The Wide World's End (32 page)

“Be quiet,” begged the excantor.

“If you go down that long, fiery path, you will have many things, but quiet will not be one of them. Nor will daughters or mates. You will be alone, in the dark, on your hoard, listening to yourself until your fire goes out.”

“I can't believe in your way. I can't believe in your God.”

“As if I asked you to! Belief. If the God exists, he needs your belief no more than the rain does, or the sea, or trees, or anything that is real. If he is not, he needs your belief no more than does up-downness or dark-lightness or anything that is unreal. You do the God no favors by believing in him. You do yourself no favors. Whom are you looking to please with this belief? Me? I am the one who just offered to help you kill your children.”

“What am I supposed to do?” whispered the excantor.

“Choose,” said Danadhar firmly. “What will you do? What will you be? What do you want?”

Now the excantor lay quiet on the stones. He wasn't breathing smoke anymore. His face seemed to be returning to its former shape. He closed his burning eyes.

There was silence in the jail.

The excantor shook off the god-speaker's hands and stood up. He turned to face Danadhar who stayed crouched there on the stones, looking patiently up at him.

“I don't need you,” the excantor said.

“No,” Danadhar agreed. “What will you do?”

“Leave here. I cannot fight my own
ruthen
-kin anymore. I will not.”

“What will you be?”

“Not a soldier. Not a jailor.” He looked at his hands. “I would like to build something. I love the smell of sawn wood even more than the smell of blood.”

“What do you want?”

“To be free.”

“Go and be free, my son. Leave here and build something.”

The ex-excantor nodded slowly. He took off his belt of office and dropped it on the jail floor. “Thanks be to you, Saint Danadhar,” he said.

“Enough of that kind of talk,” said Danadhar. “Get out of here, now. Remember me to your children, eh?”

“Are they really outside?”

“They are, with their mothers and your co-mates. They're all very worried about you. Go.”

The former excantor nodded and left.

“Free us, Saint Danadhar,” whispered someone. Then all down the corridor the shouts broke out, “Free us! Free us, Saint Danadhar!”

“Shut up!” roared Danadhar, and silence fell.

“I find that kind of talk very disgusting,” Danadhar continued, “and I will not countenance it. No! Absolutely not! Saint Danadhar will not free you. No saint will ever free you. Stop hoping for it.”

He bent down and scooped up the keys from the golden belt. He walked over to the door through which Deor and Kelat were still watching him.

“Little Cousin,” said Danadhar, “you tried to do me a favor just now.”

Deor snorted. “Thanks for noticing,
mandrake
.”

Danadhar stood back a step then smiled a long, wicked smile. “Is that offensive? I'm sorry,
ruthen
: I didn't mean it so.”

“It's nothing,” Deor said. “
Ruthen
, I spoke in haste: forgive me.”

“I'll do a little better than that.” Danadhar went through the keys and found the one for their cell. He unlocked it.

Deor released the bar and backed away from the door. The Gray One stood in the doorway.

“Here are the keys,” Danadhar said, handing them to Deor. “Do with them what you will.”

Deor rushed past him and unlocked the nearest cell. “Pass them on,” he said, handing the keys to one of the freed prisoners, and turned back to Danadhar who was still standing at the door.

“May I know your name,
ruthen
?” Danadhar said politely.

“Deor syr Theorn, cousin to the Eldest of the Seven Clans Under Thrymhaiam. My blood is yours,
ruthen
.”

“Thanks! I hope I never have a use for it. And . . . ?”

“This gentleman is Prince Uthar Kelat, son of the Vraidish King.”

“Kelat. Kelat.” Danadhar continued in Ontilian, “It seems to me a man of that name came to speak to the God's evil avatar some time ago. I tried to talk him out of it.”

“That was me, God-speaker,” Kelat said. “I wish I had listened to you.”

“Oh!” Danadhar's eyes glanced aside in separate movements, which Deor recognized as a sign of embarrassment. “I'm sorry I didn't recognize you.”

“It's nothing, great Danadhar. I cannot say my blood is yours; my blood belongs to my king. But my spear is yours, to strike where you say or keep it sheathed.”

“Sheathed, then, new friend. There has been too much killing in the city in the past year. But we must get you your spear and whatever else you came with. And whoever else. Is there someone over there?”

“Over in the corner is my
harven
-kin, Morlock Ambrosius.”

“‘Was,' you mean,” Danadhar corrected mildly. “That's a day I'll never forget, though it was so long ago. If—
Ruthen
Morlock! It's true!”

The god-speaker rushed past Kelat and stopped to stand uncertainly before Morlock.

Deor hoped that Morlock wouldn't spoil this odd reunion with any gibberish about the inner lives of dead fish.

The crooked man looked up and met Danadhar's blood-colored eyes. He stood and said conversationally, “
Ruthen
Danadhar. I greet you.”

“
Ruthen
Morlock,” the Gray One whispered. “It has been long since we last met. I have tried to keep faith with the truths you showed me on that day.”

Deor glared at Morlock, but the crooked man shrugged uneasily. “I showed you no truths. I'm glad you saw some, though.”

Danadhar nodded humbly and grinned his terrifying grin. “Yes. Yes. No one shows us. It is up to us to see. You are still my teacher,
ruthen
. Although—you seem no older than you did on that day.”

“I am, though” Morlock said. He looked around the cell. “Where is Ambrosia?”

“The woman who was here? The Olvinar has her, I fear,” Danadhar said sadly.

“The Olvinar? That is your Adversary—the anti-God?”

“Yes. He came first two years ago. He brought gifts and made friends. He called himself Lightbringer, but I perceived that was a lie. For I reasoned with myself this way,
ruthenen
: if the God chose to appear in an avatar of evil, showing us the consequences of doing what we must not do, why shouldn't the Olvinar appear in an avatar that seems good, tempting us to do what is wrong, as if we will not suffer from it? Also, his conversation seemed somewhat shifty to me. He only tells truths to mask his lies.”

“Hm. I knew a man like that once. His name was not Lightbringer, though.”

“He is like you in form, but taller, with white hair and a beard.”

Morlock looked at Deor, a little panic showing in his colorless bright eyes.

“Morlock,” Deor said. “Don't worry. If you're thinking what I'm thinking, Ambrosia is his own daughter—his favorite, from what I understand. What harm could come to her?”

“You are not thinking what I am thinking,” Morlock said. “I fear it may already be too late.”

In a way it was.

C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN

Second Chances

It is odd to know that one of your oldest friends is a murderer and a traitor. Aloê found it so. Everything that passed between her and Naevros now was stained with horror. And yet he was still her friend, and the rapport between them was as close as it had ever been. He had become strange to her and horrible without ceasing to be familiar.

And she found herself relying on him in ways both new and old. Noreê and Naevros both stopped by Jordel's to see her in the morning: Naevros to see how she was doing, and Noreê so that they could begin the task of finding out who had stolen Earno's last letter. Impulsively, Aloê asked Naevros to join them. Naevros was pleased, and Jordel clearly miffed. How could she tell Jordel that he was no use to her?
He
had no guilty knowledge to betray.

They rode together to Thaintower, east of the wall and north of the River Ruleijn.

“We should start with the thains who were on duty at the Arch of Tidings,” Aloê said. “I suppose you have a list?”

“Yes,” said Noreê. “I sent a message to Earno several days before his death. Any message he sent after that would have been written after that. And a thain on duty must have stolen the palimpsest.”

“Or they may know who stole it,” Naevros added.

“Or we may know, after we've talked to the thain,” Aloê suggested. “‘Hello, trusty thain-friend! Stand my watch for a moment while I snort down a bowl of soup.' And if the trusty friend was the thief. . . .”

“Yes,” Noreê conceded temperately.

“How many of the thains in question are yours?” Aloê asked.

“All of them.”

“Oh.” Aloê thought of the jail in Fungustown, staffed entirely with Noreê's thains. She thought of the Hall of Tidings, staffed entirely with Noreê's thains. How much of the city did she control—or was she trying to control? The thing could become a problem. It was, perhaps, already a problem.

Aloê met Naevros' eye, and he nodded. She knew he was thinking the same thing. There was a comfort in knowing that someone else saw what she saw, was concerned by the same thing that concerned her.

Of course, Naevros was a traitor and a murderer. She did not forget that.

But how little it affected him! He sat there in the saddle, sunning himself like a cat in the thin daylight, and seemed concerned about nothing except the cut of his trousers (which kept riding up his leg as they rode). Beside him trotted perhaps the greatest seer in the world, but he was obviously not worried that some psychic effluvium would betray him as a murderer.

Of course, he was a killer. They were all three killers. The murder of Earno seemed worse to Aloê than killing in battle, but maybe Naevros justified it to himself somehow. He could truly be innocent in his own eyes. Those pretty green eyes.

She shook her head and snorted.

Naevros looked at her, glanced at her horse, and smiled to himself.

She laughed. It was funny. And he was a traitor and a murderer.

At Thaintower they dismounted and let a couple of ostler-thains tend to their horses. Then Noreê (how they knew her there! how they truckled to her!) briskly demanded to see seven particular thains in the tower atrium.

It was the third one to show himself: a fellow named Bavro. Aloê's insight whispered it to her as soon as she laid eyes on him. But, to be sure, she ascended slightly into rapture and, with great difficulty, extended her hand in greeting.

He took it. His talic self was like a glowing mist with many dark gaps—perhaps like a skeleton made of fog, but it was not a human skeleton. It was the negative of the imprint left in the message sock.

She shook loose from her vision.

“Where is the letter, Thain Bavro?” she asked.

He must have suspected why he was being summoned. But perhaps he didn't expect the question to be put so abruptly. In any case he gaped at her like a fish in a net.

“What—what—?” he said.

“The letter, Thain Bavro, the letter!” Noreê said angrily.

“The palimpsest you stole from the Arch of Tidings,” Aloê explained kindly. “Earno's last letter.”

“Where is it, Thain Bavro?”

“Who did you steal it for? Who are you working with?”

Bavro glanced desperately (and most revealingly, Aloê thought) at Naevros, who stood silent through all this. Whatever Bavro saw in those pretty green eyes made him quail.

“I cannot tell,” he said sullenly at last. “I cannot tell.”

“You will tell, Guardian!” Noreê insisted. “If not now, then later. If not to us, then to the assembled Graith on the Witness Stone.”

“But the Witness Stone is broken, and—” Bavro stopped suddenly.

“Bleys tells me the Stone can be healed,” Noreê said. “But we may not have to wait so long. Take off your cape of office, Bavro; you don't deserve it.”

Bavro looked at each of the vocates in turn. He reached up and undid the fastenings at his shoulder, letting the gray cape fell to the floor.

“You will come with me to the lockhouse, there to await the Graith's pleasure. Guardians, will you come with us?”

“He may have hidden the palimpsest here, somewhere,” Aloê said. “I'll stay and have a look around.”

“I'll help,” Naevros said.

Noreê nodded curtly. She took Bavro by the elbow and steered him out the door. All the thains in the atrium followed her out, the sheep following their shepherd.

“I do not like this private army she is making of the thainate,” Aloê remarked.

“A thousand soldiers and one general,” Naevros agreed. “Yes, something will have to be done. . . .”

After some searching and asking questions of passing thains, they finally found their way to the narrow little room that Bavro called home. They took their time searching it. It needed time: the little room was layered in dirty clothes, books, pieces of uneaten food, badly drawn pornographic art, and string, which Bavro seemed to collect obsessively.