Preposterous.
Finally, Holger lost his patience. The inquisitors might have kept going all night, given rein, but he didn’t let them. “Enough,” he declared. His snowy moustache drooped above a deep scowl. “You won’t get anything out of that one.”
The lead inquisitor, a gray-maned Revered Son named Rabos, glowered for a moment, as if he might challenge Holger’s orders and carry on anyway. Instead, though, he exchanged looks with his fellows, then rose, nodding. The three priests stepped back, heads bowed, and signed the triangle. Holger walked forward, drawing his sword.
For all the weeping he’d done, the bandit met his death bravely, bowing his head and whispering a prayer to Paladine before the blade descended. Holger made sure it was quick, a single stroke lopping the man’s head from his shoulders. It was a grim duty and one he chose not to shirk by ordering another man to do it. More than a dozen men had died by his sword over the past month. Now, as the blood poured from the brigand’s body-it was always surprising, how much spilled forth-Holger wiped his blade clean with a handful of dry grass and decided this man was the last. He had spent enough time in the south. The land was secure, or near enough as made no difference. The time had come.
Half an hour later, he was back at camp, summoning his officers to him. An hour after that, riders galloped forth, bearing messages for the squads he had dispatched throughout the southern fiefs. It was time to gather again and march. Govinna awaited.
Lord Ossirian leaned against the railing atop the Pantheon’s highest tower. Beneath him Govinna drowsed in the morning light, smoke drifting from a sea of stone chimneys dotted by the green islands of temple roofs. His men walked the walls, bows and crossbows ready, and patrolled the city’s streets, watching for trouble. His grim gaze went past all that, though, on to the hills to the south. His brows lowered, his bearded jaw tightening as though he could see the enemy through sheer will alone. The imperial army, however, steadfastly refused to appear.
It was out there, though. He could sense it, like a spoor on the wind. War was coming, and he was going to lose.
He’d first realized things had gone wrong when he learned of Kingpriest Symeon’s death. Ossirian had been to the Lordcity many times, as recently as a year ago, and he knew enough of the imperial court to understand what the power shift meant. Symeon, he’d been certain, would negotiate, but Kurnos was a different matter. With the former First Son on the throne, Ossirian had the sickening suspicion that everything, all he had done, would come to nothing.
Then the soldiers came, and suspicion turned to certainty.
Riders had been arriving from the south for a week now, more every day. The tidings they brought were always the same. The Scatas had arrived in a town-one day Oveth, the next Espadica, even his home fief of Abreri-looking for signs of bandits. Sometimes they found none and quit the town in a rage. Other times they did, and people died.
He’d received word from Luciel, too. He’d dreaded what might happen if the soldiers discovered Tavarre and his men, but somehow the villagers had fled before that could happen. As if that were not wonder enough, they had managed to escape the Scatas and were marching north even now.
He’d heard the stories of the refugees’ flight from men Tavarre had sent ahead, the tales of the monk who had destroyed the Bridge of Myrmidons. It was hard to discount them as fancy when they came from the lips of men who claimed to have seen the span collapse, but he told himself it had to be. Myths abounded of priests who could do such things, but they were hoary tales, dating back a thousand years to the Third Dragonwar and before. No cleric wielded that kind of power these days-and likely no one ever had. It was all stories, legends made up by the church. Ossirian might want them to be true, but that didn’t make it so.
The same went for the other tale that preceded the so-called Lightbringer, of how he had cured the Longosai. Ossirian had heard the same story many times over the past few days. It had spread quickly through Govinna, folk speaking in hushed voices of how their neighbor’s cousin or the uncle of a friend had felt the healing touch of Brother Beldyn. People listened to the stories with hope, for the plague had come to Govinna as well. It was still spreading slowly, but already a hundred were dead, and five times that many were sick, with more falling ill every day. In the crowded city, it wouldn’t take long for the Longosai to rage out of control, like a flame in summer-dry brush. Folk knew it, too, and fear lurked in their eyes as they wondered how long it would be before they, too, lay wasted and feverish in their beds, coughing, vomiting and waiting for death. With that spectre hanging above them, it was small wonder so many wanted to believe the stories about the Lightbringer.
Plagues and miracle-working monks, however, were far from Ossirian’s main worry this morning. Neither, in fact, was the imperial army, though he knew that would change once word came of its progress. Today, of all the things that troubled him, the foremost was the Little Emperor.
Ossirian never truly intended to harm the patriarch. Even when he’d taken Durinen prisoner, the threats he’d sent to the Lordcity were little more than a bluff. Perhaps another man might have been able to kill a hostage in cold blood, but Ossirian could not. He’d gambled, though, that the church hierarchs wouldn’t guess that and would bargain with him-at least that was his hope, before Symeon had died.
He cursed, a bitter taste in his mouth. None of that mattered any more. The Little Emperor was going to die anyway.
It had been an amazingly stupid thing for Durinen to do. Last night-a scant few sleepless hours ago, in fact-the Little Emperor had tried to escape. Unable to face confinement in his own church any longer, he had attacked his guards when they brought the evening meal to the tower where they held him. The Little Emperor was a strong man, and he’d overcome the guards, leaving one man unconscious and the other with a broken arm. That gave him enough time to slip out and flee into the Pantheon’s halls, seeking a way out into the city.
Before he could flee the temple, however, the guards had raised the alarm and sealed the building. He’d tried to hide, but one of Ossirian’s men tracked him down in the Pantheon’s servant’s wing. The man had had a crossbow, shouting for the Little Emperor to surrender. Foolishly, Durinen had tried to flee, and just as foolishly, the man had shot him.
Ossirian was no stranger to battle or to injured men. He knew a mortal wound when he saw it and could tell if it would kill a man fast or slow. He’d taken one look at the quarrel lodged in the patriarch’s belly-too deep to pull out without taking half his insides with it-and bowed his head. Durinen might last days, even a week, but it would not be pleasant, and the end would come just the same. The prayers and medicines of the Mishakites Ossirian summoned wouldn’t change that, any more than they could stop the Longosai. Now the Little Emperor lay back in his tower cell, drugged into a stupor with bloodblossom oil, awaiting the end-whenever it came. With gut wounds, you could never tell.
The tread of feet echoed up the tower steps, faint from far below, and Ossirian reached for his sword. In time a young man appeared, breathing hard. Ossirian recognized him-it was a lad from his own fief-but he still didn’t lift his hand from his weapon. The boy bowed, wheezing after his climb. It was more than three hundred steps to the top of the tower.
“What is it now?” Ossirian snapped, his patience frayed.
The boy drew back at his anger, stammering. “I was looking-that is, I wanted to-you told me to tell you-”
“Tell me what?” Ossirian pressed. He knew it already- Durinen was dead, he was sure of it. He’d lost the last thin hope he had of saving his people from the Scatas. “Out with it!”
“Lord,” the boy said, more composed now. “It’s Baron Tavarre. The outriders spotted him and his lot on the road, about a league south of here. They’ll be at the gates within the hour.”
Ossirian blinked, surprised. He glanced over his shoulder, out across the hills once more, then, without another word, he pushed past the boy and dashed downstairs to the Pantheon below.
Chapter Twenty
Word the survivors of Luciel had come spread through Govinna with remarkable speed. By the time the city’s massive gates creaked open, folk were pouring out of homes, taverns and shops to fill the narrow streets. Some came because they had family or friends in the south and wanted to know if they still lived; others because the First Daughter-former First Daughter now-was with the refugees. More than a few young women turned out in the hopes of catching the eye of Lord Tavarre, a widower now and heirless. Most of those who packed the winding roadways, however, did so for none of those reasons. They came to see the monk, the miracle-worker, who cured the Longosai.
Ossirian went out with an armed escort, watched over by archers on the city’s battlements, and met Tavarre and his men just beyond bowshot of the walls. The two lords embraced each other roughly, and there were tears on both men’s cheeks when they parted. Scratching his grizzled beard, Ossirian looked past Tavarre to the mob of refugees. They were scrawny and exhausted, shivering in their dirty clothes. Nearly three weeks had passed since the fall of the Bridge of Myrmidons, and the folk of Luciel had not borne it well. They were well, though, with no sign of the Longosai among them.
Ilista sat her horse nearby, looking grave and troubled, and behind her-also ahorse-were two young men. The first wore fighting leathers and shared his saddle with a skinny, golden-haired girl. The other was clad in a dirty gray habit and had eyes like blue diamonds. The sun’s light was pale, muted by the gray sky above, but around him the air seemed brighter, glittering like the snow on the hilltops did.
“You must be the one we’ve heard about,” Ossirian said, “the one they call Lightbringer.”
“I am,” said Beldyn.
“The stories are true? You healed these people?”
“They aren’t stories,” insisted the young bandit beside the monk.
Ossirian recognized him then, beneath the road-grime and the scraggly whiskers that patched his cheeks. MarSevrin, the one who had brought him the Little Emperor, and begged leave to return south, so he could be with… with his dying sister. Ossirian paled, looking at the girl who rode with him. She was frail with hunger, dark smudges under her eyes, but as for the Longosai, there was no sign of the disease. Ossirian’s lips parted as Wentha met his gaze, then blushed and lowered her eyes.
Catching his breath, he looked back at Beldyn, who smiled quietly within his radiance. For a moment all he could do was stare, caught by the monk’s piercing gaze, then he eased his steed aside and waved toward the city, the green roofs of its temples rising above the walls.
“Come on, then,” he said. “We have need of you.”
When they first entered the city, the crowds were so thick, they could barely get out of the gatehouse. Folk pressed in on all sides, jostling and craning to see the newcomers. Many were sick or maimed. The blind, the lame… men afflicted with palsies, women stricken by barrenness… and here and there, those whose hands and throats showed the first darkenings of the Slow Creep. Those with the plague numbered more than the population of Luciel at its height, and they were only the beginning. In sickbeds all over the city, the people of Govinna were dying, their bodies ravaged by the Longosai.
When they saw the refugees for the first time, a great cheer rose from the crowd, hands rising to punch at the sky, a few throwing flowers or copper coins as Tavarre and Ossirian’s men formed a wedge and started shoving their way into the throng. A mighty shout rose from the mob’s midst, a cry that spread so fast that suddenly everyone seemed to take up all at once.
“Beldinas!” they cried. “Beldinas! Praise to the Lightbringer!”
Ilista stared in amazement as the party inched its way into Govinna, pushing slowly up the street. She had seen mobs like this before, in the Lordcity. It was the sort of crowd that had greeted Symeon on those rare days when he set foot outside the Great Temple. Looking out upon the sea of smiling faces-even those marred by sickness-she felt the lurking disquiet again. It was one thing for the people of Luciel to adore Beldyn, for what he had done for them, but this… these people had never glimpsed him before, yet they cried Beldyn’s name in the church tongue, as if he were a Kingpriest himself. She shuddered at the fanatical fire in their eyes. If this was how they looked on him now, how would they react when he cured their sicknesses?
Beldyn did nothing to quell her apprehensions. He hadn’t been in a city of any size in years, had lived in a crumbling monastery since he was a child. He should have blanched at the sight of so many shouting people-particularly when what they shouted was Ms name-but instead he looked about, tall in his saddle, and nodded to the swarming throngs, signing the triangle over them. Somehow, a young woman pushed through and threw herself at him, clutching at his cassock, but when Cathan moved to shove her back, Beldyn shook his head and clasped her hand in his, then gently nudged her away. She melted into the crowd again, her face glowing with joy.
They adore him, Ilista thought. Do people throng and yell for Kurnos this way?
She shook her head, shivering.
It took more than an hour at such a slow pace, but finally they reached the Pantheon, its high towers and slanted, copper roof looming at Govinna’s heart. There they dismounted, leaving the folk of Luciel, under the watchful eyes of Tavarre’s men. The baron, meanwhile, walked beside Ossirian leading the way to the temple, while Beldyn followed, still smiling, Ilista at his side. Cathan paused to kiss his sister, then left her with the other refugees, laying a hand on his sword hilt as he fell in protectively alongside the Lightbringer.
The mob filled the courtyard before the church-a plaza not as large as the Barigon in Istar but nearly so-even spilling up the long, broad stair leading to its great, dragon-carved doors. Only after those doors boomed shut behind them, shutting them inside the temple’s dim, cool halls, did the shouting fall away and the press of bodies stop. Ilista pressed her medallion to her lips, her ears ringing.
The Pantheon’s vestibule was dim and cool, the frescoes and tapestries on its walls all but lost in shadow. Clouds of pungent incense filled the air, glowing ruddy about the flames of candles. At the far end, another pair of doors gave onto the main worship hall, a vast, pillared space lit by stark shafts of light from high windows. Gold and silver gleamed all about, and though it bore little resemblance to the basilica in Istar-the hall was oblong, not round, and an altar, not a throne, stood at its head-its opulence still brought a pang of homesickness to Dista’s heart. After so long in the wilderness, she was back in the church’s embrace. It was nearly enough to make her forget she was Foripon.
Beldyn looked around, eyes shining, and nodded to himself.
Ossirian led them out of the worship hall-the priests within watching with raised eyebrows as they passed through — and down a carpeted hall to a long circular stair. Up they went, through an archway marking the entrance to the Patriarch’s Tower, past parlors and prayer rooms, up and up and still higher up, until at last they stopped before a pair of brass-bound doors, where two men in chain jacks stood watch. The guards dipped their spears to Ossirian, then stared at Beldyn as they opened up and let the group pass through. Ilista heard them whispering to each other as the doors thudded shut again.
They entered a study with a broad snowwood desk, velvet-cushioned chairs and shelves lined with dusty books. A door opened on the far end, letting out an old, haggard woman in blue vestments. Ilista watched, thinking how long it had been since she’d seen a Mishakite healer. The woman spoke softly with Lord Ossirian, shaking her head at his questions. Finally she stepped back, her face grave, and led the way into the Little Emperor’s private bedchamber.
The smeU of bloodblossom hung heavy in the room. Its heady, soothing scent told Ilista all she needed to know. The Mishakites were sparing with the precious oil, for it was both expensive and dangerous. More than one rich lord had become addicted to the smoke that came from burning it, lost in a blissful haze while the gold vanished from his coffers. If the healer was using so much, Durinen’
s pain must be terrible indeed.
“He sleeps,” the old Mishakite said. “He was screaming earlier, so I eased his suffering.” She kissed her fingertips, then pressed them to the corners of her eyes to sign the goddess’s twin teardrops.
The room was well appointed, jewels glistening on its walls, silken curtains hanging across a walk to a balcony outside. Mosaics of wild animals cavorted on its ceiling. The bed was a mound of furs and cushions in its midst. Once more curtains had surrounded it, but they were gone now, torn down and cast into a corner. There was blood on them and in the bed as well. Looking at the Little Emperor, Ilista caught her breath.
Durinen was shirtless, his bare skin white and shining with sweat that soaked his graying hair as well. His proud face was smooth, unlined by pain-the bloodblossom’s work, surely-but muscles still jumped in his neck, and his fingers clutched the blankets like talons.
Worst of all, though, was the wound itself. The quarrel still lodged in his belly, surrounded by bandages that bloomed scarlet where his blood soaked through. The quarrel moved as he breathed, rocking back and forth with each exhale, and the drug’s fumes could not hide the bilious stink coming from it.
Calmly, Beldyn reached to the neck of his cassock and withdrew his medallion. He brushed his fingertips across the patriarch’s brow, then reached out and touched the bolt’s iron shaft. Durinen’s face tightened, a gurgle of pain bubbling up his throat.
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