'You know,' said Pazel. 'Your vows.'
'Oh. My vows.' She pushed a drooping orchid from her face. Then, leaning close, she rasped out a string of wet Mzithrini words. The smell of brandy notwithstanding, Pazel was relieved.
'Almost,' he said. 'But for the love of Rin don't leave out the r in uspris. You want to call Falmurqat 'my prince,' not 'my little duckling.' '
'Hercol Stanapeth,' said a sudden voice behind them.
It was the pale young man from the gardens again. Hercol turned and looked at him.
'Well, lad?'
Again, that shallow, ironic bow. Then the young man fell in beside them and pulled a small envelope from his pocket. 'A gentleman stopped me at the gate, sir, and bade me deliver this to your hand.'
The young man was looking at Thasha, who returned his gaze warily. Hercol snatched the envelope. It was sealed with oxblood wax, and bore no writing. Hercol made no move to open it.
'What is your name, lad, and who is this gentleman?'
'I am Greysan Fulbreech, sir. King's clerk, though my term of employment is coming to an end. As for the gentleman, I did not ask his name. He was well dressed, and he gave me a coin.' He was still looking at Thasha. 'This message, however, I would have delivered free of charge.'
Pazel was finding it hard not to dislike this clerk. 'I'm sure King Oshiram's keeping you very busy,' he said.
'I don't get a moment's rest,' said Fulbreech, not sparing him a glance.
'Then be on your way,' growled Fiffengurt, 'unless you've more to tell us?'
The young man looked at Fiffengurt, and for a moment his smooth demeanour failed him, as though he were struggling to reach some decision. At last he took a deep breath and nodded. 'I bear another message,' he said. 'Master Hercol, she on whose answer you wait has decided. This winter there shall be fire in the hearth.'
Fulbreech stole a last glance at Thasha, and left without another word.
Only Thasha, who had known Hercol all her life, saw the shock he disguised so well. A code, she thought, but who could be sending coded messages to Hercol? She did not bother to ask for an explanation, and was glad to see the tarboys keeping silent as well. Hercol would explain nothing until he judged the moment right.
But Fiffengurt could not restrain himself. 'What in the bower of the Blessed Tree was that all about?'
'Very little, maybe,' said Hercol. 'Or perhaps the whole fate of your Empire. How does the rhyme, go, Quartermaster? Arqual, Arqual, just and true? We shall see.'
He would say no more, but in his voice was a happiness Thasha had not heard in years. Then he opened the little envelope, glanced at the single line of writing it contained, and the joy vanished like a snuffed match.
He put the envelope in his pocket. 'Greetings from the Secret Fist,' he said. 'They are watching us. As if there could be any doubt.'
The Father stood atop a staircase of great stone ovals, before the central arch of the shrine. His arms were spread as if in welcome, or perhaps to hold back the procession. Here in the sunshine his great age was more apparent, and so was his unnatural vigour. His raiment was black, and the white beard against it was like a snowdrift on a hill of coal. In his right hand he clasped a sceptre: pure gold but for a crystal set at the top, within which some dark object glittered.
His aspirants stood below him, three to a side (Look at them, people whispered, they're sfvantskors, they can kill you with their eyes shut). Like their master they wore black, but their faces were young: faces of men and women barely out of their teens. Symbols for birthplace and tribe gleamed in red tattoos upon their necks. Those nearest the Father wore white masks — ghostly against the sable robes. A seventh knelt just before the Father with a silver knife across his lap.
On the steps below the aspirants stood rows of women — a hundred or more, old and young, light and dark. Below these stood as many men, holding strange glass pipes of many colours, each one dangling from a braided thong.
Like a wave about a sandcastle the crowd engulfed the shrine, blanketing the low hills on either side of the road. A hush had fallen over them: the old man's stillness had erased all sense of a carnival from the proceedings. Toil and wind, hard stone, cold seas: these were what they saw in his unblinking eyes.
'I am nameless,' he said, and his voice carried a surprising distance. 'My holy office is my fate: there is nothing more. I am Father-Resident of Babqri City, Master of the Citadel of Hing, Confessor to His Serene Majesty King Somolar. I am the sworn foe of things evil, for ever.
'Two thousand years ago the shrines of the Old Faith stood on every isle of this archipelago, and the Gatri- Mangol, the White Kings of Mangland, presided over an age of wealth and order. Here where we are gathered rose one of the most beautiful shrines of all, destroyed by the rising sea in the Worldstorm. Twenty-six years ago I sent a letter to a monarch, new to his throne but wise beyond his years, and begged a great favour, and he granted it. We of the Faith bow before thee, Oshiram of Simja, first king of these isles to allow the rebuilding of a Mzithrin house of prayer.'
And with that the Father descended to his knees, placed the sceptre with infinite care before him, and bent his forehead to the ground.
The king fidgeted, cleared his throat. 'You're welcome, Father, very welcome. Now do rise.'
Slowly the Father took his feet.
'This house is young, but its founding-stones were recovered from the old shrine, and they are sacred. Therefore will I take my place beneath the great arch and bar the path to those whom devils claim. They may not enter here. Let them fear the attempt.'
He raised the sceptre high, and the sun gleamed on the crystal at its tip, but the dark heart was not illuminated. Then with a last fierce look he turned and marched into the shadows.
'Oh happy day,' muttered Neeps.
Thasha elbowed him. 'His sceptre,' she whispered. 'There's a drawing of it in the Polylex, or of one just like it. Something blary special, it was. Oh, what was its name?'
Pazel sighed. Thasha owned a copy of the most dangerous book ever written: the forbidden thirteenth edition of The Merchant's Polylex, the mere possession of which was punishable by death. Earlier editions, and later ones, were to be found in every ship's library and seamen's club; they were simply huge (and untrustworthy) one-volume encyclopedias. The thirteenth, however, was crammed with the darkest secrets of the Arquali Empire. But the book was more frustrating than useful, for the author had hidden those secrets in over five thousand pages of rumour and hearsay and outright myth. It was a wonder that Thasha found anything within its pages. The priest's sceptre, nowA terrible thought came to him suddenly. He gripped Thasha's arm.
'What if he's a mage?' he said, looking from one face to another. 'What if he can keep evil from entering the shrine? All evil?'
Neeps and Fiffengurt paled. Even Hercol looked alarmed. Thasha seemed to have trouble catching her breath.
'In that case…' she stammered. 'Well. In that case-'
She was interrupted by a burst of song from the Mzithrini women. It was a frightful sound, nearly a shriek. At the same moment the men raised their glass pipes and began to whirl them overhead by the straps, faster and faster, until they became mere blurs of colour in the sunlight. Astonishingly, although their orbits criss-crossed endlessly, the pipes never collided. And from them came a hundred eerie notes, high otherworldly howls, like wolves in caves of ice. It was the summons to the bride.
Thasha turned and looked back at her father. Isiq raised a trembling hand, but she was too far ahead of him to touch. She looked at each friend in turn, and longest at Pazel, who was fighting an impulse to shout, Don't go in there. Then she left her entourage and walked quickly to the steps.
The men fell back, still whirling their pipes, and so did the chorus of wailing women. And as Thasha climbed the stair a new figure emerged from the shrine. He looked to be in his thirties, nimble and straight, with a martial air about him: indeed he wore a kind of dark dress uniform, with a red sun pendant on his chest.
'Prince Falmurqat the Younger,' said Hercol.
'He's not young enough if you ask me,' growled Fiffengurt.
'A capable officer, according to Chadfallow's informants,' Hercol continued, 'but a reluctant one. Above all things his father desired a soldier-son, but until the Treaty raised the prospect of ending the long war, the son refused to have anything to do with the military. I gather he paints quite beautifully.'
