Alight (The Generations Trilogy #2)(41)

Aramovsky’s eyes open wide.

“Ritual,” he says. “The God of Blood demands ritual.”

That is Aramovsky’s important word, his cloud cover, his microorganisms.

I feel O’Malley looking at me. He stares hard, his message clear: I told you Aramovsky is a problem—now he’s going to be even worse.

“Let’s go,” I say. “We don’t have time to look at stupid art. Let’s climb.”

—

At the tenth plateau, we are already exhausted. We’re higher than most of the surrounding buildings, yet there are still twenty plateaus before we reach the top. And we thought walking “uphill” on the Xolotl was bad.

Every level has more images, all somehow worse than the level below:

…red-robed, double-ring priests cutting hearts from the chests of living people, throwing the bodies down the Observatory steps…

…severed limbs arranged into patterns, like the pinwheel of arms we saw up on the Xolotl…

…people with their hands chained above their heads, shot repeatedly with arrows, their blood draining into troughs that channel it to stone bowls carved into the terrace. Those images alone are disturbing enough, then I notice actual stone bowls beneath the vines at our feet, waiting to be filled with blood…

…scenes of two people fighting, one armed with a sword and protected by brightly colored armor, while the other is naked, holding only a small knife—or sometimes just a pointed stick…



…people pinned on their backs by bars like the ones that held me in my birth-coffin, one robed priest holding their jaws open, another pouring liquid down their throat…

…people being burned alive…

…people being skinned…

Every level holds images of torture, terror and death.

Was this what the Grownups wanted? A world of murder and human sacrifice?

We are all horrified. All, except Aramovsky.

—

We reach the twenty-fifth plateau. The tall statue is there, still looking up toward the ziggurat peak. Even this close I can’t make out if it’s a man or a woman, not with so many vines hanging all over it.

We need a rest. I tell everyone to sit in the statue’s shade.

My legs tremble. They moved past simple pain three or four levels back. Now they are numb. I can only imagine how badly they will ache tomorrow. O’Malley, Spingate and I are drained to the point I’m not sure we can make it the last five levels. Visca and Bishop look tired, but can clearly keep going. Where does their strength and endurance come from?

Spingate and I rest with our backs against the base of the statue. O’Malley lies flat on his stomach. Aramovsky, somehow, is still moving, looking at carvings with wonder. Bishop and Visca sit on the steps, staring out across the city. They don’t want to see any more of the horrors.

These top layers are just as thick as those on the bottom—a hundred steps each—but are increasingly smaller in width. It would have taken us hours to walk all the way around the base. We could walk around the twenty-fifth layer’s thin plateau in only a couple of minutes.



Everyone is still except for Aramovsky. He’s just as exhausted as I am, I’m sure of it, but you’d never know by his expression. Every new image makes his face blaze with reverence. He’s running his hands over a carving that shows two red-robed people—a man and a woman—using stone blades to scrape the skin off a little girl. The child’s agonized, terrified face is so real I can almost hear her screams.

For a moment I think, I shouldn’t have brought him. But we probably can’t get inside without him. I had no choice.

I notice that Spingate is watching him. She’s getting angry. She stands, walks over to him.

“You like that?” she says.

I hear the threat in her voice. Aramovsky doesn’t. He answers without turning around.

“It’s beautiful. This had to be carved by hand. And how did the artists make the rock different colors?”

“Artists,” Spin says, spitting the word out like it’s made of poison. “There’s something wrong with you, Aramovsky. I always knew there was, but this proves it.”

He turns to face her. If he didn’t hear her tone, he can see her body language—fists clenched at her sides, shoulders forward. I’m behind her, I can’t see her eyes, but I know they are narrowed to slits.

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” he says. “I don’t know why you’d say that.”

She points at the image of the girl, at the girl’s forehead. “That’s a tooth-girl being butchered. Is that why you like it? Or because the two people skinning her are double-rings, like you?”

I glance at the forehead symbols of the carved people, see that she’s right.



Spingate takes a step toward him. I see Bishop and Visca rise, watching carefully.

O’Malley lifts up on one elbow.

“Give it a rest, Spin,” he says. “Aramovsky didn’t make this place.”

She takes another step closer. Aramovsky takes a step away, unsure of what’s happening. A second step away puts his back up against the very carving he so admires.

Spingate closes the distance.

I realize all at once that she’s going to hit him. He could crush her if he wanted to, but that doesn’t matter—a fight could easily result in someone tumbling down the steps or, worse, rolling off the edge to the hard stone below.