Chapter XIV #2
Down on the cavern floor, time seemed to drag intolerably.
Ariana was forced to smile and nod and laugh, to beckon Fia forward with the child as if displaying some opulent object from the Inver treasury.
Words ran over her like water, half heard as her responses came through force of habit.
Ariana knew that the distance she felt was a danger—that she needed to be more attentive, in this place where everyone angled for position and advantage.
It was a terrible risk, for her to be anything less than focused, but even with Fia’s strong blood running through her veins, she could not draw the fragmented pieces of her mind together.
Gwylen’s face swam before her, then Gileta’s, and Ariana could do no more than murmur thanks for their well-wishes.
On and on the waiting went, as the cavern grew warmer with the heat of fire and the crush of bodies. At last, Orden himself began to seem restless, shifting at Ariana’s side, his eyes cutting often to the Priest.
“I’m going to see what the delay is,” Orden said gruffly. She watched as a few terse words passed between him and his brother, the Priest finally bowing his head in assent.
A gong struck. The new prince and his patrons were summoned to the altar rise.
And Ariana knew there would be no salvation for her. She could see it in the way the Priest’s jaw worked as she and Fia passed by, and feel it in the furious energy that sparked between him and the postulant at her back.
What hurt worse was that she could not even pray for forbearance from her beloved goddess.
Like players on a stage, the patrons took their places, spreading out across the altar rise.
Always before, Ariana had stood at the hearth goddess’s little shrine, at a distance from the bloody work of sacrifice.
Not tonight. Tonight, she must stand before Tyrus, at the center of the rise.
Orden was several yards to her right at Mortis’s altar, Hadrian to her left at Kidrien’s.
The Priest took her traditional place before the hearth goddess, the farthest removed from her, his hands gripping the altar with white knuckles as he spoke.
A buzz of words. Some dedication to these gods to which Ariana could never be reconciled, because Lyrien apostate though she was, the Inver faith remained an abomination to her.
The Priest waved a hand, and from among the sea of watching faces, a dozen guards came forward.
They flanked the sacrifice like an honor guard, escorting him to the rise and chaining him to the altar as Ariana stepped aside.
The shackles spread his arms wide, so that he embraced the altar, his chest and shoulders rising above it.
But he could not shrink away or fight for freedom, not bound so tightly to the fate that had been assigned to him.
Ariana kept her eyes averted. She couldn’t bear to look, to see his face or how he felt about what was to come.
Rage, fear, resignation—it was all equally agonizing to her.
Instead of looking at the prisoner, she fixed her gaze on the knife.
Keen and silver, it lay on the altar beside the brazier of tinder and coals, which Ariana would light with her bloodied hands when the sacrifice was done.
She stepped forward, until she stood behind the prisoner. Reached around him and took up the knife. This was required of her. She always did what was required. She had never faltered at her duty, save once—
Every torch in the cavern went out, plunging the sanctum into darkness.
A jolt ran through Ariana. She’d never been at a ceremony like this before. There were always torches, for the Invers loved their fire, but through the sudden darkness, the Priest’s voice rang out. Assured and practiced, it carried from cavern wall to cavern wall, magnified by the sanctum’s echoes.
“At the beginning of our ascent to power, there was only darkness,” he said.
“The unlit mercilessness of a pagan land, where all depended on the vagaries of false goddesses for light. But with blood and flame, we rose from that dark. We made our own light, our own way, our own destiny. We took what was not offered. Seized what was not ours. From the darkness now, a future king rises. He comes into the world by blood, ushered in by the edge of a blade. And he brings with him light unquenchable, kindled by our own hands. Someday he will rise, and rule, and conquer.”
Out of the fathomless dark, deep-voiced drums began to roll. Ariana knew the signal—they were the drums of war, crying out for blood upon Tyrus’s altar. It was time, she needed to be steel, needed to be fire, needed to—
A first convulsive shiver racked Ariana, and then she was shaking like a leaf on the wind, sobs building at the back of her throat, headed for the sort of breakdown that would surely signal an end to her work and her efficacy on the mountain.
She would be shamed before Orden, before the court, and remain cut off from her goddess despite serving no purpose any longer.
It would be intolerable. Life would hold no meaning for her.
“Ari. Give me the knife.”
She’d all but forgotten Fia, who’d stayed close to her as a shadow. In the blur of climbing the altar rise, taking her place, seeing the prisoner brought forward, she had not even noticed the postulant remaining steadfastly at her back.
Now Fia’s voice spoke in the darkness, her hand gentle on Ariana’s wrist.
“Take the prince,” Fia murmured, the drums ensuring her words would go no further than the two of them. “And give me the knife.”
“Fia, no, I—” Her voice broke, and she felt the child pressed against her, the slight weight of him an anchor that drew her back from the brink of collapse. The knife left her hand, and Fia steered her aside, replacing her behind the prisoner.
On and on the drums went, and Ariana realized the counterpoint to them she heard was Fia, kneeling beside the prisoner and whispering the Raean canticle for the dying in his ear.
Only when it was done did Ariana feel the shift of the postulant getting to her feet.
There came a series of sudden sounds in the dark, and Ariana couldn’t help but picture what must be happening—Fia’s free hand tangled in the prisoner’s hair, pulling his head inexorably back, baring his neck as she thrust the knife in and forward, cutting his throat with all the decisiveness she’d brought to bear while severing limbs on the Corrinian plains.
It was no foreign thing to her, the task of piercing flesh and sinew, but before she’d done it to help and heal. This was something else entirely.
“Now the prince comes to me,” Fia said, back at Ariana’s side after a few moments.
After she’d made certain, the queen realized, that she’d done her work well.
That the prisoner was truly dead, his life stolen by Ariana’s own cowardice and Fia’s steady hands.
“You take the knife and kindle the fire.”
Mutely, Ariana did as she was told. Everything on the altar was slick, and she refused to think of why, or of the deadweight of the prisoner slumped in the way. It made her task difficult, and she struggled at the work, striking several sparks before finally convincing the tinder to light.
A small flame blazed, growing in strength as Ariana stooped and breathed upon it, coaxing it to full life.
When she straightened, her hands and sleeves were streaked with crimson, and the prisoner’s staring eyes glinted in the firelight.
“I give you your prince,” Ariana said in a clear voice, and it was a miracle, she thought, that it did not shake. “Justus Inver. Bright may he burn. Long may he reign.”
Fia stepped forward with the child in her arms, her own bloodstained hands hidden beneath his gold-threaded blankets, the two women flanking the altar of the god of war.
And if the fierce cry the Invers had let out upon seeing their king had been enough to shake the mountain, the shout they let loose now was enough to bring it down to its haunted foundations.