Troy Denning - Faces of Deception

Perhaps they thought ugly ears could not hear.

The celebrants sat scattered throughout the half empty temple, men with cleft chins and women with doe like eyes, all strikingly handsome or ravishingly beautiful, dressed in silken elegance and bathed in exotic perfumes. They were reclining on velvet love couches and resting on marble settees, murmuring in soft distress as they waited for Atreus Eleint to walk the Aisle of the Adorer. Some thought it blasphemy to let him drink from the Pool of Dreams. Others claimed his presence had already ruined attendance. They all agreed that today would spell the end of the Church of Beauty in Duhlnarim.

"What you waitin' for?" whispered Yago, looming over Atreus from behind. "I thought you wanted this."

The ogre was dressed in his best ceremonial armor, filling the marble entryway with a ten-foot wall of burnished leather and gleaming bronze. He had a raw, heavy-boned face with the sloping forehead, jutting jaw, and wart-covered hide typical of his race, but even this brutish visage drew less comment than Atreus's.

"I do," said Atreus, "but I'm nervous."

"What's to be nervous about?" Yago thumped Atreus's back with a hand the size of a buckler. "Go on."

Atreus nodded and started up the aisle, his arms spread wide to display the brocade inside his cape. The pattern depicted the tail of the sacred peacock, fanning out to either side of Atreus's body. Though a master weaver had embroidered the design from thread of gold, it drew no more ovation than his velvet doublet or silk leg cannons. Even the: finest clothes could not mask Atreus's singular shape; the hunchbacked form with the lopsided hump and jutting neck, the oversized arms, the bowed legs and one pigeon toed foot.

Atreus stopped at the Show Ring and executed a graceful pirouette, spinning as lightly upon his deformed toes as any dancer. The celebrants covered their mouths and fell to tittering. No one clapped, even when he folded his arms in front of his chest and brought the two edges of his cape together, displaying the golden likeness of Sune Firehair. After today, he would be a celebrant in the Church of Beauty, and they did not consider that worthy of applause.

Atreus swallowed his disappointment, pasted a shad-lipped grin on his mouth, then executed a deep bow. If most of the celebrants grimaced and turned away, he did not blame them. His face was a gruesome, misshapen thing covered with lumps and swellings, laced with red veins, so abhorrent to look upon that he could not pass a mirror without shuddering himself. But if his appearance offended the worshipers of Sune Firehair, his wealth did not. They had been happy enough to accept the new couches upon which they reclined and the gurgling fountains and marble statues that decorated their temple's new garden.

Atreus turned toward the silvery dais in the front of the chamber, where three heartwarders stood waiting. Like all of Sune's priests, they were incredibly attractive. Their faces had that balance of symmetry and proportion that was the foundation of human beauty, a certain natural harmony that did not strike the eye so much as simply please it. By comparison, Atreus's own features were grossly imbalanced, with some parts much too large and others not large enough and nothing quite where it belonged. Had someone divided a portrait of his face down the center (not that he had ever asked an artist to paint such a hideous work), it would have been impossible to tell that the two halves belonged together.

"Atreus Eleint, through your devotion you have earned the right to look into the Pool of Dreams," said Heart-warder Julienne, the founder of Duhlnarim's Church of Beauty. "Will you avail yourself?"

"I will." From the seats behind Atreus came a chorus of disapproving groans that Yago quickly silenced with a muted growl. The three heartwarders pretended not to notice the exchange, flashing smiles as lustrous as they were practiced, Unlike the celebrants, who were guests of the temple and therefore free to behave however they wished, etiquette required the heartwarders to make every worshiper feel welcome. Of course, good manners had not prevented Julienne from broaching the subject of a nice silken hood, but Atreus had politely declined, citing Sune's sacred exhortation to "hide not away." Besides, if he had to have such a hideous face it did not seem unfair to ask others to look at it. Julienne extended her hand.

"Then come."

Her assistants, a hazel-eyed beauty and a handsome young man, descended the stairs to take Atreus's gangling arms. Though the lightness of their touch betrayed their revulsion, Atreus's grin broadened into a heartfelt smile. Julienne grimaced at the sight of so many gray, snaggled teeth.

Leaving Yago at the base of the stairs, the assistant heart-warders escorted Atreus up to the Pool of Dreams. It was a raised oval basin about twice as large as a bathing tub, with silver sides embossed in a tangled pattern of intertwined lovers. Atreus kneeled beside the basin and kept his gaze fixed on Julienne, reluctant to shatter the joy of the moment with a glimpse of his own reflection.

"Why are you looking at me, Atreus Eleint?" Julienne cast her emerald eyes upon the water. "What you seek is in the pool."

Atreus took a deep breath, then lowered his gaze and gasped in astonishment. There was no reflection, only still black water as deep and dark as a rainy night. Remembering Julienne's words, he kept his eyes fixed on the glassy surface. A scarlet halo appeared far down in the depths, growing brighter and larger as it rose toward the surface.

Behold, Adorer, the Face of Beauty. The voice was at once breathy and dulcet, and so soft that Atreus could not tell whether he heard it with his ears or his heart. Hear, Worshiper, the Voice of Love.

The halo became a flowing mane of flaming hair, and then a woman's face appeared inside the ring. She was impossibly beautiful, with sapphire eyes and a tiny nose and lips as red as fire.

"II hear, O Goddess!"

The face hovered just beneath the surface of the water, shimmering and staring up at Atreus with no sign of revulsion or distaste. The rest of the temple darkened around him. and he lost all sensation of place and time. To Atreus it seemed he was floating in the night sky, hovering face-to-face with Sune Firehair herself.

The goddess pursed her lips in an almost mortal way, then asked, "Atreus Eleint, what are we to do with you?"

Atreus's answer was quick, for he knew exactly what should be done. "Take away this face, Goddess. Make me handsome."

"Take away your face?" The goddess furrowed her brow, and even her scowl was radiant. "How can I make you handsome? Beauty comes from within."

Atreus's heart fell. He grew so dizzy with anger he thought he would fall into the pool. How many times had he heard that same cliche from some well-meaning matron or sanctimonious priest?

He had expected more of a goddess, but he knew better than to say so.

"If beauty comes from within, then only a demon could look like this." Atreus ran a set of spindly fingers down his cheek. "What have I done to deserve such a face?"

"What have you done that you don't?" Sune asked. "From the time you were a child, all you have thought of is your face, of how fate cheated you. Perhaps you would have preferred your mother had let you die?"

Atreus fell silent, afraid to admit how many times he had wished just that. He knew little of his true family. According to Yago, his entire clan had perished during the Ten Days of Eleint, when the peasants of neighboring Tethyr had risen to massacre their nobility. Atreus had survived only because the family sorcerer had disguised him as a baby ogre and entrusted him to the care of his mother's loyal Shield breaker bodyguards. Yago, the captain of those guards, had taken the newborn back to Rivenshield to raise as best an ogre could, faithfully safeguarding the enormous inheritance sent along by the child's mother.