by Hal Emerson
Chapter Nine: The Path of Light
The sun had just begun to set by the time the Prince made it into the city of Banelyn. His heart was pounding furiously, and sweat had formed on his brow and under his Commons clothing - the entire journey through the mountains down to the city had been nerve-wracking and a few times the Prince thought he might just go mad with paranoia. He had been sure every breaking twig or rustling leaf was Tomaz ambushing him from behind a tree, and every flash of light off a shiny rock the girl’s daggers whistling through the air to strike him down.
But finally he had made it. Banelyn.
He kneed his horse sharply and was soon galloping down the long dirt path – a hunting trail that he had come upon - that led to the wide paved northern road that ended at the massive Lerne Gate.
As the city came closer and covered the horizon, he became more and more flushed with emotion, feeling certain that he would find answers here to the kidnapping, to the Death Watchmen, to all of it. With each step he felt assured that it had been all a test.
He needed to find the Seeker of Truth. It was a title given to the heads of the Empire-wide information gathering organization that had agents placed in every town, village and city within the borders of the Empire. It was their job to seek out traitorous activity and report it to Symanta, as well as to the Ear of the Empress. But what was more important to the Prince was that they were only allowed to act on direct orders from the Empress, as conveyed through one of the Children, and they did not participate, on pain of death, in any Imperial politics. They were immune to the games of the Children and the Empress gave them relatively free reign. But they were, in all cases, required to answer the Children’s questions to the farthest extent of their full and often considerable knowledge. In most cases, Seekers were summoned into the presence of one of the Children, but in certain instances the Children would visit a Seeker if a situation required urgent attention.
The Prince made his way into the town that had sprung up along the road heading to Lerne, quickly losing himself in the crowd. He reined the horse in and jumped off. He crossed to the side of the street and tied the animal to a large stake and left it there, knowing that sooner or later a horse thief would come along and take it. His brother Ramael had always told him there were only two kinds of Commons: arsonists and horse-thieves.
He hurried along the street, almost running, heart pounding in his ears; his skin prickled with every touch of wind, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end at the sound of every deep, rumbling noise. He pushed his way through the crowded and narrow streets, between rickety wooden buildings decked out in purples, yellows, greens, and reds all offensively bright, passing merchants still loudly hawking wares and groups of Baseborn speaking loudly. But while the Prince saw all of this, he took no notice - all of his concentration was focused on finding a single golden flower, hung upside down, and tied to seven green shoots of long-blade grass with a black ribbon. The triliope.
The Seekers remained in a position of power partly because they existed in the collective consciousness of the Empire as omniscient phantoms. No one knew what a Seeker looked like, no one knew who could be working for one of the Seekers, no one knew anything at all but that a Seeker may be anyone, anywhere, in any station or level of society, and could, with a single word, take away all that you held dear.
Each of the Children knew the way to find a Seeker, should they need one, and it always began with the triliope, the symbol of the Empire. Peace, the golden flower, prosperity, the seven green blades of grass, contained within the black ribbon, the Empire’s borders. It was the first sign on the Path of Light, a path that led devoted followers and those seeking enlightenment to the Seekers. The Prince’s brother Tiffenal, Prince of Foxes and Lord of Formaux Province, had created a less glamorous name for the path, detailing a certain orifice into which the Seekers’ precious light should be placed. But the Seekers did their job well, and the Children let them have their little religious games.
Looking for the triliope, the Prince’s mind began to work so quickly that the world blurred and spun about him - recording, distilling, discarding information. Each second, the Prince noticed countless thousands of details, the Raven Talisman’s powers expanding his mind and allowing him to sense every facet of the life moving around him, every swirling eddy and changing current. Flashes of color, sounds, shifts in the flow of air, jumbled voices, smells of cooking meat, baking bread mixed in with fertilizer and the rank stench of too many unwashed bodies crammed into one place for too long, all passed in and out of the Prince’s mind almost instantaneously. Record, distill, discard. None of it was important - only the first marker was. There were seven in all, and had the Prince known where the seventh sign was he would have gone there and relied on his title to gain entrance. Then again on second thought, if the test-conspiracy against him went as deeply as he believed, revealing himself to anyone but the commanding Lord Seeker might be terribly dangerous. In either case, he had to start at the beginning, and he would go step by step to keep his identity concealed as long as possible.
The Prince rounded a corner, still far from the enormous walls that described the borders of the actual city of Banelyn, and found what he was looking for - the triliope. It was hanging outside of an herb shop amid various other dried plants and flowers. He let his connection to the Raven Talisman fade and finally cut off, and the markings on his shoulders and back grew cold once more. He moved toward the triliope, but instead of going into the herbalist’s shop, the Prince turned to the building across the street. By this time, the sun had well and truly set, and it appeared that the Commons were going home for the night. In the distance a loud set of bells clanged – a curfew, no doubt.
The building across from the triliope was a three-story affair, made of old wood that was warped and faded almost to a worrying degree. Looking up, the Prince saw that the building was unadorned but for two windows on the second floor, closed simply but securely with iron bars that shone dully in what light remained from the sun and the coming stars. There was a guard standing next to the door, but the Prince ignored him, and the man, after the first menacing glare, ignored him too. Had the Prince been in his official capacity he would have had the man whipped for looking at him like that … but now was not the time. Instead, he walked to the door and knocked twice.
After a moment or so, a small wooden peep-hole opened at the Prince’s eyelevel, and a voice rang out clearly.
“What do you seek here?”
“I seek the one who seeks the light.”
“How do you mean to seek him?”
“By following the path myself.”
“How do you hope to see the one who seeks if you do not see the Path?”
“I seek the Path so that my eyes may be opened to the Light.”
There was a snap as the hole closed back up, followed by a brief period of silence in which time the Prince was left waiting anxiously out on the street. Before long, there was a series of metal clangs and the clink of chain links being undone. The door swung inward just wide enough for the Prince to enter, and then was quickly shut after him, leaving him in total darkness.
“You seek a path to light?” a soft voice asked him.
“Yes,” the Prince replied simply.
“Then you are in luck,” replied the voice, dropping the formality.
A flame appeared, followed by the sharp smell of burning sulfur, and the Prince saw a man-shaped figure lighting a small oil lamp across the room at a large desk where there stood a second figure, hands folded inside his robes of plain brown homespun. The man bore a thin golden rope around his neck – a Lesser Seeker. The Prince looked around the room, making note of the bare furnishings, the dark shadowed corners where a person might be concealed.
You’re on the Path of Light, the Prince reminded himself, no need to be uneasy.
And yet, he was.
“Please, come forward, my son.”
The Prince did so, his boots tread
ing on a soft rug - a plain brown color that might be seen in the most humble of houses. Living like the poor was a mark of the lower orders of the Seeker society who sought to understand humility and a way to the Light. But like any order, the higher up one went in the Seeker organization the more lavish the decorations and accolades became. Dysuna had often commented that joining the Seekers was akin to making a long-term investment: be poor today to be rich tomorrow.
“Up that stair is the Path. Go, and do not halt.”
Without a word, as per the ritual, the Prince crossed to the simple wooden stair to which the man had motioned, and began to climb. The stairs ascended up and around a corner of the room, and then curved again at what the Prince assumed was the second story, and then again when it came to the third, where he emerged onto a long hallway with but one lit oil lamp in a wall bracket and a wooden door at the far end. He quickly crossed the distance and reached for the doorknob.
A glint of gold caught his eye. He looked down, and bent to pick up the object at his feet: a golden coin, inscribed with an eye on one side and a key on the other. He would need one from each station in order to gain access to the Seeker.
One.
He pushed open the door and found he was at the back of the building on the roof. He strode forward, the dark wall of Banelyn rising in the distance before him.
Another glint of gold caught his eye, and he looked across the street.
Two golden daggers, points down, were hung by large nails on either side of a window in the building in front of him. The building looked as if it had been built upon and extended for a long while - perhaps a series of smaller homes for the Commons all strung together.
The second sign.
The two buildings were close together - close enough for the Prince to take a running jump and leap from one roof to the other. Once he had crossed the divide, the wind whipping his clothing and stinging his ears, he scaled down the side of the building and swung in through the open window framed by the two daggers, the stone roughly cutting into his hands. He landed in a crouch, and found himself looking at a single golden coin on the floor in front of him. He grabbed it.
Two.
A voice greeted him as soon as the skin of his hand felt the cold imprint of the metal.
“What do you seek here?”
He turned to the right and saw an old woman, older than any he had ever seen in his life, sitting in a large rocking chair. Her eyes gleamed, even in the dark room, with a blazing blue light, and illuminated a face creased and lined with age. There was madness in them, pure and unadulterated. They were the same eyes his sister Dysuna had, and they struck him with fear and misgiving.
Princes do not feel fear. This is the Path, these things are meant to frighten lesser men.
He pushed the emotion away and answered the ritual.
“I seek the one who seeks the light.”
“How do you mean to seek him?”
“By following the path myself.”
“How do you hope to see the one who seeks if you do not see the Path?”
“I seek the Path so that my eyes may be opened to the Light.”
A smile cracked her ancient face, revealing straight, brilliant white teeth attached to stretched, dead gums. The Prince felt his skin begin to crawl – this was no woman but a half-human construct, a plaything of the Visigony. Seeming to sense his unease, she smiled and very slowly held up a hand, keeping him anchored where he was, forcing him to wait for her directions. She laughed at him, a deep phlegmy chuckle, and finally creaked a gnarled finger straight, pointing to his left. Scowling at her but making no comment, he followed the line to the center of three doors, eager to leave her tainted presence.
He opened the indicated door: on the other side was a long corridor, in which children were playing.
Stunned, he found himself unable to move. Children … he never seen one of those in person. Certainly not ones this small. There were three of them, two boys and one girl, dressed in simple brown clothing that hung draped over their tiny frames, all only just taller than the Prince’s knee, playing with … a piece of string, nothing more.
The girl tugged the string behind her, twirling in a circle, and the two boys chased it, squealing with laughter. The girl shrieked joyfully and ran down the corridor, blonde hair tied back behind her head in a way that reminded the Prince of a horse’s tail, and the similarly towheaded boys chased her, laughing too. They never turned to see him, but raced past, absorbed in their own private world. Two more doors opened and two pairs of Baseborn adults came out, also dressed in the simplest of attire, and took the children, laughing and cooing at them and each other, into their respective doors, and the hall was silent.
For a long time, too long, the Prince stood there, unable to move. Children were not allowed outside of their family’s quarters in the Fortress, and were never to be seen, much less seen playing, by anyone outside of their wet nurse or caretaker. The Prince had seen children in the memories of other men, but seeing them in person …
THIS IS NOT IMPORTANT.
He pushed the thoughts from his mind and walked quickly down the hall, all the while feeling that he was crossing through a land far more alien than any forested mountain. At the far end of the corridor, perhaps fifty yards away, was another door. He passed through this as well, and found himself on a staircase that went up as well as down. He paused for a moment, but then realized there was a crude painting on the wall in front of him - a painting that contained three golden falcons, ascending into a dark blue sky.
He moved left and took the stairs up. He ascended another four floors before he emerged through a door onto a raised platform on the building’s roof, from which a wooden catwalk had been laid that connected it to the next house, and from that house to the house after that - leading him closer to the Black Wall.
The Prince, who had lived his entire life thousands of feet above the ground in the Towers of the Fortress, was nevertheless daunted by the task of walking across a few narrow planks of wood hung nearly seven stories above the ground and anchored to nothing more than a series of wooden buildings that looked as though a strong breeze might push them over.
A strong breeze might even be overkill – a weak one would likely do just as well.
But as he began to think he’d gone the wrong way, another gleam of gold caught his eye and, squinting, he saw a golden falcon affixed to a wall several buildings away from him. Clenching his fear into a hard ball in his stomach, he rushed as quickly as he dared across the wooden planks to the next building, and then, without pausing for thought lest he be unable to continue, across the planks after that, the whole time trying to ignore the way the wood shook and bowed beneath his feet. He came to the final roof and breathed a sigh of relief before rushing forward, feeling the blood high in his cheeks from the exertion and fear, his senses heightened. But when he reached the falcon, there was only one.
Where are the other two?
He looked around wildly, breathing hard, and after a few confused seconds saw another falcon two houses away. He was now in the very shadow of the Black Wall that surrounded Banelyn City proper.
I guess it’s a prerequisite for Seekers to be good with heights.
He continued on, making his way across rickety boards and planks, picking his way through various heaps of discarded debris that smelled of rot and age, to the next golden falcon, this one set with a gleaming red ruby where an eye would be. The Prince wondered briefly how it was that this golden statue was still here, attached to the wall of a roof when anyone in this neighborhood of Commons might have found a way to take it down and sell it. Everyone knew the Commons would thieve as easily as breathe.
As he reached the falcon, he briefly passed a hand over it, not quite touching it. A tingle started in his chest and worked its way up his shoulders as the Raven Talisman responded to a life force. Stunned, the Prince realized the falcon was a construct just as the old woman had been, and silently thanked the Empress he had
n’t touched it. There were Bloodmages in Banelyn as well, and no doubt they had worked traps into the signs on the Path so that they couldn’t be moved. Perhaps his brother Tiffenal himself had designed the falcons; it was the type of project that would have interested the cunning Prince of Foxes. In fact, now that he thought of it, this entire Path seemed like the Fox’s doing.
He moved past the golden statue, and looked around for the third. He was now only a single house away from the massive black walls of Banelyn, and, high as he was, they still towered above him. As he looked upward, he saw a golden gleam near the top of the wall.
“Impossible,” he whispered, stunned.
Unbelieving, he crossed the last teetering house and stepped up to the sheer cliff face of black stone, wind whipping him mercilessly as it flew into the wall from behind him only to be rebuffed by the massive black stone and sent careening backwards. He crossed to the stone and put a hand on it. Not quite sure what he had expected, he was still relieved to find that the stone was just stone, cool and hard against his skin.
He looked up again and saw the golden gleam and knew, deep in his gut, that it was the third falcon. He walked slowly to his left, hand trailing on the black stone. When he was directly below the falcon, his hand lost contact with the wall.
Confused, he looked down, and with a shock saw that his hand was inside the stone. His arm looked as though it simply ended at the wrist, and he realized that the wall here wasn’t solid - it was an illusion. A chill went up the Prince’s spine. He stretched his arm forward, and it slowly sank into the black stone. His forearm disappeared, then his elbow; and when he was in up to his shoulder, he took a deep breath, and plunged through with his entire body. Passing through the illusion like crashing through the thin membrane of a pool of water, he found himself in a new world – a small alcove made of the same black stone, barley wide enough on either side to fit his slim shoulders, but fairly deep. On the wall of the alcove directly opposite him had been carved a series of wide rectangular holes … holes that led up to the top of the wall.
Stunned, he looked behind himself and saw nothing but a blank gray space - the back side of the illusion. But there, high up and to the right, was a small Eagle, head pulled back as it screeched defiance into the sky. So it had been his brother Geofred who had made these walls … or at least this staircase.
He turned and began to ascend, keeping his eyes on the hand-and-footholds in front of him and trying to ignore the knowledge that he was almost a hundred feet in the air. This was made more difficult by the fact that though the wall behind him was nothing but gray haze, the wind only increased in force as he climbed in height. Before long his hands were raw from clutching the harsh stone, and his arms and legs, particularly the ankle that had been twisted in the fight with the Death Watchmen, began to ache and shake with the effort of climbing.
The golden glint he’d seen was indeed the falcon - and it stared balefully at him as he panted and gasped his way up. Soon, he reached the top of the wall, and hauled himself up; rolling over away from the edge he found himself inside an abandoned watchtower. By the light of the moon shining through a large lookout window as it rose over the Elmist Mountains, the Prince could see that the tower had been cordoned off - there was no way into it through the two barred doors on either side, and the only objects of note around the tower’s interior were the opening through which he’d come and a black hole in the opposite wall, at the entrance of which lay a single golden coin.
Three.
He crossed and bent to pick it up. He straightened, feeling the cold weight of the golden disk in his hand, and put it in the pocket where he had stored the other two.
“What do you seek?” a voice asked behind him.
The Prince whirled to find a man dressed in the garb of a simple soldier, the black and gold of the Banelyn watch, with a sword of good quality held high in both hands and a stance that suggested he knew how to use it. He had stepped out of a small alcove hidden in the shadows, and the Prince silently cursed himself for not sensing the man.
“I seek the one who seeks the light.”
“How do you mean to seek him?”
“By following the path myself.”
“How do you hope to see the one who seeks if you do not see the Path?”
“I seek the Path so that my eyes may be opened to the Light.”
The man nodded and sheathed his sword. He motioned with his chin toward the opening in the wall and the Prince crossed to it. The hole was large and circular, just slightly shorter than he was and wide enough for him to stretch out an arm to either wall. He entered, and found that inside was a sharp right turn, around which could be seen a long sloping path that led diagonally down to another sharp turn. Halfway along the path was a torch in a wall bracket, casting an eerie half-light on the black stone so that it was hard to tell where the shadows ended and the floor and walls began.
Seeing no other option, the Prince made his way through. As he turned the second corner, there was a faint crash of metal from above, and he pulled up short.
What was that?
But only silence followed. A minute passed … then two … but no further sounds came down the long hallway to him. He shook his head and continued on, doubling his speed. His only concern now was the Seeker. A guard dropping his sword was not his problem.
There were five more turns in all along the steeply sloping passage through the wall, and then the Prince found himself in front of a large wooden door with a simple wrought-iron latch-handle. He pulled the latch and pushed the door, which swung open easily on oiled hinges.
He found himself in a storage barn. Bales of hay lay around him and up in rafters, as well as sacks of what he assumed were oats or some other type of horse-food. Across the small barn was an open door, through which the Prince could see people moving. He quickly crossed the threshold of the door in the wall, which swung closed behind him. He turned to look at it and found that the wooden door was actually part of the back wall of the barn - and even though he knew it was there, he could see no way to open it, and could hardly tell where the door ended and the wall began.
Moving quickly, he left the storage barn and found himself in the middle of a huge stable yard in the shadow of two large, beautifully wrought stone buildings. The men and women moving in the yard – few, and dressed in good quality clothing - must be the night stewards. One of them looked up and saw him, and the Prince’s heart jumped into his throat, but the man continued on and didn’t seem to find his presence to be anything out of the ordinary.
The Prince looked down at himself, and realized he looked very much like a Common stable boy. His immediate thought was to find a change of clothes, but he reminded himself that as a way to go about unseen, this disguise appeared very effective. He drew the hood of his cloak up over his head and continued on, making his way across the yard, looking as he did at the horses in the stalls around him. He knew precious little about horses - the beasts had never truly interested him - but he knew enough to know that a good number of them had the markings of Tynian stock, thoroughbred chargers that were prized by the Most High. The rest were all the type of horse meant for parades and public showings. The horses of the High Blood, possibly even just the Elevated - the highest class into which a Baseborn could rise. The Prince walked quickly out of the stables past two guards, who stood straight and tall at the entrance and gave him no more than a passing glance. They were there to keep people out, not in.
The Prince passed into the city itself, and noticed first that in direct contrast to the Outer City’s maze of dangerously tilted wooden structures, Banelyn City proper was made of long, straight roads lined with beautiful trees and well cared-for shrubs. The buildings were tall and strong, most of them carved with various facades and designs. Some had marble structures outside of them of this or that noble or mythical creature - those of the Seven Principalities were of course forbidden - and others had large family crests above their front doors.
&nbs
p; Something struck him as strange, something he couldn’t place – and then it hit him that there was no evidence of the Visigony’s industry here. No clockwork servants cleaning the streets, no industrial towers slowly burning through the night, no bright electric lights. It was like walking through something he’d seen in a history book in the Tower Libraries.
But still the Prince was on the path - and he needed to find the next sign, the seven-pointed Compass. He walked down the street - eerily deserted - looking everywhere. But everything was marble or stone, and the only gold among these houses was gilding.
He turned a corner and found himself at the back of a sizable crowd. They were in the middle of a large square that included a park and a marble fountain and large, well-groomed trees. The square was big enough to hold what looked like nearly a hundred people, all, by their dress, of the High or Most High Blood. The women were in long, flowing dresses of every cut, color, and size. Some of them were fashionable, while others came close. The men were all in long robes, decorated with the colors of their house or perhaps the colors of the Prince to which they were sworn.
And in the center of the park, next to the marble fountain, a make-shift wooden stage had been erected, on which a slave auction was taking place.
The Prince was surprised, but not shocked. Slaves were a normal occurrence in the Empire. Those who committed grievous crimes or were found guilty of treason were often sold into life-long bondage. As his brother Rikard had explained to him, criminals were turned from a burden to a blessing for society in the slave system of Lucia. They were given moral discipline, taught the Blessings of the Empress, and made into good law-abiding members of society.
So when the teenage girl was brought onto the platform, naked and shivering, the Prince did feel shock.
This is … a criminal?
The auctioneer called out information about her – height, weight, age – as two men in leather armor strapped the girl’s wrists and ankles into manacles. Once she was strapped in, the two men went to the back of the stage and pulled on a pair of ropes – the chains connected to the girl’s manacles were pulled tighter, and the girl was lifted off the ground and held spread eagle in the air, her naked skin glistening in the light of oil lamps lit around the square.
“A member of the Commons guilty of thievery, Marisa is in need of a strong master to teach her proper conduct,” the auctioneer said.
The Prince, horrified, saw two men of the High Blood at the back of the crowd laugh and mime something crude. The two ladies with them giggled shrilly, and the auctioneer paused for a moment as the giggles echoed throughout the crowd.
The girl on the platform was silent, but the Prince could see tears streaming from her eyes, and she had slumped as much as possible in her restraints. Every part of her was on display, and the Prince felt as though he were violating her simply by looking at her.
His mind flashed back to the memories of the rapist, and he was suddenly violently sick. He lurched behind one of the buildings and emptied his stomach onto the cobblestone floor of an alleyway, memories still crashing through his head, memories he thought he had buried long ago. The auctioneer spoke again, and this time there was outright laughter, though the Prince couldn’t make out what was being said. The bidding began, the auctioneer calling out numbers in a mechanical, clipped voice that ran together.
He forced himself to turn away, and as he looked up, he noticed two things simultaneously. The first was a gleam of gold that winked at him across the street from the alleyway – a golden compass gilded above the door of one of the manor houses. The second was the figure of the Exile girl standing in the shadows of the next building over.
Spikes of terror raced through the Prince’s body, and thoughts of the slave auction were obliterated. She couldn’t see him. She couldn’t – he was so close – he wouldn’t be taken back now. He had to get to the Empress – had to get to the Seeker.
He pushed against the side of the alleyway, hiding in the shadows, as the girl, even more stone-faced than normal, crossed the street. She flitted from shadow to shadow, and moved past the door with the compass on her way around the slave auction.
How was she here?
Suddenly he remembered the sound of crashing metal as he’d descended the wall and he knew then that she had followed him and incapacitated the guard. Somehow, she had caught up and followed him. In desperation, he told himself again that once he reached the Seeker he would be safe. That was one place she would never be able to follow him.
She rounded the far edge of the square, looking in all directions, and as soon as her gaze was turned the other way, he ran for the compass and the door beneath it.
His feet and legs moved jerkily, as if unsure what world they were in and whether or not they could still run. But run they did, and the girl never turned and saw him cross the street. He was at the door. Another golden compass was etched into the doorknob. The Prince reached for it, turned it, pushed the door in, and was through. The whole thing had taken barely seconds, but his heart was pounding as if he’d run a mile, and the image of the girl - both girls - kept flashing through his head.
He was now inside the foyer of a large mansion. Before him were lavish engravings and a painting by the master artist Simaltan himself, dead nearly a century and highly acclaimed. A man in a blue velvet vest and black pants entered the foyer from a room farther in, and saw him standing there. He took in the Prince’s clothing, the heavy way in which he was breathing, and then seemed to make a decision.
“What is it you seek?” he asked slowly, obviously thinking that the only reason anyone would be in his house looking like the Prince - dirty, rank from weeks of travel, and with a look of panic in his eyes - was that he was on the Path.
“I seek the one who seeks the Light,” the Prince gasped out.
The man’s wary look turned to one of relief, and he spoke the rest of ritual with more assurance, pulling his right hands out from behind his back. The Prince was certain the man had been grasping a hidden dagger.
“How do you mean to seek him?”
“By following the Path myself.”
“How do you hope to see the one who Seeks if you do not see the Path?”
“I seek the Path so that my eyes may be opened to the Light.”
The man nodded and motioned for the Prince to follow. He turned into the main room, and the Prince quickly walked after him. The rest of the house was just as rich as the Prince would have expected from one of the High Blood. There was no one else in sight as they passed through a series of rooms, each more opulent than the last, until they came finally to a grand ballroom that opened onto a garden.
The man motioned to the wide glass doors at the end of the room, and turned away, obviously dismissing him.
The Prince crossed the room, on edge the entire time, waiting to hear the sound of the Exile girl breaking into the mansion to continue her chase. But no such noise came, and he made it across the room and through the large glass doors without incident. On the other side of the doors on a dais in the middle of a wide, sloping yard was a golden coin.
Four.
Beyond the dais the Prince saw another seven-pointed compass, engraved as part of a sundial. This compass had a working arrow on it, one that was currently pointed through a hedge at the end of the garden. The Prince passed quickly through the opening, and then through the wooden door beyond it.
He emerged onto a back alley - the place where the servants of the High would most likely walk during the day. It led both right and left, but the left fork ended abruptly in a large brick wall between two houses further down. The Prince, heart still beating wildly in his chest, turned right and began to run.
He crossed the distance to the end of the alley and shot out onto the street. Or more correctly, the end of a street, for directly in front of him was an enormous gate set into the Inner Walls, beyond which only the Most High could go. Not even the High could enter here without a specific invitation, and the Elevated a
s well as the Commons were forbidden, on pain of death. The Prince, of course, would have been allowed in as one of the Children. But, remembering his attire, he realized it was remarkable he hadn’t been stopped already by whatever sort of town guard they had in the city proper. Wondering how he was supposed to get over the wall, the Prince didn’t notice until a second later all of the eyes staring out of the five main crossbars of the gate.
Five eyes.
The Prince’s gazed snapped to the gate, and he realized it was the fifth sign. He hadn’t noticed them before, as they were hidden in swirls of mythical action, but five Eyes of the Seeker - gold-rimmed with golden irises - had been strategically placed so that one might find them should he look hard enough.
But this was impossible. Nearly twenty men guarded the gate, all in the black and gold of Banelyn, all with the air of one ready and eager to shoot a trespasser full of arrows without asking questions.
The Raven Talisman grew hot on his back and he spun around.
The Exile girl was there, like a phantom in the night, coming toward him.
Fear and disbelief clashed in the Prince’s head, and then his body and instincts took over while his mind reeled; he turned and ran for the gates. Just as he’d predicted, the first three guards who saw him raised crossbows and pointed them at him, calling to their comrades to do the same.
“I SEEK THE ONE WHO SEEKS THE LIGHT!”
The words were out of his mouth and ringing in the cooling night air before he realized he had said them. Several more of the guards shouldered their crossbows and fingered the triggers, and in that second the Prince thought that it all might end, that all that had happened would come down to a dozen crossbow bolts in his chest.
“HOLD!”
The Prince, startled by the word, pulled up short; the guards blinked and faltered. A new guard strode forward, a golden knot of rank on his shoulder that served to fasten a long green cloak, so dark it was almost black, to his shoulders. This captain, or perhaps sergeant, spoke a word to the guards and surprise crossed their faces, before they turned to stare at the Prince, in his Commons clothing, dirty and travel-stained, with disbelief.
“How do you mean to seek him?” the officer asked, picking up the ritual from where the Prince had started.
One of the guards who flanked the officer shot a sudden look over the Prince’s shoulder as if he’d seen something, and the Prince whirled, expecting to see the Exile girl, or perhaps Tomaz himself wielding his greatsword, eyes burning with hatred and betrayal.
But there was no one, only an empty street filled with dark, twisting shadows.
But couldn’t the girl hide in any of those shadows? the Prince asked himself. Couldn’t she be there, waiting, perhaps readying a dagger to throw?
“If you run,” said the voice of the officer behind him, breaking into his thoughts, “or if you do not speak, I will cut you down, Commoner, where you stand. Turn and face me.”
The Prince, jaw clenched and hands balled into fists to stop the sudden terror he’d felt at the girl’s arrival from taking him over completely, turned and saw that the officer had unsheathed a broad sword, while both of the guards flanking him had raised their crossbows again, level with his chest. The guards behind them all had their hands on their weapons as well. Likely, this was the only piece of action they’d seen in a very long while and they were more than eager to use him for target practice.
“By following the path myself,” the Prince said, speaking quickly but doing his best to keep what was left of his composure.
As he said the words, some of the tension left the officer’s shoulders, but this time he didn’t motion for the guards to lower their weapons and he kept his sword unsheathed.
“How do you hope to see the one who seeks if you do not see the Path?”
“I seek the Path so that my eyes may be opened to the Light.”
For a long moment nothing happened, and suddenly the Prince wondered if he had gotten some part of the ritual wrong, but no, it was all right, there was nothing else to say. But maybe this officer had rules never to let a Commoner in, no matter what series of passwords or phrases he knew, maybe –
“Let him through.”
The guards who flanked the officer started in surprise, but obediently lowered their crossbows, while the officer sheathed his own sword and turned to walk to the gatehouse. The Prince could suddenly breathe again, and he quickly walked forward on shaky legs, following the man. As he neared the gatehouse though, the feeling of a presence came to him again, and he once more cast a glance over his shoulder, peering into the dancing darkness and writhing shadows cast by the flickering gas lamps that lit the nighttime streets. But there was nothing, and no one. He turned to follow the officer into the gatehouse, passing the guards, who looked as though, ritual or no ritual, they still wanted to turn him into a human hedgehog. Most of them seemed to radiate pure hatred and disgust, and the Prince couldn’t understand why. True he was dressed like a Baseborn, but he was a Prince. Couldn’t they see that? Couldn’t they see the difference?
He passed into the gatehouse, and saw the officer standing across the room at another wooden door. A huge bar had been placed across it, and as the Prince watched, the officer pulled out a set of keys, and inserted them into the lock, twisting quickly. There was the sound of many metallic, clockwork bolts sliding home, and then the bar simply disappeared into the wall, and the door swung open. As it did, the officer stepped aside, and watched the Prince expectantly. The Prince walked quickly through the open door.
He found himself directly on the other side of the large gate, and then heard a clinking sound as the officer behind him tossed something gold onto the cobblestone ground at his feet. He bent and picked up the golden coin with a single eye in the center.
Five.
The door to the gatehouse closed with a bang, and the Prince pocketed the coin. He turned and looked at the innermost sanctum of Banelyn, where lived the Most High, the ruling class of Lucia.
Palaces rose up around him on every side, grand and decorated with more wealth than the Prince supposed the Commons would ever see. There were sculptures, well-manicured lawns, and beautifully crafted fountains. But what caught the Prince’s eye was the Cathedral.
The Cathedral of the Empress was known throughout Lucia, and the Prince had heard stories of its grandeur since the day he was born. But being here, standing in its shadow and seeing it for himself, surpassed all words. The light of the moon and stars was just bright enough to highlight the curving, majestic lines of the stone, the way its towers speared the sky and the central dome seemed to cap the world. It was a visible incarnation of the power of the Empress - for she had built it, if the legends were true, simply by standing at its center and willing it into existence.
The Prince shook himself out of his reverie - the building was grand, but he needed to continue on his path. He needed to find the sixth sign, the -
The six penitents, who knelt on humble knees, staring at him from the face of the Cathedral. Without thinking, the Prince ran toward them - each golden statue in its own alcove, showing proper obedience to the Empress. This was it - he felt his heart begin to soar - the Path led inside the Cathedral. Of course!
He reached the huge wooden doors, still open for late-night worshipers, and passed beneath the penitents. Inside the Cathedral the Prince barely slowed down. He was vaguely conscious of the beauty around him, but all that concerned him was the seventh sign, he needed to find it, he was so close -
A glint of gold to his right, in a large basin of water. He crossed to it - and saw the sixth golden coin, and a mixed wave of relief and anger coursed through him. He reached into the fountain, doing so quickly and as surreptitiously as possible, as there were members of the Most High nearby in their long, elegant robes, praying to the Empress even at this time of night, and various servants cleaning. He grasped the coin, pulled it out and thrust it into his pocket, silently chiding himself for almost missing it. If he didn’
t have all seven coins when he came to the Seeker, he would be turned away, and that -
“Who are you, and what are you doing in this Cathedral?”
The voice behind him was deep and threatening, and the Prince spun to face its owner. The man was tall, bald, and very menacing in the long brown robes and golden rope of a Lesser Seeker. The Prince opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, the man’s eyes looked behind him and saw the empty basin, then took in the Prince’s clothing and his bulging pocket of coins, and spoke first.
“What is it you seek?”
Relief flooded through the Prince’s body, and he spoke the rest of the ritual. Once he had finished, the man, suddenly no longer menacing, but instead rather kindly, took him by the arm, and pointed him up the center aisle of the Cathedral. The Prince, not one to linger when shown the way, nodded to the man and nearly ran toward where he had pointed, only stopping himself because he knew to do so would raise an alarm, and possibly keep him from his goal, which was now within reach.
His eyes ran across the front of the Cathedral, looking for the seventh sign, the seven-pointed star, the Star of Light. Panic seized him by the throat - as he neared the large pulpit and the wooden pews on either side of him began to dwindle, he still couldn’t see it. It was nowhere - he scanned the area again. Nothing. The ceiling - nothing. The floor - simple marble. Where was the sign?
He turned to his left - and there it was, on a small, unobtrusive wooden door, far to the side of the Cathedral, hidden in the shadows.
Movement at the corner of his eye - he turned to the front of the Cathedral, and there, standing in the shadows just inside the open doors, was the Exile girl, her green eyes locked on him with ferocious intent, blazing like the gaze of an avenging spirit.
Fear, blind, senseless fear, grabbed the Prince. It was impossible that she could have followed him, but there she was. He turned and ran for the door with the seven-pointed star, hearing shouts behind him as servants and Most High saw him.
He grabbed the metal ring of the door and pulled. The door swung open on oiled hinges; he crossed the threshold, and slammed it shut behind him, locking himself in darkness.