Guy Kay - Sailing to Sarantium

In the expected, equivocal resolution, half a dozen senior clerics had made the muddy trip from Rhodias, arriving two days before, in the midst of Dykania.

They sat now with grim, unhappy faces at the front of the sanctuary before the altar and the sun disk, taking care not to look up at the dome, where an image of golden Jad and an equally vivid, forbidden rendering of his son carrying a torch of fire in his falling chariot could be seen.

The mosaics had already been judged very fine by those who understood such things, though some had disparaged the quality of the glass pieces used. Perhaps more importantly, the new images overhead had caused the pious folk of Varena, who had waited longest and been rewarded with places at the back, to murmur in genuine wonder and awe. Shimmering in the light of the candles the queen had ordered lit for her mighty father, the torch of Heladikos seemed to flicker and glow with a light of its own as the shining god and his doomed child looked down on those gathered below.

Afterwards, rather too obvious analogies were made by a great many and complex, competing morals drawn from the ferocious events of a morning that began in cold, windy greyness, moved into a consecrated space of candlelight and prayers, and ended with blood on the altar and the sun disk beyond.

Pardos had already decided that this was the most important day of his life. He had even half decided, frightening himself a little with the immensity of the thought, that it might always be the most important day of his life. That nothing would or could ever match this morning.

With Radulph and Couvry and the others, he sat-they were sitting, not standing! — in the section allocated to the artisans: carpenters, masons, bricklayers, metal workers, fresco painters, glaziers, mosaicists, all the others.

Labourers, on instructions from the court, had brought in and carefully placed wooden benches all through the sanctuary over the past few days. The sensation was odd, to be seated in a place of worship. Clad in the new brown tunics and belts Martinian had bought them for this morning, Pardos struggled furiously to both appear calm and mature and see every single thing that happened in each moment that passed.

Pardos knew he had to try to seem poised: he wasn't an apprentice any more. Martinian had signed the papers for him and Radulph and Couvry yesterday afternoon. They were formally attested craftsmen now, could serve any mosaicist who would hire them, or even-though that would be foolish-seek commissions on their own. Radulph was returning home to Baiana; he'd always said he would. There would be plenty of work to be found in that summer resort. He was Rhodian, his family knew people. Pardos was Antae and knew no one outside Varena. He and Couvry were staying on with Martinian-and with Crispin, if and when he ever returned from the glories and terrors of the east. Pardos hadn't expected to miss so acutely a man who had routinely threatened him with mannings and dismemberments, but the fact was, he did.

Martinian had taught them patience, discipline, order, the balance between the imagined and the possible. Crispin had been teaching Pardos to see.

He was trying to apply those lessons now, observing the colours worn by the burly Antae leaders and those of the well-born Rhodians who were present here, men and women both. Martinian's wife, beside him, had a shawl of a wonderfully deep red colour over her dark grey robe. It looked like summer wine. Crispin's mother, on Martinian's other side, wore a long blue cloak so dark it made her white hair seem to gleam in the candlelight. Avita Crispina was a small woman, composed and straight-backed, with a scent of lavender about her. She had greeted Pardos and Radulph and Couvry by name and offered them felicitations as they walked in together: they'd had no idea, any of them, that she'd even known they existed.

To the left of the raised altar, close to where the clerics would chant the rites of the day and of Hildric's memorial service, the most important members of the court were seated beside and behind the queen. The men were bearded, unsmiling, clad soberly in browns and russets and dark greens-hunting colours, Pardos thought. He recognized Eudric, yellow-haired and battle-scarred-handsome for all that-once commander of the northern cohorts that did battle with the Inicii, now Chancellor of the Antae realm. Most of the others he didn't know. He thought some of the men looked distinctly uncomfortable without their swords. Weapons were forbidden in the chapel, of course, and Pardos saw hands straying restlessly to gold and silver belts and finding nothing there.

The queen herself sat on an elevated seat set among the first row of the new wooden benches on that side. She was exquisite and a little frightening in the white robes of mourning with a white silk veil hiding her face. Only the almost-throne itself and a single band of dark purple in the soft hat that held the veil in place marked her as royalty today. Wives and mothers and daughters had always worn the veil, Martinian had told them, in the glory days of Rhodias when a man was buried or at his memorial. The queen, so garbed and hidden, raised above everyone else, seemed to Pardos to be a figure out of history or from the tales of other, fantastic worlds, told around night fires.

Martinian, of course, was the only one of them who'd ever spoken to her in the palace, when he and Crispin were commissioned to the work, and afterwards as he requested funds and reported progress. Radulph had seen her once, up close, as she rode back through the city from a royal hunt beyond the walls. Pardos never had. She was beautiful, Radulph had said.

In the strangest way, you could almost tell that now, even if you couldn't see her face, Pardos thought. It occurred to him that dressing in white amid those clad in deeper autumn colours was an effective way to draw the eye. He considered that, how it might be used, and thought of Crispin as he did.

There was a rustling sound and he turned quickly to the front. The three clerics who would conduct the rites-the celebrated Sybard of Varena from the court, and two from this sanctuary-stepped forward from behind the sun disk and paused, in yellow, in blue, in yellow, until the murmurous sounds grew slowly quieter and then stopped. In the flicker of candle and olive oil lamp, under the god and his son on the small dome, they raised their hands, six palms held outwards in the blessing of Jad.

What followed was not holy.

Afterwards, Pardos understood that the clerics" gestures had been chosen as a pre-arranged signal. Some device for co-ordinating actions had been needed, and everyone knew how this ceremony would begin.

The brown-bearded, big-shouldered man who stood up, just as the clerics were about to start the rites, was Agila, the Master of Horse, though Pardos knew that only later. The burly Antae took two heavy-booted strides towards the altar from beside the queen and threw back his fur-lined cloak in the full view of all those assembled.

He was perspiring heavily, his colour was high, and he was wearing a sword.

The clerics" hands remained in the air like six forgotten appendages as they faltered into silence. Four other men, Pardos saw, his heart now beginning to pound, also stood up from the back of the royal section and moved into the aisles between the rows of benches. Their cloaks were also withdrawn; four swords were revealed, and then unsheathed. This was heresy, a violation. It was worse.

"What are you doing? " the court cleric cried sharply, his voice shrill with outrage. Gisel the queen did not move, Pardos saw. The big, bearded man stood almost directly in front of her, but facing the body of the sanctuary.

He heard Martinian say softly under his breath, "Jad shelter us. Her guards are outside. Of course."