Consorts of Heaven (29 page)

Einon had never actually been to the Street of Lesser Reckoners, and he got lost several times, perhaps because he found his mind wandering. Given how cold they had been towards each other up until recently, Einon had been surprised at Kerin’s eagerness to see Sais when he awoke. Though he trusted each of them - to an extent - he was wary of them together, and he had considered eavesdropping when he heard them talking in Sais’s room - but the Mothers had spared him that temptation; Einon had ducked back into his own room when Fychan ran upstairs, ready to just happen to walk past the boy’s room as he spoke with Sais and Kerin.

He too had been relieved to hear that Fychan had had contact only with the Cariad herself, but he was puzzled at the Beloved Daughter of Heaven’s mundane request. Perhaps it was a test . . . he only wished he could work out what or who was being tested.

When he finally found the clerk’s house it was grander than he had expected: three storeys high with a small portico. He asked the servant who answered the door if Anona was in. The girl blanched and told him to wait. He stepped back to check if the falling fire had beaten him here, but the lintels were unpainted.

After a while the door was re-opened by a well-dressed man with thinning hair, obviously the master of the house, who neither invited him in, nor introduced himself, but said only, ‘I am sorry, Gwas. Anona is gone.’

‘Gone? Gone where?’

‘We do not know.’

‘But you are her, ah, father, presumably? How can you not know?’

The man hesitated, looked around, then at last said, ‘Please, step inside.’ He led the way to a finely appointed parlour, but did not offer refreshments. After they were seated he said, ‘She has run away from home. My wife and I are most upset.’

‘When did this happen?’

‘Two weeks back. We think she may have left with her beau, a mason - not the sort of suitor we encouraged.’

‘I see,’ said Einon, who did not. ‘And do you know why? Had she, ah, got herself into trouble with this boy?’

‘Oh no, I am sure tis nothing like that - and if it were, we would forgive her. We disapproved of the relationship, but we would never do anything to drive away our little girl.’

‘So why did she leave?’

The man hesitated, then said, ‘I wish I knew.’

Einon sensed a lie - not a big one, but enough to worry him. He considered showing the man the doll, then decided against it - he knew too little to give away information.

Once he had been shown out, he went to the vegetable market at the end of the street, found an eating-house with a view of Anona’s house and waited. After a while a servant emerged from the house with a basket. He intercepted the girl at the edge of the market; in return for one of the Cariad’s promissory notes, she was happy to talk and then swear secrecy.

She confirmed that Anona had left home suddenly in the company of an apprentice mason, but only after monitors in Tyr livery had called demanding to see the daughter of the house. The family had been out visiting a relative sick with the falling fire, and when the housekeeper told them of the visit the parents had hustled Anona away. She had left later that day. That explained the father’s reticence.

For the Cariad to ask Fychan to get the girl out the City was strange enough. To find the task already complete piled confusion upon conundrum.

Though Kerin tried to pray for guidance, the words would not come. Instead, she sat in the sunshine by the window, listening to Damaru picking at his harp and thinking about what Sais had told her. He believed he spoke the truth, but that did not make what he said true. A priest would immediately brand him as Abyss-touched and call for his death for such talk - just as a priest had called for, and got, the death of Kerin’s own mother.

The concepts Sais described - a world of many worlds, the sun and moons as globes - were hard, but not impossible, even if she remained somewhat hazy on the reasons why people did not fall off their globes. If this great world of worlds allowed a place for the Skymothers, she would have tried to embrace it, but the revelations he had reluctantly shared had been prompted by fears about the Cariad - ridiculous, blasphemous, unthinkable fears.

Yet when Fychan spoke of her odd request Kerin had to at least consider the possibility that the Daughter of Heaven was not divine perfection made flesh. And if she was not what she claimed to be, was anything Kerin believed really true?

She shook her head. She could not afford such uncertainty, not with Damaru’s testing fast approaching. Ebrilla and the other guests had already gone out in search of good vantage points, so she got her son some food and sat with him to wait for the priest.

When Rhidian arrived, both Einon and Sais were still out and Fychan was still asleep. Kerin went up to wake him. From the way he smelled, Kerin had no doubt he had enjoyed his night.

She suspected that Rhidian wanted to ask Fychan about his encounter with the Cariad, but by the time the lad had made himself presentable, it was time to leave.

Rhidian repainted the circle on Damaru’s forehead with his own paint, in ‘a more suitable colour’. The particular shade of dark orange reminded Kerin of a fungus that grew on dead bogwood trees back in Dangwern, and the act of painting the circle recalled again Sais’s words about the many worlds. If he was right, a single circle was wholly inadequate.

Though Rhidian did not mention her place in the upcoming test, he did not stop her attending Damaru. It was as though he viewed her as an appendage of the skyfool. When they left the house he said only, ‘Kindly remain a step behind us, unless your boy needs you.’

Damaru attracted more attention than usual on the streets. As the four of them passed, people stopped what they were doing and stood with heads bowed, some murmuring prayers or circling their breast repeatedly.

In the upper City people lined the streets to watch them. Kerin gave no mind to the curious looks and muttered comments her presence drew and held her head high. The mood of the crowd changed as they neared the square. Kerin recalled star-season in Dangwern, when the villages played each other at games; she felt the same charge, the same anticipation of sport. When she glimpsed tokens changing hands in the crowd, she remembered Ebrilla’s words about those who placed wagers on the candidates.

Over the heads of the crowd Kerin glimpsed the empty balcony of the Oriel Glan. Monitors cleared a way through the crowd for them and they entered the painted tent.

Inside, refreshments had been set up, and seats put in five groups. Servants waited to attend the skyfools and their guardians. The skyfools were uneasy, staring hard at each other, then looking away, twitching and flapping their hands. Kerin recognised the reaction; they must see other skyfools as aberrations in the pattern, and they were searching for a way to make the world right. Only the oldest boy appeared unconcerned.

Functionaries and guards fussed in the background and the air of anticipation grew. Rhidian told them that rather then entering the square together as they had for the presentation, each candidate group would wait in the tent to be called forward. The test would be conducted and overseen by a group of priests. Kerin found herself relieved that the Cariad would not be watching them. Various tests had been used at different times: this year Rhidian said the skyfools would be asked to exert their will over water; Kerin thought this sounded more like a showman’s trick than proof of divine ability.

The skyfools would be tested in the same order they had been presented in, so Damaru would go last. Despite Kerin’s confidence in her son, she was not looking forward to the wait.

The first skyfool was called forward, and the rumble of the crowd died away as the front of the tent was raised. Kerin glimpsed the square, with the wooden frame of the test in the middle, before the tent flap was lowered again. A priest announced the skyfool and requested that the test begin. The crowd murmured as the preparations were made.

Silence fell. Then the murmurs began; low voices encouraged the boy. The murmurs grew into cheers. When the crowd grew quiet again the priest announced that the boy was worthy to face the final test in the presence of the Cariad and should take his rest until he entered the Tyr the following evening.

The tent flap was raised, and the boy and his companions returned. Kerin watched the skyfool, trying to assess how the test had affected him. He looked mildly bemused and a little tired, but not too upset, which was good. The monitors escorted the successful group out the back of the tent and the next candidate was brought forward.

This time the murmurs grew in volume as the test proceeded, and a few lone voices shouted out ‘Unworthy’, only to be shushed, then overtaken by cheers. When this group returned, the guardian had splashes of red on his shoulders and face. For a moment Kerin thought it was blood. Then she remembered what Rhidian had said: the water whose course the skyfools had to divert was coloured, the better to be seen - by the crowd, as well as the skyfools, Kerin presumed.

The third candidate passed with only the faintest murmur before the cheering began.

The fourth boy, the oldest candidate, did not fare so well. The muttering grew and swelled. She heard a man, presumably the boy’s guardian, shout something, possibly to encourage his son, then the cries of ‘Unworthy!’ drowned him out. The cries became a chant, hundreds of voices, shouting, baying, some screaming. Fychan looked ashen, and Kerin swallowed and put her hand on Damaru’s arm. Her son shivered under her touch, his eyes distant and uncertain.

Finally the voices fell away.

A few moments later the flap was raised to admit the priest and the failed boy’s guardian, drenched in red dye and openly crying. The priest took the man’s arm and steered him out the back of the tent. Several of those inside made the gesture of am-annwn as he passed, and when he left he was greeted with jeers and catcalls. He would return to his home in disgrace. His fate would be better than that of his boy, who would be held by the monitors at the edge of the square until the testing was complete, then stoned to death by those same people who had earlier urged him on.

On Rhidian’s signal, Kerin stood, her legs shaking.

The four of them walked to the front of the tent. ‘Medelwyr be with us,’ murmured Rhidian. The flap was raised.

As they crossed the square Kerin found herself staring at the strange contraption at the far end. A chair stood in front of a high wooden wall. A copper spout peeped over the top of the wall. Water from earlier tests had splashed over the chair and up the wall and pooled on the ground like wine, or blood.

Rhidian murmured for them to stop about twenty paces away. A priest walked out from behind the wall and announced Damaru. Two less overdressed priests approached and led Fychan to the chair. Kerin saw his lips moving in prayer.

She stepped forward to stand beside Damaru. Rhidian did not stop her. ‘You remember what you have to do, Damaru?’ she whispered. ‘Stop the water falling and wetting Fychan.’

Damaru gave no sign of having heard her.

The priests strapped Fychan to the chair to avoid his movements influencing the test.

Kerin resisted the temptation to touch or talk to Damaru. She prayed that his apparent indifference indicated he was gathering his strength.

As the crowd grew quiet, a faint but peculiar noise began behind the wall:
squeak-thump, squeak-thump
- a pump, Kerin realised, like the ones at inns and street-corners that raised water.

A red drip fell from the lip of the spout onto Fychan’s head. Then another. Kerin held her breath, willing Damaru to show his talent.

All around, people began to murmur.

The drips became a trickle. Kerin stared at the spout as though she, not her son, were the one with the power to influence the flow. The trickle became a stream. She waited for the first cry from the crowd, but they had fallen silent.

She blinked and looked down, expecting Fychan to be wet with dye. He was not. A hand’s-breadth above Fychan’s head the flow of water stopped. It was not being diverted to splash onto the wall. The water was being taken out of existence and then - yes, she saw it now! - returned in another place. The pool around the chair was growing. Not a drop touched Fychan. Nerves gave way to a stranger feeling, a sudden unease of the soul, as though something indefinable had changed when her back had been turned.

The crowd began to cheer.

As he turned back into Stryd Dechreur, Sais heard distant cheering from the direction of the Tyr. He found the door locked, and wondered if Einon had joined Ebrilla at the testing, but knocked anyway. He saw movement at the window, and a moment later Einon stuck out his head.

‘Ah, tis you,’ he said.