Sanctuary - Lynn Abbey [75]
For a start, the outlying settlements were empty. There wasn’t a person, a chicken, a pot, or a bucket to be found in any of the deserted settlements the riders passed. Some time after the Irrune abandoned their raiding, the people had packed up their belongings and disappeared. The Irrune congratulated themselves on the fear they’d struck in the dirt-eaters’ hearts, but Molin suspected a less sanguine cause. He persuaded Arizak to circle the Irrune eastward, to Land’s End.
Lord Serripines greeted Molin without enthusiasm. He’d lost weight, his eyes were redder than ever, and his villa overflowed with quiet, gaunt men, most of them from nearby Sanctuary rather than some other benighted corner of Ranke’s once-thriving empire.
“You’re too late,” Lord Serripines explained. “No sooner had you left for the Spine, than their bloody goddess made some unholy appearance to her Bloody Hand priests. Next we knew, they were hauling everyone out of their homes—inside the city and out, too. The ones you see here, they’re the ones who got out before they shut the gates. We’ve got food, for now, but they’ve shut down the harbor.” Serripines squeezed his eyes shut—remembering, perhaps, a scene he couldn’t share, or was trying to forget. When his eyes reopened, he stared out the window a moment before picking up the fabric of his thought a few strands distant from where he’d dropped it. “They’ve got power, Molin … prayer, sorcery, call it what you will, but it’s not madmen anymore. They’ve got a god in there, the footprints of one. The stories—Stragglers got out for a while, a few at a time. No one since midwinter. It’s hell in there. Monsters. Demons. Dyareela’s got Her army. She’s packed Sanctuary’s wounds with poison; the Hands are waiting for it to burst open. We can hear the chanting. They’re coming, Torchholder. When those gates open again, it’ll be the end of us. I’ve sent the women and children away with all the horses, all the wagons I could muster. I pray they reach safety, but who’s listening?”
Vashanka listened, for all the good a disenfranchised storm-god could do. Wreathed in moonlight, incense, and memory, Molin recalled the days when Sanctuary had been a divine playground, swarming with gods, heroes, magicians, witches, priests, not to mention whole neighborhoods populated with the living dead. He’d thought that was hell. He’d never thought to see the day when he’d have welcomed the likes of Tempus, Ischade, or his own overly troublesome niece, Chenaya, with open arms.
If a man lived long enough, he’d get the chance to relearn all his lessons from the back side.
Tempus and Chenaya were with Vashanka on the far side of legend, and Ischade had followed her deadly little curse into oblivion. Vashanka was there for His priest when Molin prayed, but there was a long, long way from Land’s End. He was on his own when he went down the Ridge Road to spy on the city he’d always hoped to leave behind.
Collecting a lifetime of debts, Molin made his way through Sanctuary’s grim streets. He saw no evidence of Lord Serripines’ monsters and demons, but more than enough guilt and shame. Of course, once brothers betrayed their sisters or parents betrayed their children to save themselves, they became monsters in the eyes of those around them, and in their own eyes, too. The only people who looked straight ahead when they walked were those who’d willingly surrendered what was left of their souls to the Bloody Hands of the palace.
Still, Sanctuary was a city of survivors, and Molin knew where in the Maze to look to find a handful of resilient optimists willing to risk their lives unbarring