A gibbous moon lit all with a glowing, nacreous light, nearly as bright as day to Kencyr eyes. It was a beautiful city, far more orderly and lovingly kept than any Jame had yet seen. Was it really to die tonight? She hoped not. While not fond of her god—no Kencyr was—could he (or she, or it) really be so cruel as to smash so much grace and innocence?
Brier and Damson walked behind her. The former had insisted on coming, she said, to make sure that her lord’s heir came to no harm. The latter had simply followed, discovered too late to turn her back. Jame wished that both of them had stayed behind. This was a mission where the Talisman’s skills might serve her best. Brier didn’t know about that aspect of her life and was unlikely to approve of it. Damson, on the other hand, might see entirely too much, if she was still set on imitating Jame.
Most of the city was dark, its daytime residents gone to bed, but there were occasional clusters of lights. Jame headed toward the brightest of these constellations.
The night market swarmed with life, as active as any of its peers in Tai-tastigon, if cleaner. Stallkeepers hawked wares from finger food to erotic spices, from tin trinkets to heavy goldware. Bolts of silk dominated many a stall. Jame wondered what defect the dark was supposed to cover, unless Langadine was so rich that even these night offerings were of prime quality as their merchants proclaimed.
“Talisman!”
Jame started as big hands grabbed and spun her around. A young man with curly chestnut hair stared down at her with disbelief and dawning delight.
“It is you, isn’t it?” He shook her until her teeth rattled. “I always knew that you would come!”
“Byrne?” She waved back Brier, who had stepped forward and loomed over them both as if set to protect her. “It’s really you?”
He was at least her age now and much taller, but he still had that small boy’s mischievous grin.
“I’ll take you to my father. After all these years, he won’t believe this!”
Ean’s quarters were a block from the market in a shabby, second-story apartment, half workshop, half sparse but well-kept living space. He started up in alarm from his bed as they entered. “Has something happened in the market? Who is tending the stall? Byrne! Night rent may cost less than day, but it’s all we can afford.” Then he noticed his visitors and his agitation grew. “Who are these people?”
Jame observed that his hair was now streaked with white, his face creased with wrinkles, and he was missing several teeth. The intervening years had not been kind to him.
“Ean,” she said, “we came as quickly as we could, starting out the day after you left the oasis. Nonetheless, I’m sorry we arrived so late.”
Like his son, Ean grabbed her; unlike Byrne, he burst into tears.
“I’d given up hope. Evensong, Gaudaric, are they well?”
“As much so as when you left, if a few days older. Why didn’t you return? What kept you here all this time?”
He backed away, wiping his face, then turned as if without thinking to scrounge for the makings of tea. “I tried,” he said, over his shoulder. “The Kothifiran seeker, Lady Kalan, survived the storm, but in all these years the king hasn’t let me see her.”
“It sounds,” said Jame, “as if I should pay her a visit.”
Ean turned around, an empty teapot forgotten in his hand. “You can try, but she lives in the new palace tower, well guarded.”
“I can show you the way,” Byrne said eagerly.
“No!” Ean dropped the pot, which shattered unnoticed at his feet. “It’s too dangerous! Remember how they beat me, the last time I tried?”
“How close can you safely get us?” Jame asked Byrne.
The boy pouted. “To the palace gate, anyway. Anyone could do that.”
“Ean?”
“That far and no farther.”
“Accepted. Then you both need to get to the harbor and take ship there. When we left, Gorbel was negotiating for a boat. The whole city may be destroyed before dawn.”
“You would do that?” Ean looked aghast. “These are good people, for the most part. They don’t deserve such a fate!”
“Why does everyone always blame me? Now go, and you, Byrne, lead on.”
The boy escorted them up the hill past more terraced dwellings toward the palace. True enough, guards paced back and forth before its western gate, more than Jame had expected.
“That’s the new tower just within the walls, the tallest in the city,” Byrne said, whispering conspiratorially although no enemy was close enough to hear. “King Lainoscopes is afraid that the desert tribesmen will storm it to regain their precious black rock.”
“Led by their prophet?”
“Oh, he died a long time ago. They’ve waited for his return ever since.”
Jame considered the situation. There were too many guards to fight without raising the alarm. Somehow, the Talisman would have found a way in. Was the Knorth Lordan so much less talented?
The nearest guard stopped, yawned hugely with cracking jaws, and leaned on his spear. The next moment, he had toppled over, sound asleep. Others started toward him, stumbled, and also fell until all were down, snoring.
Damson shrugged. “Would you rather that I gave them terminal diarrhea?”
Brier looked down at her, frowning. “If you ever try that with me, brat, I’ll kill you.”
They entered the gate. The new tower rose out of a small courtyard, marble-faced, three stories high. There seemed to be no way into the first level, but an external stair led them up to the second.
Jame cautiously opened the door into what appeared to be a wide, square, low-ceilinged hall. Thick columns around the edges supported the floor above. Once away from the circling walk of white marble, nothing else broke that sable expanse except for rectangles of moonlight streaming in through open windows.
Could this be the top of the black rock? If so, it was embedded in the tower as well as buried under it, neither of which seemed particularly safe. Against her better judgment, Jame stepped out onto it. She had never encountered an inactive temple before. It was like setting foot on the back of an inert monster disguised as a black dance floor.
“Even now,” Timmon had said, “Jamethiel Dream-weaver may be dancing out the souls of the Kencyr Host.”
She remembered that dark pavement shot with veins of luminous green in the great hall of the Master’s House. A delicate, bare foot touched it, and the veins began to throb. Glide, dip, turn, star-spangled gown aswirl and power swirled with it. She danced to her own hummed tune, smiling, and the watchers swayed forward entranced, seduced. Such beauty, such power, such innocence servant to such evil . . .
Strong arms grabbed Jame and flung her off the black rock into the wall. Marble shuddered against her back as the tower swayed, grinding against the temple’s sullen, immobile flanks.
“The Fall is happening, even now,” she said, blinked, and focused on Brier’s face above her. “Sorry.”
The Kendar let her go. “Sometimes,” she said, “you frighten me.”
“Do as I say,” Jame snapped at Damson, who was watching her with raised eyebrows. “Not as I do.”
“No chance of that, Ten,” said the cadet. “You teach me my limits.”
Some of the columns had cracked and fallen. Most, however, still stood, supporting the upper floor.
But the rock didn’t move, thought Jame.
It was like a square peg rammed into this world’s living flesh. It also felt solid, unlike other temples she had encountered. How would the priests control it when they arrived if they couldn’t enter it? Were they even meant to? Nascent power was already stirring in it, and Langadine writhed. Were all temples like this, capable of shaking their hosts to pieces? Did the Builders, those small, gray, innocent folk, know what destruction their work could produce? Rather, she blamed the Kencyrath’s Three-Faced God, who used the materials at hand so ruthlessly in its seemingly endless battle against Perimal Darkling.