Fanuilh by Daniel Hood (ebook reader with highlight function TXT) 📗

in politeness, but was not interested. He was more concerned with figuring out Viyescu's strange behavior. What had the druggist been about to tell him? More importantly, was it connected with Tarquin's death?

The sound of the horn called him to his surroundings, and he turned back to the gallery, the messenger following behind wordlessly.

The horn was winded only once this time, and Liam saw that one of the shaven-headed acolytes was standing on the platform, raising a silver-chased ram's horn to the sky. He sounded it twice more, and a clash of cymbals answered the third, at which he hurriedly left the platform to join his fellows below. All eyes in the crowd turned to the north, where the main point of the procession was approaching.

Two young boys led the way, crowned with wreaths of laurel and dressed in short white tunics despite the cold. They spread rushes in the path the crowd cleared for them, walking solemnly. Behind them followed a single man in complicated flowing vestments of white sewn with pearls and gold and silver threads. He wore a tall scarlet mitre and carried a golden lantern and an oversized book bound in tooled, painted leather. His massive belly bobbled beneath the vestments, and his beard straggled over three extra chins, giving rise to Liam's blasphemous thought that Uris's second-highest priest would not enjoy the next day's fast.

The priest did manage to look grand, however, pacing measuredly on the carpet of rushes strewn by the pageboys, aloof and proud under the silent scrutiny of the crowd.

Behind him, borne in a litter carried on the muscular shoulders of eight bald acolytes, came Uris's image, shrouded in a snowy tarp. Last in line was a group of musicians, piper and drummer and the man with the cymbals, marching unobserved in grave lockstep. The attention of the crowd was divided equally between the fat priest in his magnificent clothes and the covered statue.

Only the rustle of sandals on rushes and the sigh of the wind could be heard as the procession moved into the circle of Guardsmen. The pageboys went up the narrow steps to

the platform, leaving rushes behind, and the priest folloed them, moving to the edge to face the crowd. The litter bearers brought their load to rest in front of the platform, neatly turning around so that Uris, when uncovered, would face her worshippers like the priest. Coeccias, Viyescu and the merchants stood in ranks to the left of the litter, looking up at the priest; the other acolytes knelt to the right. Finally the musicians took up their position at the bottom of the steps leading to the platform.

When they were ready, the piper nodded to the priest, who handed the lantern to one boy and the book to the other. Liam was struck by the awe with which they received their burdens, and the way they held them firmly in their hands but away from their bodies, as if afraid to soil them.

Just a book and a lantern, Liam thought. He had never had much use for organized religions, though he knew the gods were there. Meet the Storm King face to face, he thought somewhat scornfully, and see how much you care for a book and a lantern.

The ceremony was interesting, he had to admit, if only for its aesthetic and historical value. Once rid of his book and lantern, the priest raised his hands and began a chant in a high-pitched voice that swept over the silent square. Rising and falling in a stately, cadenced rhythm, the chant described the wondrous gifts Uris had bestowed on the world in an obscure, highly refined dialect of High Church Taralonian. Liam vaguely recognized it from his student days in Torquay, and was able to follow haltingly along, despite the complex syntax and the strange, inverted poetry. He wondered if anyone there besides the priest, the acolytes and himself understood a single word of it.

After several verses lauding Uris in general and her two major gifts—medicine and writing—the chant broke into song. The shaven acolytes raised their voices with the priest's, ranging around his high tenor in a complex and surprisingly merry harmony. At first the drummer was the only musician playing, giving the singers a simple beat, but then the piper began, and the man with the cymbals joined in as well with carefully muted crashes. They were, however, only the framework of the music, a steady undercurrent for the voices of the celebrants.

The singing went through two repeated verses, and then subsided into just the priest's chant, though the drummer continued to beat out a more subdued rhythm for the chanter to follow.

It went on for almost an hour, breaking from chant to song back to chant, going into detail about Uris's contributions to almost every civilized craft, illustrating the gifts with old myths and legends. First the piper wove into the chant and then the cymbalist as well, until the only way to tell chant from song was by the participation or silence of the shaven chorus. The crowd of worshippers remained silent, and Liam gave a moment's admiration to their stoicism, packed closely into a cold square listening to a long service in a language they could not understand. For his own part, he was too absorbed in translating it to himself to notice the length, and he grudgingly admitted to himself that it was beautiful in a strange way.

Finally, with the sun little more than an hour above the western horizon, the singers and musicians brought their last burst of song to a halt, and an imposing silence descended on the square. Flushed with his exertions, the priest on the platform retrieved his book and his lantern from the pageboys and raised them high for the adoration of the common worshippers. He let a suitably dramatic pause go by, and then pronounced a blessing they could understand.

"Uris, Light of Our Dark and Teacher of the World, bless this city and this gathering!"

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