Havemore blinked. “Witchcraft!” he said, peering at the nearby guards to make sure they could not hear him. “I knew it! That madman will doom us all.” His shrewd eyes fixed on Tinwright again. “I also know you are close with my old master, Avin Brone. Do not deny it! Tell me what Brone plans. Does he have some strategy of his own to save the castle?”
“I truly don’t know, Lord Havemore. He would never tell me.”
“No, likely that’s true.” The castellan frowned, considering. “Tell Brone… tell him that his old friend and servant Tirnan wishes him well. Tell him that I still think of him fondly, and would… that I would be ruled by his wisdom about what to do to save our beloved Southmarch. You will say just those words to him, and to no one else.”
Tinwright’s heart was beating fast—he was being asked to carry a message to Brone saying the castellan was open to betraying Hendon Tolly!—but he found himself shaking his head.
“My lord, the protector will never let me away from his side for so long, especially not to visit Brone.”
“Leave it to me,” Havemore said. “I will arrange something, some pretext, to get you away from Tolly long enough to deliver my message.”
“But, with respect, my lord, why do you not simply speak to Brone yourself? You are the castellan—surely you have ample opportunity?”
“Because some of my own men are Hendon’s spies, though I do not know which. And there are other spies watching Brone. He and I could never meet without every word being carefully listened to. It is too risky. No, you must do it. If you succeed, you will have made a good friend in me. If you fail—well, I will not go to the block alone, poet.”
Despite seeing the first gleam of hope he might be able to escape Tolly and the death he had assumed would inevitably come to him at the lord protector’s hands, Tinwright was also awash with anger and disgust. Brone himself, Tolly, and now Tirnan Havemore, none of them thought anything of risking the life of Matthias Tinwright for their own schemes. What was he, after all, but a worthless poet? Why should they fret if he was killed furthering their schemes?
Of course he said nothing aloud except, “As you wish, my lord.”
The roar of cannon fire went on like a winter storm.
The castellan Havemore soon made his excuses and departed the chambers, leaving Tinwright alone with the lord protector except for the silent guards and tiptoeing servants. Hendon Tolly was still drinking, but the fury was past and he had descended into a deep, strange quietude.
Tinwright was leaning discreetly against a tapestried wall, falling asleep on his feet and wondering if he dared to sit down on the floor, when the protector stirred in his high-backed chair and looked around until he found Tinwright.
“Come here, poet.” He gestured at the floor near his feet. “Sit.”
Matt Tinwright settled as far away from Tolly as he dared, so that if the protector should decide to hit him he would have to extend his arm a little and weaken the blow—he had learned a few things during his weeks in Hendon’s company. Tolly’s face was no longer flushed. He had gone quite pale, as if a fever in his blood had turned suddenly from hot to deadly chill.
“It is a poor excuse for a man who does not admit when he has met his match,” he said. “I admit it. Sulepis is clever. The pagans consider him a god. His army is the greatest in the world. He is… a worthy adversary.” He cast his eyes sideways toward Tinwright as if daring him to say otherwise. Tinwright had learned by now that it was best to speak only when asked a question, and sometimes not even then. “I thought that we each had one part of what was needed—that Sulepis had the blood sacrifice and I had the mirror. I believed we needed each other—and so did Sulepis. But something else is needed—this Godstone. Sulepis doesn’t have it but neither do I. In fact, I have nothing he needs at all, and that is why we are doomed.”
Tolly lifted his cup and took a long swallow, wiping his chin with the back of his hand. He was very, very drunk. “That fool Okros misled me, or perhaps he hoped to trick me so that he could somehow gain the power for himself. Perhaps he simply did not know. Whichever is true, he never told me of any Godstone, or any other magical bauble.” He looked around a little vacantly, as if he was searching for his audience, which at this moment was only Matt Tinwright. “But I will find some way to free the goddess. She is mine. She has told me so. And I will think of some way to keep her from the Xixian as well.”
Tinwright didn’t understand much of what Tolly was saying. The protector kept calling the thing that had spoken to him “the goddess,” but the Autarch of Xis had several times called it a god. Which of them was right? And what did such confusion mean?
Tolly finally looked down and saw the expression on Tinwright’s face. He did not seem to like it. “You. Are you wondering why I let you live, poet?” he demanded. “Why I did not simply kill you when I caught you spying? Answer me.”
As ever, Tinwright sought for the right words, the careful words. “I suppose I have wondered, my lord.”
“You suppose, yes.” The thin lips twisted in a smile. “As so many others do. But I’m different, boy, I’m different. I do not suppose—I must know. Do you understand me?” Tolly had closed his eyes now as if deep in thought or memory; he did not wait for an answer. “Men are small creatures, most of them, creeping and crawling like mice. For centuries, they scuttled at the feet of the gods, hoping mostly to stay unnoticed. But even after the gods finally turned their backs on them, men kept scuttling. Like the vermin in the walls, they continued to live their lives in fear of larger creatures, not knowing and not caring what lay beyond their hidey-holes. They continued to fear the gods even after the gods left them. But I am no mouse, poet. I do not fear the gods or anything else. The only thing I fear is not to be understood.”
Hendon Tolly was silent for a very long while, his eyes still shut—so long that Tinwright was contemplating getting up to go in search of some food and drink when Tolly spoke again.
“Who can understand me? Not one man in ten thousand, poet. Not ten men in all of Eion. The autarch—he is one of the few. It grates on my soul to admit it, but he is one of the few. He is alive, you see. He knows that the measure of the universe is the reach of a great man—no more, no less.” Hendon Tolly opened his eyes. For a man who had drunk so much, he looked terrifyingly sober. “That is why you are here, poet. Because you must write of what I do. You must witness what becomes of me… so that I will be understood.”
“By me, Lord?”
Tolly’s bark of laughter was as sudden and violent as the slap he had given Tinwright earlier. “You? By the arseholes of the foul, farting gods, poet, are you mad? You scarcely understand how to read and write. Do you know anything of Phayallos? The Book of Ximander, which you have now held and read from? Of course not. You are like so many of your type, enamored with the mewling and whimpering of Gregor and the rest of the bards, thinking that truth lies in pretty words and pretty stories. You know nothing .” He leaned and spat on the floor on the opposite side of his chair—a thoughtfulness for which Tinwright was grateful. “But you can write what I tell you to write. You can witness what I allow you to see and then write about it, and even with no better guide than a dull wit such as yours, in the centuries to come those who are worthy to understand… will understand. They will see my works and hear my words and those few will understand me. I care truly about nothing else. If I gain the power I seek, well and good. If I can do no more than thwart the autarch, that is well, too, as long as what I am—who I am—does not disappear from the memory and minds of my equals, my very few equals, most of them not even born yet.” He raised his cup and drained it to the dregs. “Go to your corner, poet. Go and sleep. The hour of your highest calling is almost come. One way or another you will see the world begin anew. You will see… astonishing things.” Tolly closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair, letting the heavy iron cup fall to the ground with a noise like a sword being forged. “You will see my… moment of glory, when the gods… recognize me at last for… for what I am.”