He shook his head, still dazed. "And two can keep a secret, if one of them is dead? Is that your point?"
"No. I believe more people should know our history. Our true history. There are so many layers to it, just like archaeology. And so strange.
"Llewes serves admirably as a Captain General. I have to admit, though, that as a research librarian he couldn't find his bleedin' arse with both hands and a color plate from Gray's Anatomy as a road map. There were six of them, one for each point on that Solomon's Seal."
And with that, she dropped to one knee in front of the cross and genuflected. She had her back to him, but her words still roared in his ears and he was too stunned to move.
"Don't bother trying. You need to be able to climb stairs if we're going to pay a call on old Giuseppe." She talked the way she fought, spins and jabs and feints and always forcing him off balance, forcing him to react instead of acting.
"Six what?" His jaw ached and moved funny, and she'd loosened at least three of his teeth.
"Six gates to the city, you impious bastard. Six labyrinths, six stones connected to the one stone. Six fairy rings hiding in the forest around Corbin."
Taking her hint, he knelt and crossed himself. His head stayed straighter, closer to the ground. "And I could have told Llewes this and saved my life?"
"They'd have shot you anyway, just for the knowing. A recent scientific survey reveals that only two respondents out of nine believe that a man can know something and not use it for his gain."
She turned and grinned at him, alert and the candles glinting in her eyes. "You think I'm a sadistic bitch, don't you? Too right. But you're too much a masochist to be any fun. I'm gonna bust you out of here, see?"
Her words rocked him back on his heels. He caught his balance, lowered his head, and slogged forward. "Why the hell would you help me escape?"
"Help's help. Don't waste your time on equine dental records when the nag is free." She bounced to her feet and made a show of studying the rood screen carvings, medieval but in fine condition. She never let him out of the corner of her eye, though, and stayed balanced on the balls of her feet. He couldn't take her.
Grab her metaphor if he couldn't grab her throat. "Maybe I want to know if the horse is fit enough to get me out of town?"
"Oh, you can ride this horse clear to Glastonbury Tor on a fine spring night, mo croí. It's sound enough." She shrugged. "Hey, maybe I'm helping you because you and I are the only two men in this nest of de-balled worms. Maybe I hate Duncan, and you're my way to knock him off the ladder and climb past his perch through the glass ceiling of our Old Boy network. Maybe I'm as pissed and disgusted about slaves at Castle Corbin as you are." She turned and grinned an evil caprice, a face and body as expressive as any mime. "And maybe the answer is D, none of the above."
Or maybe it was E, all of the above. Brian's head spun. A lifetime of small-unit tactics left him totally unprepared for the murky long-term strategies necessary for survival in this treacherous inner circle. Maureen might fit in, with her convoluted chess gambits and deeply hidden goals. Or Fiona, all malice and deceit.
Dierdre sure fit.
He pushed himself to his feet, still testing muscles and bones and tendons, still regaining his balance. His creaks and groans whispered between stone arches, and he hoped that only two pairs of ears were listening to the echoes of this surreal conversation. The shadows could hide an army.
She laughed at his searching eyes, an innocent chuckle totally out of character. "Don't worry, Brian. This is the only part of the whole keep free from spy holes and secret passages for listeners. They took confession seriously when it was built, and they all had serious sins to confess. Nobody wanted eavesdroppers."
And she, of course had checked that. In detail. Or she was lying, and didn't care who heard. With Dierdre, you could never tell for sure. She wouldn't offer a handhold you could grab.
"Six. Joseph's Throne, in Glastonbury, and the cellar under Dougal's keep. Any idea of where the others are?"
"Glastonbury and here are the only ones the Order admits to, on the record. Now you've told me where another lies. Llewes may know more, but he's not tellin'. I think the rest each opened into another land, four other worlds. There's no way left of checking. Old Merlinus Ambrosius made sure of that."
Brian felt a cold pit open in his stomach. "Merlin? He set this up?"
Dierdre's smile turned wry. "Not in building and powering the star. That goes back long before the Romans and the Picts, even, much less Christianity. No, our nasty little founder just buggered the heathen game. He always was better at destruction than creation. Glastonbury's the only door left open."
That sounded like what the Order's records said of Merlin, a much . . . darker . . . figure than White's absent-minded bumbler. The old wizard had been too sure that his cause was right. If he couldn't control something, he'd break it so that no one else could use it as a weapon against him and his cause. The same went for people, too.
"Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely." That was Dierdre all over, answering his thoughts rather than his words. No wonder she could ride the twisting winds of this inner Circle like a hawk. "Merlin was the first Utilitarian philosopher. The greatest good for the greatest number. The end justifies the means. That's the Pendragons, my little chickadee. We are the vision our founder dreamed."
His head spun. He couldn't keep up with the
