Epiphany of the Long Sun (11 page)

Maytera Mint knelt, and again the silver trumpet sounded. "I will, Great Queen!" Silk could hardly believe that it had emanated from the small, shy sibyl he had known.

At her reply the theophany was complete. The white bull lay dead beside him, one ear touching his hand; the Window was empty again, though Sun Street was still filled with kneeling worshippers, their faces blank or dazed or ecstatic. Far away-so distant that he, standing, could not see her-a woman screamed in an agony of rapture.

He raised his hands as he had when he had stood upon the floater's deck. "People of Viron!"

Half, perhaps, showed some sign of having heard.

"We have been honored by the Queen of the Whorl! Echidna herself-"

The words he had planned died in his throat as a searing incandescence smashed down upon the city like a ruinous wall. His shadow, blurred and diffused as shadows had always been under the beneficent radiance of the long sun, solidified to a pitch-black silhouette as sharp as one cut from paper.

He blinked and staggered beneath the weight of the white-hot glare; and when he opened his eyes again, it was no more. The dying fig (whose upper branches could be seen above the garden wall) was on fire, its dry leaves snapping and crackling and sending up a column of sooty smoke.

A gust fanned the flames, twisting and dissolving their smoke column. Nothing else seemed to have changed. A brutal-looking man, still on his knees by the casket before the altar, inquired, "W-was that more word from the gods, Patera?"

Silk took a deep breath. "Yes, it was. That was word from a god who is not Echidna, and I understand him."

Maytera Mint sprang to her feet-and with her a hundred or more; Silk recognized Gayfeather, Cavy, Quill, Aloe, Zoril, Horn and Nettle, Holly, Hart, Oont, Aster, Macaque, and scores of others. The silver trumpet that Maytera Mint's voice had become summoned all to battle. "Echidna has spoken! We have felt the wrath of Pas! To the Alambrera!"

The congregation became a mob.

Everyone was standing now, and it seemed that everyone was talking and shouting. The floater's engine roared. Guardsmen, some mounted, most on foot, called, "To me, everyone!" "To me!" "To the Alambrera!" One fired his slug gun into the air.

Silk looked for Gulo, intending to send him to put out the burning tree; he was already some distance away, at the head of a hundred or more. Others led the white stallion to Maytera Mint; a man bowed with clasped hands, and she sprang onto its back in a way Silk would not have thought possible. It reared, pawing the wind, at the touch of her heels.

And he felt an overwhelming sense of relief. "Maytera!
Maytera!"
Shifting the sacrificial knife to his left hand and forsaking the dignity augurs were expected to exhibit, he ran to her, his black robe billowing in the wind. "Take this!"

Silver, spring-green, and blood-red, the azoth Crane had given him flashed through the air as he flung it over the heads of the mob. The throw was high and two cubits to her left-yet she caught it, as he had somehow known she would.

"Press the bloodstone," he shouted, "when you want the blade!"

A moment later that endless aching blade tore reality as it swept the sky. She called, "Join us, Patera! As soon as you've completed the sacrifices!"

He nodded, and forced himself to smile.

The right eye first. It seemed to Silk that a lifetime had passed between the moment he had first knelt to extract the eye from its socket and the moment that he laid it in the fire, murmuring Scylla's short litany. By the time he had completed it, the congregation had dwindled to a few old men and a gaggle of small children watched by elderly women, perhaps a hundred persons in all.

In a low and toneless voice, Maytera Marble announced, "The tongue for Echidna. Echidna has spoken to us."

Echidna herself had indicated that the remaining victims were to be Scylla's, but Silk complied. "Behold us, Great Echidna, Mother of the Gods, Incomparable Echidna, Queen of this Whorl-" (Were there others, where Echidna was not Queen? All that he had learned in the schola argued against it, yet he had altered her conventional compliment because he felt that it might be so.) "Nurture us, Echidna. By fire set us free."

The bull's head was so heavy that he could lift it only with difficulty; he had expected Maytera Marble to help, but she did not. Vaguely he wondered whether the gold leaf on the horns would merely melt, or be destroyed by the flames in some way. It did not seem likely, and he made a mental note to make certain it was salvaged; thin though gold leaf was, it would be worth something. A few days before, he had been planning to have Horn and some of the others repaint the front of the palaestra, and that would mean buying paint and brushes.

Now Horn, the captain, and the toughs and decent family men of the quarter were assaulting the Alambrera with Maytera Mint, together with boys whose beards had not yet sprouted, girls no older, and young mothers who had never held a weapon; but if they lived…

He amended the thought to: if some lived.

"Behold us, lovely Scylla, wonderful of waters, behold our love and our need for thee. Cleanse us, O Scylla. By fire set us free."

Every god claimed that final line, even Tartaros, the god of night, and Scylla, the goddess of water. While he heaved the bull's head onto the altar and positioned it securely, he reflected that "by fire set us free" must once have belonged to Pas alone. Or perhaps to Kypris-love was a fire, and Kypris had possessed Chenille, whose hair was dyed flaming red. What of the fires that dotted the skylands beneath the barren stone plain that was the belly of the Whorl?

Maytera Marble, who should have heaped fresh cedar around the bull's head, did not. He did it himself, using as much as they would have used in a week before Kypris came.

The right front hoof. The left. The right rear and the left, this last freed only after a struggle. Doubtfully, he fingered the edges of his blade; they were still very sharp.

Not to read a victim as large as the bull would have been unthinkable, even after a theophany; he opened the great paunch and studied the entrails. "War, tyranny, and terrible fires." He pitched his voice as low as he dared, hoping that the old people would be unable to hear him. "It's possible I'm wrong I hope so. Echidna has just spoken to us directly, and surely she would have warned us if such calamities awaited us." In a corner of his mind, Doctor Crane's ghost snickered.
Letters from the gods in the guts of a dead bull, Silk? You're getting in touch with your own subconscious, that's all
.

"More than possible that I'm wrong-that I'm reading my own fears into this splendid victim." Silk elevated his voice. "Let me repeat that Echidna said nothing of the sort." Rather too late he realized that he had yet to transmit her precise words to the congregation. He did so, interspersing every fact he could recall about her place at Pas's side and her vital role in superintending chastity and fertility. "So you see that Great Echidna simply urged us to free our city. Since those who have left to fight have gone at her behest, we may confidently expect them to triumph."

He dedicated the heart and liver to Scylla.

A young man had joined the children, the old women, and the old men. There was something familiar about him, although Silk, nearsightedly peering at his bowed head, was unable to place him. A small man, his primrose silk tunic gorgeous with gold thread, his black curls gleaming in the sunshine.

The bull's heart sizzled and hissed, then burst loudly-fulminated was the euchologic term-projecting a shower of sparks. It was a sign of civil unrest, but a sign that came too late; riot had become revolution, and it seemed entirely possible that the first to fall in this revolution had fallen already.

Indeed, laughing Doctor Crane had fallen already, and the solemn young trooper. This morning (only this morning!) he had presumed to tell the captain that nonviolent means could be employed to oust the Ayuntamiento. He had envisioned refusals to pay taxes and refusals to work, possibly the Civil Guard arresting and detaining officials who remained obedient to the four remaining councillors. Instead he had helped unleash a whirlwind; he reminded himself gloomily that the whirlwind was the oldest of Pas's symbols, and strove to forget that Echidna had spoken of "the Eight Great Gods."

With a last skillful cut he freed the final flap of hide from the bull's haunch; he tossed it into the center of the altar fire. "The benevolent gods invite us to join in their feast. Freely, they return to us the food we offer them, having made it holy. I take it that the giver is no longer present? In that case, all those who honor the gods may come forward."

The young man in the primrose tunic started toward the bull's carcass; an old woman caught his sleeve, hissing, "Let the children go first!" Silk reflected that the young man had probably not attended sacrifice since he had been a child himself.

For each, he carved a slice of raw bull-beef, presenting it on the point of the sacrificial knife-the only meat many of these children would taste for some time, although all that remained would be cooked tomorrow for the fortunate pupils at the palaestra.

If there was a tomorrow for the palaestra and its pupils.

The last child was a small girl. Suddenly bold, Silk cut her a piece substantially thicker than the rest. If Kypris had chosen to possess Chenille because of her fiery hair, why had she chosen Maytera Mint as well, as she had confided to him beneath the arbor before they went to Limna? Had Maytera Mint loved? His mind rejected the notion, and yet… Had Chenille, who had stabbed Orpine in a nimiety of terror, loved something beyond herself? Or did self-love please Kypris as much as any other son? She had told Orchid flatly that it did not.

He gave the first old woman an even larger slice. These women, then the old men, then the lone young man, and finally, to Maytera Marble (the only sibyl present) whatever remained for the palaestra and the cenoby's kitchen. Where was Maytera Rose this morning?

The first old man mumbled thanks, thanking him and not the gods; he remembered then that others had done the same thing at Orpine's final rites, and resolved to talk to the congregation about that next Scylsday, if he remained free to talk.

Here was the last old man already. Silk cut him a thick slice, then glanced past him and the young man behind him to Maytera Marble, thinking she might disapprove-and abruptly recognized the young man.

For a moment that seemed very long, he was unable to move. Others were moving, but their motions seemed as labored as the struggles of so many flies in honey. Slowly, Maytera Marble inched toward him, her face back-tilted in a delicate smile; evidently she felt as he did: palaestra tomorrow was worse than problematical. Slowly, the last old man bobbed his head and turned away, gums bared in a toothless grin. Ardently, Silk's right hand longed to enter his trousers pocket, where the gold-plated needler Doctor Crane had given Hyacinth awaited it; but it would have to divest itself of the sacrificial knife first, and that would take weeks if not years.

The flash of oiled metal as Musk drew his needler blended with the duller gleam of Maytera Marble's wrists. The report was drowned by the screech of a wobbling needle, unbalanced by its passage through the sleeve of Silk's robe.

Maytera Marble's arms locked around Musk. Silk slashed at the hand that grasped the needler. The needler fell, and Musk shrieked. The old women were hurrying away (they would call it running), some herding children. A small boy dashed past Silk and darted around the casket, reappearing with Musk's needler precariously clutched in both hands and ridiculously trained upon Musk himself.

Two insights came to Silk simultaneously. The first was that Villus might easily fire by accident, killing Musk. The second, that he, Silk, did not care.

Musk's thumb dangled on a rag of flesh, and blood from his hand mingled with the white bull's. Still trying to comprehend the situation, Silk asked, "He sent you to do this, didn't he?" He pictured the flushed, perspiring face of Musk's employer vividly, although at that moment he could not recall his name.

Musk spat thick, yellow phlegm that clung to Silk's robe as Maytera Marble wrestled him toward the altar. Horribly, she bent him over the flames. Musk spat again, this time into her face, and struggled with such desperate strength that she was lifted off her feet.

Villus asked, "Should I shoot him, Maytera?" When she did not answer, Silk shook his head.

"This fine and living man," she pronounced slowly, "is presented to me, to Divine Echidna." Her hands, the bony blue-veined hands of a elderly bio, glowed crimson in the flames. "Mother of the Gods. Incomparable Echidna, Queen of the
Whorl.
Fair Echidna! Smile upon us. Send us beasts for the chase. Great Echidna! Put forth thy green grass for our kine…"

Musk moaned. His tunic was smoking; his eyes seemed ready to start from their sockets.

An old woman tittered.

Surprised, Silk looked for her and from her death's-head grin knew who watched through her eyes. "Go home, Mucor."

The old woman tittered again.

"Divine Echidna!" Maytera Marble concluded. "By fire set us free."

"Release him, Echidna," Silk snapped.

Musk's silk tunic was burning; so were Maytera Marble's sleeves.

"Release him!"

The perverse self-forged discipline of the Orilla broke at last; Musk screamed and continued to scream, each pause and gasp followed by a scream weaker and more terrible. To Silk, tugging futilely at Maytera Marble's relentless arms, those screams seemed the creakings of the wings of death, of the black wings of High Hierax as he flapped down the whorl from Mainframe at the East Pole.

Musk's needler spoke twice, so rapidly it seemed almost to stammer. Its needles scarred Maytera Marble's cheek and chin, and fled whimpering into the sky.

"Don't," Silk told Villus. "You might hit me. It won't do any good."

Villus started, then stared down in astonishment at the dusty black viper that had fastened upon his ankle.

"Don't run," Silk told him, and turned to come to his aid, thereby saving himself. A larger viper pushed its blunt head from Maytera Marble's collar to strike at his neck, missing by two fingers' width.