Mother of Heretics: Bastards of the Gods Dark Fantasy (Enthraller Book 2)

by T. A. Miles

  Deitir hesitated again, seeming to summon the strength to repeat the words his father had spoken. “He said the sea is going to take all of us.” He smiled nervously after the words were out. “I know it doesn’t seem like anything, but the way he said it.”

  Cayri couldn’t help but to recall the account of Haddowyn. She hoped dearly that yet another leading position had not been usurped by their enemy. “Deitir,” she said and gently laid her hand on the young man’s arm. “Please, take me to him.”

  His defenses fluttered to wakefulness again, causing him to almost draw back from her, but she held onto his arm and made her request again.

  “Let me try to help him,” she said. “Please.”

  A flash of emotion swept across his face, which made him appear even younger than he was, and he asked, “Can you?”

  Cayri couldn’t guarantee him anything. She let her hand slide down to his and squeezed it with as much reassurance as she could offer. “I’ll try.”

  Deitir accepted that and squeezed her hand in return. He drew in a breath to steady himself and let go afterward, turning toward the mansion. “This way.”

  Cayri walked with him across the street, believing that this had been his intention when he’d requested the meeting. There seemed no other reason for him to request her presence directly outside of his home. She understood the stress he must have been under, watching his parents in their respective states of stress and unlikely attitude, and listening to that of others as they openly sought counsel and direction from his father. Perhaps some of them were looking to him to take over in his father’s lack of presence to the role of governor. Undoubtedly, Deitir found that premature. Without an official handing down of office, he would have to preemptively initiate the transition. She wondered if Tahrsel’s deputy had pressed for it.

  The guardsmen at the gates opened the grounds to them immediately when Deitir arrived. He stepped through with an authoritative air that better suited the angry youth she had witnessed in the shrine garden earlier. He had a very confident gait. Cayri had difficulty keeping up with it as they traversed the open stone yard to the tall, double doors of the main house. They sat embedded beneath articulate relief work that depicted elements and people of the sea.

  A doorman opened one side of the doors obediently and Cayri was ushered inside. The front hall was well lit and deep. A grand stairwell wrapped two sides, branching off at the second floor. A massive chandelier painted golden blossoms of light onto polished brown tiles. Two high, squared doorways lay to either side of the front room, and through one of them passed the Lady Ilayna. She’d retired into a gown for the evening, but sacrificed none of her strong presence for it. Her eyes fixed sharply on her son, who paid her a defensive frown, then both seemed to admit defeat in the moment they each looked toward the stairs.

  Ilayna swept across the hall in her evening attire. “I requested the meeting for tomorrow morning,” she said with some apology directed at Cayri.

  “Tomorrow might be too late,” Deitir inserted.

  “Urgent matters are better attended early,” Cayri said to both of them. In secret, she included all of the belated decisions that had been made in this city.

  Ilayna acceded with a nod and sighed. “I’ll take you to my husband.”

  Cayri followed the woman to the stairs, noting that Deitir came along, though at a distance.

  “If he orders you to leave the city or declares you under arrest, I’ll handle it,” Ilayna said. Her tone was agitated. “Though, truthfully, you’ll be lucky if he says anything to you at all.”

  “How long has he been this way?” Cayri asked.

  “How long has he been settling into inaction? Years. How long has he been acting like a total stranger?” The aged woman looked over her shoulder at Cayri. “Only in the last few weeks.”

  “How should I introduce myself?”

  “Not as a priest, thank you for asking. Just give him your name, if he asks it. If he presses, you’re a friend of mine.”

  “All right,” Cayri said.

  At the top of the stairs, they went right, down a tall passage with framed portraits to either side along richly paneled walls. A tall, paned window provided a frame for the city in its gentle sprawl toward the sea.

  Ilayna stopped at a door situated to the left of the passage. She knocked only to announce her entrance while she opened the door. The study beyond was a large, yet cozy arrangement of dark wood in the walls and furniture with accents of deep blue and red in the carpeting and drapery. Across from the door sat a wide desk with a tall, large-boned yet lean man behind it. Short-cropped gray hair contrasted against brown skin that age had pulled somewhat from a broad facial structure.

  “Raiss,” Ilayna said, prompting for the elder’s attention.

  “I hear you, Ilayna,” the governor said in a tone that came across relaxed and unstrained, but with threads of impatience weaving through it. “I heard you when you opened the door. It seems extraneous to announce yourself vocally as well.”

  The look on the lady’s face was one of unhappy resignation. Cayri could feel a similar reaction from Deitir, who he remained in the hall behind her.

  “You brought someone with you,” Tahrsel noted. “Who could it be and more importantly, what does she want?”

  As the governor was finishing out his statement, he lifted his gaze from the desktop and looked at Cayri very lucidly.

  “This is...” Ilayna began.

  But her husband raised a hand to preclude introduction. “No need to tell me. I’m quite sure she’s capable of telling me herself.”

  “Raiss...”

  “Leave, please,” he said and though the request seemed abrupt, he maintained his relaxed manner of speaking. “Let your guest and I get acquainted free of your opinionated interruptions.”

  Ilayna released a frustrated sigh and directed Cayri into the room ahead of her. “Perhaps he’ll let you get a word in. He seems very talkative now.”

  “Thank you, Ilayna,” her husband said dismissively and also with a light edge of sarcasm to match the one Ilayna laced into the end of her own words.

  Cayri nodded to Ilayna to convey her appreciation and hopefully some assurance that she would do all she could. Ilayna’s response was simply to leave and to close the door firmly behind her.

  “A man is beside himself when his wife thinks him insane,” Tahrsel said soon afterward. He looked up at Cayri again. “Reasonably so, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Times are trying,” Cayri offered, on behalf of both husband and wife.

  “Yes,” Tahrsel agreed in a mildly dubious tone. “They certainly are that.”

  Cayri decided to step closer.

  As she did so, Tahrsel raised one hand as if in invitation and said, “Please, come in. Have a seat.” He leaned back in his own, resting his elbows on the arms of the chair and folding his hands in front of him. “Would you like anything to drink?”

  His attitude was acerbic and impatient, if not distrusting. Cayri opted not to sit down and politely declined the offer of a drink.

  “What about something to eat?” the governor asked next and his tone was not of genuine offering. When Cayri failed to respond immediately, he added, “No? Money, then. Take it all, if you’d like it. Take this house, too, and the entire damned city directly out from under my blind eyes.”

  His light brown eyes were looking at her intently and his words were sharp, but he didn’t appear upset. He retained a calm posture and didn’t raise his voice beyond its naturally projecting register.

  “That is what you believe is going to happen, isn’t it?” he continued. And then he asked abruptly, “Who are you with? Which side of this mess have you come to represent and what makes you think I’m not doing everything in my considerable power to protect this city?”

  Cayri took the opening she was given. “The danger may
be greater than you know.”

  Before she was finished speaking, Tahrsel shot up out of his chair and swept the books and papers in front of him off the desk. “I know the danger! I know, better than anyone, the threats pressing against this city! From the war, from the damned witches, from the activists who think that their scurrying around hurriedly and haphazardly putting together ideas and theories they want to call progress is helping anyone but themselves and their egos…

  “The allied cities hound me constantly for men, for supplies…for whoever can shuffle on weary legs to the borders dragging behind them whatever they can reasonably carry. The coven reminds me at every opportunity that the gods have a singularly vindictive act of destruction in store for all of us defilers of nature. And the activists…what they want, I cannot even tell you but if I hear another word from them I’ll have the entire lot of them arrested, including my wife!”

  He looked to the door with that last statement, projecting his voice enough so that Ilayna might hear if she were in the hall.

  Cayri allowed a space of silence to follow his outburst. She felt that the man had been needing this; some outlet through which to vent his frustrations. He must have felt isolated by the circumstances surrounding him, finding it difficult to address the most important concerns let alone all of them at once. He wasn’t possessed by demon, but by anxiety.

  Still, it seemed unlikely that the man Cayri envisioned through the attitudes of his wife and son would have sat letting stress compound for twenty years or more. Both indicated that they felt Tahrsel was behaving unnaturally, just as Vaelyx had expressed in his journals. While he may not have been possessed by one of the Vadryn, it was still possible that something was weighing him down, trapping him in a helpless state of distrust and paranoia. He was alienating himself. She doubted very highly that the man would allow her to touch him and enable a spell to calm his emotions.

  “What’s coming from the sea?” she decided to ask. Though her tone was patient, she meant for the directness of the words to disarm him into answering, over worrying how she might have come to such a question.

  Tahrsel looked at her, giving no insight as to what may have been happening in his mind with the newly relaxed expression on his face. He seemed aloof suddenly and perhaps finished with their conversation.

  “Who are you?” he asked her suddenly. There was an instant when he seemed interested in knowing—where it may have been urgent that he know—but then he glared. He straightened from his desk and folded his arms behind his back. The continuation of his questions came with an air of calm, but also with an acidic undertone. “What do you know about what’s going on in this city? What could you possibly know?”

  A short-lived panic stirred beneath Cayri’s skin in that instant, where the governor’s personality seemed to alter. It didn’t change, so much as it felt reinterpreted. In that moment, she wondered if she’d read his state wrong and he was possessed after all.

  Yet, there was something about it that felt different. She began to think about Korsten and Merran’s account of the Vadryn they’d come across, but as she listened to Tahrsel speaking she noticed that his words carried a heavier accent than they had before. Demons had no regional dialect or tongue; one would not affect an accent onto their vessel nor would they suppress it. The mouth and tongue would move as it was accustomed to moving. A demon took over the host’s instincts, they did not displace them.

  “Get out of here,” the governor commanded. “And consider yourself fortunate...to not—be arrested.”

  His words faltered somewhat, as if he were running out of breath. He stepped back. The chair in his path prompted him to sit and he did, dropping into the seat as if he had no more strength left to him.

  Cayri approached him carefully, pausing when he coughed and waved her away.

  “Go,” he started to say, but then began to wheeze. He slumped over more in his chair, stiffening at the same time.

  Cayri went to him, catching his hand in both her own when he tried to ward her back once more. “Governor,” she said, leaning over him. “I’m here to help you.”

  His eyes slid in her direction half lidded while his head lolled. Healing was one of her talents, linked to red, and she took advantage of that immediately, performing a spell via contact which moved into the man’s blood, seeking to regulate. Lines of Emergence emblems flushed to visibility along her fingers, making paths toward her wrists.

  The governor’s body had begun to stiffen and yet move erratically, particularly in his limbs. Cayri took note and continued with the only spell of Healing she knew, a spell which enabled her to calm a body and hopefully stabilize it, in some cases preventing injury. Mending actual damage was for priests of Merran’s talent. It was likely that his presence would yet be required.

  Cayri gently squeezed her hands around the governor’s, then stroked her fingertips from his thumb down to his wrist, applying minimal pressure there. The soft light emitting from her skin pulsed almost imperceptibly, with an irregular rhythm at first, but then it leveled to a steady pattern while Tahrsel’s body relaxed. He appeared unconscious, but his breathing was steady now.

  As her concentration on the spell subsided, she became alert to a new tension in the room and she looked over her shoulder at Deitir, standing in the doorway. His pained expression brought harshness to his features that was tempered immediately by the moisture gathered in his dark eyes.

  “He’s alive,” Cayri assured him and watched a bead of that moisture escape, running a clear line down his young face.

  Deitir held his expression tightly, causing his frown to quiver. The arrival of his mother brought him to a more controlled state at once, and he even released some of his tension on a quick breath as he intercepted Ilayna. He repeated Cayri’s words to his mother, which seemed to alleviate the panic that might have had the woman running across the room a moment before.

  “What happened?” she asked, leaning into her son, a gesture which may have provided them both with support.

  “I don’t know,” Cayri admitted. “I’ve stabilized him for now.”

  “Will he be all right?” Ilayna asked next.

  Again, Cayri didn’t know, but she chose to say, “I believe he will be. He needs rest and a physician.”

  Ilayna nodded. “I’ll send for one.”

  The lady moved from her son’s side, leaving Deitir to join Cayri in relocating the governor from his office to his bed.

  Fifteen

  In light of the journals, Irslan had insisted that Stacen take him to his uncle if he knew where he was. He assumed that the man did and determined also that he had been in communication with him consistently in the last two decades. Whether or not he was, Stacen refused to be of further assistance by taking his leave and retiring from his service, which was all just as well. Irslan would have dismissed him for such blatant deception and disobedience anyway.

  Well, he harbored no real ill will against the man, but at the moment he had one goal and damn Stacen for introducing it to him and then abandoning him. It was clear that something about this entire affair made Stacen nervous. Irslan tried to think back on the man’s behavior as long as he’d been in the house. He tried deciding that Stacen’s strangeness was anxiety over current affairs that had been pending for too long. The conclusion wouldn’t hold. Stacen had always been that way, since before it would have made sense for him to be conspiring anything with anyone. It was the death of Irslan’s father that had set their household off and, sadly, it was probably some scheme of his uncle that had involved Stacen in business the man probably had no taste for.

  Irslan went to Konlan. He’d been a friend and advocate on behalf of Indhovan and the war’s end as long as Irslan had known him. It was disconcerting to have read of his uncle’s distrust and blame where Konlan was concerned, but perhaps there would be a sensible explanation and they had his uncle’s information from the
journals to deal with. Their situation was much worse than any of them had anticipated. Obviously, they couldn’t rearrange past events. The time lost was indeed quite gone, but they had to better assist the priests and themselves. They were waiting for an attack that had already begun. Worse, they’d been debating the likeliness of it.

  His uncle had uncovered vital evidence of invasion and had been led to feel abandoned and isolated. It seemed clear that someone wanted him to feel that way and to cripple his relationship with the Vassenleigh Order. The priests had been lied to and Indhovan was left unattended except by the blind fools like Irslan and his colleagues, operating under a false sense of security.

  It was only the recent clarity of the murders and disappearances that had inspired them to proper action. Even Irslan in the last twenty years had communicated none of the urgency to Ceth, because he was not aware until lately that a true threat was so imminent. He had let himself believe that the war was being handled at the borders, that they had nothing to fear so far away and that if they were patient they would eventually learn of the war’s end. He believed that many of his peers had come to the same lulled state.

  Lulled was the operative word in that chain of thought. Lulled by whom? Irslan intended to find out so that they could set things right with their allies and work together to spare Indhovan a horrific defeat at the hands of murderers.

  His determination and energy was forcibly tempered, however, by being made to wait on his friend. It was unlike Konlan to be so slow to respond to a visit, but there was nothing for it save to be patient. Irslan had spent the first several minutes pacing with pent enthusiasm and now he sat on the edge of a plush bench with his chin balanced in one hand, his mind running impotently through the silence.

  Servants were seeing to house affairs in nearby rooms. Irslan considered going to have one of them rouse Konlan again, but he resisted and eventually his friend greeted him with a typical smile that set Irslan immediately at ease.

  “The hour grows late, my friend,” Konlan said while Irslan was rising to meet him. “I had planned to retire for the evening. Forgive my delay.”