CHAPTER 16

'I'm too old for this. Why haven't I retired yet?' General Chate Dev looked around the empty spaces of the temple plain and once satisfied there was no one in sight, he trotted over the dry, packed ground to the looming structure in the centre. He'd lived in Thotel all his life, but the immense pillars of the Temple of the Sun, hewn from a single pyramid of stone, always made him marvel.

'Because you'd be bored to death, Chate!' a deep voice chuckled from the temple.

The ageing Chetse walked over to the nearest of the four gigantic pillars as Lord Chalat stepped out from behind it. The base was a stone block eight feet high, and the pillar itself slanted up towards the centre of the pyramidal temple, dwarfing even Lord Chalat. The white-eye almost looked humbled in its presence.

In the dark, General Dev could just see the hint of a smile in the light cast by the eternal flame. So no mourning there, then – not that it surprised the general; it was common knowledge that Lord Chalat had barely tolerated his Krann, so the news of Charr's mortal injury wouldn't have grieved him overmuch.

Chalat was dressed in a simple warrior's kilt that reached halfway down his calves. His torso was wrapped in thin white linen and his massive arms were bare, other than a number of copper bands set with lapis lazuli. The scars on both arms marked him out as having passed the five tests of the Agoste field – not that anyone could possibly have doubted that. Tsatach would never have Chosen a Lord found wanting as a child. Strapped to Chalat's back was the ancient sword Golaeth. A large ruby at his throat glowed in the weak light.

'My Lord,' muttered the general as he reached Chalat and dropped to one knee at his feet. As he did so, he was distinctly aware of the empty plain behind him. No Chetse much liked the dark, and with

the unyielding weight of the temple in front of him, he felt even more uncomfortable.

A shallow trench, no more than a foot deep, marked the boundary of the blessed ground of the temple. Everything within was illuminated by the eternal flame; the rest of this eerie, ancient place was black and hidden, as if a wall of stone stood there instead of a trench.

'Get up, Chate. Now, why by Tsatach have you summoned me out here in the middle of the night? It might be magnificent in the light of day, but right now it's a nightmare.'

The general murmured his agreement as he rose. The many temples of the plain were disturbing to behold at night: there was an awful sadness that lingered after dark. The temples dedicated to Nartis and Alterr were situated on top of the rocky cliffs at the north end so even those priests engaged in night-time rituals didn't have to walk the plain at night.

The general had chosen this place for that reason. 'It is indeed, my Lord. I thought it best not to have a crowd of onlookers ready to spread gossip. It may be that the eternal flame may help us in understanding the facts.'

'The eternal flame? Who do you suspect of lying?'

The witness, my Lord.' He looked around, and continued, 'My men are bringing him along now – I thought you should know the facts, or as much as we know – before he arrives.'

Chalat made an irritated noise, then led the way back around to the inside of the pillar. The pair sat down on the wide steps cut into the rock.

'So Charr wasn't hurt in battle, then?' Chalat began.

'In a fashion yes. But his guards' story is – well, unusual.'

'Unusual?'

'They were in the hunting grounds of the Black Palace – this was almost two moons ago – when one of the scouts saw people walking through the grounds towards them, half a dozen foreigners, from the north.'

'Well, of course they were foreigners – no Chetse's going to defy the hunting laws.' He sounded irritated again.

The general continued quickly, 'Exactly, my Lord, so Lord Charr decided to ambush the party.'

‘Hah! So the stupid bastard jumped right into a trap. He deserves to die for that.'

'Yes, my Lord. In any case, the guards attacked and killed a number of the foreigners, but Lord Charr was hit by an arrow – straight into the heart – and no one even saw the archer. They loosed the hounds immediately, in the direction the arrow came from, but no one found a thing.'

'If he was hit in the heart, how is he still alive?' A gust of wind rustled over the smooth temple floor, on which the general smelled age and sorrow. In the background, the white shaft of the eternal flame, burning down from the apex of the temple to the altar, hissed quietly, as it had done for more than a thousand years.

'We have no idea. Several surgeons inspected the wound: they all agreed that the arrow was lodged in the heart and he would die. They carried Charr to the palace chapel and left him there to die with his God. My Lord, Charr's guards are devoted to him, but they agreed that there was nothing that could be done.'

'So everyone was surprised when he was still alive in the morning?'

'Quite so, my Lord. They fetched a priest and he claimed the wound was magical, that the fight for Charr's life was a spiritual one, for his soul. The priest said that the arrow itself was made out of soot, enchanted to be as hard as iron.'

'A spiritual battle? Useless shit's buggered then.' The white-eye laughed callously.

'Quite so, Lord.' The general waited patiently until his Lord showed no further sign of interrupting. Chalat was like a mountain: he moved for no man. You worked around him, or broke your hands on his edge.

Chalat waved him to continue.

'Armed with this information, the guards decided to bring Charr back to Thotel. If he was going to die anyway, they believed it would be better to be as close to the Temple of the Sun as possible.'

'Pious of them. Stupid, but pious.'

They brought with them the one surviving member of the group they'd ambushed – as soon as he saw the arrow hit, he ran, but he surrendered later, once he judged their blood had cooled somewhat – he spoke Chetse; told them he had information about the assassin. His behaviour was strange enough that they decided not to kill him immediately – instead, they trussed him like a lizard and put him on the cart next to the Krann.'

'And it's his testimony you want me to hear? What did he tell you?'

'If you don't mind, my Lord, I'd like you to judge it for yourself. He's less likely to lie to you with his hand in the eternal flame. He knows our language well, no doubt why he was chosen for the bait, so he must know about the flame. He did say that he'd been under some sort of enchantment, but that's a detail we can decide later. It's the assassin that I'm worried about.'

'Worried he's lying, or that what he says might be true?'

Harsh voices from the darkness prompted the general to clamber to his feet and walk out to the front of the temple. As Chalat joined him, the shapes of three men slowly appeared from the gloom. Two were Lion Guards, from General Dev's personal legion; the third was a little taller and much more slender, even with the thick cords of rope that bound his arms to his body and hobbled his feet.

Both guards carried crossbows, and had battle-axes slung on their backs. The larger of the two also carried an iron-shod quarterstaff, the foreigner's weapon. They threw the prisoner on to the floor and stepped over him to kneel at their Lord's feet.

'Cut those bonds from his hands,' ordered Chalat, 'and bring him to the flame.' Their footsteps echoed strangely over the polished surface, getting quieter as they reached the centre, as if deadened by the constant whisper of the eternal flame. The prisoner had hair dark enough for a Parian, though he lacked the height or the tribe's distinctive facial features. He stumbled along after the white-eye as best he could. Though the guards kept prodding him along, he couldn't help looking up at the astonishing temple. His mouth fell open in awe as he followed the four pillars up to the apex, almost eighty yards above the altar in the centre. Nothing supported them; the thin white shaft of the eternal flame was the only thing that connected the peak and altar.