Idgen Marte leaned forward. “Since what?”
Allystaire knew the flush in his cheeks was going to betray him. “Since I recovered.”
“Don’t be a prude, Ally.” She smiled. “She surely isn’t.”
“It feels wrong to speak of it,” Allystaire replied, a kind of wonder lighting his eyes. “And I do not think I know the words.”
“That’s why you haven’t prayed?”
“Her presence has always been overwhelming,” he said. “Even Her voice in my thoughts. And now it is compounded.”
“Pull yourself together,” Idgen Marte said, slapping his knee. “If you need guidance, go seek it. Be a man about it. Don’t act like some squire who’s just had his first tug.”
He sighed, seized what remained of the bread, and took a bite, nodding. “You are right. Tonight.”
“Go now,” Idgen Marte said, “before the Temple fills with folk looking to sleep there.” She grinned wickedly. “You’ll not want to go waking them all up.”
* * *
Mol was waiting for him at the top of the Temple steps. She swung the door open for him with a light touch of her hand, then stepped delicately through after him.
While a few of the village folk seemed to be preparing for sleep, or talking quietly, or even sharing food here and there, the Temple wasn’t nearly as full as it would be in a few turns.
Before he knew it, Mol’s hand had slipped up into his and she was guiding him forward gently.
Her steps barely made a sound on the laid stones of the Temple’s floor. His sounded like a tattoo upon the rim of a great drum. When they reached the altar, Mol suddenly took his hand in both of hers, and looked up at him.
The naiveté of the girl he’d rescued so many months ago was, he thought, completely worn away. Her features still betrayed her endless curiosity and her insight, but there was a resigned sadness in her face that pained him to look upon.
“Oh, child,” he started.
“Shhh.” She shook her head, faintly. “I am not a child anymore, for all that I am only a few months older than when you rescued me. In truth, I am not sure what I am. There is so much I know without having learned. So much I simply know to say, or to do. It is confusin’, sometimes.”
The slight slip into her rustic accent tugged at him. He knelt, put his arm around her shoulder.
Allystaire half expected her to cry, or to go on speaking. Instead she threw her arms hard around his neck and then stepped back. With him on one knee, they were practically eye to eye, though in falling night hers were only dark pools above her cheeks.
“Much is given to us. Much must be taken,” Mol said. “All of us have sacrificed. If I must give up girlhood a few years early, it is not so great a thing.”
“I have gained everything,” Allystaire said. “If my sacrifice is only pain and hardship.”
Mol silenced him with a finger placed upon his lips. “Speak with the Mother. I cannot know if She will reply. The winter is not Her season, and She was greatly taxed by the battle. Even more so by what she did afterwards.”
“Do you mean my recovery?”
“Did She not tell you Herself that it was forbidden to encroach upon Death’s demesne?”
The words were like a cold shock in Allystaire’s gut, but Mol was already backing away, then vanishing into the shadows that swallowed the Temple’s interior.
Allystaire looked at the five pillars. He couldn’t make out the symbols on any of them, except for that of the Arm, directly in front of him: a hammer.
He knelt again, on both knees this time, tried to ignore the jolt of pain that brought with it.
Goddess, he thought. I have set into motion something I am uncertain of. I think, I believe, that if we pursue the course correctly we can bring the peace I promised to Your people. I do not know. If you have any guidance, please lend it to me. His thought trailed off as his eyes focused intently on the hammer graven into the stone before him.
There was no answer.
He swallowed hard. Goddess, I do not ask that you come take my fears from me, or my self doubts, or that you tell me what you would have me do. If I am wrong, if I have judged the men I chose wrongly the consequences would be staggering.
Allystaire. Her voice was faint, like an echo coming to him across a chasm, but the sound of it in his head was like a balm. I cannot make your choices for you, nor would I. I told you once that I would not have chosen a man of lesser conviction. I can only guide and influence you upon the path. The steps that carry you forward are yours.
I know, Goddess. I know. I just seek that very guidance.
Allystaire. There was the suggestion of Her touch along the back of his neck, Her fingers stroking his skin. He shivered audibly.
Suddenly he was no longer in the Temple, but standing in that other place where the only factor of existence was Her presence. She filled all of his senses, all at once, so powerfully that he wanted to weep for the love of Her.
Even so, the radiance that typically surrounded Her form was softer, more muted. She was almost indistinct, fuzzy at the edges.
“The battle taxed me,” She said, her voice just as thin as it had been. “As did my final Gift to you.”
Before he could help himself, Allystaire swallowed hard. “Final?”
She smiled sadly. “If I were to bring you to me again, My Knight, as fully as I did, you would wish never to return.” Her hand cupped his cheek; his knees nearly melted beneath him, for all that it seemed Her hand didn’t quite touch him.
Allystaire nodded. He resisted the urge to turn his face into Her palm, to put his lips against Her hand. Perhaps She felt the tension in him, for Her hand dropped away.
“There are Rules that govern even Me and My Sisters and Brothers, that have always governed all of us as we rose and fell, were forgotten or revived.”
Before he could even pose the question, She shook Her head, scattering diffuse beams of sunlight across Allystaire’s vision.
“I cannot explain them to you. That is Forbidden.”
“What can you tell me, then?”
“That My Gifts will not abandon you, never, so long as you do not abandon me. That you should speak with Gideon when you return.”
He swallowed. “Am I doing your will? The Order of the Arm, the peace treaty?”
“You are doing your will in My service, Allystaire, which is what I called you to do.”
He nodded. “This has become so much more than finding one band of reavers.”
“And yet it is the same. The desire for justice, the anger within you at what had become of the poor and the weak, your determination—they are the same.”
She stepped close to him then, enveloping Allystaire’s sight so thoroughly that he had to close his eyes or be blinded.
“I wish I could bring you to me, My Knight, as I did before. If you truly wished to leave your labors behind you, if you asked that of me as some final boon, in truth, I do not think I could refuse you.”
“And you know I cannot ask that,” Allystaire said. “It is my fondest desire. But it would be cowardly to leave them behind because I am afraid to lead them forward. It would not be…”
“Knightly,” She said, finding the word before he could. “And that, Allystaire Stillbright, is why I love you.”
She leaned forward to kiss him, but the sizzling power of Her lips on his flesh was a pale imitation of what it had been after the Longest Night; still it was enough to buckle his knees and tingle his spine. “The well of my love is bottomless, My Arm,” she whispered as She drew away. “And anything may be drawn from it.”
With those words, the radiance around Her began to fade, and suddenly Allystaire felt stone digging painfully into his knees. He stood with a grunt, trying to force down the disappointment at finding himself back in a plain, stone-walled building, with the d
ark and cold of winter pressing in upon it. Along the gold-flecked red stone of the altar, there was a flicker of the radiance he longed for. A trick of the uncertain light, perhaps, but he pressed a hand down upon the stone, felt its warmth, tried to gather it into himself so that he could carry it with him into the dark.
CHAPTER 17
Theory
“One more time now,” Torvul said as he and Gideon walked headed out of the Inn, their neglected dinners finally eaten, as Allystaire spoked with Mol at the altar of the distant Temple. “And go slowly. Pretend y’were explaining it to Allystaire. Use small words and not too many of ‘em all at once.”
His breath steamed out into the air in a great cloud, but the dwarf didn’t mind the cold much. Better the cold than the heat, he thought absently as the silent boy beside him gathered his thoughts.
“I said I think I have discovered something about magic that no one else has.”
“Well, everybody who touches it thinks that at some point, boy.”
“I am not everyone, Torvul. I have contended with gods.” The boy let that pronouncement hang in the air for a moment, then said, “Well, with fragments of them, or what part of a god is touched by the prayer of an empowered servant.”
“Ya’ve a point there,” the dwarf admitted, rubbing at his chin. He felt the stubble there, thought of the razor and the bowl in his wagon. Time to sharpen it. “Come t’my wagon. We’ll have a jot of ikthaumaunavit while we talk.”
“I don’t enjoy spirits, but we’ll walk and talk where you will.”
The dwarf set a quick pace, swinging his short legs from his hips with the ease and confidence of a man returning home. Gideon kept pace with him, taking shorter, smaller strides.
At the wagon, a simple flick of his forefinger, followed by a thumb and smallest finger squeeze at its edges, and the lock that held the door fast dropped into his hand.
Gideon had to duck to make it through the door but could stand comfortably once he passed under it. Both of them felt a small jolt as they crossed the threshold, an undeniable twinge of power that brought with it a feeling of belonging.
The wagon was pleasantly warm; a small stove at the far end of the boxy interior emitted the heat, but no smoke. Torvul puttered up to it swiped his hand across it, muttered a word.“I’m going t’work while you talk. Have some preparations t’make. Sit on the bed.”
Gideon nodded and slid open a long cupboard door to his left. Crammed inside it was a tangle of blankets and pillows. He was able to wedge himself into it, but only after lifting out the folding table and stool that stacked within it.
Torvul’s home was a model of efficiency that way. No space within it was wasted, and most of it had more than one use. There were cabinets and racks built all along the meeting of wall and roof, filled with glass bottles, earthenware jugs, tightly capped metal cellars, and pouches. Likewise, hooks and ties descended from the ceiling, many holding bundles of drying plants. Torvul grabbed a few here and there, and a copper-bottomed pot from a hook on the side of the stove itself, and began picking the leaves away and dropping them in, muttering to himself.
“What’s that?” Gideon had to lean forward to keep his head away from the edge of the cupboard-bed.
“Ah? Oh.” The dwarf coughed. “Just thinkin’ on memory stone, the making of them. These,” the dwarf said, testing the heat of the stove’s surface with one finger, “were fired in the last working Stonesung Kiln in the Homes. I never saw it, of course, but my master had.”
“It saddens me when the knowledge of something goes out of the world,” Gideon offered.
“Saddens? Yes, if you’re talking about the knowledge of a recipe for stew or a pretty little song, or the memory of a war, all its tragedies and indignities. When it’s the knowledge my people had, it’s a Freezing tragedy, Gideon. A crime. Sad doesn’t…” Torvul felt his voice deepening in sudden, frustrated anger, but stopped as the boy held up one hand.
“I did not mean to stir such memory, Torvul. I am sorry.” He bit his bottom lip, then said carefully, “What if the making of them was not necessarily entirely forgotten?”
“It is. There’s no Stonesong left in the world, boy, or if there is, we know not where t’find it.”
“Well, that’s not relevant to what I mean,” Gideon said. “Let me try and explain again, please.”
“Fine.” The dwarf set his copper pot on the stove, picked up a skin, uncorked it, and squeezed a clear stream of liquid into the pot along with the leaves he’d added. The strong smell of pure, neutral spirit filled the wagon.
“When the sorcerers trapped me during the battle, I didn’t understand what had happened. I only knew I was free of physical cares, of mortal worries. I was a being of pure Will. The world fell away from me. Do you understand?”
“Aye,” the dwarf said as he put the skin back on its hook, then went to a rack of tools and pulled free a tiny silver balance. He looked up at a rack of metal cellars and deftly pulled one free with his dexterous fingers. “They made ya forget yourself. It’s a trick they’re fond of.”
“No,” Gideon said. “It isn’t. It was not a simple spell. They unmoored me. Set me adrift from the world. And in that state, while I existed, I could work nothing upon the world. No act of Will. Do you understand?”
The dwarf dipped a tiny silver spoon into the uncapped cellar, the smell of heating spirits now competing with that of rain-wet earth. “No.”
“Without a connection to the world, physical, and, I expect, emotional, magic is not possible. It cannot be worked. Think on your own craft,” Gideon said, all in a rush. “Without your home, without your songs, it began to fail you, yes?”
“We dwarfs have long known that our sense of home, of community, was the source of our power,” Torvul said. “This isn’t new.”
“Please, bear with me. The sorcerers give themselves over to magical power. They sacrifice their very being to it. Body and soul. They literally erode, over time. Why doesn’t it happen right away? And a second, related question: why do you never see a sorcerer who has taken this power into himself give himself over to research, or to a quiet life? Why do they interfere in the world?”
The dwarf carefully weighed the specks of rare earth he laid on the balance with a tiny, precisely cone-shaped ingot, peering at it through a squinted eye. “What’re ya driving at?”
“What brought me back to the world, to myself, to the mortal shell I needed in order to work my Will, was Allystaire reaching out towards me and,” he cleared his throat, “calling me son. It forced me to remember myself. My time with him, and the rest of you. What do sorcerers cling to? Wealth is practically meaningless to them, as they can achieve almost whatever they wish without it. After the first few years in their power, the pleasures of the flesh are meaningless as well, as their bodies become effectively sexless. By the time they are Iriphet’s age, not only do they not need to eat, drink, or sleep, they can’t. So why do they not simply fade away?”
A straight-edged file of silver in one hand, Torvul scraped the flecks of powdery dirt into a mortar and pestle made of blue-veined stone. “I imagine you have some thoughts on the answer.”
“I do,” Gideon said. “I think power, the use of it, becomes an end in itself. Why would Bhimanzir come to the Baronies? What is to be gained by it? Only the exercise of their power. They interfere and meddle and plot because they must. It is a lust for power that drives them to sorcery in the first place, and once they attain the power they seek, they must keep driving after something. If they do not, their very ability to use their power will vanish. And so will they.”
“Well,” Torvul offered, “that doesn’t help us kill them.” Using a matching pestle, he gently ground away at the substance inside the mortar.
“Torvul, this swings both ways. The more one has to live for, in short, the more power they can bring into the world. And I think,” Gideon said caref
ully, “that with Her help…we could bring all of it into the world.”
The pestle dropped from Torvul’s fingers, clattering on the worktable that folded down from the wall of the wagon, and then bouncing to the floor.
“You’re mad,” the dwarf said as he bent to pick it up.
Gideon’s face was intense, his cheeks drawn, eyes wide, leaning forward as he went on in a rush. “The sorcerers take children from their parents. Somehow they can sense the Will within them, the ability to tap into the power. But there is no telling how powerful they might be until they start to turn pubescent. Perhaps one in five taken children is allowed to live at that point because their masters are able to determine just how strongly they can reach across the Barrier. Now imagine that there is no Barrier.”
The dwarf’s eyes widened. He dropped the pestle again, but at least it landed in the mortar. “Then every gifted child would—”
“Be able to tap into the magic. To exert their will. And not only children, anyone that is so gifted.” Gideon swallowed once. “Allystaire put weapons into the hands of common men, who would otherwise never wield them, in order to defend themselves against their oppressors. Now imagine if folk have this? What happens to the press gang that comes for their sons? The reavers that come for their daughters? The sorcerers themselves?”
“You would loose who knows how many sorcerers upon the world.”
“Would there be a risk of that? Yes, I’ll admit it. But many of the manifestations of it would be minor, like the odd hedge wizard one hears of, a strange old man who tells uncanny fortunes, or a village wise woman whose poultice and compress are a bit more potent than any other. And if we could find the larger powers, we could guide them.”
“The Order of the Will,” Torvul breathed. His knees wobbled, and he clutched at the edge of his table. “That’s what you’re after.”
“Perhaps,” Gideon said. “Eventually. I do not think any would be gifted in precisely the way that I am. Who knows what they might be, in time?”
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