by Greg Keyes
“Then the arrow did not work?”
“We never had a chance to use it, your grace. We were beset by slinders. We never even saw the Briar King.”
“Slinders?”
“I beg your pardon, your grace. That is the Oostish term for the wild men and women Ehawk reported to you.”
“Ah, yes,” Hespero said. “Did you at least learn more about them?”
“Nothing of note, your grace,” Stephen lied.
“A pity. But still I don’t understand. How did you know to find me here? I came to this place in secrecy.”
“Your grace, I hadn’t the slightest idea I would find you here,” Stephen replied, his mind spinning down the false road he was building, wondering what he would find over the next hill.
The praifec frowned. “Then why are you here? You failed in the mission I assigned you. I should think your first priority would be to report that failure, and the logical place to do that would be Eslen. What on earth brought you to this remote place?”
Stephen’s road had narrowed to a rope of the sort jugglers walked to amuse children. He’d tried it once, in the town square of Morris Top, and the relief at managing to take two steps had felt like a triumph. But it hadn’t been; it had only been two steps, and then he had lost his balance and fallen.
“We came here at my request, your grace,” Brother Ehan interrupted.
Stephen tried to keep his face neutral. He hoped he had succeeded, even though the praifec’s glance already had shifted to the Herilanzer.
“Pardon me,” Hespero said. “I don’t believe I know you.”
Ehan bowed. “Brother Alfraz, your grace, at your service. I was with Fratrex Laer when he went to the monastery d’Ef to cleanse the heretics there.”
“Really. And how is Fratrex Laer?”
“Then you haven’t heard, your grace. Word should have reached you by now; we sent messengers to Eslen. He was slain by the slinders, the ones Brother Stephen spoke of. We were fortunate to escape.”
“So many fortunate escapes,” the praifec commented. “Still, how does that explain your presence here?”
“We arrived at the monastery and found only piles of bone. Everyone had vanished—or so we thought. But that evening we discovered Fratrex Pell, locked away in the uppermost meditation room. He was quite mad, raving about the end of the world and how the only hope was to find a certain mountain in the Bairghs. Less than a bell later, the same fate that befell the monks of d’Ef befell us, and the slinders attacked. But Fratrex Laer thought there might be something to Brother Pell’s ravings, and so he charged us with the mission of saving the books he had with him in the tower and finding the mountain of which Pell spoke.
“Almost too late, we discovered Brother Stephen, locked in a cell in the tower. The fratrex had him captive, forcing him to translate the more obscure texts.”
“I’m confused. How did you come to be in the tower, Brother Stephen?”
“When Aspar, Winna, and Ehawk were slain, I went to the only place I knew,” Stephen said, trying to get both feet planted on the wildly swaying rope. “The only place I knew in the King’s Forest was d’Ef. But the instant I arrived, Fratrex Pell took me captive.”
“I believe you earlier reported to me that Pell was dead,” Hespero said, suspicion in his voice.
“I was wrong,” Stephen replied. “He was crippled—his legs destroyed—but he was alive. And as Brother Alfraz said, quite mad.”
“Yet you believed his wild speculations?”
“I—” Stephen broke off. “I had failed, your grace. My friends were dead. I suppose I was grasping at any hope for redemption.”
“This is all very interesting,” the praifec said. “Very interesting, indeed.” His eyes tightened at the corners, then relaxed.
“I’ll hear more of this in the morning. I’m most particularly interested in learning what Fratrex Pell considered so pressing. For tonight, I’ll have someone show you to your quarters and see what can be done about a meal. I’m sure you’re hungry.”
“Yes, your grace,” Stephen said. “Thank you, your grace.”
A monk named Brother Dhomush appeared and showed them to a small dormitory somewhere in the building. It had no windows and only one door, and that left Stephen feeling intensely claustrophobic.
As soon as they were alone, he turned to Brother Ehan.
“What was all that?” he asked, his heart thundering in his chest. His deeply submerged panic had found a way up now that the immediate danger seemed past.
“Something had to be said,” Ehan replied defensively. “Brother Laer led the expedition to replace us at d’Ef—he was a Hierovasi, of course, like Hespero. With the help of the slinders, we destroyed them all. I reckoned he might know that, but not the details. It looks like I was right.”
“I don’t know,” Stephen said dubiously. “The one thing I do know, I don’t like.”
“What’s that?”
“That we’re here. And Hespero is here. Do you really think that’s a coincidence?”
Ehan scratched his head. “I suppose I thought it was just bad luck.”
“It’s impossible,” Stephen asserted. “He’s either following us or he’s after the same thing we are. I can’t think of any other explanation. Can you?”
Ehan was still mulling that over when Brother Dhomush reappeared with bread and mutton broth.
Dhomush and two other monks slept in the dormitory with them, but by the time the night had half turned above their heads, their breathing indicated to Stephen that they were asleep. He quietly reached his feet down from the hard wooden cot and padded to the door, fearing it would be locked or would squeak loudly if it wasn’t.
Neither was true.
Padding lightly on marble was as close to absolutely silent as anyone could be. Another initiate of Saint Decmanus might hear him, but as they had passed, he’d noticed that the church’s altar was dedicated to Saint Froa, whose gifts usually didn’t involve acute senses.
It wasn’t difficult to find his way back to the library. He approached it tentatively, fearing Hespero would still be there, but found it dark. A moment’s listening disclosed no breath or heartbeat, but he still didn’t feel as if he could trust his ears. Henne had regained more or less normal hearing, as had Ehan and Themes, but none of them had begun with the ability to hear a butterfly’s wing.
Knowing he had to take the risk eventually, he entered the room and felt along the wall for the window ledge where he’d earlier seen a tinderbox. He found it and managed to light a small candle. In its friendly light he began his search.
It didn’t take long to find the first item he sought: a volume detailing the history of the temple itself. It was large, massively thick, and prominently displayed on a lectern. He loved it immediately because he could see that it had been rebound many times to accommodate new pages. All the layers of time were there in the type and the condition of the scrifti bound into it.
The most recent pages were smooth and white, crafted in Vitellia of linen rag, using a secret Church process. The next layer back was more brittle and yellowed, rough at the edges; it was Lierish bond made mostly of pulped mulberry fibers.
The oldest sheets were vellum, thin and flexible. The writing was worn in some places, but the scrift itself would outlast its younger neighbors.
Smiling despite himself, he flipped through the first few pages, hoping to discover when the temple was founded.
The first page was of no use, a dedication to Praifec Tysgaf of Crotheny for his vision in establishing the church in Demsted. Tysgaf had been praifec a bare three hundred years ago; that meant that despite the seeming age of the building, it had not been established in Hegemonic or pre-Hegemonic times.
That meant he wasn’t going to find anything useful here.
Or so he thought, until he reached the last paragraph of the introduction.
It is also fitting that we laud the good sense and basic decency of those who kept this place before u
s. Though lacking the inspired teachings of the true Church, they preserved for many generations a light of knowledge in what is otherwise a dark wilderness. The legend among them is that in ancient times, before the coming of the Hegemony, they lived in a most pagan state, sacrificing to stones and trees and pools of water. During that time, a holy man came from the south who taught them medicine, writing, and the basic tenets of true religion, then departed, never to be seen again. Dark days followed as the armies of the Black Jester came to control the region, yet they kept faith with their teacher. Without guidance, the centuries have corrupted their doctrine, but rather than resisting our coming, they have embraced us with open arms as the bearers of the faith of their revered one, Kauron.
Stephen almost laughed out loud. Choron, the priest who was carrying Virgenya Dare’s journal. Not only had he stopped here, he had in essence founded a religion!
Stephen flipped ahead and discovered to his delight that the next page was older, written in a strange but comprehensible version of Old Vitellian script. The language, however, was not Vitellian but rather a Vhilatautan dialect. Translating it might be possible, given time, but reading it wasn’t, so Stephen scanned through it.
He found the name “Kauron” many times, but it was only after two bells that he spotted what he was really searching for: the word “Velnoiraganas” juxtaposed with a verb that seemed to mean “he went.” Stephen backed up and concentrated on that section. After a moment he went rummaging about the room until he found a scrap of paper, an inkwell, and a quill. He copied most of the page word for word, then scratched out the best translation he could manage.
He departed, and not (would? could?) said why (where?) he was going. But his guide later said they went along the stream (river, valley?) Enakaln (uphill?) to hadivaisel (a town?) and thence the Witchhorn. He had talk with the (old? belly?) hadivara(?)
I went (followed?) to the base (lower part) of the horn called bezawle (where the sun never falls?) and there he bade me leave. I never saw him again.
Never, someone whispered in his right ear. He felt the aspiration, and his muscles stiffened and spasmed from the sheer terror of finding someone so close without his knowing it. He batted at the sound, swinging his right arm and stumbling away at the same time.
But there was no one there.
His mind refused to accept that, and he sent his gaze searching through the shadows. But no one could move that quickly, have his mouth against his ear in one moment and be gone the next.
But he’d felt it, a double puff of breath, because “never” had been “nhyrmh,” in Vadhiian dialect, as clear as could be, and it hadn’t been his voice.
“Who’s there?” Stephen whispered, turning constantly, unwilling to put his back to anything.
No answer came. The only sound not made by his body was the faint lisp of the candle, the only motion the play of light and shadow from that small flame. He tried to relax, but some part of him felt seized in the moment, like a fish striking bait and finding itself on a hook.
Helplessly he studied the random shifting from dim to black to lumined and gradually saw what he feared the most: that the play of light and darkness wasn’t random. That from the moment he had lit that candle he had been surrounded by something studying him more intently than he had been studying the book. Horrified, he watched glyphs and letters trace themselves on the walls and fade, always hinting at sense, never quite forming it.
“What are you?” He thought speaking aloud would help, but it didn’t. It only made things worse, as if he’d been attacked by a brute, pulled a knife, and found it made of a green leaf.
The woorm reared up. The utin crouched in the corner. The greffyn stalked out of the edge of his sight. He felt as if he were in a house painted in gay colors, yet when he leaned against the wall, it crumbled, revealing the rotten wood full of termites and weevils.
Only it wasn’t a room but the walls of the world, the bright illusion of reality shattering to reveal the horror that lay behind.
Nearly weeping, he dragged his eyes from the shadow and back to the candle.
The flame had formed a little face with black round eyes and a mouth.
With a stifled shriek he snuffed the light, and darkness poured in to comfort him. He moved to the window and crouched there on the cold stone, chest heaving, trying to collect his wits, trying to believe it hadn’t happened. He drew his legs and arms up and hugged himself, feeling his heartbeat gradually slow, afraid to move lest he somehow bring it all back.
He heard another voice, but this one wasn’t in his ear. It was a perfectly normal voice, up the corridor.
The book. He reached up and found it with his fingers. He could feel the old vellum section. This might be his last chance to see it, but he dared not light the candle again. Could he tear the pages out? The very thought sickened him, but the answer was no, anyway; the vellum would require cutting, and he didn’t have anything sharp enough to serve. He quickly flipped back toward the beginning, and as he did so, something wisped by his hand. He jerked back, but it touched against his robe and then went to the floor.
He heard footfalls now. He quickly scooted underneath another table.
The footsteps rang closer, and momentarily the doorway was framed in candlelight.
“Who’s there?” A voice he didn’t recognize echoed his own earlier query.
Stephen almost answered, thinking he might be able to make up some sort of excuse, but then he heard a commotion farther away. He froze, and his palms felt chill and damp against the floor.
He could hear Ehan shouting his name, telling him to flee, the clumping of booted feet, the sound of steel drawing. The man at the doorway made a sound like a curse and ran off.
Ehan stopped shouting.
“Saints,” Stephen murmured under his breath. He patted the floor, searching for the paper that had fallen out. The man in the hall was returning, now, at a dead run.
Stephen’s finger touched the paper, and then he had it and was up, dashing toward the window. It was narrow, and he had to turn to squeeze his way into the cold night air before dropping two kingsyards to the ice-hardened ground. The fall hurt more than he had expected it to, but he felt as if he had fire in his veins.
He ran around the building, searching for the stables. He had the horrible Black Mary feeling of running without getting anywhere, and his pulse deafened him to whoever might be coming after him. The thing from the room seemed all around him, and all he could think to do was run until he found someplace where the sun was up and would never go down.
He found the stables more by their smell than by memory, and once inside, he began hunting for the horse he’d been riding since Ever.
He wished he had light.
That wish suddenly was granted as he heard the grating of the shutter on an Aenan lamp and its fiery eye turned to reveal him. He couldn’t see who held it, but whoever it was had a sword; Stephen could see it projecting into the cone of illumination.
“Hold there,” the voice commanded. “Hold by the word of his grace the praifec of Crotheny.”
For an instant, Stephen stood frozen. The lamp started toward him, wavered, and then dropped to the ground, casting its beam sideways.
Stephen bolted for the open door of the stable. He’d gotten only a few paces before someone grabbed his arm. Gasping, he tore at it, and it fell away.
“You’ll want my help,” a soft voice said urgently. He knew instantly who it was.
“Sister Pale?”
“Your Decmanian memory doesn’t fail you,” she replied. “I’ve just killed a man for you. I think you should listen to me.”
“I believe my friends are in danger,” Stephen said.
“Yes. But you can’t help them now. Maybe later, if they live. Not now. Come on, we have to go.”
“Where?”
“Wherever you’re going.”
“I need some things from my horse.”
“The books? The praifec has them. His men had ta
ken them before you even met with him. Come, or he’ll have you, too.”
“How can I trust you?”
“How can you not? Come along.”
Helplessly, mind whirling, Stephen did as he was told.
LEOFF WOKE to screaming and a damp rag on his brow. The screams, of course, were his own, and for a moment he didn’t care about where the rag had come from. But when it moved, he swatted at it and jerked himself up in the bed.
“Hush,” a feminine voice whispered. “You’ve nothing to fear. Just wait a moment.”
He heard the sound of a lantern. A tiny light appeared, then brightened into a flame, illuminating ash-blond curls framing a heart-shaped face. It was odd, Leoff thought, how he’d never really seen the origins of Mery in her mother, but in this light the resemblance was obvious.
“Lady Gramme,” he mumbled. “How—” He suddenly realized that his upper body was exposed and drew the covers up.
“I’m sorry to trouble you, Cavaor Ackenzal,” Lady Gramme said, “but I really need to speak to you.”
“Have you seen Mery? How did you find us?” An ugly thought occurred as the words slipped off his tongue, that Lady Gramme somehow was involved in the whole affair. It made a certain sense. She was a highly political creature, after all.
He didn’t voice it, but she must have seen it in his eyes. She smiled, dabbing his brow again.
“I’m not in league with Robert,” she assured him. “Please believe me when I say I would never lend him Mery for any purpose.”
“Then how did you come to be here?”
She smiled again, a melancholy grimace, really.
“I was mistress to the emperor for almost twenty years,” she said. “Did you know that? I was fifteen when I first shared his bed. I did not spend all that time on my back. There are few places on Eslen, Ynis, or Newland where I don’t have eyes, ears, and pending favors. It took me a while to find you and my daughter after you were moved from the dungeons, but I managed it. After that it was merely a matter of paying the right bribes.”
“How was Mery when you saw her?”