Child of Flame - Page 31/400

At the far end of the avenue rose a second monumental structure, linked to the great pyramid by the roadway. Platforms rose at intervals on either side. It was hard to fathom what kind of engineering, or magic, had built this city. The emptiness disturbed her. She could imagine ancient assemblies crowding the avenue, brightly-clothed women and men gathered to watch spectacles staged on the platforms or to pray as their holy caretakers offered praise to their gods from the perilous height of the great pyramid. Yet such a crowd had left no trace of its passage, not even ghosts.

It was a long walk and an increasingly hot one as the storm rolled past and dissolved into the wall of fog. Not one drop of rain fell. She had to stop twice to drink, although the old sorcerer refused a portion both times.

The other temple was also a four-sided pyramid, sloped in stair steps and chopped off short. At the top loomed the visage of a huge stone serpent. An opening gaped where the serpent’s mouth ought to have been, framed by two triangular stacks of pale stone.

Flutes and whistles pierced the silence. Had the ghosts of the city come to haunt her? Color flashed in the distance and resolved into a procession of people dressed in feathered cloaks and beaded garments, colors and textures so bright that they would have been gaudy against any background, although the vast backdrop of the city and the fierce blue of the sky almost swallowed them. At the head of the procession bobbed a round standard on a pole, a circular sheet of gold trimmed with iridescent green plumes as broad across as a man’s arms outstretched. It spun like a turning wheel. Its brilliance staggered her.

The procession wound its way in through the serpent’s mouth, vanishing into the temple.

They came to the stairs, where Eldest Uncle paused while she caught her breath and checked each of her weapons: her knife, her good friend Lucian’s sword, and Seeker of Hearts, her bow. A wash of voices issued out through the serpent’s mouth like the voices of the dead seeping up from the underworld.

“They will not be friendly,” he said. “Be warned: speak calmly. In truth, young one, I took you on because I fear that only you and I can spare both our peoples a greater destruction than that which we are already doomed to suffer.”

His words—delivered in the same cool matter-of-fact tone he might have used if he were commenting on an interesting architectural feature—chilled her. The long avenue behind her lay wreathed in a heat haze. Wind raised dust. The great pyramid shone in uncanny and massive splendor.

“I faced down Hugh,” she said at last. “I can face down anyone.”

They climbed the steps toward the serpent’s head. Coming up before it, Liath found herself face-to-face with those two flanking little pyramids of stone, except they weren’t stone at all.

They were stacks of grinning skulls.

“What are those?” she demanded, heart racing in shock as vacant eyes stared back at her.

“The fallen.” A half-dozen bows and quivers lay on a flat stone placed in front of the serpent’s mouth, and a dozen or more spears rested against the stone. All of the weapons had stone tips. The only metal she saw came from three knives, forged of copper or bronze.

“Set your weapons here on the peace stone.”

“And walk in there unarmed?”

“No weapons are allowed on the council grounds. That is the custom. That way no blood may be shed in the heart of the city.”

She hesitated, but the sight of so many other weapons made it easier to acquiesce. She did not know their powers, but she knew how to call fire, if necessary. She set down her weapons, yet he stopped her before she passed the threshold.

“Water, too, has been forbidden. Even a sip might be used as a bribe. Let us drink deep now. It may be many hours before we emerge from the tomb of the ancient mothers.”

The water was brackish by now, warmed by the sun’s heat. But it was water and therefore miraculous beyond words to one who is thirsty.

Talcing the half-empty jug, he hid it among the skulls. Their dry, grinning faces had lost their horror. They weren’t even ghosts, just the memory of folk who had once lived and bled as she did. What fate had led them to this end?

“Come.” The old sorcerer gestured toward the serpent’s maw.

It seemed very dark inside. Even the whispering of distant voices had stilled, as if in expectation of their arrival.

She had faced down Hugh, she had learned courage, but she still murmured a prayer under her breath. “Lord, watch over me now, I pray you. Lady, lend me your strength.”

Somewhere, in another place, Sanglant surely wondered what had become of her, and maybe Blessing cried, fretting in unfamiliar arms. It seemed to her, as she stepped into the dark opening as though into a serpent’s mouth, that she had a long way to go to get back to them.