Lord of the Shadows (33 page)

“You won't get away with this, Kirsh. When I explain to your father why I took a lover—”

“He won't do a damned thing,” Kirsh predicted. “Marqel is the Voice of the Goddess, now. She's beyond any harm you can do her.”

It was a bitter realization for Alenor. The reason Kirsh had kept her secret—to protect Marqel—no longer existed.
Oh, what a fool I've been!
What a fool for thinking Kirsh no longer cared she had come to Avacas carrying another man's child. What a fool for not listening to Jacinta and sending Alexin away as soon as he returned to Kalarada. And now her own stupidity and selfishness were going to cost Alexin his life.

That it might also cost Alenor her life didn't seem important right now.

She searched Kirsh's face for some hope of understanding or compassion, some remnant of the boy she had loved as a child.

“Do you hate me so much you'd condemn me to death, Kirsh?”

He didn't answer her. He just turned away and gathered up his reins before swinging into the saddle.

It was then that Alenor realized that Kirsh didn't hate her at all.

He hated himself.

ia's most lasting memory of Bollow was sitting in a tavern with Dirk Provin on their way to Omaxin, berating him over his foolish gambling habits after he'd won all that money playing Rithma. When she and Reithan reached the spired city a week before the eclipse was due, the memory rushed back, but her thoughts didn't disturb her as much as she expected they would. They were just memories, she realized, of a time when she was younger and more foolish. They couldn't hurt her. They didn't even bother her that much.

Tia couldn't explain why she felt older, why she felt more accepting of her own mistakes. Perhaps that was the difference between love and infatuation. She could admit to herself now that she'd been infatuated by Dirk, but she loved Misha. When she needed strength to deal with her own troubles, all she had to do was recall what he had endured these past few months. It made her angst seemed trite and insignificant. If Misha had freed himself of a poppy-dust addiction, Tia could deal with a few unfortunate reminders of an old boyfriend.

The lakeside city was crowded to overflowing. Dirk's decision to hold a massive ceremony honoring the Goddess's eclipse on the twentieth anniversary of Antonov's sacrifice of his youngest son worried Tia a great deal. She was certain now that Neris must have told him about the eclipse, but couldn't remember her father ever hinting at such a momentous event. She was angry at Neris for that. If there was something as important as an eclipse due, why had he entrusted the information to Dirk Provin, rather than his own daughter? She felt betrayed. Knowing about the eclipse would have been almost as useful as knowing when the next Age of Shadows was due. They could have broadcast the information across Senet and Dhevyn months ago and there would have been nothing divine attached to the event at all. It would have simply
been a natural phenomenon nobody could make any political or religious mileage out of.

But Neris had only confided in Dirk and now things were as bad as they had ever been. There was a sacrifice planned, she'd heard when they passed through Avacas, but who was to be killed had not yet been announced. Everybody of note in both nations had been summoned to Bollow to attend. Almost every Sundancer and Shadowdancer had been recalled.

All to attend a ceremony Dirk Provin had masterminded to further his own political ambition.

Tia still refused to believe he was doing this for any other reason.

Because the city was bursting at the seams, a tent city had sprung up outside its walls to cater for the overflow. It wasn't just those who could not afford an inn who were accommodated there. Quite a few noblemen had brought entire entourages with them and had set up luxurious camps in between the more humble dwellings of their neighbors. A rather large contingent of Senetian soldiers patrolled the city and the tents surrounding it to keep the peace. Their job was relatively easy. Other than the large number of pickpockets and other petty criminals that such a large gathering usually attracted, the air in Bollow was more festive than tense. The Goddess was sending a sign. Nothing like it had been seen since the end of the Age of Shadows. There was a whole generation who had never seen the Goddess at work so visibly and everybody was determined to make the most of the occasion.

The markets had been moved outside the city walls as well, to clear the plaza in front of the temple for the massive crowd expected for the ceremony. Reithan and Tia found a place to sleep in a large tent run by an enterprising merchant who had turned her tent, which was usually home to a dozen or more seamstresses, into temporary accommodation. She had sent her workers home and would probably make more in the coming week than she'd made in the previous year, renting out floor space to travelers who couldn't find a bed in the city. Once Reithan had handed over the outrageous fee the woman was asking, they headed into the city proper to find out what was going on.

They pushed and jostled their way through the gates into a city that had a carnival atmosphere about it. The flow of people through the streets was severely hampered by the numerous performers who had flocked to Bollow to take advantage of the large crowds. There were enterprising hawkers selling relics, too. One was offering a lock of the late High Priestess Belagren's hair. By the look of the sack he carried, filled with tiny jars containing a small snippet of badly dyed auburn hair, he was expecting to do quite a brisk trade. Tia smiled as she declined his offer of a lock of Belagren's hair for the amazingly low price of ten copper dorns and wondered if she should tell the man the High Priestess Belagren had been a blonde, not a redhead.

“Do you think we should head for the temple first?” Reithan asked, looking around with a shake of his head. He'd never been to Bollow before. Tia wasn't sure what impressed him most, the city's elegant (if declining) architecture, or the madhouse atmosphere of the streets.

“It's likely to be where all the action is,” she agreed, grunting as she was pushed aside by a hurrying passerby. “Maybe it's a little less crowded near the temple, too.”

They shoved their way forward toward the center of the city, walking on the road. The sidewalks were too crowded. Several times they were almost flattened against the pillars shading the footpaths by carriages forcing their way through the throng, the coachmen yelling and cursing the pedestrians as they passed.

The crowd thinned hardly at all until they reached the broad plaza in front of the temple where the ceremony was to be held in a few days' time. The streets leading to the plaza had been cordoned off and workmen were busy erecting shaded tiered seating for the hundreds of distinguished guests planning to attend. Two massive wicker suns had been erected on either side of the vast temple doors, their pyres already stacked and waiting for the victims who would be sacrificed to the Goddess.

As they neared the barricade blocking the end of the street where a few curious spectators had gathered to watch the preparations, Tia saw Dirk emerging from the temple, talking
to a yellow-robed Sundancer. The man with Dirk was old and bent and seemed to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Despite his new position, Dirk was not dressed as a Sun-dancer. He wore a plain shirt, dark trousers and high Senetian boots, and if she hadn't known it was the Lord of the Suns standing there talking to the old man, she might easily have mistaken him for a scribe or an engineer. Tia thought it a little odd.
You'd think he'd be anxious to remind everybody of who he was, particularly after all the trouble he's gone to, to get himself there.

“There's Dirk,” Reithan pointed out, spying him at the temple entrance a moment after Tia caught sight of him.

“Can he see us from up there?” she asked, not sure what Dirk would do if he realized she and Reithan were so close.

“He's got other things on his mind,” Reithan concluded, looking around at the frantic workmen. “He's planning to make it quite a show by the look of things.”

“And you still think he's doing this for any other reason than his own glorification?”

Reithan shook his head as he watched Dirk, and then he sighed. “I don't know what to think anymore, Tia. I keep hoping for the best. But in light of all this,” he added, pointing to the preparations under way, “it's getting harder and harder to think any good can come of it.”

Tia nodded in agreement, unconsciously measuring the distance between her and Dirk. “You know, if I had my bow…”

Reithan smiled. “Even the Brotherhood hasn't been able to take him out, Tia. What makes you think you'd have any more luck?”

“That brings up an interesting question, actually.”

“What question?”

“Why
hasn't
the Brotherhood been able to kill him? Are they even trying? Look at him, Reithan! He's standing up there on the top step of the Bollow temple—a perfect target for anyone with a mind to put an arrow through him—and he's not even concerned! He must know by now there's a contract out
on him. Where's the wall of bodyguards protecting him? Why aren't they sweeping the streets for assassins?”

“Maybe he's starting to believe his own propaganda,” Reithan suggested. “Maybe he truly thinks he's divinely blessed and the Goddess will protect him.”

“You don't believe that any more than he does,” she scoffed. “Do you think he found a way to call off the Brotherhood?”

“I don't see how he could have.”

“Dirk's proving to have quite a talent for performing the impossible,” she reminded him. “Getting the Brotherhood to renege on their contract probably didn't even cause him to raise a sweat.”

“It might be worth asking around,” Reithan mused. “Somebody in the Brotherhood in Bollow might know the reason.”

“Just be careful,” she warned. “We don't know how far the Brotherhood in Senet can be trusted.”

Reithan smiled thinly. “About as far as the Brotherhood can be trusted anywhere else on Ranadon, Tia—not one damn bit.”

While they were talking, a slender blond Shadowdancer emerged from the temple and stopped beside Dirk. She wore so much gold the radiance of the second sun actually glinted off her, casting refracted light from her throat and wrists, making her appear somehow more than a mere mortal. Dirk said something to her and then finished his discussion with the old Sun-dancer. Together they turned to walk down the steps to a waiting closed-in carriage.

“That must be the new High Priestess.”

“That's Marqel,” Tia muttered, realizing the young woman was the same Shadowdancer who had pretended to be so solicitous of her comfort when she was a captive of Prince Kirshov after Dirk betrayed her in Omaxin. “She claimed Dirk raped her. She said she hated him.”

“He's made her High Priestess. I'm betting she's forgiven him by now.”

Tia shook her head in amazement. Was there no end to the lies and deception surrounding Dirk Provin?

On his way down to the carriage, Dirk stopped to speak to a young man and woman who were sitting on the steps, apparently waiting for him.

“That's Eryk!” she hissed, as the pair climbed to their feet and followed Dirk and the High Priestess to the carriage. “I thought you said he was killed in Mil?” The chubby blonde sitting beside him was familiar, too, but Tia couldn't remember where she'd seen her before.

“I thought he was,” Reithan said with a frown. “I wonder how he wound up here?”

“Here and back as Dirk's servant by the look of things,” she pointed out with a scowl. “I know that other girl, too, but I can't for the life of me recall where I've seen her before.”

The carriage moved off, turning down between the seating still under construction.

“Worry about it later,” Reithan suggested. “They're heading this way!”

Tia turned and pushed her way back with Reithan by her side. Several soldiers posted around the perimeter of the plaza hurried to the barricade to move it aside and allow the Lord of the Suns’ carriage through. There was nowhere to hide and with so many people pressing close, no way they could flee. In the end they simply pressed themselves flat against the wall, with their eyes downcast, hoping they hadn't been noticed or recognized by anybody in the carriage.

The carriage clattered past without stopping. Letting out a sigh of relief, Tia turned to watch it moving down the street. It was then she realized that Eryk was leaning out of the carriage, staring, open-mouthed.

Tia's heart began to race as she realized Dirk's half-witted servant had recognized her.