“But why?” asked the countess. “And why is she here? We have not seen the Sithi inside our walls for years.”
“And we would not have this time, had a poacher not stumbled onto her where she lay, half covered by forest leaves,” said Pasevalles. “Brother Etan, I leave you to your work. Remember, if she wakes or speaks, send for me with all haste.”
“Of course, Lord Chancellor.”
Countess Rhona walked with him down the long hall of the Royal Gallery. “She was dressed for riding,” the countess said at last.
“Yes, she was. I half-suspect she is a messenger from one of the king’s and queen’s friends among the Fair Folk. That is one of the reasons I am so desperate to be there if she speaks. It has been so long and the Sithi have been so silent. King Simon and Queen Miriamele would never forgive me if I let this messenger die.”
The countess took his arm. She was the wife of Count Nial of Nad Glehs, an important noble; she had a fine wit and a keen observer’s eye, and she and Pasevalles agreed on court matters far more often than they did not. “You take too much upon yourself, my lord,” she told him. “You have done all you can.”
“But that is the problem with royalty,” he replied, “although I hasten to say that our monarchs are different than most. But still, they do not easily relinquish responsibility. Once disappointed, they will seldom bestow it again in the same place.”
Countess Rhona laughed. “As I said, you take too much upon yourself. But I still do not know why you asked me to come to you. Clearly it was not because of my skills as a healer.”
“Ah, of course, I’d nearly forgotten. This morning you said you were going to send a message to your husband with the post rider. Is your noble lord, the count, still at Hernysadharc?”
“He will not leave before Elysiamansa is celebrated here.” She smiled sadly. “I miss him.”
“Of course. I wonder if your messenger would also carry another message—one that your husband might discreetly deliver for me . . . ?”
“There you are, Lord Pasevalles!”
He turned to see Princess Idela and two of her ladies moving toward them along the gallery, having likely just come from the chapel. Pasevalles felt a stab of irritation. Prince John Josua’s widow was a comely young woman who had made plain her desire for his attention, although he suspected that was mostly a matter of court politics. It flattered his vanity, but it definitely made his life more difficult.
“Your Highness, Ladies,” he said, bowing. “You honor me.”
“Oh, good day, Countess,” said Idela with a smile for Rhona. “I trust Lillia hasn’t given you too much trouble today. Where is she?”
Only Pasevalles noticed the small hitch before the countess answered. “She is lying down, Princess. She tired herself out this morning trying to convince her pony to wear a hat.”
“Oh, the little dear.” The princess who would never be queen turned back to Pasevalles. “I have something most important to discuss with you, Lord Steward—and yet it seems you are avoiding me. Am I so frightful, that you flee me like an ogre out of a nursery tale?”
Rhona took that as a hint that she should find other things to do. She gave Pasevalles a look of commiseration as she took her leave.
He hid his annoyance beyond a smile. This day of all days! “Never, Princess. But less pleasant duties have been playing the tune all day, and I have been forced to dance to their measure.”
“And what could be of such importance, Lord Chancellor?” There was no question where little Lillia had learned to pout when denied anything, but Pasevalles did not want to explain about the Sitha woman. Idela would insist on being involved, and Pasevalles wanted to keep control of the situation. He would tell her later.
“Nothing of great weight, Highness.” He took a breath, doing his best to push his worries from his mind. He had set everything in place, and for the moment could do nothing more. Now it was up to the Sitha to live or die. “How can I help you?”
“It is this library of Master Tiamak’s. Well, it is the king’s and queen’s library, I suppose, but you know what I mean. The little fellow seems to do nothing else these days.”
“Not at the moment, as you know, since he is with them on the journey to Elvritshalla.”
“Yes, but that is why I want to speak to you. Lord Tiamak seems most adamant that all the old books in the Hayholt must be found and written down and put in his library.” She shook her head. “All of them!”
“I am sure that he does not mean to take your own books, my lady.” Idela was known to spend much of her time reading the Book of the Aedon, or at least memorizing appropriate phrases that she could use to point up the failings of others. “It is the rare books, Princess, the old ones, that Tiamak is so anxious to protect.” The longer the conversation lasted, the more he was feeling the tug of other duties. Idela, who was used to being waited on and cosseted, was clearly puzzled by his distraction.
“Yes, and that’s just it,” she said. “My John Josua had many books, as you know. So many books! Sometimes I despaired of his attention. Even when Morgan came, the midwife could scarcely get him to lift his nose from one of them long enough to leave the room.”
“Your husband would have been a great scholar, Highness—was a great scholar even in his short time. He had a rare gift.” Which was true, but he doubted Idela’s ambitions for John Josua had tended in that direction.
“There is a collection of books that Tiamak has not seen. I would not even open them myself—only the good Lord knows what horrors are in them, what ancient blasphemies—but they look very old to me. Some are only rolls of parchment tied with string. I wish you would come by and look at them. If they belong in this library he and the king and queen are building, the Wrannaman is welcome to them.”
“I beg your pardon, lady, but why me? Surely Master Tiamak should be the judge of what belongs in the library.”
“Oh, but that little man is so greedy! I do not trust him to take only those that are truly old and valuable. And I do not want to lose my husband’s possessions. They are all I have left.”
Pasevalles knew that what she really wanted was to have him to herself for a while out of the public eye, and to draw him deeper into her circle. Idela was not entirely satisfied being only the mother of the heir, and was an active participant in the Hayholt’s incessant contests of power and influence. But was that all? She had certainly pursued him for much of the last year, seeking him out, asking his opinion. Pasevalles was beginning to wonder whether she had some deeper interest in him. She was not an astonishing beauty, but she was certainly comely, with large eyes and a fine, straight nose much like her father Osric’s. A man seeking to improve his position could do worse than a dalliance with the prince’s widow.
As long as that man could keep her sweet, he reminded himself. That was a less certain proposition. Her power depended on something that could not be undone, so she was immune to most forms of persuasion.
In any case, it was a knotty problem, and not one Pasevalles wished to spend time on now.
He took the princess’s hand and kissed it. “You do me too much credit, Highness. I am ignorant of most such matters of scholarship—my schooling was more the rough and tumble sort one gets in a backwater court like Metessa. But I will put my mind to your problem and come to you with a solution very soon. Will you give me your leave to resume my less interesting duties?” And he smiled, hoping it would serve as a reassurance no matter what she truly planned.
“Of course, good Pasevalles. You are the best of men. Go and do what you must do. I know that the king and queen must have left you a dreadful burden to carry in Eolair’s absence.”
And you are a significant part of that burden, lady—or might become that if I do not deal with you carefully. “You are too kind, Princess.” He made a bow, then left her. Behind him he heard Idela and her ladies giggling softly amo
ng themselves, like fairy music on the wind.
10
Hymns of the Lightless
Nobody who lived in Nakkiga could be completely surprised to find soldiers at their door, but Viyeki had not expected a troop of the feared Hamakha Wormslayer Guards to arrive at his house in the middle hours of the night to demand that he accompany them. Faceless in their helmets, stern and utterly formal in their speech, the soldiers made no threats but it was clear that he had no choice except to go with them.
Viyeki knew all too well that such invitations were generally the formal precursor to an execution. Despite his overwhelming shock, he still could not help wondering why, if he had fallen from her grace so completely, the Mother of All had given him an audience and new orders just a few days earlier. Could this arrest be some private scheme of Akhenabi’s instead, using the queen’s authority to remove him? If so, it seemed to be a new tactic: ordinarily, the Lord of Song’s enemies simply disappeared, or succumbed to sudden and mysterious ailments.
Still, the guard chieftain had a summons that bore the queen’s seal, which meant Viyeki could only go with them and try to prepare himself for whatever might follow.
Viyeki’s secretary Yemon was suspiciously absent from the household, so he directed his second cleric to ask the Hamakha guards to wait a short time for the dignity of his office. He bade his servants dress him in his magisterial robes, his great outer tunic, his sashes and belts, and did his best to stand unmoving as they did so, keeping limbs, face, and breathing respectably calm.
“Where am I being taken?” Viyeki asked as his ornamented collar was tied in place.
“That is not for me to say,” the Wormslayer chieftain replied. “Only that you are to make haste to come with us, High Magister.”
At that moment his wife burst into the room, startling one of Viyeki’s servants into dropping the magister’s ceremonial mattock. As the tool clattered on the stones, the Wormslayers calmly leveled their spears at her. “What happens here?” she demanded. Despite the dishevelment of her nightwear, Khimabu eyed the Hamakha guards with contempt. Viyeki noticed that she also darted a glance at his bed, no doubt to see if Tzoja had been with him. “Why do these people trouble us, husband?”
“I truly do not know, my lady wife, but it is a lawful summons in the queen’s name. We will trust to the wisdom of Our Mother that all will be resolved as it should be. I have done nothing wrong.” He looked at the empty features of the chieftain. “Is that not correct?”
The leader stared forward, unblinking. “It is not for me to say, High Magister.”
“Ah, yes. So you mentioned.” Viyeki snapped his fingers, and his servants stepped forward to help him with the last of his clothing, the heavy over-mantle. “How should I call you, officer? Do you have a name?”
“I am a chieftain of the Silent Court of the Hamakha Clan,” the officer said. “That is all you need to know.”
Such stiffness—such rote prosecution of duty! thought Viyeki. He wondered if the chieftain might be a halfblood like his daughter Nezeru; they were common these days, especially in the ranks of the Sacrifices and clan guards. How many of the Wormslayers here on his doorstep were the fruits of such couplings? They seemed to make up most of the soldiery these days—but were they, as his master Yaarike had once hoped, truly Hikeda’ya, through and through? Or were they merely crude imitations, attack dogs dressed up in the finery of the Garden?
What does it matter, he asked himself with a touch of dark amusement, if they are only here to lead me to execution? Even a trained hound could do that. “Very well . . . Chieftain,” he said. “I am ready to accompany you.”
As he stepped out the front door, past his household guards and into the wide, silent street, his wife followed them to the doorway. “Husband!” she called. “Do not disgrace our family.”
“How could I, kind Lady Khimabu,” he replied, “with your faithful support to hearten me?”
The last he saw of her—the last he might ever see of her, he could not help thinking—was her long pale shape in the doorway, ordering the servants back inside before the other denizens of the Noble Tier saw the family’s shame.
• • •
Whatever hopes Viyeki might have entertained that this was merely another summons to the palace vanished quickly. Instead of climbing the great staircase to the sacred Third Tier and the Omeiyo Hamakh, his guards led him downward instead into the labyrinth of the city. They passed across the deserted New Moon Market and along the edge of the ghostly, web-festooned Spider Groves as they made their way outward toward the edge of Nakkiga, through the mist clouds thrown up by the thundering Tearfall, then past the massive vertical column of Tzaaita’s Stone. At last they reached the Heartwall Stair and followed it down to the levels stacked below the city. Viyeki had given up trying to guess where he was being taken, because each new destination he could think of seemed grimmer than the last.
The first level was filled with the community temples and mass burial grounds of the lower castes, the sojeno nigago-zhe or “little gardens of memory.” Hikeda’ya who were too poor or too humble to have family tombs, but too proud to see their dead thrown into fiery crevices or left on burning ash heaps in the Field of the Nameless, had built the shared memorial parks, each full of symbols of the Lost Garden, each with its single, silver-faced Guardian, a simple upright stone figure presiding over those places of rest as the Queen herself ruled the waking world. As they passed, Viyeki could not help envying the sleepers in these humble shared graves: he feared he was fated for an even less exalted resting place.
But it quickly became clear to him that even the throat-burning sparks and the smoky gray winds of the Field of the Nameless would not be lowly enough for him: His guards passed the Fields and continued to descend, escorting him down, level by level, into the most profound depths. He thought he had been prepared for shame and execution, but it seemed the soldiers were leading him, not to the simple, swift ignominy of a disgraced noble’s death, but toward something altogether more disturbing.
Is it to be the Chamber of the Well, then? Viyeki felt his knees go weak at the thought of that ominous place, a vast natural vault of naked stone hidden deep in the heart of the mountain. The infamous chamber contained both the Well and the Breathing Harp, objects of terrible, legendary power. It was all he could do to stay upright.
Trust the Queen, he told himself with more than a touch of desperation. Remember the Garden. Trust the Way. But the old, reassuring refrain now felt as hollow as the ageless and unknowable mountain deeps that were slowly enfolding him.
Lower and lower they guided him, by stairs so infrequently used that they were completely dark and the soldiers had to hold his arms as they all inched down the steps together. Viyeki felt as though he climbed down the throat of some vast, impossible beast, and it was more than just frightful imagining: with each step the air was growing steadily warmer and thicker, and the very stones around him seemed half alive.
Once, as a young acolyte, Viyeki had been lowered by harness into one of Nakkiga’s deepest interior chasms. That throat-clutching, disorienting darkness had felt a little like this, but the smothering air here seemed to quiver to some slow, heavy pulse, a vibration he had never felt before, like the beat of a giant heart.
Remember the Garden. It was all he could do, all he could afford to think. Trust the Way.
• • •
The fear Viyeki had been trying to suppress since the dragon-helmeted soldiers first appeared at his door eased fractionally when they reached the convergence of stairways known as the Hawk’s Path. Several sets of stairs entered the wide, helical stairwell from different levels, and for the first time he could see that he was not the only well-dressed figure being escorted down the spiraling steps to the Chamber of the Well. Viyeki could not yet recognize any of his fellow nobles because of a curious thickness to the air here, as though they all swam through bracki
sh water, but he counted at least a dozen different escorts winding their way downward. Was it possible that so many important Hikeda’ya would be brought together all at once for obliteration? That seemed too reckless for a planner as careful as Akhenabi.
At the base of the Hawk’s Path the different groups crowded together, waiting to enter a single narrow doorway, from which light of several unusual colors played across their faces—sickly yellow, deep crimson, and cadaverous gray-blue. Viyeki’s guards urged him forward, and for the first time he could see that his fellow guests (or prisoners) were not only magisters like himself but also lesser officials, dozens of clan leaders, influential clerics, and other important members of the ruling caste, both male and female. If Akhenabi intended to imprison or execute them all, Viyeki thought wonderingly, it would mean the destruction of nearly the entirety of Nakkiga’s ruling elite.
Then Viyeki saw that one of the others being led toward the arch by a troop of Hamakha guards was High Marshal Muyare sey-Iyora himself. Muyare was one of the most respected nobles, leader of all the queen’s armies, and though he was certainly one of Akhenabi’s chief rivals, he was also far too powerful to be led meekly through Nakkiga as a prisoner: Viyeki felt certain the marshal’s soldiers would never have let him be taken against his will from the order-house of Sacrifice. But even though the marshal must have come willingly, there was a deep bleakness to the commander’s expression that left Viyeki uneasy.
The crowd surged forward. As Viyeki and the other high officials and soldiers crowded through the archway and onto a single wide staircase leading down into the Chamber of the Well, the heat and the sense of smothering seemed to close in on him. When he put his foot on the first step, it felt as though he stepped not simply into another chamber in great Nakkiga but out into pure space, some absolute emptiness that could not be understood. For a moment Viyeki could not tell down from up, and he wavered in something close to blind terror until he felt someone take his arm and heard a quiet voice.