The Wings of Ashtaroth

Chapter 3: Merchants: Section III: Ashtaroth

Ashtaroth: The Palace: Qemassen

Hazzan's caprine eyes stared into Ashtaroth's from a small square alcove in the palace sanctuary beneath the heq-Ashqen's tower.

Ashtaroth shifted on his aching knees and blinked back the tears forming in the corners of his own eyes. Thick, perfumed smoke hung so heavy in the air he could be swimming in it. Every inhale was like gasping water into the lungs. Together with the flames warming his back and the sides of his face, the smoke drew him back to his dream, to the burned buildings in the lower quarter and the soot staining his hands after he'd woken. It was so hot that already the water from the basin at the sanctuary's entrance had dried on his hands.

The goat god, Hazzan, son of Molot and Qalita, was carved half in ivory, half in horn, gold inserted into the gouged slits representing his rectangular pupils. In either hand he clasped a rope, a black-horned goat on one lead, a white on the other.

Firelight from over two dozen wall-sconces and braziers danced across the polished surface of the god's face, his gold eyes glowing whenever the light tickled their metallic paint. A large bowl for offerings rested on a sacred pillar made from a single gypsum sand rose. The bowl's base was stained black from repeated burnings.

Ashtaroth held his palms outward in supplication. A razor with an image of the god carved into its sides rested in his right palm, cold against his skin, a cut strand of his white hair curled around it. In his left hand, he held one of Aurelius's carvings: a little goat Aurelius had made him when Ashtaroth had been but a child.

Having never made a formal sacrifice to Hazzan before, Ashtaroth had been unsure how to proceed. Snatching the carving from one of his cluttered shelves had been an afterthought, but now that he sat here, belly groaning from hunger, and palms still sore from the mysterious cuts in his skin, the wooden animal seemed exactly the right thing to have brought.

The walls of the sanctuary were narrow and cramped, but the ceiling was so high he could only make out the barest suggestion of its end. The walls down here, on the lowest level, were rectangular, but the rest of the sanctuary coiled round in the shape of Samelqo's tower. The eyes of a hundred gods or more looked out from the walls above, accessible only from the tiny balconies or the pulley and basket on this basement level.

Only the twenty most important gods were represented on this lower floor, and their eyes seemed to watch him as he prostrated himself before one of the least significant of their number. Sacred stones lined the twenty alcoves recessed into the walls, and an image of a god stood behind each one, every god or goddess with their own bowl in which to receive votive offerings.

Out of all of them, Ashtaroth had chosen Hazzan, god of the desert. Hazzan, the sin eater.

He pinched his eyes shut.

What could he possibly have to atone for? The soot, the scratches on his palms that had scabbed and then flaked until they resembled tiny jabs in his flesh—they could mean anything. News of the fire had interrupted Samelqo's interpretation of Ashtaroth's dream, and five days later, Ashtaroth was too consumed with shame to mount the tower steps. Twice he'd walked to the base of the twisting stairs, and twice his nerves had stopped him climbing any higher.

Where had he gone that his feet had been blackened and his hands scratched? How had he come to stand in the basement cellar where Safot had found him?

And why couldn't he remember?

It had something to do with Lilit. Not the fortuneteller Lilit, but the woman who'd come to him in the dream. Lilit covered in owl feathers, who'd whispered in his ear that he was a true child of Qemassen.