The holy man fell silent for a moment; the others looked awkwardly away) knowing that he himself had been the product of such a breeding. He looked up again quickly.
“If a demon has taken him over, what had been his personality should have been completely subjugated to its will,” he continued. “Since he came after Rhapsody, this does not seem to be the case. This is cause for some concern There must be something untoward, something different about this symbioti relationship. That worries me.
“Moreover, it causes me to wonder what sort of ties he has in this lane Clearly your ties to him are but weft thread, not the warp.”
“What do you mean?” Ashe asked.
The Patriarch studied the Lord Cymrian. “Did you see the Weaver wheel you were in the realm of the Rowans?” he asked finally.
“No,” Ashe said. “Or if I did, I don’t remember. I recall very little from that time; I was too badly injured. My only memories are of fragments c faces, and hazy, pain-filled dreams.”
“The Weaver is one of the manifestations of the element of Time,” the Patriarch said seriously. “Those who know the lore of the Gifts of the Creator generally only count five, the worldly elements, but there are others that exist outside the world. One of them is the element of Time, and Time in pure form manifests itself in many ways. The World Trees, Sagia, the Great White Tree, and the three others that grow at the birthplaces of the elements, are manifestations of Time. As is the Weaver. She appears as a woman, or so it seems, though you can never recall what her face looks like after you see her, no matter how much you study it at the time. She sits before a vast loom, on which the story of Time is woven in colored threads, in patterns, the warp, the weft, the lee.
“The Weaver is the manifestation of Time in history,” he continued. “She does not intervene in the course of events, merely records them for posterity. It is a fascinating tapestry that she plaits, intricate in its connectivity. All things, all beings, are threads in the fabric; it is their interconnectivity that weaves what we know as life. Without those ties that the threads have to one another, there is merely void; absence of life. And in those ties, there is power.
“Those ties bind soul to soul, on Earth and in the Afterlife. It is the connection that is made in this life that allows one soul to find another in the next. This is the means by which love lasts throughout Time. But other things last throughout Time as well.
“Sometimes the ties that are forged in enmity are as strong as those woven in love. Souls that have the need to finish business that is steeped in hatred can transcend many things, many realities, if the tie is strong enough. From what you have told me, none of you have the connection that would give you any power over this man, if he is still man, though more likely he is man-in-demon. The tie is not strong enough, the weft thread of the fabric, where lives cross, but don’t intertwine.
“But the tie between him and Rhapsody, that is different. There is a direct connection there. This makes her both more powerful, and more vulnerable where he is concerned. It is the warp thread, the most basic of connections. And so she will therefore be more equipped to fight him than either of you. If she has been unable to prevail—as it seems is the case—there is little you will be able to do against him.”
“Nonetheless, I will give my life, and afterlife, if need be, in the effort,” Ashe said. “Thank you for your help, Your Grace. Excuse me now; I have to find my wife.” He walked to the stairs that led up to the sanctuary, only to be stopped by the deep voice of the Patriarch.
“Wait. You have not answered my question.”
“What is it?” Ashe asked, struggling to maintain his patience.
“What was decided by the Scales?” the holy man asked. “I have had no word from Sorbold on the outcome of your discussions.”
“I would be interested to know that as well,” Achmed said.
“They weighed in favor of the Mercantile,” Ashe replied.
“The Mercantile?” the Patriarch demanded. “Who?”
“The Hierarch of the western guilds, a man named Talquist,” the Lord Cymrian said. “He seemed levelheaded and considerate; he will rule as regent for now, by his own choice, until the period of a year passes, at which time, if he is still confirmed by the Scales, he will assume the throne as emperor.” He stopped when he saw the Patriarch’s face go pale. “Your Grace? What’s wrong?”
“Talquist?” the holy man said softly. “Are you certain?”
“What disturbs you about him?” Achmed asked.
The Patriarch sat down unsteadily on the chair at the top of the sanctuary. “You could not have brought me worse news,” he said to Ashe, his deep voice absent of the power it usually had.
“Why?” Achmed demanded. “Tell us why.”
The Patriarch stared out the aperture in the basilica’s ceiling at the Spire rising into the endless blue above him.
“Talquist is a merchant in only the kindest usage of the word,” he said finally, watching the wisps of cloud pass overhead. “He is a slave trader of the most brutal order, the secret scion of a fleet of pirate ships, which trade in human booty, selling the able-bodied into the mines, or worse, the arenas, using the rest as raw materials for other goods, like candles rendered from the flesh of the old, bone meal from the very young. Thousands have met their deaths in the arenas of Sorbold; I cannot even fathom how many more have found it in the mines, or the salt beds, or at the bottom of the sea. He is a monster with a gentleman’s smile and a common touch, but a monster all the same.”
“And yet the Scales confirmed him,” Ashe said. “I witnessed it myself.”
“Why did you not say something before you left?” Achmed asked the Patriarch incredulously. “If you knew this was a potential outcome of the selection process, why did you not intervene?”
“Because it is not for me to decry the Scales,” Constantin answered. “They are what confirmed me to my position in the first place. How could I decree their wisdom to be faulty without invoking a paradox?” He sighed heavily. “Besides, to acknowledge my past in the arena would be to open the realm of the Rowans to scrutiny that would not be welcome there. And finally, he was not the only man with blood on his hands who was in the running. If I were to decry everyone I thought unfit to be emperor, Sorbold would be a leaderless state. Truth be told, I was hoping they would decide to disband into city-states, but the Scales decided otherwise.”
He rose and put his hand on Ashe’s shoulder.
“I shall intercede with the All-God for your wife, and your child, each day,” he said. “As well as for your efforts to find this Wind of Death, which now is the Wind of Fire. I pray that, as I have undergone a change of heart in my time behind the Veil of Hoen, Talquist too will experience such a transformation. Perhaps the fact that he did not immediately demand coronation as emperor is a sign of that.”
“I doubt it,” Achmed said. “In my experience, men who had a thirst for blood and power only grow thirstier the more they are fed it. You may be the only exception I have ever met.”
The three men thanked the Patriarch and descended the stairs together, leaving him beneath the aperture of the Spire, staring into the sky.
At the door of the basilica, Grunthor grasped Ashe by the shoulder.
“Child?” he demanded. “Ya didn’t mention this; why?”
“Leave for Ylorc at once,” Achmed ordered. “There is another Child who is our responsibility, a far more grave one than finding Rhapsody. Or Michael.” He turned to Ashe.
“If we hunt for them together, we have a better chance of finding her,” he said, “though I still do not hear even a hint of her heartbeat. No matter how far she has been from me, ill or injured, even within the earth, I have never lost the sound of it until now. I suspect that he has killed her; that would be like him. So though I know you will be seeking her, blind to everything else, understand that I am seeking him now. If we find him, we might at least be able to discover what he did with her. Are we clear on the distinction?”