Its sigil was of cardinal and intercardinal showing the eight directions of the world in which no falsehood could hide. The sign of the Righteous Servant. Tears leapt to Geder’s eyes, and something like relief flooded him. Triumph, perhaps. This was the place. He’d found it.
They drew nearer, and the longer it took, the more Geder understood the breathtaking scale of the place. A huge iron gate hung at the front of the wall, imposing and forbidding. Above it, in a brutal script, were the words Khinir Kicgnam Bat, each letter as tall as a man. Geder squinted up at them, struggling to make his translation while still half drunk with wonder.
Bound is not broken.
The villagers brought their cart to a stop still fifty yards from the great iron doors. Geder saw now that a section within the door itself was set with a complex of swirling gears. The interlocked teeth clanked once, shifted, and the section of iron parted like a curtain. Six men walked out toward them. They had the same general features as the villagers, though with more roundness to their cheeks and oil sleeking their hair. They wore black robes tied with lengths of chain at the waist and sandals that wrapped their ankles. The men of the village knelt. Geder bowed, but didn’t dismount. His horse shifted uneasily beneath him.
The priests looked at one another, then turned to the young man who had led the group.
“Who is this?” the eldest of the priests asked.
“A stranger,” the young man said. “He came asking after the Sinir. We brought him to you, the way the Kleron told us.”
Geder urged his horse closer. The grandness of the place had made the beast skittish, but he held the reins tightly. The eldest priest stepped toward him.
“Who are you?” the monk asked.
“Geder Palliako, son of the Viscount Palliako of Rivenhalm.”
“I don’t know this place.”
“I’m a subject of King Simeon of Antea,” Geder said. And then when the priest stayed silent, “Antea’s a very important kingdom. Empire, really. Center of Firstblood culture and power.”
“Why have you come here?”
“Well,” Geder said, “that’s a long story. I was in Vanai. That’s one of the Free Cities, or, really it was. It’s gone now. But I found some books, and they were talking about this… Ah… They called it the Righteous Servant or the Sinir Kushku, and it was supposed to have been designed by the dragon Morade during the fall of the empire, and I thought that if I could use the different descriptions of where it was compared with the times when the accounts were made I might be able to… find it.”
The priest frowned up at him.
“Have you heard of the Righteous Servant?” Geder asked. “By any chance?”
He wondered what he would do if the man said no. He couldn’t bring himself to ride back out. Not after seeing this.
“We are the servants of the Servant,” the man said. His voice was rich with pride and certainty.
“That’s excellent. That’s just what I’d hoped! May I…” Geder’s words tumbled over themselves, and he had to stop, cough, and collect himself. “I was hoping, if you have archives… Or if I could speak with you. Find out more.”
“You will wait here,” the priest said.
Geder nodded, but the man had already turned away. The priests were pulling the cart in through the gap in the iron gate, the village men retrieving another much like it. As Geder watched, the priests vanished into their temple, and the other men, waving at him and smiling, went away down the trail, returning to their homes. Geder stayed where he was, caught between the desire to see the temple behind the wall and the fear of being left alone and unable to find his way back through the mountains. The gears in the gate ground themselves closed. The rope-drawn cart vanished around the stones. Geder sat on his horse, trying not to look at the five servants he’d dragged across the known world and into this emptiness. In the distance, a hawk shrieked.
“Should we set up camp, my lord?” his squire asked.
Night fell. Geder sat in his tent, the walls murmuring to themselves in the breeze. At his little desk, by the light of a single candle, he read the books he’d already read ten times over, his eyes taking in the words without the meanings.
The sense of disappointment, of rejection, of rage were slowly building in his belly with the growing certainty that they weren’t going to come out. He’d been left to sit on the doorstep like a beggar until he took the hint and limped away. Back to Camnipol, back to Antea, back to all of the things he’d come from.
He was at his journey’s end. He couldn’t even pretend a reason to push onward. He had crossed two nations, mountains, deserts, only to be snubbed at the end. He turned a page, not knowing what had been on it, and not particularly caring. He imagined himself at home, telling the tale. The Jasuru seer, the dragon bones, the mysterious hidden temple. And then, they would say. What then, Lord Palliako?
And he would lie. He would tell about the degenerate priests and their pathetic, empty cult. He’d write essays detailing whatever perversions came to mind, and ascribe all of them to the temple. If it hadn’t been for him, for Geder Palliako, the place would have been utterly lost to history. If they saw fit to treat him this way, he could see that they were remembered any way he saw fit.
And the priests would neither know nor care, so where was the pleasure in that? The morning would come, he would have the tent loaded, and he’d begin the trip back. Perhaps he could find a merchant in one of the cities of the Keshet who would accept a letter of credit and buy some decent provisions. Or stop at the village and tell them the priests had instructed them to give him their goats. That would be almost worth doing.
“My lord! My lord Palliako!”
Geder was out of the tent almost before he heard the words. This squire was pointing at the dark iron gate. The small side door was still closed, but a deeper shadow had formed between the two massive panels, a line of darkness.
A man came out, walking toward them. Then two more, with blades strapped to their backs. Geder waved his and his servants hurried to light the torches. The first man was huge, broad across hips and shoulders. His hair was gone, and the expanse of his scalp glowed in the moonlight. In the torchlight, his robe looked black, though in truth it could have been any dark color. The guards behind him wore the same robes as the priests had before, but of finer cloth, and undrawn swords with hilts and scabbards of iridescent green.
“Are you Prince Palliako who has come to learn of Sinir Kushku?” the large man asked. Though he spoke softly, his voice had the weight of thunder behind it. Geder felt his blood shift in his veins at the sound.
“I am.”
“What do you offer in return?”
I don’t have anything, Geder thought. A cart, some servants. Most of my silver was spent on the way here, and what do you have to buy with it anyway? It isn’t as if any of you were going to the market fair…
“News?” Geder said. “I can give you reports about the world. Since you’re so… remote.”
“And do you mean the goddess harm?”