The Silver Lake (61 page)

Making his way down the quiet, spiral staircase that led to the temple’s central shrine, Brax shivered despite the warmth of a heavy woolen jacket. His face and hair were plastered to his skull from having spent the morning on the eastern battlements with Spar, standing below the great black marble statue of Estavia which stared out across the strait at Dovek-Hisar. The waves below’d had an icy sheen to them.

It had been the same six days ago when Spar had first led him there. The younger boy had stared down at the water for a long time before turning a pale, unfocused gaze on Brax’s face.

“Something’s happening,” he said bluntly.

Brax felt a corkscrew of worry twist in his belly. “Yeah?” he asked carefully, resisting the urge to rub his left elbow which had suddenly begun to throb dully. “Like what?”

The younger boy shook his head.

“You know, the last time you said that we ended up in a battle,” Brax observed, allowing a faint tone of reproof to enter his voice.

Spar just blinked the rain from his eyes before giving his familiar one-shouldered shrug. “I know.”

He fell silent again and Brax studied him with a worried frown. A season’s worth of warm clothes and heavy soups and stews had kept the winter pallor from the younger boy’s cheeks for the first time in his life. He was taller and heavier, and his hair which had always fallen limp and lifeless about his face, was now thick and shiny—or would have been if it hadn’t been soaking wet. He’d taken to wearing it long and loose like the temple’s battle-seers, with a single brown bead woven into one lock. He looked better than he ever had, but his gaze was drawing farther inward every day; sometimes it was hours before he even noticed there were other people in the room with him.

“Something?” Brax prodded as the wind began to whistle through his own hair. “That doesn’t involve us getting blown off the wall and drowned?”

The faintest hint of a smile touched Spar’s lips. “Maybe.”

“I’m glad to hear it. I’d hate to think I was out here for no good reason.” Resting his right elbow on the stone wall, he purposely ignored the irritated frown the younger boy turned on him.

“I needed to talk to you,” Spar said stiffly.

“And you couldn’t do it someplace dry?”

“No.” Spar’s brows drew down. “It’s too misty back there. I can’t see.”

Glancing up as the rapidly rising wind brought a heavy fog rolling in from the Bogazi-Isik Strait, Brax sighed. “So, what do you see out here?”

“Flowers the color of blood and gold strewn across a sunlit floor.”

Of all the things he’d been expecting to hear, that hadn’t been one of them.

Now, as Brax reached the bottom of the stairs, the sounds of the wind and the rain faded. Passing under an archway, he made his way along a narrow corridor until he came to a familiar wooden door reinforced with iron. A small wall niche to one side held a tiny bronze statue of Estavia and he laid his sword hand on his chest in salute before pushing the door open.

More a mausoleum than a chapel, most of the residents of Estavia-Sarayi avoided the central shrine out of respect for the man interned here, so Brax knew from experience that it would be empty of worshipers, but that the oil lamps to either side of the door would be over half full, the tall incense brazier in one comer no more than a third empty; the altar would be clean of dust, and its bowl of lotus flowers would be fresh and sweet-smelling. Crossing the shadowed room, he drew his sword and, after laying it across the altar, came around to stare up at the Battle God’s much larger statue standing in its high, domed alcove above Kaptin Haldin’s tomb. Under the weight of its crimson regard, he slowly felt himself calm as he had the first time he had come here so many months before.

Brax had been coming here every day since they’d returned to Anavatan last spring. It was the only place he could gain any respite from the God’s lien which kept up a constant, buzzing demand that he train, rain or shine, day in and day out, from the time he rose in the morning to the time he collapsed exhausted into bed at night when even his dreams were filled with images of conquest and battle. Here in the shrine, however, the lien calmed as if willing to accept quiet homage in place of violent action for at least a little while.

Breathing in the deep comforting silence like a balm, he knelt to press his hands against the black marble slab that covered the body of Kaptin Haldin.

Traditionally, the Warriors of Estavia stood in ranks or sat astride before their God as they would do on the battlefield and, when he stood with them; he stood as one of them. Every morning and every evening he took his place with the older delinkon of Cyan Company, feeling the power of their God course through his body to join with every other wor shiper on Her parade ground and beyond. On the first day of Her High Summer he’d stood in the company shrine, listening while the adult warriors repeated the oaths they’d sworn the day they were accepted into Her service. The delinkon around him had stood rigidly silent, overawed by the heavy solemnity of the words, but he’d seen their lips moving as they’d spoken their own private oaths or repeated prayers of thanks or supplication they’d sent to Her in the past. Brax himself had breathed the words that had changed his life.

“Save us, God of Battles, and I will pledge you my life, my worship, and my last drop of blood forever.”

Even at a whisper, his voice echoed overloud in the empty shrine, and he closed his eyes as the resurging memory of Her response on Liman-Caddesi made him feel young and desperate again, the cold of the stone slab seeping through his fingers making him feel a little sick. Surrounded by Her soldiers he stood as one of them, but here, where the man She’d loved above all others lay beneath Her feet, he knelt as Her Champion. Reaching out with his mind, he imagined the body of Kaptin Haldin lying beneath him, still and quiet, while his spirit rested in the warmth of Her presence deep below the waters of Gol-Beyaz. It made him feel better somehow, closer to both of them. If he could have sunk down beneath the slab himself to become one with Haldin’s dust and bones, he would have.

He reddened, imagining what Spar would think of this feeling were he ever stupid enough to actually tell him. The sneer the younger boy would turn on him would be so cutting it would likely kill him on the spot. And in a way he’d be right. It sounded far too melodramatic and gruesome, even a little bit obscene, to actually be real, but it was the only way Brax had to describe what was more of a deep, bone-filling need than a simple emotion. He had no idea if the rest of Her warriors felt this way. He was far too embarrassed to ask Kemal or Yashar, but he supposed that it didn’t really matter. Estavia knew it and accepted it, was greedy for it in fact, as greedy as a child standing beside a traveling confectioner handing out free rahat loukoum; greedy for them all, the sweets, the tray, even for the confectioner. For that matter, greedy for the sweet shop, the market it resided in, and the city which held the market. The tingle of amused and avaricious agreement made him smile.

Now, closing his eyes, he reached into that tingle, feeling Her presence in the underlying warmth that always began in his chest, then spread down to his belly and groin, his arms and legs, his hands and feet, and finally to his face. Once it had filled him like a pool of deep, liquid fire, he asked that it be directed down and through the stiffened scarring that curved along his shield arm. The responding trickle of warmth made him tip his head back with almost drunken pleasure.

The physician-priests of Usara at Serin-Koy had been uncertain if he’d ever regain the full use of his arm. At Kemal’s request they’d petitioned the God of Healing for aid, but even after that God’s gift of power their prognosis had been doubtful; the Yuruk’s attack had shattered his elbow, Graize’s corresponding blow had torn the surrounding tissue almost beyond repair, but Brax believed that Estavia would not let him be crippled. He’d suffered the healers’ ministrations, both there and in the temple infirmary after they’d returned to Anavatan, following their orders about medicine and exercise, but every day he’d come here to the very center of Her temple and sent his need to his own God, the Battle God; his need and his unshakable belief in Her love and in Her power. And every day She responded, sending a thin line of Her own hot and blood-red power through the damaged bones and muscles, making them stronger—not healing them perhaps, for that was not within Her sphere of influence, but definitely making them stronger. Now, although his arm often felt thick and heavy, like it was carved out of wood, there was very little pain or weakness in the joint. He could carry a shield and wield it well enough to ward off a blow. That was all that mattered.

As this latest line of power grew, then faded, he sent Her a quiet prayer of thanks, laying his right hand on his chest once again, then turned and sat at the edge of the tomb, resting his back against the altar as Kemal had done so many months before. Now that he was calm and hale, he could mull over the rest of Spar’s strange revelation in peace.

The younger boy had turned eyes gone unusually dark on Brax’s face, and he’d felt a thrill of disquiet as Spar had begun to speak.