“Listen!” Throm hissed. Once more his hands described a great circle. “The tongue of the god speaks: seven years will you wander blindly, seven years will you contend with one another in vain striving; seven years will your blood soak the ancient earth; seven years will you sow and reap in futility, Children of Dust; seven years will the wind blow through your empty palaces.
“Hear me, O kings! I, Throm, have seen the face of the future. I, Throm, have witnessed the events of which I speak. I, Throm, have heard the cries of the children… lost. All is lost. All is… lost”
The great shaggy head dropped, the powerful arms went limp. He swayed on his feet, apparently asleep. His hands trembled on the staif. The tremor became a shudder which passed through his body. His head snapped back and his eyes flew open. He stared unseeing into space, his face tight in a rictus of ecstacy, lips flecked with spittle.
Charis watched horrified as the prophet collapsed, eyes rolling in his head, limbs jerking uncontrollably as convulsions wracked his body. A thick, unintelligible sound came from his throat-as if words were being tornjrom his throat before they could be formed. His teeth gnashed and ground against one another, his tongue between them. Blood trickled at the corners of his mouth.
Throm jerked himself upright and his eyes bulged as if from fright. He loosed a throat-tearing scream that pierced all who heard it, and then slumped back unconscious. The tension melted from his muscles and he lay as one dead.
The High Mage, able to move once more, glanced worriedly at his attendant Magi. Avallach came forward to stand over the body and stare, as if unable to Believe what he had seen.
“Take him from here,” he commanded at last. Several Magi leaped forward and seized the insensible prophet, dragging him roughly away.
“My people,” said King Avallach, turning to the bewildered onlookers, “do not allow the empty words and ravings of a madman disturb our holy purpose. We have gathered to renew the bond of fidelity between king and kingdom.” He raised one hand to the setting sun, the other to the rising moon. “Bel begins his underworld journey, and fair Cybel ascends to her throne. This-this is how it has always been and will always be. Let us now fulfill the ancient and honorable rite.”
He returned to his place at the head of the assembly. The High Mage grasped the knife and, stepping to the ox, placed his hand on the side of its neck. Then, in a single fluid motion, the knife circled once and bit into the ox’s flesh. Wine-red blood spurted over the snowy hide; the stupid beast did not so much as blink.
One of the attending Magi placed a krater beneath the wound to catch the vital fluid as life gushed from the animal in a crimson torrent. In a little while the beast’s head nodded, then sank to the stone and the ox rolled onto its side. Three Magi put off their robes and mantles and fell upon the carcass with knives and axes. The High Mage raised the krater filled with blood and went to the king, who held out his bowl.
The High Mage poured, and when the king’s bowl had been filled he placed the krater on the altar and turned to Avallach. “Who are you?” he asked.
“I am the land,” he answered.
“Whence comes your life?” the High Mage demanded.
“From the people.”
“Before Bel the All-Seeing, and Cybel, the All-Knowing, renew your life,” the Mage instructed. “Drink.”
The glimmering orichalcum bowl rose to the king’s mouth and he drank the still-warm blood. The three Magi, having butchered the animal, now began stacking the quartered pieces upon the altar in a mound, reserving the liver, which was placed in a basin and set aside for augury. The ox’s head was placed last upon the heap, horns outspread, huge lifeless eyes staring emptily upward.
Two Magi, bearing long poles between them, moved to the tripod and, placing a carved pole on either side, lifted the boiling and smoking caldron. They carried the vessel to the altar and lifted it high, tilting the caldron over the dismembered ox. Fire poured out in a sheet of liquid flame, igniting the flesh. Heat licked Charis’ face and hands.
The fire crackled and the meat burned, sending up heavy, blue-black smoke. After a time, the High Mage took tongs and, reaching into the fire, withdrew small pieces of roast meat, placing each sizzling chunk on a platter. Then he carried the platter to the king and held it before him.
“What is your food?” the Mage asked.
“To serve the people,” came the answer.
“Before Bel the All-Seeing, and Cybel the All-Knowing,” the Mage intoned, “eat and be filled.”
Avallach reached out and took a piece of meat, ate it, and took another. The animal’s liver was brought forth and the High Mage lifted it from the basin for examination, sniffing it and feeling it with his hands. Another Mage appeared to hold the liver while the High Mage brought out a golden dagger and with practiced strokes laid open the organ. The crowd gasped as the tissue parted to reveal a mass of long, squirming white worms that spilled through the Mage’s hands and onto the stone where they squirmed horribly.
The High Mage, his face dead-white, turned terrified eyes toward Avallach. “Burn it!” the king said tersely. “Burn the vile thing!”
The Mage grimaced and scooped up the diseased organ with its obscene parasites and threw it into the flames.
The greasy black smoke rolled up and flames leaped high into the twilight sky. The smell of burning meat filled the air. Charis coughed and raised her eyes to see a trio of stars winking through the pall of smoke. She stood watching a ritual she had seen many times before, yet which now seemed odd and extremely archaic; as if everything-the hill, the ox, the Mage, the caldron, the king, the people looking on- everything Belonged to a time so far awaw’so obscurely ancient that it could no longer be comprehended, only felt in the pulse of blood that flowed through her veins.
The moon rose, bulking large and pale as it hovered on the horizon, bound to the earth by a silken thread, its disk looming through the haze as a featureless face, or an eye gazing sightless on the night world it surveyed.
And Charis felt a tremble beneath her feet, a vibration in the stone, seeping into her bones, into her heart, into her brain until she tingled all over, from the soles of her feet to the tips of her delicate fingers. She felt energy flowing from her, surging up and through her from earth to Cybel’s disk and back again. She felt as if she must shine-as if ends of her hair streamed sparks of moonbeams into the night.
Charis observed those around her, saw the faces she knew so well. She gazed out from the hilltop to the city Below, Kellios, royal city, lights shining from myriad windows like stars burning in a firmament of stone; and beyond, the deep blue crescent of sea shimmering beyond the curved arm of the harbor. All appeared achingly old and familiar-as if she had stood on this hilltop and looked upon this unaltered scene for ten thousand years until it inhabited her most intimate being, more a part of her than her name.
And yet… it was changed. There had been a subtle yet profound shift. Like a shift in the wind that indicates the long dry spell is broken and the rains will come, like the step that takes a traveler over the unseen boundary into another land, Charis knew the anticipation that comes when something unknown is expected.
After, the ceremony, when the bones of the ox were nothing more than scattered ashes and its blood a thickening river seeping among the ancient altar stones, the celebrants walked down the hill by torchlight. Charis moved as one in a dream, her feet drifting, every movement languid and slow. She floated, rising as if from icy, turgid depths through numbing fathoms, surfacing to breathe fresh air for the first time. She felt as if she had lived her life thus far asleep and now was about to awaken. With every airy step she felt the past receding, becoming more remote, falling away from her like worm-eaten clothing, a burial gown grown wispy and rotten with age.