‘Then, above all, First Son, do not draw a sword.’
‘How is it Syntara poses a threat?’ he demanded. ‘What manner of schism could she create? Her cadre is small — priestesses and a half-dozen spies among the servants. The Shake will not have her.’
‘It is the gift she now carries,’ Mother Dark replied, ‘that will draw adherents.’
‘Then let us arrest her, throw her and her lot into a cell.’
‘The gift cannot be chained, First Son. I see how you both struggle to understand, but the schism is necessary. The wound must be made, so that it can be healed.’
‘And what of Draconus?’
At Anomander’s question Mother Dark grew very still, and the air in the sanctum suddenly crackled with cold. ‘Leave me now, First Son.’
‘Without him,’ Anomander persisted, ‘you set before me an impossible task.’
‘Go.’
The way before him was indeed impossible and Emral could see that bleak knowledge in Anomander’s dark eyes. He wheeled and marched from the chamber.
Emral’s head spun. The air bit at her throat and lungs.
Mother Dark spoke. ‘Beloved Emral… I once asked Kadaspala a question. I saw in his eyes that he knew this question, as if, long ago, it had been seared into his very soul. But for all that, he could give me no answer.’
‘Mother Dark, what was the question?’
‘One to be asked of an artist, a creator of portraits, whose talent is found not in the hands but in the eyes. I asked him: how does one paint love?’
He knew the question. He asked it of himself.
But he had no answer.
‘Do you know,’ Mother Dark went on, ‘when you can see in darkness, nothing is hidden.’
If she wept now, the tears would freeze upon her cheeks, and burn leaving scars. For all to see.
‘Nothing,’ Mother Dark then added, ‘but darkness itself.’
Half drunk, Hunn Raal stared at the white-skinned woman who had come stumbling into his room. He saw the fear and fury warring in her eyes, but it was the alabaster bleaching of her visage that held him enthralled. Not even Silchas Ruin possessed such purity. He struggled to speak. ‘H-High Priestess, what has become of you? You are glamoured — what new gift of sorcery has Mother Dark discovered?’
‘I am cast out, you fool! Banished from Night! This was not her doing — the Azathanai said she could see into my soul. She said terrible things-’ Syntara turned away, and he could see how she trembled. ‘She reached out to me. There was light. Blinding light.’
He forced himself from his chair. The room tilted slightly and then righted itself. He drew a deep, steadying breath, and then moved close to her. ‘High Priestess, I will tell you what I see when I now look upon you-’
‘Don’t.’
‘I see a woman reborn. Syntara, you among all women do not belong in darkness.’
She looked up at him. ‘The light is within me. I feel it!’
He nodded. ‘And I see it shining through, High Priestess. There is nothing to fear — the truth of that is plain to my eyes.’
‘Reborn,’ she whispered. And then her eyes flashed. ‘I demand sanctuary.’
‘And you have come to me. I understand, High Priestess.’
‘Where else could I go? I cannot stay here. I need the protection of the Legion…’
He straightened, saying nothing. He needed to think this through.
‘Hunn Raal-’
‘A moment, please. This is a complication-’
‘Is that what I am? A complication? Hardly the grovelling stance you took yesterday, babbling how everything is in place!’
‘Yesterday you were the High Priestess of Mother Dark,’ he snapped. ‘But now she’ll not have you, Syntara. I must think of my master, and the future I seek for him. I must think of the Legion.’
She stood, faced him. ‘Save that nonsense for the fools who will believe it. I see your ambition, Hunn Raal. I know your bloodlines. You long to walk these halls again, in your rightful place. Your master is simply the means, not the end.’
‘We are not all as base as you, Syntara. Now, cease your raging. Give me time to see a way through this, to the advantage of all of us. Tell me truthfully now, why do you believe you need sanctuary?’
Her eyes widened. ‘Look at me! See what she has done!’
‘The Azathanai did this, not Mother Dark. You fled the chamber — why?’
‘You were not there,’ she hissed. ‘You did not hear the horrible things the woman said of me.’
‘Then,’ he concluded, ‘you fled in shame. Mother Dark did not cast you out.’
‘Nor did she defend me! Her own High Priestess!’
He grunted. ‘Fortunate for her then that she had two High Priestesses.’
Her slap against the side of his face sent him back a step, not from the weight of the blow, but in the shocked sobriety it delivered. One side of his face stinging, he studied the woman before him, and then sighed. ‘“Anger is the death of beauty.” Who was it said that? Never mind. This has been a fraught day — the city streets flooding to announce the coming of the Azathanai, and I am told there was ice in the passage leading to the Chamber of Night. And now you… what do these things portend, High Priestess?’
But her gaze had slid past him, to the jug of wine on the table. She strode over, poured full a goblet and drank it down in three quick swallows. ‘Are you too drunk to fuck me, Hunn Raal?’
Said the woman who just slapped me. ‘Probably.’
‘Men are so pathetic.’
‘I have other things on my mind.’
She refilled her goblet and then faced him. ‘Will Urusander take me?’
‘As what?’
Instead of the anger he expected from his careless retort, she laughed. ‘Now that would ruin your plans, wouldn’t it, Hunn Raal? Don’t you think I have had my fill of old soldiers? They are nothing but dumb need and you have no idea how tiring that is. No, Mother Dark is welcome to him.’
His nod was sharp. ‘So we’re clear on that. Good.’
‘A god now stirs the mud of Dorssan Ryl,’ she said, eyes narrowing, watching for his reaction over the rim of the goblet as she drank. ‘It was dead but is dead no longer. What ancient laws have been broken this day?’
‘Was this too a gift of the Azathanai woman? Then let us be plain. These were not gifts. A city flooded? Ice in the Citadel? They amount to an assault upon Kurald Galain.’
She shrugged. ‘Semantics.’
‘Hardly. You are speaking to an old soldier, remember? Dumb we may be but us soldiers know the answer to such things.’
‘Will you declare war upon the Azathanai?’ She snorted, somewhat drunkenly. ‘Not even Urusander is that foolish. Besides, the woman vanished — as if she opened a door in the very air itself, and then simply stepped through. The power of that made Mother Dark recoil.’
‘Then we are indeed threatened, High Priestess.’
She waved a dismissive hand, turning to refill the goblet. ‘We can do nothing about it. The Deniers will crawl out of the woods now, eager to lay sacrifice upon the banks of the river. Eager to walk the shore.’
‘And Mother Dark permits this?’
‘She is weak, Hunn Raal — why do you think she hides in darkness? Why do you think she draws close the three most feared warriors among the highborn and proclaims them her children? And why’ — she faced him — ‘did she take Lord Draconus to her bed? Sons may be all very well, but a man such as Draconus is another matter entirely. You understand nothing, Hunn Raal. You and your ridiculous plans.’
He saw the challenge in her eyes, glittering behind the alcohol, and felt something stir in him. She is like me. She is the same as me, exactly the same. ‘You will take this to Urusander, High Priestess,’ he said. ‘You will tell him of the threat now facing Kurald Galain. You will explain to him her weakness, her vulnerability. But more than this, you will show him what must be done. The purity of your skin is now a symbol — the light within you is a power.
