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?”
“Not at all,” Geder said, surprised by the question. None of the books he’d read had mentioned a goddess.
The big man paused, his attention turning inward for a moment. He nodded.
“Come with me, then, Prince, and let us speak of your world.”
Dawson
Summer in Osterling Fells. Dawson rose with the sun and spent his days riding through his lands, tending to the work that his winter business and the intrigues of the spring had left undone. The canals that fed the southern fields needed to be remade. One of the villages in the west had burned late in the spring, and Dawson saw to the rebuilding. Two men had been found trapping deer in his forest, and he attended the hanging. Where he went, his landbound subjects offered him honor, and he accepted it as his due.
Along the roads, the grass grew higher. The trees spread their broad leaves, shimmering green and silver in the breezes and sunlight. Two days from east to west, four from north to south, with mountain tracks to hunt, his own bed to sleep in, and a bowl of perfect blue skies above him. Dawson Kalliam could hardly imagine a more luxurious prison to waste his weeks in while the kingdom crumbled.
The holding itself buzzed with activity. The men and women of the holding were no more accustomed to the presence of the lord during the long days of summer than they were to his absence during the winter months not taken up by the King’s Hunt. Dawson felt the weight of their consideration. Everyone knew that he had been exiled for the season, and no doubt the servants’ quarters and the stables were alive with stories, speculation, and gossip.
Resenting that made as much sense as being angry at crickets for singing. They were low, small people. They understood nothing that wasn’t put on the table before them. Dawson had no reason to treat their opinions of the greater world with more regard than he would a raindrop or a twig on a tree.