But the folk had kept the knife-that-burns and the next generation of Lars had been a short one, for the knife carried with it a strong taboo and curse from Sin and Cyb. The Adversaries always exacted a blood-price.
Even now, it was unwise to hold the knife too long, lest the touch of the god-metal raise blisters on the skin. Only Shana, who was strange in other ways as well, could carry the knife.
With his hands on his daughter’s shoulders, Shevil followed the men and the weyr up the path they had worn in the rubble of the moraine to the tunnel-mouth. In the torchlight, Shevil could make out the symbols cut into the god-metal rim of the open doorway. They were the glyphs of the Empire, spiky and evilly shaped. They formed a legend Shevil could neither read nor understand:
Cryonic Storage D.
And below the large symbol, a rank of smaller ones, like soldiers following a warleader, Shevil thought.
Emergency Access, Radiation Shelter.
Ugly shapes, like nothing seen in nature, and consequently the work, beyond a doubt, of Sin and Cyb.
Shevil guided Shana carefully, feeling the tension in her young flesh under his hands. It was Shana who knew the Warlock best, for she had spent many hours with him at the machines, actually within the mountain. But even she was afraid, and Shevil wondered, did she fear the sin the folk had committed or was her fear like that of the other women, a dread of facing the warmen without the Warlock’s magic?
Shana the Dark,
the hetman thought.
Shana the witch. My daughter. We are an accursed family among an accursed folk. When that first Shevil went to the place where a Sun fell, he divided our blood from salvation. Long ago,
he thought,
the folk should have driven us out to freeze on the glacier--
“Father-”
“Don’t speak, Shana. It is not fitting.”
The girl followed the men with the struggling, bleating weyr up the path through the smooth rocks and pebbles of the moraine. Shevil Lar noted that young Tamil was one of the men. He frowned, knowing the fellow must have bribed one of the elders more senior than he to let him take the burden to the top of the path. One more thing improperly done, Shevil Lar thought grimly. The younger generation was without respect for anything. Tamil shall not have Shana for wife, Shevil decided. And then he suppressed an impulse to smile bitterly, for this was surely no time to think of such things. If the Warlock did not appear, by tomorrow’s sunset the folk might be charred flesh at the burning stakes. The Order of Navigators was without mercy on sinners who dealt with the powers of Sin and Cyb.
“But, father,” Shana whispered agitatedly, “Shevil--”
“Hush, girl.”
His daughter shook her head angrily. “I must tell you, Shevil. One of the eagles has attacked the warmen on the ridge. A rogue bird, father. But the attack will lead the tiny man directly to me. He will know I have the mind-touch.” Shevil’s heart felt heavy in his chest. It seemed, after all, that God in the Star had
not
forgotten the folk of Trama. He watched from the Great Sky, just as the Navigators said, and made his terrible judgments. He knew that Sin and Cyb had taken root in the valley. And no matter how much the Adversaries might wish to remain hidden in these mountains, they had not been able to prevent the rogue bird’s attack which would warn the priest-Navigator on the ridge that all was not what it seemed to be in the valley of Trama. The stakes and the fire seemed very close to Shevil Lar and the folk at this moment, and he shuddered, knowing that they were now totally committed to the Warlock and at the mercy of his Cybish capriciousness.
“Salve rey de la noche,”
he murmured, “appear to us or we are truly lost.”
At the low step of god-metal before the dark tunnel mouth the men stopped and lifted the weyr, head down and still struggling, for the folk to see. The chanting began again, this time with more urgency.
“The starships come and the warbands gather,
Save us, Dark Fathers!
What have we done to suffer fire and sword?
Save us, wise Warlocks!
From across the Sky the star kings send us death!
Strike them, Night Fathers!”
“The knife, daughter,” Shevil Lar said.
The cold metal seemed to burn on his palm. He faced the blank tunnel mouth and said simply, “We offer you what we have, Dark Father.”
With a single movement, he cut the weyr’s throat and in the flickering torchlight black blood gushed from the wound, splashing like oil on the metal step. Shevil felt the warmth of it on his sandaled feet and suppressed a shudder.
The men threw the still quivering carcass to the ground and waited. The chanting broke into rumbling and then subsided into a kind of silence as the folk continued to wait. In the stillness, Shevil Lar could hear the wind sighing through the feathery trees in the lower valley and the distant ripple of sound from the flowing river. Night sounds, and the soft communal breathing of the folk, silenced by the sight and smell of blood running like a freshet through the rocks down the moraine.
But the Warlock did not appear.
For the space of a hundred heartbeats, the tribe waited. But the tunnel mouth remained dark and empty.
Below, the women began to wail with despair and the men muttered.
A voice called out.
“It was not enough. “
Shevil felt the beginnings of a cold, very personal dread. The traditional sacrifice to the Adversaries was animal blood. But it had not always been so. In the darkest age of the Dark Time, Sin and Cyb had required richer drink and all the folks knew it, as did Shevil Lar.
“It was not enough!”
the same voice came again. And this time there were others acquiescing, urging. Shevil shivered and thought:
Little wonder the Suns fell. Men and women are abominations....
“The Warlock demands more, Shevil!”
Shevil stood frozen, knowing now what the folk demanded of him. Had it always been so in the past, he wondered? Was the price of hetmanship so high? There were legends, some so ancient they were legends in the Golden Age, of leaders made to sacrifice of their own blood to propitiate the wind or the soil or the sky. Shevil’s mother had told him the timeless tale of Great Agamemnon, a warleader whose fleet of starships would not rise from the sea, held there by Sin and Cyb, until he gave them to drink of his daughter Iphigenia’s blood. Shevil shuddered, remembering how that Star King was struck down by the Star in the person of an adulterous wife. ... He closed his eyes and wished with all his heart that he could pray to the Star now, that he had not damned himself by his devil-worship, that he could take Shana by the hand and run from this place.
He heard a woman’s voice screaming from below. “Tamil! The Warlock wants
her
blood! Take her, Tamil!” The voice was Arietee’s, Shevil thought with dismay. He held Shana’s shoulders in a viselike grip, remembering his silver-eyed Shevaughn, who had warned him that the folk hated what was strange and would turn on him if he refused to believe it.
“Father--?” Shana said.
Shevil Lar shook his head sharply. “Pay them no mind, daughter. It’s madness.”
“Tamil! Shana!”
Others below were taking up the cry, calling for deeper sacrifice from their hetman.
“Give him Shana!”
Quarlo the miller and Tamil stared at one another uneasily, then at Shevil Lar and his daughter.
Shevil raised the knife-that-burns and said, “Don’t even think it. Stay where you are.”
“But, Shevil,” the miller said reasonably, “if the Warlock does not come, we are dead men. All of us.”
Tamil looked at Shana and licked his lips. Shevil could see the strange conflict on his face.
“If you take a step toward her, I swear I’ll kill you both,” Shevil said.
From below the cries rose up, fearful, lustful, furious at this check.
“Shana! Let it be Shana!”
Quarlo leaned. Shevil glanced quickly from him back to Tamil. The young man had decided. The decision was on his face, in his eyes. He moved, and Shevil swung Shana behind him and crouched, knife held sword-fashion, low, pointed at Tamil’s belly. The others backed away, all but Quarlo, who had his own knife bared.
The miller began to circle, to take Shevil from the flank, but the moraine was narrow here and the light uncertain. Shevil felt the fury building in him. These would take his daughter from him, spill her blood in sacrifice--and for what? He bared his teeth and howled with rage and despair.
Tamil lunged, but his foot slipped in the blood of the weyr and Shevil’s point raked across his chest making a shallow cut. Tamil screamed with pain and fright.
Shevil heard the sharp intake of breath from the folk below, and the sudden silence.
Shana shielded her eyes and dropped to her knees, “The Warlock, father! The Warlock!”
Shevil raised his eyes to the tunnel mouth which was now suddenly and miraculously a blaze of light. The Warlock stood there, his terrible eyes staring, his mouth open and red in his grizzled beard. The silver cloak he wore seemed to shimmer and rustle with his anger.
His voice, amplified by the gown that sensed his every need, reverberated and crashed down the mountainside.
“Animals! Savages! What are you doing now! How dare you come to this place with your swine’s battles! Filth! Blood-lovers! God curse you--put up your weapons!”
The burning eye lowered its view to take in the slaughtered weyr and the Warlock’s frame seemed to shiver and tremble with fury. “Take that
thing
away from me! Take it away at once!” He turned and would have retreated into the tunnel once again, but Shevil leaped onto the god-metal step and, dragging Shana with him, threw himself at the Warlock’s feet.
“They wanted me to sacrifice my daughter, Dark Prince! They said the weyr was not enough!”
The Warlock stopped in midstride and stood for a moment, as though transfixed. His wizened face was a mask of horror and disgust. Then his expression softened slightly as he murmured, ”Dihanna? Is it you, Dihanna?” Shevil Lar rose to his feet and pressed himself and Shana against the strangely smooth wall of the tunnel. His heart was fluttering and pounding like a living thing. Quarlo and the bleeding Tamil were following the others in a mad rush down the moraine.
Shana stood very still while the muttering, humming eye examined her. She shivered as she saw how it seemed to grow, like a second, smaller head from the Warlock’s shoulder.
“No,” the Lord Ophir said more calmly. “You are not Dihanna. You are the bird girl from the village.”
“Yes, sire,” Shana whispered.
“They wanted to
sacrifice
you? Cut your throat?” An expression of fastidious disbelief suffused the old face. “To
me
?”
Shevil would have spoken, but the Warlock silenced him with a gesture.
“Yes, Dark Prince,” Shana said.
“Unbelievable,” the Warlock said. “Are you savages, then? Have you sunk to human sacrifice?” He shook his head and murmured to himself in an unknown language.
Shevil, who could not forget that he was hetman of Trama, said, “They are frightened, Lord. The warmen of Ulm have come.”
“Good,” the Warlock said sharply. “Let them do their duty. Are they less savages than you?” His tone conveyed an impregnable superiority. It was in such a voice, Shevil thought, that a man might address a crawling insect--a lower form of life.
“They will kill us, Lord. There is a priest with them,” Shevil said, pleadingly.
“Those who rebel against their rulers deserve nothing better,” the Warlock said in that imperial voice.
“They would not punish us that way for rebellion, Dark Lord,” Shana said evenly. “But for worshipping
you.’’
The Warlock stiffened. He raised his hands to his head and muttered again in the unknown tongue.
“We do not understand you, Lord,” Shevil Lar said desperately.
“Of course you don’t,” the Warlock murmured. “Why should you speak the Royal Language of the Rigellians.” As though the thought were more humorous than strange, he began to laugh in a cracked and bitter voice. Shana looked at her father fearfully, for it was obvious to her now that the Warlock was quite mad, and a mad demon was something much to be feared--perhaps even more than the warmen of Ulm and their Navigator.
“Can you help us, Lord?” asked Shevil.
“Perhaps, perhaps. Come see me tomorrow.” The silver robe rustled as he prepared to step away, down the tunnel.
“Sire,” Shana said carefully, “the warmen are
here.
Tomorrow we may all be dead.”
The electronic eye clicked and hummed as the first moon began to break over the wooded ridges to the east.
“Sire? Please?” The girl’s voice was soothing, gentle.
The Warlock rustled his robe irritably. “I am not a soldier. I’m not a weaponeer either--I am--” He stopped, a perplexed expression in his drug-blind eyes. “I am--” he began again. “Great Star, I don’t
know
what I am, but I knew only a short while ago. While I slept, I knew.” His voice grew agitated, tremulous with the beginnings of anger again. “How can I help you if I cannot help myself? Answer me that? Well, tell me, bird-girl. Tell me if you can.”