terrible shrine of the faith, theater of the Covenant's most solemn rite. Pandagon's irrepressible intuition . . . or just desperate hope? . . . was that the uniqueness of this did mean unease in the god. The protocols were A'Rak's own. Revision meant . . . at least something unforeseen. To that frail hope of vulnerability in the alien giant, he clung as he crossed the moon-drenched sand.
The God's Gate, its brazen valves even vaster than the City Gate's, was graven with the City's (and Covenant's) history. A'Rak's Epiphany to the Gleet-Shearers. The stages of the city's explosive growth filled the ascending panels, and the highest depicted the Quay thronged with trade and the Haagsford a-bristle with ships. As he neared the awesome valves, he had to crane his neck back to see them.
He halted, taking in the doors as a whole now, five stories high. For now, standing close, he sensed power bristling and swelling just outside them, sensed a presence outside them that was a match for their hugeness. Did not the great brazen panels even bulge with it, ever so faintly swelling and groaning with its pressure? Surely they did, just detectably! And he almost believed he detected too—like huge, remote millstones grinding slow—the murmur of that Presence's vital energy, a slow-cycling drone.
I am here .
The god's thought was a mere wisp, a fleet coruscation of comprehension. And it was a tidal surge at the same time, a huge impalpability, an immense will entering a single skull's little sanctum.
"I harken, oh revered A'Rak, and attend your will." What a chattery small noise seemed his speech in Pandagon's own ears! Such was the awe that aura-ed the Presence, that in it the priest found his terror almost suspended.
Look above thee Priest. Upwards! Behold!
Pandagon again craned his neck back, and saw nothing but the gates' brazen crest. Then, all along that crest, wispy movement caught the starlight. It seemed that some gauzy tapestry's broad hem—a silken skirt as wide as the gates themselves—had begun edging down, curtain-wise, over the graven bronze panels.
It came down with a whispery, scratchy sound, and little hitches and haltings gave its descent an almost teasing tempo, evoking a music hall curtain's coy flourishes for the comic turns. The incongruity of that notion augmented, if anything could, the priest's utter bewilderment.
A moment more and he could see dark figures embedded in the descending fabric, shapes knit in ranked array . . . ? Yes. The thing was a pattered tapestry then. Some woven proclamation? Writ large for the Convocation here of the Three Thousand two nights hence?
Steadily downward this tapestry scratchily whispered. The fabric was a dense silvery gauze—was thick raw silk. The ranked figures were the scratchy part. They were made of much stiffer stuff. And in fact they weren't woven shapes at all, but rather solid things webbed into the sheeted silk.
And then Pandagon grasped what he was seeing. His horror melted his knees and froze them solid again in the selfsame instant.
This descending curtain was a vast diaphanous shroud. The shapes in it, row on row, were spider husks—the mummied residues of the A'Rak's feedings. Here were every creature of any size native to Hagia's hills, riverfloors, and sea bottoms—a score of each kind formed the vast page's text. Their hides, tanned black by the venom, were sucked so tight to the bone that every tooth, joint and rib of them showed stark and sharp in the starlight, as clear as anatomic engravings.
Do you grasp what is blazoned here, Priest? That I have unscrolled for your eyes alone the tenderness for ye, my congregation, that I have cherished unspoken so long?
Pandagon then was to be sole human witness of this phantasmagoric whimsey—the whole thing had been wrought for his instruction. To bear alone the dire god's inquisition—such was his high office, his power and his danger! What did this ghastly riddle mean? But even as he
The God's Gate, its brazen valves even vaster than the City Gate's, was graven with the City's (and Covenant's) history. A'Rak's Epiphany to the Gleet-Shearers. The stages of the city's explosive growth filled the ascending panels, and the highest depicted the Quay thronged with trade and the Haagsford a-bristle with ships. As he neared the awesome valves, he had to crane his neck back to see them.
He halted, taking in the doors as a whole now, five stories high. For now, standing close, he sensed power bristling and swelling just outside them, sensed a presence outside them that was a match for their hugeness. Did not the great brazen panels even bulge with it, ever so faintly swelling and groaning with its pressure? Surely they did, just detectably! And he almost believed he detected too—like huge, remote millstones grinding slow—the murmur of that Presence's vital energy, a slow-cycling drone.
I am here .
The god's thought was a mere wisp, a fleet coruscation of comprehension. And it was a tidal surge at the same time, a huge impalpability, an immense will entering a single skull's little sanctum.
"I harken, oh revered A'Rak, and attend your will." What a chattery small noise seemed his speech in Pandagon's own ears! Such was the awe that aura-ed the Presence, that in it the priest found his terror almost suspended.
Look above thee Priest. Upwards! Behold!
Pandagon again craned his neck back, and saw nothing but the gates' brazen crest. Then, all along that crest, wispy movement caught the starlight. It seemed that some gauzy tapestry's broad hem—a silken skirt as wide as the gates themselves—had begun edging down, curtain-wise, over the graven bronze panels.
It came down with a whispery, scratchy sound, and little hitches and haltings gave its descent an almost teasing tempo, evoking a music hall curtain's coy flourishes for the comic turns. The incongruity of that notion augmented, if anything could, the priest's utter bewilderment.
A moment more and he could see dark figures embedded in the descending fabric, shapes knit in ranked array . . . ? Yes. The thing was a pattered tapestry then. Some woven proclamation? Writ large for the Convocation here of the Three Thousand two nights hence?
Steadily downward this tapestry scratchily whispered. The fabric was a dense silvery gauze—was thick raw silk. The ranked figures were the scratchy part. They were made of much stiffer stuff. And in fact they weren't woven shapes at all, but rather solid things webbed into the sheeted silk.
And then Pandagon grasped what he was seeing. His horror melted his knees and froze them solid again in the selfsame instant.
This descending curtain was a vast diaphanous shroud. The shapes in it, row on row, were spider husks—the mummied residues of the A'Rak's feedings. Here were every creature of any size native to Hagia's hills, riverfloors, and sea bottoms—a score of each kind formed the vast page's text. Their hides, tanned black by the venom, were sucked so tight to the bone that every tooth, joint and rib of them showed stark and sharp in the starlight, as clear as anatomic engravings.
Do you grasp what is blazoned here, Priest? That I have unscrolled for your eyes alone the tenderness for ye, my congregation, that I have cherished unspoken so long?
Pandagon then was to be sole human witness of this phantasmagoric whimsey—the whole thing had been wrought for his instruction. To bear alone the dire god's inquisition—such was his high office, his power and his danger! What did this ghastly riddle mean? But even as he
Similar Books
