Epiphany of the Long Sun Read Online Free PDF

bull and the other beasts outside, but the sacrifice of Maytera herself.
    "Sacrifices are of two kinds. In the first, we send a gift. In the second, we share a meal. Thus my dear sib and I dare hope it will not shock you when I tell you that my dear sib has taken for her use some of the marvelous devices that sustained our beloved Maytera Rose. Even if we were disposed to forget her, as I assure you we are not, we could never do so now. They will remind us both of her life of service. Though I know that her spirit treads the Aureate Path, I shall always feel that something of her lives on in my sib."
    Now, or never.
    "We are delighted that so many of you have come to honor her, as it is only right you should. But there are many more outside, men and women, children too, who would honor her if they could, but were unable to find places in our manteion. It seems a shame, for her sake and for the gods' as well.
    "There is an expedient, as some of you must stirely know, that can be adopted on such occasions as this. It is to move the casket, the altar, and the Sacred Window itself out into the street temporarily."
    They would lose their precious seats. She half expected them to riot, but they did not.
    She was about to say, "I propose-" but caught herself in time; the decision was hers, the responsibility for it and its execution hers. "That is what we will do today." The thick, leather-bound Chrasmologic Writings lay on the ambion before her; she picked it up. "Horn? Horn, are you here?"
    He waved his hand, then stood so she could see him.
    "Horn was one of Maytera's students. Horn, I want you to choose five other boys to help you with her casket. The altar and the Sacred Window are both very heavy, I imagine. We will need volunteers to move those."
    Inspiration struck. "Only the very strongest men, please. Will twenty or thirty of the strongest men present please come forward? My sib and I will direct you."
    Their rush nearly overwhelmed her. Half a minute later, the altar was afloat upon a surging stream of hands and arms, bobbing and rocking like a box in the lake as a human current bore it down the aisle toward the door.
    The Sacred Window was more difficult, not because it was heavier, but because the three-hundred-year-old clamps that held it to the sanctuary floor had rusted shut and bad to be hammered. Its sacred cables trailed behind it as it, too, was carried out the door, at times spitting the crackling violet fire that vouched for the immanent presence of divinity.
    "You did wonderfully, sib. Just wonderfully!" Maytera Marble had followed Maytera Mint out of the manteion; now she laid a hand upon her shoulder. "Taking everything outside for a viaggiatory! However did you think of it?"
    "I don't know. It was just that they were still in the street, most of them, and we were in there. And we couldnn't let them in as we usually do. Besides," Maytera Mint smiled impishly, "think of all the blood, sib. It would've taken us days to clean up the manteion afterward."
    There were far too many victims to pen in Maytera Marble's little garden. Their presenters had been told very firmly that they would have to hold them until it was time to lead them in, with the result that Sun Street looked rather like the beast-sellers quarter in the market. How many would be here, Maytera Mint wondered, if it hadn't been for the rain? She shuddered. As it was, the victims and their presenters looked soaked but cheerful, steaming in the sunshine of Sun Street.
    "You're going to need something to stand on," Maytera Marble warned her, "or they'll never hear you."
    "Why not here on the steps?" Maytera Mint inquired.
    "Friends…" To her own ears, her voice sounded weaker than ever here in the open air; she tried to imagine herself a trumpeter1 then a trumpet. "Friends! I won't repeat what I said inside. This is Maytera Rose's last sacrifice. I know that she knows what you've done for her, and is glad.
    "Now my sib and her helpers are going to