The Saphire Rose by David Eddings

“I won’t dishonour them, Sir Bevier,’ Berit swore.

Kalten had stepped towards the rear of the chamber.

‘There’s a space back here under the stairs, Bevier. It might be a good idea for you and Kurik and Talen to wait for us under there. If the soldiers manage to break through the wall, the three of you won’t be in plain sight.’

Bevier nodded as Ulath took up Kurik’s body to conceal it behind the stairs.

‘There’s not much left to say, Bevier,’ Sparhawk told the Cyrinic Knight, taking his hand. ‘We’ll try to come back as soon as we can.’

‘I’ll pray for you, Sparhawk,’ Bevier said, “for all of you. ‘

Sparhawk nodded, then knelt briefly at Kurik’s side and took his squire’s hand. ‘Sleep well, my friend,’ he murmured. Then he rose and started up the stairs without looking back.

The stairs at the far end of that broad, straight pathway that stretched across the mole-tunnel mounds of the labyrinth below were very wide and sheathed with marble.

There was no sliding wall to conceal a chamber at the foot of those stairs, and no maze led away from the temple. No maze was needed.

“Wait here,’ Sparhawk whispered to his friends, ‘and put out those torches.’ He crept forward, pulled off his helmet and lay down at the top of the stairs. “Ulath,’ he murmured, “hold my ankles. I want to see what we’re getting into.’ With the huge Thalesian keeping him from tumbling in a steely clatter down the stairs, Sparhawk inched his way headfirst down the stairs until he could see out into the room beyond.

The temple of Azash was a place of nightmare. It was, as the dome which roofed it implied, circular; and it was fully half a mile across. The curving, Inwardly-sloping walls were of polished black onyx, as was the floor. It was much like looking into the very heart of night. The temple was not lighted by torches but by huge bonfires flaring and roaring in enormous iron basins set on girder-like legs. The vast chamber was encircled by tier upon tier of polished black terraces stepping down and down and down to a black floor far beneath.

At evenly-spaced intervals along the top terrace were twenty-foot marble statues of things which were for the most part not human. Then Sparhawk saw a Styric form among them and somewhat further along an Elene one.

He realized that the statues were representations of the servants of Azash, and that humanity played a very small and insignificant part in that assemblage. The other servants dwelt in places at once very far away and at the same time very, very close.

Directly opposite the entrance through which he peered was the towering idol. Man’s efforts to visualize and to represent his Gods are never wholly satisfactory. A lion-headed God is really the image of a human body with the head of a lion tacked on for the sake of contrast.

Mankind perceives the face as the seat of the soul, the body is largely irrelevant. The icon of a God is not meant to be representational, and the face of the icon is intended to suggest the spirit of the God rather than to be an accurate recreation of His real features. The face of the idol rearing high above the polished black temple contained the sum of human depravity. Lust was there certainly and reert and gluttony, but there were other attributes in that face as well, attributes for which there were no names in any human tongue. Azash, to judge from His face, craved required things beyond human comprehension. There

was a haggard, unsatisfied look about that face. It was the face of a Being with overpowering desires which would not could not – be satisfied. The lips were twisted, the eyes brooding and cruel.

Sparhawk wrenched his eyes from that face. To look too long at it was to lose one’s soul.

The body was not fully formed. It was as if the sculptor had been so overwhelmed by that face and all that it implied that he no more than sketched in the remainder of the figure. There was a spidery-like profusion of arms that extended in clusters of tentacles from vast shoulders. The body leaned back somewhat with its hips thrust forward obscenely, but what would have been the focus of that suggestive pose was not there. Instead there was a smooth, unwrinkled surface, shiny and looking very much like a burn scar. Sparhawk remembered ‘the words Sephrenia had cast into the God’s teeth during her confrontation with the Seeker at the north end of Lake Venne. Impotent, she had called Him, and emasculate. He preferred not to speculate on the means the Younger Gods may have used to mutilate their older relative. There was a pale greenish nimbus emanating from the idol, a glow much like that which had come from the face of the Seeker.

There was a ceremony of some sort taking place on the circular black floor far below in the sickly green glow coming from the altar. Sparhawk’s mind recoiled from the notion of calling that ceremony a religious rite. The celebrants cavorted naked before the idol.

Sparhawk was not some unworldly, cloistered monk. He was acquainted with the world, but the levels of perversion being demonstrated in that rite turned his stomach. The orgy which had so engrossed the primitive Elene Zemochs back in the mountains had been childlike, almost pure, by ~comparison. These celebrants appeared to be attempting to duplicate the perversions of non-humans, and their fixed stares and galvanic movements clearly showed that they would continue the ceremony until they-died from sheer excess. The lower tiers of that huge, stair-stepped basin were packed with green-robed figures who raised a groaning discordant chant, an empty sound devoid of any thought or emotion.

Then a slight movement caught Sparhawk’s eye, and he looked quickly towards his right. A group of people were gathered on the top terrace a hundred yards or more away beneath the leprous white statue of something that must have been dredged from the depths of madness. One of the figures had white hair.

Sparhawk twisted around and signalled to Ulath to pull him back up again.

“Well?’ Kalten asked him.

‘It’s all one big room,’ Sparhawk murmured. ‘The idol is over on the far side, and there are wide terraces leading down to a floor in the middle. ‘

‘What’s that noise?’ Tynian asked.

‘They’re holding some sort of rite. I think that chant’s a part of it.’

“I’m not concerned about their religion,’ Ulath rumbled.

‘Are there any soldiers?’

Sparhawk shook his head.

‘That’s helpful. Anything else?’

‘Yes. I need some magic, Sephrenia. Martel and the others are gathered on the top terrace. They’re about a hundred paces off to the right. We need to know what they’re saying. Are we close enough for your spell to work?’

She nodded. ‘Let’s move back away from the stairs,’ she suggested. “The spell makes a certain amount of light, and we don’t want anyone to know that we’re here just yet.’

They retreated back along the dusty pathway, and Sephrenia took Sir Bevier’s polished shield from Berit.

‘This should do it,’ she said. She quickly cast the spell and released it. The knights gathered around the suddenly glowing shield, peering at the hazy figures appearing on its mirror-like surface. The voices coming from the image were tinny-sounding, but they were intelligible.

‘Thine assurances to me that my gold would buy thee that throne from which thou couldst further our purposes were hollow, Annias,’ Otha was saying in that Gurgling rumble.

‘It was Sparhawk again, Your Majesty,’ Annias tried to excuse himself in an almost grovelling tone. ‘He disrupted things – as we had feared he would.’

‘Sparhawk!’ Otha spat out a foul oath and slammed his fist down on the arm of his throne-like litter. ‘The man’s existence doth canker my soul. His very name doth cause me pain. Thou wert to keep him away from Chyrellos, Martel. Why didst thou fail me and my God?’

“I didn’t really fail, Your Majesty,’ Martel replied calmly, ‘and neither did Annias for that matter. Putting His Grace on the Archprelate’s throne was only a means to an end, and we’ve achieved that end. Bhelliom is under this very roof. The scheme to elevate Annias so that he could force the Elenes to surrender the jewel to us was filled with uncertainties. This has been much faster and much more direct. Results are what Azash wants, Your Majesty, not the success or failure of any of the interim steps.’

Otha grunted. ‘Perhaps,’ he conceded, “but Bhelliom hath not been passively delivered into the possession of our God. It doth still lie in the hands of this Sparhawk. Ye have put armies in his path and he doth easily o’erwhelm them. Our Master hath sent servants more horrible than death itself to slay him, and he lives yet.’

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