Song of Ashes

57: Face to Face

They languished in that prison for days. Weeks. A year, perhaps. Sarka knew it must be so. Her reason convinced her that it could not be true, because she lived on, although they were given no food and no water-but with no sense of time passing, with no windows to see the sun, every second was minute, every minute an hour, every hour a day.

She felt like she was starving, like she was being driven mad with thirst. But she lived, and so did Konn, and so did Ro.

Sarka was crouched in the corner of her cell when the door creaked open. She looked up, cold with shock, and saw the transparent figure of a familiar Beloved: Caol. His smile was a knife.

"Justice. It did not take so long, after all," he said. "For standing against Tayo and his oathbreakers, I won my way back into my lady's presence. It will give me great pleasure to see her punish you as you so justly deserve."

"Sarka."

Through him, Sarka could see Ro standing at the door of his cell, grasping the bars. When the ash-walker said her name in his low voice, a curious feeling came upon her, something like peace and fear all wrapped into one. She pushed the distraction away.

"It's all right, Ro," she said, turning her attention back to Caol. "I suppose this is the part where we go before our queen and confess our sins, so on and so forth?"

Caol narrowed his eyes and hissed, "Ssstand." He turned and pointed to Ro's cell door, then Konn's. "Open them."

At his command, several other Beloved came to unlock the men's cell doors, and Konn and Ro were taken. Caol seized Sarka's arm none-too-gently and guided her out of her cell toward the mouth of the prison, a self-satisfied smile on his face all the while.Sarka, who had nearly been killed by more than one of these creatures, wished fervently that she could fight him. She wanted to slap him, but she knew that her hand would pass right through his smug face.

The Beloved led them back up onto the main level of the palace and through hall after dilapidated hall until, finally, they came upon an antechamber not unlike the one where they had awaited Lady Deyna's pleasure. In Lady Deyna's palace, though, the chamber had been sickeningly opulent. Here, in Kogoren's Bone Palace, the paintings were cracked and faded, the upholstered chairs had rotted, and the only ornament to be seen was a human skull on a spike soaked with old blood, black as tar.

"Charming," Ro muttered.

Sarka was seized with the insane desire to laugh. Tears of mingled horror and mirth sprang to her eyes. She lowered her head, feeling Caol's hand close like a vice around her wrist. One of the Beloved escorting Ro cuffed him.

"Let him be!" Sarka pulled against Caol's hold, blinking away the tears.

"Laugh while you can. Cry while you can," Caol said. "Soon you will feel nothing but pain."

Konn was strangely silent. When Sarka stole a glance at him, she saw his weathered features creased, as if he were deep in thought. He looked at her, and, upon meeting her gaze, he instantly lowered his own.

"Konn-" Sarka began, but at that instant, the doors separating them from their fate swung open.

Kogoren's audience hall was as full of cobwebs and the signs of decay as Deyna's had been with gems and velvet. The place was empty of courtiers; only the Beloved attended upon Kogoren, their queen-a legion of immortal boys. On a dais at the front of the long hall stood the goddess herself. She was emaciated; her gown hung off of her figure as if it had been made for a different woman. It was sumptuously embroidered in the old Kogorian style, as were the trousers worn by her attendants, but the garment was threadbare and faded. She wore a high and heavy crown carved of bone