And then, if there was something Aoth wasn’t meant to see, his guide would steer him away from it. “No need. I can find my way around a fortress. I just wanted your permission.”
“Very well. You have it.”
Aoth left Hasos’s study and proceeded to explore the smallish castle from battlements to cellars. He took inventory of its strengths and weaknesses, just as he’d said he would. But he also looked for signs of secret passages and hidden chambers.
Which evidently didn’t exist.
He finished in the wine cellar. Exasperated by his failure, he found a dusty old bottle and picked at the cork with his dagger. He got some of it out and pushed the rest down the neck into the red liquid inside. Hoping he was pilfering something expensive, he took a swig.
Not bad, in a sour sort of way.
When he’d drunk his fill, he left the bottle on the floor, departed the keep, and walked to the temple of Amaunator. He had to wait while Cera completed a ceremony, but then she received him in a study considerably brighter and cheerier than the one where Hasos conducted business. The costly glass windows and skylights let in the warm afternoon sunlight.
Cera lifted off a round golden mask and set it on a table. “You look awful.” She sounded slightly hoarse from her praying and chanting.
Aoth snorted. “Thanks so much. Lack of sleep will do that to a person. The war is starting. I have to spend most of my time in the field. Then when I do make it back to town, instead of resting I walk the streets or fly over them, looking for some sign of the dragonborn.”
“From your manner, I take it you still haven’t found one.”
“No.”
She removed the topaz-studded cloth-of-gold stole hanging around her neck. “I guess ‘true sight’ doesn’t live up to its reputation.”
“It doesn’t make me omniscient, if that’s what you mean. You jeer at me. Have you had any better luck?”
She poured water from a pitcher into a goblet and took a sip. “Not yet. There’s a ritual that enables me to tell if another person’s speaking the truth. When I have the chance, I perform it before I talk to someone we decided was a likely suspect.” She smirked. “By the way, you’re reimbursing the temple for the incense I have to burn.”
“Even though you’re telling me I won’t be getting much for my coin.”
“I’m afraid not. Even if a person is guilty, the trick is steering the conversation in such a way that he needs to lie. I can’t just say, by the way, are you hiding dragonborn in your house? Or, how’s the plan to murder that ugly little sellsword commander going? What’s that all about, anyway?”
“And who’s to say you’re even talking to the right people? Or that anyone is sheltering the reptiles? Maybe they’ve taken refuge in an empty building.”
“Now that I doubt. To say the least, Soolabax is no metropolis, but it’s grown since Hasos’s ancestors built the walls. It’s crowded now, especially since we locals had to find space for you sellswords. There just aren’t that many vacant houses.”
“I suppose not.” He felt a yawn coming on and smothered it. He considered using a tattoo to stave off fatigue and decided not to bother. “It sounds like I just have to keep looking over my shoulder.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Oh?”
“I assume that even a devil-worshiping Thayan is aware that among his other attributes, Amaunator is a god of time.”
“You mean Bane. It’s Bane my countrymen all worship since Szass Tam drove the other zulkirs out. But yes, I know that.”
“Then it may not astonish you that under certain circumstances, the Keeper gives his clerics a measure of power over time. Not enough to visit the past in the flesh-there are excellent reasons why no one can ever be allowed to do that-but to travel there in spirit and watch what unfolds.”
He frowned. “You’re saying our souls could lurk outside your garden and see where the dragonborn came from. Get a direction, anyway.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know. It sounds like a form of divination, and I told you what happened when the wizards tried that in Luthcheq.”
“It’s not divination in a technical sense. It is a unique way of directing divine power, one that most people outside my order have never even heard of. That gives us reason to hope that we could do it without triggering the assassins’ mystical defenses.”
“All right, let’s try.”
“Don’t make up your mind quite yet.” She took another sip. “The sacred texts warn that the ritual is dangerous and should only be attempted to achieve something of extreme importance.”
Aoth smiled a crooked smile. “More important than saving the hide of one devil-worshiping Thayan, you mean.”
“Yes. But if your survival or learning the truth about the dragonborn is necessary to keep Chessenta from falling to the armies of an undead dragon, then perhaps I would be justified. I’ve prayed and meditated, and I don’t feel Amaunator telling me no.”
“How reassuring.”
“If it’s not good enough for you, you may also want to consider that I’ve never tried this before, or even watched anyone else do it.”
He shrugged. “You understand Amaunatori mysteries better than I ever could. If your instincts say go forward, then I’m game.”
She smiled, and it struck him again just how much he liked her round, impish face. “Then shall we do it now, before we come to our senses?”
“Right now?”
“The sun is bright and high in the sky. I just came from worship. I’m about as powerful as I’m going to get.” She picked up an old book bound in crumbling yellow leather, then waved her hand at a wooden chest. “You carry that.”
It turned out to be heavier than he expected, enough that it was awkward to manage it and his spear too. He had a feeling she was waiting for him to grunt and stagger, and he did his best to hide the fact that he was straining.
Cera led him through the temple to the door that opened on the garden. She instructed an acolyte to stand watch and make sure no one disturbed them, and then they stepped out amid the winding paths, green grass, and fresh red and yellow blossoms.
Aoth set the chest on the bench he and Cera had used on the night of the attack. She opened the box, and when she unpacked the four items inside and removed their velvet wrappings, he saw what had made it so heavy. About as tall as his forearm was long, each of the objects was a golden statue of Amaunator standing with an hourglass, a calendar stone, or some other device emblematic of time. The sculptor had fashioned the figures in an elongated style that made the god look skinny.
“I trust you can find the cardinal points,” Cera said.
“My men and I would have spent a lot of time wandering around lost if I couldn’t.”
“Then set the icons out on the ground to define a circle. It doesn’t matter how big, as long as we can both fit inside comfortably.”
He did as she’d directed. “Now what?”
“Now I stand at the center of the circle, you stand toward the edge, and you don’t speak or move till I say you can.”
They took their places.
Cera stood up straight and took a breath. Up until then, despite the fact that she and Aoth were engaged in serious business, there’d been an edge to her that might have signified playful teasing, lingering anger, or a mixture of the two. Now, even though she’d stopped talking, he somehow felt that quality fall away. Suddenly she almost seemed like a holy image herself, her whole being focused on drawing down the power of her god.
She opened the old yellow book and started to read aloud. At first Aoth only heard the words. Then, though a kind of synesthesia, he also perceived them as pulses of warmth and light.
Even he shouldn’t have been able to see the latter in a garden already awash in spring sunlight. Nor should he have seen the arcs of radiance that flared into existence to delineate the sacred circle, and the lines that stabbed outward through the grass. But, as if they were more real than anything around them, the magical phenomena possessed a transcendent vividness that would have made them visible in any circumstances whatsoever.