Saint Fire (Secret Books of Venus Series) Read Online Free Page B

enormous door.
    Black robes moved at the square’s edges. Eyes and Ears noted the pious hurrying in to God.
    Ghaio stepped into an alcove, and awarded his gift to the relevant hands, leaving his name as donor for the notice of the Council of the Lamb. He then moved on into the body of the temple. Here the poorest sat on the floor. The better classes had chairs. Several stared up, as now Ghaio commenced to do.
    Arch rose through arch, minor dome through dome, until at last the ultimate circle lifted, as if weightless, high above. Gold. It was more like fire. And in the fire, the painted angels flew, pausing to raise their hands in blessing.
    There were great treasures hidden here. Relics, standards, icons, thick with bullion and gems…. The apartments above, they said, had richeslike those of Heaven itself—
    How many chests of money would it take …?
    Angelic voices rang from the balconies, and Ghaio basked in his insurance. With God. If God did indeed exist, and the afterlife. But Ghaio turned his mind from his own demise. He would live long.
    O God
, the voices sang,
If I render to You all my heart, I am free. Yet, when You turn to me, You will demand of me everything. For Your love I must forget the world
.
    A tavern song—surely?
    Ghaio watched the priests, a cross stuck with rubies and chrysoprase.
    Nearby a woman wept. They always did.
    Not much longer and the show would be over.
    Then some dinner at an inn. Then two debtors to watch squirm.
    By the time the Venus star stood over this City, Ghaio would be at home, and the Fox would come in her rags, bringing wine.
    A twitch of feeling moved in Ghaio. After all the spring had found him, there in church. Sap and sea, milk and salt.
    After the first dream of the scarlet mountain, for a time Volpa dreamed every night. Not entirely acquainted with dreams, she did not think to ponder that each one followed from the one before. They were like pages torn from an illuminated book, and falling down into her sleep, one after another, telling a story in bright pictures. In the second dream, Volpa was aware of the summer heat of the wide plain. The sand was a terracotta shade and softly burned the soles of her feet, which in her sleep were bare.
    On the land, between herself andthe mountain, that in this second vision was darker, more of a maroon color, though glowing like a lamp, a haze of heat trembled. And out of this came walking a figure, slowly.
    It was Volpa’s mother.
    Volpa felt at once very glad to see her. There was no memory that the mother had died. Only a joy which might have indicated some previous parting.
    Then, as the woman moved nearer and nearer through the wavering pink air, Volpa saw she was almost naked, and though recognizably still the woman Volpa had known, younger—and darker of skin.
    Volpa did nothing, only waited. When the woman reached her she touched Volpa’s mouth with her palm. The mother smelled of hot things, stones and cinders.
    Volpa thought, vaguely,
Oh, it’s that she was burned, on the Isle.
There was no terror in that. Here her mother stood, compact and alive.
    When her mother spoke to Volpa, Volpa realized it was in another language. Even so, Volpa understood it, and was able, in turn, to utter it.
    After this, they walked away over the land.
    Waking, the girl never knew what they had said to each other, beyond a phrase of two. Her mother seemed to be teaching her things. In Volpa’s infancy, the mother had done this as a matter of course, and necessity. It was simple to resume the manner of it. In the later years, Volpa had perhaps missed her mother’s conversation, her advice, her stories. Now the dreams themselves were the stories, and the advice was inherent in them.
    After the second dream, came others.
    When Volpa woke in the cold spring dawns, to skim frost from the cistern, to cook as best she could Ghaio’s porridges and rice, and bake his bread, the dreams did not fade.They sank back a little, as if replaced neatly into