by Ben Blake
*
Calesh was still asleep. It wasn’t like him to slumber for so long, right through the evening and into the weary hours before dawn, but Farajalla was content to let him rest. He would need it, in the days to come. He and his friends talked of if the army comes, but the truth was starker; the army would come, now. The All-Church had gone too far to pull back, whatever the Margrave might say in attempted mitigation. The negotiations Ando Gliss had spoken of, back in Kissing the Moon, were futile, a flailing of the air, in the lull before the storm broke and wolves came padding through the rain.
She slept herself for a few hours, and then lay awake with her head on Calesh’s chest and listened to him breathe. His skin was still tanned from his years in Tura d’Madai, even after two months on board ship as they travelled from port to port on their way to Sarténe. Farajalla liked the contrast of her skin against his, caramel laid on bronze; she liked to feel him against her, as well, even while he slept. He was hers alone, at such times. No friend of long ago, no cause or memory could take a part of him away from her.
She finally rose when the case clock by one wall chimed softly to mark the third hour past midnight. It was still dark, but a lamp in the receiving room threw pallid beams through the bedroom doorway. Farajalla pulled the door almost shut as she padded through, and drew shutters across the lamp so it wouldn’t disturb her husband. Then she poured a cup of fruit juice and settled in an armchair to read a book, Madai myths built around the quest of the hero Lim-Galen to find the island of eternal life. The seneschal at her father’s court had been quite certain the island existed. He wasn’t so sure about immortality though.
“The tale is an allegory,” Anvuda told her one day, sitting on the steps of the summer garden with the river flowing beneath, cool and silent in the moonlight. Farajalla thought she must have been about fourteen. “Lim-Galen never does find the island, but he finds love, and when his son is born he turns for home at last, with his wife beside him. So you see, he does find immortality after all, in the way we all do: through our children.”
“If it’s an allegory,” she said, thinking it through, “why are you so convinced the island is real?”
“All myths have some truth in them,” he said, laughing.
Perhaps they did. Farajalla knew enough of legends to believe that most held seeds of truth at their heart, hidden behind scarcely credible tales of strange lands and quests, and stranger creatures. She’d read the tale of Lim-Galen many times, trying to find whatever hidden truth Anvuda had seen. Tonight, though, the wanderer’s long quest couldn’t hold her attention. She put the book down and went to check on Calesh again, to find him still sleeping.
For a moment she stood in the doorway and watched him. The wanderer’s long quest, she thought; and then, Is that his destiny, and mine? To roam in search of a chimera, and never find it? With no home waiting at the end, and no child to ease our loss?
It would not be, while there was a path for Farajalla to take or a choice before her. She would not allow it to be so. When she looked at her husband something hot and fiery blazed in her breast, a flaming seraph that never cooled and yet never burned her. She would do anything to keep him safe. If men died screaming for his cause and in his name then so be it, as long as he lived.
She thought about that for a moment. Then she went back to the receiving room to change. She always slept in one of Calesh’s shirts, which she stripped off and bundled into a corner, and after a little searching through her bags she found a cream shirt and skirts divided for riding. They had been well packed, but two months in storage had left several faint creases, which made her purse her lips. She couldn’t do anything about them though, and it didn’t really matter. If she was found wandering the Hidden House she would appear no threat, but merely a lady walking restlessly in the dark before dawn.
She pinned her braids back with a silver comb and went to the door. Halfway there she came back, rooted around until she found a pen and parchment, and wrote two lines to tell Calesh not to worry. Surely he’d wake before she returned. With that she slipped out of their rooms and into the darkness of the garden, with no clear idea of where she would go. Sometimes she was restless, that was all, and walking was better than lying abed and counting cracks in the ceiling. So she told herself, and if there was a small whisper in her mind that said she was hunting the secrets of the Hidden House, she didn’t listen to it.
The garden was silent. It had been hard enough to see past the first foliage even in daytime, and now it was impossible. Two lanterns on the wall behind Farajalla spun pools of yellow light out to the nearest shrubs, and cast everything beyond in still deeper blackness. Trees loomed up like dark sentinels, seeming to crowd her against the wall. It was hard to believe this was an enclosed atrium, just eighty yards across. It felt too wild for that. Farajalla had an immediate sense of alertness, as though the house itself was watching her, and waiting to see what she would do.
She almost turned and went back inside right then, except that her eye was caught by a faint spark between the leaves, the glow of a lamp somewhere in the garden. At three in the morning. And she had her pride, of course, learned in her father’s courtyards, where everyone knew she was his daughter and would not admit to it. Farajalla had never backed down, never retreated from a fight or allowed an acid-dipped sneer to pass, no matter what her mother said about turning the other cheek. She hesitated.
“I might find an answer here as easily as anywhere else,” she muttered after a moment. She reached up to unhook one of the lanterns from the wall and set off into the arboretum.
Fronds began to pull her clothes at once, and after mere yards the gravel path branched into three. Farajalla went right, towards where she’d seen that flickering firefly light, but almost at once the path divided again. She discounted the one that led back towards her rooms, and picked the leftmost of the other two. It led over a hump that might have been a fallen tree, and then the path twisted to avoid a pool of clear, rippling water. She followed it around, gravel crunching under her feet, and felt the sleeve of her blouse tear as it caught on something with thorns. It was very hard not to curse.
A few minutes later she did curse, when the path she was following brought her back beside the pool from the other direction, and her lantern showed a tiny strip of cream material hanging from a thorn. The light she’d seen was away to her right, leading her on yet always out of reach. How that could be so in an enclosed garden eighty yards wide was beyond her. She considered calling out to whoever was there, but just then her gaze fell on a narrow strip of gravel on the far side of the pool. She hadn’t seen it before, when it was hidden by the hanging curtain of an offspring tree, the tips of its branches almost touching the ground. They had been trimmed to leave them suspended in the air, she saw. Offspring trees kept their seeds at the ends of their branches, and where they touched, a new tree began to grow. Left to run wild, the trees soon exterminated every other plant, and formed a carpet of domed branches heavy with thin, sharp-edged leaves. Farajalla had seen it many times in the land around Harenc.
She decided to take it as a good omen and stepped forward, and almost at once emerged into a small arbour.
The Lady of the Hidden House sat on a plain wooden bench, facing a small pool backed with fitted stones. Herbs and shrubs grew between the rocks, filling the little glade with scents. The water vanished under a spray of greenery near where Farajalla stood, then merged with the pond she had twice stumbled past. A lantern had been hung on a branch to one side, its light rippling on the pool, and near it stood Gaudin in his pure white robes.
There was no doubt that this was the Lady. She was old, seventy at least if Farajalla was any judge, a small bony woman with white hair and papery skin that crinkled around her eyes and mouth. Her blue gaze was clear though, and it fastened on Farajalla at once.
“Sit with me,” the Lady said. She patted the bench beside her. “I am Ailiss. You may leave, Gaudin. I’m sure Farajalla and I will manage.”
The servant hesitated before he gave a bow and slipped away. Farajalla didn’t think he would go far; the glance he bestowed on the Lady as he left held something very close to love. Probably he’d stay close enough to overhear. She would have to bear that in mind.
“Thank you,” she said aloud. She perched on the edge of the bench, too wary yet to relax. It was one thing to set out to explore the secrets of the Hidden House, quite another to find the key to them sitting outside your door. “You’ve been waiting for me. How did you know I was awake?”
“I have some small abilities,” the Lady answered. “Especially here, in my own place. Glamours and weavings learned by the loremasters in the deserts of Magan, long ago. Most of them are rather minor, to be honest. Party tricks and flashes of light, and suchlike.”
That was either disarmingly honest, or Farajalla was being made fun of. “Really?”
“Really. Your husband has seen a few of them.” Ailiss studied her critically. “I would have expected him to tell you. Calesh is the kind of man who either gives his heart or not; there are no half measures in him, no compromises where love is concerned.”
“That’s true,” she said, surprised.
“Of course it is. Did you think I wouldn’t know him?” Ailiss sounded amused. “I have made a point of understanding Calesh for eleven years, ever since I met him for the first time. There was something compelling about him even when he was still learning how to be a man, and what sort of man he would be. The other three knew it as well, though I don’t think they realised it then. That first day, when they came into my hall, they all stood half turned towards him, as though waiting for him to move or speak, before they decided what to do.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean,” Farajalla said. “Calesh has told me next to nothing of what happened here.”
“Nothing?” Ailiss repeated. “Well, that surprises me, but it’s sensible of him. Speaking of me is one thing: speaking of what I asked, and what they did, is another. I made sure all four of them knew not to speak too freely, right from the beginning, but I always expected them to talk at least a little.”
Ailiss reached down beside the bench and produced a pair of small cups, and after them a teapot. She handed Farajalla a cup and poured for both of them, some sort of blueberry tea to judge by the scent. “There was a time I would have brought wine, you know, but I find it’s not warm enough anymore. Not even mulled. I wonder sometimes why God gave us bodies that fall to pieces as we grow older. To teach us humility before we go to Him, perhaps.”
Farajalla cradled the cup in her hands, and the old woman was right: it was warmer. She didn’t reply though. She didn’t have any clear idea of what to say.
“Sometimes I am granted glimpses of events before they happen,” Ailiss said after a sip of her tea. “It sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? But in fact it’s more maddening than useful. A vision without understanding is a frustrating thing. Still, eleven years ago I was wondering how to fetch the Book of Breathing from burial in Elorium, before some inquisitive All-Church sniffer began to root around in those tunnels and found it. I had no idea how it could be done, and then the faces of four young men came into my mind, with their names whispering in my ear.”
“The All-Church would burn you, and all your household besides, simply for that,” Farajalla said quietly.
“Yes, they would. They’d call it witchcraft, or some such silliness. In truth it’s just ancient arts though, things forgotten by the wise men of today.” She snorted disdain. “The old men in the Basilica believe that nothing is of value unless it was mastered in a church, by a churchman, and in the name of the church. Art is not art if it was created by an outsider. Science must be false if discovered by a heathen. If something comes from beyond the All-Church, or before it, they say it must be blasphemous, and they burn it when they can.”
“Ah,” said Farajalla. She thought she was beginning to understand. “There was something in the Book of Breathing, wasn’t there?”
Ailiss sipped from her cup. “It’s a very ancient book, that one. It was written in the time of Adjai, who in All-Church doctrine is the son of God. Or perhaps it was written very soon after his death. It contains many of his teachings, and several phrases which are claimed as direct quotes, the exact words he spoke. The scribe was a man named Muret. You know of him?”
“One of Adjai’s apostles,” Farajalla said.
Ailiss nodded. “Every child raised in the All-Church knows the name. One of the first converts to the Faithful, as the Basilica tells it today. Muret begins the Book with a plain statement: These are the words which the living Adjai spoke, and I recorded.” Her blue eyes locked with Farajalla’s. “In one passage, Adjai says that God is one, unique and indivisible, and denies the claim made even then by some among his followers, that he is God’s son.”
Farajalla winced.
That made it all clear. The priests of the All-Church could not discredit Muret, or claim he was an apostate and his writings heretical: he was too important in their canon of blessed men. Name as heretic a man who had walked with the God-Son, and shared his travails? Indeed not. If the priests learned of that book they wouldn’t hesitate to destroy it, or suppress it by any means they could find. That certainly included killing anyone who knew what was in those pages before they could speak of it: the Basilica had done such things before. It was still doing them, most likely, using Justified highbinders or its own secret killers to silence dissenting voices with knives in the dark.
Ailiss was right. Anything which contravened the doctrine of the All-Church, or challenged its view of the world and of God and his Son, it believed to be self-evidently false, and therefore fit only for burning. Anything that might do so was burned. There had been great bonfires once, in the dying days of the old empire, when books and scrolls were gathered from libraries across the continent until they made great piles in the streets, which were then set alight under the gleeful eyes of the clergy. Universities had been accused of fostering paganism, and endangering men’s souls, so they were closed and their remaining books used for kindling. Only writings sanctioned by the Church could be allowed. All others were hunted, and destroyed.
Nothing like those bonfires had been seen for hundreds of years. But then, the All-Church had long ago burned any book it deemed heretical, in the lands where its priests held sway. Now their soldiers had conquered parts of Tura d’Madai, and Elorium itself, lost books might be found again.
And they might prove the All-Church wrong.
“Also,” Ailiss said, her voice quiet, “Adjai says, in the Book of Breathing, that only the spirits and souls of men are divine, and made by God. The world of matter, of flesh, was created by Belial, the Adversary. As the Dualism teaches.”
“That’s why they will come down on you,” Farajalla realised. “With that book you challenge their vision of God, in the words of their own saviour.”
The Lady nodded. “Precisely. I worked to avoid that, and succeeded. We concealed the book. In another thirty years, perhaps less, the Dualism would have grown so strong that not even the All-Church could destroy it. Already Elite have gone north to Rheven, to establish new branches there. Raigal Tai comes from one such clique. More teachers have gone to Alinaur, and wherever they appear they find converts, because the priests of the All-Church are more interested in money than salvation, and because they are wrong.”
“And now my plans are ruined.” Ailiss paused to take another sip of blueberry tea. “Wrecked by the utter, irredeemable idiocy of the Margrave and the fool, whoever he was, who killed that priest by the river. It no longer matters what I do, or even whether the tales told in the Book of Breathing are true or false. The All-Church will come down on us.”
“How did you know the book was in Elorium?”
“I always knew it,” Ailiss said. “It was in Elorium when the Madai captured the city, seven hundred years ago. The last king hid it in the tunnels beneath the city just before the invaders b
roke through the walls, near the Valley Gate. People had been dumping their garbage in those catacombs for years, and they did so after the Madai conquered Elorium, too. And so the book passed out of history. As far as I could discover, nobody had seen or heard of it since. And someone would have heard if it had been found, or sold. Such a treasure would be noticed. So I thought, even after so long, that it might still be there.”
The old woman sipped her tea, and without thinking Farajalla did the same. It was very good. Her suspicions of the Lady had faded somewhat now. Ailiss was obviously shrewd, and as wily as a fox, but Farajalla detected no deception in her. She did wonder about one more thing, even so.
“Why are you telling me this?” she asked. “This house is a secret place. Not many come here, and of those, I think few learn anything very much. So why are you here, waiting for me in the small of the night so you can unburden your heart of all its cares?”
“It would take some time to unburden it all,” Ailiss laughed. “But why? Because I am old, and it is time I chose an heir.”
The bluntness of the reply caught Farajalla off guard. She stared for a moment in voiceless silence, and then finally managed, “Me?”
“Yours is the face I have seen,” Ailiss said placidly. “I will teach you the things you must know, before my time is done.”
“But the All-Church is about to fall on us,” Farajalla said. “I’ve seen them at work, Lady, and I don’t think they’ll leave much standing when they’re done. Certainly not the Hidden House.”
Ailiss studied her with those brilliant blue eyes. “Sometimes a flower must die to cast its seeds in the air. If things had been otherwise this would not have been necessary, but now it is, and we must deal with the world as we find it. Not as we might wish it to be.”
She thought the struggle here was as good as lost, then. A sudden wave of sorrow washed over Farajalla, both for the home she had lost and the new one she had hoped to make here, if the god was kind. She remembered a cobbler named Vadalin, who had owned a shop under the Moon Balustrade in Harenc, near the silver dome of the High Temple. He’d inherited the shop from his father, and he from his father, and it seemed the sons of that family were born into the world with tacks between their lips and small hammers in their hands. Sevrey himself had always bought his boots there, and tinpot dukedom or not, it was still quite something for a cobbler to shoe a lord. The boots and shoes Farajalla had brought from Harenc had all been made by Vadalin.
But the shop was gone, together with the rest of Harenc. Vadalin’s sons would never grow up to the tap-tap tune of craftsmanship in the shop their fathers had built. It was a little grief in the midst of greater ones, yet to that family it was everything. If any of them had survived. Farajalla tried not to think of such things, but sometimes the loss rose up her throat and demanded to be felt, and then it was difficult to breathe.
“You want to send me out into the world, custodian of the treasures you hold here,” she said. “But there’s a land yet to be saved yet.”
Ailiss cocked her head to one side. “Do you think it can be? I already know Calesh will want me to leave the Hidden House, and go to a fortress in the Aiguille. Adour, probably. And he’ll want my support in taking control of the Hand, no doubt.”
“My husband will ask what he asks,” Farajalla said. “But I think we act as though Sarténe can be saved. Why else did Calesh and the army come back?”
“And if we fail?”
“Then we fail,” she said. “Nothing in the world we know is forever. Grief awaits us every day, until our souls go home.”
“Very true,” Ailiss said thoughtfully. “And you grieve for the child you can’t give your husband, do you not?”
Farajalla spilled her tea. She caught the falling cup with an instinctive dart of her hand and turned back to the Lady, unsure what to say. Again Ailiss’s bluntness had caught her by surprise. She schooled her features to stillness and waited, refusing to pick up the gambit.
“Sometimes,” Ailiss said, “when a woman cannot conceive, there is nothing wrong with her at all.”
Farajalla opened her mouth, and then closed it as the impact of the Lady’s words hit home. She felt her eyes widen. Something cold coiled around her heart.
“Calesh?” she whispered.
Ailiss nodded. “It need not stop you. Most things can be overcome, with the knowledge of the lore.”
“How?”
“Go to him,” the Lady of the Hidden House said. “I have already worked a glamour. A simple enough thing.” She made a dismissive gesture. “You wondered, I’m certain, why he was so tired when the rest of you were not. It only remains for you to use what I have done. If you wish to.”
“Now?”
Ailiss nodded. “He will still be sleeping when you reach him. Wake him, but don’t let him speak. Not a single word until it is done, but you must not tell him why. This is my gift to you, in the hope of trust between us.”
Farajalla rose and started for the door, but halfway there she stopped and turned. The Lady’s blue eyes were on her.
“For this,” she said, “you will have my thanks forever. I swear it.”
“Forever is a long time for a promise,” Ailiss said softly. “Come tomorrow, and we will talk again.”
Farajalla hesitated, but there were no words that would mean anything now. She turned and went from the arbour, to find Gaudin waiting just around the closest trees with his hands hidden in his sleeves. She felt his eyes on her as she went past him, but she never gave him a glance. He didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered except reaching Calesh before he woke.
It had never occurred to her, in all the months of increasing worry, that her failure to conceive might be through a fault in Calesh. Not a fault, she thought with a flash of anger: he is not to blame, any more than I would have been, were the lack in me. But the truth was that she would have blamed herself, even knowing it was unjust, for the simple truth of failure in something that mattered so much. To him, deep in the secret recesses of his heart where he could not keep his memories quiet, and to her as well. She could admit that now. It mattered to her, just as much as it did to Calesh.
She struggled to make herself walk calmly, when she wanted to run. Her hands were clammy and her throat as dry as desert stone. She crunched over the gravel path to the door of her chambers, and for a moment she stopped there in sudden uncertainty, but then her jaw firmed. Ailiss had not deceived her. A lie in this would destroy any chance of trust between the two women, and the Lady surely knew it. She had told the truth. She must have told the truth.
Farajalla went inside.