(Shadowmarch #1) Shadowmarch (20 page)

Even fretful, chattering Duny at last fell silent as they passed into the great hypostyle hall, awed as they all were, every day, by the size of the stone pillars shaped like cedars that stretched up a dozen times the girls’ height or more before disappearing into the inky shadows beneath the ceiling. When she had first come to the temple, Qinnitan had thought it strange that Nushash should live in such a dark place, but after a while she had come to see how right it was. Fire was never brighter than when it bloomed out of blackness, never more important than when it was the only light in a sunless place.

At the end of the great hall the eyes of Nushash were opening even now as the temple’s oldest priest lit the great lanterns, moving more slowly than it seemed any human being could manage and yet still be alive, extending his long lighting-pole with the creeping pace of an insect that thinks it might be observed by a hungry bird. This priest was one of the only men Qinnitan and her fellow acolytes saw during the conduct of their daily duties. Despite the fact that he was Favored, and thus a reason far more compelling than mere age ensured he was no threat to a large congregation of virgins, Qinnitan thought the Hive Sisters must have picked him because he was old enough to be doubly safe. They certainly had not picked him for his skill and dispatch. He must have already been at his maddeningly slow work for hours this morning, she decided: more than half the lanterns had been kindled. Their flicker exposed the looping lines of the sacred writing on the wall behind them, the gold characters of the Hymn to the Fire God glinting red with reflected flame:

Beyond the massive and ornately decorated archway lay the maze and inner sanctuary of Nushash himself, chief god of the world, the lord of fire whose wagon was the sun—a wagon bigger even than the autarch’s earthly palace, Qinnitan’s father had bragged, its wheels higher than the tallest tower. (Her father Cheshret was nothing if not proud of his employer.) Mighty Nushash crossed the sky each day in this great cart and then, despite all the snares that Argal the Dark One laid for him, despite the monsters that thronged his path, continued on through the night beyond the dark mountains, so he could bring the light of fire back to the sky each morning, thus allowing the earth and all who dwelled in it to live.

Somewhere beyond that archway glowered the great golden statue of Nushash himself, as well as all the endless corridors and chambers of his great temple, the chapels and the priests’ living quarters and the storage rooms so filled with offerings that a vast part of his army of priests had no other task except to receive and catalog them. Beyond that archway lay the seat of the fire god’s power on earth, and it formed—along with the autarch’s palace—the axis of the entire spinning world. But of course, girls like Qinnitan were not allowed into
that
part of the temple, nor were any other women, not even the autarch’s paramount wife or his venerated mother.

The procession of acolyte priestesses turned left down the smaller hallway, hurrying on softly pattering feet toward the Temple of the Hive of the Fire God’s Sacred Bees, to give it its full name. If the youngest Hive Sisters had not been waiting weeks for this day, it was at this moment that they would have first realized today was not to be like the others: the high priestess herself was waiting for them, along with her chief acolyte. Although she was not as venerated as the Oracle Mudry, High Priestess Rugan was the mistress of the Hive temple and thus one of the most powerful women in Xis. That being the case, she was a remarkably ordinary and even kindly woman, although she did not suffer foolish behavior well.

High Priestess Rugan clapped her hands and the girls all fell silent, gathered in a semicircle around her. “You all know what day this is,” she said in her deep voice, “and who is coming.” She touched her own ceremonial robe and hood, as if to be sure she had remembered to put them on. “I do not need to tell you the temple must be spotless.”

Qinnitan suppressed a groan. They had been cleaning all week—how could it get any cleaner?

Rugan’s face was appropriately stern. “You will give thanks as you work. You will praise Nushash and our great autarch for this honor. You will consider the monumental importance to all our lives of this visit. And most importantly, as you work, you will reflect on the sacred bees and their own ceaseless, uncomplaining toil.”

 

“They are so beautiful,” said the chief acolyte.

Qinnitan paused for a moment in her work to look at the great hives behind their clouds of smoky silk netting, vast cylinders of fired clay decorated with bands of copper and gold and warmed in winter by pots of boiling water set beneath the bulky ceremonial stands—one of the least enjoyable of the acolytes’ jobs: Qinnitan had more than a few burns on her hands and wrists where a spill had scalded her. The fire god’s bees lived in houses far more splendid than any but the most exalted and fortunate of men. As if they knew it, the bees were singing quietly, contentedly, a hum deep enough to make ears tickle and hair lift on the back of the neck. “Yes, Mistress Chryssa,” said Qinnitan, meaning it. It was perhaps the thing she liked best about the Hive temple—the hives themselves, the bees, busy and serene. “They truly are.”

“It is a wonderful day for us.” The chief acolyte was herself still a young woman, pretty in a thin-faced way when one learned to look past the scar that ran from her eye to her cheek. The scar made her the subject of much giggling speculation in the acolytes’ quarters. Qinnitan had never summoned the nerve to ask her how she had received it. “An entirely wonderful day. But for some reason, child, you do not seem entirely happy.”

Qinnitan took a breath, suddenly shocked and frightened that her strange mood should show on her face. “Oh, no, Mistress. I am the luckiest girl in the world to be here, to be a Hive Sister.”

The chief acolyte didn’t look like she entirely believed her, but she nodded approvingly. “It’s true, there are probably more girls who would happily take your place here than there are grains of sand on the beach, and you have had the even greater good fortune of having caught the eye of Eminence Rugan herself. Otherwise a girl of your . . . otherwise you might not have been selected out of so many other worthy candidates.” Chryssa reached out and patted Qinnitan on the arm. “It was your clever tongue, you know, although you still need to learn when
not
to use it. I think Her Eminence has hopes you might be a chief acolyte yourself one day, which would be an even greater honor.” She nodded a little, acknowledging her own hard work and good fortune. “Still, it is a high, lonely calling, and sometimes it can be difficult to leave behind your family and friends. I know it was for me, when I was young.”

Before Qinnitan could seize this chance to ask the revered and mysterious Mistress Chryssa some questions about her childhood before the temple, the nets in front of the hives billowed a little in a sudden draft, although the weight of hundreds of bees clinging to them kept them from moving too much. The breeze carried something through the great room, a whisper of sudden fear and excitement that made both the chief acolyte and her young charges straighten and turn to the door where the High Priestess had suddenly appeared, her arms held up, her hands open in the air like flowers.

“Praises to the highest,” breathed Chryssa, “He is here!”

Qinnitan got down on her knees beside the chief acolyte. A murmur of footsteps became louder, swishing and booming on the polished stone floors, as soldiers began to file in, each with a great curved sword on his belt and bearing on his shoulder a long, bell-mouthed tube of brightly polished figured steel—the Autarch’s Leopards, they had to be, no one else was allowed to wear that black-and-gold armor. It was astonishing: she had never thought to see any men here in the Hive’s great portico, let alone a hundred of them with muskets. This rarity was followed by several dozen robed priests of Nushash, then an even larger troop of soldiers, these carrying more conventional but still frightening weapons, long spears and swords. At last the shuffling of feet stopped. Qinnitan sneaked a look over at Mistress Chryssa, whose face was radiant with excitement and something even stronger—a sort of joy.

A vast litter appeared in the doorway, a thing of gold-painted wood and heavy curtains embroidered with the wide-winged falcon of the royal family. The brawny soldiers who held it set the litter down just to the side of the doorway and one of them leaped forward to pull back the curtains. Although none of the women in the temple chamber said a word, Qinnitan thought she could feel them, dozens of them, all drawing breath at the same time. A face appeared from the shadows in the depths of the litter, picked out by the lanterns.

Qinnitan swallowed, although for a moment it seemed impossible to do so. The autarch was a monster.

No, not quite a monster she saw at her second glance, but the youth in the litter was bent and gnarled as though by extreme age and his head was far too large for his spindly body. He blinked and looked absently from side to side like a sleepy man realizing he has opened the wrong door, then withdrew into the darkness of his curtained bower once more.

Even as Qinnitan gaped, the Leopard guards all lifted their guns off their shoulders, held them high, then slammed their feet against the floor with a deafening report—
boom, boom!
For a moment she thought the guns had all gone off, and some of the Hive Sisters let out shrieks of fear and dismay. As the echoes died, a half dozen more men in black-and-gold armor appeared in the doorway and then a figure almost as strange as the one in the litter followed them into the temple room.

He was tall, half a head above the biggest of the Leopards, but not as freakishly so as he first appeared: it was the length of his neck and the narrowness of his face that made him seem so unusual, and the spidery stretch of his fingers as he raised his hand. Beneath the high, dome-shaped crown his face, too, seemed like an ordinary face that had been pulled a bit beyond its appropriate shape—a long jaw and a curved, bony nose like a hawk’s beak that matched oddly with his youth—smooth brown flesh stretched tight across the skull. He wore a small trimmed black beard and his eyes seemed unnaturally large and bright as he stared around the room. A few of the Nushash priests stepped forward and began chanting and swinging their censers, filling the air around the tall young man with smoke.

“Who is that?” Qinnitan whispered under cover of the priests’ noise.

Chryssa was clearly shocked that she should dare to whisper, even when it was more or less safe to do so under the cover of the priests’ voices. “The autarch, you fool girl!”

It certainly made more sense that the tall one was their ruler—he had an undeniable power to him. “But then who is that . . . who is the man in the litter?”

“The scotarch, of course—his heir. Now be silent.”

Qinnitan felt stupid. Her father had once told her that the scotarch, the autarch’s ceremonial heir, was sickly, but she had entirely forgotten, and had certainly never guessed him to be so obviously afflicted. Still, considering that the autarch’s own life and rule hinged on the health and continued well-being of the scotarch, by ancient Xixian tradition, Qinnitan couldn’t help wondering at the autarch’s choice of such a frail reed.

It didn’t matter, she reminded herself. These folk were as much above her—all the doings of the high house were as far above her—as the stars in the sky.

“Where is the mistress of this temple?” The autarch’s voice was high-pitched but strong; it rang in the great room like a silvery bell.

Eminence Rugan came forward, head bowed, her usual brisk walk transformed almost into the slinking of a frightened beast. That, more than the soldiers or priests or anything else, made Qinnitan understand that she was in the presence of matchless, terrifying power: Rugan bowed to no one else that Qinnitan had ever seen. “Your glory reflects on us all, O Master of the Great Tent,” Rugan said, voice quavering a little. “The Hive welcomes you and the bees are gladsome in your presence. Mother Mudry is coming to offer you any wisdom the Sacred Bees of Nushash can grant. She begs your generous indulgence, Golden One. She is too old to wait here in the drafty outer temple without great discomfort.”

The look that crossed the autarch’s corvine features was almost a smirk. “She does me too much honor, does old Mudry. You see, I haven’t come to consult the oracle. I want nothing from the bees.”

Even cowed by the presence of a hundred armed soldiers, many Sisters of the Hive couldn’t restrain a gasp of surprise—some of the noises even sounded suspiciously like disapproval. Come to the temple and not consult the sacred bees?

“I’m . . . I’m afraid I don’t understand, O Golden One.” Clearly confused, Eminence Rugan took a step back, then sank to one knee. “The high priest’s messenger said you wished to come to the Hive because you were searching for something. . . .”

The autarch actually laughed. It had a strange edge to it, something that made Qinnitan’s flesh prickle on her arms. The curtain of the scotarch’s litter twitched as though the sick young man was peering out. “Yes, he did,” the autarch said. “And I am. Come, Panhyssir, where are you?”

A bulky shape in dark robes with a long, narrow beard like a gray waterfall trundled out from behind the Leopard guards—Panhyssir, the high priest of Nushash, Qinnitan guessed, and thus another of the most powerful people in the entire continent of Xand. He looked as fat and unconcerned with trivial human things as one of the drones in the sacred hives. “Yes, Golden One?”

“You said that this was the place I would find the bride I sought.”