knew the hairnet well. It had crowned her madame’s head for most of Mara’s life.
 

The woman flung the hairnet to the platform and flicked her fingers as if they had been dripping muck. “The House of Sin and Silk. What an appropriate name for a den of caged whores. Olessa built quite a kingdom for herself on the Floatwaif. Her barge was its beating heart.”

Slowly, Sister Ialane raised her hand. She balled her hand into a tight fist. “And then I ripped that heart out. I burned it. I sent that den to the bottom of the Sapphire Sea and cut your madame into bits and fed her to the coral sharks. The rest of the Floatwaif burned with her. The thousands of better off forgotten filth of Sollan burned, Mara. They burned for you! How many more will burn because you do not show yourself to me? Throw off that disgusting cloak and show yourself.”

They killed everyone. They burned her home. So many thousands lived in Floatwaif, all dead because of Mara. Olessa dead because of Mara. Tag dead because of Mara. Galladus dead because of Mara.

She looked at her son, and a glimmer caught her eye. An orb tucked between her breasts shone with a faint, pulsing light the color of a calm sea. The thief Sander Hale had given the odd artifact to her just in case she needed him, just in case she found herself facing impossible odds.

Maybe if she broke it, maybe he would come. Maybe he could use his magic to rescue Gia.

Mara plucked the orb from her breasts and held it before her. “Sander, I pray you really were a priest of the Slipper Sinner. Help me. I need you.”

She crushed the orb. Warmth flared in her fist. She opened her hand, and a tiny, swirling cyclone of glittering blue dust swirled within her palm.
 

The cyclone spun faster and faster. It swelled. It burst. It evaporated.

Mara stared at her empty palm. She lowered her hand and searched the shadows for the man. She peered between the vases and scanned the crowd. She glanced to the temple roofs and searched their tiles.

Sander did not appear. No priest of the Slippery Sinner bounded from the darkness to bring Gia to safety.