Dal glanced up at Tek-aKet and waited until the man nodded before he continued. “Perhaps three days after he took the Dome, my lord, my cousin called me to him, saying that he had an errand for me.” Keeping his eyes fixed on Tek-aKet, Dal’s voice did not falter. “For years he has kept me under his hand, and I have not left Gotterang unless as his companion. Yet he has now, suddenly, asked me to do so, in order to find the Mercenary Dhulyn Wolfshead.”
Mar glanced at Gun over her shoulder, her eyebrows raised; Gun pressed his lips together and nodded. A quick look around the room showed much less puzzlement than he would have expected. She’s told them, he thought, by all the Caids, she’s told them.
Dal, too, had noticed the change of atmosphere in the room. “Apparently, you know more of this than I, though I knew that my cousin had shown interest in this Brother before he took the Carnelian Throne.
“He said no more of her at that moment, and I walked with him to the room where your crown, my lord Tarkin, and your treasures, and the jewels that your wife brought with her to her marriage are kept. He said he was looking for a relic of the Sleeping God.”
Tek-aKet nodded. “An old bracelet,” he said, “with green stones. I know of it. The Jaldean Shrine here in Gotterang has been asking for it for months.”
“As you say, my lord. Lok found it, a gold bracelet in the antique manner of the Caids, and he put it on.” Dal picked up the cup of ganje that had been poured for him, looked inside it, and put it down again. He’s not looking anyone in the face, Gun thought. When did that start? Dal had always been the most watchful of men.
“What of it,” the Tarkin said. “My mother wore it often. I’ve worn it myself.”
Gun wouldn’t have thought it possible, but at these words Dal paled even more, the shadows around his mouth stained a faint green.
“Drink something, man; you’re no use to us if you faint,” Dhulyn Wolfshead said in her rough voice. The Cloudman to the Tarkin’s left stood and with his own hand poured out water from the glass jug on the table and handed the mug to Dal-eDal.
“Thank you.” His voice was a thread of air. He sipped at the water and set the mug down next to the untouched ganje. He cleared his throat, but his voice when he continued was still rough. “Lok found the bracelet,” he said, “and slipped it over his hand. As I watched, the bracelet faded, dissolved, and was absorbed into his skin. I looked up, and Lok was watching the spot where the bracelet had been and smiling. And his shadow, on the wall behind him, was not his own, but larger, darker, than it should have been-” Dal sucked in a short, sharp sip of air, “and was the wrong shape, as if it had wings about to open.”
Parno Lionsmane’s cup tilted, but he caught it before it fell.
“The lantern-” Tek-aKet started to say.
“No, my lord,” Dal interrupted. “My own shadow was there, pale and ordinary, as familiar to me as my own hand. Except that my shadow seemed to shrink from his, as if it knew something I did not.” This time, when Dal stopped speaking, no one else moved or spoke, so obvious was it that he had not finished. “There is more, my lord. When I looked again to my cousin, to ask him about what I had seen, his eye was green. Not blue as it has always been, and, his eye patch-” Dal lifted his left hand to his own face, as if to show them where the eye patch should be. “I don’t know, perhaps because of the angle at which we were standing, perhaps because he had touched it somehow-” Dal looked across the table at his Tarkin. “My lord, I could see that both his eyes were green. Both of them.”
Mar shifted abruptly and Gun loosened the suddenly tight grip he’d taken on her shoulders. His breathing came uncomfortably quick, and in his mind he saw again the barricade of shelves and books that kept away the Green Shadow. The Cloudman at the table with the Tarkin made the old sign against evil, thumbtip to tip of index finger, the Mercenaries standing around the room developed suddenly neutral expressions, and Wolfshead and Lionsmane looked at each other, recognition in their faces. But Dal spoke matter-of-factly like a man beyond caring what other people thought.
“Clearly, you believe what you saw,” the Tarkin said finally. “What do you believe it means?”
“It means you must not wait, my lord,” Dal said. Suddenly reaching out his hand to the man across from him, Dal looked the Tarkin directly in the face. “Listen to me. This is no ordinary coup. I have thought that it did not matter to me who sat on the Carnelian Throne, but I tell you, it matters to me what sits there, and that green-eyed thing is not my cousin.” Once again he spoke, not as a frightened man who expects to be held in contempt, but as a man freely owning a fear in the face of which the opinions of others were meaningless. “It has the Marked brought to the Dome, and they leave broken and mad. The Carnelian Guard-” He broke off, frowning. “Elite troops injure themselves with carelessness or in quarrels, except for those who go off duty and disappear. Gan-eGan has killed himself. Children are weeping in corners. Whatever this is, its poison is spreading. You must waste no time. You must act now.”
Gun licked his lips. One pair of eyes had left off looking at Dal-eDal and had fixed on him. One pair of stone-gray eyes that had slid over him, unable to see him when he had entered the room, were focused on him now.
“Let’s ask the Scholar,” Dhulyn Wolfshead said. “I’ll wager my second-best sword he knows what this is, or can guess. He knows more than anyone what the formerly one-eyed Lok-iKol has been up to.”
Gun’s hands formed fists at his sides. It felt like every eye in the room was on him. Even Mar had turned around and was searching his face, her eyebrows drawn down, her lips parted.
“Come, Gundaron of Valdomar.” Gun winced at the tone in Dhulyn Wolfshead’s husky voice. “From the look of you, Dal-eDal’s not the only one here who’s seen this green-eyed thing.”
Everyone was looking at him, Gun saw as he tried to swallow with his suddenly dry mouth. Everyone except Parno Lionsmane. He stood behind the Wolfshead, his hand on her shoulder, his eyes squeezed shut.
“Come forward, boy, and tell us what you know of this.”
Gun found himself responding to the tone of command in the Tarkin’s voice, stepping around Mar and coming closer to the table before he realized he’d made up his mind to do it. Mar touched him on the arm as he passed, her worried eyes searching his face. He looked away from her. He couldn’t tell them everything. He couldn’t tell them that he, himself-they would never understand. Mar would never understand. He would lose all that was growing between them.
When he was facing the Tarkin, he cleared his throat, and released the breath he was holding. “I have seen it, my lord Tarkin. It is real.” Gun glanced around, but except for Mar, there was no friendly face. “I-we’ve been hiding,” he said. “Can you tell me, Lord Dal, have the Marked been going to the Dome only since the…” Gun bit his lip and then continued. “Since the green has come into Lok-iKol’s eyes?”
“I believe the decree changed that morning, just hours before my cousin, or the thing that he has become, sent for me.”
“What can you tell us, Scholar of Valdomar?”
Gun drew in a deep breath and settled his shoulders. He found himself folding his hands in front of him, as if about to recite his lesson. If only this was just another lecture, another examination in his Library. That what he was about to say was only interesting history, and not something that might very well change the lives of everyone in this room, including his own.
“I believe it is this Green Shadow that seeks for and destroys the Marked. That the teachings of the New Believers are nothing more than an excuse, invented to give it freedom to act.”