The lamb dispatched, Silk addressed the Sacred Window. "Accept, O Tenebrous Tartaros, the sacrifice of this lamb. And speak to us, we beg, of the times that are to come. What are we to do? Your lightest word will be treasured. Should you, however, choose otherwise ..."
He let his arms fall to his sides. "We consent. Speak to us, we beg, through this sacrifice."
The black lamb's entrails were somewhat more favorable. "Tartaros, Lord of Darkness, warns us that many of us must soon go into a realm he rules, though we shall emerge again into the light. Those of you who will are welcome to come forward and claim a portion of this sacred meal."
The black cock struggled in Maytera Marble's grasp, freeing and flapping its wings, always a bad sign. Silk offered it entire, filling the manteion with the stink of burning feathers.
"This gray ram is offered by Auk. Since it is neither black nor white, it cannot be offered to the Nine, singly or collectively. It can, however, be offered to all the gods or to some specific minor god. To whom are we to offer it, Auk? You'll have to speak loudly, I'm afraid."
Auk rose. "To that one you're always talking about, Patera."
"To the Outsider. May he speak to us through augury!" Suddenly and inexplicably Silk was overjoyed. At his signal, Maytera Rose and Maytera Mint heaped the altar with fragrant cedar until its flames reached beyond the god gate and leaped above the roof.
"Accept, O Obscure Outsider, the sacrifice of this fine ram. And speak to us, we beg, of the times that are to come. What are we to do? Your lightest word will be treasured. Should you, however, choose otherwise . . ."
He let his arms fall to his sides. "We consent. Speak to us, we beg, through this sacrifice."
The ram's head burst in the fire as he knelt to examine the entrails. "This god speaks to us freely," he announced after a protracted study. "I do not believe I have ever seen so much written in a single beast. There is a message here for you personally, Auk, by which I mean that it carries the sign of the giver. May I pronounce it now? Or would you prefer that I impart it to you in private? I would call it good news."
From his place on a front bench. Auk rumbled, "Whatever you think best, Patera."
"Very well then. The Outsider indicates that in the past you have acted alone, but that time is nearly over. You will stand at the head of a host of brave men. They and you will triumph."
Auk's mouth pursed in a silent whistle.
"There is a message here for me as well. Since Auk has been so forthright, I can do no less. I am to do the will of the god who speaks, and the will of Pas as well. Certainly I will strive to do both, and from the manner in which they are written here, I believe that they are one." Silk hesitated, his teeth scraping his lower lip; the joy that he had felt a moment before had melted like the ice around Orpine's body. "There is a weapon here as well, a weapon aimed at my heart. I will try to prepare." He drew a deep breath, fearful, yet ashamed of his fear.
"Lastly, there is a message for all of us: When danger threatens, we are to find safety between narrow walls. Does anyone know what that may mean?"
Though his legs felt weak, Silk rose and scanned the sea of faces before him. "The man sitting near Tartaros's image. Have you a suggestion, my son?" The man in question spoke, inaudibly to Silk.
"Would you stand, please? Let us hear you."
"There's old tunnels underneath of the city, Patera. Fallin' down in places, an' some's full of water. My bunch hit one last week, diggin' for the new fisc. Only they had us to fill it in so nobody'd get hurt. Pretty narrow down there, an' everything shiprock."
Silk nodded. "I've heard of them before. They could be a place of refuge, I suppose, and they may well be what is meant."
A woman said, "In our houses. There's nobody here that has a big house."
Orchid turned in her seat to glare at her.
"In a boat," suggested a man on the other side of the aisle.
"Those are all possibilities as well. Let us keep the Outsider's message in mind. I feel certain that its meaning will be made apparent to us when the time comes."
Maytera Marble was standing at the back of the manteion with a pair of doves. Silk said, "Auk has first claim on the sacred meal. Auk? Do you wish to claim all or a portion of it, my son?"
Auk shook his head, and Silk swiftly divided the ram's carcass, casting its heart, lungs and intestines into the altar fire when everything else was gone.
Maytera Marble held one dove while Silk presented the other to the Sacred Window. "Accept, O Comely Kypris, the sacrifice of these fine white doves. And speak to us, we beg, of the times that are to come. What are we to do? Your lightest word will be treasured. Should you, however, choose otherwise . . ."
He let his arms fall to his sides. "We consent. Speak to us, we beg, through this sacrifice."
A single deft motion severed the head of the first dove. Silk consigned it to the flames, then held the fluttering, crimson and white body so that the blazing cedar was sprayed with blood. At first he thought the staring eyes and open mouths of the mourners and the throng who had come to worship or in hope of sharing Orpine's mortuary sacrifices no more than a reaction to something that had happened at the altar. Perhaps his gauntlets or his robe had taken fire, or old Maytera Rose had fallen.
Maytera Marble saw the Sacred Window blaze with color, and heard an indistinct voice. A god spoke, as Pas had in Patera Pike's time. She fell to her knees, and in so doing involuntarily freed the dove she had been holding. It shot toward the roof, and then, seeming almost to ride the sacred flames, rose through the god gate and was gone. An unshaven man in the second row, seeing her upon her knees, knelt too. In a moment more, the bespangled, brilliantly dressed young women who had come with Orchid were kneeling, too, nudging one another and tugging at the skirts of those who still sat transfixed. When Maytera Marble raised her head at last to see, for what would almost certainly be the final time in her life, the swirling colors of present divinity, Patera Silk was beside her, his hands lifted in supplication.
"Come back!" Silk implored the dancing colors and that gentle thunder. "Oh, come back!"
Maytera Mint saw the goddess's face dearly and heard her voice, and even Maytera Mint, who knew so little of the world and wished to know less, knew that both exceeded in beauty any mortal woman's. They were also very much like her own, and seemed to become more so as she looked, until at last, moved by reverence and superabundant modesty, she closed her eyes. It was the greatest sacrifice that she had ever made, though she had made thousands, of which five at least had been very great indeed. Maytera Rose was the last of the three sibyls to kneel, out of no lack of reverence, but because kneeling involved certain body parts with which she had been born-parts that were now in a strict sense dead, though they still functioned and would continue to function for years to come. Echidna had blinded her to the gods, the goddess's just punishment, and so she saw and heard nothing, though the holy hues danced again and again across and down the Sacred Window. In the deep tones of the divine voice, tones that she found herself comparing to those of a cello, she occasionally caught a word or a phrase. Young Patera Silk (who was always so careless, and never more careless than when dealing with matters of the greatest importance) had dropped the knife of sacrifice, the knife that Maytera Rose had cleaned and oiled and sharpened now for almost a century, still dyed with the dove's blood. Stretching, Maytera Rose retrieved it. Its bone handle had not cracked; its blade did not even seem to have been soiled by its brief contact with the floor, though she wiped it on her sleeve as a precaution. Absently, she tested the point against the tip of her thumb as she listened and sometimes made out, or nearly made out, a short sentence played by an orchestra too wonderful for this poor whorl, this whorl which was, like Maytera Rose herself, worn out and worn away, past its time which had never come, too old, though it was not even as old as Maytera Marble and though it was so much nearer to death. Cellos of the woods of Mainframe, flutes of diamond. Maytera herself, old Maytera Rose who was so tired that she no longer knew that she was tired, had once played the flute. She had not thought other flute since the shame of blood. Pain's eaten it away, she thought, tortured it to silence, though once it sounded sweetly, oh, so sweetly, at evening.