The Seventh Gate (The Seven Citadels ) by Geraldine Harris Read Free Book Online Page A

not betray me again!”
    Kerish tried, one-handed, to break the
terrible strength of her grip, and failed. He twisted and struggled as the
hands crushed his throat. His blood screamed in every vein and his eyes would
surely burst from his head.
    “Oghara,” a new voice rang out, distorted
by a sea of pain, “let him go!”
    “No, he is mine. His blood belongs to me!”
    “It does not. The Chief Priest has released
him to me.”
    “All men must look on my beauty and die.”
    “I look on it and I do not die,” said Khan
O-grak. “Let him go, Oghara.”
    “But I am the Goddess.” The voice sank to a
whimper and the grip loosened. “In all Zindar, there is nothing so precious as
my beauty.”
    “Nothing,” echoed O-grak gently. “Release
him and depart.”
    The hands opened and Kerish slid gasping to
the ground. The voice was sweet again, and childlike. “Father, don't leave me
in the dark.”
    “It is yours now,” said O-grak, stooping
over the Prince. “Go!”
    A sigh filled the room, and for a moment
the scent of Bloodflowers lingered; then the torch flared  into life.
    The Khan pulled Kerish to his feet and half
carried him to the couch.
    “Your throats bruised but the cuts are
shallow.” O-grak brushed the blood from the Prince's throat with his sleeve. “Since
you kept so staunchly to my advice, you'll come to no harm.”
    “But you looked at her.”
    O-grak turned his face away. “Three years
ago the Priests of Az chose the Living Goddess from among the fairest daughters
of the Khans and Princes.”
    “Your daughter?”
    “She believes it herself now,” said O-grak
slowly. “Perhaps she truly is possessed by the Goddess. I shall never know. To
me she will always be Oghara, my only child.”
    “She is beautiful then?”
    “You were tempted to look? No,” said O-grak
grimly, “she is not beautiful now. Can you walk?”
    “Away from here? Yes.” Kerish stood up
unsteadily.
    “Good, then I will take you home. You are
fortunate that even the Priests of Az will listen to the father of the Living
Goddess.”
    Kerish looked back at the crevice. “How can
you bear to leave her here?”
    “She would have killed you, Prince, like
the rest of her consorts. She belongs to darkness now.”

Chapter
3
    The Book of the Emperors: Warnings
     
    And Jezreen
spoke to his kinsmen, rebuking them that they would not journey beyond Galkis
to seek out new gods, but the High Priest answered him saying. “Truth and
goodness dwell in other lands in other shapes. Zeldin has given us our shapes,
let us rejoice in His gifts rather than covet the truths of others.”
    Yet Jezreen
said, “I will accept no gift, until I know its worth. It is the duty of the
young to doubt all teachings, and to seek new things.” “And it is the duty of
the old to forget them again,” said the High Priest, and when he saw that the
Prince would not be humbled, he denounced him to the Emperor.
     
     
    KERISH stood close to the wooden wall, to
study the crimson comb and brindled feathers of a bird, painted weaving its
nest between branches.
    “I don't know why we paint them like that,”
said O-grak cheerfully.” I've never seen a bird that color, but then I take
more notice of them in the pot than on the wing. You look better now, Prince.”
    A scarf hid the lacerations on Kerish's
throat. Bathed and rested, there was nothing to show for his ordeal but pallor.
    “My brother . . .” began Kerish, but O-grak
chose not to listen.
    “You'll be better still with food inside
you. Sit to it!”
    Kerish crossed meekly to the trestle-table
and the unappetizing bowl of boiled salt-meat.
    “The outsides of your towers are so stern.
I would never have guessed that the insides would be so charmingly painted. “
    “I told you, I don't know why it's done,
but old ways are kept here.”
    O-grak was sprawled in a massive chair with
the tower serpent coiled at his feet. Both of them seemed out of place against
the delicate tracery of branches