tool.
Tormond’s eyes glittered. He was as aware and alert as could be, trapped inside that deteriorating flesh. But he could not communicate easily.
The meeting took place in an audience where Brother Candle had conferred with Tormond and his councilors before. Tormond had asked his opinions about everything, always, but never took them to heart. This morning the room was damp, chill, gloomy, barren, and almost unpopulated. Hodier was there. The healing brother was there. The Duke and the Perfect were there. Where twenty to thirty usually gathered, raucously, with fires roaring in the fireplaces.
Brother Candle observed, “Between us we have over two centuries of experience. And the priest is just a boy.”
The healing brother said, “I can give him an infusion that will restore his control of his body briefly. We seldom use it. It sucks up what resources he has left. Is now a good time?”
The priest had bent to ask that question beside Tormond’s ear.
Brother Candle caught a flash of mischief in Tormond’s rheumy eye as he managed a tiny nod.
The priest hustled away.
Hodier said, “This infusion does work wonders. But the cost is cruel. Hours like this, or worse, after barely a quarter hour of creeping over just this side of the far frontiers of normal. Don’t waste what time you get.”
Brother Candle could think of no appropriate response. He shifted the Duke’s chair so they could face one another once he parked himself on a bench so he did not have to grind his knees into the hard oak floor.
“We’ve all enjoyed several seasons since last we met.”
Tormond offered a gurgled grunt.
The healing brother rematerialized. “This won’t look good. But it’s how the job has to be done.” He seized Tormond’s wispy hair and forced his head back. Tormond’s mouth opened as his head tilted. The priest gave him five heartbeats to clear his windpipe, then dumped a small clay cup into his mouth. The contents looked like dark tea. Brother Candle smelled nothing. That meant little. His own senses were not what they used to be.
The priest pinched the Duke’s nose, forced a swallow response.
Tormond downed his medicine without choking or aspirating.
His response was not long coming. And was dramatic.
“Almost magical,” Hodier opined, perhaps tongue in cheek.
Color came to Tormond. His slight palsy stopped. His drooling ceased. Then, laboriously, his chin came up off his chest. “Charde ande Clairs. My most faithful friend.”
There was a pathetic indictment of relations between Tormond IV and his world. And the Duke’s own fault. He never took charge. He let himself be managed and manipulated and got stubborn over the wrong things at the wrong times. Everyone tried to take advantage, excepting Sir Eardale Dunn, who had died defending Khaurene. And Brother Candle, who had been Charde ande Clairs in an earlier life, when he and the Duke-to-be had shared childhood adventures in contravention of the rules of station.
“I’m here.”
“But, almost certainly, had to be dragged.” Tormond could not overcome a slur and a lisp, nor did he rattle on as was once his wont. He could, however, be understood. And it was clear that he wanted to speak directly to Brother Candle. “Bicot, find Isabeth. Bring her. No excuses. Fornier, go get coffee. That was supposed to be here by now.”
The priest inclined his head. “As you wish, Your Lordship.”
“He took that gracefully,” Brother Candle said. While searching the room for shadows that did not fit.
“He’s a good man, Charde. Unlike most of his tribe. We have little time. I need you to listen.” Tormond beckoned the Perfect closer. “Among my many ills, lately I’m cursed with glimpses of what the Instrumentalities of the Night see when they look into the face of tomorrow. Usually while this drug infusion is fading.”
“Uhm?” Carefully neutral.
“Charde, the future is not a friendly place.”
Not exactly an epiphany.
Tormond took Brother Candle’s hands into his own. He eased something out of his sleeve into that of his guest. The Perfect concealed his surprise.
“Not friendly at all. Great sorrow is coming. Fire will scourge the Connec. There is no way to avoid it. Tell Count Raymone that I regret everything. Though I don’t see what I could have done to make things come out better. Give him my blessing. Tell him to salvage what he can.”
A wisp of darkness stirred behind the Duke’s eyes. The effect of the infusion was approaching its peak already.
Fornier returned with coffee service so fast Brother Candle had to believe coffee preparation had been in progress after all.
Queen Isabeth and several Direcians blew in moments later, all frowns. As Tormond failed his demesne became, ever more, an extension of Navaya. King Peter’s men would not be pleased with random old contacts who wandered in and caused distress.
Brother Candle recognized none of the Queen’s men.
He eased the packet in his sleeve to an inside pocket.
Brother Candle had known Isabeth since birth, though never familiarly. For reasons he never understood there was more warmth on her part than his. Bright with concern, she demanded, “What’s going on?”
The Perfect gestured. “Your brother sent for you. Not I.”
“Sit, Isabeth,” Tormond told his sister. “Listen. This may be the last chance I get to speak.”
The Duke rattled along as though there was more in need of saying than he possibly had time to say. He had been having apocalyptic visions. Disaster could not be avoided but its harsher details were not yet fixed.
Twice Isabeth started to interrupt. Twice Brother Candle stopped her with a gesture. This would be a grim race. Tormond had no time for interruptions.
He did not get as specific as anyone wanted. Always the trouble with sibyls, though Brother Candle did concede that all futures were fluid as long as they still lay ahead. The Night saw possibilities and probabilities but could fix nothing to its place or temporal point before it happened.
Still, some things verged upon certainties. None of Tormond’s futures boded well for Khaurene.
Tormond’s flirtation with lucidity degenerated into a gurgling mumble. The Duke vainly trying to communicate, still.
Isabeth eyed the Perfect. He stared back. She said, “It will start before we’re ready.”
“The future always arrives before we’re ready. Whatever you do, the ambush comes when you don’t expect it. But he did tell you a lot that you can use.” In a way. The personalities set to dance in the coming storm thought too much of themselves to deliberate what might be best in the long term.
Isabeth said, “I’ll have to inform Peter. He’ll have decisions to make. And you. You can’t waste time. Go preach to your people.”
He had other obligations, too. And might succeed in fulfilling none.
The dying man’s most dire visions had presented as the most determined futures.
And Tormond was dying. No doubt about it. He had given them a choice of three dates, all inconvenient. Two could be beaten by taking action to prevent them. Action entirely within the domain of Father Fornier.
Brother Candle suggested, “Whatever you do, be clear and don’t sugarcoat. Your husband’s choices will be hard. He deserves the best information possible.”
Isabeth considered him for several long seconds. She was no child. And she was not her brother. If anything, she could be hasty making decisions. “You accept what he told us, Master?”
Brother Candle did not correct her usage. She had done that deliberately, for the benefit of her companions. Most Direcian nobles were solid Brothen Episcopals, if openly contemptuous and defiant of the Patriarch himself. They were willing to exterminate the inquestors of the Society-mainly because those fanatics presented a threat to the nobility’s temporal power.
Isabeth was suspect religiously. She sprang from this nest of heresy. She had to tread carefully.
Brother Candle said, “I accept his visions. My creed tells me I must accept what is. The Night is. The Instrumentalities are. None of us can deny those facts because they’re inconvenient.”
Nothing he said contravened Chaldarean doctrine. So long as no one accorded the Instrumentalities any
