As she examined the day’s work, automatically checking each page to make sure the inks were dry, and smoothing out any wrinkles, she forced herself to be careful. If she damaged a Sacred Text, that would be an even worse penance than being late for dinner.
Thia had actually been in the scriptorium on the day that Ryleese had overturned her desk and spilled all her inks onto the text she’d been copying. It had been awful, hearing the other girl’s shrieks and wails for mercy as the scriptorians dragged her away. They said she’d been possessed by Outer Demons who had caused her clumsiness to punish her for sinning, and that under questioning she’d blasphemed.
They said that Ryleese was fortunate that Boq’urak, in His mercy, had granted her the blessing of cleansing.
All Thia knew for sure was that two days later Ryleese had been declared Chosen and given to Boq’urak. Thia swallowed uneasily.
Don’t think about it. Concentrate …
As she rolled up the day’s work, she felt pride in the neat rows of precise letters, the beautifully illuminated capitals that marked the beginning of each page.
Thank you, Master
Varn,
she thought, remembering the first day he’d noticed her. She’d been sitting on her stool at this very same desk, eagerly poring over a scroll, wondering about the meaning of the words and letters on the vellum. Unlike many of the other fledgling scriptorians, Thia understood the theory of written language, if not the symbols themselves. Each time she worked here, she listened intently to all the conversations going on around her, and she’d learned quite a bit that way. Until that day … Her lips curved in a smile as she remembered …
She had been on this very stool, at this very same desk.
She was all alone, and so dared to trace the letters with her finger, wondering what they meant. “What are you?” she’d whispered softly, under her breath. “What do you say?”
As if in answer to her plea, a deep voice said, almost in her ear, “That is the letter om-ee.”
Startled, she’d swung around in her seat to find Master Varn, vivid in his scarlet robe, standing beside her. The priest was a handsome man, with the typical coloring that betokened Northern blood—like Thia, he was tall and slenderly formed, with dark, dark eyes. Like all the priests and priestesses, his skull was shaven, but he was standing so close that the girl could see a faint pale fuzz on his pate, just like the fuzz that she had to remove from her own head. His hair must be the same color as her own, the color of ashes just before they blew away.
“And that one there is the letter tyy,” he said quietly. He put out his hand, and his fingers closed around Thia’s, warm and strong. “Would you like to know all of them?”
Thia had stared at him worshipfully. “Oh, yes, Master!
What word is that?”
“That word is ‘ocean,’ ” he said.
“ ‘Ocean,’ ” she repeated, under her breath. “What is an ocean, Master?”
“A body of water. Like a sea, but larger. They lie on the other side of Boq’urain.”
“The other side, Master?”
“The world is shaped like a ball, child.”
The child priestess had stared up at the priest who would become her Mentor, her dark eyes wide with amazement.
“How can that be? If I look out any window, the world is flat, save for the mountains surrounding us here in Verang. If I look out through the pass, to the sea, it is flat. If the world was shaped like a ball, the sea would pour off it!”
He’d smiled at her, his big white teeth flashing in amusement. “Not only curious, but intelligent,” he said, and the approval in his voice made the girl flush with pleasure. “Would you like me to teach you to read, little one?”
Thia could only nod, struck dumb with the enormity of his offer. Young as she was, she’d known it was forbidden for the novices to read, but she wanted to learn so badly that she’d convinced herself that she could do her job better, copy better, for the glory and worship of Boq’urak if she knew
what
she was copying. So they’d met, secretly, late at night, for months, then years, while Varn taught her … first to read, then about the world as he knew it. Her Mentor had traveled as a missionary priest in his youth, and he told her all about his journeys as he’d preached Boq’urak’s scripture and doctrine.
Thia had learned to be circumspect, to never reveal that she and her Mentor had a relationship outside the ordinary one of Mentor and novice. She knew that revealing their mu-tual transgression would result in both of them being thrown out of the temple, or worse. And she’d treasured every minute they spent together. Her Master was the wisest, kind-est man in the world.
Master Varn had made it possible for her to achieve her dearest wish—to learn, to understand, to accumulate knowledge. He’d even arranged for her to leave the temple complex on several occasions, to accompany some of the lay workers when they went to buy provisions or other goods.
Unlike her sisters, she knew what money was for, and how to count it. The novice had watched the townspeople at work and at play, had witnessed staggering drunks and rowdy fights between street urchins, seen lovers holding hands and embracing …
Of course, Thia had averted her eyes quickly from such sights. She was a Sacred Vessel, soon to take her final vows.
Such carnal pleasures were not for her.
Thia would not even allow herself to recall the dreams that had come to her after seeing those lovers. Dreams where Master Varn touched her face, her hand, even, once, her breasts …
Realizing where her memories had led her, the novice blushed violently.
What is wrong with you? Be careful, or
you’ll make a mistake! Do you want to wind up Chosen?
Memories of the daily sacrifice performed before dawn each morning to ensure that the Sun would rise made the novice shiver, her chest suddenly tight. To have a huge hole punched into one’s breast, so that the entire living heart could be removed …
But she knew it was necessary. Boq’urain needed the Sun for the crops to flourish and the people to thrive, but …
But sometimes the Chosen would remain conscious for a long minute as they beheld their own dripping, pumping hearts. Usually they lost consciousness and died quickly, but not always. Thia had learned to look at their hearts, rather than their faces, since it was a transgression to look elsewhere than at the High Priests and their victims.
All of the scrolls were now safely stowed. Thia closed the cabinets, slid the bolts into place, and activated the locking bars with urgent haste. Seconds ticked by in the novice’s head as she extinguished the candle and darted out the door, carefully closing and locking it behind her. Then, holding the skirt of her gray habit high, she began to run.
The corridors around her were whitewashed, nearly fea-tureless, and spotlessly clean due to the ministrations of the acolytes and postulants. Thia’s bare feet pattered against chill stone as she ran, but she was used to it and never noticed the cold hardness. Verang was a city built in the mountains, surrounded by peaks on three sides … even the summers were chilly. Winters could be deadly for the unprotected.
Swish-slap, swish-slap
… the sound of her feet striking stone warred with the pounding of her heart. She rounded a corner, darted down a flight of stairs so timeworn that a faint depression hollowed the center of each step.
Down … down. Around another corner. So far she had not met another soul, and that was a bad sign. That meant the community was gathering in the eastern ziggurat, where the refectory was located. Acolytes and lay priests and priestesses would be moving among the rows of tables and benches, handing out bowls of barley-lamb soup and thick chunks of bread for sopping up the broth. Thia had not eaten since the noon repast, six hours ago; her stomach rumbled loudly at the thought of food.
She hesitated but a bare instant at the tapestry near the end of an otherwise bare corridor, then lifted it and slid through the door beyond into darkness. Fumbling with her cold fingers, she lit her tiny travel-candle, shielded from drafts in its protective cylinder of metal.
No time to run down the ten tiers of steps that led down from the western pyramid, cross the cobbled courtyard, and then up the ten tiers to the eastern ziggurat. Instead she would take the secret way, the way Master Varn had first shown her all those years ago. It was forbidden—but taking it would save her so much time that it was worth the risk.
The corridor here was more like a tunnel; the blocks of gray granite were bare of whitewash. The novice kilted her habit up into the knotted scarlet scourge that served as her belt and set off again. The flame from her tiny lantern threw barely enough light for her to see ten paces ahead, but she knew these secret ways well; she had been traveling them for years.
There were crypts down here, and that was not all. Secret conference rooms hidden within mazes, ancient altars and confessional cubbies … even abandoned prison cells and places of torture. It was in the first level beneath the western ziggurat that she and Master Varn had conducted their clan-destine lessons, hunched together over a single flickering flame as Thia pored over reading scrolls or laboriously worked out the sums the High One set her to ciphering. Varn had warned her sternly against venturing below the first level, but over the years, Thia had explored on her own, becoming braver as she translated the guiding symbols that marked each tunnel.
Each branching tunnel was marked with secret signs, combinations of letters and numbers. Some were in script so old that no one alive could translate it. But overlaying the ancient runes were modern letters and numbers that provided an infallible guide to one lessoned in its use. Even though she had been this way many times before, Thia was careful to check the symbols. All of the tunnels looked alike, and a mistake could mean a slow and torturous death, wandering these hidden ways without hope of being found and rescued.
Forty-two, Sun sign, overscribed with the letter kay,
she read, scarcely pausing in the swaying light to dart down the leftmost branch of a triad of tunnels.
She was now far, far below the level of the ziggurat, deep within the foot of the mountain itself. It was so cold that her nipples tightened, and she hugged her arms across her breasts. Her steps came quicker in the chill dankness. This place … she had never traversed this section without the sense that someone was watching. The walls were clammy, the floor sloped down, steadily down.
Despite her urgency, Thia came to an abrupt halt when the sounds of chanting mixed with the rush of water reached her ears.
Oh, no! One of the Hidden Rites! It has to be …
Her mouth went dry. She had never seen one of the secret ceremonies. She was only a novice, and it was forbidden for her to even stand here and listen to the chanting. And yet …
her path led through a gallery that ran along the top of the
huge chamber where the rites were held. There was no other way she could go.
For a moment she hesitated, half turning to look back up the tunnel. Dare she try it? Or should she go back all that long, weary way to the western ziggurat? If she were caught in the vicinity of a Hidden Rite … She had no idea what would happen to her, and did not even want to think about it.
On the other hand, the stone parapet lining the gallery passage was low but thick, with small ornamental patterns cut into the stone. If she stayed low and crept along, the High Ones would not see her. And she was over halfway to her destination …
With a sudden squaring of her shoulders, Thia began to run again, down the tunnel, toward the huge, echoing chamber. The chanting sounds grew louder and were now mixed with other sounds, low and muffled, with an occasional loud shriek or wail rising above the rest of the cacophony.
Reaching the huge archway that led into the gallery above the enormous chamber, Thia extinguished her light, dropped to her hands and knees, then began inching along, careful to stay below the level of the ornamental pattern cut into the parapet. The stone of the gallery floor was smooth and chill against her hands. Her robe caught her as she tried to creep, until she kilted it up to mid-thigh. Her feet were toughened by constantly going barefoot, but her hands and knees began to ache almost immediately.
When she reached the first hole in the parapet, she could not resist putting her eye to it and gazing down at the rite that was under way.
The chamber beneath her had been hollowed out over ages by an underground branch of the River Ver. The water rushed through the chamber, cold and dark as the mountains in winter. The chill of the black water reached the novice even in her high perch. Great stone icicles hung from the ceiling and thrust upward from the floor, glistening in the light of dozens of torches.
Beside the rushing river stood a huddled group of children, a full score of them, ranging in age from perhaps ten to a few that could barely toddle. All were dressed in the white flowing robes of Boq’urak’s Chosen.
Thia made a low sound in her throat, even as her hands went up to cover her mouth. Children?
Babies
? Dressed for the sacrifice?
By all that was sacred—no!
But there they were. Most of them were crying, and the ten High Priests moved among them with alabaster bowls, carefully collecting their tears, encouraging them with pokes and frowns to cry harder. One youngster, a lad of perhaps nine who stood scornfully tearless, suddenly broke and ran for the entrance, but was roughly dragged back. He began to weep, and the High Ones scurried to catch his tears, as though they were to be treasured above all.
Thia had lived with sacrifice as a daily part of her life since she had first come to Verang. She’d been taught to think of the Chosen as fortunate, because as soon as they died, they would be with Boq’urak in the Paradise Beyond the Sun. It helped that the Chosen were usually enemies of Amaran, either outlaws, captives, or enemies of the state.
They were not innocent, they were being given a wonderful opportunity to redeem themselves and to enter Paradise.
But to sacrifice children? Innocent children? It was unthinkable! How could Boq’urak demand this? How could anyone do this?