The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [37]
“Melia?” Lirith gasped.
At once the small woman staggered, her eyes fluttering open. Lirith rushed forward, grasping Melia before she could fall. The lady was as light as a bird against her.
“Sister?” she whispered, her voice tiny and forlorn. “Sister, is it you? I do not think I can bear it. I know now that it was he who made the river run red with the blood of our people. I would rather die than wed such a monster.”
For a horrible moment Melia’s face was a mask of confusion, her amber eyes wide with fear. Then Melia stiffened. Gently, but forcefully, she disentangled herself from Lirith’s grasp.
“Lirith,” she said, her regal face stern. “What is the meaning of this?”
Lirith fought to keep from reeling. “You were dancing, Melia. You nearly fell. I … I caught you.”
Melia frowned. “Dancing? I have not danced in more than two thousand years. Not since …”
Her voice trailed off as she followed Lirith’s gaze to her bare feet and the gold rings on her toes.
Melia’s ire melted. She glanced over her shoulder at the altar. “I had come to speak to my brother. Mandu was ever the most sensitive of the Nindari, and I have been hearing such strange news from the south. I wished to know what he thought of it all. Only I must have lost myself in the past for a moment.” Her gaze grew sharp once more. “But I am quite well now, Lady Lirith. Is there something you wish of me?”
Lirith winced at Melia’s formal manner. But it was her own fault; she was the one who had chosen to greet the lady so coldly when she arrived at Ar-tolor. Now she regretted that action. What cause did she have to be so mistrustful of Melia?
You know perfectly well the cause, Lirith. She and Falken are agents of Runebreaker, are they not?
Lirith forced this thought from her mind; right then there was a more immediate question to answer. Before she lost her nerve, she explained in clipped words about the tangle she had twice glimpsed in the Weirding.
When Lirith finished, Melia folded her arms and paced before the altar. “Can this possibly be related to the whispers we have been hearing?” she murmured, although Lirith had the sense Melia was speaking not to her but to the statue of Mandu.
She answered nonetheless. “What whispers do you mean?”
Melia glanced up, as if she had already forgotten Lirith was there. “I’m not entirely certain I can put them into words. They aren’t really whispers in the sense you think.” She cast a fond glance back at the altar. “Words are limiting things. Yet most of what I have heard has, at its heart, the same matter. Of late, some among the New Gods of Tarras have sensed a change.”
“A change?”
Melia sighed. “How can I explain it any better? It’s as if … you’re sitting in a lovely garden at noon, dozing in the warmth, when suddenly a cloud passes before the sun. Nothing in the garden itself is different than it was a moment ago, and yet the entire nature of the place is altered.”
Lirith thought she understood. “So you’re saying the city of Tarras is like that garden?”
Melia nodded. “Many of the New Gods are uneasy, although none can really say why.”
The words startled Lirith. She had not thought it possible for a god to be afraid. But were not the gods simply reflections of the people who followed them? More powerful and beautiful and sublime by far—but reflections all the same? And certainly people feared things which they could not name.
Lirith nodded to the figure on the altar. “What does he think? Is this shadow in the garden the same as the knot I have seen in the Weirding?”
Melia sighed. “I fear Mandu speaks little anymore. With each circle he completes, he grows more perfect—and, I think, more distant. And I’m afraid I know little enough of the Witches and the Weirding to be able to tell you what this tangle is. Yet it seems to me there must be a connection somehow. Why else would you see a change in your web even as we have seen in ours?”
Lirith felt a bit of the tightness leave her