"We wouldn't accept them as they are now if they did," Geri said with a laugh. "No, actually, I think they're integrating their two personae; then once they know how things are now, they'll react as a Karsite who was brought up in the old ways would."
Alberich felt a profound relief. The last, the very last thing he had wanted to do was to change anyone's religion. "That's sensible. Geri—" he hesitated.
Only now did Kantor interject something. :Geri is your priest. This is surely a question for your priest.:
"I'm torn," he said at last. "It feels as if there must be something more I can do, for Valdemar. Valdemar has given me so much—what should I be doing in return?"
Geri considered that question carefully. "Alberich, my friend, it is also my duty to tell you things that are true. You are doing as much as any other Herald; someone has to be helping to keep the peace here in Haven, and you are doing that. You still serve as Selenay's bodyguard, and thus free someone else to go South. And in case you were wondering if you should offer your military expertise—no.
"No?" That surprised him. "But—my training—"
"One of the things that is true is that you are not a great general. Not yet, anyway. Valdemar has great generals, and it doesn't need you in that capacity." Geri gave him a look shaded with pity and understanding.
"Ah." He felt deflated. But—well—
:We have the Lord Marshal, with decades more experience than you. Perhaps you have the advantage of training at the Academy, but we have the Collegium, which is, dare I say, just as good. It isn't only Heralds who are taught here. Occasionally, among the Blues, there is a young military genius from the Guard, and the Lord Marshal was one of those.: Ah. Geri was right, then. He stared down at his cup. "So—"
"So other than doing what you are doing—you should be getting yourself prepared for the day when the King and the Heir and everyone else that can hold a blade goes down to the battlefields of the South to hold off that last big push that you know is coming." Something about the tone of Geri's voice made him look up—because it was odd. Very odd. It didn't exactly sound like Geri.
Geri stared off into space, his face blank, his eyes looking—elsewhere. And Alberich felt an unaccountable chill on the back of his neck. There was something going on here, something he didn't recognize. "You are Selenay's bodyguard, Alberich, and when the day of that final battle dawns, she is going to need you more than she ever has before—because the last, the very last thing she will think about is her own safety, so it is the first, indeed, the only thing that you must be concerned about. That is what you must be readying yourself for. Nothing else, nothing less. If need be, you must save her from herself on that day, so that you save her for her Kingdom."
Alberich had never believed those stories about how "the hair on the back of someone's neck stood up" when something very, very uncanny happened. Now he did—because he could feel that exact sensation. Geri continued to stare off into space, with that peculiarly blank expression on his face, but something glinting in his eyes. And Alberich had the distinct impression that whatever was speaking, it wasn't Geri. Which left—what? Here in Vkandis' own temple, it couldn't be anything inimical... but it sounded almost as if this was a prophecy.
He wanted to speak and ask something for himself; wanted to ask a question, a dozen—but they were all questions he really didn't want to know the answers to, honestly—
If I did, I'd be trying to tame that Gift of mine and make it serve me predictably.
The Writ said that the future was mutable and unknowable, until one passed through it and it became the past. That was why the Writ spoke against the witch-powers of those who tried to predict the future—not because the attempt to know the future was wrong in itself, but because being told a future closed some peoples' minds to the possibility of any other and they focused all their attention, their hopes, and their fears, on that future to the exclusion of other possibilities... which defeated the entire Prime Principle of Free Will upon which all of the Sunlord's Writ was based.
All this flashed through Alberich's mind in the time it took for the cup to slip out of Geri's fingers and drop to the table with a clatter.
"Botheration!" Geri was back, startled, seizing a cloth and blotting at the spill before it escaped to make an even bigger mess. "Look at me—woolgathering! I'm sorry, Alberich."
"No matter." The hairs on the back of Alberich's neck had settled, but not the uneasy feeling that something had wanted him to know more than he should about the future. A future.
Except that we know there is going to be a final battle. We're planning for that already. And if I had taken thought about it, I would immediately have known that Selenay would never consider her own safety under battlefield conditions. I haven't been told anything I couldn't have figured out for myself. Have I?
"I should be going. My day starts early, and yours, even earlier," he said, trying not to show any of his unease.
"True enough; good thing for me that I'm a real lark-of-the-morning," Geri said cheerfully as he walked Alberich to the door. "Come by here more often, won't you?"
Alberich almost, almost, prevaricated. Then he hesitated.
Because the Writ also said that when Vkandis wished the future to be revealed—or steered—He would find a way to do so.
"I will," he promised, and went back out into the cold, dark, and the rain—ordinary things.
Ordinary things.
He didn't think he was going to sleep well tonight. Probably not for many more nights to come.
PART THREE
THE LAST BATTLE
12
HE had been expecting it for months, with a feeling of heavy dread and sick anticipation that put him off his food and kept him staring at the ceiling at night. All winter he'd worried and wondered. Were the Tedrels going to break with their pattern and attack in the winter? After that strange evening when Geri briefly spoke for—Something Else—how could he not have felt that the storm was about to break?
He'd wished for an inkling that he was doing the right thing—and he'd gotten it. Nothing inimical could have used Geri as a mouthpiece, not a Sunpriest, and not inside the sacred confines of the temple. Everything in the temple was sacred, no matter how homely it seemed. Vkandis was the Lord of All, from the Sun-fire to the hearth-fire, and he did not scorn the small and commonplace. So even if what had spoken through Geri was not Vkandis Himself, it was certainly some spirit that was doing so on behalf of the Sunlord.
Be careful what you ask for. Well, now he had it, and now he knew, well in advance of everyone else, that Sendar and Selenay would go into combat, no matter who tried to stop them. Now he knew... and didn't dare tell anyone.