Moths to a Flame Read online

  The shouts of the crowd grew louder as Clodolë climbed the steps of the gatehouse. She climbed slowly, awkwardly, afraid to drop the squirming bundle.

  Emerging into the daylight, she was greeted with a tumultuous cheer; servitors and citizens thronged beneath the walls, gazing up at her. Her eyes ached in spite of the gauze veil; the autumn sun seemed overbright even though there were clouds gathering above the heights. She smiled, and lifted the baby to show them.

  ‘Mithiel has blessed me with a son!’ she cried, triumphantly. Her dhamzels brought forward baskets and threw down handfuls of sugared almonds and silver eniths into the cheering crowd.

  She hugged the baby to her triumphantly.

  ‘Now you’re mine, Dion,’ she crooned. ‘All mine.’

  Lai shaded his eyes against the cloudy light and gazed intently upwards.

  Clodolë. He felt a strange stir of emotion as he saw her appear on the ramparts, a distant vision of drifting golden veils and pale hair.

  He did not join in the scrabbling for almonds and coins, but stayed gazing upwards, jostled to and fro by the crowd.

  Dion. She had taken Dion from Laili. From the awkward way she carried the baby, he was sure his suspicions were true.

  And if she had taken Dion – then where was Laili now?

  Dion began to snuffle in his gilded cradle. The snuffling soon deteriorated to a quiet but insistent grizzling. Clodolë crept closer, wondering what she should do. The baby’s face crumpled up, its fists clenched tight as it began to hiccup its rage. Its face had turned bright scarlet.

  ‘There, there, baby,’ Clodolë said. She patted its arm ineffectually.

  Dion’s toothless mouth opened and he let out a yell. A terrible yell, as if all the daemons of Ar-Zhoth were raging in his belly. He drew his knees up, his little body convulsed.

  What was she supposed to do? Was he hungry? Cold? Wet?

  Uncertainly she reached into the crib and picked him up. Ugh. The linen robe was damp and stained. As she lifted him, his lower lip drooped and he let out another shivering cry.

  ‘Hush now.’ She tried to hold him close but it seemed hard to get a safe grip on this quivering, hot, damp little body. She began to rock him in her arms. ‘Hush. What’s the matter?’

  Dion only yelled louder.

  ‘Quiet, baby.’ Why was he not responding? This was what mothers did, wasn’t it? How could he tell she was so inexpert at it? How could he tell she was not his real mother? She began to pace up and down the little room, patting at the furious baby on her shoulder. ‘Quiet, Dion.’ His sobs were beginning to affect her; tears stung her eyes. If this were her baby, it would not cry so. If this were flesh of her flesh, it would nestle close to her heart, it would know the sound, the rhythm of her heartbeat. How could it go on crying so? Did it know what she intended? Did it know it was to be taken from its mother?

  Panicking, she dropped it clumsily back in the crib. It went on yelling piteously, its knees drawn up to its chest, as though in agonising pain. Perhaps it was in pain. Perhaps even this one would die, as every baby of her own had died—

  Tears streaming down her cheeks, she seized the silver bell and rang it hard.

  One of her dhamzels came hurrying in.

  ‘Take the baby away.’ Clodolë had to shout to make herself heard above Dion’s yells.

  ‘I think he’s hungry, Arkhys.’

  ‘Then bring the wetnurse. The one with red hair,’ snapped Clodolë.

  ‘I thought you said her milk had dried up—’

  ‘Just bring her here! Bring anyone!’

  In his mother’s arms, Dion’s frenzy gradually subsided. Laili drew him into the little room, talking to him, hushing him, rocking him … all the things Clodolë had tried to no avail.

  Clodolë lingered outside the door, watching them: mother and baby, locked in a charmed circle which she could not penetrate. They seemed so absorbed in each other. So content.

  Well, it would not last much longer. Laili was dispensable. Clodolë had sent into Perysse for wetnurses; as soon as a suitable woman with a good supply of milk had been found, Laili would be disposed of.

  Someone gave a discreet cough; Fhedryn stepped out of the shadows.

  ‘My lady Arkhys, there are petitioners from the city waiting to see you about the ravages of the plague—’

  ‘I will see no one else today, Fhedryn. I have a headache.’

  ‘But I really think you should—’

  ‘No one!’ Clodolë cried.

  But when she had closed her chamber door, she crumpled slowly to her knees, burying her face in her silken sheets, weeping and clawing at the soft-sheened fabric with her nails.

  Lerillys crept up to the door, listening, terrified to knock to see what her mistress wanted and yet terrified to leave her alone in such a passion of weeping.

  ‘He knows,’ wept Clodolë, rocking herself to and fro. ‘He knows I’m not really his mother.’

  ‘Lerillys!’ Clodolë rang the little bell to summon her attendant. She called again. ‘Where are you, girl? Lazy slut. Still asleep?’

  She went into the antechamber and flung open Lerillys’s door. And stopped, mouth open. The air was filled with moths; they fluttered everywhere, coating the silken draperies with their sweet-scented dust. And on the bed lay Lerillys, naked, head lolling back, eyes unfocussed, moaning with pleasure beneath the vigorous thrusts of the tarkhastar who had mounted her.

  ‘Lerillys!’ said Clodolë again, gazing with fascination and loathing at the lovers. They neither heard nor saw her. They were trapped in a trance of sexual ecstasy that would go on and on …

  Yskhysse …

  Moths swirled about them, dusting their sweating bodies with stargranules of boskh, brushing one against the other in their own darting, swooping dance of mating.

  Clodolë inhaled the boskh-laden air, the sense-stimulating tingle flaring through her brain like a kaleidoscopic orgasm of flame – and dying to ashes.

  She shivered, hugging her arms to her body. The room had turned winterdrear and cold, her mind was draped with dull mourning sheets.

  Moonmoths began to settle on the lovers, their shimmering wings covering their hair, their naked flesh, like lacy wedding gauzes.

  Clodolë, staring unseeingly down the dark attic corridor of her past, began slowly to walk away. A fitful wind banged the doors of the rooms where her stillborn babies lay …

  The road leading to the plague-stricken Memizhon barracks was barricaded and the barricade was patrolled by tarkhastars. But Ymarys had once shown Lai another way in, a treacherous scramble through thornbushes and scree.

  You have to be drunk to even consider attempting it …

  Desperation drove him; he would have clambered up the sheer rockface below the mausoleum, if need be. He had to find Azhrel.

  At the top, he scanned the deserted parade ground, sucking the thorn scratches on his hand. No one was about. Where all had been bustle and military precision: drills, orders, marching feet … now only a few birds hopped amongst the weeds.

  Lai warily pushed open the armoury door. For a moment he half-expected, half-hoped to hear Ymarys’s voice drawling from the shadows, ‘What time do you call this? You’re late!’

  But the armoury was empty … except for a thin vapour that wreathed its way across the floor. Lai sniffed – and pulled a face. He had not smelt that foul stink of chymicals since Mithiel’s Day. His guess must be right; Azhrel was in his laboratory.

  Azhrel was warming an alembic over a flame. He was so engrossed in his work he did not even notice Lai come in.

  ‘Arlan.’

  Azhrel started.

  ‘What by all the daemons are you doing here? Suppose someone recognised you?’

  ‘I have to speak with you.’

  ‘In a moment,’ Azhrel said distractedly, tapping the grey granules in the alembic with a glass rod.

  ‘Haven’t you heard?’ Lai’s voice trembled.

  ‘Heard?’ Damn him, he wasn’t
even paying attention.

  ‘The proclamations have been posted all over the city. They’re – they’re going to try her for witchcraft.’

  ‘Witchcraft?’ Azhrel’s herd jerked up. The granules had begun to sputter.

  ‘Djhë, Arlan, do you have to repeat everything? Laili, my sister Laili. A public trial for witchcraft. They say she brought the plague on the city.’

  ‘When?’ Azhrel said tersely.

  ‘The Day of the Dead. Sh’amain, you call it. They’re holding some kind of rite in the arena.’

  The sputtering became a violent sizzling. Azhrel, glancing around, suddenly grabbed hold of Lai and threw him to the ground.

  The alembic split apart in a flash of white light. Glass fragments shattered, sprinkled down in a lethal hailstorm.

  Lai’s ears dinned with the after-echoes of the explosion. His sight was scored with jagged lines of whitefire. Someone was shaking him, someone was asking, ‘Are you all right? Are you all right?’

  He put one hand to his jangling head.

  ‘I think so.’ He could not hear the words although he knew he had spoken them aloud. ‘What happened?’

  Thick smoke swirled between them; Azhrel’s face, smeared with firedust smuts, loomed over his. Slivers of glass powdered his hair, his leather jerkin. And in that moment Lai saw what he had never seen before: Azhrel’s eyes unguarded, staring wide with fear.

  ‘The mineral salts produced a more volatile reaction at that temperature than I had anticipated.’ He began to cough on the smoke.

  ‘In other words you nearly blew us to bits.’

  Azhrel nodded between wheezing coughs.

  ‘Now surely someone will come!’

  ‘If you hadn’t interrupted me in the middle of an experiment—’

  ‘Oh, so it’s my fault?’

  ‘Yes, damn you. Now I’ll have to start again.’

  ‘Hold still. You’re covered in glass.’ Lai took out his kerchief and gently wiped the smuts from Azhrel’s scarred face. A smear of blood stained the fine linen. ‘Was this how it happened?’

  ‘My father was working on a new weapon for Sardion. I was helping him, learning the secrets of the art. He … miscalculated.’

  ‘An explosion?’

  ‘I was lucky to escape with my life. He was – not so lucky.’ Azhrel stood up to survey the damage; glass crunched beneath his feet. ‘He did not wish to make weapons. Sardion compelled him.’ He took a broom from the corner and began to sweep up the shards.

  ‘It’s not going to be ready, is it?’

  ‘I need time. Just a little more time.’

  ‘There isn’t any more time. Not for Laili. I can’t wait for Sh’amain, Arlan. I’ve got to do something. I’ve got to find her.’

  ‘You said she’s to be tried for witchcraft? That’s priests’ business.’ Azhrel propped the broom back in its corner.

  ‘The priests of Mithiel? You think she’s being kept in the shrine? Or the temple?’

  ‘It’s possible …’

  An idea came into Lai’s mind, an idea so absurd he almost began to laugh aloud.

  ‘How do you become a hierophant?’

  Azhrel looked at him.

  ‘The ultimate irony, yes? The adept of the Goddess becomes a servant of Mithiel.’

  ‘A servant of Mithiel! Look – I know you’re upset. But take time to think this out, Lai. If they discover you, an imposter, trying to infiltrate their mysteries—’

  Lai was not listening; he was already planning how he would present himself at the temple.

  ‘I’m obviously wasting my breath,’ Azhrel said, turning away.

  Lai went to him and caught hold of him by the hands.

  ‘Whatever happens to me—’

  ‘Whatever happens to you, I’ll do my part. I’ll give them a display of firedust they’ll never forget. And if it doesn’t destroy the moonmoths, it will distract Ophar and Clodolë just long enough for you to spirit your sister away. Just don’t try to take on the brotherhood of Mithiel single-handed.’ His mouth twisted into an ironic, affectionate smile. ‘You’d better take this too.’ He handed Lai a leathern pouch. ‘It will open any door – no matter how strong the lock.’

  Lai tipped the pouch open: inside were two lengths of string, a set of tinderstones and a packet of grey granules.

  ‘Firedust?’

  ‘Indeed. So take care and don’t stand too close to any naked flames.’

  ‘And the string?’

  ‘Not just any common kind of string!’ Azhrel said, affronted. ‘These are fuses – of my own designing – to set the firedust alight. Once you’ve lit the fuse, you’ve ten seconds to take cover before the dust ignites. Understand me? Ten seconds – no more.’

  CHAPTER 24

  Incense cones drifted thin trails of bitter fragrance into the gilded dome of the Temple of Mithiel; the air was hazed with cinnabar smoke. An incessant muttering of prayer chants, low as a murmur of summer bees, buzzed within the heart of the incense cloud.

  For a moment Lai shut his eyes and let his mind drift back with the smoke to the distant Grove and the night of his initiation. They might not worship the same deity in this temple, but the spirit of worship awakened familiar echoes in his soul. If he had been born in Ar-Khendye, he might well have found himself drawn to the service of the Undying Flame.

  ‘Whom do you seek, brother?’ A priest barred his way, his eyes suspicious, unwelcoming.

  ‘I have come,’ Lai said, ‘to follow the way of Mithiel.’

  ‘The way you seek is long and many do not complete the journey. Are you prepared to leave all trappings of your life outside behind?’

  ‘Since the plague, I have lost all that I held dear,’ Lai said. It was true, in a way.

  ‘You will leave all your worldly possessions behind. You will wear the robe of an acolyte. And you will shave your head. Are you prepared?’

  His hair. Lai swallowed. But to save Laili, he would submit to this … and a thousand other indignities, if need be.

  ‘I am prepared.’

  A hierophant sheared off Lai’s braids and then slapped a soapy paste on his skull before setting about expertly shaving off stripe after stripe of hair.

  Lai sat, head bent, ruefully watching the russet locks fall to the floor. Already his head felt cold; no wonder the hierophants wore hoods.

  When the shaving was finished, the hierophant took Lai down to a small plunge room, steamy with a hot stink of sulphurous water.

  ‘Discard your clothes and cleanse yourself.’

  Lai stripped and bathed in the bubbling brown spring water.

  The hierophant draped a robe of black around his naked body and then conducted him deeper below ground.

  ‘Enter the Shrine of the Flame,’ he said, reverently touching his breast as he pronounced the sacred name.

  The Undying Flame burnished the shadowed rocks of the shrine to a dark, metallic glow. Lai shivered, sensing the presence of an ancient and cruel deity. There was no sense of transcendent calm here. The stones had been consecrated in blood, the blood of human sacrifice.

  ‘The High Priest of our order, is waiting. Kneel.’

  Lai found himself staring into Ophar’s eyes. Eyes so devoid of human emotion they could have been chiselled from chill, grey stone.

  ‘What is your name?’

  His name. Lai hesitated only a fraction of a second.

  ‘Mirghar.’ The name of Eryl’s brother; it had a suitably Arkendym ring to it.

  ‘Your face is – familiar …’

  Don’t let him recognise me. Not now. Not now I have come so far.

  ‘And this mark – the mark of the Flame.’ He touched Lai’s forehead.

  ‘I was a brandslave. I fought for my freedom – and to honour the god – in the arena.’

  This answer seemed to please Ophar though he still stared piercingly at Lai.

  ‘Welcome to our order, brother. You will serve a long apprenticeship until we judge you are ready to take yo
ur vows. You will fast and study the holy texts. You will serve the brothers as a servant. And you will obey – whatever you are commanded to do. Do you understand?’

  ‘I understand.’ Lai bowed to the High Priest.

  ‘Obedience is all.’

  ‘I will obey.’

  ‘Then plunge your right hand into the flame.’

  ‘Into the flame?’ Why had no one warned him that this would be part of his initiation?

  ‘Obedience, brother,’ Ophar said softly. ‘Fail to obey and your apprenticeship ends here.’

  Lai walked slowly towards the flame. As he drew nearer he could feel the heat, strong as a furnace. This flame was no illusion; whether natural gas from the rocks or slow-burning sea-coal, it was searingly hot.

  He rolled back the wide sleeve of his robe. The heat burned his face, dazzled his eyes until he could see nothing but the white heart of the flame.

  To turn away now would be to fail Laili. He must see this through. He had endured the tattooing in the donjon. Would this be any worse?

  Gritting his teeth, he thrust his hand into the flame.

  For a moment the air around him seemed to burn with an incandescent heat. Then the pain centred on his hand – his blade hand – the flesh was on fire.

  A hierophant was at his side, holding a bowl of water.

  ‘Quick. Dip your hand in here.’

  Lai, eyes squeezed shut against the pain, plunged his hand into the bowl; the water was icy cold.

  ‘Why did no one warn me?’ he heard his own voice whispering.

  ‘Would it be a true test of your faith if you knew what to expect?’

  As Azhrel approached the dye works he heard a bizarre commotion: orders barked out, the cracking of whips, chains and shackles clinking.

  Tarkhastars of the Tarkhas Zhudiciar were marshalling a column of chained brandslaves out of the dye works and away up the hill.

  ‘What’s going on?’ He hurried over to the nearest tarkhastar. ‘Where are you taking them?’

  ‘None of your business.’ The tarkhastar elbowed him out of the way.