The Book of Fire (7 page)

The chambermaid knocks again while Paia is searching
for her discarded nightgown. She finds it, throws it on, and flops down in her favorite window alcove to calm her breathing before calling permission to the girl to enter.

The breakfast tray is laid before her on a cloth of gold embroidered with images of the God Rampant. Paia thinks he looks very handsome that way. She also thinks that the breakfast looks more than usually appetizing—one of the much pampered melon vines must finally be bearing. She’s grateful that today’s duties in the Temple are not ones that require fasting. Her long night’s exertions have left her famished. It would be a shame if the chambermaid does, as Paia suspects, subsist entirely on her mistress’ leftovers, because this morning, the High Priestess intends to devour everything put in front of her.

Paia lets her voice rise in the call to prayer, in the precise tone and pitch that the God has taught her. The intense heat in the Sanctuary rimes her body with sweat, and the metal band of her jeweled headdress itches intolerably. But the ritual is nearly over. This is the final prayer, where the Faithful are to echo the formal pleadings of the High Priestess for the God to lead them safely through the Last Days of the World. After that, there’s only the processional, a short march out past the Sacred Well to the Temple Plaza for the purification and sacrifice. Already the huge bronze doors have swung open as if by magic, and the lethal sun has laid a bright path between the paired columns of the inner court, straight down the center aisle between the shadowed ranks of kneeling Sons and Daughters of the God.

Yet this is the part that always frightens Paia the most: the moment when she must come down the seven holy steps from the raised and gated safety of the dais, and walk among the Faithful with only the God’s little gun for protection. To be sure, the side and rear walls of the Sanctuary are lined with well-armed members of her Honor Guard. But always at this moment, they seem a very long way away, certainly longer than the easy arm’s length she is from potential death with each row of celebrants she passes. But the God insists that she do this at least once in every ceremony. These are fearful and violent times, he agrees, and there is fear and violence in their hearts. But
it’s a sign of her favor with him, he explains, that she dares to walk so freely among them. Besides, those lost in fear and violence have the greater need for her compassion.
Her
compassion, Paia notes, not his. Finally, he says, the Faithful need the actual contact with her “reality.” So, while Paia wishes that the God’s idea of priestly vestments allowed for a little more coverage, she’s grown used to them touching her, men and women alike, to the drawing of their worshipful palms and fingers across the bare skin of her arms and legs and back. It is, she reflects in her more profane moods, the only touching she gets, or will get, until the “right” Suitor comes along and is approved by the God.

Speared by the hot shaft of sunlight, Paia slow-steps down the aisle with her head held high and her eyes on the freedom of the open doorway. A low-ranking Daughter is leaning out into the aisle ahead, out of eagerness, not disrespect. An older woman, missing one hand. Not a likely threat. Paia glides by, feels the woman’s stub brush her back reverently. She must never rush, never show an inkling of fear. But she will feel safer when she reaches the shaded Inner Court, near the Sacred Well, or even outside in the sun-drenched but open Temple Plaza. Her favorite ceremonies end in the Inner Court. The Temple Sanctuary is the God’s domain, as is the Plaza. Her own holiest of holies is the Well.

She clears the mammoth doors with a private sigh of relief, pauses at the Well’s smooth dark oval to scoop icy water with her own sanctified hands into a golden bowl offered by one of her priestesses, then moves out onto the pale marble paving of the Plaza. She is trailed by the rest of her retinue, twelve thin First Daughters in red robes and red veils with whom she is not allowed to socialize. She’s never even seen them without their veils—would not know them if she ran into one of them in the hallways. The God says the High Priestess must declare her august stature and superior dignity by not mingling. For this reason, she is not a Son or a Daughter, but a Mother to them. Mother Paia. It makes her laugh. In truth, she is nobody’s mother, and she is not sure her dignity is best preserved by being always alone.

A contingent of the Honor Guard falls in behind the Twelve, and then come the Faithful, shuffling, eyes down-cast,
crowding up against each other like herd animals, even in the stifling heat. Now there’s the sacrifice to be got through.

Paia turns left toward the huge Altar of the Winged God, an oblong ton of raw granite stained with the blood of countless prayers to the Deity. The usual complement of the lower priesthood awaits her there, ranged formally behind the tall and impressive figure of First Son Luco, Paia’s immediate subordinate. Of all the colorless functionaries the God has surrounded her with, this is her favorite. Paia almost likes Luco. He is kind in his own odd way and more often amusing than irritating. He’s uninterested in her sexually and ambitious for the Temple, which is no doubt why the God permits her a limited association with him. Perhaps he hopes the good examples set by Luco’s unswerving faith and devotion to duty will rub off on her. It is Luco who actually manages the day-to-day affairs of the Temple, so his avid claim on the giant sacrificial Knife is a favor Paia is only too willing to grant. He holds it crosswise in front of him now, its heavy golden hilt tucked to his hip like a favorite child. In front of him on the altar, a sturdy Third Son, stripped to the waist, restrains a young goat.

Paia suppresses the frown that would betray her surprise at seeing a sacrifice as major as a well-formed goat kid being offered at so inconsequential a ceremony. The God has explained the need for the sacrificial rite rather patiently, given how many times Paia has been bold enough to suggest that it’s a waste of valuable livestock. She falls back on this practical argument, knowing that notions of mercy will be lost on him. His reply is always the same: “For the true believers, only the spilling of blood is a proper recognition of the nobility of their sacrifices for the Faith.”

In other words, only blood will keep them quiet. Paia wonders if this goat has come from the Temple flocks, or if some merchant’s wife is finally pregnant and hoping for a healthy child. And Luco, she notes, is decked out in full makeup and all his best finery—his billowing and dazzlingly white Temple pants, clasped at the ankles with bands of gold and sapphire, his tallest headdress, his sandals with the heels. A crimson velvet vest—his favorite, sewn with winged images of the God in glittering gold—frames
the shaved and oiled muscles of his chest. Sometimes Paia suspects that Luco dresses to look like the God in man-form, though this has to be unconscious. It would be, officially, a sacrilege. But First Son Luco is wily enough to know that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, to which the God is famously susceptible.

Approaching, Paia nods to Luco in ritual welcome. She accepts the golden bowl from her priestess and takes her place to Luco’s right at the head of the altar to begin the Invocation of the Winged God.

She’s halfway into it, the vessel of sacred water raised above her head, when she feels the God return. Elation and terror churn in the pit of her stomach. She stumbles over a word, holds firmly to the bowl but leaves out an entire line of the prayer. She is waiting for that high, vast, swooping shadow to darken the sun over the courtyard. He is here. Her awareness of him is like the Temple gong sounding inside her. But he does not show himself. Paia blinks and steadies her voice. Her own belief in the God of the Apocalypse has less to do with his messianic promises than with her uncanny sense of connection to him. She fears him, often hates him, but she loves him, too. Until his arrival in the Citadel, she had never felt entirely whole. Even now, his return completes her, in a way no human ever could.

Paia finishes the Invocation, aware of the First Son surreptitiously readying the Knife as the sacred water blesses the altar with its precious moisture. Luco hates to be caught unprepared. He takes great—some might say, unholy—pride in finishing off each sacrifice with a single graceful stroke.

The young Third Son steps back, leaving the goat alone on the altar. Luco’s giant shining blade arcs skyward. All eyes follow but Paia’s. She has seen one too many small creatures bleed their innocence away on the rough, stained stone. For this reason, and for this reason only, she spots the brief flash among the crowd of priests and acolytes to the other side of her. She is already ducking away from the smaller knife when it slashes across the empty space where her throat has just been. The throng presses around her. She cannot see her attacker, only a robed arm and a moving blade, thin and deadly. Beside her, Luco swings his
gilded curve of steel, down, down, and completes a perfect stroke. Blood sprays outward. Paia, fumbling for her hidden gun, falls against a First Daughter behind her. She thinks for a moment that the blood is her own, particularly when the young priestess screams and snatches at Paia’s stained limbs in horror. The formation at the altar breaks rank and erupts with shouting and outrage. Luco is jolted out of his post-sacrificial trance. He leaps to Paia’s side with the holy blade at the ready. Paia points. The attacker is spotted forcing a desperate path through the worshipers crowding the Plaza. He gets nowhere. The Faithful grab him, bring him down, sucking him into their maw with cheers and wild eyes and raised fists.

And then, a vast shadow sweeps across the hot sky, across and back, fleeter than any cloud, nearing, descending. The throng stills as the shadow circles and drops with a flare of scales and sun and golden wings onto the paving stones in front of the altar.

The throng of the Faithful draws back with a gasp of reverence, then spits out the attacker, sprawling and facedown. The terrified man mewls and grovels at the feet of the God, who pins him to the stones with a single golden claw at his neck, then lifts his great horned head and roars to the heavens until the air itself vibrates. The Faithful moan as one and fall to their knees. When silence has settled again, the God returns his attention to his groveling victim. He snarls and unleashes a sudden blue-white gout of flame that sears the man to a spasming cinder.

The crowd sighs. Their God has returned.

Paia’s knees buckle. Son Luco catches her.

“Look sharp, now,” he murmurs in her ear. “Everybody’s watching.”

A
woman laughs and calls out a name. A last set of footsteps fades. A door shuts softly. N’Doch feels the house empty out below him. He inhales the silence in long slow breaths. They’re all out there now, in the snow, probably crowding around the dragons, petting and cooing like women do. Something in him disapproves of that. Like, the fact of dragons is amazing enough . . . why make a big thing of it, let it go to their heads? What he’d never admit is that he might be a little jealous. She’s
his
dragon, after all.

N’Doch shifts his weight and stares resolutely out at the falling snowflakes. He sees they’re starting to blow around a little, and for a moment he thinks how he’d really prefer to be one of them, floating free in the crystalline air. He hates this feeling of being caught, of being seduced and repulsed simultaneously. But he knows he can’t spend the rest of the day halfway down the stairs, like the clever, witchy Rose woman ribbed him about. That would be even more ridiculous. Ought to take a look around. Ought to get this patched-up body moving.

Right.

This gets him down the stairs and partway across the dim, low-ceilinged room at the bottom, where he’s stopped dead by the undeniable reality of everything he sees. How could he have thought that VR was an equal substitute for the real McCoy? For these heavy wooden chairs with woven seats, those long tables, or that stone fireplace half the width of the wall. Or this neat stack of wood, that bucket of twigs for kindling. That one lantern burning on a stool at the far end.