The Emperors Knife - By Mazarkis Williams Page 0,34
He couldn’t remember if there had been a temple exactly like this one. It was square in shape and as large as three courtyards. Its tower rose into a point towards the heavens, as did each of its windows. He strained to see more, but the sun lingered on the horizon, cloaking the building in shadow.
“What is it?”
“Nothing good,” he said.
They stood and watched, and the sun sank beyond the dunes. Myriad shapes lit up around the temple: triangle, line, half-moon. Eyul couldn’t count them all; they were without number or end, with more appearing, forming a bright net around the dark building. Beside him, Amalya drew in her breath. The shapes lingered for a moment, prolonging the crimson light of day’s end, before sinking into the sand and stone, disappearing like rain.
A tingling spread between Eyul’s fingers and the twisted hilt of the emperor’s Knife. “That’s where we need to go.”
Amalya turned towards the stairs without a word. They made their way down, stepping over the sandy remains of the demon that had worn Pelar’s face. The street outside had fallen into a purplish gloom, but Eyul still felt uncomfortably hot. He passed Amalya his waterskin. “Be ready to duck into one of these buildings,” he warned her. “Who knows how many of those creatures are loose?”
She said nothing as she took a drink from the skin and passed it back.
“This way,” he said, leading her around one turn and then another. He kept his ears open for the telltale sound of shifting sands, but no more demon princes appeared and after a few minutes they were close enough to see the dark tip of the temple’s tower. The next street would be under its shadow.
Amalya slowed to a stop. “I feel something,” she said.
“Power?” He paused, still on the balls of his feet and ready to move on, but when she didn’t stir he settled his heels in the sand.
“Yes, power. But it’s all wrong. I can’t go in there.”
“But I have to go in there.” As he said the words, Eyul knew it to be the truth. “I don’t think we should separate.”
“I can’t go in there. I just can’t. Try to understand—would you go into a place of—” Amalya’s voice rose and broke off.
Eyul frowned. “A place of what?”
Amalya didn’t respond, but cringed away, folding her arms over her chest.
“I don’t get to choose.” He drew his Knife and looked up at the Mogyrk steeple.
Amalya took a step backwards, raising one arm protectively over her face, and it hit him like a sword in his gut: she didn’t trust him—and not only that, she thought he was capable of slitting her throat, right here, under the rising moon, for no other reason than her refusal to go into the temple.
And he could; in another situation, he would. The thought sank through him.
“Oh, by Herzu,” he swore, turning his back on her. His feet felt heavy, but he walked on with determination. What is this power, that allows me to leave a woman alone in a nest of demons? He felt childish and cruel, but he discarded the idea of turning back. He was certain the answer to their escape was here, in the dark Mogyrk temple. He would come back for her—by then she would be scared enough to welcome his return.
He stopped just before turning the corner that would take him out of sight as a more familiar feeling washed through him: self-disgust. If he made her wait, made her wonder if he was coming back, she would despise him even more, and rightly so. He reached out and tapped the building to his left. “Get up on this roof so I can see you,” he called out. “If something happens, scream for me. I will come.”
He walked on, the sweat on his skin feeling clammy in the cooling air. When he looked back, he could see Amalya’s white robes shining in the starlight.
She had no power against a sand-demon. He would have to hurry.
The temple’s face rose before him, three storeys of carved stone. The One God of the Mogyrk faith looked down from his place above the mammoth door. The god who had been destroyed by his enemies, as Eyul understood it. A frail god of flesh, whose followers preached weakness, yet behaved savagely.
In the Cerantic pantheon there was a place for charity and love, and also a place for justice and righteousness. The empire could not have survived without the favour of