she unlocks a heavy wooden door with a key around her neck. Every priest or priestess carries such a key, but none of them has yet found cause to use it. Being the first gives her a flush of pride.
“In Hanharan I find my strength,” she says as she closes the door behind her. There is a rack of oil lamps fixed to the wall and she lights one, watching shadows scamper out of sight. Spiders and ghourt lizards. They’ll leave her alone if she shows no fear. She draws in a deep breath and starts down. “In you I seek my truth, and to you I promise my best. In your words I hear the history of Echo City, and I vow to listen, adding my own life to the history you impart.”
The staircase curves onto landings, doors lure her in, tunnels are swallowed in darkness. Eventually she crosses a street of the most recent Echo, built upon several hundred years before and preserved down here like a painting of older times. What she sees of the buildings’ facades resembles those above, except deserted. There are shadows that move the wrong way, and whispers, but she recites the route aloud, remembering which way to go, feeling the importance of what she is doing pressing heavily upon her like the weight of the city itself. She has no wish to see or hear phantoms.
Several times her oil lamp almost goes out when a sudden breeze whistles in from the darkness, and she tries to ignore the smells.
Reaching the hidden place, she uses her key again to unlock another heavy wooden door.
Inside, the room is small and sparse. Its corners and junctions are blurred by dust and sand-spider structures. There is a table at one end, upon which sit several books, and three shelves on the left wall that hold two storage jars each. Dust on the floor is thick and undisturbed, and the books appear to have settled into place. No one has been here for a very long time.
There is a mummified corpse curled beneath the table, wrapped in heavy chains.
She feels a flush of terror, and for a moment she cannot believe in this place. What it contains goes against everything she holds true: the last sorcerer, trapped down here with the things that put him down…
“I only hope it’s still here,” she says, reaching for a jar.
The torture’s over,” she says later, holding the back of Bamore’s head and offering him the mug. “I’ve consulted with the Council. Your lack of confession means that you’ll be sent to trial, and you’ll be crucified in three days.”
“Won’t that depend upon the verdict?”
“The verdict is a formality.”
“So predictable,” he says, trying to grin through his broken face. “But I won’t die up there.” Why he has not chosen to mend the damage as he healed those cuts she does not know. Perhaps it’s a sort of perverted vanity. Or, more likely, he wants people to see what has been done to him.
“Drink, in the name of Hanharan. He will watch over your final days.”
“Your god?” Bamore sips, swallows, sighs. He has not been given a drink in days. “Hanharan can suck my cock.” He stares up at her, his one good eye twinkling as he awaits her reaction to such blasphemy.
But she only smiles, and, behind his ruined face, Dal Bamore’s smugness turns to confusion.
Jan Ray tried not to scream. It felt as if her whole shoulder and arm had been dipped in molten metal and then solidified, locking all the pain inside. She kept her eyes open, because she needed to see, and when she lifted the knife still in her hand, someone pressed down on her wound.
“Priestess!” a voice hissed. It was a Scarlet Blade, splayed across her body to protect her from any more woundings. But the fool was young, and scared, and with every movement he nudged the bolt protruding from her shoulder.
“Get…off…” she managed, and then the soldier was lifted away from her. Jave’s face came close, and he even smiled.
“Jan Ray, I’ll give you a sword if you’re so eager to fight.” He helped her sit up, glancing around all the time, watching for danger.
She grimaced through the agony, then looked around. The raving Wreckers had been cut down, and there were three Blades hacking at their still-twitching bodies. They appeared shocked and terrified, but beneath that was a professionalism that shone through. They’d have a story for their barracks tonight, that was