“So. You’re the slave that dared to name himself, as if free.”
Darin dropped to his knees and let the stone cool the sudden heat of his face. “Yes, lord.”
“Lord Damion, in his infinite wisdom, decided to be merciful.” The high priest’s voice was a purr. “And I, slave, have decided to be likewise merciful, considering your ignorance.”
“Yes, lord.” Nothing in Vellen’s words reassured Darin.
“This evening, the rites of the third quarter are to take place in the House temple,” Vellen continued, his voice almost conversational. “Normally, no slave is allowed entrance there—at least, not in the gallery.”
Kerren whimpered. He began to struggle with the guards that pinned his arms; one of the four casually slapped him with an open, mailed, hand.
Darin could not even speak.
“But you, little slave, are to be granted that privilege. Having named yourself,” he added, darkly, “in ignorance, I wish you to understand what the holding of a name means in Veriloth. You too will be allowed to preside over the Dark Heart’s ceremonies.”
He sat back in his chair, a smile on his lips.
“And for this eve, by donation of the Church, we will not even stain the altars with the usual criminal levy.” He raised one elegant hand and Darin slowly turned to look at Kerren.
“We will instead choose an innocent from among your number. ” His voice changed. “Guards, take him to the house priest. Have him prepared.”
It was almost too much for Darin. The words took moments
to sink in; moments in which Kerren’s whimper had escalated to hysterical pleas.
“
Darin!
” he screamed, as the doors to the hall swallowed him. “
Darin!
”
Darin rose then, knowing the naming meant nothing, understanding what the high priest intended for his friend, his brother. He lunged forward.
“Stop!” the high priest’s word was cutting and clear.
He couldn’t obey immediately, but the guards at the door were prepared for this. A blow to the chest took the wind from his lungs, and he collapsed in a heap, gasping.
His name filled the hall with Kerren’s despair and terror.
He was not allowed to return to his quarters. The house guards at the door were given care of him, and one at least was always within hand’s reach. He cried, but his tears were silent, and the guards did not appear to notice them. But they were not completely aloof either; they wore tension as Darin did, but were more effective at hiding it.
Lord Vellen sent his summons to the study that served as a prison, and the guards received it with a nod, grateful to be able to do something other than listen to a child weep. They grabbed him roughly by the arms and began to lead him down the hall. The halls were silent, almost cavernous. Darin thought there was some chance that he might see Stev, but even the slaves were no longer on duty; everything was still. Even the lamps along the walls seemed low and dark.
They came at last to the one wing of the building that Darin had not entered before. It was austere; only one large tapestry colored the west wall, but it was done in subdued tones. Doors grew larger as they approached, stretching from floor to ceiling. A crack of light appeared around them.
“Here,” one of the guards said softly. He continued to hold Darin’s arms as the other man went to the doors. They slid smoothly and silently open.
Darin froze.
From where he stood, he could see the edge of a brass balcony; carpets, deep and red, lined the floor from the door to the rails. There were four large, mahogany chairs—he could see the backs of them clearly. A fifth, less fine but no less sturdy, stood between the third and the second.
“Ah, good.” Lord Vellen rose from the third chair and turned toward the open door. “I feared you might be late.”
“No sir,” the guards replied in unison.
Vellen nodded. “This chair,” he said, gesturing to his left. “Bind him.”
Darin wanted to struggle, but the blue of Vellen’s eyes pinned him like daggers. Nerveless, he allowed himself to be pushed into the chair. It was large, the back inches higher than his head, the arms, inches wider than his arms. They tied his wrists and shoulders firmly.
“Welcome to the galleries, slave,” Vellen murmured, as he resumed his seat.
Darin turned his head to the side with some difficulty.
Lord Damion’s gaze was impassive. Cynthia’s was full of icy fury.
He sank back, trying to look at his feet.
“Not there.” Cold fingers dug into his chin, forcing it up.
“Below.”
Darin shuddered and looked down.
Three robed figures stood around an obsidian altar. Inlaid in red along its surface was the crest of House Damion. It shone orange, catching the flicker of multiple torches. The three, priests all, seemed to be looking up at the gallery.
Vellen nodded grimly, not taking his fingers from Darin’s face.
“Begin,” he said softly. The word was caught by the arches of the vaulted ceiling; it drifted slowly but surely to the priests below.
The figure closest to the gallery bowed. Then he straightened and gave an order in a tongue that Darin did not fully understand.
He forgot those foreign words when Kerren was brought into the chamber. Kerren’s voice, much louder than Vellen’s, was shaky and hysterical. He was wearing nothing; his flesh, pale and white, was reflected briefly on the surface of the altar before he was chained to it by the Swords that had conveyed him to the priests.
Kerren could twist his head enough to look up. The gallery was perhaps thirty feet above the ground, and Kerren’s eyes were young and sure.
Darin met them helplessly. He strained against both the ropes and the hand that held him.
“Oh, no, little slave. You
will
watch this.”
The priest who had bowed walked over to the altar, and one of the robed figures handed him an ebony box.
All of the line stories about the blood ceremonies came back to Darin in force. He
knew
the knife, and it seemed that it winked balefully up at him as the priest took it firmly in hand.
“No ...” Darin whispered, his throat too tight for any louder sound.
Kerren’s voice echoed it, filling out the shadowed edges with hopelessness and fear.
Darin tried to drag his face away again, and Vellen’s fingers bit deeper, drawing blood. No escape there.
He shut his eyes. The darkness behind his lids made Kerren’s pleas grow louder and more urgent.
“Slave,” the high priest said. “You will watch this, or you will see it repeated, again and again, until you do. Every slave that you have ever spoken with will follow this one.
Do you understand?”
Chanting filled the room as Darin forced his lids open. His mouth was dry; his hands clenched the wood of the chair until they looked more bone than flesh.
“Good.” Vellen’s voice was smooth. He withdrew his hand and made a steeple beneath the edge of his jaw.
“Poor child,” he said. “You cannot know what this feels like for those with the blood. It’s a little like music, but wilder.”
The chanting stopped. The priest raised the knife and circled the altar so that those watching from the gallery could see clearly what he intended.
No.
NO.
“Watch this carefully, slave.”
The knife came down, but slowly, delicately. The caress of naked blade left a sudden, crimson stain in its dance across Kerren’s chest.
Darin didn’t know whose scream was louder or longer—his or Kerren’s.
“Do you see the grooves in the altar? They catch the blood of the offering.”
The knife moved again, rising and falling in a hypnotic cadence. It stopped, and the scream it evoked faded.
“The blood runs down to the silver pail at the far edge.”
Kerren’s eyes were clenched shut as he strained against the chains that rattled coldly against the stone.
Five minutes later, that was no longer a problem.
“It’s surprising,” Vellen said, “just how long a body can survive. But you will see.”
The knife rose, the knife fell, the knife swam along a body more blood than flesh. And Darin’s screams grew louder as Kerren’s grew weaker. There was nothing else he had to offer.
Three chains were removed from two ankles and a wrist. The fourth had seen no use after the first half hour. Slaves came into the hall, pale shadows whose hands very carefully lifted the corpse from the slick obsidian at the directions of the priests.
Darin’s bonds were cut at the same moment. His face fell forward into his lap.
“Not so quickly,” Lord Vellen said softly. The hand that gripped the back of Darin’s neck was not so gentle. “You must now work off the debt my favor has granted you. Guards!”
The door opened once again. The same two guards stepped into the gallery. They took care not to look beyond their lord as they saluted.
“Take the slave below. Give him over to the priest’s care. Tell Kaleb that the stone duty is to be transferred to the boy.”
The guards nodded and stepped forward to take hold of Darin’s sagging body. He leaned into the strength of their hands as they began to turn him around.
“And tell Kaleb that he progresses well. Another few quarters and perhaps I shall let him serve in the Church proper.”
It was such a relief to be free of the galleries that Darin did not immediately question his destination. But even if he had, he would have had no choice in it; either guard alone would have been strong enough to force him to walk.
His throat was hoarse, his breath shallow and rapid. Flickering torchlight outlined the step of his sandaled feet; he could not look up to see beyond them.
Stairs. The plain, slightly worn stonework did not look familiar to him. It was odd to find uncarpeted stone in the house. He shook his head from side to side, but even this exertion left him dizzy.
After a minute, he closed his eyes and let the guards almost carry him. He stumbled once or twice, but their grip was sure enough to spare him the inconvenience of a fall.
The fall would have been welcome.
Kerren.
No. No, that
wasn’t Kerren. They didn’t do it. That wasn’t
—He threw back his head, and a parched, strangled noise came
out of his lips. One of the guards took a moment to slap him gently across the face.
Kerren!
No. No, Kerren never looked like that. Kerren never screamed like that.
Kerren
...
Not because of me. Not because of me. Not my fault.
But the halls echoed with screams now; the calling of Darin’s name. And that name—the use of that name ...
It should have been
me.
But the worst thing of all was the knowledge that there was something beyond the guilt and the loss. He might have screamed as Kerren screamed, as Kerren died—but the knife did not do its work upon his body, had not called forth the splash of his blood. And he was afraid now, afraid of the black altar, of the black blade, of the black robes.
He was afraid that it might have been him.
He sagged further, and this time he felt a sharp pain in his leg; the guard had kicked him. It was nothing.
He moved in a trance, eyes closed, darkness all around.
Then the doors opened. Darkness receded to a blur of red, and he looked beyond the doors. From here, he could see the dark, wet stains along the sleeves of the priest’s robes and hands.
“This is for you.” One of the guards pushed him forward.
“Stone duty. The high priest was pleased by your ceremony tonight.”
The younger man raised an eyebrow and then nodded more formally. His face was longer than Vellen’s, framed by black hair and colored by brown eyes—but his expression held that remoteness that came with a certainty of power.
The minute the guards released him, Darin fell naturally to his knees. His forehead struck the ground more forcefully than normal, sending a shock of pain through him.
“I am not lord here.”
Darin froze, then struggled to his feet. It was hard to keep them.
The priest knew that. “Ah. The watcher from the gallery.” Again an eyebrow flickered in the expanse of forehead before coming to rest. “Come.”
He turned and walked into the room.
Darin followed. It wasn’t easy. Each time he took a step, his legs threatened to throw him.
The priest appeared not to notice. He walked over to the altar, and Darin froze again. It was still glistening in the torchlight.
“Come.” The word was sharper, darker.
Darin followed, looking down at his feet.
But even that wasn’t safe; the blood had splattered here and there in a patchwork pattern on the marbled floor. Each drop seemed to come to life and struggle toward his wobbling feet.
No safety here. None. He swallowed. He followed.
The priest came to a stop and waited. Darin nearly ran into his back, but corrected himself in time. His arms, held so stiffly at his sides, were shaking.
The priest pointed.
Darin followed the line of his arm from shoulder to finger and beyond.
“Take this.”
He was pointing to a pail. Silver; Darin knew silver well by this time. Stev had taught him all about how to recognize it. The pail before him gleamed; it was newly polished, but not by his hands.
“Are you deaf, slave?”
The pail. And in it, inches below its delicately fashioned rim, blood.
This was the closest he had come to Kerren since Kerren had been dragged out of Lord Vellen’s study.
“If you spill a drop of it, slave, you will replace it. Is this clear?”
No. Not me
.
Darin swallowed and reached out to the side of the pail. His nerveless fingers gripped the handle and pulled it. The blood rippled as if it had a life of its own.