Viernan was in no humor to suffer another of Niko’s melodramatic speeches. He drew in the deepest breath of patience he could muster, though it still felt thin in his lungs, and growled, “The news, Dore Madden?”
Dore glared at him as if he’d spoiled the punch line of a lengthy story. He flicked at a piece of lint clinging to his knee. “Your prince’s people have arrived safely in Tambarré.”
“Safe.” Viernan lifted his lip in a sneer. Safe could in no way describe the plight of M’Nador’s refugees, not with the luminous malice burning in Dore Madden’s gaze.
“The Prophet is ready to complete his bargain and is sending fifty eidola to support your assault on Raku.” Dore wore a dangerous look of satisfaction. “They’re en route to you posthaste from Tal’Afaq and should arrive within a fortnight. Morwyk is prepared to lend you five thousand men—trained soldiers, as your prince required—but there is something else.”
Viernan struck a viper’s stare towards Dore. “Else? What else? Our bargain has already been fixed.”
“Events move, Viernan.” Dore flicked at his knee again but was apparently unable to dislodge the lint clinging there. He finally pried the offending particle from the cloth with his fingernails. “Gydryn val Lorian is dead, and soon your Prince Radov will regain his precious Raku. But,” and he eyed Viernan malevolently at this, “if he means to do it with reinforcements from Morwyk’s army, he must make concession of his navy to serve Morwyk in the north.”
“Preposterous!” Viernan could hardly believe Dore would dare ask such a thing.
“Events progress, Viernan,” Dore repeated with a pointed stare. “Morwyk will soon move on Calgaryn, but he cannot have Dannym’s Admiral n’Owain out-flanking him from the sea. He’ll need your navy, disguised as raiders, to attack the coastal cities and draw Dannym’s warships away from Calgaryn.”
Viernan leveled Dore a daggered look. “M’Nador’s navy will be needed to protect Tal’Shira while Price Radov is at the front.”
Dore scoffed at him. “Who would think of invading Tal’Shira? No, Viernan. Speak to your prince. I believe you’ll find him quite amenable to the idea. Doubtless he will see reason where you cannot.”
Doubtless your Prophet has reduced his will to that of a sea sponge.
“And what about the Sundragons? Where is this contact who claims—”
“He’ll find you at the front.” Dore’s malevolent stare twisted into Viernan like a fire-flamed corkscrew. “Make haste, Viernan, lest the dust of your passing go unnoticed.”
Dore’s comment seemed to hold a duality of meaning, an implication Viernan misliked as much as Niko’s festering kingdom, one-eyed gypsies, fortunetellers, and zanthyrs of any gender….
And Thrace Weyland.
He spun in a swirl of black silk and wordlessly took his leave, but he couldn’t so easily turn his back on that feeling. It haunted his steps all the way to home to Tal’Shira.
Twenty-eight
“Like bugs to malicious boys are we to the gods.”
–The Immortal Bard Drake di Matteo
“From whence cometh this power? Is it agent of divinity or demon?” The Ascendant’s baritone voice sounded like the low clanging of a death bell: doleful, interminable, unrelenting. Sitting on her cot, Nadia pulled her knees to her chest and pushed her hands over her ears, but somehow his words still reached her.
“If it be divinity what fuels their forms with light and fire, if it be pure of intent, innocent of action, their mortal corporealities anointed by the blessed kiss of sanctity…” he licked his forefinger and turned a page in the Book of Bethamin, inhaled a sanctimonious breath and continued reading, “transcendent souls born of celestial radiance; if this be their genus, for what purpose must they have been put here upon this, our terrestrial plane?”
Nadia pushed her palms harder against her ears.
The Ascendant stood in the middle of the archway, just beyond the energized wall, forming an obstacle to her view of the Marquiin, who was standing a few paces behind him.
Her eyes kept straying to the latter.
The first two Marquiin who’d come to question her had been horrifying—barely even sane. Their questions phrased as accusations had made little sense to her, and their thoughts…it had taken all of her skill to keep their radiating malice from infecting her mind.
She’d feared the Prophet would be angry with what little information she’d given them, though she’d made an earnest effort, but how does one answer such accusations as, ‘Why were you sent here to spy for the Empire?’ or ‘What treachery is the Empire planning against our master?’ Their badgering and berating had quickly brought her to tears, especially since she feared angering the Prophet by not answering properly. She would rather have endured the Marquiin’s insanity than more of Darshan’s compulsion.
She’d been surprised then when the third Marquiin came. The winds of his mind only swept in circles of confusion, without the hatred and desire to harm so prevalent in the thoughts of the others. He’d used a gentle manner towards her and had even spoken eloquently in her own tongue.
Could this be him again?
Why had he treated with her so? It was almost as if Darshan had ordered him to be kind, which begged the question of why the Prophet might’ve issued such an order.
By Cephrael’s Great Book, he was such an enigma!
Nadia leaned back against the wall and rested her elbows on her knees, thinking again through her meeting with the Prophet.
Pelas’s description of his brother had led her to believe Darshan was arrogant, indifferent to human suffering, and wholly bent on the destruction of their world. Tanis’s description of the Marquiin and the Ascendant who’d captured him in Acacia had further solidified her impression of the Prophet Bethamin. Nadia had envisioned a terrifying man who thought himself a demigod and sent his minions outward to spread a doctrine of horrifying intolerance.
Nadia had been hearing about the Prophet Bethamin in one form or another for years. Reports from Agasan’s Order of the Glass Sword named him an insurgent and his Ascendants tyrannical minions; the Marquiin, they called abominations. Her mother thought Marquiin were a worse affront to elae than Malachai ap’Kalien’s Shades. Of the man himself, the Order had only been able to discern that he wielded an arcane power.
Now that Nadia had met the Prophet, she knew him to be all of these things and yet…not.
A monster wouldn’t have held her prisoner in his own temple, or freed her from goracrosta. Thus far, Shail had treated her far more monstrously than Darshan had. Yet undeniably, the Prophet had committed monstrous acts. She was staring at the product of one of them right now.
Nadia narrowed her gaze, trying to better focus on the Marquiin. The wall of energy blurred her vision as if through rising heat, but even had her sight been clearer, she still would’ve had difficulty discerning the Marquiin’s features beneath the grey silk shroud covering his face. Out in the world, the Marquiin wore both shroud and veil to ‘signify their purity’ and ‘veil their true essence from the wretched gaze of the sullied,’ but the shrouds alone apparently sufficed while in their master’s temple.
The Ascendant raised his voice for emphasis, as if her quiet thoughts were disturbing his reading. “For what purpose then have they been put here? Surely for no other than service, for thus is the Maker’s will: that all who might serve do so; that divine gifts be used towards the betterment of those less fortunate, asking nothing, giving all, devoted sacrifice of body and will, the alignment of conscience along the path of unrestrained abnegation, expelling all self unto servitude…”
Nadia shifted with a pained grimace. The words of that book felt like needles in her ears. She might’ve taken recourse in her talent to silence the awful man, but she wouldn’t risk using elae in the Prophet’s temple just to spare herself a little discomfort. One didn’t purposefully annoy a cobra when it lay coiled between oneself and freedom.
After her interview with the Prophet, his acol
ytes had brought her a cot, an armchair for sitting in while being questioned (or sermonized to—ever Bethamin’s Ascendants were vigilant to wake her before dawn with filth read from their sainted Book of Bethamin), a table for eating upon (or banging her head against when frustration overcame her), even a privy booth with a connected room for washing, though she wondered if some dark humor was at work behind its construction, for it appeared to have once been a confessional chamber.
Nadia frowned at these thoughts.
A monster didn’t give his young female prisoners privy chambers and leave them with access to their Adept gifts.
Maybe he just doesn’t want his own residence reeking of excrement.
Then why keep me here instead of in some baser cell? But for this argument, she found no suitable reply.
“Yet if service be their calling…” the Ascendant licked his forefinger and thumb and turned another page, inhaled a deep breath of pretension and continued dolorously, “why do so many of them seek to rise in ranks, even above their betters? From whence cometh this superior disdain that they use divine gifts only to incur wealth and power? By what right do these lustful creatures dominate, when they were assuredly placed here for servitude?”
Nadia’s attention again strayed back to the Marquiin. This time she rose from her bed and walked towards the iridescent wall, that invisible demarcation of her odd prison. She’d learned how closely she could stand to the barrier without feeling like humming bees were crawling all along her skin.
Trying to ignore the preaching Ascendant, she focused instead on the Marquiin who was standing behind him and slightly to one side. “Brother…may we speak?”
“…slave to those less fortunate…” intoned the Ascendant.
Seeming ghostly in his collared grey robe and close-fitting head shroud, the Marquiin approached Nadia.
With relief, she saw as he neared that he was the same Marquiin as had last attended her. She braved a fleeting smile. “I’ve thought of other things your Prophet may be interested in hearing.”
“…if from demons, they should at best be bound into service, their terrible abilities conscript to—”
The Marquiin put a hand on the Ascendant’s arm. “Brother, I believe that’s enough reading for today.”
The Ascendant jerked back from the Marquiin with rounded eyes, staring mightily at the grey-gloved hand resting on his arm. “Why-why-why do you presume to touch me?” His stammered words of indignation seemed much at odds with the horror on his face.
Nadia felt a pang of pity for the Marquiin. Even this revolting Ascendant despised him.
The Marquiin slowly lowered his hand back to his side. “The princess has information for the Prophet which I am obliged to hear, brother. You must resume your reading at a later time.”
The Ascendant’s cheeks flooded with the ruddy color of his anger. He angled a scathing look at Nadia. “Can you not see she merely seeks to evade the Prophet’s truth?”
“It is not for us to judge, brother, but to act as we’ve been given.” The Marquiin took the book from the Ascendant’s fingers with his own grey-gloved hands and turned to a specific page, from which he read, “‘Do not seek to know thyself. Seek to know my will, for I alone of this world am divine.’ So say the writings of our master.” The Marquiin closed the book and handed it back to the Ascendant, his meaning clear.
The Ascendant scowled.
Nadia knew his type—too young to receive any kind of power without abusing it; full of vigor, envy and spite in equal measure.
The Marquiin was still holding out the book. “The Prophet bade me receive the princess’s words and answer her questions as my primary mandate. Please, feel free to query our lord directly, should you disagree with my actions.”
The Ascendant glared at him for a moment longer. Then he snatched the book from the Marquiin’s hand and clutched it close to his chest as he rushed off. The Marquiin frowned after him for a moment, his expression making creases in the grey silk that conformed to his face.
Something in his melancholy manner, in the terrible hurricane storm of his mind, drew a needle through Nadia’s sympathy. She felt it threading her to him—by aspect of shared imprisonment, parity through ostracism or aught else, she couldn’t say. But he had been kind to her. At the moment, she didn’t even care if that kindness came by the Prophet’s command.
But whyever would he give such an order?
“He’s right,” she found herself confessing the moment the Ascendant had gone. “I was trying to stop him from reading any more of that…book.” Her tongue ached to decry the Book of Bethamin, as well as its author, but speaking ill of a god in his own house hardly seemed prudent.
“It doesn’t matter.” The Marquiin frowned after the Ascendant. “They only do it for spite. If you suddenly embraced the faith, you would never see one of them again.”
Nadia perceived within the storm of his thoughts a sudden hint of the innocent Adept chained to a lashing god. She dropped her gaze regretfully. “I would that I did have more to confess to you.”
Now why did she say that?
The Marquiin seemed equally surprised by her comment. He took a step closer. “If not confession,” he proposed, “perhaps you have questions. My master bade me be truthful with you and answer anything you asked to the best of my knowledge.”
Nadia blinked at him. Why by the Lady would the Prophet do that? It should’ve relieved her, but Nadia only found the Prophet’s order unsettling. To cover her disconcertion, she grasped for the first question that came to mind. “Do you embrace the faith, brother?”
The Marquiin’s eyes were as hollow shadows beneath the shroud that concealed his face, though his dark eyebrows stood out rather clearly against the sheer silk. He looked down at his gloved hands. “When your mind is being torn apart, you can resist or you can succumb. I thought I might escape the worst if I supplicated.” His jaw tightened, stretching the silk shroud. “I was wrong.”
His confession revealed such naked pain—immediately her heart went out to him. A truthreader’s entire existence revolved around the sun of thought. To have one’s mind so entrenched in the gravity of another’s will would be a truly horrifying state. She tried not to think of how the Marquiin’s fate might also become hers; she worried enough about that in the cold darkness of the night, when the Prophet’s temple opened its doors to nightmare.
He was still staring at his grey-gloved palms. “After the act is done and irreversible, some embrace the power invested in them. I do not know any who’ve sought the Fire. I haven’t met any who truly believe.”
“I’m so sorry.” She dropped her own gaze to her hands. He’d been so kind. What must it have cost him to converse with her, another truthreader still in contact with her gifts, her small chamber less a prison than his own apparent freedom? Was it any wonder the other Marquiin had treated her so ferociously? What they must’ve thought of her, flaunting her freedom at them.
“Does it pain you to speak to me?”
Lifting his gaze, the Marquiin answered, “There’s a kind of resolution in accepting one’s own acts.”
“Your acts? But surely you’re not to blame for what the Prophet did to you?”
He came closer to the barrier—so close she feared for him touching it. “I might’ve chosen death when the Fire was raging in my veins.” He looked off, as if seeing that moment again, or perhaps some future other than the tragic one he’d chosen. “In that moment, Princess, I could see Death standing just across the threshold, beckoning to me. I cowered from him.” He looked back to her. “Now I know Death’s arms would’ve offered a more merciful embrace than the storm that lives forever within me.”
“But you seem so sane!” Nadia blurted the words before she could stop herself. Immediately she flushed and dropped her gaze to her hands. “I’m sorry. That was insensitive of me.”
“Yes…but fairly observed.” He leaned a shoulder against the wall and gazed off along the invisible barrier that separat
ed them by mere inches. His brow furrowed beneath the silk, making odd shadows in it. “A few days ago, you wouldn’t have said so, but now….”
Nadia moved closer still, until the static energy coming off the barrier lifted the fine hairs on her arms and made her skin itch. But standing so near, she could better see his features. She realized he could hardly be much older than herself. “You were saying?”
He turned his head back to her. “Caspar.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“My name is Caspar.”
She offered a smile she didn’t feel. “I would we might’ve met under different circumstances, Caspar.”
The ghost of a smile hinted beneath the shadow-silk of his shroud. “We never would’ve met under different circumstances, Princess.”
So many thoughts laced these words of his—astonishingly clear thoughts. Intense, desperate thoughts projected to her as if a grappling hook thrown in a last daring effort to halt a slide over the precipice. Nadia suddenly saw no monster, only a young man trapped in a monster’s cage, urgently craving escape.
Against all judgment, she let the hook pierce her mind and even took hold of it herself to be sure it was properly lodged there. Caspar was anchored to her now, dangling above the abyss—bonded to her.
What chance Caspar had was now pinned to her, as her chances were likewise secured to Pelas. They were both dangling, in truth, two climbers roped to a third who climbed out of view in the rocks above, yet who remained their only hope against a fall.
But with the temporary bond she’d just established came the storm. Into her own mind surged that chaos wind, bringing its dark clouds of insanity, its jagged flashes of lightning pain. Nadia quickly closed a mental door to wall it off, immensely grateful that she could, since Caspar could not.
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