Warm satisfaction flooded her. “Thank you.”
She caught a look from Vendanj that suggested he’d never heard her say so much at one time. She also saw approval, and a new respect in his eyes.
Now she just had to convince King Elan to attend this Convocation. And it wasn’t simply about a leagueman and his family—happy as she was to have helped them. If the Far Nation was ever going to rejoin the world of man, it had to be now. They could no longer remain aloof to the other races. Their commission to protect the Covenant Tongue had found its time. The power of the Language was needed. Now.
It was time to fight or die.
Vendanj opened the door. “We’ll return for Convocation as quickly as we can,” he said.
Mira followed the Sheason from the High Office, wondering if she’d see this place again.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Garlen’s Telling
If you get the words right, you can go anywhere.
—Author proverb, taken as an expression of fancy
Beyond the window of the Levate healing room, darkness had fallen, interrupted only by the glow of lights from windows in the Recityv night. Braethen stared out, new knowledge weighing on him. The others had returned dressed in thick cloaks and high-collar coats. Vendanj and Grant spoke softly near the door. Mira hadn’t yet returned.
An uneasy feeling tugged at Braethen’s gut.
He’d spent hours reading all he could find on Tillinghast. It was an end place: at the other side of the Saeculorum.
Much of what he’d found had been written in other tongues, writings he struggled to decipher. But the closest he could discern was the idea of atonement.
And no story that took this idea as a theme ever ended well. None that Braethen knew, anyway.
He watched as Tahn and Sutter took turns rushing to a basin to disgorge the food they’d eaten. They’d consumed too much, too fast. Their tender stomachs couldn’t bear it.
The door opened and Mira stepped in. She conversed with Vendanj and Grant in a low tone. She then opened the door, looked into the hall, and nodded to Vendanj.
“Let’s go,” Vendanj said. “No talking.”
Mira led them down the hall and across a mezzanine. They descended a stairway into a second hallway. Recessed alcoves on either side of them harbored statues, empty suits of mail, and occasionally a door.
At the hall’s end, another stair spiraled down. Mira led them, and in short order they arrived at a workroom. Large tables stood laden with mallets, steel rings, sharp shafts, and rolls of leather. Along the walls, pegs were hung with unfinished suits of armor, saddles, tack and harness rigs, lengths of hide still curing. To the right blazed a forge with water troughs beneath it to cool heated metal. Everything smelled of armor oil and rawhide. A dense, humid heat thickened the air. That and the smell of a man’s labor.
At this hour, the room was empty save for three smiths. One held something in the fires of the forge. As Mira started through the armory, he put a piece of red-hot iron into the water. A gout of steam and a loud hiss rose from the trough.
The other men beat at folds of doubled leather, driving studs into them at even intervals. They worked without their shirts, thick stomachs glistening with sweat beneath corded chests and shoulders. Each hammer swing fell precisely where they intended it.
One of the men working his leather looked up as they passed two tables away. He continued to hammer, uninterrupted, grunting at a casual nod from Vendanj.
Broad doors at the far end of the armory were open to ventilate the fires and keep the men cool. The wind was blowing hard, sending strong gusts into the room. Ten paces from that open yard, Mira abruptly stopped, drawing her swords in an impossibly quick, dual motion. Braethen heard Grant pull his own weapon. Four leaguemen walked into sight, blocking their passage into the stable yard.
“His Leadership was right. Look what we’ve found.” One of the leagueman laughed as all drew their swords.
“Stand aside,” Vendanj said.
The leagueman shook his head in an exaggerated motion. “Sheason, you’re going to the pit for this. And if you draw the Will, you’ll be put to death. Do you understand your choices?”
Mira leaped forward, blades slicing. Sparks rose from the furnace in the wind, streaking the air like light-flies around her as she dashed. Before the leagueman could defend himself, she had her blade at his neck.
“Not another word,” she said. To the remaining leaguemen, “We’re leaving. If you try to stop us, your friend dies.”
“Hurry,” Vendanj called.
Braethen ran with the others into the stable yard, where they found their horses ready.
They’d all mounted, when the leagueman gambled on Mira’s threat and began to shout an alarm. His cries rose on the wind. A moment later, running steps echoed toward them from every direction.
Mira struck the man in the back of the head, knocking him unconscious. He dropped like a sack of wheat. Then she jumped to her own horse. Vendanj clucked twice, sending his horse into a gallop toward the stable yard gates. The clop of hooves rose like applause across the stone mall.
They rode hard and fast, the cobblestone underfoot too slick for iron-shod hooves to stop. A horse-length from the barred doors, Vendanj shoved a flattened palm toward the gates, casting them aside like straw in a summer storm. Into the street they poured, turning south along the outer wall of Solath Mahnus. Warning cries rose behind them, but were soon lost to distance and the rush of blood in Braethen’s ears.
Around a sharp turn, the cobbled road ended, passing to soil. Braethen breathed a sigh of relief as their horses’ hooves quieted in the dirt.
They raced under a full moon. Around them, the city had begun to fall to sleep: fewer lights shone in windows, fewer dogs barked.
After just a few minutes, Vendanj pulled up abruptly, jumping from his saddle and taking two running strides to a modest door. He rapped lightly at the lintel as Braethen and the others came to a stop and looked down in confusion. This was no cathedral. Mira gestured them off their horses, gathering the reins and pulling the mounts into a covered alcove beside the house. Grant assisted her, his eyes searching the night with the same intense awareness as the Far.
The door squeaked, and an old face peeked out—sallow cheeks beneath a shock of snow-white hair. An expression of unhappy surprise was clear on the man’s face. But the fellow opened the door to admit the Sheason. Vendanj half-turned and gestured them to follow.
All went in save Mira and Grant, who remained outside to watch.
Braethen had just cleared the door when Vendanj shut it fast and directed him to keep an eye on the street through the window. The Sheason then stepped into the direct glow of a lantern hanging from a rafter. He eyed their host carefully. The old, tired-looking man stared back with arched brows.
“I need a Telling, Garlen, and I need it quickly.” Vendanj spoke fast but clear.
“What else,” the man replied. “I should know the sound of rushing hooves by now. Each time they clatter to my stoop, you expect some words. And in a hurry.” An obstinate tone entered the old man’s voice. “As things go, just talking to you could get me horse-whipped. And beyond that, those bumble-fools at Council may decide an author’s craft is like to yours. I barely make enough coin as it is.”
Braethen stared. An author. He’d been so distracted that he’d completely missed all the books and parchments. In this home, tucked away in a squalid quarter of Recityv, tables overflowed with scraps of parchment and books of various sizes, some bound in animal hide, some in cloth, others wrapped in twine; crowded shelves bowed from the weight of their volumes, sagging like a series of thin smiles; trunks sat open on the floor, overflowing with loose sheets and other paraphernalia; and amidst the clutter Garlen seemed to bring a perfect order to it all.
“Please, Garlen,” Vendanj said. “I don’t have time to debate the decay of a society that doesn’t esteem your skill. And I’ve always made generous payment for your work.”
“You’re the only one,” Garlen shot back, wheezing as he climbed a short stair and perched behind a lectern which rose two full strides from the ground.
“We go north, and east,” Vendanj hurried on. “The words must tell of the Soliel. Do you remember it?”
“Aha.” Garlen smiled and winked. “To me you come when my age and experience suits your purpose, but younger pens dally at your scryer’s beck—”
“Nonsense,” Vendanj said. “Yours is the only pen in Recityv I trust. And we’re in a hurry, my friend.”
“Don’t end there,” Garlen sputtered through a laugh. “Say it all. We’ve Quiet in the land. Patient shadow-stuff that brings with it a taint. A taint not just of foulness but of secrets mankind has ignored for far too long. I’ve put it on parchment a thousand times.”
“I know, Garlen. But enough! Can you write it?” Vendanj may as well have thrust his fist into the lectern. The force of his cry rattled in the wood.
Garlen raised his chin and squinted with one eye. Up on his writing perch atop the impossibly tall lectern, his white hair glowed in the light of the lamp hanging close by. His spectacles caught a glimmer of the flame inside. The author peered a dreadful moment at Vendanj, testing the Sheason’s patience. Then he pointed a quill at him.
“You’re going to Tillinghast.” Garlen paused, twisting the quill in his fingers. “It’s a dangerous place, my friend. Not a place to go gallivanting off to with a tribe such as this.” The quill swept across the room to indicate the rest of them.
Vendanj opened his mouth to speak.
Garlen stopped him before he could utter a word. “Yes, I can write it. Or near to it. I’ve seen the Soliel. Wandered like a lost pup in places most men won’t write about.” The author became quiet, his gaze reflective. “But I’ve not written of such things. Ever. That region is better left alone.” Then as though waking, Garlen spoke up, “But yes, I can write it. I’ll take double on what you usually pay. And I’d have you make mention to your cathedral hootenanny, that we tone-deaf louts find plenty of song in the spoken word alone.”
Vendanj said nothing to that. Finally, he added, “We need to get to Naltus Far.”
A look of concern touched the author’s face. “I’ve not been there. I’m not sure I can write that Telling accurately. But I can put you on the Soliel. From there—”
“Do you have Hargrove’s Collected Works?” Braethen interjected.
A’Garlen looked down from his perch, squinting into the dimness near the window where Braethen stood watch. “Who’s that? What do you care about my book collection?”
“Do you have it!” Braethen demanded.
“No author considers himself—”
“Where?”
The author began to point, and Braethen dashed to a bookcase on the far wall. Braethen scanned the books and found them quickly. There were eight volumes. He fingered the bindings in a blur, and pulled down the sixth book. With an audible crack, he opened the tome and flipped, from memory, a third of the way through the pages. He scanned, his mind and heart racing with remembrance and urgency.
“Here!” Braethen passed the open book up to Garlen. “Halfway down the left page.”
The author took the book with a look of skepticism, but read the printed page. His face took on a conspiratorial smile. And before he did anything more, he reached down. Braethen took the author’s grip, one he knew well.
“I thought so,” the old man said. “Thank you, lad. Of course, this is pedestrian language, and won’t do for a Telling.” He harrumphed. “But it gets me what I need.”
He shook his head, and cast a gleefully wicked eye over Braethen and the rest. Then the diminutive man stretched his arm up to draw back his sleeve, and made a grandiose movement of dipping his quill in an inkwell. His gaze flitted over the top of his glasses toward Vendanj as he withdrew the stylus, seeming to ask if the Sheason really meant to use what the author was about to produce. Vendanj nodded gravely.
As Braethen returned to the window to watch the street, the Sheason caught his arm and gave him a grateful nod. That one nod went a long way to erasing the feelings of disappointment he’d carried for not becoming an author himself. He settled deeper into the skin of a sodalist.
Garlen looked down at his lectern, and began to write. The scratch of the quill against the parchment came loud. But Garlen never looked up. His hand moved with practiced ease to the inkwell, but so quickly that it scarcely seemed anything more than another stroke in his current word. No pause, no waiting on something more to write. The scribbling was feverish but not panicked. The author’s eyes looked beyond the page under the quill to whatever he created. Braethen’s skin prickled at the sheer thought of what the man might be creating inside his mind and committing to parchment.
No one spoke or moved. None wanted to break the spell of silence. In the quiet, the only sound was the solitary quill roughing its way with black ink over a patch of vellum. That sound seemed to Braethen immeasurably lonely, and in the same instant impossibly important. It reminded him of his father’s work, and somehow, so far from home, his esteem for A’Posian grew.
He didn’t know how long they’d stood waiting, watching Garlen create his Telling. However long it may have been, it seemed an instant. The author was creating words that Braethen—from his years of study—knew could be sung in order to bridge great distances. The legends of Tellings were like legends of Far.
Suddenly the door burst open. Mira swept past Braethen to Vendanj, who didn’t look away from Garlen.
“A mob searches the next street,” she said in a quiet, urgent voice. “They come here next. If we don’t leave now, we’ll be overmatched.”
Vendanj appeared not to hear her. And Garlen could not be disturbed. The author was alone with his words in a room full of strangers.
“Shall I run a decoy south? Grant and I could lead them false long enough for you to reach the cathedral.” Mira looked up at Garlen. “How long ’til he’s done?”
Vendanj raised a hand to silence her. That same moment, fighting broke out in front of the house. Mira bolted from Vendanj’s side and into the street as the clash of metal and heaving grunts told of swordplay beyond the door. Shouts of alarm rose up.
“Over here,” one man called.
Rearing horses whinnied, and frantic hooves echoed toward them. Getting closer. Scuttling boots pounded the soil of the road. The clink of armor and blade jangled Braethen’s nerves. The shouts and calls became furious. Oaths echoed down the hard-packed dirt of the street.
The Sheason looked up at Garlen again. The author’s quill still leapt across the page, undisturbed by the combat outside his door, unperturbed by the intrusion of voices and the threat of weapons in his own house. The fight raged closer to the stoop, bodies slamming the outside walls. Panes of glass rattled in their frames, wall hangings jounced and fell. A shrill cry rose like the sound of a mortal wound. Still, Garlen wrote; still Vendanj watched him write. Neither could be disturbed.
Someone got to the door, shouting an oath of death. The words gurgled in his throat, Mira’s blade cutting short the curse. A hollow thud followed as the man fell across the entry.
There was a maniacal look in Garlen’s eyes. His lips worked over his yellowed teeth. The hair on his jowls and in his ears stood on end, as though he were chilled. He didn’t stop. His quill worked now at such a pace that it sounded as one long stroke, the individual letters and words indistinguishable from the whole.
“Here!” another voice called from beyond the door.
Garlen dropped his quill into the inkwell and dusted the parchment with sand to dry it. Then he rolled the sheet with stubby fingers, lashed it with a braid of horsehair, and tossed it at the Sheason.
Vendanj caught the scroll with a deft hand, and swept it into the folds of his cloak in the same motion.
The lantern rocked slightly over Garlen’s head. The author leaned out over the lectern. “Never forget that you asked this Telling of me, Vendanj. I’
m glad I don’t know the names of your company.”
Vendanj pulled a small bag from his cloak and placed it on Garlen’s writing perch. “Thank you, my friend. And take care of yourself.” With that, Vendanj whirled and strode to the door.
The others followed. Braethen lingered a moment to note the strange look on Garlen’s face. It was as though he’d just returned from another place, and found the world he’d come back to with relief. The author turned toward him. He didn’t speak, but smiled thanks again to Braethen and nodded.
Braethen returned the nod and moved fast to the door. He stepped across the body lying there and onto the stoop. Eight men stood near Mira and Grant, wearing the emblem of the League.
Vendanj rushed into the center of the street and pointed splayed fingers toward the sky.
The wind began to stir.
Vendanj dropped his arm toward the men and the wind descended on them in punishing waves. Small pieces of wood from houses down the street tore loose from their nails, rocks and cast-off bits of iron rose from the ground. Panes of glass shattered, and shutters, barrels, everything light ripped into splinters, streaking through the air toward the men. A rain of debris struck them like a swarm. A few of the men fled, some fell to the ground under the assault, their bodies writhing beneath hundreds of pointed pricks and the bludgeoning of stone and metal.
Braethen and the others clambered onto their horses and bolted as the wind howled past them, tearing at their cloaks and whipping dust into their eyes.
CHAPTER SIXTY
Leaving Peace Behind
As a young man, I ignored the advice of my Maesteri and left Descant to stand with my family in war. I don’t regret it. But I returned broken.
—From the diary of Maesteri Belamae, Descant Cathedral
More shouts followed them. Searchers, spotting them as they raced through the streets, called alarms and pointed accusing fingers, spurring their mounts to move faster. Shadows blurred past, smears of grey beneath a bright moon.
Then they turned into a broad street that ended at the steps of Descant Cathedral. The sight relieved Wendra. It rose like a monolith against the starry sky. Great domes marked dark half circles against the night. Upper windows showed the dim light of reading lamps.
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