He was so disappointed that for a moment he considered leaving it there and walking out, but his mother was watching him with such a poorly-hidden expression of satisfaction that he changed his mind and put it back in his breast pocket again. “I will think of something, then. Perhaps I’ll offer it at the Zorian shrine.”
“Have you any other news to share?” Elan asked. He had the distinct feeling now that his presence was being endured rather than enjoyed.
“Nothing much,” he said, and stood. “In fact, I am on an errand to the Erivor Chapel for Hendon Tolly even now and should be on my way. Things at the residence are… well, they are bad, to speak truthfully. Tolly is full of strange notions and doesn’t seem to have any desire to withstand the autarch’s siege—he can hardly be bothered to speak to Berkan Hood or Avin Brone.…”
“Our poor lord protector has forgotten that the gods do not give any of us burdens too great to bear,” Tinwright’s mother said piously. “He will recover his faith. He is a good man.”
Even the newly religious Elan couldn’t quite go along with this. “We must pray for Lord Hood and Lord Brone, Anamesiya. They will need the gods’ help, too.”
Anamesiya! She was even calling his mother by her first name! What next?
He had never thought he would make up excuses to leave the company of Elan M’Cory, but now he found himself doing exactly that.
Alone among the thousands of people crowded into Southmarch Castle, Father Uwin did not seem to realize that a war was going on, let alone that its result might be the end of the world.
“Yes, yes, of course, with pleasure—we get so few visitors these days!” the spritely old man said as he led Tinwright into the chapel’s library, which was in the King’s South Cabinet, a room for prayer and meditation that doubled as the chaplain’s office. It had been less than a year since he had replaced Father Timoid, who had been the Eddon family priest for years. “What does Lord Tolly want? What can we do for him?”
Tinwright tried to tell Father Uwin what he had learned to this point, a confusing jumble of happenstances, rumors, and strange ideas. He had spent all of the past two days (traveling only in daylight, of course) in the great Trigonate Temple in the outer keep to study the books there. “I was trying to find out why some of the Hypnologues thought Southmarch was such a significant place, you see.”
“Hypnologues?” The priest cocked his small head. With his tuft of white hair waving atop his head he looked like a startled chicken. “That heretic sect from the old days? The ones who thought the gods were asleep? Why should Lord Tolly care about them?”
Tinwright wanted to end this particular discussion before it ever began. “That is for him to say, Father. It is only for me to do his bidding.”
“Of course, of course.” Uwin rubbed dust from his eyeglass lenses, which hung on a scissor-shaped holder around his neck, then lifted them to his squinting eyes. “Here is Clemon—he wrote on them, I think, although only briefly. But you must have seen that already in the great temple library.”
“Yes, I have. I came here because there was a rumor mentioned about a sacred stone that the Hypnologues believed came from the gods themselves, and on which they based much of their beliefs. Rhantys thought that the stone was lost somewhere below the earth here in Southmarch. But another book said that very stone was displayed here during King Kyril’s reign—right here in the Erivor Chapel! Do you know anything about that, Father?”
“A stone sacred to heretics, here in the chapel?” He shuddered and ostentatiously made the sign of the Three. “I find it hard to believe—I have certainly never heard of any such thing. Perhaps you could find Father Timoid and ask him. I’ve heard he’s living at the university on the far side of the bay.…”
Uwin obviously wasn’t considering the difficulties of visiting East-march on the other side of the autarch’s besieging forces, even if the university hadn’t already been burned down by one of the occupying armies. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary, Father. But I would like to look through the books here if I could. Especially if there are records kept by your predecessors.”
Uwin gave him a skeptical look. “The bond between the Erivor chaplains and the royal family is not for outsiders to scrutinize, and their conversations are not meant…”
Tinwright held up his hand. “I’m only interested in the daybook, or whatever it would be called here. Records, purchases, things like that.”
The little priest led him down to a row of heavy, leather-bound volumes. “These are the charter books for Kyril’s reign. Good luck with your search.”
When Uwin had left him alone, Matt Tinwright pulled a stack of thick books from the shelf and sat down on the floor. He had not told Uwin everything, and one of the most significant facts he had left out was the strange thing he had read about how the statue came to be in the chapel. Kyril, the king, had taken the stone from the Funderlings as part of some dispute and then had dedicated it to Erivor. But why? And why did the Hypnologues and other believers think it was something to do with the gods in the first place?
Most importantly, though, could this statue truly be the Godstone that Hendon Tolly and the autarch were looking for? The thought made Tinwright’s skin go cold. Could he truly have found the key to the war that raged all around?
Father Uwin came back about an hour later. “And how do you, Master Tinwright? Any fortune?”
“I think so, Father. See here.” He pointed at a passage in the charter book and read aloud. “ ’Given to the chapel, by His Majesty, King Kyril, a statue of a god made from some unknown stone or gem, taken from an altar of the Funderlings beneath the castle, dedicated by the king to great Erivor…’ So you see, that might be it. But I could find no other mention of it…”
“We have no such thing in the chapel now,” Uwin said with certainty. “I would have seen it.”
“You didn’t let me finish, Father. I found no other mention of it for fifty years, until Father Timoid spoke of it in his own charter book—here, a bit less than ten years ago: ‘The statue of Kernios given to the chapel by Kyril has been stolen. I have informed King Olin and begun a search through the castle. I suspect a servant.’ Later he mentions that several servants were questioned and some were beaten, but no sign of it was ever found.”
“Beat the wrong servants, perhaps,” Uwin said cheerfully. “Might not have needed to, anyway. Surely you know the famous tale of the thief who stole a gold chalice from one of Perin’s shrines and it began to burn in his pocket as though it was molten…”
“Well, if it burned somebody up, this... ‘statue of Kernios,’ it is not recorded. But the real question is, where did it go?”
“Ten years past?” Uwin shook his head. “Somebody took the statue ten years ago, with people going in and out of the castle by the hundreds every day, and scores of ships coming and going… ? It is lost, young man, whatever it was. Comfort yourself and the lord protector that it could not have been worth much, to be so little discussed even after it was stolen.”
“I do not think that will bring much comfort to Hendon Tolly,” Tinwright said as he bade the priest farewell. “But I will tell him.”
As he made his way back, Tinwright wondered precisely what news he could give to the lord protector. There had been a statue, but it had disappeared years ago. Not the kind of news that Hendon Tolly would enjoy.
It was only as four men stepped out of the shadows below the Lagoon Bridge that the idea came to him.
“Please, fellows, I’m in a hurry,” he said. “I have no money…”