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Kurnos sat back in his chair, speechless. So Ilista was dead. He would never forget the horrible sight, and he knew that, tomorrow night, Symeon would have company in his nightmares. Beldyn, who mattered most, was still alive. The King-priest wrung his hands, as Fistandantilus clenched his fingers about the emerald once more. With another twinge, the ring reappeared on his finger. Its grip felt even tighter than before.
“There is your answer,” the wizard said. “The First Daughter hurt Sarhira badly. She ca
Ridiculously, after all the mage had told him, Kurnos’s first thought was about their unfinished game. The archmage paused, glancing over his shoulder.
“Oh… yes,” the sorcerer said. “It is my turn.”
With that, he raised his finger, making a sharp gesture. As one, his pieces surged forward, swarming across the table and laying into the Kingpriest’s men with sword and fang. Screams rang out across the balcony as the game pieces perished, cut to shreds by the sudden onslaught. In seconds, and against all the game’s rules, his men had all perished.
“Rigo iebid,” Fistandantilus said as Kurnos gaped at the carnage.
The realm is fallen.
He was gone, melting into the shadows, leaving the sound of mocking laughter in his wake.
Chapter Twenty-Three
It snowed the eve of Lady Ilista’s funeral. It was the first of the season, blowing in on bitter winds off the Khalkists to the west. A light dusting that sparkled the air around the street lamps and filled the cracks between the cobblestones, it was the sort of snow that would be gone by midday, only a herald of the coming winter.
The snow kept folk inside, save for the watchmen on the city’s high walls, who shivered as they huddled around smoldering braziers, and so the weather helped prevent the riots that might have transpired in the wake of the slaughter in the Patriarch’s tower. There was worse on the way, fiercer storms that would howl down from the mountains and bury Taol’s roads, as had happened last year. Some of the bandits’ leaders looked on the coming snow as a boon. If the passes were clogged, after all, it would thwart the Kingpriest’s troops. Tavarre, however-who had taken command of the city’s defenders after Ossirian’s death-scoffed at the notion, his scarred face sour.
“We didn’t have enough food for last winter,” he noted. “Another season like that, and half of Govi
He didn’t mention what else troubled him. If the outriders’ reports were correct, and two full Dromas were marching through Taol, it didn’t matter when they came. Even with those who had pledged their swords to the Lightbringer since his arrival, the city’s defenders were too few to stand against such a force. Govi
True to form, the snow turned to drizzle when dawn came, and fog settled in, filling the streets with gray murk. The city became a ghostly place, full of muffled sounds and eerie glows where lanterns burned. The mourning cloths outside the houses and shops hung limp, soaked through, and when the mourners made their way to the Pantheon, thousands strong, they seemed like phantoms in the gray. Unlike the wailing, pottery-smashing masses in the lowlands, the folk of the highlands were somber in the face of death, chanting in low voices, their hands ritually smeared with soot. Those who could afford to wore blue, but dyes were expensive in the highlands, so most came dressed in drab grays and browns, their faces daubed in crushed woad instead. The fog made them seem an army of drowned corpses, gathering in the courtyard in the foredawn cold.
The worship hall was dim, its vaulted ceiling lost in shadow without the daylight to illuminate it. What was strange, though, was the number of candles the clerics had set out. There were thousands of them, on shrines and in wall sconces, on silver candelabra standing throughout the room, and covering the dais where the god’s altar stood. Of all the tapers, however, only one in ten were lit. The rest stood whole and dark, no flames dancing upon their wicks. Folk remarked at the strangeness of it, whispering and wondering. Somehow, it seemed wrong.
The bodies lay at the head of the hall, atop three wooden catafalques smothered in smoke from nearby censers. Clad in the chain hauberk he’d worn when he’d stormed the Pantheon months ago was the hulking body of Lord Ossirian, his hands clutching his broadsword upon his breast. On another side, Durinen lay shrouded with a blue cloth to hide the ghastly wound that had killed him, but it was the figure in the middle, clad in full vestments, the sacred triangle painted upon her forehead, that drew the most looks. The former First Daughter had been in Govi
By the time the Pantheon’s bells tolled the dawn watch, the worship hall was filled with people, pressed shoulder to shoulder on the pews and packing the aisles and apses as well. Still they came, spilling out into the vestibule and down the steps to the courtyard outside. Tavarre and the bandit chiefs stood near the front, their faces hidden by deep hoods, and the folk of Luciel held a place of honor nearest Ilista’s bier. Wentha stood among them, and Fendrilla, and aU the rest who had fled north to Govi
A gong sounded, and a hush fell over the crowd as the procession entered. It began with two young acolytes, dressed in gray and bearing lit torches. After them came an elderly cleric, one of the Little Emperor’s men, swinging a golden thurible that trailed blue smoke in zigzagging arcs as he walked, into the room. Following him were four priestesses, singing a dirge, their voices echoing across the vast chamber. Then two more acolytes, and then the Lightbringer, and the mourneTs gasped as one.
The funerary rites in the Istaran church were clear and had been for centuries. They were specific about many details, among them the garb of the priest conducting the ceremony. He was to wear vestments of blue, unadorned and unhooded, and all the jewelry of his position. Beldyn, however, wore no rings or bracelets, no circlet on his brow. Only his holy medallion, glinting in the candlelight, hung openly around his neck. His robes were white, heretical at such a solemn occasion. It was neither of these facts, however, that made the folk of Govi
It was the blood.
The stains were dried now, the color of rust. They covered the front of Beldyn’s robes, stiffening the cloth, and smeared the cuffs of his sleeves. Bloodstains were even on his face still, a smudge on his chin and another on his temple. The clergy had taken pains to clean and prepare the bodies of the dead, but the Lightbringer had not washed since the attack. His long hair hung greasy down upon his shoulders, and the smell of the incense did not fully mask the whiff of unclea