The poets sing all the usual things of my divine beauty. As she is described in The Song of the Red Year, the High Priestess Manora had skin like white satin and hair as golden as the dome of the Summer Palace at dawn. The High Priestess Jynine, according to the Book of the Moon, had eyes the colour of emeralds and a face like the bud of a rose. As to myself, my hair is like trees against the evening light; my skin is like rainwater in a garden; my eyes are like the sky after a storm. Which is to say, I have black hair, brown skin and blue eyes. I am tall, a good thing. Caleste, my predecessor, was so short she had to stand on tip-toe to reach the High Altar. I was taller than her as a girl of thirteen.
The day of my dedication was grey and hot. I spent the night before in prayer, fasting. I was not even permitted a drink of water in the heat. At dawn slaves came to bath me, dressed me in a robe of gold and a veil of silver net sewn all over with golden flowers. It was so heavy I could barely see through it; my reflection in the mirror when they showed me was distant and blurred like a figure seen through thick glass. Two acolytes had to hold my arms to lead me where I walked. On my feet I wore shoes of copper, raised up on wooden pads so that I did not touch the ground.
I was sat on a high-backed bronze chair with a curtain drawn around me while the priestesses and guests filed in; I could hear the chatter of voices and then the silence when the Emperor arrived. I sat hidden for a long time while the ceremony went on around me; priestesses chanted in high, sad voices, calling down the blessing of the Lord of Living and Dying upon me. After what seemed half an eternity, the curtain around me was pulled back and Samnel called upon Great Tanis to behold His servant in all her glory. More prayers, more singing, then, finally, slim cool hands lifted the great veil and revealed me to the assembled multitudes. The lords and ladies wore their best clothes, shining red and green and purple and white. So beautiful, they looked.
I looked first for the Emperor, of course, whom I had never seen. He sat at the front in the middle, flanked by his guards, young and striking in his black but disappointingly plain with a fat face. He looked bored, fidgeted with the clasp of his robe. Helase said later that it is because the Emperor must remain a virgin: it is harder for men to remain that way, she said.
More prayers, then Samnel approached me and raised me to my feet. It was strange to see her like that, masked in silver with lapis inlays around her lips and eyes, like the tiles on my bedroom floor. I stood awkwardly in the copper shoes. She helped me across to the High Altar, and two priestesses helped me to kneel before it. I’d been told to keep looking straight ahead, but the one on my right pinched my wrist and I glanced up into pale blue eyes: Helase, laughing at me behind her mask. I hadn’t known, before, that she would manage to get a role in the ceremony.
Samnel’s voice came lisping through the mask. I bowed my head and said the words after her. My voice was very loud. I had been afraid that it would stick in my throat. I was raised up again, a cup placed in my hand. Bitter in my mouth when I drank, salt water mixed with the tang of blood. The faces stared at me, a multitude of faces black and brown and white, bright eyes and golden jewellery. I rose and stood tall before the altar, in my robes and my crown, and I was the High Priestess, the Chosen of God, the Beloved of Great Tanis the Lord of Living and Dying, she who gives light and darkness and life and death and mercy and pain.
Chapter Ten
They would be in Sorlost the next morning.
The last few days had worn their patience, sleeping rough without tents, so close to their destination. Emit had argued with Alxine and Rate, Rate had snapped at Alxine, Marith had wandered along a few paces behind not speaking until Emit swore at him for nothing in particular except being alive and good-looking and not swearing with him first. The last of the bread had gone mouldy. Rate had found a scorpion in his boot.
And it had been the birth night of Amrath, two nights past. That was going to make a man edgy, even if he wasn’t sleeping on stones with nothing to eat but green bread. Emit had made a libation. Alxine had rolled his eyes. Rate had muttered words against ill omen, refused to watch.
‘About a thousand years late for that, don’t you think?’ Emit had muttered back at him. ‘You Chatheans really need to let it go.’
‘Bit hard to let it go, when someone wipes out your entire population.’
‘It was a thousand years ago! And it can’t have been your entire population. ’Cause you’d hardly be sitting here, would you, if it had?’
Marith hadn’t spoken to anyone all night that night. Twitchy. Nasty sad face. Best left alone. But the boy was from the White Isles, Tobias thought, to be fair to him. Biggest celebration of the year, there. Gods, the stories you heard of what went on! He’d be missing it. And it was lonely, being so far from home on celebration nights. Missing his mum especially badly, probably. Deep down the whole damn troop of them knew how that felt.
Being a good Immishman, Tobias had recited the story to himself in the starlight. His mother and his grandmother and everyone in the village had gathered to recite it every year. Light the lamps, stoke the fires, bar the door. It begins with a woman, a princess, a descendant of the old gods, and she lived in a country called Illyr, on the shores of the Bitter Sea, on the edge of the world … Amrath the World Conqueror, the son of Serelethe and … and, well, the gods and His mum alone knew who His father was, but He claimed that His father was a demon, and if any man who ever lived could claim that he’d been fathered by a demon, it was Amrath. By the time He was ten years old, He’d killed a man. By the time He was twenty years old, He’d conquered an empire. By the time He was thirty years old, He’d conquered the world. The greatest, the most terrible of all the Lords of Irlast. Merciless. Ruthless. King of Shadows. King of Dust. King of Death. The whole world feared Amrath. They were right to fear, too, since He was a bastard who killed like other men breathed air. His wife Eltheia was the most beautiful woman living. His armies were the wonder of the world. Whole cities, He ordered burned with a snap of His fingers. Whole kingdoms, He enslaved. And by the time He was forty years old, He was dead and gone without even an unmarked grave.
Not a good night to be out in, then, the anniversary of Amrath’s birth day. Ill-omened. The dark was close around them, the light of their fire was thin and weak. Their feet ached from walking. The ground seemed especially hard and lumpy. Rate discovered wriggling worm things in his water bottle after he’d drunk half of it. Emit laughed until Rate punched him. Marith woke them all up crying in his sleep again. Alxine found two scorpions in his boots.
Ill-omened. Hell, yeah. Tobias had a suspicion that even apart from Marith’s sobbing none of them had got much sleep.
Then the next morning the sun came up with a staggeringly pretty sunrise, and they found a tree full of ripe pink apples just sitting there waiting to be eaten, and a staggeringly pretty ripe pink girl waved at them, and Rate and Emit apologized to each other, and they’d finally been able to come down out of the wilderness into a town, and, glory of all the glories, spend the night in a cheap inn.