When the priestess awoke him, the fire had burned nearly to its embers. Groggily, he arose and reached for his ax.

  “Leave your weapon behind,” Qenwath said.

  Kwasin nodded to indicate the Khokarsan denial. “Where I go, the ax goes,” he said. “And besides, the voice of the Voice of Kho at Khokarsa commanded Queen Awineth herself to find the greatest hero in the land to retrieve the ax from the Wild Lands. I am that hero, and surely Dythbeth’s oracular priestess will want to see my ax.”

  Qenwath frowned. “The Queen chose the hero Hadon, the winner of the Great Games, to bring back the ax, along with the three said to be under the protection of Sahhindar. The network of the priestesses tells me that it was Hadon who found the weapon you now hold.”

  “But it was I who brought back the ax,” Kwasin said in a rumbling voice that roused the men sleeping at his feet. “My weakling cousin would never have succeeded in his quest if not for me, and I would be foolish to tell lies in the temple of the oracle, who sees and knows all.”

  Qenwath glared at him and said, “There is a reason, O King of Dythbeth, that you are known throughout the land as the ill-fated Kwasin. Now come. The oracle waits.”

  He followed the woman through two prayer rooms and into a vast, oval-shaped chamber with torches guttered high along the walls. Like its counterpart in the temple at Dythbeth, the same mosaic collage representing the chain of time since the creation of the world by Kho spiraled from the center of the chamber’s floor.

  Kneeling on the brightly tiled floor before an imposing marble-and-ivory statue of the Great Mother crouched a white-shrouded figure. The being before Kwasin seemed to be painting the single blank tile at the end of one of the mosaic’s spiral arms.

  Kwasin shivered. Though the figure’s back was to him, it must be Wasemquth, the oracular priestess, and with a brush and paint she was completing the artwork on the tile that many said would one day illustrate the last great event in Khokarsan history. What could it mean? The tile had remained blank for centuries.

  He tried to peer over and around the oracle, but could not quite manage to see the image she painted. Qenwath nudged him and whispered that they should take off their clothes. He did so, but he could not keep his eyes off the oracular priestess and her fear-invoking task.

  “Priestess, we have come,” Qenwath announced.

  The old woman before them said nothing but continued on with her painting. About a minute later she rose and hobbled, stoop-shouldered, behind the base of the towering statue of Kho. Kwasin looked at the tile, and though it remained only half painted, he could see on it the image of what looked like the Great Tower of Kho and Resu at Khokarsa. He stepped forward for a better look, but Qenwath held out an arm and pushed him back. Then the oracle returned carrying a three-legged oaken stool, which she positioned in front of the area where previously she had knelt, thus again obscuring the newly painted tile from view.

  “Leave us, Qenwath,” the old woman said. “Warrior, leave your ax against the wall and come forward.”

  Qenwath looked as if she wanted to object, but after making sure that Kwasin had propped his ax against the wall, she left the chamber.

  Kwasin stepped forward until he towered above the oracle on her stool.

  “Kneel, warrior, so that I may look into your eyes.”

  Kwasin obeyed, and when he did he noticed a narrow crevice in the tiled floor before the oracle’s chair. From this hole rose thin wisps of bluish smoke, the aroma of which was heavy and sweet. The only time he had previously smelled its like was in the temple of Kho at Dythbeth when old Wasemquth had sentenced him to exile.

  The oracle smiled, revealing dark-stained teeth and several gaps where those which had rotted had obviously been pulled. “The oracle would much rather reside in the temple at Dythbeth,” the woman said, “but the quaking and shifting of the earth has extinguished the holy vapors there. Here the fires of Kho yet smolder, at least for now.”

  Kwasin said nothing but it unsettled him that the oracle had answered the question he had been pondering. Wasemquth leaned forward and inhaled deeply the rising fumes. Her mysterious smile also unnerved him.

  “Why, O Oracle, have I been permitted to speak with you directly?” Kwasin asked finally, for it was customary to have a priestess translate the oracle’s holy utterances. Out of respect, Kwasin tried to speak in low tones but found that his deep voice resounded like rolling thunder within the cavernous chamber. A dizziness had seized him, however, so he was not sure—perhaps he only thundered in his own mind. His eyes had begun to tear from the smoke, and he felt queasy as the room seemed to contract to the size of a needle’s eye and then expand into infinity.

  When Wasemquth laughed it was with the sound of a gargantuan web being plucked by the legs of some monstrous and hideously insane spider. “You have long wondered,” she said, “why Great Kho spared you from a sentence of death and instead sent you off into exile. I say to you, sometimes those who must accomplish great deeds need be forged in the fires of trial and denial. What have you denied yourself, warrior?” Again the woman made her hair-raising cackle, and Kwasin had no idea how to respond. Then the oracle continued.

  “It is said by some that you are cursed with two souls. One that rages and is possessed by death’s spirit and produces only sorrow and destruction. The other that rejoices with great humor and love of adventure.”

  Indeed, Hadon had volleyed such a taunt at him on more than one occasion, and Kwasin had always retorted by saying it was better to possess two souls than the half-soul with which Hadon had been born. His cousin’s jibe, however, now took on an air of truth, coming as it did from the lips of the oracle. Had Hadon somehow actually caught a glimpse of his soul? Or souls?

  “Is it true?” Kwasin whispered, fighting off a tremor of fear that sought to shake through his great frame. Cold sweat dripped from his forehead and onto his cheeks.

  “Two souls may be forged together by fire,” the oracle said, and now her eyes glazed as if the sacred trance had at last fully seized her. “Look up and know how a soul is divided!”

  Kwasin lifted his gaze to the statue of Kho, whose blank marble eyes seemed to look down on him in judgment. Then something long and thick and dark moved beneath the crook of Kho’s arm. He gasped and his heart raced as two tiny eyes glimmered redly in the torchlight. With a slow, malevolent grace, a cowled and thick-bodied serpent slithered from behind the statue and down its front.

  “Do not move!” The oracle’s shrill voice stopped Kwasin as he rose to back away from the snake. “Kneel or Kho will strike you dead! But do so slowly if you wish to live.”

  He almost found it impossible to obey. Though he held no fear of snakes besides the usual caution, this one was different, for he had seen it many years before. But no, he thought, his eyes must deceive him—it could not be the same snake, but instead must be one of its kin. Still, fear constricted his throat and his heart hammered a chaotic rhythm against his ribs.

  The oracle peered up at him with her watery, red-veined eyes as the snake glided along the floor and caressed her ankles. Kwasin resumed his kneeling position but readied himself to jump up at the slightest indication of the snake’s interest in him.

  “Ask yourself, O Black-Hearted One, why you have allowed this one to divide your soul.” The old woman bent forward. The snake coiled itself around one of Wasemquth’s spindly arms and slid into her lap like an obedient pet.

  Kwasin found himself unable to speak. He had never told anyone the story of how one day, when ten years old, he had brought home a long, black serpent such as the one the oracle now held before him in her lap. On that long-gone day, the young Kwasin’s plaything had shot into a hole in the wall of his mother’s house, and almost as quickly as it had gone from sight, the snake had vanished from the boy’s mind. Kwasin had left home to spend the remainder of the day stealing fruit from the local shopkeepers, and when he returned, it was to inhale the delightful aroma of his mother’s cooking drifting from the kitchen. A few moments later Kwasin’s mother screamed, and his blood ran cold as he recalled his escaped pet. He ran into the kitchen to find his mother prone on the floor, the snake coiled and ready to strike. He grabbed a heavy mallet used to soften meat and with a single blow crushed the serpent’s head, immediately killing the creature, for even at that young age Kwasin’s muscles were immensely strong. But looking at his mother’s face, he saw he was too late. Already a paleness had seized her, and she cradled her arm where she had been struck. With a kitchen knife he cut open her wound and sucked the venom from it as Pwamkhu had once taught him; but still his mother moaned softly and shivered, saying nothing. Kwasin, tears streaming down his cheeks, confessed to his mother how he had let the snake into the house and that it was his fault the creature had struck her. Wimake had shushed her son and, too weak to speak, looked at him with her kind, forgiving eyes and then passed quietly into dread Sisisken’s shadowy domain.

  Wasemquth grinned malevolently at Kwasin, stroking a hand along the snake’s sleek, black body. As if drunk on Kho’s sacred breath, the woman bobbed her head back and forth, and spittle ran down her chin in periodic gushes. Kwasin began to think the woman would never come out of her mind-numbing trance when, after a long period of silence, she looked to the far wall against which Kwasin’s ax lay propped and said, “The serpent and the ax will be your undoing or your succor, and so shall it be for all the land.”

  The woman rose to her feet, and the snake that had been in her lap slid down her leg and onto the floor. Old Wasemquth got up from her stool and followed her familiar as it glided across the tiles. Then both woman and snake disappeared behind the base of the great statue.

  Kwasin was about to rise and leave the chamber, which now seemed to spin dizzyingly, when the oracle returned bearing a large double-handled amphora made of fine black clay. The front side bore in somewhat crude bas-relief an image of what appeared to be Sahhindar, his bow pulled wide, launching a forbidden arrow into the side of a fleeing antelope. Wasemquth sat down upon her three-legged stool and passed the vase to Kwasin from her shaky grip.

  “Drink, warrior!” Wasemquth hissed.

  Kwasin lifted the vase to his lips and swallowed a mouthful of what tasted like mead or extremely sweet millet beer. When he pruned his face at the bitter almond and faintly charcoal aftertaste, the oracle motioned for him to down more of the liquid. After three additional mouthfuls he felt sick to his stomach and passed the amphora back to the woman.

  Kwasin looked at her questioningly.

  “I grow tired,” she said, rising. “One day another may yet initiate you into these mysteries, but if that day comes and you dare forsake the Goddess, you will endure much suffering and pass even more to your descendants. Go now!” Then Wasemquth turned away from Kwasin and hobbled past the statue of Kho and into the darkness.

  “Oracle!” Kwasin cried after her. “Our business is not complete! I must at least know if I am free to lead Dythbeth against her enemies. Has my exile indeed been ended?”

  Wasemquth stopped in the shadows and turned. The light from the torches caught her eyes, which glared back at him demon-like.

  “You are free to lead the city of Khukhaqo,” she said, “but never shall your guilt be lifted. Never.”

  The oracle turned and disappeared around the statue. A moment later Qenwath appeared at Kwasin’s side. After Kwasin had risen and retrieved his clothing and ax, she led him from the chamber and asked him what he had learned of his fate.

  “All is well!” Kwasin boomed with all the inflated ego he could feign. “I have been forgiven!”

  Qenwath looked at him sidewise, but said nothing.

  Beneath his stony exterior, Kwasin felt his two souls tremble.

  9

  For three days Kwasin lay ill in the old temple of Kho while Qenwath and her apprentice administered to him. No matter the great pile of blankets with which they covered him nor the roaring hearth that burned in the chamber where he slept, Kwasin shivered with a coldness that ached to the marrow. He told himself he must have picked up the sickness from the journey through the fetid swamp, but deep in his heart he feared the oracle’s words had stricken him down. Either that or the illness came from the queer liquid she had made him drink, which burned in his stomach long after he had consumed it.

  One night Kwasin awoke and in his delirium thought he saw the oracle’s terrible black serpent slithering along the chamber’s high ceiling. He cried out for the temple priestess, but when she did not come, Kwasin swallowed his pride and summoned the bard to sit at his side and strum his lyre to drive away the nightmares. Bhako, happy to at last be of service to his habitually ungrateful king, took out his instrument and hummed a soft and tuneful ballad about the courtship of the heroine-priestess Lupoeth. Within minutes, Kwasin fell into a dreamless sleep.

  That evening, Kwasin awoke to a terrible thirst and found himself hot and sweating out his fever. He finished off two great bowls of water and again fell asleep, only to awaken in the morning with a ravenous hunger and feeling surprisingly rejuvenated. He devoured the food brought to him and announced that it was time for him and his party to return to Dythbeth.

  At first Qenwath objected and said he should remain at the temple to rest for another day. Then she said, “Perhaps it is just as well. While you slept, your men have eaten so much fruit from our small orchard that I fear we will not be able to survive the season with what is left to us.”

  And so Kwasin, the bard, and the king’s guard left behind the temple and its oracle—both of which Kwasin wanted very much to forget—and entered the dreary swamp on their way back to the city. This time, however, they proceeded with instructions from Qenwath to follow a secret path that wound through the wetlands to the north and thus avoid the swamp’s deepest and most treacherous regions. When he learned of the route, Kwasin swore. He wondered if Queen Weth had known of the path all along but had withheld the information so that he and his men would be forced to wade almost directionless through the wretched and nearly impassible quagmire. It would be like the woman to torture him so, he thought.

  In any case, his spirits lifted when he and his company managed to pass through the swamp without incident. By midafternoon, they emerged on the eastern edge of the marshlands just south of the confluence of the Karhokoly and Beswaly rivers, thankful to see the dry and open plain before them. Here they waded across the Karhokoly and marched south along its eastern bank, stopping only to kill and feast upon an antelope that had been watering at the river.

  Not long after they had again set out, a great cloud of black smoke arose from behind the river’s curve. Fearing the worst, Kwasin ordered his men to quicken their pace while he jogged ahead.

  Soon it became clear that Dythbeth’s walls indeed lay under siege. He could see fiery spheres—tiny from this distance, although he knew the missiles to be the size of small boulders—fly up from behind the city walls, only to land on the great plain, where black and gray smoke billowed skyward. Since he saw no missiles catapulted in the direction of the city, he surmised that Dythbeth still held out.

  Kwasin ran ahead of the others until he could at last make out the field of battle. He stopped for a moment and tried to take it in. A dark mass of soldiers swarmed across the great plain, surrounding the city’s northern and eastern walls, and perhaps the southern as well, though he could not see it from his position. In the midst of the troops, harnessed oxen drew forward many large-wheeled catapults. Hahinqo had positioned his own troops in a great mass along the city walls, though their ranks looked feebly thin compared to the vast hordes of the Sixth Army. Indeed, Kwasin had never before seen such a staggeringly large gathering of men.

  Bhako, panting heavily, jogged up to Kwasin’s side. “Minruth’s troops have been reinforced,” he said. “Either Minanlu has been taken or our mad emperor has abandoned his efforts there and come after a prize more sweet. That is, your head.”

  “I must get through to the men,” Kwasin said, gazing out at a vast phalanx of perhaps ten thousand enemy soldiers that stood between him and Hahinqo’s troops.

  “You are an imposing presence, O King,” Bhako said, “but to rush madly into that fray would be suicide. It would be better if the king lived to fight another day. Queen Awineth is said to be leading a resistance in the eastern mountains. Perhaps if we joined with—”

  “Flee if you wish, bard!” Kwasin growled. “I need no cowards at my side!”

  And then Kwasin was off, running as fast as his long legs would carry him along the banks of the Karhokoly. If he could not cross the plain to rejoin his troops, then he would find another way.

  When he neared the shallows where he and his men had forded the river on their journey to the old temple, he climbed a low rise and saw in the distance the rearguard of the Sixth Army’s northern flank moving along the plain. Quickly, he ran back to the river and slid down its bank into the cold waters. He waded through the shallows for about a quarter-mile before he noticed abandoned on the bank an old fisherman’s boat. He pulled the craft into the river and boarded it. Soon the river deepened and he paddled with the strong current for a half-mile until the river widened as it neared the opening of the Bay of Boqawenqady.

  He fought against the strong urge to continue on into the bay to meet up with Dythbeth’s navy. He did not know, however, if the fleet still lay at anchor in the bay or if Admiral Poedy, the commander of Minruth’s navy, had staged an attack against the fleet to coincide with the Sixth Army’s land assault. He might enter the bay only to find it occupied by Poedy’s vessels.

  He guided his craft toward the eastern bank, a steep ridge that traced the waterline and made it impossible for him to know what lay beyond it. In his previous scouting he had witnessed a flank of enemy troops not far from the area. He had no idea how he would pass through this thick contingent of Minruth’s soldiers and enter the city, but from what he had seen, the enemy here was spread thinner than to the east. Perhaps chance would open a way—and if not chance, then his ax.