Molin held both with evident discomfort and outright fear. "What do I do?" he whispered hoarsely.
"Complete the ceremony," the voice he had last heard in Stonnbringer's swirling universe informed him from Shupan-sea's mouth. "Carefully."
Torchholder nodded. The vial contained blood from the Stormchildren, venom from the snake Niko had slain with Askelon's weapons, and ichor from Roxane's giant serpent which had been combined and distilled four times over with I powders the Beysib priests knew but had no names for. The ' scent of its vapors could kill a man; a drop of the fluid might poison an army. Molin intended to be very careful.
"The vial first," the avatar informed him. "Poured on the knife edge and offered to each of our children."
Molin remained slack-jawed and motionless.
"The snakes," Shupansea's normal voice whispered, but the Rankan priest did not begin to move. "Hold your breath," she added after a long pause.
He had once said to Randal that he did whatever had to be done, be it moving the Globe of Power or unstoppering the lethal glass teardrop. He held his breath and tried not to notice the green-tinged fumes or the sizzling sound the liquid made as it ate through the carpet and on into the granite beneath. The obsidian shook when he extended it toward the smallest of the serpents-the one with its leaf nosed head resting on the Beysa's right nipple. He was prepared to die in any number of unpleasant ways.
The beynit's tongue flicked a half-dozen or more times before it consented to add a glistening drop of venom to the sulphurous ooze already congealing on the knife edge-and it was the most decisive of the lot. His lungs strained to bursting and his vision drifting amid black motes of unconsciousness, Molin faced the avatar again.
Shupansea held her hands out palms upward. He looked down and saw the lattice work of uncountable knife-scars there. During his youthful days with the armies he had killed more times than he cared to remember, and killed women more than once as well, but he hesitated-for once unable to do what had to be done.
"Quickly!" Shupansea commanded.
But he did not move and it fell to her to grab the knife, letting its noisome edges sink deep. 0 Mother! she prayed as her blood carried its searing burden toward her heart. It was too soon. The priests had said wait for the fifth decoction; they had abandoned their offices rather than preside at her death. The serpents plunged their fangs into her breasts many times over but it would not be enough. Not even the presence of Mother Bey within her would be enough to change the malignancy Roxane had created. Clenching her fingers together, the Beysa heard the rough edge of the knife grind into bone but she felt nothing.
She fainted, although the lifelong discipline of Mother Bey's avatar was such that she did not topple to the ground. Still, she was oblivious to the agony when the imperfect decoction reached her heart and stopped it.
She did not hear the collective gasp that rose from Beysib and Rankan alike when her eyes rolled white and the three serpents stiffened to rise two-thirds of their length above her shuddering breasts.
She did not feel Molin let go of the knife or see him ignore the hissing beynit to hold her upright when even discipline faded.
She did not hear Kadakithis's enraged shout or the slapping of his sandals across the stone as he raced to take her from the priest's arms.
She experienced nothing at all until the prince's tears fell into her open eyes then she blinked and stared up at him.
"We've done it," she explained with a faint smile, letting the now-harmless knife fall from her scarred, but uncut, hands.
But barely. Shupansea lacked the strength to gather the drops of blood now welling up on her breast in a second, pristine vial; nor could she take that vial and place its contents on the lips of first Gyskouras, then Alton. Her eyes were closed while everyone else prayed that the changed blood would awaken the Stormchildren and they remained that way when the two boys began to move and a chorus of thanks rose from the assembly.
"She needs rest," the prince told the staring women around them. "Call her guards and have her carried back to her rooms."
"She is alone with All-Mother," the eldest of the women explained. "We do not interfere."
Kadakithis blinked with disbelief. "The goddess isn't going to carry her to bed, is she?" he demanded of their glass-eyed silence. "Well, dammit, then-I'll carry her."
He was a slight young man compared to any of the professional soldiers in his service, but he'd been trained in all the manly arts and lifted her weight with ease. The trailing cosa tangled in his legs, very nearly defeating him until he planted both feet on the gilt brocade and ripped the cloth from its frames. The beynit, their venom temporarily expended, slithered quickly out of his way.
"She is alone with me," he informed them all, striding out of the bedchamber with the Beysa cradled in his arms.
Molin watched as they went through the doorway-turning left for the prince's suite rather than right toward hers. He suppressed a smile as the snakes found safe harbor with the other Beysib women, not all of whom were so comfortable with a serpent spiraling under their garments as Shupansea had been.
Unimpressed by the ceremony surrounding them, the Storm-children behaved as if just awakened from their daily nap. They had already pulled the velvet hangings from the altar. Arton twisted the cloth around his head in unconscious imitation of his S'danzo mother's headgear while Gyskouras put all his efforts into wrenching the golden tassels free from its comers.
The archpriest turned to his single acolyte, Isambard, who could scarcely be expected to control the Stormchildren when they became either adventurous or cantankerous-which they were certain to do. "Isambard, go downstairs to the hypocaust room and remind Jihan that the children need her more than anyone else." The young man bowed, backed away, then scampered from the room.
Molin then turned his attention to the Beysibs in the room. The musicians he dismissed immediately, sending them on their way with only the most perfunctory of compliments. The women stared at him, defying him to give them orders as they gathered up the discarded cosa and bore it reverently from the chamber. This left him with a double-handful of priests, their foreheads still bent to the ground, who had been left to him by Mother Bey's high priest.
Ignoring the holes and the sacrilege, he paced the length of the gold carpet and back again. "I think a feast is in order: a private feast. Something delicate and easily shared: shellfish, perhaps, and such fruit as remains in the pantries. And wine- watered, I should think. It would not do to dull their appetites." He paused, waiting to see which shiny head would move first.
"You'll see to this." He pointed his finger at the most curious of the lot; with their bald skulls, bulging eyes, billowing tunics, and pantaloons, the Beysib men all looked alike to him. He seldom thought of them as individuals.
The Beysib he had addressed cleared his throat nervously and the one at the front of their triangular formation pushed himself slowly to his knees. "The priests of All-Mother Bey serve only Her transcending aspects. We... that is. You, the Regum Bey, do not serve the Avatar," he explained.
Torchholder leaned forward to grip the other man's pectoral ornament. Reversing it with a quick snap, he used the golden chain as a simple garrotte. "The Beysa will be hungry. My prince will be hungry," he said in the soft, intense voice his own people had come to fear.
"It has never been so," the Beysib protested, his face darkening as the Rankan priest hauled him to his feet.
"There is a first time for everything. This could be the first time you visit the kitchens or it could be the first time you die...." Molin gave the pectoral another quarter turn.