Traitor's Moon

here.”
    No curtain walls shielded the city; it had no gates, no guards. Instead, open ways paved with springy turf cut into the jumbled mass of the place like rambling fissures weathered through a mountain by a thousand years of rain. Its street were empty, the arched windows of it towers blank as dead eyes.
    â€œI didn’t expect it to be so empty,” Alec whispered as they continued along a broad, winding concourse.
    â€œIt’s different when the clans gather for the festivals,” Seregil told him. “By the Light, I’d forgotten how beautiful it is!”
    Beautiful?
Alec thought. Eerie was more like it, and a little oppressive.
    Evidently he was not the only one to feel it. Behind him, he could hear the Urgazhi plying Nyal with questions, and the steady murmur of the interpreter’s replies.
    Smooth walls of dark green stone etched with bands of complex designs rose on all sides. There were no recognizable figures; no carved animals, gods, or people. Instead, the intricate patterns seemed to fold and knot themselves into greater interconnected patterns that drew the eye to a single central point or away along lines of rhythmically repeated shapes and symbols.
    The turf gave beneath their horses’ hooves, sending up the scent of crushed herbs and deadening the sound of their passing. The deeper they rode into the city, the more muted sounds became, underscoring the strangeness of the place. The wind brought the occasional distant crowing of a cock or the sound of voices, but just as quickly whipped them away.
    Alec gradually became aware of an unsettling sensation creepingover him, a sort of tingling on his skin and the hint of a headache between his eyes.
    â€œI’ve come over all strange,” said Beka, feeling it, too.
    â€œIt’s magic,” Thero said in an awed voice. “It feels like it’s seeping from the very ground!”
    â€œDon’t worry; you’ll get used to it soon,” Seregil assured them.
    As they rounded a corner, Alec saw a lone robed figure watching them gravely from the lower window of a tower. Beneath the red-and-black sen’gai and facial tattoos that marked him as a Khatme, the man’s expression was aloof and unwelcoming. Alec uneasily recalled a favorite saying his father had had:
How you come into a place is how you go out
.
    Seregil’s initial joy at seeing Sarikali did not entirely cloud his perception. Clearly the isolationists still held the upper hand. Nonetheless, his pulse quickened as he felt the quicksilver play of exotic energies across his skin. Childhood habit made him peer into the shadows, hoping for a fleeting glimpse of the fabled Bash’wai.
    Rounding a familiar corner, they came into the open again, at the center of the city, and the breath caught in Seregil’s throat.
    Here lay the
Vhadäsoori
, a clear pool several hundred yards wide and so deep that its waters remained black at high noon. The magic was said to radiate from this spot, the most sacred ground in Aurënen. Here, at the heart of the Heart, oaths were given, alliances forged, wizardly powers tested. A pledge sealed with a cup of the pool’s clear water was inviolable.
    The pool was ringed by one hundred and twenty-one weathered stone statues that stood a hundred yards or so back from the water’s edge. Neither the reddish-brown stone nor the carving style was to be found anywhere else in the city, or in Aurënen beyond. Thirty feet tall, and vaguely man-shaped, the statues were said to be a relic of some people older than the Bash’wai. They towered and tilted now above the crowd gathered outside the circle. Expectant faces and sen’gai of every description formed a colorful mosaic against the muted backdrop of dark stone.
    â€œThat’s him,” he heard someone whisper loudly, and guessed they were talking of him.
    The crowd parted quietly as he led Klia and the others to the edge of the stone circle. Inside, he saw the eleven white-clad members of the Iia’sidra waiting for them at the water’s edge, flanking the Cup of Aura on its low stone pedestal. Its long, crescent-shaped bowl,carved from milky alabaster and set on a tall silver base, glowed softly in the late-afternoon sunlight.
    With a sudden sharp pang, he recalled his father bringing him here as a small child; it was one of the few positive memories he had of the man. Legends differed as to the Cup’s origins, Korit had