Bloodwalk - James P. Davis [81]
The shadows thinned around them. Objects became more distinct, inertia settled in their stomachs as they slowed. Each step became truer to the laws of nature. The walls of nearby homes appeared beneath the shadowy twins. Rain fell upon them like a tide and the shadows disappeared completely.
No one witnessed their arrival, no herald or watchman, no merchant packing his wares at the day's end. The streets were empty and still. Even the rats had sought shelter from the pounding rain, explosive thunder, and flickering lightning.
Quinsareth helped Elisandrya to her feet. The transition from shadow to gravity had unbalanced her and flipped her stomach. A flashing bolt above illuminated their faces as their eyes met.
Quin could feel her arms clinging to him. "Are you all right?" he asked.
She raised a hand to her cheek, catching her breath before answering. "I'll be fine."
They glanced about, taking stock of their position. The lightning showed them the curving ivory walls of the Temple of the Hidden Circle, mere blocks away. Both noticed that the storm had grown even stronger. It raged above the Qurth and it moved ever closer, a sure sign that little time remained for conversation concerning their shadowalk.
Quinsareth strode purposefully onward, splashing through the flooded streets. Elisandrya matched his stride toward the temple. They found the structure unguarded, the gates open and banging against the white walls in the icy wind.
The tall double doors at the top of the stairs stood unbarred. They opened easily to give the pair entrance to the long windowed hallway that led to the inner sanctuary.
* * * * *
The domed sanctuary of the temple was eerily quiet and full of dancing shadows as the lightning neared the outskirts of the city. A growing dread wracked Sameska's senses, and she paced the perimeter of the room, stopping to pause briefly each time she passed the murals depicting the city of Jhareat. She stared at the tower in the old paintings, surrounded by burning buildings and bloody warfare. The tower remained untouched by the fires and acts of war, pointing skyward as if to torture her with her own fears.
She glanced upward warily now and then, as if expecting to find Savras in the clouded sky, looking down upon her through the glass dome above.
"Foolishness," she told herself each time, knowing it was a commoner's idea that the gods lived among great cities in the sky. It was small comfort, though, as she strode on weary legs through his temple.
Wild thoughts swirled in her mind, unbidden, crashing into each other and rebounding with ever more questions and doubts concerning her prophecies. The voice in which she had spoken two nights ago made her shudder each time she remembered it, feeling like a violation of her will, but at the same time it was the truest sign of her ability as the high oracle.
"Savras spoke through me. Used me as his instrument," she said to herself over and over, but the words felt hollow. She wrung her hands almost constantly, the tactile sensation a welcome balm in a world that seemed to be slipping away with each passing moment.
The blood-stained statue of Savras had been covered with a black cloth, the body of Nivael burned in secret outside the walls of the city so as not to incite panic in the commoners. The statue stood like a black shadow of death over her shoulder, drops of blood still visible on its exposed, sandaled feet. Its image was burned in her mind and she had avoided looking at it directly since it had been obscured, but beneath the cloth she knew his eye was trained upon her.
Thus she also avoided the spells she had cast the day nightmares had begun, afraid to call upon the All-Seeing One. The screams and terror of Logfell and Targris still filled her waking moments. She had no wish to see again what could not be changed. The burning eyes of the Hoarite, as he fought viciously against the incursion at Targris,