The words cut through the shrine like a blade through silk—quiet, but carrying absolute authority that made the very air seem to still. The echoes caught it, carried it through the carved chamber, bounced it off coffered ceiling and polished floor until it seemed a hundred voices spoke in perfect unison.
Petran froze, arm still raised, every muscle locked. His eyes went wide. Slowly, as though fighting against invisible chains, he lowered his fist. His hand released Eliot's hair, and the boy crumpled to his knees, gasping, bleeding, dripping water onto stone that drank it greedily.
Footsteps approached from the entrance passage, measured and unhurried. Each one echoed with perfect clarity against the rose-red walls: the scuff of leather sole on polished stone, the faint creak of the boot leather itself, the tiny rattle of steel buckles. Heavy steps. Confident. Someone accustomed to being obeyed without question, someone who walked through carved sanctuaries as though they were his personal halls.
"Stand aside." The voice again, deep and rough-edged. "All of you. Make way."
The militiamen parted like water before a ship's prow, pressing themselves against the carved walls, making themselves small. Petran stepped back, his scarred face pale beneath the dust and sun-damage. Another man—Joram, judging by his insignia of two crossed swords on his shoulder—moved quickly to the side, dragging the still-snarling hounds with him. A third—Ralven, younger than the others, his beard still sparse—flattened himself in one of the carved niches, his eyes darting between his commander and the goddess statue.
The leader emerged from the shadows of the entrance passage, and Eliot felt his remaining hope shrivel like a slug touched with salt.
Captain Davren Kael.
Even Eliot, lowest of the low, slave-born and slave-raised, knew that name. Everyone in the territories knew it. Captain of the Third Watch, commander of the eastern territories, the man who'd put down the rebellion at the Red Wells by poisoning the water-stones until the rebels had no choice but to surrender or die of thirst. The man who'd discovered three hidden settlements in the deep desert by tracking water-seekers back to their secret pits. The man who never showed mercy, never hesitated, never questioned his own righteousness.
Tall—taller than any man Eliot had ever seen, perhaps six and a half feet from boot sole to crown. Broad across the shoulders in the way of men who'd spent their lives swinging swords and axes. His face looked like something carved from the same stone as the canyon itself—all harsh angles and weathered planes, baked dark as old leather by decades under the killing sun. Gray threaded through his close-cropped black beard. But his eyes... his eyes held the worst thing. Not cruelty, not rage, but calculation. The cold arithmetic of a merchant weighing profit against loss, a farmer deciding which animals to slaughter before winter, a commander deciding which men to send to their deaths for the greater good.
He wore the leather of a Watch Captain, blackened and oiled until it gleamed like a beetle's carapace in the shaft of golden light he walked through. His insignia—a water drop falling into an open palm, surrounded by a circle of thorns—was embossed on his chest in silver that had tarnished to gray. His sword belt carried three blades—a longsword on his left hip, a curved falchion on his right, and a long dagger in the small of his back. The hilts showed the wear patterns of weapons used often and maintained obsessively.
Captain Kael paused in the center of the chamber, his eyes sweeping across the carved walls, the coffered ceiling, the niches filled with stone figures depicting the ancient covenant—the goddess's gift of water-stone in exchange for devotion, for sacrifice, for absolute obedience to Her laws. His gaze lingered on the ornate details—the geometric patterns that symbolized water flowing through stone, the battle scenes showing the Water Wars when settlements fought over access to the pits, the frozen processions of priests carrying vessels of blessed water—and something like genuine reverence flickered across his weathered face.
He'd been here before, Eliot realized. Many times. This was no stranger stumbling into a forgotten shrine. This was a man who knew this place, who perhaps worshipped here, who had made offerings in that central niche, who had knelt on this floor and prayed for victory, for the goddess's blessing on his campaigns, for guidance in protecting the water-stones from those who would abuse them.
Captain Kael moved past Eliot without a glance, his attention fixed entirely on the goddess statue. His boots clicked against the polished floor with metronomic precision, each step certain, each one carrying him closer to the rose-red niche and the figure that dominated it.
At the sculpture's base, he went to one knee with surprising grace for a man his size. His hand rose, fingers spreading in an intricate pattern—thumb and forefinger forming a circle representing a water-pit, the other three fingers splayed like water flowing from stone. He held the gesture for a slow count of ten heartbeats while his lips moved soundlessly.
"Lady of the Weeping Stone," his voice was barely a whisper, but in the shrine's perfect acoustics, every word carried with crystalline clarity. "Guardian of the Deep Waters. She Who Makes the Barren Rock Flow. I bring you an offering. I bring you justice. I bring you blood for the water You have given us."
His men stood rigid, barely breathing, watching their commander commune with the stone goddess. Several had removed their helmets, holding them against their chests in respect or fear or both. Their eyes darted nervously between their kneeling captain and the goddess's serene face, as though they expected her carved eyes to move, her stone lips to speak, her hand to close around the mask it held.
Petran's lips moved in silent prayer. Joram's hands trembled slightly as he held the hounds' leads. Young Ralven pressed himself deeper into his niche, as though trying to disappear into the carved stone itself.
The light from above shifted slightly as clouds passed across the setting sun, and the goddess's face seemed to change—the shadows deepening in the hollows of her eyes, the carved lips appearing to curve into something that might have been a smile or might have been a warning.