by Tom Deitz
And since it was bad luck to stray from those paths, Avall stayed on one until, later than he liked, he came at last to the stone-paved plaza before the fane itself.
But that was not his destination. His interest was in the Well that rose waist high in the center of the pavement. He started toward it eagerly, then remembered himself. He had a choice now. He could approach as King, in the prescribed regalia, and Fate would presumably recognize him as King and provide a response appropriate to that role.
But he could also approach the Well naked, so that Fate recognized him only as a man. So did he come here now simply as Avall syn Argen-a, or as the High King of all Eron?
It was his choice, and he feared to make it.
But Fate itself had several aspects, he recalled, Choice and Chance among them. Perhaps Fate had its own idea about how he should proceed. Squatting where he stood, he reached into his pouch and withdrew a coin—one of the new ones, with his face on one side and Strynn's on the other. It was a good likeness, but it made him feel strange. In any case, the male side was traditionally Chance's face, because men took chances. The other side was for Choice, because women made more considered decisions. Chance would represent Avall the man; Choice would represent the Sovereignty of the Kingdom.
With no other thought than that, he flipped the coin into the air. Torchlight caught it and made it gleam, and then it was falling again—to land, half on the pavement, half on the soft moss on which he stood.
Which might itself be an omen.
The face he saw was his own.
That was all he needed. With a soft “wait here,” he divested himself of his clothes, handing them to Bingg to fold away. If anyone else was about at this time of night, it would be a Priest, and most of the Priests had seen him naked when he'd stripped for final proving of his physical perfection before they'd made him King.
A final pause for breath, and he stepped out into the plaza, feeling the stones pleasantly cool against his bare feet, as the wind was cool against his body.
Too soon he reached the Well and gazed down into it. He'd tasted of the Wells before, of course—at his coronation—but they'd told him little. Sometimes they didn't. Hadn't The Eight made their will known clearly enough by giving Eron victory in the war, and making Avall, untried as he was, King?
Well, that King needed guidance now! No, he countered, Avall needed guidance. He could abdicate tomorrow if he chose. But he knew already that he would not.
His face looked up at him when he peered into the darkness. The moon was behind him, which made him seem crowned with golden light. Perhaps the Well was telling him that regardless of his coin toss, it was his Sovereign aspect it was addressing. Or maybe it was saying that it would address the man, but that the Sovereignty would be an underlying factor.
He wouldn't know which without trying. Steeling himself, he slid both hands into the cold, clear water, cupped them beneath the surface, and drew up enough to drink. It tasted sweet, with maybe a hint of moss, stone, and earth.
But it tasted of something else as well. It tasted of moonlight on stones, the way an imphor high could rearrange one's senses, so one could taste colors, feel tastes, and smell textures.
“I am here, oh Fate,” he whispered, his voice loud as thunder in the silence, though he knew that only he heard it, so softly did he whisper.
Nothing replied, though he could feel the wind caressing each hair upon his body, like the mist creeping up the gorge. For a moment he was the gorge, and then he was all Eron, and then he was himself again, and the Well had shown him nothing.
Disgusted, he started to turn away, then realized he hadn't begged The Eight's pardon for the intrusion. Scowling, he stared once more into the depths.
And saw that water stretch, flow, and expand, until he gazed upon a lake of clear blue water, and inside that lake, an island. And upon that island, people.
And then the image shattered, as something cold lanced into his shoulder like a dart of direst pain.
It took a moment to realize that, though it had already been foggy when he'd set out, it was actually raining now— scattered drops, true, but big ones.
Bingg was asleep when he returned to where he'd left the lad, and only when he checked the glimmer of the one moon that still struggled with the massing clouds, did he realize that a full hand had passed while he stared into the Well, though it had seemed to him that his vision had lasted barely a breath.
“Did you learn anything?” Bingg dared, as Avall dressed.
“I don't know,” Avall replied sadly. “I got an answer, but it wasn't to any question I thought to ask.”
Sometimes, Avall discovered two fingers later, as he trudged up the stairs to his suite, one didn't truly consider something until long after one had first thought it. So it was now. Back at the council, the notion had crossed his mind that they could lay siege to Priest-Clan, or at least confront its chiefs directly. And while that was far too risky, he nevertheless had a member of that clan to hand right here in the Citadel, if only he'd cooperate. In any case, it would take half a hand to find out—that and turning right at the top of the stairs instead of left.
He opened Rrath's door carefully—but not carefully enough, it appeared. Someone rose from the floor almost at Avall's feet, all in a scramble of blankets, night robe, and startled countenance beneath tangled hair. Hands fumbled for a paring knife, even as Avall reached for his own sturdier blade.
“Don't—” Esshill began. Then paused, blinking, as he realized who he faced. But he remained where he was, blocking access to Rrath, who seemed not to have moved since the last time Avall had seen him.
“You always sleep on the floor?” Avall asked casually, though his hand never left his knife hilt. “Devotion's a fine thing, but—”
“Don't hurt him,” Esshill hissed, still blinking, and shaking his head uncertainly.
“What?” came another voice from Avall's left. The door there had opened as well. Beejinn stood there, a dagger sparkling in her hand. Avall weighed the odds and didn't like them. There was caution, and there was threat, and Esshill, at least, had little cause to love him.
“It's me, Beejinn,” Avall said carefully, trying to keep an eye on Rrath's official nurse and his unofficial one at once, and finding it impossible. “I need to talk to Esshill, so I'd appreciate it if you'd leave us alone a few moments. You can sit in the hall, if you don't trust me.”
The knife wavered, then lowered. Beejinn managed a wary— and weary—smile, then padded toward the door through which Avall had just arrived. “I didn't tell him he could stay there,” she murmured. “But I didn't think it would hurt. As for Rrath … no change.”
Avall nodded absently. “Nor did I expect any.”
Not bothering to observe her exit, Avall reached out and steered Rrath's bond-brother toward the door to the right, which opened on his quarters. It was no more than a cell, really, but Esshill was still a novice in Priest-Clan and therefore used to austerity.
Closing the door behind him by feel, Avall motioned Esshill to sit on the bed, while he claimed the single chair. Light from the torches on the battlements trickling through a window to the right was the only illumination, yet it glanced off Avall's blade like sunfire. Esshill dropped the paring knife on the rug, and folded his hands before him, head bowed.
Avall started to ask him to raise his head, to stare him straight in the eye, then reconsidered. “The Ninth Face,” he said instead, keeping the inflection neutral.
Esshill did look up then, but his face showed nothing but confusion.
“What? Majesty, I'm sorry, but I don't understand. What—?”
“Rrath never told you?”
“What?”
A pause, as Avall wondered how much he should reveal. “Who his allies are,” he dared at last. “Those who got him into this.”
Esshill's face went hard with conviction. Anger and indignation pulsed off him so strongly Avall could feel them as a thrust against his consciousness. More of
the gems' doing, he supposed. Even apart from him they were still of him, never mind the master gem. “If I knew who they were,” Esshill said clearly, “I would kill every one of them I could.”
“Though it cost you your own life?”
Esshill nodded toward the door to the room where Rrath lay. “The best part of me is dead already.”
Avall started to tell him he was a fool to invest his feelings in one as flawed as Rrath. But then he remembered that he'd liked Rrath as well, and had himself been hurt when Rrath had transferred his friendship to Eddyn. More to the point, he remembered how he felt when anything threatened his bond with Rann.
Abruptly he stood, wondering why he'd bothered coming here at all. Wondering, more to the point, if he should trust his intuition and believe Esshill's vow of ignorance. Well, it wasn't as if Esshill was going anywhere. “If you think of anything,” Avall said, from the door, “anything at all—or anyone who might know more—let me know at once.”
He was already a stride into Rrath's room when he heard footsteps behind him. “Nyllol,” he heard Esshill whisper into the gloom. “Not a fact, but a guess. That's all I can offer.”
“It won't hurt,” Avall sighed, and left Rrath's chamber. Beejinn was sitting on the floor blocking the door as he entered the corridor between it and the world outside. She rose fluidly, but in her own good time.
“No one was hurt,” Avall muttered as he passed her. “No one here will be, if I can help it.”
The lock snapped shut behind him. It was less than a hand until dawn.
The note on Avall's pillow didn't surprise him, only that it had appeared so soon. He snatched it up and read it one-handed as he fumbled with his dagger belt with the other. No surprise in it, either; the silence had already told him what it said, though not the physical silence of his and Strynn's suite, but the more subtle silence inside his head that told him without thinking that she was nowhere nearby.
The note had to have been written hastily, yet the script showed no sign of that. Rather, Strynn's script was as neat and measured as ever.
My dear Avall,
Perhaps I should address this to Your Most Sovereign Majesty, for it is in service to that title that I write this, not my dear and treasured husband. In whatever case, I have decided to save us both the anguish of another parting as well as the anguish of endless arguments that lead to that same parting, when we both know the conclusion is inevitable, and in fact one to which you have, in principle, agreed already. In short, I have determined to act now, while I am still flush with the fire of determination, and you are likewise aflame with indignation, for if daylight shows you to me again, I may fail in my conviction, and I dare not. In short, I have gone—already, this night—to seek Merryn. Div and I will travel together, leaving you, Rann, and Kylin to console each other, as I have no doubt nor dread you will do. Perhaps I am acting precipitously, but—again—what other choice do we have? You must lead the country and probably the army. I have nothing to add to that; therefore, I do that for which I am best suited in order to serve our common good. And I find that I am rambling already, stating things poorly that should be expressed with eloquence, and for every word I put down I reject hundreds, even as more arguments crowd upon me to make their precepts known. But I will silence them all now. I am gone. The discussion, if discussion there must be, will come after, when you and I and Merry and Div and Rann are all reunited in an Eron I pray will be free from strife—to prevent which I bid you yet another farewell … my love.
Strynn
The note still in his hand, Avall fell, fully clothed, onto the bed and remained there, oblivious, until two hands after sunrise, when Vorinn arrived with the first of the muster roles.
CHAPTER XIV:
ORDERS, WELLS, AND ORDERS
(NORTHWESTERN ERON: GEM-HOLD-WINTER—
HIGH SUMMER: DAY LVI—EARLY EVENING)
Zeff flung down the pickax he'd been wielding, with a dozen others of the Brotherhood, and wiped his hands on his robe with more than a little irritation. It wasn't the labor that irked him, however—labor was good for a man of any station—it was the futility. They'd been digging for days now, but every stairway down to the mines ended the same: in seemingly endless mounds of rubble. Well, except one, which ended in water, courtesy of a cistern the explosion had breached. That might be their best choice, too—if they could ever figure out how to drain the wretched thing.
He wondered why he bothered. Everything he'd learned— which wasn't much—suggested that the gems were not common, that Avall and his cadre had found the only ones to be found, and that Clan Argen's vein was the only one that held them. Even worse, Argen's vein was, inconveniently, farthest from the entrance, so that even if they won through to the actual mines, there was no guarantee they'd reach the presumed source of the gems anytime soon.
Of course Avall didn't know that, as he didn't know many things. But this difficulty, while not unexpected, was proving far more troublesome than anyone had predicted. Worse, the Face's ancient legacy of egalitarianism demanded that Zeff toil with the rest of his brothers and sisters toward that common goal.
At times like this, he wished their charter allowed slave labor. Murder was fine, if effected to the Face's greater good. But murder merely put the victim back in the Cycle, to be reborn better than before, as recompense for having his choices removed. So said the charter. So, also, said both The Eight and The Nine.
Zeff wondered if Lord Death would be amenable to a wrestling match right now, the better to renegotiate the terms of their devotion. But Death was not the Face they worshiped, any more than Life was. Their god—their Face—was that most shadowy one that transcended—yet united—all the others.
Time. Of which everything else, both tangible and ephemeral, was a part. Including patience, which aspect Zeff sometimes had trouble accommodating.
In any case, there was nothing more to be gained here now. Not for Zeff, First Subchief of the Ninth Face.
Yet still he lingered, as though patience alone would prompt some breakthrough. But what he saw was the same: a dozen of his knights stripped to their breeches, with their hair bound back, and their shoulders showing scars where clan tattoos had been effaced when they'd sworn higher allegiance; a dozen of his knights crowded halfway down one of the wider stairs, working steadily at a wall of rubble with pickaxes, while others carried away their leavings. Stone mostly, but three times, so he'd heard, the shattered remains of bodies. He'd given those to their clansmen, with all the solemnity he could muster. And sent their finders back to digging.
“Eesh,” he called, snapping his fingers toward the youngest among them: a skinny, clanless lad they'd rescued from a foolish hunting party, and who was now this stairwell's waterbearer.
Eesh approached silently, eyes downcast, as he presented the dark-glazed jug. Moisture dewed it, which was good, for the shafts were proving hotter than expected. Zeff refused the proffered cup, however, and drank straight from the jug as a sign he did not set himself above those he commanded.
Water gushed out faster than expected and drenched his face. Impulsively, he splashed his chest, then each hand in turn, thereby depleting the jug. “Sorry,” he told Eesh. “You'll have to get more.”
“It's the dust,” Eesh replied solemnly. “It gets in everything.”
“Wash yourself,” Zeff told him. “When you finish. I only regret the explosion blocked access to the main baths. They're supposed to be magnificent.”
“What I have suffices,” Eesh murmured. “—Lord,” he finished with a bow, and pounded up the stairs in search of the nearest cistern.
Zeff followed him more slowly, though still at a vigorous pace. He'd stayed too long, he feared, hoping to have some real answer to relay to those who waited to hear. Hoping the orders he was soon to give would not be given too precipitously.
Being a commander was more trouble than anyone suspected. But sometimes one had to endure trouble in exchange for power.
Up and up and
up.
He found the level that the Ninth Face had appropriated, and was pleased to see it thoroughly and competently guarded by grim-eyed men and women in long, blue, hooded surcoats, worn above the best mail anyone outside Smithcraft could fashion. Their mouth-masks were raised, too, obscuring their identity—not so much from their fellows, as from any kinsmen, renounced though they might be, that they might chance upon in the hold.
A moment later, he was striding into his quarters. Ahfinn rose when he entered the common hall, blinking as though his eyes were tired. He also looked irritable, which was not to be encouraged, and certainly not in an underling, however accomplished at organization, record-keeping, and the drafting of ultimatums he might be. Ahfinn's gaze swept toward the time candle in the corner, then back again, before he looked down. Zeff caught the gesture anyway.
“I know I'm late,” Zeff snapped. “I'll tend to my business before I bathe rather than after. What I need from you is to know whether you've found anything.”
Ahfinn exhaled anxiously and shook his head, indicating the open volume on the desk behind which he stood. “This looks promising, but it's a duplicate—a rough draft, actually, and mostly scrawled. What we really need are the Mine-Master's records, and they're—”
“I know. Sealed somewhere beneath us.”
Ahfinn nodded sagely. “And I think it's safe to say that when he says he knows nothing he hasn't told us already, he's not lying.”
“The imphor worked, then?” Zeff inquired, offhand.
“So it seems, but you know how long it takes to break someone when they've been conditioned.”
Zeff spun around in place. “Conditioned? He was conditioned?”
Ahfinn regarded him steadily. “He started out at War-Hold, then came here with his wife, liked what he saw, discovered he had a knack for it, and told Preedor—who was some kind of subchief then—that if they wanted him back, they could come here and dig him out. That was around the time of the plague, and Preedor had other things to do—like policing the cities— and the Master managed to get himself forgotten.”