The Thirteenth Scroll (6 page)

She had no sooner drawn back the bolt than the Baron himself burst through the door, filling the room with the restless energy
she was too tired to face right now.

“It’s about time you let me in,” he began. Then his expression darkened at the sight of her weary eyes and the wan pallor
that tinged her skin.

“You’ll do neither of us any good by wearing yourself out this way.” He reached out to stroke her hair.

“Ah, but I have,” Aurya said, turning away, back toward the table.

“You’ve finished with the scroll, then? You know what it says?”

“Enough of it to know that Ballinrigh may be our final goal, but it is not our first.”

“Where, then?” Giraldus demanded. “The
throne
is in Ballinrigh. What benefit can there be in going elsewhere?”

Aurya sighed, trying to curb her exhaustion-born irritation.

“Patience,” she said. “How many times have I told you the value of
patience
? The best way to gain a thing is not always by laying siege to the front gate.”

Aurya could see the flush rising in Giraldus’s cheeks, as it ever did when he grew angry. But she had no energy for this either.

“Please, Giraldus,” she said, “I promise I will explain more after I have rested. For now, be content to know that
I
know.”

Giraldus opened his mouth to speak. But before he could, Aurya held up a hand and shook her head.

“Go,” she repeated, pointing at the door. “Have the kitchens start gathering provisions for two weeks, perhaps three. We will
leave soon—but right now I must sleep. I can’t think anymore.”

Giraldus stared at her a moment longer. Then, like any good soldier, he recognized the time to retreat. At the door, however,
he stopped.

“Do not rest overlong,” he commanded. “I’ll not have another gain the crown because you were sleeping.”

Aurya laughed. “I promise you,” she replied, “that will not happen.”

And as he closed the door, she hoped that she would continue to feel as confident as she had just sounded.

Nights wore into days into a week as Lysandra discovered anew how very fragile was her peace. Day after day, she tried to
forget the news the shepherd had brought; night after night, the dream that was calling her returned, until sleep became a
time of dread. She felt as if her entire existence now whirled somewhere between memory
and premonition, and she was trapped at the mercy of both in a place where no mercy existed.

She tossed again upon her bed, trying to find her way past the discomfort that had little to do with her body. But tonight,
all the memories of who she had been, of what she had once felt and hoped and wanted, refused to let her rest. She did not
want to venture back into the world, where all the things from which she had fled, all the loves and hates, the beauty and
the ugliness of human life, would assault her.

Again her memories whispered; again came the feeling of being summoned from her solitary life. Again her heart asked the question,
what could she, one blind woman, do?

Perhaps
, came the answer,
she could save one person, one life, from suffering what she had suffered. Perhaps that was enough
.

With that answer, Lysandra knew she had no other choice but to fulfill the persistent call of her dream. Once her decision
was made her inner battle ceased. The voices stilled, the memories—and the storm of emotions that came with them—all abated.
With her acceptance, Lysandra’s mind was suddenly made silent and free.

That night, she slept the first dreamless sleep she had known in weeks.

It was nearly dawn when she heard Cloud-Dancer’s low growl. It brought Lysandra awake with a start. Her
Sight
, which for the many days of her turmoil had been elusive, was fully upon her from the moment she opened her eyes. This time
it was rich with color; the images were sharp and clear.

As always, the presence of color surprised her, and it took her a moment to realize that her room was bathed in an odd, eerie
light. It came in through her bedroom
window, turning the room a soft, luminous green, as if all the plants in her garden had started to shine.

Lysandra sat up quickly. Cloud-Dancer, who usually slept curled next to her feet, was standing in front of the window, hackles
raised. Suddenly, he raised his head in a long, plaintive howl.

Lysandra jumped from her bed. This was a sound he almost never emitted and it drove every other thought from her mind. Nothing
mattered except Cloud-Dancer as she knelt beside him.

“What is it, boy?” she asked softly, forcing herself to keep calm as she ran her hands over his body, checking for anything
that might be causing the pain she heard in his cry. But as Cloud-Dancer continued to howl, neither her fingers nor her renewed
Sight
could find anything wrong.

Lysandra felt fear closing in, carried on the love she bore him. “What is it, boy?” she whispered again. “Show me what’s wrong.”

She knew he could not understand her words, but she prayed he would sense their meaning through the bond they shared. If he
did not, if she failed to help him as she had failed with the ewe…

Cloud-Dancer’s howling ceased and he began to tremble beneath her hands. Lysandra was becoming desperate, in a way that both
instinct and experience told her would do Cloud-Dancer no good. She forced herself to sit back on her heels and release her
touch on the wolf. Then she took some long, slow breaths to calm herself so her own fear would not prevent her from helping
him.

Cloud-Dancer began to howl again. The light from outside had grown brighter. The green was almost rich enough to touch. It
pulled Lysandra’s
Sight
from Cloud-Dancer to the window.

Then Lysandra
saw
him—a man in worn, much-mended monk’s robes. All around him, coming from him, was the light that filled her garden and poured
in through the window. Nor was this light static; it pulsated in time to Lysandra’s own heartbeat.

He stood, unmoving, at the end of her garden. In his hands he carried something Lysandra could not quite make out. She concentrated
upon it, feeling that it was important—but both its identity and its purpose eluded her.

Then Lysandra
saw
his eyes.

They were the eyes she had seen so often in her dream—and yet they were different, too. Older, sadder, they were the eyes
of someone who had seen too much and laughed far too little.

Although he still did not move, and no sound was uttered, Lysandra could feel that he was calling her. She felt herself start
to rise, ready to leave the house and go into the garden. But even as she did so, he vanished. Her
Sight
did not fade; all was as clear to her in the moonlight as to a sighted person in the light of day, but he was no longer there…
and with his passing the green light also disappeared.

To Lysandra’s relief, Cloud-Dancer stopped howling. She again put her hands on his fur and found that he no longer trembled.
His hackles were down and his muscles relaxed; his posture was neither threatened nor threatening. Finally, Cloud-Dancer shook
himself and went to the foot of her bed, as if to say all was well and it was time to go back to sleep.

Lysandra almost laughed aloud with her relief that Cloud-Dancer was all right—but what was it he had sensed that caused his
strange reaction? And who, or what, had she glimpsed in the garden?

She knew there would be no more rest for her that
night. “Sleep if you want to,” she told Cloud-Dancer, stopping to pet him. “But you gave me quite a fright.”

She gave a small smile as, leaving the bedroom, she heard Cloud-Dancer jump on the bed. She wished she could do the same,
but instead she headed for the kitchen and placed some fresh wood onto the well-banked fire in her stove. Once the wood caught
flame, she moved the ever-ready pan of water onto the heat.

While she waited for it to boil so that she could cook her breakfast of porridge and tea, she went to the back door and opened
it. She stood in the doorway, breathing in the cool air and listening to the calls of the night birds and the rustling scurry
of nocturnal creatures. Everything seemed normal, undisturbed by the strange presence that had been there such a short time
ago.

Once more, Lysandra stilled her thoughts and with her
Sight
searched her garden. There was no trace that anyone had stood there—no trampled leaves or newly smudged dirt along the paths.
Nor did any internal resonance remain. Lysandra extended her
Sight
as far as she was able and still found nothing.

Whatever had once been there was gone, leaving her with only more questions.

L
ike all the bishops of Aghamore, Elon Gallivin, Bishop-ordinary of Kilgarriff, had two residences—one in Ballinrigh and one
here, in Ummera, the cathedral city of Kilgarriff. Ballinrigh was where he stayed when either the business of the court or
the Church required his attendance—but it was in Ummera he kept his secrets.

The Bishop’s Residence in Ummera was palatial. It had been enlarged several times over the last three centuries and its heart,
the oldest part of the building, had been built during a time when the Church’s hold in Aghamore was not yet strong and persecution
came often and without warning. It was filled with hidden rooms and secret passages. Through the years, as the Church’s position
became more secure, those rooms fell to disuse and were soon forgotten—until Elon discovered them again.

Only two of his servants knew of their existence and Elon’s use of them. One of those servants had been dead these last two
years. The other, Thomas, had been with him for nearly a quarter century, since Elon’s rise in the Church demanded he employ
a staff. Thomas was the one person whom, for various reasons, Elon trusted with his life.

That was what he was doing by giving Thomas this
knowledge. Had his brother bishops found out the contents of the secret rooms, his life within the Church would have been
over—and his physical life might well have been forfeit. Elon would have been burned as a heretic and blasphemer, an agent
of the devil sent to poison the Church from within.

Even knowing this, he could not keep away. The writings of Tambryn, though proscribed by the Church, were nothing compared
to many other books and scrolls in Elon’s collection. Tambryn’s words had been banished because they held things the Church
did not want to hear. Tambryn had offended too many people in positions of authority—but his “heresy” had been only a lack
of prudence. He dared to tell the truth.

The other writings Elon owned were the works of countless minds and hands, meticulously gathered from every land possible,
spanning many centuries and many faiths. These were the gateway to magic and to arcane knowledge, to the occult—to power that
fascinated Elon.

When he returned from his visit with Aurya and Giraldus, Elon gave orders not to be disturbed and hurried to his secret library.
Aurya fascinated him in the same manner as did the writings he had collected. Although she could only guess at her parentage,
he knew she was his daughter.

He had carefully searched the records of the province to find her mother, Aileen. From parish records, he knew there was magic
in her maternal ancestry; a century before, her grandmother’s grandmother had been driven from their village under the accusation
of witchcraft. This information, coupled with the fact that Aurya’s mother had been an only daughter, the last and seventh
child, born on the night of a lunar eclipse, meant she met all of the requirements of the ritual Elon was set upon attempting.

Whether she possessed magic herself was something Aileen’s unprepossessing nature would not allow her to explore. The
potential
was there and that was all Elon needed; already downtrodden by a domineering father and six older brothers, she was far more
easily controlled than Elon had expected. That she also possessed a gentle beauty added an unforeseen pleasure to his task.

It took but little attention from him for the affection-starved Aileen to lower her guard without even realizing she had done
so. Then, using the power of his voice, he had entranced and then seduced her, taking her to bed at a precise time and day
and dedicating the act to an ancient god in order to conceive a creature of magic.

And it had worked. It was this fact, and not any form of fatherly affection, that fostered Elon’s fascination. For all the
Church’s claim that no other gods existed,
this
had worked. Aurya was, in every way, a creature of magic. Elon sometimes felt as if the magic in her radiated all around
her, making even his old bones tingle.

Although Elon made use of many hidden rooms, each having its own purpose, this library was his favorite. Tonight, a lamp burned
on the table, casting shifting shadows through the room. The room was without window or chimney, yet somehow the air was not
stagnant; in some places it felt as if the air was actually moving, as if that place contained another entrance or unseen
portal. Although he had searched, Elon had found no hidden doors or air shafts—nothing to explain the freshness of the air
he breathed or the drafts he sometimes felt upon his skin.

He did know, however, that the house had been erected over a place the ancient religion of this land had dedicated to its
god of divination. Just as there were places in this room where moving air could be felt, there were others that sent a chill
down his spine.

The lamp gave enough light for him to find what he wanted. Open before Elon was a tome from the ancient land of Kaitrue, half
the world away. It told of the dark god Leshtau and his consort Parumia. Together they ruled the underworld, gathering living
souls to be their minions here on Earth. It was from this book that Elon had taken the ritual when he seduced Aurya’s mother.
Now he searched for a way to bring the daughter as much under his control as the mother had been. If something in their plan
went awry, he wanted to be certain he had the means to protect himself.