The White Tree (38 page)

Twenty feet away, ever closer. Ten. He could hear each of her words now, the thick-tongued scrape of Gaskan. He moved to put Blays to his left, between him and the Citadel. He slid his knife from his belt and sliced a shallow line over the ball of his left thumb. Blood wormed into the folds of his hand. A single bead rolled down his palm, dripped to the street. He closed his eyes to catch his breath. When he opened them she was standing in front of him. Their eyes met. Samarand's were a sky blue, airy with the peace of her fifty-odd years. He saw no violence in them. She was a good liar, then.

She murmured something in Gaskan and he steeled himself against a flinch as she reached out for his forehead. Her fingertips were warm. She looked at him again with kind creases in the corners of her eyes and he felt a yawning fear sweep through the marrow of his bones. He let the nether wait. When she moved down the line, when she turned her back. He dipped his head to mimic the gratitude of the others. He kept his left hand clenched, blood slick between his fingers. Samarand smiled at him again and turned to Blays, who doffed an imaginary hat. She laughed, took his hand. Dante held his bleeding fist against his stomach and sent for the nether. He found nothing, an emptiness he'd never before felt. His breath shuddered. At once the shadows flooded forward, filling his vision with gray. He looked down and saw a violent darkness surging around his hand. Samarand said something holy-sounding to Blays and moved along to the next man. It was time. Release it. Split her chest so no man could mend it. Use his blood to spill her own.

She shuffled along. Blays glanced at him from the corner of his eyes. Dante licked his lips. The high collar of a priest brushed his nose and he jolted back and nearly blasted the man with the shadows he intended for her. Heads craned and waggled between his and hers, now. He thought he could feel the weight of her presence, the deep substance that bulged beneath her skin. Release it, strike her down. His fingernails bit into his palm. Blays' elbow nudged his hip. He shook his head, paralyzed but quivering. She was well into the crowd now, hidden by the upraised chins of those she'd passed, by the bulky shoulders of monks and men-at-arms. Dante let the shadows fade, felt them burn along his hand as they dispersed back to the cracks of the earth.

"I couldn't," he whispered.

"I know," Blays said softly, but Dante saw the doubt in his eyes. Dante closed his own. Laughter and chatter battered his ears.

"I was waiting for the moment, but when it came I couldn't get a hold on it."

"We can find another," Blays said. "We know where she keeps herself."

They threaded their way from the square. Dante didn't reply to Blays' simple stabs at jokes and after a while of walking Blays began humming a hopeful tune he'd sounded along the river beyond the mountains. Dante let out a long breath. His feet ticked over the cobbles. He rubbed dried blood from his hand. Blays led the way; he gave no thought to their path or the city around them and was mildly surprised some blank time later to find themselves back at the house they called theirs. She had meant to take his life: she'd tried it on four separate occasions. Yet he couldn't end her own.

"I wonder if she always travels with so many guards," Blays said. He shut the door behind them and gazed at its iron handle.

"I expect so," Dante said, the first words he could remember saying since the square.

"The priests, could you tell? Were they all swoll up with the same power you've got?"

"Some of them. There's a stillness around the ones who do. A heaviness."

"Maybe it was for the best, then," Blays said. "They probably could have told it was you."

"Probably," Dante said, and wasn't consoled.

They burned a week walking endless circles through the dead city, scouting the Sealed Citadel for ways inside, waiting for open gates, searching for tricks of passage. Every time the doors opened and the grille raised forty armed men watched the entry of the man they had parted the gates for. Wagons were searched before they were allowed through. They saw nothing more of Samarand, heard of no other sermons or appearances. They could bribe their way in, perhaps, or try to scale the towering walls by cover of night, but the keep was a city to itself, and even if they stood inside the courtyard they'd have no way to find the woman priest within its alien layers. Every measure seemed too desperate, its hopes far too trivial to risk their lives for.

They killed the rest of their long hours sifting through the rubble in the outer regions of the city, kicking around the trash of houses for anything they could use or sell. It was a tedious business, dirty and exhausting, and they did it in their rough old clothes. At four hours a day, they found more to sell than they spent on food enough to keep themselves alive. Dante rose each day feeling hollowed out, torn open. He'd missed his chance, and as time raced on, time that surely saw the spread of unrest and death in their homes in the south, he saw no way to amend his mistake. His weakness. It had been a single moment, but it had confirmed every fear and close-held hate for himself he'd ever felt. He thought of nothing else, knew his life from now till death would be defined by the single minute when he'd thought himself strong but found himself wanting. Whatever else he'd done well or done right meant nothing. Blays' attachment to him was hollow. His skill with the nether, a talent he'd once allowed himself to think would one day enshrine him in immortal glory, that was a sham, a delusion. There was only his failure, that non-act that loomed cyclopean from his memory, sharper and more crippling than any wound to his body. He began to wish he'd never existed; he daydreamed of standing at the foot of a hill and being consumed by the damp, cool dirt, leaving no trace of himself on the stupid earth.

By night he found some small comfort losing himself in his books. Dense works, dripping with intricate thought and elevating efforts of logic, it was a week before he finished the three he'd found in that abandoned temple on their first day within Narashtovik. The day he finished the last of the tomes, he and Blays walked the roads between the two sets of walls until they found another edifice bearing the marks of Arawn and none of recent use. Dante combed its floors and shelves for more books with which to salve his mind, and there, among the rubble and the ruin, at last he found the answer.

14

"Here's your damned book," Dante said, flipping the
Cycle of Arawn
at the feet of one of the priests they'd found inside the Cathedral of Ivars. The bald man raised an eyebrow at its sprawled pages.

"A copy of the
Cycle
," he said, replying in Mallish. "Shall I add it to the hundred others in the cellars?"

"Not
a
copy," Dante smiled. "
The
copy."

The priest glanced at him, then at the book on the floor, then shot Dante a sharper look. His shoulders jerked at the cold defiance on the boy's face. The priest tripped on the skirts of his robe as he bent to snatch up the book. He cupped it with both palms, the White Tree of Barden shining up at his face. A tall, willowy priest, silent till now, leaned over his shoulder to gaze on its cover.

"Dante Galand," the bald priest said, and Dante willed his face to keep composed. "Why have you decided now to return it to its proper owners?"

"I've read it all," Dante said, tossing his head. "Besides, I'm tired of killing your men."

"It's not even sporting anymore," Blays added from his side.

"You wouldn't know a real man if you were staring straight at his kneecaps, boy," the tall priest spoke down to them.

"You think so little of Will Palomar?" Dante said through curled lips. "We slew him too, you know."

"Will's not dead," the tall man said. Blays burst into laughter. "Is he?"

"He hasn't come back yet," the bald priest said, meeting the other's eyes. They turned back to the boys. "No. Boyish fancy. What are you, twelve?"

"Almost sixteen," Blays said.

"Our friend robbed the corpse of his mailed shirt," Dante said. "We thought his cape too womanly to take."

The tall priest gasped. The bald one beetled his brows.

"I assume," he said, voice measuredly soft, "you didn't come all this way to let us know we need to order another tombstone."

Dante nodded, body as tight as a bowstring. It all hinged on their reaction to his next words.

"I can't read that gibberish in the back," he said. "I want to know what the rest says."

"There's a nice long section about the tragedy of outgrowing one's breeches," the bald priest spat.

"I don't remember that verse," the tall one said. The first priest blinked at him.

Dante folded his arms. "I'm joining your order. I want a cell in the Citadel. Access to your archives. A tutor who knows enough to be of use to me."

"We'll give you a cell." The bald priest licked his pudgy lips. "A nice dank one, with good thick walls to keep you safe."

"You'll do as I say," Dante warned, stepping forward until his nose was an inch from the priest's. "You'll give me my books. My lessons. The knowledge I still lack. And I'll release our god from his chains in the heavens."

"You're a rat's asshole," the tall man said. He splayed out his hand. In the same moment Dante met the priest's nether with his own and Blays' sword whipped up to dimple the man's throat. His adam's apple bobbed against the killing steel.

"Put your weapon down," the bald priest said, and for the first time his eyes were bright with fear. "And you step back, Paul. I've heard enough to know he's not as weak as he looks."

The priest named Paul spread his fingers in peace and lowered his hands to his waist. Blays kept the blade at his neck. He twitched his hand and a tiny rivulet of blood leaked down Paul's skin. Paul suppressed a whimper. Blays snorted, lowered his sword.

"There," the bald priest said, folding his hands below his chin. "All right. Let's calm down and think about this for a minute."

"Think about me gutting you like a trout if you try one of your little spells again," Blays said, twitching the point of his sword at Paul's belly.

"Like a flounder for him," Dante said, pointing to the bald one. "It's fatter."

"And think about me gutting you like a flounder."

"I said let's calm down," the bald priest said, shuffling the anger from his face and waiting till Blays put away his blade. The man took a long, slow breath and gazed around the small living quarters in the back of the cathedral where the boys had ambushed them. "This is beyond my authority," he decided, nodding so the wattles on his neck ruffled like a lace sleeve. "Paul. Go see Larrimore and tell him the boy has come. Tell him he's brought us the book."

"And then what?" Dante said, pointing his chin at the bald priest's sternum.

"And then he'll figure out what to do with you," he said through his teeth. Blays' sword ground against its sheath as he worked free the first half foot. "Which I'm certain will be peaceable and amenable to both parties." He fixed Blays with a look. "They'll appreciate you've returned our property without any more bloodshed."

"What are you waiting for, Paul?" Blays said. "Move your bony ass."

The bald priest fought a smile as Paul hustled from the room. Blays glanced at Dante and bugged his eyes. Dante fought down a laugh that would have unmasked them both. They snapped their faces flat and dully contemptuous as the priest turned back to them.

"What's your name?" Dante said.

"Nak Randal," the bald priest said. He nodded to Blays. "And yours? We never learned your name. We'd taken to calling you 'The Pain.'"

Dante saw Blays swallow a grin. "Blays Buckler," he said.

Nak sucked his cheeks and darted his watery brown eyes between the two boys for any sign they were putting him on. Blays didn't need to act to make his face go red.

"Very well," Nak nodded quickly. "Dante Galand and Blays Buckler. You've come a long way."

"We heard of your city's legendary hospitality," Dante said.

"Thought we'd see it for ourselves," Blays said.

"I hope it hasn't disappointed," Nak said, wiping something from his eye and examining his nail.

"Someone shot at us on the way in," Blays shrugged. "It's been better since."

Nak nodded. "It might have helped to learn the language. Things are a bit bestirred at the moment, but some of the city's wary of foreigners."

Dante snorted. "We've been a little busy being snuck up on in the night by Samarand's hounds to work on our education."

"I suppose that's true," Nak said. He crinkled up his face and rubbed his eyes with one hand. "Things are going to get interesting a few minutes from now. Care for a seat until then?"

"Thanks," Blays said, thunking into a chair. Dante took the one beside him and Nak bent over the last one in the room and dragged it in front of them. He sighed as he sat down, then laughed, shaking his bald head.

"They're not going to like this."

"Too bad," Blays said. Nak crossed one leg over the other, wincing when his slippered toe snagged on his robe.

"Trouble with your feet?" Dante said.

"Bunions," Nak said sadly, then looked up, faintly embarrassed. He frowned hard at Dante. "Speak like that to Larrimore and he'll either kill you on the spot or take to you like a duck to water."

"Lots of non-duck fowl like the water," Dante said.

"What?"

"Who's Larrimore?" Blays said before Dante could expound.

"He's known as the Hand of Samarand," Nak said with a hint of irony around his mouth, "because he turns her will into something you can grasp."

"He's a priest, then?" Dante said, leaning forward.

"Just a man with an uncommon facility for getting things done. If he weren't so damned good at it, you can bet one of the council would have stilled his restless tongue a long time ago. Thus why he might actually like you two."

Dante cocked his head. "If he's that good, maybe his arrogance is accurate."

"Even if that were granted," Nak said, folding his robed arms, "he still lacks the wisdom to realize that fortress over there may be jammed with holy men, but it's no less a court than the palace in the capital, where respect and obedience are the highest virtues of all."