The Wings of Ashtaroth

Chapter 6: Visitors: Section V: Ashtaroth

Ashtaroth: Qemassen: The Palace

The sun had just risen when a door that had not been there before appeared in Ashtaroth's room beside his window. There was nothing unusual about the door in and of itself, besides the fact that it had come from nowhere and that when it had appeared the scent of lilacs had filled the room.

There were no lilacs in the riad beneath Ashtaroth's window, and even had there been, the lilac trees shouldn't have bloomed this early in spring. Strange, too, that Lilit had summoned lilacs and not the yellow hyacinths that had covered her hair when he'd seen her in the Eghri eq-Shalem.

Ashtaroth sat up from his bed and walked toward Lilit's door. He was long past fear now—long past letting it paralyze him in any case. Besides, what was a door if not a point of egress? And Ashtaroth badly needed to escape. He had to reach Samelqo before Hima arrested him. Only Samelqo could help Ashtaroth with the contents of his vision. Only Samelqo would believe him.

"Where does it lead?" Ashtaroth asked the empty air. No doubt Lilit was listening—it seemed unlikely there was anywhere in the city she couldn't hear him.

But if she did hear, she didn't answer. Ashtaroth hovered in front of the door. In stories, doors could also trap you.

He curled his hand around the handle. He opened it.

As soon as he opened it, he found himself outside. He hadn't even stepped through—the mere act of opening it had transported him into the palace gardens at night. He craned his neck back, taking in a pitch black sky devoid of stars. Something white was falling all around him—snow? He caught a piece of it in his hand, expecting the flakes to melt, but it wasn't snow at all. It was a purple-white lilac petal. They rained onto the gravel path ahead of him, onto the stone benches beneath the trees, so white against the opacity of the darkness that it was as if the whole world had turned to black and white.

Black, white, and red.

Where they hit the earth, the petals gradually turned red, as though soaking up blood.

Ashtaroth turned around, but even as he did he knew the door would be gone. All he could do was move forward along the path, crushing flowers beneath his bare feet.

"Lilit?" he called out. He swallowed. What had the girl's name been? The one from his vision in the Eghri. Dannae? Yes, Dannae. Invoking her seemed dangerous. It was after he'd seen her that Ashtet's statue had attacked him.

He crept past the benches, blood and blossom wet against his skin. The flowers were oddly warm, like living flesh. He could feel their breath rustling up through his feet, his calves, his knees.

The blackness ahead was endless, something that had fed on the colour of everything around it—turning stones plain grey and trees a muted brown so pale they may as well have been white. The path was straighter than the real paths in the gardens, which twisted and turned, and as he trod its length he felt in his heart that should he stray from it, he'd be lost in the blackness. He wetted his lips with his tongue. "Dannae?"

The petals stopped falling. On the benches lining the path, a word appeared in blood, each letter formed as though by invisible fingers. S-M-L-Q. Samelqo.

Blood welled along the shapes of the letters as though they'd been cut in flesh and not written on stone. It dripped from the edge of the bench and onto the ground.

Ashtaroth froze. Was Samelqo already dead? Was that what Lilit was trying to show him?

Go deeper, said Lilit's voice, not from the air, but inside his head. It echoed slightly, as though it had reached him from far away.