Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky, #1)(110)
As he moved closer to the center, he found the bodies of the masked priests. They were arrayed in a line of four, as if stacked side by side in sacrifice. The first was a young woman, her long burnished hair clotted with blood from a blow to her scalp that had shattered her mask of white dawn in two and likely killed her instantly. He reached down and delicately pulled the bottom half of her mask away, revealing a young face, soft and pretty even now with a red gash opening her throat. He amended his cause of death.
He had never seen any of the priests unmasked, but it gave him pause to see a young woman so… normal… revealed as a priest.
Beside her was an older man, his head crowned with wisps of white. His face was collapsed entirely as if half of it had melted, skin, bone, and flesh fusing into something grotesque. His black mask had been carefully set atop the broad expanse of his stomach, empty eyes staring upward at nothing.
Next was the headless body of a man. Cupped in his hands was what must have been his missing head, still wearing the radiant mask of the Sun Priest. Okoa bent to remove the mask, accidentally sending the severed head tumbling to the earth. He fought the urge to vomit.
He stared at the man’s face, thinking. Did that mean that the woman Sun Priest he had met at his mother’s funeral was not here this day? That eased something in his chest. He was not sure he wished her dead. And suddenly the message made more sense, and so did why he had not received a reply to his inquiries. Betrayal… he wondered what had happened within the walls of the tower. Wondered if he could have made a difference. Wondered if the woman was, in fact, dead after all.
There was movement to his left, and Okoa startled so badly he almost fell, a shout of alarm on his lips. He raised his blade, ready to defend himself. It was the red-masked priest. Okoa approached warily, but it was clear the priest was in distress, a deep fatal gash ripping low horizontally across her stomach, blood leaking from the wound to soak her red robe, turning it black. She had her hand pressed to the wound, fighting to keep her innards intact. She might be alive now, but she would not be for long.
Okoa gingerly lifted the mask away.
The woman was unfamiliar. She didn’t seem the same priest who had sliced his jaw open at the funeral. Her breath came in syncopated pants, tight and short, as she struggled to hold on to what little life was left her. Her long hair had come loose and stuck to her wide forehead in wet ribbons. Her gray eyes searched Okoa’s, pleading.
Okoa stared at the woman, his emotions a tempest of confusion. Here was a fearsome Knife before him. Not just a Knife but the Priest of Knives. And just as he had been strangely moved to see the red-robed dedicants, he was similarly moved to see their leader.
“All human after all,” he said quietly, and Okoa did the only thing he could do; he gave the Knife his mercy.
He found the Odo Sedoh surrounded by crows. They must have come while Okoa was crossing the Rock and tending to what was left of the Watchers. The birds circled the figure, calling to one another in distinctive bursts and clicks. Okoa recognized some of the smaller residents that shared the aviary and the surrounding nests of the Great House, but others seemed different in size and build—smaller beaks, feathers more blue than black, chests a different circumference. Voices echoed from above, and he looked up to see the great crows from the aviary circling overhead, adding their strident cries to the chorus.
Crow ceremony, he thought, and let them say their farewells.
After a moment, he stepped gingerly through the circle of crows and stopped, eyes wide. He had only noticed the crows on the outer circle and those in the sky. But there was an inner ring of corvids nestled against the man’s body. At first, he thought they were sleeping, they looked so peaceful, but the truth dawned slowly, and to Okoa’s horror, he realized they were freshly dead. Each bird had settled against the bare blood-painted skin of the man’s chest, wings spread like a blanket. His breath caught as he realized the crows must have sacrificed themselves for the man, but to what end? Had they joined him in battle, or only come to him after his collapse?
Okoa had never been a particularly religious man, but he prayed now, simple words of thanks to the dead crows for the lives they had given, before he reached down to push their black-winged corpses away.
The Odo Sedoh was not a large man. He was tall for a Tovan, stretched leaner and thinner than most of his kin, and certainly not as broad or muscled as Okoa was, but his wide cheeks and mouth resembled Okoa’s own. His face ran with rivulets of dried blood below eyes closed as if in sleep, and his hair was matted with it. The bargeman had said he had been blind, but Okoa could not tell either way. His upper body was carved well if not skillfully, showing a hand with more enthusiasm than practice. All told, the man could have easily been one of his cousins.
Okoa had decided he would not leave the Odo Sedoh here among his enemies, so he bent and lifted him in his arms. He was light, as if made from bird bones. Okoa pressed an ear to his chest. He thought for a moment he heard a heartbeat, fast and stuttering, but he couldn’t be sure. He did see that despite the blood matting his hair and coating his bare skin, the wounds on his body seemed superficial; there was a gash on his stomach but it was far from a fatal blow. It seemed hard to believe this man could have caused so much bloodshed, created so much carnage, and escaped death himself. But as Okoa looked again at the dozens of crows at his feet and circling above, he found himself reordering what he believed and what he did not.
Okoa stepped around the crows, who took to the wing as he passed, loud cries reverberating across the canyon. He made his way back to where he had left Benundah. She fussed and squawked when she saw him, or was it that she saw the Odo Sedoh? He remembered that she had sheltered him the previous night, and a tight spike of jealousy pricked his heart. But that was foolish. Benundah and he had a bond forged over years, and besides, this man was surely dead, or at the least at death’s front door.