Page 2 of Empire of Shadows

He knew the significance of those signs all too well. The oozing pustules were a clear indication of the smallpox pestilence.

Flames whirled up to consume the bodies—but it was too late. The disease had already been unleashed. It would sweep across this place like a wind. Salavert had seen how it ravaged the villages near the mission of San Pedro de Flores, leaving them empty of everything but ghosts and flies.

He realized that he had indeed been called to this unholy place by God—but the instrument of redemption that he had been chosen to deliver was not prayer.

It was death.

?

Weeks passed, and the regular deliveries of food and water Salavert had enjoyed in his prison became more sporadic. He took to shouting through the ragged opening overhead about the deplorable conditions in which he was being held.

No one answered.

At last, he resigned himself to the truth. It was not the red robes of a cardinal or a choice post at the Vatican that God had chosen for him. Salavert had been destined for martyrdom.

He strove to await his glorious death with grace and equanimity—at least when he wasn’t frantically scratching himself and cursing at the ever-present bugs.

Finally, a rope unfurled from above, slapping down to the stones beside him. Salavert woke from his doze with a jerk of surprise, and was hauled back to the surface.

The men who fetched him were weak with fever and covered with sores. As they marched him to the center of the city, Salavert found that the paradise he had seen on his arrival had been transformed into a nightmare.

Black clouds rose from burning fields. Bodies were piled in fly-haunted masses. More of them lay where they had fallen along the verges of the great plaza. The air was dense with smoke and the stench of rot.

His captors dragged him to the tiered pyramid that loomed like a pale ghost through the haze. Salavert staggered up each massive step, half-carried by the guards until they reached the pinnacle.

Someone waited for him there—a slight figure made larger by the elaborate feather headdress and jade breastplate of a priest.

But this was no priest. It was a woman of perhaps thirty with umber-hued skin and fiery golden eyes. The beauty of her face was marred by an unseemly old scar on her cheek, a jagged lightning bolt of puckered skin that any self-respecting lady back in Spain would have kept hidden under a veil.

Around her neck hung a medallion of dark stone. Salavert had last seen the ornament on the chest of the most prominent man who had watched over the slaughter of his converts. It was a symbol of rank he was sure this mere woman would never have attained if not for the plague.

With horror, Salavert wondered whether martyrdom at the hand of afemalewould even count in the eyes of God.

The priestess made an authoritative gesture, and the two guards pulled a dark hood over Salavert’s head. The cloth stank of another man’s fear as it enclosed him in darkness.

He stumbled blindly along an obscure, tortuous path of rough stones and low, tight turns. The air around him grew cool.

At long last, the bag was pulled from his head. To his profound surprise, Salavert found himself inside a massive cave filled with soaring pillars and graceful veils of stone. It looked like a cathedral formed by the hand of God from the very earth itself. The vast space whispered with the soft hush of the glittering water that ran across the floor to a deep pool at the far end of the cavern.

At the center of the vast space lay a flat, black disk, smooth and clear enough to reflect phantom glimmers of the nearby torches.

It was a mirror—a great mirror made of stone. The dark perfection of its surface in the still, haunted atmosphere of the cavern transfixed him.

As the guards pushed Salavert closer, he was haunted by the unexpected sense that something murmured to him through the soft crackle of the flames and the gentle susurration of the water.

It sang of dreams—and of glory.

The priestess took a black obsidian dagger from the sheath at her belt.

The spell over Salavert broke in a fresh, desperate pulse of fear. His scream echoed off the delicate frills of stone, but the guards held him fast, dragging him to the edge of the glass as the priestess began her incantation.

The melodic tones of her profane liturgy melded with the fading echo of his terror, and the uncannily resonant walls of the cave transformed her worship and his fear into a symphony.

Salavert began to recite the last contrition, grasping frantically for some semblance of control. He would not achieve sainthood while shrieking like a maniac. As a row of insect bites on his back took up itching again, he determined that he would meet his end with dignity.

The priestess drew the blade across the skin of her palm. She whispered a few phrases laced with grief and desperation, then knelt at the edge of the mirror and pressed her bleeding hand to the surface.

Smoke welled up from between her fingers. The priestess leaned into it, breathing deeply. Her eyes glazed over.

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