Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [54]
The nightmare began in earnest one balmy summer morning, eighty-one years after the founding of the Empire. No one guessed, then, what lay ahead, not even Molin Torchholder, whose lifework had changed from building temples for the god of war and storms to the gathering of information and the detection of omens. He’d had reason to think the worst was over. Twenty years had passed since, on his orders, the Imperial city of Sanctuary had last sent its collected taxes to Ranke. Life hadn’t been easy—between storms and droughts, fires and floods, a priest might think all the gods in paradise had turned against him and the city whose course he guided—or tried to guide—from deep within the palace shadows. But lately, life had been better. The city’s defenses were solid, its fields were green, its treasury, if not overflowing with gold, was at least bright with silver.
They’d gone a year without a riot or plague.
Molin had been sipping flower-scented tea on the balcony of his palace apartment when Hoxa, by far the best of the amanuenses who’d served him over the years, arrived with the news:
“The S’danzo, Lord Torchholder, they’ve gone … pulled up stakes and disappeared during the night. The women have left their shacks in the bazaar, and the men are gone from the taverns, leaving only their debts behind. There’s not a one to be found. The word is they’ve all headed south—”
“South, Hoxa? How? All that lies south of Sanctuary is days upon days of empty ocean. Did they set sails in the middle of their wagons? Put oars in the hooves of their mules and oxen?”
“No, not directly south, Lord Torchholder. They’ve headed east first, east, then south—beyond the Empire. They said there’s a land far to the south, beyond the ice, where horses have wings and chickens lay eggs of pure gold.”
“That’s nonsense, Hoxa. Don’t believe a word of it.”
“No, Lord Torchholder, but the S’danzo are gone. Every last one of them. I looked for myself.”
There was at least one S’danzo left, of course, a half-breed woman living in the bazaar who saw the future more clearly than many men saw the past and who, sometimes, could be persuaded to share her visions with a disenfranchised priest.
Molin visited her that very afternoon.
“Last week, three women saw the same vision,” Illyra explained while they sat in a shadow-filled chamber behind her husband’s forge. “It was a warning: Bad times are coming. Very bad times.”
“Worse than we’ve already seen?” Molin remembered asking in a bantering tone. “Wetter storms? Hotter fires? A plague with spots? Or are the dead coming back again?”
Illyra folded her hands on her table and stared at them. “No,” she replied so softly Molin had leaned over the table to hear her.
“What then? Surely you were one of the three … ?”
She shook her head in denial before Molin could finish. “The Ancient One will return … to Sanctuary.”
“The Ancient One?” Molin asked.
He prided himself in his knowledge of the world’s pantheons. Off the top of his memory, he could recall two Ancient Ones. His palace library would undoubtedly contain references to more, but none of them would make mention of the S’danzo. The S’danzo did not acknowledge any gods; they’d lose their gift of timeless sight if they did.
Illyra was visibly anxious. She glanced about and twined her fingers, looking more like the young woman she’d been when Molin first arrived in Sanctuary than the gray-streaked seeress she’d become.
“An elder god,” she whispered. “To speak Her name is to invite Her across the threshold.”
“A goddess, then?”
Illyra watched her husband through the open door. Dubro remained a mighty man, but the years had taken their toll, and a pair of journeymen—adopted sons—did the heaviest work now.
“A goddess,” Illyra conceded. “A goddess with the parts of a man as