Surrender to the Will of the Night (26 page)

The healing brother said, “I can give him an infusion that will restore his control of his body briefly. We seldom use it. It sucks up what resources he has left. Is now a good time?”

The priest had bent to ask that question beside Tormond’s ear.

Brother Candle caught a flash of mischief in Tormond’s rheumy eye as he managed a tiny nod.

The priest hustled away.

Hodier said, “This infusion does work wonders. But the cost is cruel. Hours like this, or worse, after barely a quarter hour of creeping over just this side of the far frontiers of normal. Don’t waste what time you get.”

Brother Candle could think of no appropriate response. He shifted the Duke’s chair so they could face one another once he parked himself on a bench so he did not have to grind his knees into the hard oak floor.

“We’ve all enjoyed several seasons since last we met.”

Tormond offered a gurgled grunt.

The healing brother rematerialized. “This won’t look good. But it’s how the job has to be done.” He seized Tormond’s wispy hair and forced his head back. Tormond’s mouth opened as his head tilted. The priest gave him five heartbeats to clear his windpipe, then dumped a small clay cup into his mouth. The contents looked like dark tea. Brother Candle smelled nothing. That meant little. His own senses were not what they used to be.

The priest pinched the Duke’s nose, forced a swallow response.

Tormond downed his medicine without choking or aspirating.

His response was not long coming. And was dramatic.

“Almost magical,” Hodier opined, perhaps tongue in cheek.

Color came to Tormond. His slight palsy stopped. His drooling ceased. Then, laboriously, his chin came up off his chest. “Charde ande Clairs. My most faithful friend.”

There was a pathetic indictment of relations between Tormond IV and his world. And the Duke’s own fault. He never took charge. He let himself be managed and manipulated and got stubborn over the wrong things at the wrong times. Everyone tried to take advantage, excepting Sir Eardale Dunn, who had died defending Khaurene. And Brother Candle, who had been Charde ande Clairs in an earlier life, when he and the Duke-to-be had shared childhood adventures in contravention of the rules of station.

“I’m here.”

“But, almost certainly, had to be dragged.” Tormond could not overcome a slur and a lisp, nor did he rattle on as was once his wont. He could, however, be understood. And it was clear that he wanted to speak directly to Brother Candle. “Bicot, find Isabeth. Bring her. No excuses. Fornier, go get coffee. That was supposed to be here by now.”

The priest inclined his head. “As you wish, Your Lordship.”

“He took that gracefully,” Brother Candle said. While searching the room for shadows that did not fit.

“He’s a good man, Charde. Unlike most of his tribe. We have little time. I need you to listen.” Tormond beckoned the Perfect closer. “Among my many ills, lately I’m cursed with glimpses of what the Instrumentalities of the Night see when they look into the face of tomorrow. Usually while this drug infusion is fading.”

“Uhm?” Carefully neutral.

“Charde, the future is not a friendly place.”

Not exactly an epiphany.

Tormond took Brother Candle’s hands into his own. He eased something out of his sleeve into that of his guest. The Perfect concealed his surprise.

“Not friendly at all. Great sorrow is coming. Fire will scourge the Connec. There is no way to avoid it. Tell Count Raymone that I regret everything. Though I don’t see what I could have done to make things come out better. Give him my blessing. Tell him to salvage what he can.”

A wisp of darkness stirred behind the Duke’s eyes. The effect of the infusion was approaching its peak already.

Fornier returned with coffee service so fast Brother Candle had to believe coffee preparation had been in progress after all.

Queen Isabeth and several Direcians blew in moments later, all frowns. As Tormond failed his demesne became, ever more, an extension of Navaya. King Peter’s men would not be pleased with random old contacts who wandered in and caused distress.

Brother Candle recognized none of the Queen’s men.

He eased the packet in his sleeve to an inside pocket.

Brother Candle had known Isabeth since birth, though never familiarly. For reasons he never understood there was more warmth on her part than his. Bright with concern, she demanded, “What’s going on?”

The Perfect gestured. “Your brother sent for you. Not I.”

“Sit, Isabeth,” Tormond told his sister. “Listen. This may be the last chance I get to speak.”

The Duke rattled along as though there was more in need of saying than he possibly had time to say. He had been having apocalyptic visions. Disaster could not be avoided but its harsher details were not yet fixed.

Twice Isabeth started to interrupt. Twice Brother Candle stopped her with a gesture. This would be a grim race. Tormond had no time for interruptions.

He did not get as specific as anyone wanted. Always the trouble with sibyls, though Brother Candle did concede that all futures were fluid as long as they still lay ahead. The Night saw possibilities and probabilities but could fix nothing to its place or temporal point before it happened.

Still, some things verged upon certainties. None of Tormond’s futures boded well for Khaurene.

Tormond’s flirtation with lucidity degenerated into a gurgling mumble. The Duke vainly trying to communicate, still.

Isabeth eyed the Perfect. He stared back. She said, “It will start before we’re ready.”

“The future always arrives before we’re ready. Whatever you do, the ambush comes when you don’t expect it. But he did tell you a lot that you can use.” In a way. The personalities set to dance in the coming storm thought too much of themselves to deliberate what might be best in the long term.

Isabeth said, “I’ll have to inform Peter. He’ll have decisions to make. And you. You can’t waste time. Go preach to your people.”

He had other obligations, too. And might succeed in fulfilling none.

The dying man’s most dire visions had presented as the most determined futures.

And Tormond
was
dying. No doubt about it. He had given them a choice of three dates, all inconvenient. Two could be beaten by taking action to prevent them. Action entirely within the domain of Father Fornier.

Brother Candle suggested, “Whatever you do, be clear and don’t sugarcoat. Your husband’s choices will be hard. He deserves the best information possible.”

Isabeth considered him for several long seconds. She was no child. And she was not her brother. If anything, she could be hasty making decisions. “You accept what he told us, Master?”

Brother Candle did not correct her usage. She had done that deliberately, for the benefit of her companions. Most Direcian nobles were solid Brothen Episcopals, if openly contemptuous and defiant of the Patriarch himself. They were willing to exterminate the inquestors of the Society — mainly because those fanatics presented a threat to the nobility’s temporal power.

Isabeth was suspect religiously. She sprang from this nest of heresy. She had to tread carefully.

Brother Candle said, “I accept his visions. My creed tells me I must accept what is. The Night is. The Instrumentalities are. None of us can deny those facts because they’re inconvenient.”

Nothing he said contravened Chaldarean doctrine. So long as no one accorded the Instrumentalities any status but that of devils or demons.

Truths like that did not please the kind of soul that found completion only in a Society for the Suppression of Sacrilege and Heresy. A soul determined to coerce God Himself to conform.

Brother Candle said, “I’ve played the part your brother created for me. Which was to make sure he got his say and you people listened.”

Isabeth was skeptical.

She was a tired, graying woman who had spent her adult years enmeshed in the politics of her brother and husband. She had seen little of the stylish court life enjoyed by most women of standing. From the moment the Connec went into continuous crisis she had scant opportunity to enjoy the company of her husband or son. Who would be walking and talking and making life an adventure for his nurses, now. And whose name, Brother Candle realized, he did not know.

Embarrassed, he asked.

Isabeth rattled off a string of names. Direcians liked to get their favorite ancestors and saints involved. “But just Peter, or Little Peter, for everyday.” Wistfully.

Brother Candle got away soon afterward. Bicot Hodier accompanied him to the citadel gate. “I can’t walk you all the way, Brother. Tormond will need close watching now. He sometimes suffers after using Fornier’s infusion.”

“I understand. I know the way. I’m not senile yet. I just walk slower.”

***

The Perfect did not walk alone. He soon realized that he had a tail, a brace of rogues who did not appear to be moved by benign intent. But they suffered a change of heart soon enough. A half-dozen Direcian troopers came jogging down from Metrelieux and by coincidence seemed headed whatever direction the Perfect was.

***

“I don’t know what that was all about,” Brother Candle told the Archimbaults when they got home from the tannery.

Archimbault hazarded, “Must have been Society thugs. The capture of the notorious heretic Brother Candle would be quite a coup.”

The Perfect did not argue. Archimbault might be right. There was no fathoming the reasoning of some people. “Possibly. I need to get back on the road. Before I become a distraction.”

He could become one in a huge way.

After reaching the Archimbault home and making sure he was safe from stalkers and prying eyes, he retrieved the packet Duke Tormond had slipped him.

The contents could rock the Connec.

Within it were the ducal seal, the ducal ring of office, and a relic of Domino that had been in the Duke’s family since Imperial times. Each was an item only the true Duke of Khaurene could possess. They were the talismans of the office. Also included were documents inscribed in a tiny hand, copies of the legal instruments that confirmed Duke Tormond’s family as lords of the End of Connec. The originals went all the way back to Imperial times. Each copy was signed with incontestable sworn attests that it was an exact and true copy in every respect. Multiple signatories had witnessed every page of every document. The names ranged across the spectrum of Khaurene’s religious leadership.

The key document, the prize that could shake the world, was one in which Tormond IV legally adopted Count Raymone Garete of Antieux and made the Count his heir in all respects.

That would upset everyone. People had been jostling for position for years. Peter of Navaya led the pack. Isabeth had been Tormond’s only heir for a decade.

Adoption had not been much employed since Imperial times, when the more thoughtful emperors used it to assure the Empire of a competent successor. But adoption remained a viable legal maneuver. So long as it could be established beyond challenge.

Brother Candle considered the list of witnesses. Every man was highly respected, excepting Bishop LeCroes. And LeCroes had been rehabilitated.

There were too many of them. Honest men all, yes, moved by loyalty and the best of intentions, surely. Yet someone would say something to someone. That was human nature. The news would leak, if it had not done so already. Someone with ambition and a streak of villainy would start trying to undo Tormond’s scheme.

Thus, Brother Candle saying he had to get on the road. He needed a good head start before anyone began to suspect that a lapsed, superannuated Maysalean Perfect had smuggled the emblems of state out of Metrelieux for Tormond IV.

Brother Candle considered taking Archimbault into his confidence. Archimbault was as good a soul as they came. And the man thought better of Tormond than did most of his subjects. Archimbault could be valuable in the effort to execute Tormond’s plan. But Archimbault had a life, a wife, a family, a career, and an important role in the community. He did not deserve such cruel peril.

Archimbault and his wife both tried to talk the Perfect out of going. The Maysalean community did not want to share him. They did not like Brother Purify, who was the only other Perfect available.

Identical arguments were offered later, once the evening meeting started. The Seekers enjoyed themselves. Debate became spirited. And, to a soul, they insisted that their gatherings were never so enjoyable when the Perfect was not there to teach. Meaning, by implication, to referee.

Brother Candle put more into the evening than usual. The Seekers had to be warned that dark times would return. “The trial that’s coming will be harsher than ever the Captain-General was. The Captain-General was a gentler, more honorable man than the commanders we’ll see now. And that time of tribulation, terrible as it was, lasted only a few seasons. The next trial might last for generations. Till the last Seeker has been burned.” The Society had shown a fondness for burning heretics.

Tormond had not mentioned prolonged persecutions. His focus had been on the near future. But the crushing darkness of the deep future had been implicit in his every word.

Brother Candle finished the evening by saying, “Please awaken me early. I want to be on the road to the Altai with all the day ahead.”

He felt badly about the misdirection. Which, no doubt, would be of little efficacy, anyway. Anyone chasing him for what he might be carrying would know that he had to take it to Count Raymone. In which case, he ought to head into the Altai after all, then travel eastward through the wilderness.

***

Brother Candle reached the northernmost of Khaurene’s several gates only to find it shut. A lot of military activity was under way. There had been a bloody fight in the assembly area just inside the gate.

The soldiers and militia were not looking for an old man smuggling the emblems of state. Brother Candle approached a Direcian who did not appear to be overwhelmed, asked what had happened and when the gate would open.

“King Regard’s men are outside, Father. They tried to capture the gate during the night. They had inside help. They failed. The survivors are licking their wounds but they haven’t gone away. If you want out you’ll have to use another gate. They won’t be watching them all. They’re too busy here.”