Secret Sacrament Read Online Free Page A

sweat run down his back, he shivered. He looked across the stone steps at his mother. She appeared calm and assured, but she was very pale, and there were deep shadows under her eyes. Her youngest child, her three-year-old daughter, Subin, dragged on her hand and whimpered in the heat. Beside them, lined up in single file on the steps, were her other four children, all sons. In silence they waited, while the funeral bier bearing their father was carried up through the winding stone paths of the huge city cemetery. All Navora’s dead were interred here, in family crypts hewn out of the rocky hillsides. On the lower slopes were the simple caves where the poor were buried; but where these mourners stood, on thehighest ground, were the stately tombs of the wealthy, adorned with carved obelisks and statues. There were no plants or trees, and the dark stones glinted in the sun and threw back the heat like a furnace.
    Gabriel wiped his sleeve across his face, pushing back the heavy curls. Glancing at the other mourners on the path behind him, he saw mainly uncles and aunts and cousins, and close family friends. Among them were several distinguished citizens: dignitaries from the palace; a famous astronomer from the country of Sadira, tall and majestic and olive-skinned, and now a Master teaching at the famed Citadel; and the commander of the Navoran navy. They too looked uncomfortable in their formal clothes, their faces flushed but dignified. In spite of the hot day the commander was in full naval uniform, his heavy cloak falling in deep blue folds to his black boots. He wore several jeweled rings, and priceless stones fixed his cloak to the shoulders of his tunic. The front of his tunic was richly embroidered with the sign of the horse, cleverly intertwined with the Empress’s initials. He was an imposing man, a famous navigator and warrior, and one of the most powerful people in the Empire.
    The heat intensified. High above, gulls wheeled and screamed in the blazing skies. Elsewhere inthe cemetery children laughed, the sound echoing and incongruous in the solemnity. There was a scuffle farther down the path, and the mourners heard men laboring, heavily burdened, up the steep slope. Gabriel looked straight down the steps, his eyes narrowed, his expression suddenly tense. As the bier was carried past him, he noticed the sickly odor of embalming liquids, precious oils, and spices; and he glimpsed his father’s face, stern and resolute even in death. He tried not to think of the rest of his father’s body, the lower half crushed by a marble block that had fallen while it was unloaded at the wharves; tried not to think of his father carried home, wrapped in an old boat sail that dripped with blood, with the slaves wailing and sobbing; tried not to think of his mother’s screams, or of his own horror and powerlessness in a household suddenly devastated.
    The bier disappeared into the cavernous dark below, and Gabriel glanced at his mother. She saw his tension, the beads of sweat across his upper lip, and she smiled a little to encourage him, and nodded.
    As eldest son, he led the way down into the hollowed earth. From brilliant light he passed into utter darkness; from birdsong and summer warmth into silence, ominous and cold and suffocating.
    Slowly he grew accustomed to the dark. Immediately in front of him was the stone sarcophagus, its huge lid propped against one side. Beside it stood the bearers, his father’s six brothers, stern and straight as they held the bier. Beyond them, indistinct in the dimness, loomed the stone coffins of previous family members, some richly carved and bearing statues of those interred within. Gabriel looked away from them and concentrated on the living. His relatives stood close by, and the more important family friends. They stood very still, the shadows pitch-black about them, their faces glimmering in the torchlight. In the hollowed stone even their breathing seemed loud, and