“No, Lord Tolly, fear not! We have solved most of the riddles already, except for the damnable Godstone. I begin to believe it doesn’t exist.”
“Didn’t you say this Godstone was not absolutely necessary?”
“Yes, my lord, as best I can tell, but I still would like to have it before we attempt…” The physician cleared his throat. “Please remember, these are very complicated matters, sire—not like readying a siege engine. Not a matter of simple engineering.”
“I know that. Do not treat me like a fool.” The dangerous chill in Hendon Tolly’s voice deepened.
“Never, my lord!” Tinwright had seen Okros Dioketian around the residence, a brisk, unsmiling man who seemed always a little contemptuous of those around him, though he masked it with etiquette. But he did not sound contemptuous now—he sounded terrified of his master. Tinwright could sympathize. “No, my lord, I say it only to remind you that there is much still to do. I am laboring all hours of the day and night to…”
“You said we must employ the charm at Midsummer or miss our chance. Is that not right?”
“Yes… yes, I did say…”
“Then we cannot wait any longer. You must show me how it is all to be done, and soon. If you cannot… then I will find another scholar.”
Okros did not speak for some time, moments in which he had clearly struggled to master his shaking voice. He had not been entirely successful. “Of course, Lord Tolly. I… I think I have pieced together most of the ritual now—yes, almost all! I merely have to deduce what some of the words mean, since Phayallos and the other ancient scholars are not always in agreement. For instance, there is one who says most emphatically that for the charm to be successful, ‘the Tile must be clouded with blood.’ ”
Hendon Tolly laughed. “I do not think we should have any trouble with that—a few less mouths to feed in this gods-blasted anthill of a city would be welcome.” His voice grew fainter as he began walking again. Tinwright said a silent prayer of thanks to Zosim that he would not have to crouch in hiding much longer: his back and buttocks were beginning to ache.
“But I cannot help wondering what that means—‘clouded’?” Okros sounded like he was following after. “I have checked three translations and they all say something like it. Clouded, fogged, never smeared or anointed. It is a mirror, lord. How do you cloud a mirror with blood?”
“Oh, gods,” said Tolly in evident frustration, “slit a few virgin throats I suppose. Isn’t that what those ancients always want? Sacrifices? Surely even in this blighted city we can find a few virgins—there are always children, after all.”
Even as the horror of what Tolly was saying sank in, it abruptly became clear to Tinwright that the voices were coming back toward him once more—that Hendon Tolly had reversed his direction and was approaching the staircase where Tinwright was hiding. Without even taking the time to stand up, he turned and began to scramble up the staircase on his hands and knees. When he got to the first turn he pulled himself upright and hurried on, trying to match speed to stealth. He could still dimly hear Tolly and the physician arguing below him, but only a word here and there: to his measureless relief, they did not seem to be following him up the stairs.
“… Phantoms… lands that do not…” Okros was faint as wind around the castle’s turrets. “… we cannot chance the…”
“… Gods themselves…” Tolly was laughing again, his voice rising in glee. “The whole world will fall to its knees, shrieking… !”
As he reached the top Tinwright tumbled out of the doorway and onto the landing above, his fear no longer just that of being caught. Something in Hendon Tolly’s voice had changed—those last words had sounded like the cry of something not quite human.
For a long time he stood by the stairwell, trying to breathe silently as he listened for the sound of footsteps on the stairs, but he no longer heard even the voices. Still, Okros and the Lord Protector might only have moved to the next room. He would wait a long while to make sure it was safe to go down. Tolly terrified him at the best of times, but to hear the man talk so blithely of blood sacrif ice—and that laugh, that terrible laugh… ! No, he would stay until nightfall if necessary just to make sure he avoided the master of Southmarch Castle.
At last, feeling the need to stretch his legs but not yet ready to venture downstairs, he took a quiet walk along the upstairs hall, past the open doors of storerooms now being cleared out to provide more accommodations for highborn refugees. At the far end of the hall a window faced south across the garden toward the gate of the inner keep. In fact, from the small mullioned window Tinwright could see all the way to the stretch of bay where the causeway had once joined mainland Southmarch and the island castle. The far shore looked strange somehow. Tinwright stared at it for a long moment before he remembered the fearful conversations he had heard during the morning, courtiers whispering that after a long, quiet time the fairies were up to some devilry.
“Strange noises,” some had said, saying they had been wakened in the dark of night. “Chanting, and singing.” “Fog,” others had claimed, “a great fog rising up everywhere. Not a natural one, either.”
Tinwright saw that a vast cloud of mist did indeed lie along the bay front on the mainland side, and at first he thought the dark, slowly moving shapes in the murk were plumes of black smoke, that the fairy folk had lit huge bonfires on the beach, but though mist itself eddied in the wind, the dark tendrils did not. Something… something was growing out of the mist. But what? And why?
Tinwright shook his head, unable to make sense of it. After several quiet months it had almost become possible to forget that the Qar were still there, malicious and secret as a fever. Was the long, fretful peace over?
Trapped between the fairies and the Tollys, he thought. Might as well slit my throat now.
Matt Tinwright decided he had hidden long enough—it was probably as safe to go down now as it would ever be. Avin Brone would want to know what he had heard here. Tinwright also had a responsibility to another, equally frightening authority.
“She is most unsatisfactory, this girl,” his mother proclaimed. “I bring her good food from the marketplace and she turns up her nose at it. Does not the book say, “The poor must be sausaged?”
Solaced, he almost told her—but what was the point? Trying to tell his mother anything was like talking to a statue of Queen Ealga in the castle gardens. A very loud statue. “Are you not eating?” he asked the patient.
Elan M’Cory was propped up in the bed. Her color had come back but she still had the sagging look of a child’s rag doll. Tinwright did his best to ignore a flash of annoyance that the young noblewoman was still in bed. She wasn’t well. She had been poisoned—albeit lovingly. She would be well when she was well. “I eat what I can,” Elan said quietly. “It’s just… I don’t mean to be ungrateful, but some of the things she brings back…” She gave a limp shudder. “The bread has beetles in it.”
“Not beetles, only ordinary wholesome weevils.” Anamesiya Tinwright clicked her tongue in disgust. “Not as though they were alive and walking around, either. Baked in—a bit crunchy, like a nice roasted pine nut.”
Elan’s shoulders quivered and she brought her hand to her mouth. “Of course, Mother, I’m sure it’s perfectly good, but Lady M’Cory is used to a different sort of fare. Look, here is a Brenlandish two-crab piece—no, a pair of them.” He had been writing love notes for a court that, with summer approaching and the Qar still beyond the gates but quiet, had been full of a sort of fatal giddiness. Also, Brone had given him a silver starfish for his information about Okros and Hendon Tolly and had barely shouted at him at all, so Matt Tinwright was feeling unusually well-fixed. “Find Elan some nice bread made with good flour. No weevils. And a piece of fruit.”