“A quest for what?” The Prophet sounded honestly intrigued.
“For…for pleasure,” he offered in a bare whisper, so afraid that at any moment the man would desire something more of him.
“What is pleasure then?” asked the Prophet. “Is seems to me this nebulous idea takes many forms, and all of them equally useless when death is the only end.”
“Perhaps…” Kjieran tried to draw in a breath, but he was shaking so dreadfully. All he managed was a gasp. “P-perhaps it is just a way of p-passing the hours until death,” he whispered.
“My doctrine,” the Prophet stated, clearly displeased with this answer. He drew away from Kjieran, releasing him. “I mislike platitudes drawn from my own teachings.”
Kjieran swayed in place, so cold and so terrified he could hardly breathe. “I’m sorry, my lord.”
The Prophet took hold of Kjieran’s jaw and lifted his head to look upon his face. Kjieran closed his eyes and prayed like he’d never prayed in his life. “I have seen your faces when desire is upon them,” the Prophet observed as he studied Kjieran’s countenance with his darkly scalding eyes. “But I have not been able to engender it myself. Some emotions are so simple—fear, anger, desperation, these you seem to find easily. But desire…that it eludes my understanding makes it intriguing. I would know it better, Kjieran.”
“Yes, my lord,” Kjieran whispered.
The Prophet ran his thumb across Kjieran’s lips, the soft kiss of ice. “What do you desire, Kjieran?”
The compulsion to answer was so complete that only Raine’s earlier binding saved him from telling everything. “To please you, my lord,” he heard himself reply in a desperate gasp. Did he really mean to say it, or had Bethamin dragged it out of him? He honestly didn’t know.
The Prophet released him. “You see, it is empty when I require it, but I know there is desire in you.”
Kjieran dropped his head and stared hard at his feet, fervently wishing he might be anywhere else.
The Prophet returned to his chair radiating restlessness and malcontent. After a moment, he asked, “If I don’t require it of you, what answer will I get from you Kjieran? The same?”
“Do you…wish me to desire you, my lord?” Kjieran braved.
The Prophet was silent for a long time, considering this question. “An intriguing concept,” he finally replied. “Am I something to be desired?”
Trapped in this, Kjieran answered, “Desire takes many forms, my lord.”
“Ah, a safe conclusion. You hide from me. Why?”
Kjieran nearly cried for wanting to answer him because you rape our minds and destroy everything that we are! But he answered truthfully, “Because I fear you, my lord.”
“Yes, fear,” the Prophet grumbled. “That one is easily managed. Here then, we return to the first question. What is it you truly desire, Kjieran? What drives that fire within you which I have so often seen in other men’s eyes? How do I waken it in you?”
The Prophet laid no compulsion upon him that time, and Kjieran knew this was a gift from him, the gift of his trust. He also knew that should he disappoint the man with his answer, it might be the last thing he ever did. So he drew in a tremulous breath and answered honestly, feeling stripped and naked in the telling, “Freedom, my lord.”
“Freedom,” the Prophet repeated, his voice resonating in the chamber, which stood empty save for themselves and the dead man on the floor. Bethamin rose again from his chair, and once more Kjieran felt him approach. He stood helpless before him, merely his pawn to be dispensed with as he saw fit.
Bethamin turned Kjieran to face him, and he placed one icy hand upon Kjieran’s shoulder while another held his bare hip. It was an intimate stance, and Kjieran feared where he would take them next.
“Freedom,” the Prophet murmured again, clearly considering the concept while his eyes assessed Kjieran’s face. Kjieran could not see his expression, but he felt the man’s thoughts. For once they were not riotous, but this did not mean they were pleasant. The Prophet cupped Kjieran’s face with one hand again and ran his thumb across his lips. “This discussion has been fascinating,” he said after a moment. “We must do it again.”
“Yes, my lord,” Kjieran whispered, feeling the Prophet’s thumb binding his lips even as his nets of compulsion hovered hungrily above Kjieran’s consciousness, just waiting to be cast.
Nine
“How deep does the alabaster go?”
- A popular saying in T’khendar
Carian vran Lea draped his arms around bent knees and squinted into the distance. He could just make out the wavering form of the Vestal Raine D’Lacourte making his way back up the long sand dune, his image distorted by the morning’s heat. Balls of Belloth but that truthreader was obstinate. Carian had told him there was nothing around for miles, but no, he had to go see for himself—and take all damned night doing it.
“Who’s the one that’s been here before?” Carian demanded indignantly of Gwynnleth’s unconscious form lying in the sand beside him. “Yeah, that’s what I said.” To be fair, Raine had also been to T’khendar, but that had been three hundred years ago, so Carian didn’t think it counted.
He glanced over at Gwynnleth again. She didn’t look so good. He’d kept an eye on her all night while the Vestal was gone—that is, in between his tirades of alternately cursing Raine and Franco Rohre—so he knew she lived, but he felt unnerved sitting next to her for so long without her saying a bloody word. The avieth always had something to say to a man—most of it uncomplimentary—but that just made her more interesting.
Carian still didn’t know what he thought about being in T’khendar. True, it had been his plan to go there soon enough—had he not been drawn into service for Raine D’Lacourte, he’d have left the moment he got the weldmap from that wily old Kandori woman. But being tricked into traveling to T’khendar…well, that just rankled. Never mind that he could blame their situation entirely on Raine—as he’d said so many times, if the Vestal had let him travel the node to find out where it went, he’d probably have realized how dangerous it was. Then again, he might not have. It had been exquisitely done.
A doubleback by Belloth’s black balls!
Carian fashioned himself one of the best Nodefinders in the thousand realms, yet he doubted he could’ve managed such a complicated and difficult working. The skill needed to pin two nodes to the same nodepoint…you might as well try to move two rivers and make them converge at the same mouth. It was practically Nodefinder mythology to speak of it at all. What’s more, this doubleback ran between Alorin and T’khendar, two entirely separate realms! If Franco Rohre had truly created it, the Espial deserved his most profound respect.
Still, Carian had imagined a more triumphant return, one where they didn’t end up in the middle of the bloody Wyndlass Desert.
Raine was near enough now that Carian could see the sand on his britches and the chagrined look on his face. The pirate leaned back on elbows and extended his long legs in the sand, crossing his boots at the ankle. “Well?” he inquired cheerily.
“You were right.” Raine trudged up the last ten feet of the dune looking exhausted.
Carian gave him a hard look. “You didn’t walk all bloody night, did you?”
Raine threw himself down in the sand beside the pirate and draped arms over knees, hanging his head. “What in Tiern’aval do we do now?” he growled.
Carian had prepared a number of pithy remarks for use upon Raine’s return, but seeing the Vestal so morose took all the fun out of gloating. “Like I said last night,” he said. “We walk—that way,” and he pointed west.
“But the mountains—” Raine made to protest again.
“Look, poppet, I know you think you know all about T’khendar—‘ooh, I was here during the Adept Wars,’” he mimicked in a high-pitched voice, waving his hands in the air, “but I’ve been here recently, savvy? I actually know where I’m going.”
Raine turned him a flat look. Then he turned and
looked behind them at the empty air where the node had been. Then he looked at Gwynnleth’s unconscious form. Then he looked back to Carian. “All right,” he said, sounding defeated. “We’ll do it your way.”
“Might’ve reached that conclusion last night, you know,” Carian complained as he got to his feet. It really was bloody hot. He wasn’t looking forward to carrying the damned avieth either, but Raine sure didn’t look like he was worth much that morning.
Hitching up his britches, Carian dropped to his knees in the sand, grabbed Gwynnleth’s arm and shouldered her up, then exhaled an oath as he straightened. She weighed a good deal more than he thought any self-respecting female should. He blew the hair out of his eyes—hers, not his; his was tied in a knot behind his head—and looked to Raine. “Ready?”
“Lead on, Captain,” Raine murmured, his diamondine eyes as hard as their namesake.
Carian turned them west and headed off. With every step he sank up to his ankles in the sand. To pass the time, he started a stream of invective that only got more creative as the sun got higher.
It was a long morning.
Round about midday, they found a copse of withered looking date palms and stopped to rest in the meager shade they provided. They’d been taking turns carrying the avieth, but Carian’s back and shoulders were still aching. He was really starting to despise her. He took a swig from his flagon and handed it to Raine. It wasn’t smart to drink rum in the middle of the desert, but it sure as silver was smarter than drinking nothing at all.
Raine accepted the flagon and took a sip, somewhat gasping as the rum flamed his throat, “How many days did you say to cross this desert?”
“Six—more on foot.”
Raine looked around at the barren landscape and held his tongue. “Tell me about the node,” he said as he handed Carian’s flagon back.
They’d done little talking before Raine set off into the night to prove himself wrong. Mostly shouting, actually. Besides which, Carian hadn’t known how Franco had done it when they first arrived, but in the intervening hours he’d figured it out. He’d had all night to think about it, hadn’t he?
Carian laid his head in the small bit of shade and stretched out on his back. “Best I can tell, it was a doubleback.”
“Which is?”
“Well, to describe it in layman’s terms, you take two nodes and you pin them to the same nodepoint. Since a nodepoint can only ever open into one node at a time, there’s a switch that occurs as soon as one is traveled.”
Raine considered this. “So the minute Franco took Ean across the one node…”
“Righto, my handsome. As soon as he stepped off the node, the first one switched off and the second one switched on. Then, once we traveled the second node, it switched back to the first, which is why we’re trapped in this wretched hole of Belloth’s burning arse.”
Raine looked frustrated. “Then where did Franco take Ean?”
“Dunno, but they’re here somewhere.” Probably enjoying a good meal and a smoke in Björn’s bloody palace.
“How do you know they’re here? In T’khendar?”
Carian closed his eyes and tried to imagine himself swimming in the sea caves of Jamaii with a hundred naked maidens waiting on the shore to attend to his pleasure. “The nodes have to be close together to start with,” he murmured. “At least in the same realm.”
“Well, that’s something at least,” Raine remarked. He wiped his brow with his forearm and looked up at the sky. Then he frowned. “When did it turn blue?”
“Ages ago,” the pirate muttered.
“Come to think of it,” Raine said, really frowning now, “how is it we’re still on our feet at all?”
“You’re quick, aren’t you?” Carian remarked with eyes still closed. “All night and you just figured out things are a bit different since you visited last?”
“Carian, your manner becomes tiresome.”
“Sarcasm is just one of my diverse talents,” the pirate returned unrepentantly. The man had made him wait all night in the damned sand. He could bloody well listen to him complaining about it for at least a commensurate amount of time.
Raine leveled him a long, steady stare.
Carian could feel his eyes like a hot lamp. “Oh, all right,” he growled. He sat up to give the Vestal an annoyed scowl. “Like I tried telling you last night. There’s elae here now. Go ahead, truthread me or something.” Then he grimaced. Who’d have thought he’d ever offer to endure such torture in the pursuit of truth?
But Raine clearly didn’t want to test his theory anyway. “But Gwynnleth…” the Vestal said.
“Yeah, there’s got to be some other explanation for what happened to her,” Carian muttered with an absent wave of his hand, “because I’m telling you, there’s elae all over the place. Not that it’ll help us much right now unless you can work the fifth and call the wind to carry us out of here.”
Raine still looked unconvinced.
Carian shrugged. “Suit yourself. Believe me, don’t believe me. I don’t give a rat’s arse. But you’re going to have to face it sometime, you know.”
Raine gave him a strange look. “Face what?”
“The truth,” Carian said. He climbed to his feet and grabbed the avieth’s arms again, getting her up onto his shoulders. “Fortune prick me,” he hissed as he shifted her dead weight across his back, “I vow she’s gained ten pounds just lying there.” He pushed his face close to where hers dangled below his shoulder and told her, “You’re going to owe me big time when this is over, birdie.” Then he smoothed a tangled strand of auburn hair away from her cheek and turned to Raine. “Ready?”
“As ever,” remarked the Vestal, sounding anything but.
Perhaps an hour of walking later, something caught Carian’s eye. He paused, hitched the avieth higher on his shoulders, and squinted toward the horizon. He could just make out a dark spec moving across the sky. It would have to be as big as a galleon ship for him to see it from that distance. As the spec gradually grew in substance and shape, Carian arched brows. “Is that what I think it is?”
Following Carian’s gaze, Raine sighed resignedly. “Very likely.”
“Winds blow me proper,” the pirate muttered.
“The drachwyr have always served my oath-brother,” Raine noted unhappily. “He’ll know we’re here now.”
Carian grinned sardonically. “Poppet, I hate to break this to you, but I’m sure he’s known from the beginning. We came through his trap, remember?”
Raine looked wearily to him and then back to the drachwyr soaring in the far distance. He sighed. “No doubt he’ll have us walk all the way to Niyadbakir just to make his point.”
“And what point would that be?”
“Whatever his point is in bringing us here,” Raine replied, leveling him a heated look, “because rest you assured, Carian vran Lea, there is a reason we’re here.”
“Yep,” the pirate agreed, “there sure is—because you refused to let me travel the goddamned node.” He hitched Gwynnleth up on his shoulders, hitched his britches up over his butt, and started off in the direction of the flying dragon. “At least we’ve got a heading now.”
Wearing a black scowl, Raine followed.
They made steady but slow progress through the deep sand, seeing nothing and no one until the sun became a disk in the western sky and Carian vowed he would go no farther. The wind had picked up as the sun fell, and now a steady furnace breeze accosted them. They’d trudged to the top of a dune to get a feel for the lay of things, and Carian decided that was as good a place as any to stop for the night. He slung the avieth off his shoulders somewhat ungently, trusting the soft sand to be more of a friend to her than it had been to his aching legs and ankles, and threw himself down beside her.
“Shade and bloody darkness, but do you owe me big-time, birdie,” he muttered as he rolled in exhaustion onto his back, flinging his arms to either side.
Raine stood at the edge of the dune gazing at the
line of mountains on the horizon. They didn’t seem even one inch closer.
“I’ve been putting some thought to what you’ve told me, Carian,” Raine observed while the wind tossed his brown hair into his eyes.
He’d been quiet for most of the afternoon and seemed to have regained his composure. Perhaps realizing he wasn’t about to keel over and die had something to do with it. Carian could see how facing imminent death by elae-denial could impact a man’s disposition—especially a man like Raine.
“Mmm-hmm?” Carian murmured.
“If you were truthful in telling me how many people are living here…”
Carian felt the tiniest touch of Raine’s power in his head and smiled. “There are five cities the size of Rethynnea,” he returned with eyes still closed, “and Niyadbakir is easily as large as the Sacred City of Faroqhar.”
Raine eyed him cynically. “Why weren’t you forthcoming with this knowledge before, Carian? A man like you…I would’ve thought at least the Guild would know about it.”
Carian grimaced, said a few silent curses and returned peevishly, “It’s because of that damned zanthyr.”
“Ah…” Raine seemed to need little else by way of explanation.
But Carian still grumbled, “We had a bit of a misunderstanding the last time I was here,” feeling like the words were being scraped out of his pride with a dull-edged spoon, “and he—well…he was in a position to demand a certain measure of discretion that I wouldn’t usually agree to.”
“I see.”
“Yeah.”
“Considering the number of people living here now,” Raine observed then, blessedly not pushing Carian for more details about his prior interaction with Phaedor, “it would only follow that there would be elae. I decided to trust you and looked, and the currents have formed a natural pattern, though it is quite different from Alorin’s…which I suppose is to be expected.” Wearing a thoughtful frown, the Vestal sat down and draped elbows over knees. “There is much I do not understand about all of this.”
The Dagger of Adendigaeth (A Pattern of Shadow & Light) Page 13