The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [129]
The third priest on the dais, representing the lowest tiers, was an emaciated man in a drab brown robe, yet he seemed somehow more compelling than those who stood beside him. He was Lyderus, priest of the temple of Gol, who, from what Durge could gather, was the god of a group of ascetic hermits. He supposed that explained Lyderus’s gaunt visage.
Durge knew the gods themselves were not present in the Etherion, only their priests, but there was a power on the air he could not deny. It felt like the air on the moors of Embarr just before a storm swept out of the north with thunder and lightning. Wherever they were, the gods were watching.
“The circle is open,” Medris said, his voice again booming into the alcove. “Who would address the Etherion?”
All around, flags of different colors were unfurled and draped from various balconies.
Medris scanned the flags, then nodded. “The Etherion recognizes the right of the temple of Vathris Bullslayer to speak.”
He laid his hand on the golden orb that topped the pedestal before him. There was a faint whirring, like the sound of wings, and something rose from the shadows below. As far as Durge could tell, it was a huge crystal set into an ornate wood frame. It was like a window, but with no walls around it, and made with glass so thick that things seen through it were distorted. Attached to the frame were two more of the gilded horns.
The crystal was supported by some sort of mechanical frame of wood and iron, with multiple joints, gears, and pulleys that Durge could not fathom at this distance. The crystal began to rise toward the highest tier.
“Halt!” Lyderus said on the dais, the gaunt priest’s voice sharp and thin as a knife, but ringing into the alcove as Medris’s had.
Lyderus moved to the center of the dais. “The records show that at the last assembly of the Etherion, the final speech was made by the temple of Vathris of the first tier. Precedence must be granted to a temple of another tier, if one would speak. The Etherion will hear the temple of Ondo.”
Medris glared at Lyderus, his rage clear even at a distance. Both he and Lyderus looked to Vanhera, who stood apart from them on the dais. She glanced to one side, and Durge saw a hollow behind the dais he had not noticed before. In it a scribe wrote furiously in a book. The scribe flipped back a page, then nodded to Vanhera.
“The record is as Lyderus describes,” she said, her voice filling the Etherion. “The temple of Ondo will speak.”
Medris gave a poisonous scowl, but he stepped away from the pedestal. Lyderus placed his hand on the golden orb. At once the crystal began to move again, the mechanical arms carrying it down to the third tier, then moving it halfway around the Etherion. At last Durge realized the movements of the crystal corresponded to the motions of Lyderus’s fingers upon the orb; somehow he was using it to control the crystal.
The crystal came to a halt before the alcove whose priests had unfurled a golden flag. The purpose of the crystal became clear, for one of the priests stepped toward it, and the crystal enlarged the image of his face, so that it filled the entire frame, ensuring that all in the Etherion might plainly see his expressions. The priest spoke, leaning toward one of the golden horns, and his voice rang out in Melia’s alcove.
Durge began to understand. The horns on the frame of the crystal were like those the three Voices spoke into on the dais. Somehow the horns carried the voice of the one who spoke into them, redoubled it, and brought it through other horns into each of the alcoves in the Etherion. It was a trick, like that of the crystal. However, he had never known light and sound could be manipulated as if they were wood or metal. The Tarrasians were indeed great engineers. Or at least, they had been when the Etherion was built over a millennium ago.
The priest of Ondo was speaking in a shrill voice, his pinched face filling the crystal. Lirith was right; they seemed a rude lot.
“This is an outrage! How could another temple dare try to speak