her instruments 03 - laisrathera (6 page)

“I… I don’t know.” Belinor sounded stricken.

Val nodded. “There you are, then.” He closed his eyes. “You have become very thoughtful, Lady of the Castle.”

“Reese,” she said. “My name’s Reese Eddings. And yes. I maybe know a little bit about how hard it is to break away from your social conditioning. Enough to do something everyone else thinks is horrible.”

“And this makes you trust me?”

“No,” she said, honestly. “I trust you because I like your eyes.”

Irine pressed a wrist to her mouth.

“Yon tigress seems to find that amusing.”

“Yon tigress has a filthy imagination, and she’s always teasing me about not joining her in the gutter,” Reese said wryly. “I think you can untie him.”

“My Lady! At least ask him what he’s doing here!”

“That matters?” she asked the acolyte, confused.

“He is dallying here where he does not belong,” Belinor said firmly.

“Because he had so many other places to go?” Irine lifted her brows. “What with the ‘people kill mind-mages and apparently hate rogue priests’ thing?”

“He’s right to be suspicious,” Val said. His eyes were sparkling again, and Reese liked it and was instantly wary. And then he finished: “I’m here because I’m the reincarnation of Corel.”

CHAPTER 4

In the morning, Hirianthial asked to be shown to Urise’s room and followed one of Lesandurel’s kin—for he should so call them now, shouldn’t he?—to the priest’s door. Chiming for entrance, he received not the Alliance’s computer-thrown voice, but a mindtouch:
Come, my son.

Entering, he found the priest… in a chair by the window, once again lost in the voluminous folds of his robes, smiling the same smile he’d worn when they first met in Ontine. Startled, Hirianthial said, “It is as if you have merely been transplanted, Elder.”

“This chair is more comfortable,” Urise said. “Prithee, don’t tell the Queen I said so.”

“Oh, she already knows.” Hirianthial sat across from him. “Given how many of them she has warmed off our world. How do you fare, then?”

“Better than before I left.” The priest flexed his fingers beneath the concealing sleeves, making the fabric flutter. “Truly, the medicine of these non-Eldritch astonishes.” He lifted his brows. “And you, my son? You look more hale yourself.”

“If a touch like a shorn sheep?” Hirianthial smiled a little. “I am as well as could be expected, given the circumstance.”

“Which involves the ending of the Veil, yes?”

“You knew?”

“That it would come or that it has?” Urise shook his head minutely, and the words were delicately stippled, part shadows, part silver. “It was inevitable. And nothing less than violence would have served. It has become too comfortable, the Veil. All things must change if they would live.”

“So I noted,” Hirianthial murmured.

“So you have. And what will you do with that knowledge, mmm?”

Hirianthial looked up. “Beg a few last lessons from you ere I go back, Elder. Where I go now, I must have every weapon to hand.”

“Ah?” Urise narrowed his eyes. “Have you given over your horror so quickly, then?”

Had he? He looked at the priest and said, “They sell our own to slavery, to die in the arms of dragons. They use weapons given to them by pirates and drug lords. They have ships, and they have our world at their mercy. Whatever advantage I have, I must use.
Must
use. Everything is at stake.”

“And if I told you that you could stand at the head of a battlefield and rip the souls from a thousand men, as Corel once did?” Urise asked, his tone more a question than an attack. And because of that, Hirianthial hesitated, took the idea seriously, tried to imagine it… and couldn’t.

“I could do such a thing?” he asked, low.

“It was done before. Why not again?”

So it was possible. God and Lady, that a man could be more destructive than a bomb! And yet, if there was nothing between death and all those he warded but his own mind.… “Will you teach me?”

Urise sighed. “You already have the trick of it, my son, or you could not have used it in your own defense already. But let us practice other things that might be of use.”

“Such as?”

“Such as how to survive the effort,” Urise replied, dry. “For if you think striking out against ten men is taxing, wait you until you try a hundred.”

“At your convenience, Elder.”

“Then we begin now. Recall you the earlier teachings? The Now and the Quiet and the foundations?”

Hirianthial inclined his head.

“Keep those things in the forefront,” the priest said. “We shall begin.”

“What am I to do?”

Urise eyed him, then said, “Don’t fall.” And then a gentle pressure settled on his aura and began to push inward. Hirianthial wondered what the priest was about, but obediently kept the force at bay. Slowly, it grew stronger. He continued to hold.

How strange it must have looked from outside: two men, sitting at their ease facing one another, eyes closed, silent, for hours. But as the time passed, Hirianthial began to sweat and then to tremble with the effort. When he collapsed at last, he was startled to find himself on the floor.

Urise leaned over. “What have you learned, then?”

“That I can be crushed by a man a third my weight?” Hirianthial said, bemused.

“Not a bad beginning.” The priest pursed his lips. “Go on.”

“That there must be a better way to resist than to endure.”

“Better,” Urise said. “You already endure too much. Anything else?”

“That you know something I don’t,” Hirianthial said, eyeing him.

“How is this, then: you collapsed because you were hungry.”

“I… beg your pardon?” Hirianthial paused, then frowned. “What time is it? We are past the hour? We are!”

Urise chuffed a laugh. “We are expending physical effort, my son. Don’t forget it. Now go and find fuel and rest.”

“And you?” Hirianthial asked, lifting his brows. “Have you not also expended physical effort?”

The priest looked exactly as he had when they’d begun: pacific, unbowed, with a touch of merriment hidden in his eyes and swirled through his aura. “I have.”

Hirianthial folded his arms.

Urise grinned. “Your assignment is to figure why you are tired and hungry, and I am not. And to practice the renitence.”

“A riddle!” Hirianthial said, amused. “Very well, Elder. I shall apply myself directly. To that and the renitence.”

“After the meal.”

“After a meal.” He bowed and withdrew… and stopped in the corridor, running a hand down the back of his exposed neck and finding it slick. A meal, yes. But
after
a bath.

For a heartbeat, no one moved. Almost, Reese exhaled.

And then Belinor threw himself at their prisoner with a howl of rage, and Irine and Taylor leaped after him. There was a tussle Reese knew better than to interrupt and then the foxine was dragging the youth off Val, still yammering away in his own tongue.

Val was sporting a new bruise—or two—and seeing it, Reese sighed. “Taylor, why don’t you walk our native guide around the castle a bit? Take him to the roof, see what he makes of the town, maybe.”

“That sounds like a great idea,” Taylor said, eyeing Belinor. “Yes?”

“I will not leave a lady with that outlaw!”

Irine said, “I’ll be with her, and I’m armed.”

“It may not be enough!”

“If it’s not, it’s too late already and you should get away so you can run for help,” Reese said, trying not to sound as acerbic as she felt. Her hired help was pushy and never listened to her, fine. But the biddable Eldritch acolyte assigned to her started giving her trouble within a day of being assigned to her? Apparently something about her inspired backtalk. No wonder her glares never worked.

The acolyte was waffling, so she said firmly, “Please go, okay? I’d like to get this sorted without the interruptions.”

“Very well, my Lady,” the youth said, though he looked distinctly rebellious. He did, however, allow Taylor to lead him away. Hopefully she’d keep him for a while.

Reese went to the Eldritch and paused. “To untie you, I’m going to have to touch you.”

“And that should matter why?”

Reese exchanged a look with Irine, and their captive chuckled. “I can feel your skepticism like a brick falling on my head. Yes, I know it’s hard to believe, but properly trained, you don’t have to feel anything through your skin… or floating in the air, either. It’s true that the Eldritch you’ve met would have you keep away because they can’t control it. But that’s what it is: a lack of control. Just like you couldn’t walk until you learned?”

“Blood and freedom,” Reese muttered. “Can you stop with the shocks for a minute?” She started untying him. “Figures I’ve finally met an Eldritch with a sense of humor and the personality to go with it. There had to be one.”

Val grinned as she released him and rolled, slowly and awkwardly, upright. “Thanks. You tied them tight.”

“I’m good with knots,” Irine said.

The Eldritch snorted, but said nothing, and Reese sat across from him with the fire at her back. Irine joined her and together they stared at him. She wasn’t sure what she was waiting for. Mostly she thought she was tired.

Irine finally whispered, “He looks pretty normal.”

Reese laughed and rubbed her face. To Val, she said, “So why are you trying to pull Belinor’s chain?”

“Pull his chain?” the Eldritch said, puzzled.

“Upset him,” Irine offered. “Tease him just to annoy him.”

“Oh!” Their guest looked superbly innocent. “Was I?”

“The reincarnation of Corel?” Reese prompted, dry.

He looked at her, and suddenly she couldn’t tell if he’d intended it as a joke. Her heart fluttered.

Val grinned. “Seemed like the thing to say at the time. Besides, it’s a good reason for me to be here, where he died.”

“His castle,” Reese said.

“His castle?” Val snorted. “Who told you that story? It’s the official one, I’ll grant you that, but it’s not the real one.”

“Uggggh, just tell me already!” Reese threw up her hands. “You’re all so bleeding enigmatic! Get on with it!”

He laughed. “Fine, fine. Have you wondered why Ontine is a palace, but this is a castle?”

“No?”

Irine’s ears were flat, though.

“Yon tigress does, though.”

She eyed him. “Well… it is weird. Architecturally.”

“And she’s a tigraine, not a tigress,” Reese said. “Tigers are animals. Tigraines are people.”

“He can call me ‘yon tigress,’” Irine said. “It’s kind of cute.”

Reese covered her eyes. “Ugh, stop flirting with him, Irine. Back to the castle, please?”

Thankfully, Val had let it pass. That was the last thing Reese needed: her Harat-Shar seducing an Eldritch she still wasn’t sure of. “This was the original capital. Corel lived north of here, but he occupied it—his solitary self, you understand—and when he killed most of the army that tried him, and finally died here, well… no one had the heart to stay. They moved south and started over. Palaces this time, not castles, because they saw for themselves just how useful castles were against the things they were really afraid of, so why bother with the false reassurances? Anyway. A few people remain in town, but nobody’s lived in this castle since. And I am here because it’s the furthest I could get from the bloodrobes, and distance is a good thing when people have to ride horses to cross it.”

“The whats?” Irine said, frowning.

“The bloodrobes,” Val replied. He sat crosslegged, but loosely, with the soles of his feet pressed together in front of him. “What one calls our kind, the hunters of men and women and innocent children.”

“Oh,” Reese whispered, struck by vivid memory. “Baniel.”

Val glanced up so sharply Irine half-rose, brandishing the palmer. But all the Eldritch did was hiss, “Did you say ‘Baniel’?”

“Please tell me he’s your enemy. That sounds a lot like he’s your enemy.” Reese looked up at the ceiling. “Please, I could use some good luck here.”

“Have you come to this world to kill him? Dare I hope?” Val asked. “Because if so, oh, I am with you.”

“What did he do to you?” Irine was, Reese noted, no longer aiming the weapon at Val, but trying not to play with her tail, which was her nervous habit.

“He was the one what swept in and made things more vile,” Val said. “And he was the one who turned everyone else on me when I spoke against it.” He glanced at Reese. “Called me a traitor to my race, and a renegade, and trust me when I say that the word from him is an epitaph, rather than the epithet it is from your boy.”

“You make that sound as if you were important,” Irine said.

“Oh, I was, a little.” He smiled. “He and I were the only possible candidates for the head of the order.”

Another silence. At least this time, Reese was sure there wouldn’t be any bodies flying around to end it.

“So do I hear right, that you might want something done about him? And that perhaps you might have compatriots with modern weapons who might be of aid?”

“Your hearing’s not all that bad, but it’s embroidering things,” Reese said, feeling tired and suddenly cold despite the fire. Or maybe it was because of the fire; she peered at it and found it a lot lower than it was before. “Look, we have a billion enemies—”

“More like fifty thousand, or maybe twenty-five thousand, depending on which population estimate was right,” Irine interrupted.

“Fine, twenty-five thousand enemies, a lot of who seem to have plenty of modern weapons themselves, plus there are pirates here with a ship in orbit and possibly at least one Chatcaavan,” Reese said. “So getting you over to the palace for your revenge isn’t going to be as easy as ‘hooray, I’ve got a couple of aliens with palmers, I can go clean up the priesthood now!’”

“No,” Val said, studying her with interest. “But it seems I have stumbled on something a lot more interesting than mere revenge.”

“You might not think so when you’re done hearing the rest of it.” Reese sighed and said to Irine, “Call the others down? I think it’s time we contacted Malia, if she’ll answer, and start making real plans.”

CHAPTER 5