The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [114]
No, not weary. Bored. It has dwelled here too long in the hot sun; it has seen again and again everything time has to offer. This city is bored, and its people as well.
Durge knew this was a perilous thing. When men were bored, they would commit rash and foolish acts to experience, even for a moment, some new sensation. He had seen men drink and wench themselves to death out of boredom; and he had seen them go to war and kill for the same reason.
And if an entire city was bored?
“Are you well enough to keep walking, Melia?” Falken said once more, as they passed through an archway back into the teeming streets of the Fourth Circle. “Lirith and I can go ahead to the hostel and send a litter back for you.”
Melia’s regal visage was hard. “I told you I will not ride in a litter, Falken. What comfort will soft cushions give me now that two of my brothers are no more? I will walk to the hostel on my own feet.”
They turned onto a side street that was made nearly a tunnel by buildings that leaned together overhead. The sun did not reach there—just the blue-white glow of used light, reflected again and again from high above. Only as his eyes adjusted from glare to gloom did Durge see them: a gray woman holding a child, drifting toward them.
Durge stumbled, and he was certain his heart had stopped beating. How could they be here in this hot, foreign city so far from the frozen plains of Embarr?
“Durge?”
A hand on his wrist. He knew it was only the warmth of human flesh, but it felt like a hot brand.
“Durge, are you all right?”
It was Lirith. He looked at her, and she must have seen the fear in his gaze, for she snatched her hand back, a look of horror blossoming in her own dark eyes. But his fear was not for her and her witch’s touch. He looked back down the street.
The ice melted in his chest; blood and breath returned.
They were close now, woman and child, close enough that he could see they were not ghosts. The woman wore a robe of pale gauze that fluttered around her like mist, and her skin was rich and dark beneath the ashes that stained her cheeks and brow. The infant wrapped in swaddling cloth in her arms was as dark as she, its tiny face marked with ashes as her own. The woman bent her head over her child, humming a soft song as she passed.
I am well, my lady, Durge started to say, but at that moment Melia moved toward the woman in gray.
“I do not recognize your robes,” Melia said in gentle tones. “May I ask whose cult you follow?”
The woman looked up from her infant and smiled. “It is no wonder you do not recognize my garb, mistress. The one I follow is new in this city. She is named Tira, who is called the Child of Fire.”
Durge heard both Lirith and Aryn gasp beside him. Even he felt a twinge deep inside, and had it not been so many years since such feelings had been lost to him, he might have thought it to be joy. As a rule he placed little stock in gods, but then seldom had he journeyed with one. And there had been something about the girl, a peace that was strange but compelling as well.
“Of course, I should have known,” Melia murmured.
The woman in gray misunderstood this answer. “Do not trouble yourself that you did not know, mistress. Yet I think soon many in this city shall know Her, and when they do they shall follow Her. For She went into the flames that we might all be transformed.”
Melia’s gaze grew sharp. “Transformed? Into what?”
“Why, into ourselves.”
With that, the woman held her child close to her breast and moved down the street, her gray garb fading into the cool dimness. They were not ghosts. However, as Durge had learned these last few weeks, one did not need to see ghosts to be haunted. He wondered if he would ever see Embarr again.
A heavy breath escaped him, and he was belatedly glad that the others seemed not to hear it, their attention on Melia. The lady continued down the street, Falken beside her, and while sorrow still veiled her, it seemed a faint smile touched the corners of her mouth.
“It’s Tira,” Aryn whispered, eyes shining. “She