The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [127]
His thoughts were shattered by the high, clear sound of a child crying.
Durge glanced up; the others had moved slightly ahead. They did not seem to hear the child’s cries. He shuddered. Was it the ghosts again, only no longer silent?
He turned, then breathed a sigh as he saw the source of the wailing. It was no ethereal child, but a mundane boy of perhaps four or five winters. He stood on the side of the street, black hair tousled, tears streaming down his round face. Had he lost track of his parents? As he cried, the boy flapped his arms, his hands lost inside long, dangling sleeves.
Durge frowned. It wasn’t just the sleeves that were too long. The blue robe the boy wore was far too large for him, slipping half over his shoulders and pooling around him like water on the street. The robe was clearly intended for a grown man. In fact, it looked like the robe some of the priests they had passed earlier had worn. But then why was this weeping boy wearing it? He gazed around himself with large, bewildered eyes, then his flood of tears gushed anew.
There was something odd about the child and his too-large robe. Durge started toward him.
“Durge!” a voice called behind him. “Come on!”
He jerked his head around. It was Aryn. The others were some way ahead of him now. She motioned for him to hurry.
Durge glanced back. A woman had approached the boy now and was speaking to him in a consoling voice, no doubt asking him if he knew the name of the street he lived on. Satisfied, Durge hurried after the others.
However, it was some time before the sound of the child’s grief faded completely from his ears.
42.
The light of the sun was just creeping over the wall of the First Circle below when they passed between two towering pillars of white marble into the Etherion.
They moved along a broad hallway. Then the walls fell away to either side, and Durge stumbled to a halt, gripping a stone balustrade for support. For all their skill, he knew the engineers of Embarr could never have constructed the likes of what he saw before him.
The space beneath the dome of the Etherion was vast—so impossibly vast an entire castle might have fit within, leaving room to spare. So far was it from the place they stood to the opposite side that the moisture on the air was visible as a faint haze. The dome soared above their heads, as blue as it was on the outside, so that it seemed they were looking at a vivid sky. Round windows were cut near the base of the dome, and golden sunlight rained down. Birds flitted back and forth across the lofty heights.
The Etherion formed a great circle, and its walls were lined with colonnades of marble veined with crimson. Durge counted seven levels or tiers, each supported by a row of columns, and between each pair of columns was a kind of alcove in which onlookers could gather. The alcoves in the bottom tiers were small and cramped, providing only standing room, while those in the topmost tiers were large and open, appointed with chaises where priests or priestesses might recline while watching the proceedings. Evidently higher meant more important in the Etherion just as in Tarras itself.
“Look at Durge,” Aryn said with a smile. “A bird could fly into his mouth. I believe he’s struck with awe.”
Falken laughed. “More likely he’s trying to figure out how the Tarrasian engineers built this place.”
“I imagine they had some help in the matter,” Lirith said, casting her dark gaze toward Melia.
“Come,” Melia said. “My alcove is this way.”
Durge managed to wrest his attention from the marvel of the Etherion. “Your alcove, Melia?”
She shrugged. “Well, I suppose I would have to share it with Tome, if he were here. After all, it was reserved for the Nine of us. Although it was always a bit cramped if all of us showed up at once.”
Melia’s alcove was located on the sixth tier up, only one below the highest, on the side opposite the great archway that led into and out of the domed space. The alcove was large and furnished