“Klai,” she said. And the girl shuddered heavily, sighed and dropped her hood.
The Goddess was a tall, swaying column of total darkness which balanced on its height a blank, pale, passionless face with two great green eyes faceted like emeralds and too bright to look into. At first glance, she seemed not to be there at all except as the pale mask floating upon a column of blindness. The eyes of the beholder dazzled and tried in vain to focus upon the garment that clothed her. The straight-falling robe was black, but a black out of which all light had so entirely gone that it could hardly be perceived at all. Where the figure stood, a hole in the air seemed to stand too.
The Goddess had no face. Hers was the only figure here to wear two masks, fronting both forward and back. In the oval openings where the eyes should be two large, flat lenses caught the light and shot it forth again blindingly, emerald-green, faceted. Sawyer wondered what the world must look like through those cut surfaces. Did the Goddess see as a spider does, in solid banks of complex, faceted images?
The green gaze like two tangible rays of light touched Klai, knew her, dismissed her for the moment and dwelt speculatively on Sawyer. He felt burned where the green fire touched him. As the gaze moved past him, Nethe burst into sudden, impassioned speech, trying in vain to draw the eyes of the Goddess to herself. It was useless. The gaze moved on toward the curtains out of which the drifting Isier came…
Sawyer turned to watch. Alper’s face was dimly visible, peering out, trying with a fatal curiosity to see what was happening. He saw. He met the searching green beams that swept from the sockets of the Goddess-mask, and Sawyer saw him go rigid for an instant, and then move stiffly forward.
Like a man hypnotized—perhaps he was hypnotized—he stepped out between the curtains and came down the steps slowly, moving with an automaton’s gait. Nethe’s breath hissed softly through her teeth. Alper’s hand was in his pocket, and the Firebird was nowhere to be seen…
The Goddess spoke for the second time, her voice hollow and resonant inside the mask. The column of her guards moved forward. And with a sudden, sinuous leap, Nethe sprang between the three humans on the step and the advancing Isier. She screamed angry commands at them, her voice running deep with latent music even when she was angriest. The guards hesitated, looked toward the Goddess. It crossed Sawyer’s mind that if Nethe were really destined to assume that terrible mask and robe in three days, the guards might well pause before flatly disobeying her.
The Goddess spoke again, dispassionately. Nethe swooped forward toward her, in a swirl of ice-white robes. The two stood face to face for a long moment, each swaying just a little, like two hooded cobras poised to strike.
“She’s threatening the Goddess,” Klai whispered faintly. “She’s saying what she’ll do after—Oh, wait! Listen!”
The Goddess spoke in a voice that rang across the square. Nethe swayed back, hissing. From the crowd, Isier and Khom alike, a low gasp rose.
“What is it?” Sawyer demanded urgently. “What did she say?”
“Hush,” Klai said anxiously. “Let me listen. She—she isn’t going to surrender the Double Mask without a fight. She challenges Nethe to the Unsealing of the Well. That means one of them will die. It’s her right. If she wants to take the chance, she can do it. She—”
“I thought these Isier were immortal?” Sawyer said.
“To outsiders, yes. But there’s one weapon that destroys them. The reigning Goddess controls it. I don’t know what it is. No Khom knows. If the Goddess unleashes the weapon she can be destroyed by it herself, of course. But she makes the challenge anyway. She says she’ll kill Nethe at the Unsealing of the Well, or die at Nethe’s hands.” Klai drew another of those deep, unsteady breaths. She laughed, a weak, small sound. “I’ll have a grandstand seat for a big event,” she said, smiling up at Sawyer.
“What do you mean,” he asked, clasping her hand harder. “What’s the—the Unsealing?”
“A ceremony,” Klai told him. “Where they need sacrifices, naturally! And the Goddess knew me. Now I’ve got something to look forward to!”
Nethe had gone rigid before the triumphant, challenging figure she confronted. She seemed imperceptibly to shrink into herself a little, to draw back. Klai laughed. Nethe heard, for she turned her head slightly and the little lamps at her ears swung backward against the cheeks of her mask. She hissed once more, a chain of furious, musical phrases at the Goddess. Then she whirled toward the waiting group on the steps. She shot one slanted, lethal glance from her snake-like eyes at Klai. The girl caught her breath and huddled against Sawyer. Nethe’s crescent-smile deepened ominously. The large, luminous eyes moved to Alper, still standing rigid, facing the Goddess.
“I’ll get to you later,” she said in a rapid, low voice. “When you’re questioned, keep quiet about the Firebird. Remember what I say or we’ll all die. Alper, do you hear me?”
Numbly he nodded his heavy head.
She turned away and swept down toward the Goddess as a file of the Isier guards came upward toward the humans. The lofty, inhuman faces did not glance down, but their hands were like cold iron on Sawyer’s arms, urging him forward down the steps. Alper came slowly awake and struggled briefly, and Klai collapsed in the grip of the oblivious gods. Half stumbling, half walking, they went rapidly down into the square in the strong, cold hands of the Isier.
The sunset grew lurid behind the storm-clouds as the Goddess’s men took their captives down winding streets toward the glass towers of the temple. It was darkening fast here, and lights went on one by one as the long file wound its way among the evening crowds. Here in the narrow byways the prisoners were led single file, so that Sawyer and Klai could no longer speak. The girl had thrown her hood back now, and was scanning the familiar streets anxiously, hoping hard for recognition.
Sawyer walked in a dream, hearing unfamiliar speech all around him, seeing strange lights go on behind curtain and colored shade in the mysteries of these unknown houses. It seemed a very real and solid world.
Music in extraordinary rhythms, at extraordinary pitches, played on instruments Sawyer could not even guess at, sounded behind windows glowing deep crimson or bright green with lamplight. The smells of unfamiliar cooking drifted through the streets, mingled with the poignantly familiar fragrance of woodsmoke. Small boys with shrill voices vended something out of wire-net cones which Sawyer could not see clearly. They dodged to and fro in the crowds, doing a brisk evening business.
But mostly the crowd fell silent and melted miraculously off the streets as the Isiers passed with their captives. Sawyer met many grave, quiet gazes along the way, sympathy offered helplessly by the humble folk who could no more than pity the captives and hope fervently to be spared themselves. Once, from a high window, someone threw a spotted purple fruit that thumped against the black-facing mask of the Isier just before Sawyer. The man turned quickly, marked the window with a serene eye, and went on. Sawyer felt a cold chill down his back.
Just as they reached the entry to the street where the Temple stood, a solemn roll of thunder shook the city and a slanting shower of rain swept across the rooftops, colored crimson by the sunset. Windows slammed against it, doors banged, women called anxiously and children answered. It was an emptied street that the captives left as they reached the Temple gates, with a shower of blood-red rain falling over it.
The gates were like glass, or ice, and soared to a mighty arch almost gothic in its intricacy of mounting and interlacing tracery, all colorless in itself but glowing ominously now with the red light of evening. A curtain of copper mesh hung in tremendous folds inside the whole gate, closing it from the street.