The Harkans stood silent.
Sarra circled the ashy ring, her heart pounding like a child, like someone who still believed in myths—in things she could not see. She took deep breaths, in and out, her lungs cold with agitation, her skin wet with perspiration, tingling with excitement and confusion. She felt that burning, the feeling she sometimes experienced when she came upon a great idea, a revelation like the one she’d had with Ott below the Desouk Repository when she learned that the sun would not dim.
The massacre of the Soleri. This was all that was left of them, this ghostly ring of figures—Mithra-Sol’s last light reflecting off his dead children. She saw the outlines of their grand costumes, medallions and collars burned into their flesh, their desiccated faces screwed in odd contortions, their once-golden masks and headdresses mottled and dripping.
Ott broke the silence. “The pendant around that neck, it bears the sign of Sekhem Den, last of his line, the last to pre-date the line of Tolemy in the time of the old war, the War of the Four, the moment, two centuries ago, when the Soleri walled themselves off from the kingdoms.”
The emperor did not hide within the Empyreal Domain. He was hounded. He was hunted down and killed, along with all of his family. Twelve figures, the emperor, his wife and their five daughters and five sons. Ten children. Always ten for the Soleri. One of each, as the Soleri married each other. This was the last remnant of the ancient divine race.
“They did not wall themselves off after the war, they were driven here, away from the Empyreal Domain. They must have used their sacred road, the Amaran Road, to flee the capital. We thought we were following the grain, but we weren’t. Without knowing, we were following them, following their road to the place where they perished. It was here that they made their final stand.”
You cannot kill a god.
To look into the face of the emperor is to face one’s death.
Before time was the Soleri, and after time the Soleri will be.
Lies.
For two hundred years the Soleri have knelt here, frozen in death’s contortions while in the capital, in the empire, things went on as if they were still living, as if they were still in power.
For two hundred years while they were frozen here.
A thought occurred to Sarra. Two centuries ago the amaranth seed lost its fertility.
The gift of the Soleri was rescinded.
When they died, so did their flower, the amaranth. When the Soleri perished so did their land. The life-givers were gone. Sarra understood why the seeds of the amaranth no longer grew, why only the ancient seeds blossomed. The amaranth was born of their power—it said so in the sacred texts. When that power died, the amaranth died. For two centuries the empire had coasted on the remains of the once-great kingdom of the Soleri, but that time was at an end. The ancient amaranth was gone and the flower that gave life to the desert would not bloom again.
The Ray of the Sun, the emperor and his domain—all of it was nothing more than a clever ruse—a fa?ade.
There was no emperor and there had not been one for two hundred years. The Ray of the Sun was the true ruler of the kingdoms and his power was nothing more than a farce.
How could she judge? The priesthood had concealed the amaranth’s infertility just as the Rays had concealed the emperor’s absence. It was all lies; they had deceived one another. This is the secret of the empire, the secret of the Soleri, the secret from which they had drawn their power and position. With a start, she realized they were not alone.
Dasche and Taig waited for orders.
Noll kneeled alongside the statues, carefully studying them.
Sarra looked at Ott.
He uncapped a wine sack and offered the soldiers a drink, then Noll. They drank and Sarra waited. In a moment the poisoned wine would take their lives. She had enough to poison the soldiers who waited at the base of the cliff as well.
Secrets were power.
Sarra Amunet did not have to be the First Ray of the Sun to know this.
THE DAWN CHORUS
40
Dirty and thirsty and longing for her own bed, for a long and detailed game of Coin with an inscrutable Ott on the other side of the table, Sarra returned to the city of light, the secret of the Soleri’s demise burning within her. She cantered through the eastern gate, the Rising Gate, and recalled her hasty exit from the capital just a few weeks past, the day she stood in the Protector’s Tower and watched the eclipse fail and the crowds riot. The sky had been black with smoke, the walls splattered with graffiti, the air loud with the cries of pilgrims and priests alike.
And I nearly lost my life.
Now the white-walled towers were newly plastered, flags waved above the circus, and a plume of white smoke billowed from the temple of Mithra. Deeper into the city, past the outer districts, she saw banners swinging in the wind—gold and white bunting stretched between hastily set poles. The statues in the garden of Amen Hen were newly polished. And at the steps of the Waset, flowers littered the streets, cassia and milkweed, their petals mashed to the ground by the footsteps of a celebratory crowd. The rioting was over; the city was changed. Renewed.
But why? Sarra slowed her horse so she could take in the scene. The white smoke. The gold-trimmed bunting and yellow flowers. Sarra tugged the reins, stopping the horse. Solus had more festivals than the calendar had days, but this was no common holiday. It could only mean one thing: Suten had left his post. The light had shone from the mountain, and a new Ray had been appointed. The white and gold were his symbols. Up ahead, men and women in saffron colored mantles gathered at the Shroud Wall, at the veiled window of the Antechamber.
A shadow loomed behind the screen, a tall, broad-shouldered man. The figure was too large to be Saad. But who? Sarra tapped the helm of a nearby soldier. “Who is it, boy? Who is the new Ray?”
“The enemy. Mithra sent a traitor into our midst,” the boy said.
“His name?” she asked, her voice filling with impatience.
“The Harkan.” His words were like spit. “Arko Hark—”
Wadi. Arko Hark-Wadi.
She wanted to ask the boy if he was certain, but she caught herself. There was no mistake. In the Shambles, the Harkan soldiers told Sarra that Tolemy had summoned her husband to Solus. She had thought Arko a dead man then. With a start, she realized her mistake. There is no Tolemy, no emperor.
“I assure you this wasn’t Mithra’s doing,” she said as she rode off. This is Suten’s work. Sarra understood why the Ray had refused to meet with her during the Devouring. He had already chosen his successor, and it was Arko.