His call drew Nico back. The old man smacked his gums and squinted up at him.
'You did not ask me for a divination. It is your right, on this night.'
'I would not know what to ask you.'
The ancient farlander tilted his head. 'You do not wish to go off on this crazy venture of theirs.'
Nico glanced back to see if Ash was listening, but his master had already stepped outside. He looked again at the Seer, his mouth open but no words coming forth.
'You fear you are not ready for this vendetta your master takes you on. You suspect that you are out of your depth.'
It was true. All day, Nico had been struggling to face the thought that in the morning he would be leaving this hidden refuge in the mountains, this place that had begun to feel a little like home. And for what? To cross the sea to the city of Q'os, the very heart of the Empire, in order to kill the son of the Holy Matriarch no less, and with Nico himself still barely able to wield a blade. Sweet Ers, it set his blood racing just to think of it.
'Will you listen to my guidance, then?' inquired the Seer.
Nico cleared his throat. 'In truth, I'm not yet sure if I believe in all these things… divination and such. Your guidance may be somewhat wasted on me.'
'Know this, my young friend: the seeds of things show what fruits will come of them.'
Nico nodded, out of politeness rather than anything else.
'When the time comes to leave him, you must follow your heart.'
'What?'
The old man smiled, began packing away the paraphernalia before him.
Nico backed quickly to the doorway and stepped outside.
All around them lay the night's stillness; even the flow of the stream seemed more subdued to his ears. Master Ash stood in silence next to it, watching the water gathering and unfolding amongst the rocks.
Together they walked home through the semi-darkness.
'A strange fellow,' Nico commented.
Ash rounded instantly on his apprentice. 'You owe that old man more respect,' he snapped. But then he seemed to regret his outburst, and tried to say something else – an apology perhaps. He could not find the words though. Instead, he turned and continued onwards.
As the moons of Loss and Longing shone down to light their way, the two figures descended slowly, each lost in his own thoughts. Below them, the warm and welcoming lights of the monastery windows stood out clearly amidst a forest of silvery leaves.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The Diplomat On the first day of autumn, in what would soon be the fiftieth year of Mann, in a deafening rainstorm that slashed through the air to burst against every surface like a torrent of glass shots, a man hurried from the dark and hooded entranceway of the Temple of Whispers, and threw his own hood about his shaven skull, and set off at a brisk stride across the planking of the wooden bridge, his priestly white robes whipping behind him with their own wind, the stamp of his footsteps falling lost in the thrashing waters of the moat below.
The man did not pause as he passed the masked Acolytes standing on duty in the shelter of the guard house at the far end of the bridge. His gaze remained fixed to the ground as his pace bore him through the empty streets of the surrounding Temple District, his skin constantly itching so that he kept scratching at his arms and face. A few fellow priests scurried past, their similarly hooded heads bowed low in submission to the elements. Puddles boiled without reflections. A white cat huddled in a doorway, silent and watching.
Behind him, ever further behind him, the Temple of Whispers loomed amid curtains of rain like a living thing; its flanks bristling with spikes in such numbers that they looked like a covering of fur; a tower that was not one tower but a great twisting column of fluted pillars and turrets wrapped and warped by bands of stone. With every step, the young priest could feel it at his back, a massive sentinel watching him. It was a presence that flattened his mood even further – this sense of confusion he had awakened with on the morning of his twenty-fourth birthday.
The further he went, the busier the streets grew. Ahead rose a clamour of voices, and wild cries as though from some exotic menagerie. The rain had settled into a steady drizzle as the priest entered the great plaza called Freedom Square, where distant marble buildings lined three sides of the open space, and behind them, in turn, were visible lesser skysteeples – pale spikes partly obscured by the shroud of rain.
The bad weather had barely diminished the vast crowd of devotees already gathered in the square in anticipation of the forthcoming festival of Augere el Mann, which was still almost a month away. The majority were pilgrims from across the Empire, drawn in ever greater numbers than usual by this Augere marking the fiftieth anniversary of Mannian rule: men and women alike, foreigners who had fervently embraced the religion of Mann even though many of their compatriots still grumbled bitterly and called for insurrection. All wore the common garb of the lay devotee, a vivid red robe hanging almost down to their bare feet. The front of their sodden garments bore the testimony of their past conversions: white open-palmed handprints flaking with age so that many were now a mottled pink.
After several years living in this city, the young priest Che was still barely inured to the sights and sounds of these mass devotions. As he splashed his way across the flagstones paving the square, he eyed his surroundings from within the reassuring folds of his hood.
The pilgrims called out in tongues whilst thrashing about wildly on the spot. Or they listened with bright eyes to the inflammatory sermons of priests perched on canopied podiums, firebrands who shouted and gesticulated with fervour at their nodding heads and calls of concordance. They skewered their bleeding faces with spikes, or paraded with scalps afire, or copulated on the ground, or simply wandered about like dazed sightseers, with mouths agape at everything going on around them.
Che skirted a great block of conformity that stretched from one side of the square almost to the other, ten thousand converts who stood facing the rain-shrouded Temple of Whispers, all dressed in unmarked red robes, their arms raised above them, mouths chanting constantly, faces aglow with the same fervour that had drawn them all the way to Holy Q'os for the ritual of conversion.
As one, they knelt on the flagstones, ten thousand robes rustling like a murmur of the wind. They bowed prostrate on the ground then stood up again, only to repeat the ritual. The young priest continued past lines of such dripping converts as they waited in turn to step forward and receive the press of a painted hand upon their chests from an ordained priest of Q'os. Che did not slow in his stride even here, the pilgrims clearing a path for him, as soon as they recognized his white robes. He walked between the legs of a dripping statue of Sasheen, the Holy Matriarch, sitting astride a rearing white zel, and another of Nihilis, founding Patriarch of the new order, his bronze face grim and ancient.
Towards the eastern end of the square, the press began to thin, pilgrims mixing with ordinary citizens going about their daily business. The usual vendors' carts had been set up, with their simple, sagging awnings, from beneath which their owners sold paper cups of hot chee, bowls of food, bundled rainslicks. Others stood in the rain hawking souvenirs: cheap tin figurines of Sasheen, Mokabi, Nihilis. They observed the practices around them without fondness in their eyes, and cast furtive looks at the plain-clothed Regulators who stood in pairs around the edges of the crowd, watching over all.
A pair of guards mounted on zelback halted to give way to him, their unstrung crossbows resting on their laps. Che did not bother to acknowledge them, but marched on out of the square through Dubusi street on the eastern side. He took a quick left and then a right through some smaller side streets, the noise of the crowds fading behind him with every step. His senses grew alert for any indication that he was being followed.