Mortal Suns by Tanith Lee Read Free Book Online

presently rushing out. Cemira was the last only because it was more awkward for her.
    As her sticks swung her hurtfully through the passages, she was passed by priests and priestesses who also ran, speechlessly.
    Yes, the world was to end.
    Was she sorry? She did not question herself, this little girl. She had only miseries to lose. The one who taught her to sew, any way, soothing her chapped hands, had sometimes told her of another aspect of Thon. Then he was the Veiled One, who shut the eyes of the sufferer with his gentle breath, and brought the Sleep of Night, which might be full of beautiful dreams.
    The Death Altar lay in the forepart of the temple. It was the sole public hall of the house, to which, very rarely, suppliants might come, wishing to show honor to some deceased relative or lover. But usually such people would take themselves to temples of the towns, not here. For Thon’s house in the hills of Akhemony was not kept for remembrance.
    When thechild reached the hall, it was packed full, and full too of the smells of unwashed morning bodies and mouths, and the rope-thick smoke that gusted from the Altar. Nearby, a black cow stood tethered, tossing her head in fear, for she scented old blood around the drain, which could never quite be washed away.
    There was no chanting. No words were being said. There was no true sound.
    The child listened. She heard her heart beating. No, it was the Heartbeat from the mountain, the Heart of the Land of Akhemony. This was what she heard.
    All her life, her four into five years, she had heard it, and mostly here, so loud, so omnipotent in this place. Heard it so long, she no longer heard it at all, although every hymn of the temple took its tempo from that beat.
    The smoke roiled into the roof, up to the wide black beams. There was no statue. Thon showed himself only in the sanctum. They said, he was too terrible for others to look on until, presumably, they must.
    She was sorry for the cow. She had fed it yesterday. They had told her in the kitchen it need not be killed for another month, and that was for food, which would have been better, because the butcher’s yard was kept quite clean, and there it might not have noticed the odor of blood—
    Nearby, another child, adrift in the adult crowd, threw up from terror on the floor.
    A priestess turned, quickly, and slapped it.
    Yes, yes, let the world end now.
    I see myself as if from above. I see myself standing there, as I had then to stand, on my canes. Almost mindless I was with lack of life and knowledge. I weep for her, that little child I was.
    Annotation by the Hand of Dobzah
    I wish to say that, at this point of her narrative, tears ran from the eyes of Sirai. But only for a moment. I have never seen her weep before except for another, but it is always very swift. I tried to catch one tear once in a bottle. When she saw what I did, she burst out laughing at me. And her tears stopped.
    Up onthe peak of the Heart, it was possible to see, across the earth, the initial trace of light that must be a messenger of the Sun.
    The riders had reached the lower platform. They might go no further. Perhaps, they could not have done, for here the Drumbeat juddered them, made them dizzy and half faint. The land—seemed to dance. One man staggered down from his horse. His torch fell. He lay full-length on the ground, clutching at the rocks.
    All about, the gathered height, still, in disturbed darkness, spring-dashed with the most silver, or the most dirty snow. But above, the pinnacle-peak, its round, dim disk of cave, was garbed gleaming in clandestine virgin white. And where the stream darted over and down, not long unfrozen, catching torchlight, the magical greenish flowers grew.
    The priest who had ridden with them, the Sun priest from Oceaxis, had come to the boulder where the horn hung on its chain.
    The chain was rusty. He must scrape and scrabble to reach the instrument. Having it, he did not wipe the filthy lip, that would be