Chapter 36

  Zaidna

  The Empire of Judath

  The Temple of Marin

  Zalas paused to look over his shoulder as a wheezing Davim trudged up the steep portico steps after him. “Hurry up, you lazy idiot!”

  “Why do their temples have to have so many stairs?” Davim huffed.

  The crowds were just as thick today as they were yesterday, and as Zalas reached the top of the steps, he observed the thick Naltite horde sifting continuously in and out of the temple.

  “How are we supposed to find Batem in all of that?” Davim asked as he scratched at his blistered forehead, now covered by a bandana.

  “He won’t be anywhere near these savages.” Zalas hadn’t seen Batem for fifteen years, but did not miss him. Batem, a high priest of the Orb, had been one of the few spies selected by Anoth to infiltrate the Naltite clergy. He had suffered through years of their seminary and even allowed himself to be castrated at Anoth’s command. Zalas could never understand that level of devotion to Anoth, but knowing Batem, he probably had leapt at the knife groin-first.

  “Why do we have to see that old bastard?” Davim whined.

  Zalas stared witheringly in reply. “Sack up. The sooner we find Batem, the sooner we go home. Now move it.” He grabbed Davim by the back of his neck and shoved him roughly through the mob.

  As they made their way into the dim temple lobby, the crowds eased somewhat. Aside from the fact that these people were chanting to statues of Naltena rather than Verahi, this temple seemed somewhat plain compared to the temples in Yalet. The floors were lined with pale, alabaster tiles rather than colorful mosaics, and the walls were mostly bare, unadorned by the broad, golden filigrees Zalas was used to. But the biggest difference was the smell, which became more apparent as the stench of commoners began to dissipate. Sweet incense and smoke overwhelmingly filled the air, mixed with the faint scent of—dung? Zalas scowled. Toward the back of the lobby, he spotted several baby narus, squealing as they were led away by priests in black.

  “What are they doing?” Davim wondered aloud. “We can’t even wear shoes inside of our temples without getting whipped, and here they’ve got animals pissing all over the floor!”

  Keeping focus on the task at hand, Zalas headed further into the lobby and caught the arm of a nearby priest. “Excuse me, you wouldn’t happen to—”

  “Sorry,” the priest dismissed with a wave of his hand. “All of our normal worship services have been cancelled. If you must pray, do so quickly; sacrifices are the only activities still scheduled for today.”

  Sacrifices? For what purpose? “We’re looking for a certain someone. A priest, I believe?”

  “Is he a high priest?” The priest craned his neck to look over Zalas’s shoulder distractedly. “Most of them are still being detained at the warden headquarters. You’ll have to—”

  “His name is Batem. Do you know of him?”

  The priest’s expression soured. “Oh, the bald binder.”

  Zalas grinned. “That’s him. It’s very important that we make our appointment with him now. Can you direct us?”

  The priest turned to survey the lobby. “He’s one of the pre-seminary instructors. With everyone else gone, he will have been assigned to a chapel.” He pointed to one of several broad, double doors that ringed the lobby. “It’s probably that one. You will need to wait for him to complete his sacrifices before you can see him, though. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” With that, the priest rushed away to help tether a struggling naru.

  Zalas waited for the priest to disappear down a hallway, then moved toward the chapel he had pointed out, motioning for Davim to follow him. They crossed the lobby, passing the Naltites who worshiped at the feet of a large statue of Naltena. Stupid cattle, praying to a dead goddess.

  When they reached the chapel’s shut doors, Zalas peered through the crack between them, but saw only a bright orange glare. “Keep watch,” he hissed to Davim, before digging his nails into the crack and slowly prying the doors apart, just enough to squeeze his way through.

  Once inside, Zalas squinted to see a lone figure standing in front of a blazing pyre at the far end of the chapel. Several blackened narus lay stacked in the center of the flames, smoke rolling continuously up from their carcasses and through a circular skylight that had been opened above the dais.

  Zalas heard Davim close the doors behind him, and both headed down the middle of the chapel, watching as Batem hunched over an altar, on top of which a screeching naru lay bound. In one swift motion Batem raised a thin knife and sliced it down across the naru’s neck. The poor creature thrashed and gave a loud gurgle as it died, thick ribbons of its blood draining away through a small depression in the dais.

  “So, this is what Anoth sent you to do,” Zalas mused as he reached the foot of the dais.

  Batem whirled around, swinging the knife down at him, but Zalas deftly jumped back to avoid it. “You!”

  “Tsk, tsk. You’ve lived with savages for so long you’ve become one yourself,” Zalas sneered, wiping away the spattering of naru blood that Batem’s knife had slung onto his caftan. “Is this how you greet your emperor?”

  The surprise faded from Batem’s face, replaced by a slow, gap-toothed smile. He’d aged badly since leaving Yalet. “Well now, the little princeling has come of age and finally become emperor, has he? I seem to recall that I last saw you at your father’s funeral. Has it really been fifteen years?”

  “It has,” Zalas answered. Of course, to Batem that was nothing. Eshtans didn’t often live past a century and a half, but Batem must have been almost two hundred years old by now; like a cockroach, he refused to die.

  “And if it isn’t my cousin’s encumbrance, Dakim!” Batem cried with feigned warmth.

  “It’s Davim,” Davim corrected.

  Batem had never been secretive about his disdain for Davim, taking every opportunity when Davim was a child to remind him that he was filth, unworthy of being the adopted son of a provincial lord. “Yes, whatever. Davim. And why are we keeping the company of commoners now, ‘Emperor’?”

  “He’s family now.” Zalas shrugged.

  Davim grinned smugly. “Anoth married me to the high princess. Seems like a son of the sixth house is worth something nowadays.”

  “Well, Nejim certainly has gone to hell in my absence, hasn’t it?” Batem circled the altar and set his bloody knife on an adjacent stand, where a large bowl of water waited. He stared at Zalas icily. “But I can’t say that I’m surprised. Your father was always weak-willed, but at least he possessed an iota of wisdom.”

  “Better to be an unwise emperor than a Naltite priest,” Zalas retorted. Batem continued to disgust Zalas, and not only for his endless criticisms of the imperial family. Aside from ensuring that Zalas was barred from seminary, he had garnered Anoth’s support in everything else by constantly ramming his nose up the immortal’s ass. “I bet it hurt when they castrated you. Pity your hair didn’t grow back.”

  “I am willing to suffer any pain for Master Anoth,” Batem boasted. He wove a quick pattern and used it to fling the dead naru from the altar and into the fire. “Now then, it is hard enough to maintain appearances without you two here. Why did you come? And in broad daylight.”

  Zalas folded his arms across his chest. “We have some questions.”

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  “Is that so?” Batem laughed as he dipped his hands into the bowl of water on the stand, scrubbing them clean. “Well, I won’t answer your questions until you answer mine: what have the hadirs done?”

  Zalas glanced at Davim, who shrugged. “What are you talking about?”

  “The priestesses have all been having nightmares,” Batem hissed as he then used a damp rag to scrape the gore from his knife. “I’m sure you’re aware of what happened here. The Naltites are being warned about us, and the Nassé was driven mad because of it. What have the hadirs done to anger Anoth’s enemies?”

  Zalas arched his eyebrows. The oath-breaking was much worse than Anoth had realized. “I don’t think that has anything to do with the hadirs.”

  “Of course it does!” Batem threw down the now cleansed knife. “It was that attack on Lanae Palace, wasn’t it? Whose fool idea was it to try to kill the star emperor? Not even Tovam would be so—”

  “Anoth was the one who tried to kill him,” Davim chimed.

  “Master Anoth?” Batem asked, visibly surprised. “He would never expose himself to a kada, let alone deliver judgment himself.”

  “He has his reasons,” Zalas said, smirking. “The Orb has been found.”

  Batem burst out laughing. “The Orb? Nonsense. I would have been told!”

  “Perhaps you weren’t important enough to know,” Zalas said, feeling a little smug.

  “I don’t believe you. Master Anoth would have informed all the high priests.”

  Zalas shrugged and loosened the strings of the pouch at his belt, pulling out the sleeping Orb. The labradorite flashed green-gold in the fire, but its glyphs lay dormant for the time being.

  Batem sputtered and dropped to his knees, and Zalas hoped that his heart had finally given out. “It’s real! The Orb is real—so beautiful!” He reached for it with shaking hands.

  Zalas held the Orb up to Batem on the dais, but then snatched it back at the last second, dropping it back into its pouch. “I don’t think so.”

  “What right do you have to it? You’re no priest!” Batem gnashed his remaining teeth and balled up his fists.

  “I know,” Zalas mocked. “Isn’t it funny how things come together? You and your cronies go through all that trouble to keep me out of seminary, and yet I am the one in possession of the Orb. And you end up in possession of an empty loincloth. Perhaps my lineage is favored after all.”

  Batem’s face shuddered in fury as he thrust out his hands, his fingers spewing a swirl of bubbling acid down at Zalas and Davim. Zalas shoved Davim out of the way and sliced through the pattern, negating it at the same time his own pattern knocked Batem flat.

  The old man skidded across the dais, slamming into the back wall of the chapel. He was still at first, but then wheezed and shook with a hateful laugh. “So, Anoth taught you some of his tricks, has he?” He rose with an audible crack and hobbled back to the altar, clearly uninterested in continuing their fight. “Leave me to my duties.”

  Zalas smiled. “No. We need to get into the palace.”

  “You don’t need my help for that. If you’re scouting the palace for Anoth, he’ll find it as easy a mark as the star emperor’s palace.”

  “This isn’t an attack. We have to sneak inside without anyone noticing us. Perhaps you could help us get in as Naltite priests.”

  Batem shook his head as he began to scrub the altar clean with his rag. “No, no. The high chief warden is distrustful of me. If you’re caught dressed as priests, he’ll come to question me first about where you got your clothes. There’s far too much at stake here for me to risk myself.”

  “You wouldn’t risk yourself even for your god?” Zalas challenged.

  “Your plan to sneak into the palace has nothing to do with my gods,” Batem replied.

  “It has everything to do with our gods,” Zalas snapped. “We’ve been tasked with freeing Verahi from the Orb.”

  Batem arched an eyebrow. “But if that’s the case, you don’t need help from an old man. If the Orb works the way I suspect it does, you’ll need keys to free him.”

  “Anoth calls them ‘witnesses,’” Zalas said. “There were dozens of them yesterday, right here in the temple. But they were all snuffed out.”

  “In the temple . . . .” Batem slowed his scrubbing. “I see. Master Anoth seeks candidates.”

  “Yes, and they’re all dead!” Zalas reiterated. “That’s why we need to get into the palace.”

  Batem dropped his now filthy rag and looked Zalas square in the eyes. “No, what you need to do is leave here at once and warn him.”

  “What for? He already knows.”

  “Does he know that almost every candidate is dead? Does he know that if he doesn’t act now, that all of his ‘witnesses’ will end up dead?”

  Zalas drew in a long breath. “So, the Nassé really was commanded to kill them. What does Anoth’s mother have against Verahi?”

  Batem jerked visibly and glanced about the chapel. “You’re not to speak of her here.”

  “Ah, so you do know of her,” Zalas said. “Why would the clergy keep her a secret when she’s our true enemy? Why are you afraid?”

  “You’re an impudent fool, Zalas.” Batem picked up the rag from the altar and proceeded to rinse it. “Live here as long as I have, and you will be afraid. In this world, we are only safe from her when she sleeps.”

  Zalas shifted uneasily on his feet. “I don’t understand what the problem is. Why can’t Anoth just kill her like he did Naltena?”

  “Because she’s out of reach,” Batem chuckled. “She always has been.”

  Zalas didn’t know how to respond to that.

  Davim scratched furiously at his forehead with both hands, letting loose a frustrated growl. “What the hell are you two talking about? Is he going to help us or not, Zalas?”

  Zalas looked pointedly to Batem.

  Batem shook his head. “Master Anoth was unwise to have sent the two of you to gather the witnesses alone. Go back to him now. Tell him to get the witnesses himself, and soon. Otherwise, his mother will see to it that every last one of them dies.”

  “That isn’t an option,” Zalas said. “Davim and I have to be the ones to do it.”

  “Why? Where is he? What could possibly take precedence over this?”

  Zalas had no interest in telling Batem that this little task of his was also a test of his worth. “Anoth’s priority is the star empress. He’s making her his wife.”

  “That’s ridiculous!” Batem scoffed.

  “It was permitted by Verahi,” Zalas stated.

  “But Master Anoth is a perfect being. He would never stoop to bring filth like that to his bed.”

  “He’s already turned her into a hadir.” Zalas smirked at Batem’s scandalized expression. “We can’t count on his help now, so we have to count on yours.”

  “I already told you I can’t get you into the palace.”

  “Well, there is another witness outside of the palace. A non-noble.”

  “Then I will help you with her,” Batem offered. “But do not ask me to endanger my mission.”

  “Fine. We’ll deal with the palace later,” Zalas said. “This particular girl survived the slaughter yesterday, and the Naltite priests all tried to make her become the new Nassé. Do you know her as well?”

  Batem frowned. “You are speaking of Kirin Toredath, are you not?”

  “Ah, you know her.”

  Batem slowly turned and picked up the bloody bowl. He took a long time to dump the water down the drain. “. . . Of course. She is my student. But she’s not suitable for your needs.”

  “Why the hell not?” Zalas demanded. “She’s the only witness left that isn’t surrounded by palace guards!”

  “No, but she will be surrounded by wardens, which is worse,” Batem warned. “Her father is the high chief warden of Judath and a son of the eighth house; he’ll broil your skin down to the bone if you go near her.”

  Zalas pursed his lips. “That’s inconvenient. We’ll have to catch her unguarded.”

  “No,” Batem snapped, setting down the bowl a little too hard. “You cannot have her—not even for Verahi.”

  Zalas narrowed his eyes. “Is that so?”

  “I need her alive. She is to be the next Nassé, and I have spent years grooming her. It is critical that we have control over the Nassé, especially now that Verahi has been found and his enemies are gathering against us!”

  “I don’t care about your plans for the girl.” Zalas jumped up onto the dais and grabbed Batem by his collar. “The Orb requires sacrifices, and points at her as one of them!”

  Batem struggled in vain. “I won’t do it. I’ve worked too hard!”

  “You won’t?” Zalas growled. “Davim, kill him!”

  “Gladly.” Davim climbed the dais, snatching the thin blade from the stand and swinging it menacingly. “Should I cut him the same way he did the naru?”

  “Do it however you like.” Zalas whirled Batem around and forced his head back to expose the lump in his throat.

  Davim pressed the knife to Batem’s neck, and the old man shouted, “Go ahead! I live and die according to the will of Anoth.”

  Infuriated, Zalas spun Batem away from the knife and shook him by his shoulders. “You are a high priest of the Orb! You should know that the only will that matters is Verahi’s.”

  Batem made no reply.

  Zalas waved for Davim to set the knife back down. “Fine. I’ll let Anoth deal with you instead. What do you think he’ll do when he finds out you’ve refused to help us? I bet he’ll send a certain albino to pay you a visit.”

  Batem began to quiver, his eyes widening.

  Seeing this, Zalas grinned. “I wonder if getting your psyche eaten hurts worse than castration.”

  “Fine, I’ll help. I’ll help!”

  Zalas released Batem, who rubbed at his neck vigorously. “Now, take us to the girl.”