Stargate SG-1: Trial by Fire: SG1-1 (8 page)

"Those and others."

Those and others.

"How many?" asked Jack. As if the exact number mattered. He
knew for a fact it didn't. He was an authority on that one.

The third-degree reverend was still staring at his quarry, feigning
omniscience. His eyes were quicksilver gray, with pupils like
pinpricks. At least they didn't glow. "Forty-three in all."

For a moment the yard fell quiet enough to hear the petals flutter
as a ribbon of wind sighed past the pillars. Then Carter stirred
softly and blew out a little puff of breath.

"Are they... Do you have any indication that the children are
still alive?"

The see-all eyes slid away from Jack at last and on to Carter.
"You do not want to exact revenge on our behalf, Lady Samantha?
You are as wise as you are beautiful. I shall not deceive you. We
cannot say, other than that the children were alive when they were
taken. But Meleq has sent you to us. He has sent his spirit with
you. It must be his wish that you help us free our children. If they
are still alive."

If they are still children.

Teal'c hid a wince, a wisp of cold sadness flickering over his
face. Jack could guess where he was right now. A dungeon on
Chulak, crying kids and pleading parents, as Apophis and his
entourage were taking their pick of the hosts.

Kill the rest!

The Priest of the Third Order gazed at him again, scared of the
wrath of his god, imagined or real, and suddenly Jack got sick of the
mind games, his own and Kandaulo's. The facts were inescapable.
They'd all seen them. Except, he was the last person who should
be trusted with this decision. He'd have to make it anyway and
hope to God that he didn't make it simply for the memory of a
dead child.

"Do you have any hunch at all of where the Phrygians are
hiding?"

"So you will aid us?" Kandaulo asked back.

Jack nodded, oddly relieved to watch a minute Mexican wave
of corresponding nods ripple from Carter to Teal'c to Daniel. For
once even Kelly looked like she might be in agreement... perhaps
it was constipation.

"You have my thanks and the thanks of our people." Kandaulo
rose from his bench. "Tomorrow you shall meet the Synod and
confer. But tonight we shall prove that no man can prevent us from
rightful worship, and we shall beg Lord Meleq's blessing for our
endeavor."

By foresight or choreography he turned precisely in time to
face Luli who had emerged from the house. Dressed in white robes
and a thin diadem similar to Kandaulo's, the boy crossed the yard
with a studied poise that seemed jarringly wrong, a million miles
away from the kid who'd been chasing through the patio to greet
his father. When Ayzebel saw him, she leaped up as though her
chair had caught fire, eyes huge, one hand clamped over her mouth,
trying to hold in her soul or her sanity.

Then the hand dropped, slapped aside by a wail. "No!"

Like Sara nine years ago. But Luli wasn't dead, was he?

Luli continued his private little parade, refusing to meet his
mother's eyes. "You shame me, mother. You shame this family."

She shrank into herself and without another word fled down the
arcade. For a second it seemed as though Hamilgart wanted to go
after her, but one of Kandaulo's crystal gazes nailed him to the
spot.

"The Lady Ayzebel is distressed," the reverend announced,
stating the obvious. "That is understandable, and Lord Meleq will
value her sacrifice all the more. In time she will come to recognize
the great honor bestowed upon your house."

"Mind telling me what's going on?"

It'd been way too loud, with way too much of an edge, but the
carillon was jingling like Christmas morning, and Jack was on his
feet, not quite sure how he'd got there. A strained smile on their
host's face, glove puppet scrunched into a fist kind of smile, and
Hamilgart was about to answer when Luli glided to a halt in front
of them, his smile even more surreal, somewhere between Happy- Clappy and brainwashed.

"I have been chosen, Jack. Meleq has chosen me to serve him."

"Who says, Luli?"

"Kandaulo and father. It is a great honor."

Kids crying and parents pleading. But Luli wasn't crying, was
he?

Ignoring the twinge in his knee, Jack crouched to be at eye-level
with the kid. "What does that mean? Chosen?"

"I shall serve Meleq."

Yeah, he'd grasped that. Circular arguments. Gotta love `em.

"Luli, if it's such an honor, why's your mom so upset?"

At last the boy dropped the act and his small face creased with a
mixture of sly guilt and sulkiness normal for his age. Like he knew
he'd been shooting his mouth off and hurt mom.

"Mother does not like it because I am her only child. That makes
me the firstborn, and that is why I have been chosen." He pouted a
little. "She should be proud of me."

Hamilgart woke from his rigor, still smiling, stepped forward,
and placed a hand on Luli's shoulder. "She will be, my son. She
will be pleased when Lord Meleq is pleased with us once more."

Countless torches illuminated the stone path from the city to the
temple. You could see them snake up the hill, twinkle from between
trees, flickering and alive like some mythical dragon's tail. The
Tyreans had turned out in force, both sexes, all ages, carrying those
torches and lining two miles of road either side. Their utter stillness
made the spectacle even more unreal. No chants, no drums, no
ritual noise of any kind, just bowed heads and oddly elated silence.
It was quiet enough to hear the swishing of surf on rocks far below,
air streaming through a night bird's wings, the hoarse twitter of
cicadas - even the rustle of Ayzebel's cloak as she shivered. She'd
led them to the spot by the cliff where the forest ended and stood
waiting.

"They shall arrive soon," she murmured, her voice hollow with
a desolation that made Sam's stomach clench.

Arms folded in front of his chest, the Colonel leaned against
the trunk of a cedar a few steps away from the rest of his team, inhabiting his own thoughts. He'd made the right call, Sam firmly
believed that. So did Daniel and Teal'c. You couldn't witness a ship
unload a massacre and ignore it. But he'd been unusually tentative
to make a decision. She figured she knew why. This whole situation
was too close to the nerve; to wit, his reticence.

I lost my son!

It had been one of the very few occasions when he'd actually
mentioned it - a desperate last-ditch effort to dissuade Malachi
from time-looping them into the Hereafter - and the look on his
face hadn't been something you'd easily forget. As a matter of fact,
Sam Carter was perfectly content never to see that much raw pain
again, which stopped her from even trying to bring it up now. Not
that he'd let her, anyway.

"Hey, Carter! Something's happening," he whispered.

Major Carter stifled a little gasp of surprise, hoped to hell he
hadn't noticed her staring at him for the past two minutes, and
squinted down the path in the direction he was pointing.

The dragon was losing its tail. Right at the bottom of the cliff,
where the road entered the city, torches winked out, snuffed one
after the other, parallel lines of nothing crawling up the hill and
eating the brightness. Just ahead of them she could make out
the procession. Moving dots of brilliant white, tinted golden by
torchlight - the children, twelve of them, Hamilqart had said.
Behind billowed the dark purple of priests and acolytes. They
moved at a slow, ceremonial pace, and once the last of the acolytes
had passed, the onlookers by the roadside would extinguish their
torches.

"Tsk! Look at it!" The ever-present Gladstone bag had yielded
a collapsible hunting stool, one of those gizmos with a spike at one
end and a seat that unfolded like leaves on the other. Balancing on
this idiotic contraption sat the Professor, furiously scribbling in her
notebook. "Matham's ominous Passing Through the Fire... It's a
blooming pageant, Jackson!"

Daniel shushed her, and Sam wondered about the unfortunate
Matham. Teal'c peeked over Kelly's shoulder at the notebook,
cocked an eyebrow, and returned his attention to the road.

They were drawing closer now. The children walked in pairs, side by side, stacked like organ pipes, shortest to tallest. The little
ones in front could hardly be older than six. Tiny white robes, heads
held high, their faces much too serious, as though the responsibility
for an entire people had been dropped on their narrow shoulders. In
a way it had, though, or at least that's what they'd been told. Sam
grimaced. They should be climbing trees or batting balls through
living room windows.

"We do it, too," muttered Daniel. "Think of the Dalai Lama.
Same thing in the Middle Ages. Little kids, sometimes as young as
three or four, were sent into monasteries and convents. They were
called oblates, gifts to God. Their parents never saw them again."

Great. She resisted an impulse to glance at the Colonel.

Between them, Daniel and Kelly had managed to extract enough
information to form at least a rough idea of what was going on.
The children, all firstborns, would spend a night of fasting and
prayer and be initiated to the cult of Meleq at dawn. It explained
the monks' cells that Daniel had found.

As to what happened after the initiation, accounts got a bit hazy.
Hamilgart had grown misty-eyed and cited the `Ineffable Mysteries
of Meleq', as though that shed any light on the matter. They would
grow up in the care of the Lord Meleq, he'd said, as had hundreds
of others before them, until the Phrygians had begun to interfere.
Supposedly Meleq had been displeased and sent floods, storms,
and diseases. So Abibaal, the late High Priest, and two acolytes
had secretly sailed to Sidonia to pick up children there, bring them
back, and hold some kind of mass initiation to appease Meleq. The
outcome of that plan had docked in the harbor this afternoon.

Right now they were watching Plan B, as drummed up by the
Synod under the new leadership of Kandaulo. Plan B was Forge
Ahead Regardless, based on the assumption that the Phrygians
would be unable to stage another raid so soon.

Over night sounds and the whisper of flames drifted the rasp of
leather soles on stone. Ayzebel shifted again, fingers clenched in
the lush fabric of her cloak, knuckles stress-white against violet.
The first children were passing. One of the two munchkins out
front wore his bottom lip clamped between his teeth, wet streaks
glistening on his cheeks, a matching smear soiling the sleeve of his robe. At a guess, his parents had been further down the hill. How
on earth was the little tyke supposed to stay up the entire night?
Fasting and prayer. The kid was five, if he was a day.

Sam looked away, looked for Luli.

He was the right half of the fourth pair, next to a chubby boy
with red hair and freckles who seemed out of breath. When he
spotted his mother, the put-on dignity sprang hairline cracks. He
missed a step and his eyes went wide, dark and pleading, as if to
say Can we go home now, mom? Then he blinked, stuck out his chin
like something that had escaped from a second-rate production of
Annie, and marched on.

Ayzebel hadn't moved. No shiver, no rustle. Body taut as a
string, her face bled of color, she stared through the procession.
Still waiting, as though she hadn't even seen her son, and perhaps
she really hadn't. Her pupils were unfocused, gazing at something
miles and years away. Still waiting. Maybe for her husband.

The children filed past, and after them followed two young men
carrying brass bowls with incense. Fanned by motion, white smoke
coiled in the breeze and unfurled over the crowd, spreading a moldy
sweet blanket of scent. Wisps of it reached for the nine members
of the Synod; an assortment of old men, sharp as hawks, the veil
of piety thin as the smoke from the braziers. Rulers first, priests
second. Ahead of them strode Kandaulo, the new High Priest. He
seemed relieved and tense at the same time, smiling and X-rayeyeing the bystanders as though he expected trouble and Phrygian
caps. The pale gray eyes settled on her and the smile deepened.
Incongruously, Sam found herself wanting to believe its sincerity.
Then Kandaulo had passed, too.

Behind him and the Synod, like the train on a wedding dress,
trailed a symphony of mauve and lavender; the acolytes, among
them Hamilgart, beaming proudly, not quite craning his neck but
straining to catch his wife's eye. Ayzebel concealed her face, and
the beam collapsed.

As the last purple back moved on up the road, torches were
stubbed upside down in the dirt and night fell.

"Do you mind?" barked Kelly, having lost her desk lamp.

Sam heard a brief snort that must have come from Daniel. Around them rose the noises of people beginning to depart, soft
calls of farewell, feet shuffling towards the road and the city. As her
eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw Ayzebel stray to the edge of
the cliff, gazing out over a starlit coast and calm, inky sea. Teal'c
had noticed as well and joined her, murmuring something too quiet
to be heard. After a moment she faced him.

"We shall return to the house," she said.

"Absolutely not!" retorted a rotund shadow in clipped British
accents. "I must see what is happening at the temple!"

"It is not permitted." Ayzebel's gentle voice again. "Only the
postulants and the priests have access to the temple at this time."

"But you don't understand! I have to record -"

"That's not how it works, Professor," Daniel interrupted the
looming tirade. "We're going back to the house. You can ask
Hamilgart in the morning."

"Or look it up on the Internet, maybe?" The creak of rusty hinges
and irritation announced that Kelly was folding her hunting stool.
Under protest. "No wonder your head is stuffed with silly ideas,
Jackson! How can you people expect to learn anything if you never
bother to gain first-hand experience? Alright, alright! Give me that,
duckie! I'm going!"