“Only Etanun’s heir may bear the sword from this chamber,” the prisoner said. “See?” She hastened to the stone and knelt, holding her gleaming flower up to it. Mouse shouldered her way past priestesses and eunuchs to peer through the doorway. She saw what the flower revealed. She saw that the sword was indeed part of the stone itself. She could see where chisel and mallet had chipped its contours into the shape it now bore. And around the place where the stone blade seemingly entered the boulder were deeply carved letters. These were more elegantly depicted, if unreadable to those looking on.
Then, as Mouse watched, the characters suddenly shifted and moved, not on the stone itself, but inside her mind. She found herself not reading but seeing images that to her were unmistakable. They said as clearly as words:
Fling wide the doors of light, Smallman,
Though furied falls the Flame at Night.
The heir to truth, blest blade of fire,
He finds in shielded shadow light.
The high priestess saw it too. But she growled, shaking her head. “That is foolishness,” she said. “Nothing will stand between the goddess and her prize, neither this Smallman nor any heir.”
She tried to approach the boulder again, but Stoneye restrained her. She whirled on him, eyes flashing, and snarled, “Very well, if you are so set on protecting me! You pick it up. You carry it from this room and show everyone the power of the goddess over these old superstitions. The Fire will burn all else away, including shivering cowardice!”
Stoneye gazed upon her. And for the first time Mouse saw his rock-hard mask slip. She saw in his cold eyes a sudden warmth, a heat that shot pain through his whole body but surged inside him with power as well.
She realized with horror: He loves her.
Not the high priestess. No, for no one could truly love that tall, detached being. But her. The woman she was beneath the trappings of her office. Beneath the robes, the wigs, the woven crowns. Beneath the burns. When he looked at her, he saw the person not the priestess, and he knew her name, which all others had forgotten.
Mouse’s heart broke. In that moment she might have wept for dreadful Stoneye, the eunuch who had sacrificed all to serve this hard shell of what had once been a woman.
“Do as I say!” the high priestess cried, her voice ringing shrill in the stillness of that otherworldly chamber.
Stoneye stepped around her, his head high, his shoulders back. Mouse saw the Silent Lady cast herself before him, heard her small voice protesting, “Don’t! Please! As you value your life, leave it be!”
Stoneye pushed her aside, and she landed in a crumpled heap on the tile-paved floor. Her starflower flew from her hand, spun wildly through the air, and floated gently down to rest on the black stone. The Silent Lady pushed upright, her long hair tossed back, and cried again, “Don’t!”
Stoneye’s hand reached out. The starflower illuminated each finger as it closed upon the carved hilt.
There was a rush, a deep-throated groan.
Then a thud as the slave’s huge body fell upon the stone.
How cold, how silent was this place beneath the world! In that moment, as Mouse watched death sweep through that fallen body, she felt as though it grabbed her as well, catching her heart, dragging her down. She was abandoned, alone, forsaken in this black universe of nothing.
The voice of the high priestess spoke like darkness itself:
“Stoneye, get up. I command you.”
5
I LEFT ETANUN THEN. For the first time since coming to that world, I took to the air and soared higher and higher. Perhaps I thought to fly into the hot embrace of Lumé himself and let him burn me away into nothing. But his brilliance was soon too great for me, and I was driven back to earth. I crashed upon a high mountain and lay with broken wings upon the stone. I hoped I was dead. My dreams were shattered, and life held no charm for me.
“Greetings, child,” someone spoke.
I did not have the strength to raise my head. It astonished me to hear someone in so high and remote a place. But the voice spoke into the churning fire in my gut.
“What a beauty you are,” the someone said. I felt his approach, felt him kneel beside me, and when I opened my eyes, I looked upon the face of Death-in-Life.
The face of the Dragon.
She strode across the chamber, the soft, shushing noise of her robes the only sound in that stillness besides the crackling torches and the breathing of the stricken throng.
Stern, the high priestess stood over Stoneye. “Get up,” she said.
Mouse, leaning heavily against the doorway, saw how the white flower shone on her mistress’s face like starlight on ice.
“At once. Slave.”
The woman did not seem to breathe. Her eyes were shadow-strewn pools of dark water. She nudged the fallen eunuch with her foot like one might prod a lazy dog. “Up. Up. Up.” Each word was a small gasp.
Then her mouth opened in a black slash across her face. Without a sound, she fell to her knees, clutching at the dead man’s head, clawing at his face, pulling at the sleeve of his tunic. Her voice returned in a sudden wail, an animal sound without words. It broke off in another eternal silence. Then she breathed again, and this time Mouse heard her crying, “Get up! Get up!”
Her voice was that of a child. She was, Mouse realized, weeping. Tears glistened like drops of fire on her face. Broken, she crumpled over the form of her dead slave.