“It broke when we fell.” Brander pulled open a pack and drew out a cloth dyed a vivid red. “But they’ll see this once they’re close enough.”
“You wave it,” Maggie called to Artek, because Brander was clearly exhausted, and she wanted Keet where he could see the people. Artek didn’t look happy at taking orders from her, but he accepted the cloth, went out along the ice and signaled with the makeshift flag. The ship was too far to tell whether it was Denalait or Bleakhavener, but either way they might be saved.
“Good thinking,” she said to Brander, “bringing that with you.”
“Captain’s orders. We’ve all got one.”
The surge of relief drained away. Vinsen had planned their mission down to the smallest detail and had struggled through every obstacle, yet they were here while he was alone in the fortress.
He’d told her to stay safe no matter whom she had to leave behind, and he wouldn’t like it if she disobeyed his orders. She slid her gloved fingers over the smooth undersurface of the flute, to feel its solidity like a touchstone in her hand, and compared her choices: sit on the ice to wait or return to be with him, no matter what. That made up her mind.
“I’m going back,” she said. “We left the captain behind.”
“This leads to a gallery.” Ruay stopped at a closed door. “High enough above the Eldred’s pedestal that no one’s likely to see you up there unless they’re on the same level, so it might give you an advantage.”
“And you’re not coming,” Vinsen said.
She continued fast, as if to get it all over with. “When I told you the Faith could kill you, that wasn’t true. You’re not one of us. He can’t master your mind or shape your flesh. But if there are ways to use the Faith against you, he’ll find them, and he can control me, so I’m going as far as I can.”
“One last thing.” If Greoc could take over her mind and make her more treacherous than she already was, it certainly was best for her to leave. “Were any of those people related to you?”
Ruay looked from him to the closed fluid surface of the door. “Two of them were my sisters,” she said, and left.
Vinsen wasn’t sure how he would have reacted if someone had done that to his younger half-brothers, estranged though they were. Doesn’t matter. He opened the door a fraction, stopping his breath to listen carefully, but heard nothing from inside.
The high gallery was ice, as he’d expected, with nothing across from it but a vast empty space and a matching balcony on the other side of the hall. The gallery reminded him a little of Maggie, because it was the place minstrels might have played from to entertain an audience, except no one was in sight.
It was always possible Ruay had led him into a trap—she’d done it once already, after all—and the silence was unnerving. It wasn’t like the vault, where he’d heard the people breathing. But the sides of the gallery were a filigree, coils upon clear coils twisting with each other, so he could stay low and look down through them.
Crouching, he edged forward and glanced through a gap. Below him, in the center of the hall, was a stepped pyramid, well over twice the height of a man. Was that what Ruay had meant by a pedestal? Someone sat on the flattened highest point of it, though from above, all he saw was a thick brown fur cloak. No one else was in the hall except…
…except Maggie.
Greoc had ordered two of his servants to dispose of the bodies. The gates of Palemount had been sealed, because he didn’t need any more Denalaits slipping past his defenses, but there were drop shafts for refuse within the fortress. Once the servants returned, they mopped the floor and there was no more sign of what had just happened in the pedestal chamber.
Greoc had always preferred the Faith’s ability to remove problems without the unpleasantness of blood and viscera, but even that power couldn’t physically tear foreigners apart. Another of the Eldred had once told him that because outsiders didn’t have the ability to bring forth the Faith, there was something missing in their minds. That absence meant the Faith couldn’t get enough of a foothold for him to reshape their bodies and fill their lungs with spiders.
But he had nine remaining guards and Artek to deal with whatever he couldn’t defeat. One of them knocked on the inner door and was let in by the warden. He came to kneel on the second step, which meant important news.
“Eldred,” he said respectfully, “Artek told me to inform you that the vault is secure.”
Trying not to show it, Greoc breathed a little easier. Although no one could enter the vault without him, he felt better knowing the Denalaits weren’t skulking outside. With that settled, he shifted his legs beneath him to get more comfortable and waited for the news that the Denalaits had been found.
He still wasn’t sure what to do about the ship, but Palemount was his first priority. Once that was scoured, he and Artek would prepare a new strategy. Perhaps the captain’s death would demoralize the remaining crew into surrender. He could always hang a few heads from the closest cliffside to the ship to show them.
Two other guards came in, followed by a few more servants who stood at a respectful distance from the pedestal. Anyone who needed to speak with him would have knelt on the first or second step, so they were all waiting for orders.
Either that or they felt more secure in the pedestal chamber. For that matter, he felt safer surrounded by people too, and the Denalaits could never have slipped into the pedestal chamber unnoticed. Even if they dressed like his people, they would stand out too much—their faces, their postures, their lack of knowledge of where to stand and what to say. The vault might be the heart of the fortress, but this was the mind.
In ones and twos, more of his guards and servants entered, standing at the perimeter of the floor and waiting patiently. Greoc waited too, since neither Artek nor Ruay had appeared yet.
That was only to be expected. Artek never asked his men to risk their lives if he wasn’t willing to do the same, while Ruay clearly wanted to prove herself after doing nothing on the ship. But as time passed, Greoc realized the fortress’s entire population—other than Artek, Ruay and those in the vault—had gathered before him.
Something’s wrong. He’d been lulled into a sense of security, but it was taking far too long for Artek and Ruay to report in.
“Deslen,” he said, and the guard snapped to attention, approaching the pedestal. “Caice. Myavar.” A woman and a man took up their places before him as well. “Did you finish your search?”
Myavar had, but both Caice and Deslen said they’d been told to go back to the pedestal chamber and wait for further orders.
“Who told you that?” Greoc had to be careful in the questions he asked, because a power structure could hang in a delicate balance; if they doubted Artek, it might be only one step from there to doubting him too. But he had a feeling he didn’t have time to phrase anything tactfully.
“Artek,” Caice said.
“Piald,” Deslen said, though Greoc knew at once whom Piald had received his orders from. He nodded to show the guards everything was all right, then thought of the people in the vault.
He couldn’t sense anything. Their acceptance and loyalty, their presence itself, was gone. Immediately he cast a mental net through the fortress, but they weren’t there either.
He closed his eyes, hoping he would look lost in relaxed contemplation rather than struggling to hide fear, and reached out as far as he could through the iceberg. It was like shouting into a canyon, and the distant echo that answered him might have resonated from rocks a thousand miles away.
So they were alive, but that was no comfort. The vault had been positioned exactly below the pedestal chamber for just that purpose; the farther he was from the source, the less power he could draw on. His guards—those he trusted, anyway—could be sent to retrieve them, but if the Denalaits had not only robbed him of his people but corrupted Artek as well, he didn’t have time
.
What now? Panic began to rise. He needed the Faith to retake what had been stolen from him, but without that source, he didn’t have the Faith in the first place. Unless…
Opening his eyes, he studied the people who had gathered in the pedestal chamber—where Artek had deliberately herded them to keep them out of the way. Thirty or so of them, not a great many, and the cream of his crop had been in the vault. Some of his guards and servants just hadn’t been that strong in the Faith, which was why he’d given them other work. What he could get from them would be dregs compared to the rich wine he’d been carefully cultivating.
But it was all he had. Besides, he knew how to extract the most from them, and how to make certain the Denalaits couldn’t steal his new source. This time, he wouldn’t give them a chance to do so.
Carefully he got to his feet. That had to be done in stages, straightening first one leg and then the other, enduring the pins-and-needles cramps until he was certain he wouldn’t lose his balance—which would probably be all the people needed to lose faith in him, assuming the fall didn’t break a hip. Alertness ran like a current through the room, as everyone waited to hear what he would say.
He took a pace down, onto the step of rejoicing. No, not yet. Not the steps of instruction or discipline either, but the next, the one below them, the step of protection on which his guards stood. Now he stopped between the two of them, and the other guards and servants came forward, drawing themselves up before the pedestal in preparation for his words.
He hadn’t had much time to think about it, but he’d never needed a lot of planning before he made a speech. “My people.” Sadness overlaid his voice like velvet. “We are under attack from the Denalaits.”
A few of the garrison glanced at the doors from the corners of their eyes, but no one seemed afraid. That was understandable, since he had built Palemount not to be stormed by conventional means.
“I know none of you saw them,” he went on calmly, “but they have not only invaded our home, they have taken Ruay as a hostage. That is why Artek told you to break off the search. He knew that if you found the Denalaits, they would murder her in retaliation.”
The old warden was one of the few people who hadn’t moved, because the wardens’ duties were to remain by the doors at all times. Now he raised his voice to be heard from across the room.
“Where are they now, my lord?” Lines of concern had etched themselves across his face.
“Wherever they can be, trying to weaken our defenses further.”
“I meant Artek and Ruay.”
Greoc recovered quickly. “They’re alive. We can save them if we act now, because I haven’t yet shown the Denalaits the full glory of the Faith. For that, I need all of you.”
There were looks of relief in the crowd, because this at least was something familiar. Greoc beckoned them closer until they all stood just outside the sunken border. For his part, he returned to the top of the pedestal, the highest point in the hall except for the galleries.
He’d used so much of the Faith to build and keep Palemount that a residual quantity of that power remained in the fortress, like a scent clinging to the air after the roses had died. It was very little compared to the Faith unleashed, but when he drew on it, his voice rang out like the toll of a great bell, deep and compelling.
“The more willing you are to give of yourselves, the greater the Faith is,” he said, “just as a field of soft plowed earth brings forth a greater harvest than a spread of stones. I will tell you how to be that fertile field, how you will defend our home.”
None of the other Eldred would have plunged straight in like that; they would have safeguards set up first. But Greoc didn’t have time. For that matter, he didn’t even have one of the most basic precautions, which was an unbeliever.
The Eldred always kept someone from another land close at hand and channeled the Faith through that person. The negative aspects of the Faith, the corruption of the Fall, drained away through the unbeliever, who was called the imperfection that enabled perfection for that reason. Greoc had managed to find such a person—some refugee, if he remembered right—and had held her under guard in Stagskin, only to discover the unbeliever had to be a willing conduit. So much for that.
But perhaps the requirement was another thing the Eldred had been wrong about. Nothing bizarre or unpleasant had happened in Palemount as a result of his shortfall, so now his confidence returned as he stared down at his people, his new source of power.
He sensed the Faith gathering. The air shimmered as if waves of heat rose through it, distorting the faces turned up to him, and under any other circumstances he would been satisfied. But now he had to make certain no one could ever take that half of his people away from him.
“Open yourselves completely.” Each command reached into their midst and spread to encompass them, his will superimposed over their obedience. “There is nothing of you that does not belong to Bleakhaven, so there is nothing of you that will be held back. Your thoughts, your dreams, the fears you hide from yourself. Even the lowest acts you’ve ever committed will not be wasted. Your shame and your pride are equally food for the Faith.”
He couldn’t see their faces clearly any longer, but he was so familiar with gestalt dynamics that he knew what they looked like—identical in the blankness of surrender and the exaltation as they were absorbed into something far greater than they were. “Body and soul, you belong to the Faith. And it will claim what it owns.”
The splintering of thin glass sounded in the chamber. The Faith surged out through the people, then returned to the focal point of Greoc—and when it did so, it brought everything.
As if from a distance, Greoc heard the sigh of clothes slipping to the floor and empty armor clanging down, but he saw nothing. His vision flared white and his body snapped taut as a bow. For a moment he was afraid the power would tear him apart from the inside. He’d imagined it like swallowing a flask of wine in a single gulp, but it was a hundred times more intense. Lightning flickered along his nerves. His heart slammed against the cage of his ribs, and he clamped his jaws shut. Any sound he made would come out as a dragon roar and bring the roof down around his head.
Nothing can rise which first does not fall. Within the Faith, one becomes all.
The well-known words calmed him. He closed his eyes, panting as he struggled to control the strength and youth and, most of all, reserves upon reserves of the Faith that now coursed through his body. Gradually his runaway pulse slowed. The fireflies behind his lids died, and he dared to open his eyes, though he brought his hands up before his face first.
The skin stretched smooth and unwrinkled, the occasional age spots gone as if they had been washed away. The stiffness in his joints was nothing more than a memory. Greoc couldn’t help smiling. Now that the initial surge of panic was gone, and he’d controlled the…the absorption…he felt full of health, in the prime of a life he’d given up to revive the Tree. But this in itself was an eternal existence too.
When he looked around the empty pedestal chamber, he saw the price he had paid for it. The sacrifice was the worst crime possible under Bleakhavener law, and if the Concordium ever learned about it, they would want him to die slowly for the rest of his life. But he’d had no choice, not after the Denalaits had crowded him into a corner, and at least no one could steal his people again. Nothing remained of them outside him except for their clothes, fallen flat as empty sacks. The guards’ hookspears lay at angles across the steps of the pedestal like a pick-up-sticks game.
Greoc changed his position, sitting comfortably on the pedestal’s summit, since no one was there to expect the traditional posture. Now to harness the power he’d gained. Once he scoured Palemount, he’d crush that ship between closing walls of ice. He’d needed it to transport a crowd, but it was hardly necessary for a single man—albeit someone far more than human.
He attuned himself t
o the patterns of power in the fortress, and knew at once that something was wrong. The Faith was being…used, somehow. Oh, compared to what he had, it was a tiny drain, a pinhole leak in the ocean, but his senses were so exquisitely honed now that he saw it clearly. Someone else was drawing on the Faith.
A rill of music trickled along his spine like water.
Not Ruay or Artek; they simply didn’t have the ability to control the Faith. Very few in Bleakhaven did. Had the other Eldred tracked him down? Greoc tensed involuntarily, but when he closed his eyes, he saw a single shadow across the white floor.
Apprehension gave way to curiosity. He could deal with any one person on his own, so he drew the Faith out in an unseen trail that ended at the pedestal chamber. This way.
Again a ghostly fragment of melody shivered through the air, but it was echoed by faint sweet notes in the distance. The doors of the pedestal chamber were closed, but Greoc’s senses were heightened after absorbing those of everyone in the room. He could have stood on the highest peak of the iceberg and seen for miles, and now he heard the music easily.
That was how it had been done. He’d always liked reading history—which had come in useful when he’d searched for the Tree—so he knew of how the Faith had been controlled and directed in the past. Except that was such a crude method compared to what the Eldred could do that he’d never thought about it.
And he had certainly never suspected a Denalait would stumble upon it. The woman who pushed the outer door open stepped in cautiously, and at first she didn’t seem to see him. Instead she looked down at the clothes just before her, the wools and furs once worn by the warden.
“Come forward,” Greoc said. The Denalait woman’s gaze jerked up. Behind her, the door closed and melded into the wall.
Chapter Twelve
Duet
Oddly, Maggie didn’t feel nervous or afraid as she crossed the bridge, though she didn’t even have the dog beside her any longer. She wasn’t going anywhere safe or following orders, but she was doing the only thing that mattered. And she wouldn’t let herself think any further than that.
The Coldest Sea Page 22