Berry moved from statue to statue in turn, making her gifts and asking for blessing. Finally, she stood in front of the statue of Istra, the Dark Lady, patron of Dark Haven’s
vayash moru
and of outcasts everywhere. Against his will,
Jonmarc felt himself drawn to look up at the face of the statue, and he shuddered. Amber eyed and wild, Istra was more beautiful than any of her statues. Once, when he lay close to death, he had seen that raven-haired beauty on the shores of the Gray Sea, the sea all souls must cross at the end of their days. He had bargained with Her, and She had claimed him as Her champion.
“Istra, patron of outcast souls and Those Who Walk the Night, protector of my champion, look on us with favor. You know the dangers we face. M’lady, I beg of you, make us wise to know the vipers among us.”
Jonmarc felt a shiver go down his spine. He realized he was holding his breath. There was power in the air, and even though he had no magic of his own, he could feel
something
. The energy made the skin on the back of his neck prickle in warning.
When Berry had made her offerings to each of the figures, she turned and moved to the center of the dais. Aidane stepped back, her eyes scanning the crowd. The eight Sacred Vessels clustered around Berry, and the queen knelt. Each of the Sacred Vessels moved closer to lay a hand on Berry’s head. They murmured together in a language Jonmarc did not recognize, and he dimly remembered hearing once that the acolytes of the Lady spoke in a tongue all their own.
Near the stage, drummers began a complicated rhythm, and flutes picked up a descant. It started slow, but increased in tempo, and the Sacred Vessels began to sway with the music, even as the crowd felt its rhythm.
The Sacred Vessels fell silent, and one of them moved away from Berry. The white-robed woman let her cowl fall back, and she shrugged out of her robe, letting it pool
around her feet. She was a beautiful woman, with chestnut hair that covered her shoulders and spilled down to partly cover her breasts. Strands of red beads draped across her chest, all lengths, falling to her navel. She lifted up her arms and let her head fall back as she let the music take her.
“A prophecy for the queen. Plague will depart from Principality, but War will take its place. Blood will feed the crops of the next harvest. Blood and flesh will fatten the birds. Death and birth begin in blood.”
Still possessed of the spirit of prophecy, the Sacred Vessel began to dance, caught up completely in the music that was moving faster and faster and in the pounding drumbeats.
A second of the oracles stepped forward, and when her robes fell, blue beads, sacred to the Mother, covered her body in a cascade like sea water, with the torchlight glinting off the facets of hundreds of beads. “A prophecy for the queen. Alliances will be forged, and new life will replace the fallen. Night and day will become one.” She joined her sister oracle in the dance as yet another of the Sacred Vessels stepped to the front.
Bright green beads and feathers festooned the oracle’s nude body, like a short, fringed dress. She threw open her arms as if she would embrace the crowd, but her eyes were distant, possessed. “Hear the prophecy of the Childe. Water births and water kills. From the waters comes darkness. To the waters return the souls of warriors. The future is born of water and fire.”
As she joined the dance, the fourth oracle left her place by Berry. She wore a more revealing cascade of yellow beads around her neck, but bracelets of beads covered
her from wrists to shoulders and belled anklets chimed as she moved. “A prophecy for the queen. Hear the vision of the Lover. Hearts break. Hearts bleed. Bury love and fear together. Reap a harvest of souls, and a hollowing of spirits. Weep for the lost ones, never to wake again. Kings will fall and crowns will rise, and the old ways will be forever changed.”
The crowd, drunken as it was, had stilled despite the music that played faster and faster. Some of them were sober enough to hear the warnings in the words of the Sacred Vessels, and as much of a hush as was possible for several thousand people fell over the throng as the fifth oracle moved to the front.
Orange beads, for Chenne the Warrior, covered the prophetess. She was of mixed blood, and Jonmarc guessed she had Eastmark heritage. “Soon my horses will ride your lands, and your blood will whet my steel. Hear me, Berwyn of Principality. In the rising and the setting of the sun lies your salvation. From across the sea comes death. Look to the course of the sun.”
The sixth oracle let her robes fall. She had short, chopped brown hair and white, sightless eyes. She was thin, too thin, like an animated corpse.
Vayash moru
looked far more healthy than she. Clear beads, the color of Nameless, the Formless One, did little to hide her nakedness or the bluish pallor of her skin. “I ride across your land with my Host, harvesting what belongs to me. Beware the Hollowing. My servants have heard another voice, someone who would be their master. The Night Ones wake. Dread their coming. Dread and blood come and what will remain when they have passed?”
The crowd was now nervously quiet. While the oracles
danced across the stage, whirling in a frenetic motion that drove out reason and opened them to the passions of the divine, two more seers had yet to speak. Jonmarc felt a coldness in the pit of his stomach as the seventh seer revealed herself.
Beads black as night covered her, making her pale skin glow in the torchlight by comparison. Or perhaps, Jonmarc thought, the seer was
vayash moru
. The beads made the sound of rattling bones as she moved, and unlike those that adorned the other seers, these strands seemed to move on their own, followed by a blur of shadows that almost formed a misty covering for their wearer. “Hear the words of the Sinha, the Crone. My cauldron fills with blood and spirits. Shadows awaken from long slumber. Days grow short, and night remains. The battle is coming, between day and night. Dawn and sunset war with each other. In darkness lie both defeat and victory.”
Jonmarc’s throat tightened as the eighth seer moved forward. Berry knelt alone in the middle of the dais, surrounded by a circle of skyclad dancers. Sweat formed a sheen on their bodies and their beads flew as they danced, making brilliant swirls of color in the torchlight. Tambourines had joined the drums and flutes, along with pipers, and it seemed as if the heartbeat of everyone in the crowd had synchronized with the music of the dance.
When the eighth oracle’s white robe fell, a gasp went up from the crowd. A dark-haired woman stood at the front of the stage, covered in a cascade of blood. Jonmarc blinked, and realized that it was a trick of the light, that the wash of dark red that covered the woman was made of beads, and not blood. He felt a tingle of familiar power and knew that the Dark Lady’s presence was very near.
He remembered the voice he’d heard in his vision, and the amber eyes that had fixed on his as he argued for death. Perhaps others in the crowd had as clear a vision of one of the other Aspects, but for Jonmarc, it was the Dark Lady who was frighteningly real.
“Istra, protector of Those Who Walk the Night and those for whom the night holds no comfort, speaks to you, Berwyn of Principality. I give to you both blessing and curse. Your crown will be remembered forever, and until the end of the world, men will speak of the days of your rule. You do well to favor my Chosen, and my children of darkness. Remember that my strength is in the night. I am with you.” Her head turned as she spoke the last words, and although he was surrounded by a mob, Jonmarc swore that the seer stared right into his eyes.
There was a hush, and Berry rose slowly to her feet. Her face was turned skyward, and her arms were open, palms up. Her eyes were closed, and while the crowd murmured at the queen’s obvious possession, all Jonmarc could think was that she made a wide-open target. When she spoke, her voice was deep and raspy, like the voice of a much older woman.
“When the north sky drips with blood, soldiers rise and fight,” Berry prophesied. “Only the oldest magic will prevail. When the last days come and the War of Unmaking is upon you, look to the darkness. Born of curses, raised in fire, anointed with blood, the Son of Darkness may yet prevail. Before the end, you will hone your swords with tears and temper your spears with blood.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Jonmarc glimpsed movement and saw a man brandishing a knife. “Get down!” Jonmarc shouted to Berry, as he barreled onto the dais to
cut off the assailant as the man vaulted onto the stage. Jonmarc collided with the man before the attacker could reach Berry, and the knife sank into his left shoulder as both he and the assassin fell to the ground. Laisren seemed to come out of nowhere, adding his strength to pull Jonmarc free and subdue the wild-eyed man whose hand and shirt were slick with Jonmarc’s blood.
“Not again,” Jonmarc muttered, looking at the wound.
Before they could do anything, a scream came from the back of the dais, and all eyes went to Aidane, who was standing, stiff and staring, as if some other power suspended her on strings. She was quivering, and her eyes were wide like someone taken in a fit.
The music stopped, the drumming ceased, and the Sacred Vessels turned to stare at Aidane.
“Who has your body,
serroquette
?” It was the seer for the Dark Lady who spoke.
“I am Helja, the rune speaker.”
Even Jonmarc recognized the name of one of the legendary oracles of Principality, a rune speaker who had counseled the kings of Principality a century ago. Helja’s wisdom was still sought with gifts and incantations by the battle mages of every merc outfit in the kingdom. Berry rose slowly to her feet, advancing a step toward Aidane with Jonmarc right behind her. “Honored spirit, thank you for your presence. What message do you bring to us?”
Helja was pleased by Berry’s deference. Aidane could feel the spirit’s pleasure. “I have a message for you, Berwyn of Principality.”
Berry nodded soberly. “Speak. I will hear you.”
“Look to the Son of Darkness, when all is lost.”
“Who is the Son of Darkness?”
“Ask my children who hear the music. They will know. They can hear the Blood Stalker rising, and they know the Hollowing is near. Mad eyes watch the horizon, and they flee the call only they can hear. But they know. They know. Look to the Son of Darkness, when all is lost.”
As quickly as Helja’s spirit came, it departed, and Aidane staggered as the ghost left her. Thaine’s spirit rushed in to fill the void with a new and urgent excitement. “Black Robes are among us,” Thaine cried. She stared at a man with close-cropped brown hair who was standing in the crowd. “You’re one of them.” Thaine’s voice was loud and certain.
One of the huge straw figures of the Aspects burst into flames. The man Thaine accused let out a shout and hurled a knife at Aidane’s chest. Aidane barely dodged out of its way, crying out as the knife slashed her shoulder. As the crowd screamed and tried to flee, Aidane saw Berry’s hand flick once, twice, and Aidane’s attacker fell, with one of the queen’s knives in his throat. Kolin dove for Aidane, taking her down to the stage. Jonmarc, still bleeding, shielded Berry from the crowd.
Aidane felt Thaine’s death memories pour over her as Thaine pointed out the Black Robes disguised as revelers in the crowd. Laisren and the
vyrkin
reacted first, tackling the men Thaine identified. The crowd began to stampede toward the rear.
Amid the chaos, the Sacred Vessels had somehow gathered their robes, but they did not run. Instead, they formed a ring around where Jonmarc lay covering Berry, facing outward, peering into the crowd. Aidane felt their power, their spirits, as if they were seeking out Thaine’s ghost. Thaine spotted another of the Durim in the crowd.
“Black Robe. Murderer. I see what you are.” It was the voice of the seer for the Crone.
Guards barreled through the crowd to apprehend the man. Another of the straw effigies burst into flame.
The seer for the Formless One turned her blind eyes toward the flames. “There is death in the straw. Death in the straw.”
Flames roared to life along the straw outline of the third effigy, and then the fourth, although it was not yet the appointed time.
The first effigy began to crumble with the ferocity of the flames that enveloped it. Mats of straw and thatching fell away, exposing the burning wooden structure underneath it. Aidane had just an instant to glimpse some kind of apparatus inside the effigy, something that intuition told her should not be there, before there came a sound like swords singing through the air on a field of battle.
A hail of solid, silver objects sailed over her head, glittering in the light of the festival torches. Screams rose from the crowd.
Blades. Someone rigged the effigies with blades.
She dared a glance up, to see if any of the Sacred Vessels had been hurt, and to assure herself that Jonmarc and Berry were safe. She saw a ring of coruscating light, translucent, like the film of oil on water, surrounding the seers and their royal charge. In the crowd, people were screaming and crying. Aidane strained to see. Many of the people close to the first effigy lay on the ground covered with blood. Others were shrieking in shock and terror, holding motionless bodies.
“Take down those damn effigies!” The voice sounded with authority from the crowd, and Aidane recognized it
as belonging to the general with the eye patch. Her vision was limited from where she lay, but she saw a red-haired man come to a standstill facing the second effigy and raise his hands in a gesture of warding just as the straw giant began to tumble.