“I am a farmer who occasionally sings for a few coppers at the local tavern in Redern,” Tier said. “I usually spend the winter months trapping for furs. I was on my way home. I have a vague memory of seeing a group of strangers, and then I awoke in this cell. Telleridge—that’s the man I told you about—”
“Telleridge?” said Phoran. “I know him, though I didn’t know he was a wizard. Did he tell you why they wanted you enough to take you from Redern?” asked Phoran. Then a strange expression came over his face. “Is that the Redern that belongs to the Sept of Leheigh?”
“Yes,” Tier agreed.
“Avar?” said Phoran almost to himself.
Avar, Tier recalled, was the given name of the new Sept, the new Sept who was supposed to be so influential with the Emperor.
“Is Avar a member of this Path?”
Tier shrugged. “I don’t know. The only two I’ve met by name are Telleridge and Myrceria—and I don’t think she’d be considered a member.”
Phoran got to his feet and began pacing. “Why you?” he asked again. “Why did they go all the way to Redern to find you? You aren’t a Traveler, not if you’re a farmer in Redern who used to be a solder.”
“Because I have a magical talent usually associated with the Travelers,” replied Tier. Preempting the next question, he began telling Phoran what he knew about the Orders.
Phoran held up a hand. “Enough,” he said. “I believe you. Let’s get you out of here, then you can explain anything you feel necessary.”
Tier followed him to the threshold, but when he leaned forward to step through the door, white-hot pain convulsed his body and a shock of magic threw him back several feet into the cell.
“What was that?” said Phoran, startled.
“He is bound,” said the Memory. It sounded like a crow’s mating call or the rattle of dry bones.
Tier wobbled to his feet. “It talks?”
The Emperor looked at the Memory. “Sometimes. But this is the first time it’s ever volunteered information. Are you all right?”
Tier nodded. “Your Memory is right. There must be some sort of magic here I cannot cross.”
“Can you do something with it? Didn’t you say that you have magic?”
“He is bound,” said the Memory again.
“Stop that,” said Tier, a command that usually worked when Jes began to get too creepy. He turned to Phoran. “I don’t have the kind of magic that could counter this, and they have managed to keep me from what little useful magic I do have. It looks like I’m stuck here.”
Phoran nodded. “Very well.” He came back into the room and shut the door. “There are wizards who are supposed to serve me, or serve the Empire at least, but I don’t know if any of them are the ones who belong to the Path. Find out who the Path’s wizards are, and then maybe I can find a wizard to undo this.”
He gave Tier an apologetic look. “I am more emperor in name than in reality or I could just order your release. The twentieth—nineteenth by common reckoning—had real power.”
Tier grinned, “That’s because he’d ordered the death of fifteen Septs by the time he was your age and accounted for another three or four personally.”
“I’m rather finicky in my food choices,” said Phoran with mock sadness. “I’ll never manage to be properly terrifying.”
“You wouldn’t have to suck the marrow from their bones the way the Nineteen—ah, excuse me—Twenty did,” said Tier solemnly. “I suspect a cooked heart or two would do just fine.”
“I don’t eat heart,” said Phoran firmly. “Though I suppose I could feed it to the grieving heir—that might have a similar effect.”
Tier and Phoran gave each other a look of mutual approval.
“I already owe you a favor,” said Phoran, “but your experience is different than my own. I’d like your opinion on my problem.” He waved at the Memory.
“I am, always, your servant, my emperor,” Tier was rather pleased to find that he meant it.
“For the past three months,” Phoran began, “I’ve had this creature. Not that it follows me all the time, you understand. Usually, it just visits me once a night.” He smiled grimly and sat down on the bed.
Tier followed his example and collapsed on the other end of the bed. He should have waited until the Emperor bid him sit, but between whatever happened during the time he couldn’t remember and the jolt the doorway had given him, his joints were all but jelly.
“Sometimes when I can’t sleep,” Phoran said, “I go exploring the shut-off places in the palace. I have this key,” he took one out of his pocket. “It’s supposed to open every door in the palace. It didn’t do yours, but it opened the turnkey’s box that had your key in it.”
He put it away and began his story again. “Anyway, one night a few months ago I was wandering through the Kaore wing—that’s one of the ones my father shut down, I’m told. It’s usually pretty boring: long corridors with identical rooms on either side, that sort of thing. But this time I heard some noise at the end of one of the corridors.
“No one’s supposed to be there—but sometimes people are. I sneaked down to a door that was ajar.” He pulled the velvet fabric of his pants and absently rubbed it between thumb and index finger.
“There were a number of people in dark robes with hoods over their heads. They were standing in a loose circle, chanting. A seventh man was kneeling, blindfolded and bound in the center. If I’d known what they were going to do, I’d have tried to stop it somehow. But by the time I saw the knife it was too late. One of the robed men had already slit the bound man’s throat.”
Phoran got off the bed and began to pace restlessly. “There was blood everywhere—I hadn’t realized… It was too late for the dead man, and I thought that they might not be too excited at having a witness so I left as quickly as I could. The Memory came to me the next night.”
Phoran looked at the creature solemnly, then sank back onto the bed and began rolling up his sleeve. “It comes to me every night,” he said, showing Tier marks on the inside of his wrist that climbed in fading scars to the hollow of his elbow.
“After it feeds it tells me that in return it owes me the answer to a question. Usually its answers aren’t very useful. Tonight I asked if it knew someone who could tell me something about the Sept of Gerant’s lands and it brought me here.”
Tier said, “You think that you interrupted them killing their last Traveler prisoner.” He considered it. “I think you are right—how many groups of dark-robed men do you have going around killing people in the palace?”
“There might be as many as five or ten,” he said. “But not that manage to summon or create something like this.” He pointed at his dark comrade. “This is wizardry.”
Tier nodded slowly. “I’m not a wizard, but I’ve dealt with them. If this was something that might result from their meddling, I’d think they’d be careful that it would not attach itself to them. Maybe some magic. That would mean that you were the only one there it could attach itself to.”
He got off the bed and walked closer to the Memory. His eyes wouldn’t quite focus on it, reminding him forcibly of the way Jes could fade into the shadows when he wanted to.
“How did you know that I could answer the Emperor’s question tonight?” asked Tier.
The thing shifted restlessly. “You fed me true,” it said at last. “I know you as I know Phoran, twenty-seventh emperor of that name.”
“I fed you?” Tier asked.
“ ‘Numberless were the heroes who fell,’ ” whispered the Memory in a voice quite different than it had been using: it was no longer without inflection. The change was remarkable.
“You were my listener?” said Tier.
“I was Kerine to your Red Ernave,” agreed the Memory.
“What else are you?” Tier took a step nearer to it.
“I am death,” it said and was gone.
“Did you understand what it meant?” asked Phoran.