A drawback already rejected as Sethvir’s effort to ameliorate the upset continued apace. “Traithe’s sent to Lanshire at speed. He’ll raise stop-gap stayspells to preserve Seshkrozchiel’s hibernation.”
Asandir tracked the Warden’s summary oversight, aware the drakes’ restive turmoil beyond Northgate could erupt beyond salvage if the somnolent dragon aroused prematurely, stung livid with wrath. Other simmering crises would gain momentum long before the excess resonation dispersed. The incoming shock wave already tinged prescience with the spectre of ruin. Swept en masse by another flux-based disturbance, the fanatical priesthood at Erdane would cry foul and blame the fell works of Shadow and sorcery.
Sethvir crystallized the quandary forthwith. “Our guarded care not to inflame the religion is blown to ashes and dust.”
“Defend Tarens from mayhem, I can’t lend support,” Asandir cried in anguish. Toppled priorities forced his immediate choice to douse the outbreak of worse fires, elsewhere. “Dispatch Kharadmon to Rockfell. I’ll ride to join him straightaway.” An incarnate Sorcerer must stand in partnership with the discorporate’s presence before Dakar’s miscalled strategy thrashed across latitude and destabilized the grand wards that incarcerated Desh-thiere. Miss that urgent rendezvous, and damage to Athera herself would outstrip war and chaos as the equinox squalls ignited the major nexus at Caeth-al-Caen.
Early Autumn 5924
Reassessments
Sequestered in the caverns that riddle the mountains at Skelseng’s Gate, Arithon sounds the nuanced records harboured in the matrix of Elaira’s crystal; and the knowledge found there defers his oath-bound support of Valien’s upbringing at Ettinmere Settlement, and prioritizes his preference in favour of solving the riddle behind Cosach’s death-bed legacy …
While the seasonal thunder-heads darken the sky above Daon Ramon, and one fateful lightning strike unleashes chaos through a copper rod planted at Caith-al-Caen, Lirenda closets herself with the Skyron aquamarine, immersed for days in an extensive search of the order’s history, first to defend her succession from rivals, then to seek clues to the secretive agendas engaged by her murdered predecessor …
Abandoned to loneliness at Ettinmere with her bastard infant, ridden day and night by the strain of spellbound attraction, Vivet’s bitter resentment of Arithon’s absence fires her resolve to delve into the mystery behind his evasive identity …
Autumn–Winter 5924
IX. Secrets
When the True Sect campaign to purge the old blood-lines from Halwythwood finished in disaster, news of The Hatchet’s disordered retreat at first eluded the scrutiny of Erdane’s populace. The advance, cryptic messages carried by pigeon informed only the exalted High Priests. Their dismayed, hushed whispers rose and fell behind the pillared arches of the temple’s innermost chambers, until the rumours leaked from the seaports outpaced the written reports from the field. Broken at last, the shredded decorum of secrecy sowed panic and stunned indignation. Talk in the streets and the wine-shops decried the plight of the war host gone barking mad in Daon Ramon Barrens.
If the long distance withdrawal let most of the dedicate companies regroup their shocked wits, none of the stricken diviners recovered. Despite the healers’ diligence, the afflicted talents stayed intractable, unfit for service and forced to languish in sequestered confinement. The plucked note of hysteria by then tried far more than the armoured nerve of the Temple’s faithful. A flock chafed restive by war tithes threatened a True Sect crisis of faith.
Not blind or deaf, as Lysaer’s valet, Dace Marley tracked the course of outside events in the routine pursuit of his duty. Amid the cross chop of tension, he hauled his weekly allotment of linens up the staircase of the central arcade. No alternate route from the laundry allowed him to side-step the turmoil. The stone cell where the avatar lay in recovery had been a secluded chapel for offerings, converted into a private sick-room with no backstairs access for servants.
Mass upheaval made today’s progress more difficult. Dace breasted the press, careful not to cross the prerogatives of his superiors. A crowd of officials overwhelmed his ascent just below the third landing. Dace shrank against the tapestried walls, his stacked basket turned to fend off a harried first-level examiner. The priests just behind tightened their ranks and broke off a heated discussion. Dace bowed deep, face pressed into the folded sheets in transparent pretence: a wise servant overheard nothing concerning his betters’ affairs.
The glittering party swept by without pause. Dace started upwards, stopped again by a peremptory grip on his shoulder.
“You, there, are you deaf? I said, bring those linens along straightaway! They’re required to settle our fallen diviners.”
Dace stifled protest and bowed again. “I’m the avatar’s valet,” he demurred, hopeful the temple’s hierarchy might deflect the demand.
“Nonsense, come along!” The insistent priest bore the badge of a senior healer. “Downstairs staff can replenish your basket, with the blessing of the Light’s glory your due reward for the inconvenience.”
Dace dared not venture a second excuse. Here, a s’Gannley descendant with Fellowship ties lived and breathed in the quicksands of jeopardy. Any hint he was not the devout lackey he seemed would invite the scrutiny of an examiner. Dace shrank to imagine Lysaer’s lonely fate if the untoward gaffe unmasked him. He followed the healer priest up one more floor, past the rhythmic thump of the looms, where conscript craftsmen wove silk into vestments, and the chanting of the second-year novices chorused in recitation.
Dace turned where he was led, down a dim corridor faintly laced with the ammoniac whiff of slopped urine. A carpet padded with broom-straw dampened stray noise, to little effect. Moans, deranged screams, and hysterical laughter erupted from the incarcerates locked behind the stout doors.
The healer priest beckoned Dace down a cross corridor. Ahead, two attendants idled in plain livery, one bald-headed, and the other thatched with marigold ringlets.
“Can’t you quiet them down?” the priest healer demanded. “This bedlam will unsettle the inbound arrivals from Daon Ramon.”
“Perhaps your newcomers have our lot stirred up.” Forehead burnished with sweat, the speaker shrugged his jaded dismissal. “The ravers react to any uncanny disturbance outside of reasoned awareness.”
“Imbecile!” The healer shouted over the clamour of crazed fists beating at the walls hard enough to pulp flesh. “Quit prattling nonsense and care for your less fortunate brothers before they take further harm!”
The mop-haired attendant swanned off in compliance, while the other’s pouched chin quivered above his starched collar. “The new rooms have been cleared. That way, on the right.” His gesture denoted the bright swathe in the gloom, where several cell doors down the passage gaped open.
The priest healer’s reprimand fastened on Dace. “Along with you, then. You’re needed to furnish those pallets.” To the remiss attendant, “Those beds should have been ready long since!”
The flushed malingerer shuffled off, grumbling. “Not my fault those sluggardly junior initiates took their time moving out. It’s a bootless assignment, not worth spit and polish. These lunatics wet themselves in a rage if you so much as look at them sideways.”
No glance acknowledged the servant behind. Dull humility being the safest tactic, Dace crossed the threshold of the first cell.
As his dazzled eyesight adjusted, Dace confronted bare walls and a washstand with flaked paint, the rail under the ewer denuded of towels. Flooded in daylight beneath opened shutters, the pallet’s stripped ticking lay empty.
“Are you lack-wit or lazy, you can’t make up a bed?” the attendant lashed out in exasperation.
“Neither one, grant me forbearance.” Dace thumped down his basket.
“Well, hurry along!” Above the racketing bellows and shrieks funnelled in from the corridor, the attendant added, “I won’t abide laziness!”
“Light’s will be done, always.” Dace’s unctuous bow l
ent the crass fellow the grace to clear out of his way. The allotment of sheets drawn for Lysaer obliged him to complete several pallets. Fast work must see him excused before the next lot of lunatics arrived. Aware as his arrogant betters were not, Dace feared his spirit-marked presence had triggered the outbreak of tantrums.
Delay thwarted his bid for escape. Two chattering flunkies sent to replace the mildewed mattress in the last room kept him under the eye of the critical attendant. He smoothed the final fold in the top sheet and stuffed the slip on the pillow, too late. Heavy footsteps approached. Four muscled men burdened with a litter manoeuvred through the narrow doorway. Dace clutched his basket, trapped where he stood.
The diviner they carried in strapped restraint muttered in agitation, then started to thrash with a violence that jostled the bearers off balance. They grunted and swore, while their prostrate charge bellowed through frothed lips.
“A minion of Shadow lurks in our midst!” Bound limbs strained against the leather cuffs, the mad talent turned a contorted face, rolled eyes fixed upon Dace with outraged accusation.
The attendant’s appalled regard noted the servant, flattened against the wall with his wicker basket hugged to his chest.
“Burn him!” screeched the diviner. “Bone and sinew, throw his spirit-marked flesh to the flames! Let evil’s corruption be cleansed!”
The unsettled healer yelled for a priest.
“Grace wept!” the lead bearer swore, fed up as the buck of the litter skinned his knuckles against the door-jamb. “This your first assignment? You’ll learn, soon enough. The afflicted see Shadow in every dim corner!” Through the diviner’s incensed yammer, he snapped, “Bedamned to this crackpot’s noise. Servant! Have you got a cloth handy?”
Dace swallowed, shaken from paralysed fear. “None, by your will.”
“Then hop to and find one!” The dedicate nodded to his harried partner, then deposited his end of the litter on the freshly made bed. Ears ringing from the racket, he laced into the dumb-struck attendant. “Gag the raver forthwith! He’ll bite. Scratch, too, mind your eyes. Guard your bollocks as well, this one kicks like a horse whenever we loosen his straps.”
The moment the towel was yanked from his grip, Dace bobbed a subservient gesture and squeezed past. He left the wrestling men to their duty and fled, head down, for the threshold. The pretence of decorum sustained his escape, while the unhinged diviner struggled in the maniacal frenzy behind, and the festering chorus of outcries chased him the length of the corridor. The burly priest healer who moved to waylay him spied his empty basket and waved him on. “Light save us! The ward will be rife with loose bowels. Tell the laundry to send up more linen at once!” Spun away, he yelled towards the dispensary. “A round of valerian possets, before every blighter we have fouls his bed.”
While the furore up-ended the steamy routine of the cellar laundry, Dace made his noon meal the excuse to duck further requests for service. Returned late from the kitchen to replenish his basket, he waited as the chattering women wrung the sopped sheets from the vats, then collected them, dried and pressed. When at length he ascended to Lysaer’s quarters, the cadence of song from the temple closed the late-afternoon devotions.
When Dace reached the sixth floor without incident, trouble met him on the side stair that accessed the avatar’s tower apartment. Contentious voices reverberated behind the closed door above. Paused in the tight passage, Dace also heard whimpers of anguish, recognizably Lysaer’s.
Anger trumped fear. Dace thumbed the latch, his laden basket braced against his hip. He found the lock turned and used his valet’s key to gain entry.
Beyond the cracked panel, the plush horsehair chairs in the foyer loomed empty. Cold daylight spilled through from the bedchamber casement, flickered by the passing shadow of someone beyond the far doorway.
“You are not yet excused,” snapped a testy authority. “Your charge to extract the current location of the Spinner of Darkness is not satisfied.”
Dace slipped inside and eased the oak panel shut. The wool carpet silenced his step, while powerful men unaware of an eavesdropper locked horns in continued argument.
“And I’ve told you already! A forced reading is like trying to sound the mind of an animal! I’ve already split my skull with a headache. A search is impossible where no structure exists.” Through a murmured objection, the tirade resumed. “Oh, by all means, seek a second opinion. Another examiner will tell you the same. That’s if prying deeper does not shock the subject into a fatal seizure.”
The rebuttal bristled with impatience. “Harmful risk is no option. The avatar may be a drooling imbecile, but the asset of a living figure-head still inspires the populace to renewed faith.”
Alarmed beyond care for himself, Dace crept through the dusky, spice-scented air. He passed the pearl-inlaid altar atop the low dais, with its spooled rail and tasselled cushions where priests knelt to pray and burn incense. Pulse racing, he neared the far door, while Lysaer’s distressed sobs under-ran the impersonal conversation.
“Indeed, a show of pageantry’s needed after the failure in Daon Ramon,” the first speaker continued. “A spectacle to instill awe and resharpen the upright fear of heresy would do best after nightfall. Staged with lensed mirrors and hidden candles, the impression of a divine aura might enhance the enthroned avatar.”
“That’s folly. Light save! Your puppet cannot stand up unassisted!” A sigh followed. “Let that weakness be seen, or if a slipped veil should disclose his marred eye, we’d wreck the illusion of credibility when we most need the masses’ fervent devotion.”
Higher authority killed the debate. “No more talk of frivolities when evil itself has just outfaced our troops on the field. Disaster looms if the corruption of Shadow casts the Canon’s truth into question. Action must restore our demoralized host and bolster the garrison at Etarra. We need a sure target to offset a drained treasury and quell the unrest stirred up by the tithes.”
Hesitation ensued, pressured by the silent resistance of the examiner.
“Lives have been lost, and sanity squandered.” The decisive tread past the casement took pause. “I will risk no more dedicate talent without purpose. The Light’s avatar was made incarnate to serve! He strayed, to his downfall. Spend his life against Shadow, he may find his redemption, and there, our duty commands you. Either ferret out news of the Spinner of Darkness, or show yourself apostate before witnesses.”
“On your head the consequence,” snapped the cornered talent, then added his resigned instructions to tighten the subject’s restraints.
Lysaer’s furious bellow rattled the sconces. Dace shouldered forward, scorched fearless by rage. He bashed into the bedchamber, basket clutched to his chest, when sound sense should have sapped his resolve at the threshold. His sally met a daunting wall of white vestments: no less than three High-Temple officials, the loftiest thrown into eclipse by the jewelled headdress of His Hallowed Eminence, the Light’s Priest Supreme. The talent lately browbeaten with threats bore the sunburst of the Exalted Examiner.
Shoved against the apex of the True Sect hierarchy, Dace gained sight of the bed, where Lysaer bucked against lashed wrists and ankles. The ripped sheets and pillow-case were flecked scarlet, testament to the coarse handling of the armoured dedicates ordered to gag him.
From battered features, the single blue eye blazed with imperial fury.
No mistaking the baleful malice of Desh-thiere’s curse, raised by the ill-advised probe seeking knowledge of Arithon’s affairs. Lysaer’s prodded resistance had nearly failed: unbridled, incendiary violence lay only a heart-beat away. Dace embraced that peril, magnified twofold: for a valet to launch a direct intervention empowered by Fellowship artistry before the eyes of True Sect authority risked the exposure of his covert role.
Dace chose the innocent tactic and tripped. The cascade of unfolded linens masked the thrust that slammed his basket into the examiner’s back. The disrupted talent pitched to his knees. Wrenched from invas
ive, trance-focused immersion, the severance of his deep probe wrung him dizzy. The after-shock caused Lysaer to throw up. The cadre of officials recoiled, aghast, not only concerned for their splashed clothes. A servant’s witness of a gross violation, visited upon the divine person, threatened both the Canon’s integrity and their devout reputation.
Dace responded in self-preservation. Prostrated amid the spilled laundry, he latched supplicant hands onto the nearest priest’s ankle and cringed as though braced for a cuff. His stream of profuse apologies tangled with the man’s bellowed annoyance.
The nudge of a disdainful toe only rattled him to panicked excuses. “Your Lordships, Exalted, forgive my lapse! I was side-tracked by the needs of your healers, and unable to be here in proper attendance. I beg you, leave this morbid unpleasantness to me. Care of the avatar’s revolted nerves is unseemly for your higher office.”
Kicked aside, Dace let go. Abased humility dared no glance upwards to know if the pathetic display had defused suspicion. Movement rustled beside the pallet. The disgruntled examiner righted himself and snatched one of the fallen sheets. He blotted his soiled vestments. While the Supreme High Priest ordered the dedicates to cut the bound avatar loose, his complicit entourage also seized their moment to recoup decorum.
Seconds passed. Awash in the sour stench of spilled bile, Dace trembled with unfeigned terror. He had no responsible avenue left if his servile pleas failed to evoke the impression of harmlessness.
“Oh, get up, fellow!” the Supreme High Priest exclaimed. “No fallible mortal can shoulder the blame for the avatar’s sick-room distress. Stiffen your spine and clean up his mess. The Light’s Canon demands our attention elsewhere.”
Dace stalled, crushed against the wracked linens, as the haughty parade of silk slippers and vestments swished past him and crossed the ante-room threshold. When the shut door at length restored privacy, he stood and surveyed the damage.