The Leopard (Marakand) Read Free Page B

fits. You should lay her down on her side . . .”
    “Away, away!” The Right Hand of the Lady pushed through, Revered Ashir, a youngish man for his high office, but balding, easy to take for older. He elbowed the other priest aside and leaned over the table to shake the Voice, which did no good, and then to slap her, which drew shocked murmurs and hissings of breath from those around, but likewise achieved nothing useful. The priestess who had been serving the bread wrestled Revered Lilace from behind, trying to force her arms down, but she could not overcome the Voice’s frenzied strength. Lilace’s nails grew red with her own blood; she turned on the priestess who held her, raking that woman’s face. The Right Hand cursed irreligiously and scrambled over the table, but the Voice, breaking away from his snatching hands, fled, the white veil of her office floating behind her.
    “Lilace—Revered Voice!” Ashir gave chase, leaving others to look to the injured woman. “Lilace, what did you see?”
    The entrance to the well was covered by a squat, square, domed building of many pillars, the double doors in the entry porch carved and painted with flowering trees. The Voice reached it before the Right Hand and fled within, down the stairs, not stopping to light a torch at the carefully tended lamp, down into cool, moist air, where the walls were carved from the layers of living rock and the stone sweated. The stairs ended at a dark, still reservoir.
    “Lady!” Ashir heard her wail as her feet splashed into the water. “Lady, come to me!”
    The earth heaved. The earthquake tossed Marakand like a householder shaking dirt off a rug.
    It was three days before the survivors of the Lady’s temple thought to dig out the entrance to the deep well, to recover their Right Hand and their Voice. Revered Ashir was alive, though weak with hunger. The dome of the well-house had stood firm; only the porch had fallen in the earthquake, blocking the door.
    The Voice, however, rocked and muttered, playing with her fingers like a baby, as she had, Ashir said, ever since he dragged her out of the heaving surface of the sacred pool onto the stairs. Her eyes focused on nothing, blank as stones, but she spoke as they carried her to the hospice, which, by chance or the Lady’s grace, was the least damaged of the temple buildings other than the well-house.
    “Let all the wizards of the temple go to the Lady in her well. She calls them. She calls, she calls, she calls, let them go now, they must go now, make haste, haste, haste, haste, she calls . . . Let the wizards of the library be summoned to her, let the wizards of the city be brought before her, she has need of them, she will have them, she must—they must—No, no, no, no . . .”
    In the end they drugged Revered Lilace into sleep to silence her, and prayed for her. The several priests and priestesses who were wizards, the one weakly wizard-talented of the temple dancers, and a son of the Arrac-Nourril, who, being devout, had come to help dig out the temple’s survivors rather than those in his own ward, answered the summons at once. All went down the steps of the deep well to face their goddess.
    None came back. Not that day. Nor the next, as Revered Rahel sent messengers out to the city and the undamaged caravanserai suburb north and west of the city walls with the summons. Hearing that the Voice summoned wizards in the Lady’s name, they came, scholars from the library, both native-born and foreign visitors, scruffy outlander rovers from the caravans, wizards in the service of the Families or soothsayers from the nearby villages of the hillfolk of the Malagru and the silver-mines of the Pillars of the Sky. Some thought it meant a paid commission, involvement in rebuilding and restoration; some for pity and mercy, wanting to use what skills they had to bring aid to the stricken city.
    None came back from the deep well.
    And after that, two of the three gods of Marakand fell