The White Tree (56 page)

Dante sheathed his sword, slid the rib down the right side of his belt. He drew a shuddering breath.

"You're keeping that?" Blays said, scrunching up his face. "Why?"

He shrugged. "I'll have a sword made from it."

"That's sick."

"What isn't," Dante said, then felt dumb, however true it may be. Cally leaned back on his knees, chest heaving, scraggly white hair plastered to his brow. He scowled down at Samarand's red, bug-eyed face and slapped her across her dead cheek.

"Look what you made me do," Cally said. He clambered to his feet and kicked snow over her body. "If you'd known your place you could have been indispensable to me. Idiot pride!" He kicked more snow, stumbled forward.

"I don't think she can hear you," Blays said.

"If there's any justice in the world a passing spirit will give her my message." The old man's green eyes gleamed in the glare of the snow. His gaze shifted to Dante and some of the wildness faded from his wrinkled face. "He's dead, isn't he." Dante didn't reply. "Larrimore was a good man, from what I saw of him."

"You don't know anything about it," Dante said.

"No, I don't."

"Then don't speak as if you do."

"Right," Cally said. His eyes drifted downhill and he frowned at the walking dead standing rock-still a short ways down where Dante'd left them. "You're dealing with dangerous forces."

Dante shrugged, severed the bonds that kept them upright. They dropped like cut puppets.

"I'm not the only one," he said.

"I'm starting to see that." Cally ran his fingers through his beard. "So. Going to add me to the pile of bodies fertilizing this tree?"

Dante snorted, wanting nothing more. It wasn't Cally's assassin that tempted him to strike down the old man; that he could forgive. It was everything else that he couldn't: betrayal and lies, the false friendship he'd let Dante believe so long as it would benefit him, the empty ache he felt to the marrow of his bones. Dante shook his head, sickness curdling his heart.

"I need you to tell that army down there they serve you now. They'd never follow me."

"Wise beyond your years." The old man considered the few dozen men running up the hill toward them, no more than a minute away. "It could work, though some of them probably weren't even born the last time I ruled the order."

"Deal with it."

Cally chuckled to himself, brightening by degrees. He smoothed his hair away from his brow and looked shocked to see he was missing most of the bottom two fingers of his left hand.

"That's unfortunate," he said, watching blood pulse from the stumps with the beating of his heart. He shook his hand, like two new fingers might pop out, then sighed wearily. "Shit."

He spent the minute before the troop arrived binding the wounds with a strip of his black doublet. The sixty-odd men who'd come slowed as they approached the otherworldly spread of the White Tree and the fresh carnage beneath its boughs. Rettinger separated himself from the pack and looked between the old man and the two boys, eyes thick with confusion.

"Tell me why I'm not about to cut you three down as traitors," he said, voice trembling with an indecipherable mix of emotion.

"Because that would make you a traitor, too," Cally said, "and then some bright young man would have to kill you. Where does it end?" He smiled vaguely at the waiting men. Dante felt him gather a trickle of shadow and lend it to his words so they'd boom down the slope of the valley. "I am Callimandicus. Years ago I led this order until Samarand stole it from me. I've just now reclaimed it."

"He killed her! He admits it!" someone shouted from the crowd. There was a general shift of cold steel. Dante clenched his jaw and readied the nether, wondering if he killed a few of them suddenly and brutally enough whether the rest would flee. He doubted that. Somehow his fate again rested in Cally's too-clever hands.

"Do you serve an all too mortal woman, or do you serve Arawn?" Cally barked, sweeping his eyes over the ranks. A few swords faltered.

"We serve the pleasure of the Sealed Citadel," Rettinger said slowly. "All I see is a few outsiders with the blood of good men on their hands."

"He is who he says." A middle-aged man with a scar-creased face stepped forth from the line of soldiers, nodding at Cally.

"Hello, Vlemk," Cally waved. A couple other time-weathered soldiers spoke Cally's full name. Rettinger sucked his teeth and rested his hand on his sword. Snow fell on their faces. Cally lifted his unwounded hand. "I know it hits your hearts as false. But don't act in haste. The rest of the council will know my claim. Let them accept or reject it as they will."

Rettinger's expression flickered as he gazed on the wreckage of the woman and men he'd so recently followed. He shook his head. But he was a born lieutenant, Dante knew, had seen it in the course of the battle with the rebels.

"That's the only smart course," Rettinger said. "I won't risk adding to this tragedy, no matter how hard I might wish to." He turned around to face his men. "Gather up the bodies. It's time to go home."

Dante let the nether bleed away from his grasp. Blays bent over Larrimore's body and plucked at his cloak. Dante dropped his jaw to see his friend looting the body of the only other man he trusted in the entire kingdom, but before he could upbraid Blays or punch him in the face the boy stood and held out Larrimore's badge. It was nearly the same as Dante's own, the outline of the tree surrounded by a silver ring, but at the center of the tree two blue sapphires glittered in the overcast light.

"I think he'd want you to have it," Blays said.

Dante nodded, unable to speak. The twin sapphires winked up at him from his palm. He turned away and wiped his eyes and shuffled around the snow until he found the
Cycle of Arawn
, the book that had been used to cause so much hurt. He brushed away the snow, held it to his chest. The soldiers piled the bodies on the wagon, wrapping loose limbs in the cloth of the slain. Hundreds had died on the journey to Barden and all that had changed was the position of power from an old woman to an older man. A hundred miles lay between them and the dead city. Dante closed his eyes and took the first step.

18

Cally led the soldiers through the empty miles of the road, encountering no one till they reached the fringes of the dead city. He took them over the river and through the outer sprawl, past the silent guards atop the Pridegate and Ingate and finally to the gates of the Citadel itself. Without attacks, with significantly fewer men to slow them down, it took them under four full days. The guards of the Citadel saw the colors of the order and the faces of their fellow armsmen and swung open the doors to let them through.

"What are you going to tell them?" Dante said to Cally as they approached the keep. The remaining members of the council stood on the keep's front steps, awaiting them in the dull afternoon sunlight. Over the last few days, Dante's anger toward Cally had sunk from the base of his skull to the pit of his stomach, leaving his mood sour but his mind clear. He'd resolved to use the old bastard. The council would never allow Dante as its leader, but with Cally seated at its head, he'd have a straight line to its decisions—perhaps a seat for himself. Whichever, he'd no longer be a pawn to any other man.

"I'll tell them the truth," Cally said. He scowled at Dante. "It's not funny."

Cally had sent no riders ahead of their march and they'd made no stops once they'd hit the city. The members of the council spilled down the keep stairs and as they saw how few had come back from Barden their faces switched from anxious expectation to wavering shock.

"
Callimandicus?
" Tarkon said as they drew up. The priest's face wrinkled double as he squinted through the gleaming snow in the yard to look on Cally's face. Cally waved at him.

"Where's Samarand?" Olivander demanded.

"Dead," Cally said.

"Dead?"

Cally nodded. "Very unfortunate."

"And the others?"

"Check that corpse wagon back there," Blays said, jerking his thumb behind him.

Olivander struggled for control of his face. "What about Arawn? Did they release him?"

The four other priests drew themselves as straight as their old backs would allow. Cally combed his beard with his hand.

"That," he said, doling out the words syllable by syllable, "is the reason she's dead."

Olivander gaped. "Arawn slew her?"

"No, you halfwit, Arawn didn't slay Samarand," Cally said, giving Dante a look that suggested how little he'd missed some parts of this place. "She failed. She failed and she decided to lie to you and the people of Gask and say she'd brought him forth. We disagreed on the wisdom of such a plan."

"How were you there to disagree with her in the first place, Callimandicus?" Hart said, looking down on Cally with all the height of the keep's front stairs and his own seven-foot frame. "We thought you've been dead for fifteen years."

"A very good question," Cally said, tapping his chin. He thought for a moment, then laughed and gave them a bony-shouldered shrug. "No more lies. We've had too many already. Why don't we try the truth for once?"

"Which is?" Olivander said.

"I killed Jackson when he was down in Mallon. Couple months ago now. Isn't hard to duplicate a man's appearance if you know what you're doing. You probably won't believe this, but I meant no more harm than to be a voice of moderation on the council. I was of the mind Samarand's warmongering would set us back another hundred years." He glanced between the remaining members of the council. "I know I'm not the only one."

"That's a convenient enough story, considering you ended up killing her," Hart said.

Cally shrugged. "Well, it happens to be true. Things disintegrated at a regrettable pace when I revealed myself and questioned her intent to deceive you."

Olivander stared hard at the old man. "So you say."

"It's true," Dante said to bolster Cally's lie. "Blays and I were there at the foot of the White Tree. Some of the council agreed with Cally, others with Samarand. When they attacked him, everyone else was killed."

"Larrimore's boy," Olivander said, cocking his head at Dante. "So why didn't you kill the old man when it started? Surely Larrimore went to her aid."

"He also once told me this man had led the council. I hesitated. It all happened so fast. Most of them were dead before I knew what was going on."

"Say I take this at face value," Olivander said, shifting his gaze to Cally. "It sounds enough like her. You've had a few days to think about what the rest of us should do."

"That is a delicate subject," Cally said.

"I was next in line."

Cally's face grew guarded. "It was never Samarand's to take."

"I thought you weren't here to take back your old chair," Olivander said. His hands drifted toward his belt.

"You were here when she stole it from me, weren't you? Botching your lessons in that little chapel while she and the others conspired?"

"I've been defending this city for thirty years," Olivander said, dropping down a step. "I've been on this council for fourteen. Where have you been all that time? Hiding in a cave a thousand miles away? It seems to me it was the will of the council that you should step down, not an act of treason."

Cally thrust out his chin and paced forward and Dante felt the nether shrouding the old man's form. He clamped his lips between his teeth, ready to bite until he bled. If there was to be one more battle, he'd hit as hard as he could. He'd leave it all in rubble.

"I was driven out by treachery," Cally said in a voice that wasn't yet a shout. "She turned them all against me, bent the laws to her advantage. The passage of time doesn't make it any less a betrayal."

"Things kept going while you were gone, old man. This isn't the same order you left behind."

"I'm here now."

"So am I," Olivander said. He wrapped his fingers around the hilt of his sword.

"Stop!" Tarkon said, putting himself between Cally and Olivander. "You weren't yet in a position to see how it happened, Olivander. All you know about why Cally left is what Samarand told you. Well, now she's dead. So are five of our brothers. You want to see the rest of us killed over a dispute that was never right in the first place? You want to take your vengeance till there's none of us left at all? Then time can finish turning our city into ruin."

"You're on his side?" Olivander said, flinging a hand at Cally.

"I'm on the side of our order," Tarkon said. "All of us are. I won't see any more of our blood spilled."

Olivander glanced between Cally and Tarkon and the three other living priests. No one spoke.

"Perhaps," Hart said, breaking the long silence, "the full council should be given a say in who's to replace the fallen."

Cally opened his mouth, then clicked his teeth together and nodded. Dante wished Larrimore were here. He could hardly grasp the layers of politics flying between these old men.

"I'd ask it anyway," Cally said. "I have been away too long to know who's worthy to appoint."

Olivander met eyes with Hart. He dropped his hand from his sword. "It's been a long time since the laws of the Citadel were amended. Perhaps we should learn from Samarand's death. Perhaps it's a dangerous thing to collect too much power in the hands of a single man."

"I thought so even when I had it," Cally said.

"We could shift more responsibilities to the council," Tarkon said. He smiled wryly at the few who remained. "If it's time to make changes, the time won't get any righter than this."

"We'll have open discussions on the council's new structure," Olivander stated more than asked.

"It will all be open," Cally said. Olivander looked for a moment like he were trying to swallow a stone the size of his fist. At last he nodded.

"Then let it be remembered I laid down my claim in the name of rebuilding."

Relief washed the faces of the council. Again it had all gone too fast for Dante to fully follow. He felt the nether the priests had held ready soak back into the substance from where it had come. They turned to smaller details: the horses of the troop were led away to stables, the armsmen dispersed to meals and barracks. Rettinger made orders for the storage of the corpses until they could be properly buried. Cally and the boys followed the council priests out of the cold and into the keep.