“Who was this Dryman, that he could do this to you?” Noetos asked.
Torve offered no reply.
Captain Duon lowered himself to his haunches with a groan. “Aye, that’s the question. I may have some answers for you. It is time to lay everything out for all to hear, I think. Then we can judge what must be done.”
“Here?” Arathé asked, her hands flashing. “Are we safe here? Won’t the gods hear our conversation?”
“Who knows?” the southerner replied. “I doubt we’re safe anywhere. But I think we may have a short time to ourselves before the gods return to resume their meddling. The Father has achieved his purpose, and the Son and Daughter are disembodied for now. We must take this time to decide what we are to do next, and for that you need to hear what I have to say.”
Stella raised her head from bending over another prone figure. “I do not mean to offend,” she said, “but whatever answers you provide may be somewhat suspect. Before we hear from you, we need to discuss the matter of the voice in your head. I am wary of our plans being overheard.”
“But I can assure you—”
Stella shut him up with a wave of her left arm. “Later. First we attend to the injured. There is a man over here bleeding from the head. His brother does not seem capable of dealing with him.”
“You know who those two are, don’t you?” her guardsman growled. “Two of the Umerta boys. Lenares’ brothers. The southerners apparently hired them as porters.”
There was the briefest quiver in the woman’s arm, the smallest suggestion that she wanted to withdraw, but she said, “And now they are hurt. We must care for them nonetheless.”
“Like they cared for you?” Noetos said, pointing at her missing forearm and hand.
“That… wasn’t the Umertas.”
Beside her, the guardsman stared at his feet.
“More to talk about,” said Noetos. “Or perhaps more secrets. Well, if we are to cleanse and bind these wounds, we need water and cloth.”
“In hand,” the guardsman said. “Kilfor and his father have gone back to one of the other rooms in this place. There was a pool of cold water there. There’s plenty of cloth in our packs, spare clothes and the like. We have all we need.”
So there was nothing for Noetos to do but sit and wait. Others attended those who needed help, others made decisions, others did the things necessary for human survival and comfort. He sat on the sand and ate food handed to him, then lay down and tried to rest, while all around him people busied themselves.
He found the experience of not being needed profoundly unsettling.
An indeterminate time later—it seemed like an hour, but time felt greasy here and it could have been a few minutes or a day or more—Stella asked Duon to explain the voice in his head. Noetos pricked up his ears at this. He’d been expecting, and dreading, this confrontation and the likely outcome.
“We’ll speak Bhrudwan,” Stella said as the others trooped over to where she sat. “We’ve all picked up enough of it over these last few months to understand each other.”
Noetos acknowledged the point as he raised himself to his elbows, then his feet, and followed the others. Most of the Falthans spoke the Bhrudwan common tongue with something approaching fluency, and even the southerners seemed able to understand it, though occasionally they struggled to make themselves understood. Some common language root, no doubt, made it easier to learn. More evidence to support the story of the three gods originating from the same place, he supposed.
Arathé sat to one side of Duon, Conal to the other. Torve lay quietly nearby, only the bunching of his facial muscles betraying his pain. The remainder of the travellers gathered in a group facing the three of them. As though they are to be judged, Noetos thought.
Perhaps Duon felt that too. “There’s no conspiracy here,” he said. “We kept nothing from you. It’s taken us a long time to realise what is going on in our heads, and even longer to work out that each of us shared the phenomenon with two others.”
“So what is it?” the old scholar Phemanderac asked in his reedy voice. “Whose voice speaks in your mind?”
Duon sighed and scratched at his unshaven chin, making a rasping sound. “More than two years ago now all three of us were in the Undying Man’s fortress of Andratan at the same time. I was visiting as an emissary of the Amaqi Emperor, while Arathé had gone there to learn magic. Conal—”
“I’ll tell it myself,” the priest snapped. “I was there as an emissary of sorts, part of a delegation from the Koinobia, the religious movement based in Instruere that some know as the Halites.”
“A spy,” Phemanderac said.
Conal denied it, but no one was fooled. With a voice cloaked in anger at all the injustices visited upon him, the priest described his heroism and courage in playing his part to undermine the Undying Man. The gist of it, at least as it seemed to Noetos, was that the Father—referred to as the Most High—had used the priest as a mouthpiece. Then, some time after that, months perhaps, he began to have thoughts that were not his own.
“Thoughts about women?” Sauxa asked neutrally. “Perfectly natural, son. We all have them.” His son spluttered a laugh.
“Not about women,” Conal said, though he coloured. “I began to harbour rebellious thoughts about the Koinobia and my master, the Archpriest.”
“Also perfectly natural,” muttered Stella. Noetos doubted the priest heard the woman’s words.
“The point is,” Duon said, “all three of us spent time in Andratan concurrently, and all three of us have since experienced remarkably similar symptoms. A cynical voice in our heads, goading us to do things to its advantage. A supply of superhuman strength, though not under our control. I experienced it in the fisherman’s company.” He nodded to Noetos, who sensed what was coming. “We wiped out more than a hundred enemies between us, many of them heavily armed.”
The words were out before Noetos could bend the conversation away from the subject. He’d rather it was forgotten; he was trying to forget it himself.
Arathé waved her hands and spoke in her distorted voice. “I survived a knife in the back,” she told them while Anomer translated. “The voice exercised magic to keep me alive and heal me quickly.”
She then had to explain the context of her statement to those not familiar with the story of what had happened to her first in Andratan and then months later in Fossa. Questions followed, one or two of them vehemently expressed, particularly from Heredrew the Falthan. Noetos could think of no reason why the man should be so particularly concerned.
Robal then described how Conal had rescued Stella from the rogue Lord of Fear. “Never seen such strength and speed,” the guardsman told them. “And afterwards the priest seemed unaware of what he had done.”
More questions followed, another story painstakingly told, more time wasted. This was followed by an account of Conal’s attempt to kill Stella and Heredrew in some Falthan city. This story actually begged a few questions, but Noetos forbore. He was becoming increasingly uneasy about the amount of time they were spending in the House of the Gods. Though he knew it was irrational, though he acknowledged the gods would be able to find them anywhere they went, he still felt vulnerable here. And all the while a dead body lay on the sand a short distance away.
“So,” he summarised, before anyone else could launch off into yet another tale, “you all hear the voice of someone you do not know. He’s a magician, able to lend you powers you don’t normally have. And, by all accounts, he does not necessarily have our best interests at heart.”
Three nods.
“You think someone in Andratan put something in your heads.”
Again, three nods.
“Then there’s only one solution,” he said, the words forming before he could question them. Pre-empting the obvious conclusion. “You three need to leave the rest of us. It is too dangerous for you to remain.”
There was a general indrawing of breath.
“Father!” his so
n cried out. “How can you even suggest such a thing?”
Noetos found himself asking the same question. His own daughter, whom he’d thought lost! Yet he had a responsibility to everyone here.
“Having a presence amongst us capable of slaying anyone without a moment’s warning is simply intolerable,” he said.
“There are many among us with such power,” growled Heredrew from somewhere behind him, in a voice that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.
“You have that power yourself!” Duon shouted at the fisherman. “Must I tell everyone here all the details of what happened in the Summer Palace at Raceme? You drew power from a voice in your head!”
This was not where he wanted the conversation to go. “That magic came from the sacrifice of my daughter, who acted as a conduit for hundreds of refugees from the city,” he said angrily. “A perfectly legitimate exercise of her magical powers. Nothing at all like yours.”
He decided not to mention that the voice in her head might well be able to reach him through her. Might even have assisted him in the Summer Palace. If the others couldn’t figure that out, he’d not help them.
“You’d drive your own daughter away?” This from Stella, in the gentlest of voices.
“I do not see it as driving anyone away,” Noetos replied wearily, aware—and secretly grateful—that he was going to lose this argument. “Rather, we are simply depriving our enemy of information. How can we help our three friends if our every plan is overheard by the voice in their heads?”
“Spoken like a soldier,” said Stella. “Perhaps I’d feel more comfortable were you to speak like a father.” She stared at him with something akin to loathing on her face.
Why do people always follow sentiment rather than common sense? He gave it one more try. “As her father, I want Arathé to have the best chance of getting free of this curse that has her in its grip. If that means sending her away—in the company of a priest and a very capable soldier, I remind you—so we can work out in secret how to save her, then that is what, as a father, I ought to do. If I give in to sentiment and keep her here beside me, we all might lose our lives.”
Incredibly, as he scanned his fellow travellers, he found himself facing a dozen hardened expressions. They don’t understand. None of them, it seemed, could take the tough decisions. His son’s attitude he could comprehend, but the others were leaders. This ought to be the sort of equation they dealt with on a daily basis. He wondered at the scrupulousness that forced him to argue for what was right and against what he wanted. Was it some failure in him; or was their rejection of his argument their failing?
They hate me, he realised. They think me unfeeling. They will never follow me.
“You should not send them away,” said Lenares. “If you send them away they will be hurt. The hole in the world will swallow them up. We need to protect them.”
Murmurs of agreement rippled across the group.
“Very well,” Noetos said, trying to contain his anger and hide his relief. “But this decision should be reviewed often. And those three”—his finger punched the air in their direction—“must report to us every word this voice speaks in their minds. No more secrets.”
Without waiting for a reply, he rose from his position at the side of the gathering and strode rapidly away across the sand, scuffing at the dirt. Walking off his frustration and confusion, just as he had done in Fossa after every argument with Opuntia. Just as unsuccessfully.
He returned a few minutes later—it felt like a few minutes later—to find a fire lit and people eating food that would surely have taken far longer than a few minutes to prepare. Time itself was playing tricks here; but then it was the House of the Gods, in which the rooms moved about and the entrances could seemingly be anywhere. He squatted down near the fire.
“Now, to the question you asked earlier,” Captain Duon said, drawing his gaze across those gathered around the fire and nodding to Noetos. Duon’s features were pinched, his lips pursed, as though about to deliver unwelcome news. “Who was Dryman?”
“He was a liar,” Lenares said. “An evil and cruel man. Look what he did to my Torve!”
Duon was clearly familiar with interruptions from the young cosmographer. “Yes, he was a liar, but even more, he was a deceiver. Lenares, you have a great gift, but you did not penetrate Dryman’s disguise.” His voice was gentle. “That is because Dryman had help from a god. You saw how he died. The Father, through Heredrew and Stella, confronted Dryman and spoke to him as the Son. The Father tricked his Son and killed the body he inhabited, Dryman’s body, but the god escaped before Dryman died and so continues to live.”
“The Father called him Keppia,” Lenares said. “Keppia spoke to the Daughter through Dryman’s lips, and she called him her brother. Yes, he was the Son, Torve told me that.” Her brow crinkled in concentration. “But I don’t know how he managed to hide it from me for so long.”
“There’s more, Lenares.” Duon sighed. “Dryman was the Emperor of Elamaq.”
Her eyes opened wide; Noetos could not remember seeing her surprised. “I know, Torve told me that too. He tried to tell me for weeks, though I didn’t understand. But how did you work it out?”
“I overheard him talking with Torve,” Duon said. “Only a few days ago, or I would have warned everyone. I’m sorry I didn’t reason this through sooner. In fact, I now have reason to believe the Emperor planned all this well in advance of us leaving Talamaq.”
Lenares stood and started to pace. “The… No, I would have… But I saw the Emperor on the balcony as the expedition left.” She paused a moment. “No. I saw someone on the balcony. Not the Emperor. Someone pretending to be the Emperor.” She pulled at her lip. “Therefore the Emperor must have been somewhere else. Someone took his place because… because the Emperor wanted to leave Talamaq without people knowing. He left with us. Disguised himself as Dryman the mercenary, and I could not tell because I’ve never seen the Emperor’s true face. He always had it hidden behind a golden mask. I knew something was wrong though. I just didn’t know what.”
She rubbed at her reddened eyes, then turned away. Everyone watched quietly as she walked the few steps to where the body of the mercenary lay wrapped in cloth. No one spoke.
They all know this is hers to reason out, Noetos realised. She’s the one who prides herself on knowing secret truths about people from their numbers. The others are giving her the opportunity to deal with the blow to her pride.
“Look,” she said as she pulled aside the cloth covering the corpse’s bloody face. “There’s the callus where his mask rested on the bridge of his nose. Why didn’t I see? I can see now! All the clues were there. Torve tried to tell me, but for so long he could not. I wondered why, I thought Torve was keeping secrets.” She pulled the cloth over the face. “But you weren’t,” she said, turning to the Omeran. “You weren’t. I am sorry, Torve. You had to obey him. You wanted to tell me. But I couldn’t work it out! And because I couldn’t work it out, he cut you.”
“I tried,” Torve said, his voice little more than a croak. “I tried to tell you.”
The man needs water, Noetos thought, but before the thought was fully formed Stella reached out with a skin.
The Omeran handed back the water skin, cleared his throat and continued. “I didn’t know who he was either, until he revealed himself the night we stayed with the Children of the Desert.” Noetos had no idea what Torve referred to. “That child—I’m so sorry, Lenares, but the Emperor commanded me and I could not disobey him.”
“I understand,” Lenares whispered. “You are Omeran.”
“Torve, you should not have to tell this,” said Duon. “But it must be told, so allow me to continue. The Emperor seems to have conceived a desire to torture innocent people, and he forced his servant Torve to accompany him on their expeditions. I overheard him commanding Torve to obey him in this, which was when I began to piece this together. Too late to be of any use, regrettably.”
“
We tortured hundreds of people,” Torve said, his eyes closed, his voice like stone grating on stone. “The innocent and the guilty. Anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves in the dungeons of Talamaq Palace. My master kept notes. He… he wanted to discover the secrets of death.”
“Because he wanted to live forever,” Lenares said triumphantly. “I saw that when I first met him.”
“Yes. I did not want to help him, but he was my lord. Despite appearances, he was a good master. He treated me like a human, a real person, and even loved me in his own way. He loved me more than he loved anyone else.” The man’s voice broke. “I loved him in return. He made me into more than any Omeran has been for a thousand years. He taught me how to read, gave me books, and granted me access to the Great Library. He dressed me in finery and took me to his court, despite the murmurs from the Alliances. He relied on my counsel. I would have done almost anything for him, even without the need to obey him. But not torture people; I didn’t ever want to do that, even though—” He swallowed, lowered his face, then looked up again a moment later, his eyes clouded. “I enjoyed the science of death, the thoughts it generated, the speculations we shared as we took people through the gates of death.” He lowered his head and hissed, whether in pain or heartache, Noetos could not tell.
“When he sent me north with his army I was saddened and gladdened both. I was sent from his side for the first time since I was gifted to him as a child, and felt abandoned. Yet I was relieved also, because now, I believed, the torture would stop. But when Dryman revealed himself to me I was forced once again to help him. We researched dozens of people on our way north. I am so sorry. His death—it has lifted a great burden from me, but… ” His face crumpled.
“I don’t understand this,” Phemanderac said, wriggling uncomfortably and grunting as he resettled his bony backside on the sand. “Everyone has a choice to disobey, even if it costs their life. You seem a good man, Torve. How could you do such things?”
“Omerans are bred to obey,” Lenares said. “Everyone knows that. Mahudia said that just as an olive tree cannot produce grapes, so an Omeran cannot go against his master’s commands. Three thousand years of careful breeding has produced animals that cannot disobey their masters.”
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