“No. You did right, Hal.” Abramm unfastened the ties of his cloak.
“He’s in the sitting chamber,” Haldon said. “And quite restless.”
“Is he?”
The chamberlain stepped around behind him to lift the cloak from his shoulders as Abramm stripped off his gloves. “I brought him some orange juice and twistbreads,” said Haldon. “Would you like some, as well?”
“Just some juice.” He handed over the gloves and strode down the short hall past Haldon’s tiny quarters into his own bedchamber, then through the study beyond it and into the royal sitting chamber.
Master Belmir sat in one of the blue-and-white-striped divans arranged around a table before the marble fireplace. Sipping a glass of orange juice, he stared up at the huge painting of the Battle of the Hollyhock on the wall beside the hearth without seeming to see it. He looked smaller than Abramm remembered, more wizened, his long braid thin and more than half white. Looking around as Abramm entered, he leaped to his feet.
“Your Majesty,” he murmured, giving Abramm a short bow. “Thank you for seeing me.”
“Please, sit down, Master,” Abramm said, taking the divan facing Belmir.
After Abramm had settled, Belmir sat himself, still holding on to the juice glass and staring down at it through his wire spectacles as if he didn’t quite know what to do with it.
The last time Abramm had seen this man, he had been riding at Gillard’s side, appearing out of the mist to block Abramm’s attempt to meet the morwhol outside the Temple of Dragons. According to what Abramm had learned, when Belmir had seen Gillard go after Abramm, and Prittleman had run for the valley, he’d ridden on into the pass himself, leading his holy men with their pan of flames in a futile attempt to stop the beast. There hadn’t even been a confrontation. The morwhol was so focused on Abramm it had blasted by them, killing most of them incidentally before it sucked up their tiny flame and ran on. Belmir was one of the few who survived. He’d been brought back to the Holy Keep without fanfare and there had all but closeted himself these last months, healing from injuries reputed to be more than physical.
Because of this, plus the fact that few had even noticed Belmir at Gillard’s side that day—along with blatant sentimentality—Abramm had declined to pursue him for his treasonous stand with Gillard. The man had been his discipler for eight years, after all, and Abramm had grown to love and respect him in ways he could hardly articulate. Nor was he the only man who’d supported Gillard that Abramm had pardoned.
“Well, Master,” Abramm said, “what brings you out of seclusion so unexpectedly? And at such an early hour?”
The holy man looked up, his eyes magnified by the lenses of his spectacles as they flicked to the scars raking Abramm’s face, then down to the juice glass again. He turned it once in his hands, then set it on the table between them and sighed. “I’ve come to plead for the High Father’s release.”
“Ah.” Plead, he said, not demand. That’s promising.
“Though not in an official capacity, of course,” Belmir added. “Few, in fact, know I’ve come. And many would be irked if they did. But I felt I might offer a perspective you have not yet heard.”
“I’m listening.”
The old man’s eyes went again to Abramm’s scars, held there a moment, then dropped to the shieldmark on his chest, glittering between the openneck edges of his blouse and jerkin. Abramm did not wear the mark exposed when he was formally dressed anymore—but when working or relaxing he made no effort to hide it, and now his former discipler’s gray eyes fixed upon it for some time before rising again to meet his own. “You must know the kind of tensions his imprisonment is breeding. It’s certainly not the way to make yourself friends among us.”
As Haldon arrived with his juice, Abramm cocked a brow at his guest. “I didn’t think making friends with Mataians was even possible for me.”
Belmir grimaced. “Perhaps ‘friends’ is too strong a term. Let me just say there are those among us who do not support this radical element that is taking hold of our faith. We believe the Words command us to respect and obey the civil leaders Eidon has placed over us.”
Abramm sipped the cold, tart juice, giving himself a moment to cover his surprise and the sudden strong surge of hope his former mentor’s words had provoked. He set the glass on the table, too, then looked up at Belmir.
“Yet you’ve come to plead for the release of a man—your superior, in fact—who obviously does not agree with you.”
Belmir frowned. “The people are afraid, sir. Rumors are running rampant. And with your obvious preferences for Terstan advisors, your impending marriage to a Chesedhan, the closing down of the city, the search, the High Father’s arrest, and the destruction of the Keep . . . no one is sure what you’ll do next. Many fear persecution and seizures. There is talk you’ve already executed Bonafil and that you mean to use the tax and conscript writs you asked for to build an army that will purge the realm of your enemies. They believe you mean to abolish the Mataio. Even the leaders who would not oppose you hesitate to speak out.”
“There will be no purge,” Abramm said firmly. “No persecution, no seizures, no legal sanctions nor fines. Each man answers to Eidon for his choice of faith, and I have no intention of interfering with that.”
“But the people . . . do not know you well enough to rest in that, sir. Especially when you continue to hold their spiritual leader unheard from and unseen . . . and even if your intent is otherwise, you know there will still be persecution. There are Terstans who will take it upon themselves to drive out the heretics or avenge themselves for past wrongs.”
“And the persecutors will be punished. Which has already happened, I note.”
“Yes, sir. That’s true. You have been . . . quite fair.” Belmir’s eyes dropped to the mark on Abramm’s chest again, held there a moment, then dropped further to his own hands now folded in his lap. He sat there for some time, and when he lifted his head again, he looked deeply grieved.
“I don’t understand,” he murmured. “You were the most worthy novice I ever discipled. After you disappeared, I prayed for years for your deliverance, rejoiced when you returned last fall to think my prayers had been answered. Only to find you had . . .” He glanced again at Abramm’s shieldmark, then returned his gaze to Abramm’s, his brow furrowed with bewilderment. “What happened to you, son? How could you have been so strong and been turned so thoroughly?”
For a moment Abramm hardly knew what to say. In the first place because of his surprise at the sudden radical turn the conversation had taken. In the second because it was the first time any of his Mataian brethren had asked him why he had changed. And in the third, how could he possibly express it all in a way Belmir would understand, and even more important, accept? If he told him the first and strongest reason: that a former High Father had actually been possessed by a rhu’ema, one of the very creatures the Flames were supposed to ward, the man’s ears would close immediately and the conversation degenerate into cries of “Blasphemy!” and “How dare you!”
Better to emphasize the positive—the reality that Abramm had found at the end of all the lies and illusions.
He sighed and rested his elbows on the chair arms, clasping his hands before him. “I suppose, if you boiled it all down, it was because from the first it was Eidon I sought, not the Mataio. I wanted with all my heart to know Eidon. And in the end I came to see that he wasn’t in the Flames.”
The old man frowned at his fingers as they traced the grooving on the chair’s wooden arm. “And you think you’ve seen where he really is?” Belmir couldn’t quite keep the dryness out of his voice.
Abramm smiled. “I know I have. He lives in me. He speaks to me—”
His words sent a jolt through the other man, who looked up wide-eyed. “You claim the divine lives within your own flesh! Sweet Elspeth have mercy, sire! Do you hear what you are saying?”
“Blasphemy to you, I know.” He smiled again, ruefully now to think f
or all his care he’d provoked the cries of blasphemy anyway. “I thought the same thing at first. But I know differently now. There is no way to come to know Eidon on our own terms. Shadow cannot wipe away Shadow, not with soap and water and not with endless sacrifices of wooden slats.” He looked down at his fingers and was surprised when a Star of Life took form on them, hardening as he caught it between thumb and forefinger. “It was a long and painful road,” he said. “On which everything I’d ever thought was presentable and righteous about me had to be stripped away before I would admit the truth. But in the end I did, and it was the wisest decision I have ever made.”
He rolled the Star between his thumb and forefinger, then leaned forward to set it on the table beside the empty juice glasses.
Belmir stared at it, pale-faced. Then his eyes darted up to Abramm, and the look on his face was one of disapproval and utter disappointment.
“I see I have made you uncomfortable,” Abramm said. “Forgive me. Some find it repellent. Others see but a dull and harmless pebble. I hoped you might see at least a glimpse of what it really is.” He reached forward again and took it back, closing his fingers about it and feeling it dissolve into his palm. “I came back changed because I found him, old friend. These scars are but the testimony of that fact . . . for they remind me that it was his Light that slew the beast that made them.” He paused, and then his brows lifted in sudden understanding. “You saw the morwhol suck up your holy flames that day, didn’t you? Saw them make it stronger when they should have driven it away. Maybe you even felt the pulse of Light that destroyed it. That’s why you’ve closeted yourself all these months, isn’t it?”
His former discipler’s wrinkled face had become cool and hard. “You see things as you wish it, son, not as they are. It was the Flames that delivered me that day. And how the morwhol could have—”
The man’s frown deepened as his eyes focused on something at Abramm’s back, even as the sense and flicker of movement at the corner of Abramm’s own visual field drew him around. To his amazement a cleaning girl had just entered the room and was now busily dusting the sideboard. What the plague? Haldon knows better than to let cleaning staff wander in while I’m receiving guests! He frowned at her and said sharply, “Miss, you may leave us now.”
The girl gave a start, half turned in his direction and bobbed a curtsey. With her face turned toward the carpet, she mumbled, “Aye, sir,” and fled into the adjoining study. Leaving him stunned and breathless with recognition. What is she doing here? And dressed as a servant again! Does she have no sense at all?
But this was not the time to unravel that mystery. He turned back to Belmir, who unfortunately used the interruption to return his focus to the matter of the High Father’s imprisonment.
“Bonafil is the High Father, sir,” he said as if the other conversation had never occurred. “So long as you continue to detain him, the people will grow increasingly fearful. If you release him, however, or even allow him visitors who might testify of his well-being, it would go a long way toward allaying the people’s concerns.”
Abramm had to bite his tongue, tempering his disappointment with the observation that the other topic had likely run its course anyway and was just as well left as is. Still, it was hard to let it go.
“If you just allow him to be seen at his window, it would help,” Belmir went on. “I think most people, in their hearts, will acknowledge he was wrong to confront you as he did. . . . But after a reasonable time of punishment . . .”
“It was always my intent to release him eventually. When the time is right. Whether that be sooner or later, I cannot say yet. Though I am far from convinced that having him returned to his place of authority would have the kind of calming effect you suggest. Nevertheless, I will take your counsel under advisement.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Abramm stood. “If that is all, then?”
“Yes, sir, I believe it is.”
CHAPTER
15
As soon as Belmir left, Abramm turned his attention to Lady Madeleine. He expected that, having been discovered, she’d have taken her cue to escape down the back stair, but when he stepped into the study to make sure, she was waiting for him.
“My lady, have you lost your mind?” he asked as he shut the door behind him. “What are you doing here—and pretending to be a servant no less?!”
“I didn’t want anyone to see me come in. I’ve cloaked myself. No one recognized me—”
“I recognized you.”
“But only because you were angry that I interrupted your discussion with Master Belmir. And you know me well.” She turned back to the small wooden table she had been in the process of pulling out of its niche, the marble figure of a water nymph playing with dolphins set aside on the floor. “Did you conjure a Star for him?”
He refused to let her sidetrack him. “The others know you well, too.”
“Yes, but they don’t look at me like you do.”
“Like I do?” Alarm sharpened his voice. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean you actually look at me. The others don’t.”
He felt his brows rise. “You expect me to believe that I’m the only one who actually looks at you?”
She rolled her eyes. “No. But you’re the king. You see me. The others— they just see a high lady. If I’m not wearing the right clothes they can’t make the shift because, you see, you’re either a high lady or nothing, and the nothings are never allowed to look closely enough at the high ladies to actually see them, nor are the high ones allowed to look—”
“Yes, yes, I’m aware of how that works,” he interrupted, relieved to know it wasn’t more of Trap’s “I’ve seen the way you look at her” nonsense. “That still doesn’t explain—”
“I had to do it.” She seemed barely able to contain her excitement. Her hair floated in wisps around a face that was flushed and eyes that fairly glowed with energy.
“You had to.”
The story tumbled out of her: how she’d found the book tucked between the shelves, brought it back to her apartments to make her map, only to have book and map both stolen while she was at Graymeer’s yesterday.
“Thankfully, I’d had Jemson make a copy of my work in progress, and once I had the newer plans you sent over, I saw where it had to be and came up here to confirm.”
Dressed as a servant, she said, to avoid inciting new gossip. “Though . . . I thought you would be out riding, sir.”
“And when you saw that I wasn’t, it didn’t occur to you to back out, I suppose.”
She frowned. “Well, no. Actually, it didn’t.”
“So someone stole your book and map because he didn’t want you to find something, yet you continued your search for it and told no one.”
“Of course.” She tossed her head. “He might just as well have said ‘You’re on the right track, keep at it.’ I certainly wasn’t going to back down then.”
He shook his head, aghast at her audacity and knowing it would do no good to reprimand her for it. “And so what is it you believe you have found?”
“A hidden library. Just like with the pictures in the gallery.”
He stared at her, uncomprehending.
“You know how I’ve been telling you there are supposed to be records? Journals, histories, memoirs, and such in the royal library that I cannot find? Yet the librarian there tells me they were sent to the University. And when I go to the University they swear they never received them and suggest they were moved to a private library on palace grounds. I seemed to be getting nowhere. Well, that book showed me they were right. There is a private library. Yours. It’s just that there’s more of it than we’ve realized. See?” She gestured toward the niche between bookshelves that she’d uncovered by moving the table. “You can see the spell quite clearly if you put your mind to it,” she said, stepping toward it.
He turned as she did and watched her disappear into the wall with openmouthed astonishment. Moment
s later he followed her, stepping through the cold-lard sensation of illusion into a narrow chamber lined with books and lit by the weak daylight filtering through the window embrasure at the room’s end. As in the main study, the stacks soared past his head, accessed by a narrow ladder whose top end ran along a rail fastened to the upper shelf. Years of dust covered the floor, the drapes, the books, the single table and chair at the room’s midst, the benches of the window embrasure, and even the windows themselves. Its scent mingled with that of mildew and aged books, tickling his nose.
He gazed around avidly, his mind seizing at once on an oddity he’d long noticed without consciously remarking on it: how the outer study’s narrow L-shape embraced a mysterious rectangular space that had no entrances—not even in the adjoining bedchamber. It had been there all along, and no one ever noticed.
Maddie stood beside him as one stunned, even though she’d been the one to theorize the room’s existence in the first place. “It really is here!” she breathed.
“I’m amazed it could be hidden all this time and no one realized it.” Abramm stepped farther into the room. “That window’s not even boarded up.”
“Of course not. Someone would have noticed that.” She turned her attention to the dusty shelves. “But look at all the books!” She started for the wall in front of them, then stopped, turned back, and flicked her fingers. Abramm heard the faint chiming sounds of a cloaking spell. Then she bloomed a kelistar to life and began to brush the dust off the ranks of book spines, tilting her head to read their titles.
No sooner had she begun than she let out a squeak and pulled a volume from the shelf. “It’s The Histories of the Hollyhock! So Master Dewes was right all along. It was here.”
If she’d barely contained her jubilation before, now she gave up trying, hopping up and down, turning to squeeze his arm with both hands in her excitement, then turning back to the book. “I believe this will see a lot of your questions answered!” She blew the dust from its cover and opened it, paging gingerly through the age-yellowed leaves. “Look at all this—firsthand accounts!”
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