Toria’s face mirrored Pellin’s own surprise.
“I don’t have centuries or even decades of experience to draw upon.” Fess shrugged. “If you are asking me about Willet, he was known to us in the urchins for years before he became a lord and then one of the Vigil. That’s my polite way of saying I’ve known him longer than you have. He has a way of seeing to the heart of people, imagining himself as that person, and then reacting the way they would.”
“Undoubtedly, he has a very strong talent for others,” Pellin said. Grateful for the opportunity to steer the conversation away from Ealdor and his improbable message, he waved his hand in a circular motion. “Please. Continue.”
“Lady Bronwyn said as much while we were traveling together. I think, somewhere deep down inside, Willet knew what it was like for us in the urchins. That’s why he helped us so much. The church fathers called it a gift of empathy.”
Pellin gave Fess an indulgent smile. “I’ve read them. Many of the church’s early clerics were expansive in their theological speculations. There’s no mention of any such gift in the Exordium of the liturgy.”
Fess met his gaze, steady, without looking away. “And is Aer bound by the Exordium?”
“That stroke was well laid,” Pellin said. Toria’s expression might have held a tinge of frustration, as if the conversation had failed to answer her deeper questions. He put his hands on the table and rose. “Now, if you will excuse me, the events of the day have left me fatigued.”
Allta followed him out of the huge dining hall and to his quarters, stepping in and bolting the door, despite the fact they had seen no sign of dwimor in Edring. Instead of preparing for bed, Pellin took a seat at the small table in the anteroom, pausing to pour a glass of a full-bodied wine currently in favor in the south.
“Eldest?”
Pellin nodded toward the door. “I think I’m expecting a guest, Allta—at least one, but possibly two.” He lifted the wine and let a sip flow over his tongue, picking up hints of dark berry through the oak. Allta took a seat opposite him without questioning further. A half hour later someone knocked, firm but spaced, indicating neither frustration nor haste.
“Two, it would seem,” Pellin said. “Allta, please admit Toria Deel and Fess and then rebolt the door.”
Toria entered with Fess behind her, his eyes scanning the room for threats in the way of the guards. The past few days training with Allta had only hardened the boy’s detachment from his former good humor. Strange that Fess seemed to prefer his role as guard over that as one of the Vigil.
Pellin rose and poured each of them a glass of wine. When Fess made no move to join the two of them at the table, he nodded to Allta. “We are guarded and the door is sturdy, Fess.”
The youngest member of the Vigil sat before taking a single sip from the glass in front of him, no more.
“I can understand why you didn’t speak of certain matters in the hall, when all were present,” Toria said without preamble, “but why the continued reticence? I waited for you to speak to this matter, Eldest. Why did you not? Ealdor spoke to you, didn’t he? He told us to—”
“Stop!” Pellin held up a hand. “I didn’t speak of it because Ealdor didn’t,” he said. “Dura’s reaction made it plain that he heard nothing in the Fayit’s cry except a wail of pain and frustration. In the moment Ealdor screamed his instructions, we heard something Dura did not. Do you think this was by accident?”
Toria favored him with one slow inclination of her head. “But how does that imply that Ealdor did not mean for us to share that knowledge with one another?”
There—she’d asked the question he’d hoped she wouldn’t. “I can only say that some intuition guides me.” He held up his hand to forestall her rebuttal. “There is wisdom in such a course, Toria Deel. If any of us are taken, we would be unable to betray the others.”
Her hair—dark as pitch, like most of those from Elania—waved with the force of her disagreement. “Eldest, should we be so quick to trust this Fayit? We know nothing of him except what we’ve gleaned from Dura’s memories. Memories, I hasten to add, that we believed were the product of Dura’s tortured mind before today.”
Instead of answering her objection, he addressed the fact behind her presence in his quarters. “You each received instruction, did you not? And unless I miss my guess, the two of you received the same direction.”
They exchanged a glance that might have meant anything, but Pellin’s intuition told him this wouldn’t be the first conversation they’d had about Ealdor’s appearance.
“Yes,” they said in unison.
“Then we have our separate tasks,” Pellin said. “Allta, Mark, and I will leave tomorrow.” He pulled the green scrying stone from his pocket. After Bronwyn died, they’d given her stone—a duplicate of Pellin’s and one of four—to Fess. The Chief of Servants in far Collum held the fourth and final stone, leaving Dura without access to immediate communication. Not for the first time, Pellin questioned the wisdom of that decision. “Contact me if you must, but without undermining the Fayit’s intention.”
The next morning, Pellin, Eldest of the Vigil, and perhaps the last who would ever hold the title, rode between Mark and Allta. They avoided the chaos of Cynestol by taking the port road around the city. Soon they would board ship and for the seventh time in his life, Pellin would step upon the southern continent, the birthplace of man. Only this time he wouldn’t be there to keep the fragile tie intact between the northern church and its southern counterpart but to try to answer the unanswerable.
Mark shook his head as he gazed west toward the incomprehensible sprawl that constituted
