Free City of Ice by Laurence Yep Page B

a goddess who punished oath breakers like the thirsty emperor and the rich man with horns.
    â€œKushan art likes to depict the kindnesses that the goddess does, but the Sogdians worship another aspect of Nana,” Kles murmured.
    â€œYou Kushans are secure in your power,” Roxanna said sincerely, “but we Sogdians often live among strangers and far away from our own kind. We prosper because everyone knows we deal fairly.”
    â€œSo your goddess reminds you to keep your word,” Bayang murmured. “And She also serves as a warning to your customers of what will happen if they break a contract with you.”
    For a moment, it seemed the statue’s blank eyes were gazing right at Scirye and she remembered how she had stood back at the museum with the dead and injured all about her, smelling the blood and looking through the dust wreathing that other statue of Nanaia and promisng Nanaia she would pay any cost if the goddess would make her into an Avenger too.
    You’re being silly, Scirye told herself. After all, it’s only a statue.
    Roxanna had extended her arms with her palms upward as a suppliant. “I ask thy patience with me, O Nana,” she began in formal Sogdian. “Thou seizeth the lawbreaker like a lion, and that is Nana. Terrible is thy fury, and that is also Nana. Thou foldeth the babe and the old crone into thy dark embrace, and that, too, is still Nana….”
    Scirye could not help closing her eyes and extending her arms just as Roxanna did before she began her own prayer. I’m doing my best to get the ring back, Scirye thought. But don’t you want someone else who’s older and stronger and smarter?
    Suddenly there was a grinding noise. When Roxanna gave a gasp, Scirye opened her eyes. Nanaia was slowly extending the arrows toward her, triangular points first. At they drew nearer, the arrowheads seemed to swell larger and larger until they filled her field of vision.
    The shrine had been very warm, but suddenly she was shivering in a cold, bitter wind. With a shock, she realized she was no longer in the shrine but upon the slope of a mountain. Below her was a strange city. The buildings were all in ruins, the roofs collapsed, the walls disintegrating. And far in the distance was a mountain roughly shaped like a lion’s head.
    She was standing in the middle of a large platform. Here and there through the layers of muck, the wind had exposed a bare patch of marble. A row of pillars flanked either side, their bases covered in accumulated dirt and the flowery capitals at the top cracked and weathered. They had supported ornate arches, a few of which still rested on top of some pillars, but most had fallen and lay in piles of rubble. There was no sign that there had ever been a roof, so perhaps this place had been left to the open air.
    At the very end, three giant stone columns stood just beyond the platform’s edge. They rose upward into the sky, their tops crumbled by time, but they looked vaguely like the dense branches of trees.
    Before the three columns was a large bronze brazier on tripod legs, and she felt invisible strings tug her toward it. Despite the layer of soil, her soles felt the grooves worn into the floor by generations of feet.
    As Scirye drew closer, she saw that the brazier was green with age and time had eaten small jagged holes into the side. The pillar closest to it was blackened from the smoke of past fires in the brazier. And there was just a trace of a sweet but stale odor of incense that still lingered in the bowl.
    Then from her right a flute sounded high and sweet, and from her left a drum answered with cheerful thumps. From overhead she heard rustling sounds and saw living tree branches sprouting from the stone columns, and winding around the branches were flowered vines that cast down a heavy perfume.
    The flautist, a man in a fur kilt, danced by with a high kicking step. From his head sprouted a pair of antlers. The