• • •
Verrus Allamar sat in the sanctuary of his office. The hour was late, but he was known as a hard-working soldier; indeed, perhaps the most dedicated of all the Verrus. His lips thinned into a smile that would have chilled the men who served with the Kings’ Swords. “Enter.”
A young woman, dressed in the livery of Darias, made her way across the threshold, walking neither too quickly nor too slowly. But she made certain that the door at her back was closed tightly before she turned.
The light around her body shimmered and flared; her voice became deeper and heavier as she chanted softly. Her body blurred, as did her uniform; her face changed, chin elongating into a frosted, black beard, shoulders broadening, waist thickening. The livery was still of Darias.
Verrus Allamar’s eyes narrowed. “You took your time.”
“We did not have the choice,” Krysanthos replied tightly, as he unstooped his shoulders and clapped his hands in front of the door’s keyhole. “After your failed attempt at delivering the Breodanir hunters to us, security has grown . . . difficult.” He turned back to the Verrus. “You were supposed to see that the Hall of The Ten remained relatively free of interference.” It was an accusation.
“You did make it in,” Allamar replied coldly.
“Yes. And at some personal cost. This had better be important.”
“It is.” The Verrus planted both of his hands on the flat of his immaculate desk and rose, placing the weight on the tips of his fingers. The desk creaked beneath the force he exerted. “Mirialyn ACormaris has requested the use of the Kings’ Swords three days hence for a meeting with an un specified personage. She did not route her request through the regular channels.”
“This means that you’ve no idea what the meeting is about?”
“It means that I was not even supposed to know that the meeting existed.” He smiled at that, the very wolf of a smile. “And I find that rather odd. It seems that my position here has been compromised, and it will probably be of little use in the very near future.”
“Agreed,” Krysanthos said, almost absently. “What else have you discovered?”
“Both of the Kings—and the Queens—are to be in attendance.”
Krysanthos swore. That meant—it could only mean—a personal request from one of The Ten; no one else could demand and receive an audience with the four Crowns on such short notice. And only one House might consider the affairs of the city to be in enough of a state of emergency to do so. “Terafin,” he said softly.
Verrus Allamar had the grace to look surprised. His confirmation was unnecessary, but he gave it anyway. “How damaging will this be?”
“I’m not certain.” The mage took a chair and sat heavily, brooding. “Sor na Shannen is loath to part with information about her activities; I only know that the work in the labyrinth is not yet completed.”
“That would make us vulnerable.”
“Yes. But not by much. Remember that none of the people who lived by the maze had full knowledge of its workings.”
“Depending on the ignorance of our enemy has always been folly.”
“Tell that to Lord Karathis,” Krysanthos replied, with a shade too much bitterness.
The Verrus smiled at the sound of the grating in the mage’s voice. It was a hint of food to a man starving. “Very well. How much time is needed to seal the maze completely?”
“As I said, I don’t know.”
“Your best guess?”
“More than three days.”
Verrus Allamar flicked his finger and the desktop cracked. He smiled, and as he did, his lips grew thinner and wider until they opened fully upon a row of teeth that could never belong in a human mouth. “Only give me the word, Krysanthos; give me the word of my Lord. I will see to the rest.”
Krysanthos’ eyes snapped open; his expression became crisp and clear of worry. “You will do nothing until you have that word. Your position here as a Verrus is of import to us, as you well know.”
“My position here has already been compromised.”
“We have no positive proof of that—your squabbles with the Princess are well known, and a slight of this nature would not be beyond her.” He paused. “However, we assume that you are being watched; it is why I was sent.”
Verrus Allamar’s face shrank back into the confines of a human expression, and at that, a sour one. “Very well. I will wait your word. But do not delay. I do not relish the fate of Akkrenar.”
“Agreed,” Krysanthos replied. “But were I you, and I wished to avoid such a fate, I would not challenge APhaniel directly. He is more than your match. As,” he added softly, “am I.”
• • •
Stephen bowed low, his face wreathed in the curling mist at the God’s feet. He felt humbled by the aura of the Lord of Knowledge, but not so humbled that he could not speak. For he had come to ask his questions, have his answers, and have done with the Gods for as long as he possibly could.
Before he could speak, Meralonne did, and his voice, in the muted surround of the half-world, was stronger, richer, and deeper than Stephen had heard it before. “Why are you dressed for war, Master of Lore?”
“Because there will be a war,” Teos answered without preamble, his voice a thousand voices. He lifted his sword arm and pointed; the tip of the double-edged blade touched Stephen’s forehead. “This one has ridden at the front of that storm. And I foresee that it has not yet finished with him.”
“Bredan is the Hunter God,” Stephen said with certainty.
The Lord of Knowledge gazed at him a moment, and then gave a measured nod. “We did not know, although we suspected it to be so. My sons and daughters are not among his kin, and his powers are not what they were.”
“I have come,” Stephen said softly, stumbling over a ritual that he only half-remembered, “to offer you information and, if it pleases you, to ask of you the question that you granted me.”
Teos’ eyes glimmered with a smile that did not reach his still face. He nodded gravely. “Your information?”
“The demon-kin have found Vexusa, the home of the Dark League.”
The golden eyes of the God closed as he bent his head in acknowledgment. “And?”
“We believe it to be beneath the ground upon which we stand.” It was Meralonne again. “And worse; the Allasakari and the kin are unmaking the ways that lead to it.”
“Unmaking?”
“Indeed. They use power as if there is no end to the power that they can summon. They use power as if—as if the Covenant of the Unnamed One had never been made.”
“What is the Covenant of the Unnamed?” Stephen said, surprising himself. It was not the question that he had thought to ask, but he asked it, and it hung in the air as if the words had become physical, tangible.
The God stared at him a long time, and then at last, said, “that is the right question, Stephen of Elseth, although you yet may regret the asking of it. Will you hear the answer?”
“I will.”
“Very well.” He nodded and the book fell open in his left hand; pages, thin and supple, turned as if at the behest of a strong wind. “We are the Lords of the Heavens, and the Lords of the Hells; we are the Gods to whom you look and from whom you receive direction, should you choose to ask it. We are the gatherers, and we are the judges.
“But in the time of the Shining City, we were more than that. We walked among you, in the Age of Gods.” He looked up, and his face was the very face of youth; what he remembered, Stephen could not even imagine—for what could make a God feel young?
“You are the last-born,” he said softly. “And you are the strangest of the creations. Your bodies are weaker than we could have imagined when first we encountered you, but your minds are quick, and you are, of all the creations, most curious.” His smile was fond. “But you did not survive much.”
“But not the humans. It was Mystery who showed us their truth. For the souls of the mortal kin were little shards of light too beautiful to be cased forever in dying flesh; and when the flesh was stripped away, the shards remained, colored by the brevity of the life led.
“Mystery said to the Gods of the Heavens and the Lords of the Hells: Here, within each mortal, is the best and truest test of your power; no more will your battleground be earth alone. Each mortal is infinite in possibility, and finite in time. Do you call yourselves powerful?” At this, the God’s expression darkened, but he continued to speak. “Behold: the changes that you have made over landscape are already healed; for all your rage and glory, they might never have been. Yet your influence here, with these mortals, might be lasting and felt forever.
“And we saw what he showed us, and we saw what might follow; we saw the truth in the words that he spoke—although we did not comprehend all of his motives. There were the Heavens, and there were the Hells, and to these, in the end, those souls of man would go; and when the Mother at last was appeased—for it was hardest to part her from the children she had known, but that is another story—the gods withdrew to let the last-born flower.
“But Mystery was not content, and wisely so; he went to Bredan, and asked him for a binding that the very Gods could not break, and Bredan bound us by our words and his being: No God could come directly to the world again and wreak their power upon those too weak to bear it. And Mystery sealed the bargain, and there was the Great Change, that closed the world of the last-born to us forever. Bredan was the Oathholder, and Bredan the guardian of the divide.
“Yet there were three who did not swear the binding oath: Bredan of the Covenant among them, for he is the holder of the oath, and he enforces it.”
The air was alive with the last words of Teos, Lord of Knowledge. His sword sparked, and the book slammed shut, as if a final judgment had been pronounced.
Meralonne cursed in the silence.
“But it doesn’t make any sense!” Stephen cried out. “If—if he’s here—why would the Hunter God not tell us this? Why would he hide his true name and his true nature?”
“Mortal life is short,” the God replied gravely, “and mortal memory shorter still. The ages pass and change it. For my part, I do not believe that Bredan lied to his people. It is not his way.
“For there is more, Stephen. The Covenant bound us, but it was not the only binding; the Great Change sundered us from the world, and the world from us. We are not as we were, and we can never be so again, and just as we have sought to change you, so you have, in some remote way, touched us. There is a divide between us and within us, and the crossing of it would be perilous even if the binding were not in place. Not one of us knows—not even I—what might happen to a God who makes that crossing.”
If there were a chair, or ground that he could see, Stephen would have let his legs collapse beneath him. He did not. “He’s here,” he said softly. “He’s always been here.”
The God made no reply.
Stephen paled, and then, wind taking his hair, he raised his face, lifting his sky-blue eyes to meet the warmth of golden ones. “If the Lord of the Darkness is not on his throne in the Hells, where is he?”
• • •
Teos lowered his helm and lifted his great sword. “War will come,” he said softly, “and I pray that war can be contained in the Hells.
“Find Bredan. Find our brother, and return him to us.” He bowed to Stephen, the full bow of the Breodanir.
“What? How?”
But the Lord of Knowledge did not answer. “I fear that we will not meet again, Stephen of Elseth. At least not in this world.” He rose, and then nodded to Kallandras and Meralonne as they stood in silence. “Perhaps,” Teos said to the mage, as the mists began to grow and thicken between them, “you and I will meet again in future. You have but to ask any of my children in the Order.”
Meralonne nodded gravely.
“You know what is at stake, Illaraphaniel. Do what must be done.”
“Have not I always?” The words hung in the air as the walls of the mage’s tower study became substantial, became real. A crack of pink light, straight and thin, peered out from the edges of the shuttered window. Time passed strangely in the half-world, or in its lingering aftermath.
Stephen looked up into the pale face of the slender mage whose gray eyes were focused on a distance that none but he could see. “Meralonne?”
The mage looked down, as if from a great height, and a cold one. “Yes?”
“He’s here, isn’t he?”
“I think not,” was the quiet reply. “If I read the Lord of Knowledge aright, then he is neither here nor there. Were he here, in fact, we would know it; and not just us. The continent itself would be re-formed to the vast wastes of his desire.” Absently, almost as if by drill and not conscious desire, he reached for the pipe that he had set aside. He lifted it, empty and cold, to his lips, and inhaled. “Yet he is not on his throne in the Hells. He is somewhere between.”
“And we must stop him,” Kallandras said, speaking for the first time since the half-world had taken him into its fold. “I saw the arch. The gate,” he added. “I saw it, but I did not know it for what it was.”
“If you saw it and you escaped, he was weak indeed, and his grasp upon the world was poor. When?” As the bard hesitated, the platinum brows of the mage drew into one thin, long line. “Kallandras, we have no time for foolishness. When?”
“Eight years ago. Near Lattan.”
The mage smiled softly to himself, but the smile was bitter. “I see.” The smile withered. “Where?”
“By Myrddion’s final resting place. In Vexusa. I would not have escaped, but she sent me away; she used her magic to move me from the coliseum to the streets of Averalaan Aramarelas.”
Meralonne turned to Stephen. “He thinks that you are capable of finding Bredan of the Covenant—of finding your God. Do it.”
“I—” All protest died on Stephen’s lips as he met the mage’s eyes. Winters were warmer than what he saw there. He swallowed. But before he could speak, the mage spoke again, and his tone was softer, although his face was no less bleak.
“I understand that if you find your God you may well face the fate to which you were bound. But that fate was your choice, and if you did not understand all of what you were swearing, you swore the oath nonetheless, and you have benefited from it. If you do not find your God, then it is not only Breodanir that will suffer, but the Kingdoms of the West, the Empire of Essalieyan, and the Dominion of Annagar.”
“I don’t—I don’t understand.”
“Bredan was the keeper of the Covenant, but he was also the guardian of the ‘divide.’ It is that unknown divide that the Lord of the Hells is crossing as we speak. If we want any chance of hindering Allasakar—yes, Allasakar—in his passage, we must find Bredan.”
• • •
Ashfel saw Stephen first and bounded up to him, taking long easy strides that ended with two gray paws splayed out against the breadth of Stephen’s chest. Were it not for the intervention of the wall, Stephen would have fallen, and he lost no time in telling Ashfel exactly that.
Ashfel’s response was unacceptable, and he knew it; he also knew the exact moment that Gilliam was about to cross the threshold, for he bounded up and off, and sat with delicate good grace at the disheveled huntbrother’s feet.
Dogs, of course, were usually rather stupid when it came to lying, and Ashfel was no exception. The idea that Gilliam had already seen the end of Ashfel’s paws planted firmly against Stephen’s chest just didn’t occur to him until Gilliam caught him by the snout. At that point, he realized that he’d been caught out
, and struggled between defiance and pathos; pathos won.
Or at least it might have had Stephen been the Hunter Lord. Gilliam was unamused. Stephen thought it strange—he almost always did—that these dogs revered Gilliam, that they would die for him without hesitation, yet that it was Gilliam who was most severe and rigid when any of his rules were broken.
“You’re late,” Gilliam said, although his gaze was on Ashfel, who lay belly to ground in the entry hall.
“Sorry.”
“What happened?”
“We’re in trouble.”
“I’d guessed,” was the quiet response. He caught Stephen by both shoulders; the huntbrother tensed, but met his Lord’s gaze.
Don’t ask, Gil, he thought. Just don’t ask.
Gilliam was not good at asking questions; he was not well-versed at the art of starting a dialogue with little help. He also had his pride; Stephen felt it prickling the edges of their bond. He knew that Gilliam was hurt, and knew better that Gilliam would never admit to it. Just as well. Anger, he could deal with.
“Messenger came,” Gilliam said gruffly, as he let go of Stephen and turned away.
“What?”
“A messenger.”
“At this hour?”
Gilliam nodded. “From The Terafin. She wants us back.”
“Why?”
“How should I know?” He turned to walk away, and Stephen went after him.
“Gil—”
“Don’t bother.” He walked to the flat surface of an unused desk, and picked up a curled scroll. “This is the message,” he said, turning, his face dark.
Stephen took it, looked at it, and saw the perfect brush strokes of a person well-versed in the art of writing. More than that would have to wait. He curled the message up and slid it into the hip sling that he wore. “Gilliam, I won’t lie to you.” He couldn’t; a lie required the building of far too many walls, and the bond would not allow them. “But I won’t tell you things that are too personal either. You’ve said nothing at all about Espere, and I’ve only ever asked the one time.”
The Sacred Hunt Duology Page 88