Neda Pathkendle. A row of old Masters spoke her name in the Greeting Hall that first day, as if the very syllables displeased them.
Neda Ygrael, said the Father. I have renamed her. Watch her; you will understand in time.
Ygrael, Phoenix-Flame. The grandness of his gesture did not help. The other six aspirants (four boys, two perfect girls) were scandalised. A hazel-skinned refugee from Ormael, one of the vassal-states of the enemy? Had they been singled out for shame? Were they such poor candidates that the timeless customs need not apply?
One did not question the Father — he who had sucked a black demon from a wound in King Ahbsan's neck, and spat the thing into a coal stove, where it howled and clattered for a month — but his choice tested faith. There was open hissing at the feast of Winterbane, when the new aspirants marched through Babqri City. There was the dove's carcass, burned black and left on her pillow, with the words Never to Rise in ash upon the floor. There was the day she learned about Belligerent Expulsion: an ancient rule by which the other aspirants, if they declared unanimously that one of their brethren had 'sought to make enemies of them all,' could cast that member out.
Neda had done no such thing; she had been obedient to their whims, tolerant of their spite; and yet five of the six had voted for her removal. When the effort failed, Neda had gone quietly to the one who sided with her, a tall proud girl named Suridin. Neda knelt before her and whispered her thanks, but the girl kicked her over with a bitter laugh.
'It wasn't for you,' she said. 'I want to serve the navy, like my birth-father, and they bring witches who can smell a lie to the swearing-in. What am I going to say when they ask if I've ever given false testimony?'
Suridin's birth-father was an admiral in the White Fleet. 'I understand, sister,' said Neda.
'You don't understand a thing. I wish you would start a fight with one of us. You don't belong here, and I'd vote against you in a heartbeat if I could.'
All this was horrid and prolonged. But five years later it was over, and it had ended just as the Father said it would: with Neda trained and deadly and strong in the Faith, and her six brethren embracing her (some loving, others merely obedient), and the Mzithrini common folk no longer quite sure why they had objected.
Neda, however, suffered no such confusion. They were right, her enemies. They saw what the Father did not: that she would fail, disgracing her title, if it were ever bestowed. She had fired an arrow over the River Bhosfal and struck a moving target. She had walked a rope stretched over the Devil's Gorge, and carried her own weight in water up the three hundred steps of the Citadel. But the way of the sfvantskor was perfection, and in one matter she was gravely imperfect. She could not forget.
For an aspirant nothing could be worse. Besides martial and religious training, a great part of the making of a warrior-priest occurred in trance. Only with those in trance could the Father share the holy mysteries; only those souls could he cleanse of fear. Neda drifted easily into the first layers of trance — sleeping and waking at his command, obeying without question, focusing her mind on whatever thought he named. But never only on what he named. The deepest and most sacred mode of trance was achieved when all other distractions melted away: in other words, when one forgot. Remove the dust of Now and Before, went the proverb, and things eternal are yours.
This Neda could never do. Year upon year she tried, stretched out on granite, listening to his voice. While the others shed memories like old clothes, she lay still and pretended. Forget yesterday and today. Forget the breath before this breath. She remembered. And when the Father told them to forget certain lessons, certain books suddenly gone from the library, certain Masters lecturing one day and the next quite vanished, Neda recalled them too. Every word, every face. And other weaknesses of the Father, shameful for an aspirant to know.
But what damned her beyond redemption were her lies. They were skilful — flawless even — for it was never an effort to recall exactly what she should pretend not to know. But how long could she hide this loathing for herself?
Alone at prayer, she beat her head on the floor. In bed she cursed herself, sfvantskor battle-curses and sea- oaths in her father's Ormali and sibilant Highland witch-curses from her mother, whose dabbling with spells had almost killed Neda and her brother before the invasion.
And should have. For her brother Pazel had been carried away unconscious, to be buried with the day's thousand dead, or nursed back to health and enslaved. And Neda, spared such a fate by the Father, could not stop her mind from betraying him.
'Rise, my seven.'
Quick as cats, they obeyed. All were dressed, none armed: the Simjans allowed visitors many privileges, but weaponry was not among them. The Father led them in silence through the east arch and along the marble wall, to the foot of a narrow unrailed staircase. At its top stood the Declarion: a high pedestal, topped with four pillars and a jade-green dome, on the inside of which was inscribed the Covenant of Truth in a script of flowing silver. The Father climbed, and they waited to be called.
The sun had not yet risen: its light touched only the peaks of the distant mountains of Simja, leaving the land below in darkness. Around the shrine a flock of goats had settled for the night and lingered yet, barely stirring, and not a window gleamed in the city of Simjalla across the fields. Neda listened to the waves' cotton roaring, felt the pull of them still. I was all night in the sea. I walked from here to the surf in trance. The creatures swarmed round me, the anglerfish and skates. A witch sang spells over the water. A murth-girl was crying for a boy she loves. I'm not supposed to remember.
She tried to empty her mind for prayer. But on the last step below the Declarion the Father abruptly turned to face them. His disciples jumped: the morning rites were not casually altered. The Father gazed at them fiercely.
'You know how long they have sought our destruction,' he said. 'You know the price in blood we have paid to survive. Now much is changed. Our Five Kings of the Holy Mzithrin have laboured long for peace with the enemy, and when today in this very shrine our prince weds Thasha Isiq, they say the time of pain and death will be over. But I see something darker, my children. A new war: brief but terrible, as if these several centuries of war were compressed to a single year, with all the ruin but no rebirth. I see the spectre of annihilation. Would you know where it resides? Look behind you, then.'
As one his disciples turned. There lay Simja Harbour, thick with ships: their own white warships and Arquali dreadnoughts, the island's tiny fighting fleet, scores of vessels bearing rulers and mystics of the lesser faiths, all gathered for the wedding that would seal the peace.
Yet dwarfing them all was the Great Ship. The Chathrand, ancient of ancients, seemingly immortal in her sea-worthiness, made by forgotten artisans in a lost age of miracles. They said six hundred men were needed just to sail her, and that twice as many could ride with ease, and still leave room for grain enough to see a city through the winter, or arms enough to gird whole legions for war. She belonged to the enemy, though not to the enemy crown. By some mad twist of Arquali thinking her ownership was private: the Emperor had had to pay some merchant-baroness for the right to convey the Treaty Bride in such style.
'The Chathrand,' said the Father. 'Like the Plague Ships of old, she comes flying the colours of peace, but in her hold the air is rife with evil. When first she weighed anchor in Etherhorde, half a world away in the bosom of the enemy, I knew she bore a threat. Each league closer I felt it grow. Wide across the Nelu Peren she sailed, and there far from land the danger grew. Then six days she lay in Ormaelport, Neda's old home, and took on some monstrous new power. And yesterday — yesterday the sun dimmed at noon, and the spell-weave of the world was stretched, almost to tearing. Then nearly I saw her true intent. But the power hid itself away, and now she lies like a great docile cow, awaiting our summons.
'And we must summon her — summon the bride's party and our own Prince Falmurqat, summon all the visiting lords and nobles to this our shrine. For that is the will of the Five Kings. Who can blame them? Who does not want peace? And perhaps yesterday's burst of magic saw the evil in Chathrand destroyed. But my heart says otherwise. This Thasha of Etherhorde will not marry our prince, and her Empire seeks no end to war — unless our end as a people be part of it.'
The Father's jaw tightened. 'The Five Kings would not hear me out. 'You live in the past, Father,' they chided. 'All your long life the war has raged, and now in your waning years you can imagine only more of the same. The world has changed; the Empire of Arqual has changed, and so must we. Train your sfvantskors a little longer, if you are not content to rest, but leave off statecraft.' But when have I been wrong?'
He paused deliberately. Neda dared not breathe: she alone knew when.
'They are blind,' said the Father. 'They see only the riches to be had through trade with the East. I see further. But I am no king, and have no spies or soldiers to command. Yet I have the friendship of certain officers in
