Tolly took a long, savoring sip. “Now, speak.”
Matt Tinwright did his best to make his days and nights of reading into something easily understood, but it was not an easy chore. He explained to Tolly, who did not appear to be listening very closely, how the Hypnologos sect had believed that the gods were not awake, but only touched humans in dreams, and that the scene of the gods’ downfall had played out right here, in Southmarch Castle—or at least somewhere nearby.
“The stone was here. It was in the Erivor Chapel and had been made into a statue of Kernios.”
“That old cuckold,” said Tolly with an angry laugh. “You see, even here old Kernios tries to keep her prisoner. But he cannot. No, I don’t care for any magical stone. If the autarch can open the gate to the land of the gods without it, so can I! We have proved you can speak the words to open the mirror just as well as Okros! Better, in fact, since you still have your life and both arms!”
“My lord?” Tinwright suddenly wondered if Tolly had heard a word he was saying. “I don’t understand any of ...”
“Of course you don’t, so shut your mouth and listen. I spent months with Okros, learning the truth that hides behind other truths. The Hypnologoi have a sign they use to know each other—Okros was one himself! Their learning is secret and shared only among themselves ... and certain others, such as me, who sponsor their inquiries.
“It’s the land of the gods we’re talking about, poet—the very place you prating verse-spouters are always on about. The place where they sleep and dream. The autarch seeks to open it up and take the power for his own. But I know how to do it just as well as he—Okros was ready, it had been the study of his life, you see?—and I have all the things I will need to do it. The stone ... that is something else, something foolish, a mere precaution that Okros already told me was likely not needed. We have a mirror that will serve the task perfectly well, whether the southerner has one of his own or not. But what we need, ah, what we need now ... is the blood.”
Tinwright was caught by surprise. He took a step back, heart beating very fast. “But, Lord Tolly, I have worked so hard for you ...”
Tolly laughed even louder. “Do you think I mean you? Do you think any immortal is going to smell the mud that runs in your veins and come running, especially when she’s been asleep for a thousand years and more?” He threw back his head and laughed even louder, an edge of madness in it. “Ah, I have not felt so cheerful all day! Your blood! Fool of a poet!” He turned and slapped Matt Tinwright across the face so hard that Tinwright fell to his knees, stunned. “Do not ever presume,” the lord protector said, his voice suddenly a snarl, “that you are like me. The blood that runs in the Eddon family’s veins and also runs in mine is the holy ichor of Mount Xandos—the blood of the gods themselves! But to open the proper doorway, that blood must be spilled from a living heart, and I assure you it won’t be mine.” He laughed again, but this time it was a distracted growl. “No, we must find a proper sacrifice. Almost all the Eddons are gone from here ... but there is still one left who carries the sacred blood.”
Matt Tinwright was confused and frightened. He had not heard Tolly talk this way before, as if he believed the maddest of the old tales and meant to act on them. “Eddon blood ... ?” Who could Tolly mean—old Duchess Merolanna? But she was from somewhere else, wasn’t she? Not of the Eddon bloodline, whatever that truly meant—she had only married an Eddon, like Queen Anissa ...
Anissa. He had almost forgotten about her. Tolly had been manipulating her for quite some time, long before Tinwright himself had become the lord protector’s unwilling servant. Anissa, who had married the king and had given birth to King Olin’s last ...
“... Child?” Tinwright had been frightened before, but now he felt sickened as well. “You ... you don’t mean the child, do you? Anissa’s child?”
Tolly nodded. “Young Alessandros, indeed. He is exactly what I need. Take soldiers and fetch him to me. Do not harm Anissa, though—I may still have some need of her.” He stood looking out the window again, staring down at the lights of campfires.
Tinwright wanted it not to be true; he wanted to have misunderstood. “You want me to steal the queen’s baby—the king’s son?”
“If you are too craven just to take it, you may tell Anissa whatever you like,” said Tolly, waving his hand as if stealing a woman’s only child was an everyday sort of task. “Tell her that I mean to have the priests give him a special blessing or something like that. No, then she will wish to come along. I don’t care, poet—time is short! Just bring the child back to me here. Take two guards along. Three of you should be able to deal with a single small Devonisian woman. Now go, curse you. Make haste!”
Child stealer. Tinwright stumbled out of the protector’s chamber, wondering how he had been consigned to the darkest, cruelest pits of the afterlife without ever noticing his own death.
Ash Nitre’s apprentice looked as though he didn’t quite believe Chert. “Are you certain you only want two donkeys?”
“Just enough to pull the cart, yes.” Chert nodded toward the line of waiting men, mostly stonecutters now too old for daily work but willing to do what they could to save Funderling Town. He wondered what they would say if they knew what he planned, but he also knew he could not afford to tell them until they were well away from the temple, on the site, isolated from the temptation to let a word or two slip. “The rest will be carried on foot. We’ve got narrow paths ahead of us. We may have to lift the donkeys over in a few places!”
“Problems enough of my own,” the apprentice said. “Cinnabar and the rest of those unbraced Guildsmen now expect us to make five more barrels a day—five!”
Here, in this quiet part of the sheltering earth, it was doubtless hard to remember sometimes what was going on only a short distance away. Still, Chert thought, Nitre and his helpers might benefit by leaving their blasting-powder mill for a day and visiting the far end of the temple estate, where the healers were hard at work all hours of the day and even the men who had not suffered badly in the fighting had faces that looked as though they came from poorly made dolls, their eyes staring blank as buttons.
“It is a war, you know,” was all Chert said.
“Oh, the Elders know I know that. Even after we go to all the work of making it, we still have to lower it down five hundred ells of rope. Do you know how long it takes to splice that much rope together well?” The apprentice shook his head. “I know it’s a war. It had better be a war, to wear me out like this.”
Flint, back today after another of his mysterious disappearances had driven Opal almost to distraction, clambered up onto the narrow seat of the wagon. Chert made certain the sacks of different ingredients were all tied before flapping the reins against the donkey’s hindquarters to start the procession. He knew enough about the making of blasting powder now that he wasn’t worried the saltpeter might catch fire and burst and kill them if it fell. Instead, he was worrying about what would happen if he had an accident on one of the steeper tracks and lost one of the large sacks completely, or—Elders forbid it!—the entire load. They had very little of anything to waste.
It was madness, of course, Chert knew. The whole idea was mad. Even if it worked correctly it might kill them all ... but there was very little chance it would work correctly.
A worker walking in front of the cart slowed as others slowed before him, then at last had to set his barrow down. Chert pulled back on the reins while the road ahead was cleared of some minor blockage. He worried that he might have exaggerated the chances of success of this venture to Captain Vansen and the others.