Chapter 72
By the time he reached the end of the tunnel, Abass had left behind the strange, cutting smell of the terraces. The chill must of dirt and darkness was broken only by the edged notes of blood and emptied bowels. Slaughter had been done here, and recently. The smell filled Abass’s nose, tightening into a knife-point just between his eyes, and drove him wild. He needed to taste blood, to bathe in it. Distantly, he realized the dew was changing him, making him something different. It was hard to remember Isola at times; now, he salivated at the thought of divine blood moistening his parched lips, the feel of godly flesh between his teeth.
Firelight broke the dew-lit darkness, and as he rounded another bend in the massive tunnel, Abass found himself at the mouth of a cave. It felt ancient; stone showed through the soil here, great, jagged spires of crystal, wet and rainbow-shining in the flames. Like the rest of this strange, subterranean part of the temple, the cavern was huge, and the firelight illuminated only a small section in the middle, where a rough stone altar, identical to the one from the sanctuary, sat surrounded by a dozen iron braziers, their metal red with heat.
Abass’s heart leapt. Men and women in wooden cages lined the ring of firelight. Hundreds of them stood in the cages, and even cramped as they were, they drew back from the terrible heat of the braziers, and from the blood-stained stone at their center. The smell of blood was strong here, whirling on invisible drafts with the musty soil and the cool, dry smell of stone.
Something man-shaped, slightly hunched, approached the altar. The shifting light of the coals would have made it hard for the prisoners to make out anything else, but with the dew-light in him, Abass could make out the details hidden to them. For a moment, he wondered at the lumpy, dark-brown creature that stood at the altar. It was man-shaped, with thick, matted hair covering most of its body, except for the three-fingered hands. In one of those hands hung a dull, bone-white knife. The head and face, though, were what made it truly different. Its lower jaw jutted out, and thick, curved tusks obscured the rest of the mouth. Blood, dark and vibrant in the dew-light, glistened on the yellowed tusks. Though he could not see its eyes, Abass remembered them from his first High Harvest—the color of fresh-turned soil, dark and deep.
The tair, the altar, the braziers—it all looked too small. Only after long moments of careful watching, of resisting the flood of dew that threatened to sweep away thought in a frenzy of bloodlust, did Abass realize that the proportions were right, just incredibly distant. The tair dragged a victim from one of the cages, and next to the god-made-flesh, the struggling man looked like a toddler. The tair carried the man who kicked and thrashed—not attempting to escape, Abass realized, but overcome with the passion of the harvest—to the altar. The man’s back arched; he drummed his heels and clawed at the uneven stone.
With one economized motion, the tair brought the dull knife across the sacrifice’s throat.
Blood stained the air, soaked the stone. In the cavern, so close to the disi and the god-made-flesh and the harvest, the smell of blood drove the breath from Abass’s lungs. Before he realized it, he was soaring through the air, flying down the steep, uneven sides of the cavern. He jumped from stone to stone, working his way down and across the chamber, toward the altar. Every drop of blood burned inside him.
A cool, dry breath of air washed over him. Abass felt his head clear, the pounding of the dew receded. He teetered on his perch of stone, the world tilting as the bloodlust disoriented him. He clung to the moment of clarity, to a sense of himself as a man. Disjointed images whirled around him: Segi dead and shattered, one breast exposed; Scribe, his body carved by the same mad butcher who had filled the Sleeping Palaces with wights; himself, slaughtering that first band of eses on the street. Then the memories shifted. A warm afternoon on the Perch, with a breeze to break the heat; the feel of leather, rough against his skin, and the clink of coin within as he cut his first purse; that first throwing dagger, his toy, his passion, sinking into Isola’s chest, and the sound of tearing fabric and flesh.
He pushed aside the images of blood and death; they threatened to send him tumbling back into oblivion. Instead, he focused on the feel of coins, the way he could judge a purse’s weight from a distance, the smooth stone of the Perch against bare skin. Sunlight and dust and thousand-glories filling his lungs. Facing Fadhra in the tunnels and realizing he knew what love was. The memories provided a center, a place from which he could resist the pull of the High Harvest that flowed in time with the dew inside him. Slowly, still balancing on that wet, shimmering crystal ledge, Abass found himself. He righted himself, the grace of the dew helping him stay on the slick stone, and as he regained his balance, he found himself at peace, for the first time in years.
He knew what it meant to love someone. He also knew what it was to hate. And, for the first time since he was a child, Abass knew what it meant to be responsible. No more blaming himself for what others had done. And no more blaming others for what he did himself. Or for what he failed to do.
The dew receded, a flood of life and energy within him, awaiting his call. He was a man, not an animal. A man made his own decisions. Abass looked down at the men and women caught up in the throes of the harvest. Isola might be down there. She might not. He realized, now, that his anger at Fadhra, combined with the dew, had clouded his judgment. He had been so sure that he could find Isola by anger alone, slaughtering anyone who stood in his way. Now, watching those people tremble as the ecstasy of the harvest caught them, he knew he had been a fool. Still, if he could not save Isola, he could at least save someone.
With the perfect balance of the dew, Abass launched himself from the wet stone, spiraling down into darkness.