In the Ruins (Crown of Stars 6)

“It would be best if you remained at the Heart-Of-The-World’s Beginning,” they said. “Our runners can bring you news of all that transpires in the land.”

But could she trust the news they brought her? She did not voice these doubts aloud, and they went on.

“We insult the gods by not bringing in work gangs to whitewash and paint, to refurbish the house of the gods.”

“Let the fields be raised and planted first,” she said.

The oldest among them leaned in close, his breath sharp with the smell of pepper. “If you who were cursed to die in exile had not stopped performing the sacrifices, then you would not have lost the gods’ favor.”

She bent her head to look him in the eye, a look that would have quelled dissent among her own people, but he came from a different world. He feared the cloak, but he did not respect her.

“How do you know what we suffered in exile?” she asked him. “You walked between the worlds for the course of a Great Year, fifty-two cycles of fifty-two years, yet according to all reports I have heard, it seemed to those of you that you walked in the shadows for only some months. We lingered in exile for generations. The world you live in—in your heart—has not changed, but the world you come to is not the one you left.”

“What we owe the gods does not change,” he said. “If we remember the offerings, then the rain will fall at the proper time and the sun will shine at the proper time.”

There is no arguing with a man who cannot see the world as it is around him. It was human sorcerers who had woven the spell that had exiled them, and human sorcery that had poisoned the lands beyond. She remained silent, and he mumbled complaints under his breath, tallying up his list.

But her brooding could not last. A market during her life in exile was any patch of ground where folk spread a blanket on which to display a handful of precious nuts or bruised tubers or reed mats or a wooden staff with a carved spear point. This plaza was only the entryway; the market took up the entire district, and even if it was by no means fully tenanted, it was truly overwhelming, more people than she had ever seen together at one time in her entire life.

Beyond stone-and-brick arcades lay streets and alleys where all different categories of merchandise were sold. There were grinding stones, bricks, tiles, wood hewn and shaped, shells, bones, and feathers. There was copper and tin, and bronze tools and weapons, and all manner of ornaments molded from gold and silver. There were spines from the sap cactus for needles for punches, and for sacrifice. There were mantles and tunics woven from its thread as well as tough cord and rope, and also its sweet sap for a syrup and a fermented sap strong enough to kick you. There were arrowheads of wood and others of stone or bronze, even a few brought from human lands, forged of iron.

There was too much. And she barely glimpsed the streets where foodstuffs were sold: cactus fruit and delicate squash flowers just starting to wilt, birds plucked and hung while others fluttered in cages, rabbits, dogs, bees, eggs, and so many fish of such variegated types that she was amazed so many existed.

And all this seen and gawked at before they brought her to the central square of the market house where this mass of commerce was overseen by a bundle of judges, each in their own cubicle. In fact, the market came under the jurisdiction of a local authority, but her presence was acknowledged and feted with a series of speeches and poems deemed appropriate to the occasion. The sacrifices, all those delicious quail, would come later.

Yet she wished she could set foot on the earth and just walk through the market, taking her time, taking in smells and sounds. She wept a little, to see such riches, although the judges assured her with the greatest embarrassment that if only the gods favored them, then in a few years the terrible poverty of today’s fledgling market would be replaced by a decent selection as in the days before, and folk would have cacao beans and folded cloth with which to trade properly.

How could they not recognize how life flourished here, even if it seemed poor to them. There were so many people. There were so many children!

It was hard to concentrate, and doubly so when a parade of mask warriors chivvied a mixed herd of sheep and goats into view.

This was too much! She got to her knees, rocking the litter so that her bearers staggered. As the blood knives cried complaint, she swung down, let fall, and walked over to examine the beasts, who bawled and ba’aahed from the shelter of a makeshift corral over against the arcade leading to the street of live animals. Many folk gathered to stare, and especially she noted among them the wasted bodies and thin faces of those who had survived exile, yet they were only a few compared to their brethren who had come out of the shadows.

White Feather accompanied her, to protect her from the nattering of the blood knives, and a pair of judges came up quickly to ascertain what manner of trading was to go on.

It was Cat Mask, after all, who was leader of the group. He had a fresh scar on his left thigh but looked otherwise entirely pleased with himself.

“We have been tracking beyond the White Road,” he explained to the market judges, “and brought these here, our prizes, to the market.”

“For sacrifice!” cried the blood knives.

“Two of them,” said Feather Cloak. “Let two suffice, two males. The rest must be sold for breeding stock.”

Oh, they did not like to hear it, and some of the folk gathered to stare murmured in favor of the blood knives, while others murmured in favor of her decree.

“If we do not maintain the balance,” said the blood knives, “then He-Who-Burns will darken.”

“Clouds cover the sun in the north,” said Cat Mask. “But He-Who-Burns shines on us here in our own country. It is the fault of the human sorcerers. Everyone knows that they are the ones who wove the spell. Now it has rebounded against them.”

“You babble like a Pale Dog,” cried the blood knives. “How long will our good fortune, if that is what you call it, last, if we do not restore order. How soon will He-Who-Burns turn his bright face away from us in anger and despair?”

“Two is enough, until there is plenty,” said Feather Cloak, but they muttered and scowled to hear her speak. They were fighting her now for no other reason than to test her authority; she did not know how to counter them.

“See what else we brought,” said Cat Mask, dismissing this as he might the whine of a mosquito. Like all the young adults who had grown up in exile, he had never seen or conversed with one of the blood knives. “See, what we have brought from the lands beyond!” He and his mask warriors preened, being proud of themselves. “This herd is not the only one we captured.”

There came in a line, dressed in wooden slave collars, a bundle of children: four infants, eight of toddling age, seven very young, and one older girl of nine or ten years of age who looked glassy-eyed with shock, staring only straight ahead. They looked nothing like the Bright One, having a different complexion and broader features and black hair more like to that of the Ashioi than Liathano’s mass of fire-gold hair. They were not handsome children, not like those of her kind, but they were very young and there were so many in that one group. After so long in exile, she was still astonished by the sight of children.

d stone-and-brick arcades lay streets and alleys where all different categories of merchandise were sold. There were grinding stones, bricks, tiles, wood hewn and shaped, shells, bones, and feathers. There was copper and tin, and bronze tools and weapons, and all manner of ornaments molded from gold and silver. There were spines from the sap cactus for needles for punches, and for sacrifice. There were mantles and tunics woven from its thread as well as tough cord and rope, and also its sweet sap for a syrup and a fermented sap strong enough to kick you. There were arrowheads of wood and others of stone or bronze, even a few brought from human lands, forged of iron.