They were wrapped in dark mantles. Some hunched over as if trying to be furtive. Others stood straight but kept their cloaks wound tight.
Vincentius thrust an elbow into Maurus’ ribs. Maurus had already seen what his chin was pointing at. One of the figures nearest them had a familiar hitch in his gait.
Maurus’ brother Bellinus had been born with one leg shorter than the other. It made no apparent difference on a horse and he had not been judged unfit to inherit their father’s dukedom, but lately he had been acting odd—bitter, angry, as if he had a grievance against the world.
Maurus bit his lip to keep from making a sound and tried to breathe silently. Vincentius’ breath was loud in his ears. Any moment he expected one of the people in the circle to come looking for either or both of them.
The circle turned inward on itself. The air began to feel inexplicably heavy. Maurus’ head ached and his ears felt ready to burst.
Out of that heaviness grew a deep sound, deeper than the lowest note of an organ, like the grinding of vast stones under the earth. The floor was steady underfoot, but far down below it, Maurus thought something was stirring, something he never wanted to see in the daylight.
The circle moved, drawing together. Blades flashed in unison. Each shrouded figure bared an arm and cut swiftly across it. Blood flowed onto the already glistening stone.
Those arms were scarred with knife cuts healed and half-healed and barely scabbed over. It was true, then, what Maurus had heard. These worshippers of the unspeakable had been meeting nearly every night to make sacrifice in blood.
No one had been able to say what that sacrifice was for. Something dark was all Maurus could be sure of.
He had imagined that he could do something to save his brother from whatever it was. But hiding behind the curtain, huddled with his friend whose elder brother was also somewhere in the circle, Maurus felt the weight of despair. He was a half-grown boy with a small gift of magic. He should never have come to this place or seen what he was seeing.
The sound from within the earth grew deeper still, setting in his bones. Blood congealed on the altar. The circle began to chant.
It was all men’s voices, but they sang a descant to the earth’s rumbling. The words were not in a language Maurus knew. They sounded very old and very dark and very powerful.
They tried to creep into his mind. He pressed his hands to his ears. That barely muffled the sound, but the words blurred just enough that he could, more or less, block them out.
His skin crawled. His head felt as if he had been breathing poison. He was dizzy and sick, trying desperately not to gag or choke.
It all burst at once with a soundless roar. The earth stopped throbbing. The chant fell silent.
Above the altar with its thick shell of clotted blood, the air turned itself inside out. Maurus’ eyes tried to do the same. He squeezed them shut.
He could still see the flash of everything that was the opposite of light, of nothingness opening on oblivion. As terrified as he was, he needed to see it clearly—to know what it was. He opened his eyes, shuddering so hard he could barely stand up.
Oblivion spawned a shape. Arms and legs, broad shoulders, a head—it was a man, naked and blue as if with cold. He fell to hands and knees on the altar.
Lank fair hair straggled over his shoulders and down his back. He was so gaunt Maurus could see every bone, but there was a terrible strength in him. He raised his head.
His eyes were like a blind man’s, so pale they were nearly white. But as he turned his head, thin nostrils flaring, he made it clear that he could see. He took in the circle and the room and, oh gods, the curtains that shrouded the walls.
He must be able to see the boys hiding there. Maurus tried to melt into the wall. If there had been a way to become nonexistent, he would have done it.
The strange eyes passed on by. The pale man stepped down from the altar. He was tall, and seemed taller because he was so thin. One of the men who had summoned him held out a dark bundle that unfolded into a hooded robe.
That face and that lank hair were all the paler once the body was wrapped in black wool. The voice was surprisingly light, as if the edges had been smoothed from it. “Where is it?” he asked. “It’s in none of you here. Where are you hiding it?”
“Hiding what, my lord?” asked one of the men from the circle.
The pale man turned slowly. “Don’t play the fool. Your little ritual didn’t bring me here. Where is the maw of the One?”
The man who had spoken spread his hands. “My lord, all we are is what you see. We summoned you by the rites that were given us by—”
“Empty flummery,” the pale man said. “Great power called me. Your blood showed me the way. Now feed me, because I hunger. Then tell me what you think you can do to bring the One into this place of gods and magic.”
“We trust in you, my lord,” said the other. “The message said—”
“I was promised allies with intelligence and influence,” the pale man said. “I see a pack of trembling fools. That’s comforting in its way, I do grant you. If you’re such idiots, those we want to destroy might even be worse.”
“My lord—” said the spokesman.
The pale man bared long pale-yellow teeth. “This game we play to the end—ours or theirs. We’ve failed in the Dance and we’ve lost in battle. This time we strike for the heart.”
A growl ran around the circle, a low rumble of affirmation. Obviously they took no offense at anything this creature might say.
The creature swayed. “I must eat,” he said. “Then rest. Then plan.”
“Of course, my lord,” the spokesman said hastily. He beckoned. The circle closed around the pale man. It lifted him and carried him away.
Maurus swallowed bile. The stink of blood and twisted magic made him ill. He was afraid he knew what they had been talking about—and it brought him close to panic when he thought of his brother caught up in such a thing.
There had been other plots against the empire. The emperor had been poisoned and the Dance of his jubilee broken, with riders killed and the school on the Mountain irreparably damaged. Then in the next year the emperor had gone to war against the barbarian tribes whose princes had conspired to break his Dance. With help from two of the riders and the gods they served, he had destroyed them—but their magic had destroyed him.
Now his daughter was shortly to take the throne as empress. There would be a coronation Dance. Surely the riders who came for that, along with every mage and loyal noble in the city of Aurelia, would be on guard against attack.
Which meant—
Maurus did not know what it meant. Not really. He did know that his brother was caught up in it, and that was terrible enough.
Vincentius slid down the wall beside him. His face was the color of cheese.
He always had been a sensitive soul. Maurus pulled him upright and shook him until he stood on his own feet again.
The worshippers of the One had gone. The corridor was silent. The lamp guttered over the altar.
Maurus dragged Vincentius with him around the edge of the room—as if it made any difference now how furtive they were—and peered around the door. The passage was deserted as he had thought.
It was almost pitch-black. The lamps that had been lit along it had all gone out. Only the one at the farthest end still burned, shedding just enough light to catch anything that might have stirred in the darkness.
Maurus eyed the light over the altar, which was burning dangerously low. He was not about to