‘How can I know?’
The cry, so filled with despair, silenced the historian.
Endest ceased punching his thighs, his head shifting as if he was looking for something on the floor, and then he spoke. ‘I step into the hearth chamber. They have been arguing — terrible words, cutting like knives upon kin and loved ones. But she is not right, the woman dying on the hearthstone. I see her in the robes of a High Priestess. Of course,’ he added with a weak, dry laugh, ‘they are women who like to spread their legs. They do not fight, and would make of surrender a gift, even if one of little worth for its easy ubiquity.’
Rise studied the young priest, struggling to understand the scene Endest Silann was describing. Yet the historian dared not ask a question, although this prohibition seemed in itself arbitrary. The man before him had no answers.
‘I walk up to her, numb, unable to stop myself. She is already wed — though how I know this I do not know — but I see her as Andarist’s wife, and a High Priestess, beloved child of Mother Dark. She is not yet dead, and I kneel at her side and take her hand.’ He shook his head as if refusing an unspoken objection. ‘Sometimes her husband is there, sometimes not. She is badly used and dying. I watch the life leave her, and then I hear Lord Anomander. He is saying something, but none of the words make sense — I do not know if he speaks another language, or if I simply can’t hear them distinctly. When I grasp her hand, I am whispering to her, but the voice is not my own — it is Mother Dark’s.’
‘It is but a dream,’ Rise said quietly. ‘Do you recall, there was a banquet, Endest, which we attended. Two years ago. It was before Lord Andarist met Enesdia — before he saw her as a woman, I mean. Scara Bandaris was there, as guest to Silchas. The captain was telling a tale of when he was offered hospitality in House Enes on his way down from the north garrison. He had been amused by Lord Jaen’s daughter, who walked with the airs of a High Priestess. That was the title Scara gave Enesdia, and this memory has twisted its way into your dream. Nor, Endest Silann, were you there in the time of her dying. No one was but her killers.’
The priest was nodding vigorously. ‘So this world insists, and I bitterly bless its every claim to veracity, each time I awaken, each time I stumble into it. Still, what answer will you offer me, historian, when I find her blood mingled with sweat upon the palms of my hands? I have examined myself, stripped naked before a mirror, and I bear no wounds. What correction will you provide to right my senses when I walk the Hall of Portraits and see her image so perfectly painted upon the wall? High Priestess Enesdia. The label is worn, but I can make it out nevertheless.’
‘There is no such portrait, priest — no, a moment. Ah, you speak of her grandmother, who was indeed a High Priestess, but before the coming of Night. Her name was Enesthila, and she served as the last High Priestess of the river god, before the cult’s reformation. My friend, such is the sorcery of dreams-’
‘And the blood?’
‘You say that you speak in your dream, but that the voice belongs to Mother Dark. Forgive this blasphemy, but if there is blood on anyone’s hands, Endest-’
‘No!’ The priest was on his feet. ‘Have I no will left to me? We beg her for guidance! We plead with her! She has no right!’
‘Forgive me, friend. I reveal only ignorance in speaking on matters of faith. Have you spoken to Cedorpul?’
Endest slumped back down in the chair. ‘I went to him first. Now he flees the sight of me.’
‘But… why?’
The young man’s face twisted. ‘His hands remain clean, his dreams untouched.’
‘Do you imagine that he would welcome what leaves you outraged?’
‘If she demanded his lifeblood he would offer her his throat, and know delight in the bounty of his gift.’
‘But you are not so enamoured of sacrifice.’
‘When my every prayer to her goes unanswered…’ he glared at the historian, ‘and do not dare speak to me of trials to test my faith.’
‘I would not,’ Rise Herat replied. ‘As I said, to track down this path is for me a fast unravelling of reason. But three strides along and I am floundering, too many ends in my hands and doubtful of every knot.’
‘How is it you can deny a belief in power?’
‘It is my thought that without belief, there is no power.’
‘What do you win with that, historian?’
Rise shrugged. ‘Freedom, I suppose.’
‘And what do you lose?’
‘Why, everything, of course.’
The priest stared up at him, his expression unreadable.
‘You are exhausted, friend. Close your eyes. I will abide.’
‘And when you see the blood on my hands?’
‘I will take them in my own.’
Endest’s eyes filled with tears, but a moment later he closed them and set his head back against the chair’s thick padding.
Rise Herat watched sleep take the young priest, and waited for the mask to crack.
They rode through a city subdued, where light struggled and what commerce Orfantal saw spoke in strident voices, with gestures sudden and fretful. The gloom of the alleys that led on to the main thoroughfare bled out like wounds upon the day. He was riding one of Lady Hish Tulla’s horses, a placid mare with a broad back and twitching ears, her mane braided yet cut short to raise the knotted stubble into a crest. He wondered if the animal had a name. He wondered if she knew it and held it as her own, and what that name might mean to her, especially when in the company of other horses. And did she know the names given to other horses; and if she did, then what new shape had she found in her world? Was there some inkling that things were not as they had once seemed; that something foreign was now lodged in the animal’s head?
He did not know why such questions haunted him. There were all kinds of helplessness, just as there were many kinds of blindness. A horse could carry on its back a hero, or a villain. The beast knew no difference and deserved no stain from the deeds of its master. A child could stumble in the wake of a father who murdered for pleasure, or a mother who murdered from fear, and yet find an entire life spent in the shadow of such knowledge. Questions could not arise without some sense of knowing, and the worst of it was, with that knowing came the realization that many of those questions could never be answered.
Directly ahead rode Gripp Galas, who had returned from the wedding that never happened at Hish Tulla’s side, and the lady had been wearing armour and weapons, and there was news of deaths coming down from the north. All of this made the room where Orfantal stayed, and the house that surrounded it, seem small and woeful. Gripp and Hish Tulla had been silent and yet filled with grim news, but Orfantal had been too frightened to ask any questions, and he fled the weight of their presence.
But on this day they were escorting him to the Citadel, into the keeping of the Sons and Daughters of Night. He was about to meet Lord Anomander and his brothers: all the great men his mother had talked about, and if there was talk of war, then Orfantal knew that he had nothing to fear in the midst of such heroes.
Lady Hish Tulla rode up alongside Orfantal. Her expression was severe. ‘You have known such hardship since leaving House Korlas, Orfantal, and I fear the unpleasantness is not yet at an end.’
Ahead of them, Gripp Galas glanced back, and then looked forward once again. They were approaching the first bridge. That brief moment of attention disturbed Orfantal, though he knew not why.
‘There has been news from Abara Delack,’ she continued. ‘The monastery has been assaulted and burned to the ground. Alas, the violence did not end there. Orfantal, we have word that your grandmother has died, and that House Korlas is no more. I am sorry. Gripp and I disagreed on this, the telling of such terrible news, but I feared you would hear it when in the Citadel, in an instant lacking sensitivity — the place awaiting you is a buzzing wasp nest of gossip, and often words are spoken for the sole purpose of witnessing their sting.’
Orfantal hunched over in the saddle, fighting a sudden chill. ‘This city,’ he said, ‘is so dark.’
‘More so in the Citadel,’ Lady Hish Tulla said. ‘Such is the flavour of Mother Dark’s power. At the very least, Orfantal, you will soon lose your fear of the dark, and in that absence of light you will find that you see all there is that needs seeing.’
‘Will my skin turn black?’
