Summerblood

by Tom Deitz

  And now Nyss and the invader were engaged in as vehement a contest of authority as Kylin had ever witnessed.

  “You were to make sure the Warden was in her quarters,” the invader snapped. “Half this hold sees her daily or waits upon her. You were to have made sure the door was locked when I told you. This one,” he added, evidently referring to the man he'd slapped, “was supposed to have done it.”

  “She wasn't supposed to go visiting or have warning,” Nyss retorted. “One of your men must have moved too soon or too carelessly. He was seen.”

  “Aye,” came the accused's cautious reply. “I was on my way here when I saw someone from War also approaching. I knew at once what he was about, and I … I suppose I should've challenged him, since I'd lost the initiative of surprise. But that would've made noise, which would've alerted the Warden in any case, and increased the odds of her success.”

  “And your death,” Nyss inserted sourly. “But go on.”

  “I thought I might find another chance,” the man panted. “So I followed them. I was moving toward her on the porch with my dagger drawn, hoping to kill her in the confusion, since capture no longer seemed viable. But then she reached one of the buttresses that support the arcades, and before I knew it, an opening had appeared there, and she—and that soldier from War—had ducked inside, and she was gone.”

  “Eight!” Nyss spat, even as the invader uttered a coarser word.

  “I would've followed!” the man protested.

  “Silence!” from both others at once. Then, from Nyss: “We both know how riddled with secret corridors and stairs this place is, else you wouldn't be here. But that one—I did not know of it. Still, if it was in a buttress, it can only go up or down, and down would make more sense, since that way lies escape, if that was her goal, or the—”

  “The mines,” the invader replied heavily.

  But he said no more, for at that moment, the entire hold was shaken by what had to be an explosion in its depths. Even where Kylin crouched, many levels above the ground, he felt the floor jump beneath him. Worse, the table threatened to topple, and would have, had he not braced it. The air filled with the dreadful grating of tortured rock, mingled with distant shouts and much closer curses, and finally by the shriek of splitting stone. A loud rumble followed, and more shouts— one from Nyss, yelling for her companions to get in the doorway, and then, with a deafening roar, a section of ceiling came down. Something struck the tabletop, and Kylin heard wood splinter. He wondered, briefly, what had become of his chiefharp, but that concern lasted only long enough for him to realize that the harp, without him alive to play it, was not a thing that mattered.

  More rubble fell as the building settled, but Kylin didn't want to ponder what that signified, save that something or someone had surely wreaked havoc deep in the bowels of the hold.

  A final shake-and-shift, and the stone wall split right beside him. He flinched away in horror, expecting some terrible fate, but what he found was merely a rush of cool air. Which meant that however much destruction reigned beyond his hiding place, he probably wouldn't suffocate.

  But he didn't want to be taken prisoner, either. Fortunately, the tabletop above him listed to his left, and the force of falling stone had dragged part of the cover down with it and pinned it to the floor, effectively prisoning him in a fabric cage. Which was just as well, since the last thing he wanted was to be detected. The wall to his right, however … He probed it with his fingers, seeking the source of that fresh air. Nor was he long in finding it. A split ran as far as he could reach up and down, neatly bisecting one of the intricate metal ventilation grills that brought outside air into the hold's inner regions. It had loosened the grill, too, and it was a simple matter to remove it.

  Freedom was suddenly the most important thing to him: freedom and survival. With the hold apparently under siege, any free man was valuable. There might still be allies somewhere in this pile, after all; and in any case, Div was due back soon and would surely sense the situation. Hopefully, he could somehow connect with her. In the meantime, he would learn what he could about these invaders. He'd try not to be seen, but if he was seen, anyone who didn't know him would only see a harmless blind man. Which meant he had to avoid being seen by anyone who knew him, which was best effected if he availed himself of this gift from The Eight he'd found right here. The vent ducts led everywhere, and they had many openings. Some even opened onto shafts that terminated close to ground level. If he could reach one of those—Well, he'd worry about that if he survived to confront it.

  At least the building seemed to have settled, though he could smell smoke now, which was a good reason not to try the vent ducts yet. The hold was largely impervious to flame, but that didn't mean parts of it couldn't burn. As soon as the air cleared, he'd make good his escape—from this level, at any rate. Just twist his way into the duct beyond the grill and pull it to behind him. And hope there were no more explosions and that the domain behind the walls was not more dangerous than the one beyond them.

  CHAPTER V:

  DECISIONS

  (ERON: TIR-ERON: ARGEN-HALL-PRIME–

  HIGH SUMMER: DAY XLI–SHORTLY BEFORE NOON)

  Perhaps, Avall reflected, as he strode away from Eellon's death chamber, there were advantages to being King. If nothing else, the title gave him an excuse to absent himself from that cold, dry thing that had once been his two-father, mentor, adviser, goad, and friend. As, he reflected, Eellon had also been to Eron—and three generations of Kings, not the least of them the one whom Avall had succeeded.

  But he wanted to think about Gynn even less than about Eellon. At least Eellon was dead; therefore, he was at peace. Any decisions concerning him would be determined by rite, tradition, and the Death Priests. Gynn, however, still lived—if sitting wide-awake with half his brain gone constituted life. Avall didn't think so. Better a clean death for his predecessor— a sword through the heart in the heat of battle, or a clean slice across the throat—than a chunk of stone shrapnel flung high by an explosion that, upon falling, crushed the back of the High King's helm and the head beneath it. A finger's difference in distance that fateful moment, and Avall would still be back in Eellon's chamber, free to mourn.

  He froze in place, then spun around to face the Guardsmen following discreetly three paces behind. Strynn was there, too, with Rann and Lykkon. Most of his inner circle, in fact, save Merryn, whom he'd left as his surrogate to guard the corpse until the Death Priests came. Scowling, he motioned them farther back; then, having no other choice, turned again and strode numbly on, his vision increasingly veiled with ill-fought tears, until he came to what had been his own suite before he'd assumed the throne. Abandoning his companions to the sitting room, he slipped into the bedroom, locked the door, and for the next hand lay staring at the ceiling, knowing there was one less good thing in the world, and one less resource on which Fate would let him rely.

  By rights he should cut his hair and change into mourning black. But that would acknowledge the reality of what had happened, and he wasn't ready for that. Instead, he flung himself off the bed, unlocked the door, and rejoined his friends. But not to mourn.

  Their ranks had swelled, he noted. To Rann, Lykkon, and Strynn had been added his mother, Evvion; Veen; and a redeyed Merryn—now off duty—along with Vorinn and Tryffon of War. Preedor was standing honor watch over his old friend, Merryn murmured through a hug. Avall wondered what those two old men had been like as boys. They'd been bond-mates, he knew, until something had torn a rift between them. It was long since healed, but they'd never renewed that vow. And now they never would. Maybe someday Preedor would tell him the entire tale. In the meantime, there were more pressing things to ponder.

  The company had claimed seats around the room, some even on the floor, for all he was about to turn this into a royal council. Bingg appeared a moment later with food and drink, causing Avall to wonder yet again whether the boy and Lykkon might not share some mental bond that was more than ordinary, if
not as strong as that wrought by the gems.

  In any case, they got themselves settled, with Avall in his favorite chair beside the fireplace. “I need to be distracted,” he informed them frankly. “Probably we all do. But I don't need frivolity. Therefore, as much as I hate to discuss politics, this might be the time for it. Most of you saw what transpired at court today. You must also know that I had no more notion of convening that council I promised than I had of holding court while painted blue. Which is not to say that I don't think such a council is needed, nor that, now I've committed to it, one won't be forthcoming. Still, I preempted myself to buy time in an awkward situation, and now I have to throw myself on your mercy”—he grinned at that—“and ask your advice after the fact. Specifically … what are we going to do about Priest-Clan?”

  “Assuming we do anything,” Strynn added. “If we play things carefully, we can let them destroy themselves. They have as much to answer for as we do, if we can only get Common Clan to see it. Whatever we've been hiding from them—which, as far as I'm concerned is nothing—Priest-Clan has been hiding far longer.”

  Avall chewed his lip. “So you're saying that we should try to redirect whatever questions are put to us to Priest-Clan instead? Let them bear the brunt of whatever … rebellion, to name the direst option, Common Clan contrives?”

  “The problem is,” Lykkon observed, “there isn't one single, united Priest-Clan, and I'm not sure there ever was. There are the folks that tried to kill you and Rann, for instance. We've no idea if they're officially sanctioned, or if the bulk of Priest is no more aware of their existence than we were. From what little Eddyn told us between his return and death, I'm inclined toward the former.”

  Tryffon scratched his short gray beard. “And I wish we'd thought to query him more thoroughly, since he was our main source of information about them. As it is, we know very little. Mostly that they're very canny, very competent, and have at least one citadel between here and Gem-Hold-Winter.”

  “But if they're that canny,” Merryn retorted, “they're likely to have more than one. Fallback positions are a necessity for extralegal groups like that. It would be nice,” she added with a sour grimace, “if we at least had something to call them.”

  “Eddyn called them ghost priests,” Avall supplied. “Because of those white cloaks they wore. That'll do until we learn otherwise.”

  Lykkon cleared his throat. “Actually … a means does exist to learn otherwise—maybe.”

  Avall looked puzzled, then glared at him, as realization dawned. “You mean Rrath?”

  Rann and Lykkon nodded as one. “He's still alive,” Rann continued. “Whatever happened to him doesn't seem to have involved brain damage—not like what's afflicted Gynn. His healers say his coma is more like a retreat from the world. The gems in the regalia kept him alive after what should've been a fatal fall. There's no reason they shouldn't also have saved his mind, given that they seem to protect whoever wields them.”

  “Which raises the question of whether the gems are active or passive parties in all this,” Merryn noted.

  “Which is damned far from the question of Priest-Clan,” Avall growled, “and more properly subject for open debate before this new council I now have to organize. In the meantime, I think Lyk's right. There is no single Priest-Clan now, and maybe never was. Eight, I can think of three factions without even trying.

  “The first,” he went on quickly, counting on his fingers, “are those who want to preserve things as they are, but for positive reasons. They're the arm that honestly wants to serve the people—all the people, but especially Common Clan, and clanless. They care less about dogma or power than about expressing the will of The Eight in ways that can actually help people. If some heavy theological debate a quarter from now suddenly has us acknowledging that geens have souls, the cosmic implications of that decision will matter less to them than the practical matter of how it would affect the supply of surplus meat, since geens would then have to be kept from starvation, just like people. If there's a rebellion—which I pray won't happen, but which we must admit might occur—we can probably count on that faction to go their own way calmly, and play as much as they can for both sides. They won't fight against us, but I doubt they'll fight for us, either. And they'll minister spiritually to anyone who requests it.”

  “Good thinking so far,” Tryffon conceded. “Optimistic— but that's your age talking. Still, it's in line with what I've seen and heard.”

  “Second faction,” Merryn prompted. “Let's define the structures, then fill in the details.”

  “Second faction is the opposite of the first,” Avall went on. “I'm talking about the ghost priests, of course. We know they're the radical political arm of the clan. We know they're powerful and have resources at their disposal that we can't begin to suspect. Beyond that, we know nothing.”

  “I do,” Vorinn volunteered, speaking up for the first time. “I've been talking to some of the Ixtian defectors, and one of them says that some people he assumes were representatives of these very ghost priests came to Barrax's camp one night with some kind of bargain to offer. From the very little he overheard or pieced together later, it appears that this faction told Barrax that they—and, by extension, Priest-Clan—wouldn't oppose him during his invasion, in exchange for assuring their own position.”

  Avall felt heat rise in his face. “Now you tell me!”

  Vorinn regarded him calmly, his smooth features carefully controlled—yet vaguely at odds with the rest of his body, which evinced a kind of restless power, even in repose. “I only just learned myself. And let me stress that a lot of it is guesswork.”

  “Makes sense, though,” Tryffon rumbled. “Those to whom power is important will work to secure that power any way they can. If it involves throwing in with the enemy—well, they might just as well regard us as enemies, and with better reason, if implicit threat is what defines an enemy to start with.”

  “The third faction—” Lykkon reminded them, looking up from his ever-present journal, “I assume it's the middle ground?”

  Avall shook his head. “I don't think there is a middle ground. The primary variable really seems to be how much a given faction values power in the abstract over their clan's stated goal. One faction evidently doesn't—much. The second values it above all—I suspect for its own sake. The third is the ‘no-change’ sept—except that what they're hoping to maintain happens to be very powerful anyway, simply because their clan ‘controls’ religion. And since religion equals both hope and comfort for a large part of our population, that isn't to be underestimated.”

  Strynn steepled her fingers before her. “Which means that in case of rebellion they'd advance their own causes before they'd advance ours.”

  Merryn nodded gravely. “Given that we're probably the ones they'd be rebelling against to start with, I think that's a fair assessment.”

  “Rebellion,” Lykkon echoed harshly. “We keep throwing that word around like it was something very abstract, much like we did ‘war’ two seasons back. But I wonder how abstract it really is. I assume that this rebellion, if it comes, will be Common Clan against High Clan, with Priest sitting by to pick up the pieces?”

  Tryffon leaned back and folded his arms. “Not necessarily. Common is no more united than anyone else—less so, if anything, simply because it's so diverse. They've got people poor as mud who'll side with anyone who'll give them a meal, preferably for free. And, on the other extreme, there are those who are so precisely similar to us in every way but lineage that we marry them and think nothing of it.”

  “But we're not united, either,” Rann retorted. “Even before the war we were factionalized. There's the ancient Smith-War-Lore triumvirate, to start with—with Stone almost included as well, since we've married into the others so often; and Gem as a somewhat shaky adjunct: not strong enough to go against the powerful three-and-a-half, nor yet wanting to be overrun by them—and important because they're rich.”

  “In other wo
rds, they'd like to be courted,” Avall summarized. “I wonder if anyone actually has. Remind me to set someone watching their hall and hold, to see who enters.”

  “I'll tend to it,” Merryn volunteered before Veen could preempt her.

  The discussion continued in ever-more labyrinthine detail as the day waned. Eventually, it progressed to every single clan and craft being named and its strengths, weaknesses, alliances, loyalties, and countless other traits assessed. It was tiring work, and represented only one set of admittedly biased opinions, but it proved to be a useful and much-needed distraction from confronting Eellon's passing. That was properly a clan matter, anyway, to which Avall would merely give royal assent. He could sit in on the deliberations, but only as a clansman, not as King.

  Finally, Avall took a deep breath. “Well, that's about as much as we can accomplish today—mostly to put us all on equal footing in terms of information. I'm sure Tyrill will be needing several of us soon, which means we won't get anything useful accomplished until after Eellon's funeral. I'll have to participate, of course—in a double role. But the actual logistics are for Priest and the Argen chiefs to work out. In the meantime, I have a bit of personal business I need to conduct.” He rose at that, which everyone but Rann, Strynn, Merryn, Lykkon, and Vorinn took as a request to leave. Those five lingered. He eyed them wearily, loath to abandon their company, which was comfort in itself. “Merry and Lyk,” he sighed at last. “Stay here and be my spies in Argen—and my mouth, should that be needed. I trust you both to know my will if a ruling is needed. Strynn, I'm about to do something you may not like, but I don't want to leave you out of any more than I have to, so you can accompany me or not, as you choose. Same for you, Rann. I know you're preoccupied. Vorinn—”