SOMETIME IN THE NIGHT, someone had decked the entrance to the royal crypt with flowers and boughs. The
sacred plants’ pungent smell filled the entire Temple of Anthros, and Cassia knew word of the display
would soon spread throughout Solorum.
Blossoms of Anthros’s fire in every shade from orange to gold, tongues of flame to halt the unholy,
lay scattered on the threshold of the crypt. Branches of sunsword, bound into rod-shaped bundles and
woven into flat circles, flanked the steps and stood sentinel over the door. Their scent burned as
sharply as sun in the eyes to drive away the defilers, the blood drinkers, those who defied death. The
Hesperines were coming.
The court had only arrived at the capital last night. But the king would know by day’s end who was
responsible for this silent outcry against his decision to treat with the Hesperines.
Like all who were assembling in the temple for dawn rites, Cassia could not avoid walking past
the crypt on her way to her place. As she neared the steps that led down to the tombs under the
temple, Knight sniffed and let out a whine.
She did not slow her pace. Most of all, she did not look toward the head of the gathering, where
the king sat in state. She kept her head down and held her breath. Tears stung her eyes as she walked
past the deep stone archway and the age-darkened wooden door of the crypt.
She ought to be able to control such foolish things as her watery eyes. It was entirely the fault of
the odorous herbs that she came so close to weeping. With a hand on Knight’s ruff, she mounted the
stairs to the temple gallery and pushed herself upward. The whispers followed her.
“She does not pay her respects.”
“Does not even pause to remember her sister.”
“Half sister. Tainted blood can bring no honor to blessed bones.”
Cassia attained the temple’s gallery, and the words faded into the general murmurs of the lords and
their ladies assembled below. The crypt slipped out of sight, although she knew its black door waited
beneath her.
No one bore any love for the bones of the past kings and their kin who now ruled only the silent
realm under the temple. The flowers were for her sister. Cassia could have told them it was much too
late for that. She could have told them why she had never set foot in the crypt where the king had
buried the princess. How many, many things she could have told them. But Lady Cassia told no one
anything; Lady Cassia did not speak.
She took her place at the gallery railing with other women who were not to be seen except when
they did their duty and appeared in the temple. Today Cassia found herself beside Free Lord Titus’s
concubine of twenty years. Some of the woman’s golden curls were fading to silver, and her famous
figure was becoming stout, but her mouth remained a subject of great renown. Her lips had a natural
upturn at the corners, as if she were always on the verge of a smile or mockery.
On Cassia’s other side was a girl about Perita’s age. Cassia didn’t recognize her face, only the
gown and jewels the newcomer wore. The girl must be Free Lord Tyran’s latest doll. A couple of
fortnights from now, a different body would be wearing the same finery, and a different pair of eyes
would briefly meet Cassia’s before the two of them turned their gazes ahead in obedient silence.
Cassia counted herself fortunate to be relegated to the gallery. She could see everything clearly
from here, and it was the best place to make oneself invisible to the king. She had not set foot in
Solorum Temple in years, but he and his court presented a sight she understood well.
At the head of the temple loomed the sun disk, half embedded in the eastern horizon of the stone
floor. The vast bronze circle captured what little light crept in through the temple’s small windows.
The free lords stood assembled before the disk, their swords also waiting to catch the gleam of dawn.
Their conversations provided a wealth of information for a lip reader like Cassia. Today their
mouths moved in discussion of every matter but the stinking display at the crypt. The ladies in the
women’s court behind them never so much as glanced at the door of the tombs that loomed at their
backs. No one wished for the king’s perceptive gaze to fall upon them.
King Lucis of Tenebra watched the room with his sword, his liegehounds, and his heir close at
hand. Had twelve-year-old Prince Caelum paused to honor his fallen sister, who had been the heir
before she died and he was born? Cassia saw that the royal chairs were positioned as she
remembered, against the wall and facing inward, that His Majesty might observe the crowd and the
disk at the same time. The king never turned his back to his subjects or the gods.
At the foot of the sun disk stood the king’s new royal mage. Only he presented an unusual sight, an
unfamiliar figure in the position his predecessor had occupied for decades. The late royal mage had
been fond of marching out to greet the crowd with a flash of light and a clap of noise that made the sun
disk reverberate. His bald pate sweating, he had brandished his power to lift the screeching, groaning
disk. But his successor was already here, waiting quietly.
The sun’s rays now penetrated the windows and advanced under the temple’s rounded arches. As
light expanded within the old hulk of stone, Cassia peered at the new mage. A man of medium height
and build and moderate demeanor. This was the best glimpse she’d had of him since he had joined the
court upon their departure from Namenti. The king’s bastard was expected to stay out of the way of
such exalted men during the court’s progress from the winter palace to the capital, just as she was
expected to make a show of piety by attending temple once they arrived.
Dawn’s light struck the surface of the sun disk fully, and Cassia squinted. Now the mage smoothly
raised his hands. In complete silence, the disk lifted from its trench in the floor and began its ascent. It
reflected light upon the pillars of the temple, turning the pale, time-worn sandstone the color of
sunlight.
The columns had once been the temple, twice-seven stone sun rods meant to welcome Anthros’s
power down from the sky, before grandiose kings had added walls and a roof over the course of
centuries. Now only peasants observed dawn rites outside. Lucis himself had ordered the last of the
royal temples in the kingdom roofed, as his engineers and architects were all too fond of reminding
his subjects. Just in case they forgot that their king demanded the same fear and trembling as his god.
Now the mage dropped his hands, and the disk continued moving, set on its westward path. It
would reach its zenith in the rafters at noon and then set over the crypt at sundown, as it did all three
hundred and ninety-two days of the year. The mage began to recite the same old invocations of
Anthros in the Divine Tongue, which none but those trained in the Mage Orders could understand.
Cassia, however, found any speech quite revealing about the orator who delivered it. The late
mage’s bombastic recitations had demonstrated that he possessed considerable lung capacity and
little else. The new mage, on the other hand, spoke at no great volume, but his clear diction and the
steady timbre of his voice carried to her ears in the gallery. His tone rose and fell as if he held a
conversation with his god. Only the slightly nasal quality of his voice detracted from the effect.
Cassia recognized the sound of the words that were the closing supplication to Anthros. The new
mage fell silent and folded his hands. Along with the crowd, Cassia recited the worshipers’ response
they all learned as soon as they could speak. She still wondered what it meant.
The hall was full of sun now. The mage’s distant gaze focused again on the mortals before him, and
he smiled. In that same pleasantly nasal, calmly expressive voice he began to speak in the vulgar
tongue.
“Obedient sons and daughters of Anthros,” he greeted them, opening his hands, “blessed and
fearful subjects of Tenebra, I am honored to be welcomed among you by your king, whose victories
by the sword have long-since pleased the god of war. I am Amachos, Honored Master in the Order of
Anthros, recently of the Temple of Anthros at Namenti.”
He performed dawn rites without dramatic displays of power designed to mystify, and now he
gave a speech in Vulgus, which everyone in Tenebra and Cordium could understand. Amachos was
indeed a departure from the sort of mages who usually presided over the king’s temples. Cassia
listened now to what the mage’s voice and his words told her.
She deemed him a very safe choice. The Temple of Anthros at Namenti had always stood watch on
Tenebra’s southern border, where Cordium waited to stretch its influence farther north. Of all the
temples of the Tenebran mages of Anthros, Namenti was the one powerful and prestigious enough to
rebuff the Cordian Orders’ ambitions.
Everyone knew the Mage Orders in Cordium were the supreme divine authority in the world and
the true mouthpiece of the gods. That didn’t mean Tenebrans wanted their interference. Tenebran
mages had worked spells their own way since before there were Orders, and neither king nor free
lord wished to meet the fate of the Cordian princes, who had become nothing more than dogs on
leashes to the Orders. There was a reason everyone called Cordium the Magelands, and no one spoke
of the Principalities or the City-States anymore.
Amachos was sure to please everyone, for they would see him as a defender of the one principle
the king, the free lords, and even the peasants agreed on: Tenebrans should be their own masters.
The mage smiled again. “It is with great delight that I take up the sacred duty to which the god has
called me, to serve as your master in all matters sacred, and devote my gods-given power to the good
of King Lucis’s people. Together, let us put the plow to the soil of Tenebra and do fruitful work.
“The first work we must do together is of utmost importance to the safety of the kingdom and the
honor of the gods. This very night, Hesperine diplomats from Orthros arrive among us for the Equinox
Summit, and I rejoice that I am here to act as your guide at this crucial time.
“The god of war has bestowed upon this kingdom a great honor: to stand as the world’s shield
against Orthros. Tenebra is Anthros’s aegis, the bulwark of man, safeguarding all that is holy from the
Hesperines.
“The weak kings of the past failed in this duty, for they neglected to convene the Summit and thus
allowed the Equinox Oath to lapse for hundreds of years. But Anthros has now delivered Tenebra into
the hands of a mighty ruler who will once more face the Hesperines and hold them to the age-old
truce. Lucis Basileus has been bold enough to order the Summit Beacon lit.
“Rejoice, Tenebrans, for you are fortunate in your king! The Hesperines have seen the fire on the
mountain! Thanks to your courageous monarch, they have lit their beacon in answer. They shall come
forth and treat with your king.
“All know that great Anthros hates the disobedient and rejoices at their defeat. Let us not forget,
however, the god also loves order. A king may lead his people to victory at the negotiation table as
surely as on the field of battle. Let us dwell on this as we welcome your king’s guests and invoke the
god’s blessings upon his endeavor.”
Now the mage folded his hands in the belled sleeves of his red-gold robe. He did not even move
as the sun god’s glyph flared to life above the crowd. A disk was carved on the air in golden light,
throwing one magical sun rod upward. The sign hung in the air a moment, then disappeared without
Amachos making any grand gestures.
A slight ripple of movement passed through the crowd. They seemed to realize belatedly that the
dawn invocation was at an end, and the mage intended to say no more. The glyph was graven, the
blessing cast. The king’s subjects had received the spell of Anthros they had come for, the protection
they sought against the immortals who would arrive when the sun fell.
Diplomats from Orthros, Amachos had called the Hesperines, to be welcomed as the king’s guests.
Where was his condemnation of the heretics? His diatribe against the fallen goddess Hespera and her
perverse followers? If he was going to speak in a tongue comprehensible to everyone, why not issue a
warning about Hespera’s vile spawn and their alluring powers or a call to prepare for the presence of
the godsforsaken among the blessed?
His speech had been a call to the talks, not a call to arms. The mage and the king both appeared
committed to pursuing a truce with Tenebra’s feared nocturnal neighbors.
The mage’s presence displeased Cassia. It would be so until she knew what he wanted.
Perhaps his aim was nothing more than power. His position as the royal mage afforded him plenty,
and his influence would only increase the more he displayed public support for the king’s politics.
But Cassia could not say for certain. She had evidence neither for nor against.
There was little drama about his person. There was no passion in his speech. Amachos was
dangerous.
Those who wanted too much were dangerous. Those who appeared not to want anything were
much more so.
The crowd below filed out of the temple through the western doors. Cassia and the others waited
above for the powerful and respected to leave. Eventually the women around her descended in the
wake of their benefactors. Lord Titus’s concubine departed with an amused smile. Lord Tyran’s
picked her way down the steps, holding her expensive skirts as if they might break. At last Cassia and
Knight trailed down the stairs.
As she neared the door to the crypt again, her steps dragged. Everyone’s backs were turned to her.
But she never knew from what direction a watchful gaze might observe her. She refrained from
looking at the flowers and passed them by once more. Her eyes began to water again. When she
stepped outside, the bright morning only worsened her blindness.
She blinked until she could see, then tried to get her bearings. She would have expected the ancient
capital to look smaller in reality than the massive specter it remained in her memories. But she felt as
if she had stepped right back into the Solorum of her childhood.
The Temple of Anthros towered at her back on the eastern hill, casting a long shadow as the sun
climbed behind it. On the southern slope loomed Solorum proper, the oldest palace in Tenebra, once
home to the Mage King himself—if he had really existed. Across from it on the northern hill stood
Solorum Fortress, which seven much later kings had built over the course of two centuries. There the
Hesperines would stay.
The greensward cupped between the three hills had been newly cleared, but the groundskeepers
had lost their battle with the ivy that clung to the Mage King’s throne. The stone chair in the middle of
the green had stood since long before living memory and even before the memory of minstrels, its
four-sided seat ready to receive sunlight from all directions. Songs said its back had once thrust high
into the air in the shape of the sun rod, but now its jagged, broken top stood only a little taller than a
man. Just visible beneath the carpet of ivy at its foot was the circular dais, a stone sun on the ground.
Leaves and tendrils of ivy cradled the throne, as if they alone held it up, even as they split tiny
fractures in its surface. The woods still clung close to the edges of the greensward and blanketed the
slopes surrounding the complex of structures. The grounds beyond looked damp and dark, and the
scent of last night’s rain still wafted from the forest’s green depths. Somewhere within the trees, a
bird unleashed a wild cry.
Cassia felt a sense of pressure in her neck, a tension in her limbs. She swept her gaze all about her
again, taking in the buildings, but also the warriors who stood on either side of the temple door. The
king’s men. They watched her.
She rested a hand on Knight and walked on.