A Burning Sea by Theodore Brun (i am reading a book txt) 📕

straight into trouble. Erlan had followed his slinking shadow through a maze of dingy alleys only to spill into the grey light of morning on the embankment overlooking the Horn – and straight into a patrol of nightwatchmen. By then, there was such a hue and cry ringing through the district that they recognized him as a fugitive at once. He stood no chance, one lame man with a dagger against six soldiers with spears and clubs. Aska had vanished – leaving his master to be bludgeoned to the ground. So here he was. . .

The fountain was chuckling away, oblivious to whatever grim punishment was about to ruffle the courtyard’s careful serenity. A crowd of household servants was assembled. The hum of their voices continued as he was stripped to the waist and bound to a wooden frame at the foot of the marble staircase that led to the floor above.

Erlan could only wait and wonder. In the north, he would certainly die. A man’s pride could never suffer the insult Erlan had dealt Arbasdos so publicly. But the south was different. People had strange motives he didn’t understand. But whatever fate awaited him, it was going to be unpleasant.

All eyes rose to the gallery as General Arbasdos appeared from his private chambers, flanked by his spatharios, and descended the grand staircase. He stopped a few steps from the bottom, the spatharios beside him.

‘This man has wasted enough of our time already. So listen all of you, and listen well.’ The general’s gaze moved menacingly among his slaves. But Erlan’s attention was gripped by something else. The hideous object trailing from the spatharios’s hand. ‘I make it my business to be generous to you all. You live in conditions many a free man would envy. In return, I expect loyalty. I expect submission. If I permit a man a cup of my wine, I don’t expect him to spit it back in my face.’ His finger rose to point at Erlan. ‘This man has mocked my kindness. So heed his lesson well.’ Kindness, thought Erlan grimly. He must have missed that part. ‘Davit.’ The spatharios trotted down the last two steps, the whip dragging behind him, scraping across the flagstones. He took his place behind Erlan. Glancing under his armpit, Erlan saw long tendrils of leather and threaded amongst them pieces of jagged metal and bone.

You will bear much pain, but you will never break. The words of the vala, spoken a lifetime ago. To another man. To Hakan. . . But Hakan was dead. So Erlan would have to bear it in his place.

The shock of it was like nothing he’d ever known. A splice of time, a swipe of the leather, a dozen metal hooks sinking into his flesh and ripping it away.

He could only gasp and gasp away the pain, his back cloaked with sudden fire. But he did not scream. He would not scream. Would not give these bastards the satisfaction. His eyes rolled madly around him and happened to alight on a column on the shaded side of the gallery above. He saw behind it, pressed against the marble, a small figure. Saw red lips curled in a curious smile, half-sneering, half-sad.

‘Again,’ said Arbasdos.

Another phantom, Erlan thought, and shut his eyes to soak up the pain.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Lilla looked up.

Light splintered in from a hundred different apertures in the ceiling, filling the air, lifting her vision higher. Far above her, she saw domes and half-domes, tiers upon tiers of pillars climbing up and up in a race to reach the sky. Green and purple stone, white and black, and everywhere covering the walls, images. Images all around her, sparkling with golden iridescence and just out of reach a floating sea of candles suspended by chains from the far-off ceiling.

‘It’s like being inside the sun,’ whispered Gerutha.

‘What did Demetrios call this place?’ Lilla murmured.

‘The Holy Wisdom. It must be some kind of temple to their gods.’

‘Their god,’ corrected Lilla. ‘They worship only one.’ She had understood that much at least from the Greek.

The air was heady with some scent, so dense it felt like breathing liquid. Above them a lattice of sunbeams criss-crossed at the base of the great dome, dancing on particles of dust. As she looked she was struck with a strange, preternatural feeling – a sense that the gap between gods and men was narrow here, as if Bifrost, the rainbow bridge to Asgard, were somehow redundant. One had only to reach out and touch. . .

There were other folk in the great temple. Some standing, some kneeling. She heard singing, too, floating down from the vaulted galleries above. Sweet voices that filled the scented abyss, climbing and falling, weaving between them harmonies as intricate as the tapestries that hung in her father’s hall.

She had never heard anything so beautiful in her life.

The music ended, and behind that exalted emotion, she felt a sudden urgent impulse to leave, to run away. ‘Can we go?’ she said to Gerutha.

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. I just. . . I must.’

Not waiting for an answer, she turned and fled outside, through the enormous doorway and the cavernous atrium into the courtyard beyond. She felt dizzy.

Gerutha caught her up. ‘Are you all right, Lilla?’

‘I need water.’

Gerutha took her hand. ‘Look, there.’

They sat together on the stone lip of a fountain in the centre of the courtyard and Lilla scooped up a handful of water. ‘So clean,’ she said, gazing into her palm. ‘But where’s the stream?’ She poured it down her throat. It tasted fresh as mountain meltwater. ‘Don’t you feel terribly stupid, Grusha?’

‘Stupid?’ Her servant chuckled. ‘No. Small? Definitely.’

‘I used to think myself half-wise.’ Lilla shook her head. ‘Gods, if only. Can you imagine our folk building such a thing?’ The great hall stood as backdrop to her servant, a monumental witness to the backwardness of her people. ‘I keep thinking – what is their secret? What do they have that we do not?’

‘Sunshine,’