Ruler of Naught (78 page)

Gone.

The flame burned steadily. Gazing at it, Jaim felt the lure
of the Dreamtime and willed it away. Exulting in his victory, he became aware
of the sound of slippers whispering over stone.

He found the High Phanist standing next to him, turning a
glance of question up at him.

“Ivard,” he said.

“He is well. Do you wish to see him?”

Jaim remembered the sensation of initiating a blow and
meeting only wind as his opponent accepted his movement to turn the engagement
in an unexpected direction.

He spoke on impulse: “This is a nick religion—a Douloi
religion.”

She smiled. “When it began, it was for the lowly, the poor,
and the outcasts.”

Jaim shrugged. He wasn’t interested in a history.

The High Phanist said, “There is an enclave for the
Serapisti at the other end of this continent.”

Jaim shook his head impatiently, aware of the keening ring
of the chimes in his braids.

Her eyebrows lifted. “Mourning braids?”

The question was oblique enough to make an answer possible.
“The rituals bring someone closer in memory for a short time, and they are
beautiful.”

“You treasure beauty,” she said, not quite a question.

He nodded, transferring his gaze to the steady tongue of
fire. How still the air was that high! The flame rarely flickered.

“But now you have chosen the Path of the Warrior.”

Surprise made him turn. “If I have?”

She smiled, her eyes crescents of mirth. “Bear with me,
Ulanshu flame-seeker. I think you are the very person I was hoping might exist...
”

He crossed his arms.

She touched his wrist with one finger. “It is not a game.
But I’m going to intrude, and I sense that privacy has been your armor. With
your permission, then?” She gave him a short, antiquated bow, dignified, but
she smiled at him, as if sharing a confidence.

“Go on.”

“You have denied the Spiritual Path, because access to
someone’s presence seems to have been denied you. This suggests to me that you
have chosen the Warrior’s Path because you’ve found a worthy leader. Yes?”

“Why?”

She gave a short sigh of relief, then glanced northward.
Curious, he followed the direction of her gaze. In the north transept, light flooding
from high western windows illuminated a familiar profile: the Arkad.

“Where he is going next,” the High Phanist said, “he will be
alone among many dangers. He has to steer a course through these shoals, but I
would find someone to guard his back while he sleeps.”

The objections came to Jaim’s mind first, but he sensed that
she knew them, she even saw past them. For she could have asked those Marines,
whose job it surely was to guard Brandon.

And yet she had come to Jaim.

He met her gaze. She gave a short nod, suggesting covenant.

o0o

Brandon shivered in the cold draft blowing from the vaulted
ceiling far above as he approached the altar, aware of Vahn’s presence nearby. Ahead
of him Ivard limped up the steps before the large white-clad table and stood
quietly, his limbs and body weaving their strange triple rhythm.

Brandon genuflected where he was, the appropriate gesture of
respect for this face of Telos as required by his position, and then moved off
towards the north transept, leaving the boy to commune as he would.

Why had they been brought to Desrien? He had seen a
wariness, even a flare of fear in Captain Nukiel, the night before, and he was
sure it wasn’t simply the spectre of the court marital undoubtedly awaiting him
on Ares, which must certainly be their next destination.
But that’s what I
thought after Rifthaven.
Once again events were pushing him around on a
game board he could not perceive, but at least he wasn’t alone in that. Nukiel
had betrayed something of the same feeling.

He half sat on the edge of a stone ring around the base of a
column, his eyes closed, subliminally aware of a choir, and then organ music.

But when the great organ began to peal out KetzenLach’s
masterpiece, the
Memoria Lucis
, there was Markham again. The two of them
had played this and many other pieces by that composer while they studied,
Markham certain that KetzenLach’s music made their brains work faster.

Markham... and Vi’ya.

The dead seemed to crowd around Brandon once again, as they
had on Dis, and in the Hall of Ivory. The airy interior of the cathedral
resonated with echoes of the past and future melded into an eternal instant,
while the flagstones underfoot felt insecure, evanescent, barely supporting him
above a yawning gulf that could swallow him without a trace.

Brandon pushed away from the column and walked aimlessly,
his intent to take in the art while he waited, although he knew that he could
not escape either music or memory. Beams of light struck down from the vast
windows, bold strokes of dusty color that were as much a part of the
architecture as the stone walls themselves, or the evocative tang of incense on
the air.

His sense of a gulf underfoot intensified; he walked on the
balls of his feet next to the east wall, as if the floor there were more
secure.

There were statues in niches along the wall. Brandon moved
from one to another. A trick of the filtered light made them appear to stare
out over his head, not blindly, but without interest in him below. He came to
one he recognized: Jaspar hai-Arkad, in vigorous middle age, clad in courtly
raiment. In one hand he held a sphere with stars carved in its surface, perhaps
symbolic of the Thousand Suns he'd imposed his peace upon. The other arm cradled
the Mace of Karelais. The sculptor's art had reproduced with uncanny realism
the complex facets of that ancient symbol of power.

Brandon felt comfort in the presence of his ancestor until
he became aware of a light shining past Jaspar's figure, revealing that the
statue stood not in a niche with the others, but in the mouth of a narrow
corridor.

The light had the quality of sunbeams, but shone from the
east, against the shafts striking through western windows high above.

He squeezed past the statue, following the widening corridor
towards the light, and stepped into the Dreamtime.

o0o

The hull of the courier ship pinged and crackled as it
cooled, the underside sizzling and emitting jets of steam as it sank into the
muck of the ruined wheat field. A last rattle of hail struck spitefully at the
little ship as the storm moved on, trailing hollow thunder as the sun struck
wanly through thick clouds in a sky the color of a bruise.

Brandon jumped out of the lock. His glossy boots sank deep
into the half-grown wheat and mud that the storm had left behind. Nearby a road
emerged from a forest, stretching toward the setting sun. There, silhouetted on
a distant rise of land, rose a castle, battlements jutting like teeth against
the sunset light.

Brandon squelched towards the road, and set off towards the
castle. He passed an orchard, the fruit and leaves stripped from bare branches
by the hail that still lay in thick drifts upon the ground, crunching mushily
underfoot. From time to time he passed people working in the fields, their
motions listless with abandoned hope as they hacked wearily at the sterile mud.

He called out, “Where am I?”

The people watched him with dull, incurious eyes,
unresponsive to his call. He trudged on in silence.

The bright peal of trumpets greeted him as he approached the
castle. Surprised—looking around for who the welcome was really intended—he
passed inside.

Lights blazed up against the encroaching night. A crowd clad
in finery welcomed him and he forgot the misery outside the walls. A young, cheerful
page brought a silver ewer to him, and with cool water he washed the dust of
travel and the grime of long confinement from his face.

And then, as they ushered him towards the hall whence the
sounds of merriment beckoned, he spied a tall figure silhouetted against the
golden light spilling out between the opened doors. He couldn't see the face,
but as the figure moved with familiar lanky grace down the steps towards him
joy banished all questions and he rushed forward.

“Markham!” Words failed him as they embraced.

But words never failed Markham. “Brandy! You made it after
all.” He laughed. “I wondered, watching that landing. Didn't I tell you, never
argue with a thunderstorm?” He stepped back with his hands on Brandon’s
shoulders, his swashbuckling grin both merry and tender. “Come on,” he said,
taking his arm in a warm, strong grip, “let me show you to our host.”

They moved into the hall, and as Markham continued talking
with the old, familiar ease, Brandon's tongue thawed. Soon they were laughing
together, trading rapid-fire jokes and insults back and forth, moving at the
center of a constellation of brightly garbed young Douloi, some dressed like
them, others in fashions favored a hundred years ago, five hundred years ago,
older, but all these young people moved in orbit round the double star of Arkad
and L'Ranja.

In the banquet hall Markham led him past tables laden with
food and drink from a hundred worlds, threading easily through the crowd of
revelers, but as they approached the high table at the end the noise gradually
fell away, and Brandon was aware of an expectant hush. Even Markham spoke
rarely, finally silent as he halted before the throne-like chair at the head of
the hall.

The man who sat there wore the aspect of vigorous
middle-age, but his stern, high-browed face was marked with pain, lined with
the memory of many sleepless nights. Withal, his eyes were steady and
intelligent, his countenance solemn, yet hinting at a humor undefeated by
long-borne pain. Brandon bowed; shock thrilled through his nerves as his
lowered gaze descried bright blood, seeping slowly, marring the clothing of his
host. What was this untended wound—and why?

Brandon controlled his reaction as he straightened up.

“Be welcome, Brandon of Arthelion,” said the man, his
resonant voice courteous. “I am Jaspar. If there is aught you lack, only ask.”

“Thank you, my liege.”

Jaspar motioned them to seats on either side, and the night
progressed in delicacies, fine wine, and finer conversation—history, philosophy,
music, art, all the range of human endeavor passed under review, discoursed
with ease and grace by the guests of all ages who were gathered there. At the
head of the table the host was given to long silences, but these did not impose
a stricture on the observations of others. He seemed content to strike a spark
from time to time with a few well-chosen words and then sit back and listen. Occasionally
he shifted carefully in his seat, his face betraying nothing of the discomfort
of his wound.

“Will you have more to eat?” he said to Brandon. “You have
come a very long way.”

Brandon replied politely, his mind on the long flight—and a
double awareness flickered through his mind like lightning, present and past
overlaid.

He turned to Markham, trying to retain both images: though
he didn't quite have them, a sense of urgency possessed him. “I tried to join
you at Dis,” he said. And as he spoke, memory flooded back. The urgency
metamorphosed to grief. “But I was too late, and you had—died.”

Markham leaned across to smile at him, the torchlight twin
flames in his eyes. “Why did you wait so long?” he asked.

Brandon wanted to protest that it was impossible to escape
before that, but he did not utter the words: they were not completely true. It
was not the possibility of escape, but the rightness of it that had kept him
vacillating for three years.

And he still felt ambivalent. He had abandoned the world
established by Jaspar himself. His gaze returned to his host, who smiled at his
guests enjoying themselves.

Brandon turned back to Markham, who breathed and smiled
again, impossibly alive. “I've got so much to ask you.” The exclamation was
wrung out of him.

Markham's twisted grin was a blend of affection and
challenge. “You have the answers, Brandy. You have everything I had. Take them
and—” He gestured, slashing one hand through the air.

“Take everything,” Brandon repeated, “and run?”

Markham laughed soundlessly.

“Wherever I run,” Brandon went on, “people fall down dead.”

“Not flight.” Markham snapped his fingers. “
Fight
.” He
jabbed his forefinger in the air.

The solemn stroke of a brazen chime rang through the hall
and the merriment diminished to a quiet murmur that died away, yielding to the
silence of expectation. All heads turned.

A door that Brandon hadn't noticed opened and a young ensign
walked into the hall, carrying before him the double-handed burden of a
glittering mace. Its facets cast back the radiance within the hall in spots of
light that danced across the faces of the guests therein assembled. He walked
solemnly across the room; somehow no table, chair, or gathering of diners
obstructed his slow straight progress.

Shock again, again controlled rigidly, as Brandon saw the
fresh bright blood welling from the mace, running down the ensign's arm from
wrist to elbow in a slow crimson braid that traced his path across the shining
marble floor.

The chime resounded once again as the young man left the
chamber with his burden, and the conversations once again resumed. Brandon
glanced at his host, now bent in conversation with an old woman dressed
entirely in black.

Markham gazed into the depths of his cup, silent and abstracted.
Distant. After a time the sound of young voices rose above the genteel tumult
in the hall, and silence fell once more. From the same door there issued forth
a band of maids and youths, singing wordlessly, finely clothed, bearing a
variety of vessels; but Brandon's gaze was captured by the burden of the first.
She bore a sphere of silver, wrought so fine and polished such that the eye
could grasp it not at all, except as a distortion of the forms around it. She
placed it on the table before their host and then withdrew.