3. EDICT #2
It wasn’t quite a question, but at least she was speaking. Jacen had spent the better part of two days with her now and still he could not tell whether she liked him—let alone trusted him—or planned on poisoning him in his sleep.
“We all arrived within a year of each other,” he said. “Hes and Taoro and I are all that’s left of our cohort.”
In his peripheral vision, Nines flinched. Their first attempt at conversation since this morning, and Jacen couldn’t have chosen a more depressing thing to say.
Those early years of training were brutal, and if an acolyte was not selected as a novitiate by the age of sixteen, they were marked for the Harvest and given to the gods on the last offering of that year’s eclipse. Of Jacen’s cohort, less than half had survived to ordination.
He fumbled for a change of subject as he chose a spot near the statue of Nabatar, Lord of Sickness. Soon, a rumble overhead drowned him out.
The floor trembled as the roof of the pyramid split open.
Massive pieces rotated to reveal the sun overhead, washing the courtyard with its red-orange light.
A hush fell over the crowd, then a ripple as it parted for Zivora’s High Lord.
A retinue of his family and closest advisors followed, the only civilians allowed at this ceremony.
The doors to the Cathedral depths thudded shut at their backs.
A god walked with them.
Rakalem, Lord of Fear, appeared human from a distance—a tall, lean man with long white hair, clad in silvery robes.
But when one looked closer, one noticed his lack of eyebrows, his pointed ears, and his ridged skull.
The bloodless dark grey of his skin, the utter lack of hue in every part of him but his brilliant violet eyes.
His teeth bared in an expression that was not quite a smile, exposing pointed canines.
As the god ascended the pulpit, Jacen bowed his head. A shiver crawled up his spine. Rakalem’s mind had a weight to it, vast and alien as the shadow creeping over the sun.
Without a word, he lifted a four-fingered hand. The sun winked out.
In a moment, the red glow drained away and all that remained was a radiant silver halo with its aura of coronal loops. The statues’ shadows lengthened and darkened. Night-blooming flowers unfurled their ghostly petals.
The god began to speak, in a booming voice that made the courtyard tremble:
“Four hundred and fifty-one years ago, this land was ruled by your ancestors and their heretic priests.
In their arrogance, they charged their acolytes to traverse the Gates between universes and return from the Source possessed by demons.
They called forth powers they could not control and forced our intervention.
“You lost the right to rule yourselves. But we are merciful. We gave you this mighty city and ordained you, our priests, to protect it. So long as you obey our laws and pay us tribute, you will enjoy our blessings, and you will spend eternity among the faithful in our celestial paradise.” He raised a hand toward the heavens, to where the stars glimmered in the midday dusk.
“But for those who transgress as the demon priests once did . . . they shall know neither the gift of paradise nor the mercy of oblivion. They will suffer eternity in torment.”
Jacen clenched a fist in his robes, fixing his gaze on the floor. In his mind’s eye, a different god took Elyas’s jaw in his hand. He twitched his four fingers and snapped his neck. Again and again and again. Jacen could not stop it. He had only ever been able to drown it.
“Each year we remind you,” said the Lord of Fear, “that we can take the sun itself. You must never forget our power, and you must present your offerings. Brothers, Sisters—consecrate their souls to us.”
From below the pulpit, Brother Lev intoned the words of a prayer they all knew by heart:
“Gods above, creators of all life, our masters and protectors—we offer you these souls. Deliver us from sorrow—”
“We offer you these souls,” all assembled replied as one. “Deliver us from hunger—”
“We offer you these souls.” Jacen mouthed the words with the rest but could not bring himself to make a sound.
“Deliver us from pain—” “We offer you these souls.”
Before the effigy of the Lord of Sickness, the priest in front of Jacen trembled. A sob broke from her chest.
“Deliver us from fear—”
“We offer you these souls.”
The priest unclenched her fist over the chalice at the statue’s feet. A patter of metal against stone followed—at least a dozen, maybe twenty clink-clink-clinks.
No one knew for certain how the Harvested were chosen, or how they were taken, or where.
Only that for one out of each year’s ten cycles the eclipse came, and people disappeared.
Usually a few dozen, but sometimes hundreds, in a slow trickle or all at once.
Sometimes entire families—or even twenty from the same congregation, led by an unsatisfactory priest.
Don’t think about it. The words repeated, a desperate refrain in Jacen’s head. You can’t think about it.
“Deliver us from sickness—” “We offer you these souls.”
A hundred years earlier, one of Jacen’s order had betrayed his vows. He had told his congregants who among them would be Harvested, so they might fight to keep their loved ones. The gods allowed a plague to enter the city, and every outbreak still served as a reminder.
No sin was without consequence, and none of them had a choice. “Deliver us from despair—”
“We offer you these souls.”
The other priest turned away from the statue, and for a splinter of a second her gaze locked with Jacen’s. Her face was gaunt, her brown skin sallow, her irises pale circles in yellowed sclerae. She offered him the briefest of nods—like recognizing like. Jacen did not acknowledge her.
And Lev concluded, “—so that we may endure, in prosperity and in peace.”
Jacen fished in his pocket and struggled to pinch the tiny piece of metal between his shaking fingers.
It took him too long; conspicuously, humiliatingly long, and he bit back a vicious curse as he almost dropped the chip.
He cast it into the chalice. He did not wait to see it fall—whatever it was, he didn’t want to know, he didn’t care—and returned to Nines’ side to wait for the ceremony to end.
“We pray this sacrifice will suffice,” Lev said, “and that you will ask no more of us this Harvest.”
But they always did. The first of a season’s four offerings tended to be the largest, but this ceremony would be held every ten days until the end of the cycle.
The god Rakalem gave no indication whether he had heard Lev’s plea or whether he even cared. He glided down from the pulpit and left the courtyard, the High Lord and a handful of senior priests trailing behind him. Only after his suffocating presence faded could Jacen breathe again.
Lev droned on for a time, apparently forgetting he’d been asked to deliver a prayer and not a sermon.
Strong telepaths tended to be good speakers. They possessed the helpful ability to sense the collective unconscious of an audience, to adjust to the minute cues and currents that swayed them. Before his life went to shit and he’d had to start forcing everything he preached,
Jacen had loved it. There was nothing else like it—the power of well-chosen words to tap in to a group’s shared hopes and fears, to make the many feel as one.
He missed it. He could not recall the last time he’d been able to summon such conviction.
When Lev finally yielded the pulpit, the crowd began to disperse. “Come on,” Jacen muttered to Nines, who looked as miserable as he felt. “We have to make a few house calls before curfew. If we hurry, we might catch a kirikil cart.”
Predictably, he found himself stuck behind a long line of priests and dignitaries clogging the main exit.
He ground his teeth, turned on his heel, and stalked across the courtyard toward the way he’d come in.
Nines had to jog to keep up. As they approached the garden, though, she slowed, craning her neck at an argument until Jacen was compelled to stop and look.
A young boy was shouting at a richly dressed old woman—Lady Sloane Ancarath, a prominent member of the Merchants’ Guild.
As a novitiate, Jacen had completed his required combat training alongside her granddaughter, Saraida.
The stocky, curly-haired Knight Captain stood close by, wearing a mortified expression.
“I heard you!” was all Jacen caught from the boy.
It took Jacen a few seconds to recognize Neri Semira, the High Lord’s youngest grandson, whom he’d met once or twice in passing and had never known to speak above a mumble. Today the boy was distraught, making enough of a scene to draw several eyes.
Neri was small for eleven, walked with a limp from a deformed foot, and squinted from nearsightedness. He sickened easily, the desert dust made him wheeze, and overall he lacked both the confidence and robust physicality typical of the Semira family. Jacen assumed he took after his mother.
Neri seemed painfully aware of his lack of presence. He squared his chest, balling his fists at his sides. “I heard you,” he said again. “I know what you did. I heard you tell the priest—”
“Watch your tongue,” said Lady Ancarath. “One more word out of you and I’ll have you whipped like one of my kitchen boys.”
“No!” Neri shouted. “I don’t care. I’ll tell the High Lord.” “Grandmother.” Saraida reached out a hand, only to be rebuffed.
“Enough,” the old woman snapped. “I don’t know what you think you heard.”
But there was more than anger writ across her face, and Saraida’s. Confusion. It gave Jacen pause. There was truth in Lady Ancarath’s words. She did not know what Neri had overheard—or perhaps she had not said anything to be overheard. Not out loud.
A knot formed in Jacen’s stomach. Nines put it together at the same time, because they had both made this mistake before. Every telepath had.
“Is he—” she gasped.