The Hidden Icon (29 page)

“
Dreshani
,” Paivi said, nodding in respect to father, mother, and daughter. “We will take her now.”

This seemed explanation enough for the royal family, if it felt rather unsatisfactory to me. Morainn’s look was sympathetic but brief, for she, too, had a part to play. To be my friend wasn’t in her power just then. Parents watchful, she left my side to join them. I crossed around the table to Paivi. I was determined not to look as though I were being led, though his smile at my being so agreeable did little to rid me of the feeling that I was.

The company that waited at the table folded around us as we exited the hall. I noted the guards that lined the corridors, a presence that hadn’t been in place the day before. An extra precaution on my account, no doubt.

“Where are we going?” I asked. Paivi managed to smile even when talking, and I began to think that perhaps this was not merely a response to me, but simply in keeping with his character. Erutal had hardly any stories about him and didn’t make much trouble, so I supposed cheer could be his province where terror must be mine.

“Our quarters and our work spaces in Jhosch lay under the city. One of the entrances is here, in the royal palace.”

I appreciated his candid answer, and couldn’t help but thrill a little at seeing yet another side to this strange place. I decided to press him, to see if he would prove as taciturn as Gannet.

“Why aren’t I staying with the rest of the icons? Did I need to be tested first?”

I wanted him to clarify many things about my test, but I wasn’t yet sure if he had truly been present, or how much I wanted him to know if he had not been.

“We are in the same instant revered and reviled by the people of Ambar,” Paivi explained without a hint of irritation or shame. His voice dipped slightly lower, but didn’t take on the full character of subtlety. “
Drech
Colaugh wishes you to stay where you are for now. So for now, you will.”

What he didn’t say was that it was they, the icons, who would ultimately decide my fate.

And the fate of all in Ambar, I suspected.

The others nodded their assent at Paivi’s declaration, murmuring here and there. I noted that the icons were in many stages of life, the youngest a boy who had yet to grow in the beard that was so fashionable among his people, and the eldest a woman paper-delicate, supported on the arm of another. My desire to make woefully uninformed guesses about which icon was which was curbed by my attentions drifting to the course we took.

Paivi lead us out of the palace into what might have been dubbed out of doors a courtyard, though within the mountain it seemed a strange, unnaturally green place. Musky-scented mushrooms sprouted from the rocks, and lichens, herbs, and shade-loving foliage besides. Ferns trembled as we passed, their fronds closing up like hands retreating to pockets. A fountain like the ones I had admired on our arrival bubbled here, too, the stone splashed in a wild pattern and blank of the growth that asserted itself so thoroughly elsewhere. Near the fountain two columns rose, web-delicate, filtering the murky light. A great gulf of shadow opened up between them, and only when we moved closer did I realize we didn’t approach a well, but a stair.

I watched as the icons that had walked with us from the hall began to file down the stairs. A glow trickled down the walls where some of them passed, and the faces and hands of others seemed to exude ghostly light. Our gifts were not all the same, but these little manipulations of the natural world were still amazing to me. I allowed them all to pass me, and even shared a light smile with two among them, a young man and woman who proceeded hand-in-hand down the stair, each fairer even than many of the Ambarians I had seen. As I had with the other icons, I didn’t extend my mind to theirs, though I sensed that they were not as guarded, as resistant, as the others, and I couldn’t help but compare the slim mouth and eyes of the woman with those of my sister, Esbat. Without Morainn, without Gannet, I wanted very much for a clever companion.

Paivi waited with me, and when the others had descended, his hand didn’t need to make the gesture his eyes so strongly suggested. I should go down. I thought about suggesting that I could not conjure light as they had, but I had the power Gannet had taught me, to see the light of moving life even in deepest darkness.

And what else did Gannet teach you, Eiren?

I walled myself against him immediately, for hadn’t Gannet warned me it would go this way with me in Ambar? Despite his lessons, I was as free with my thoughts here as I had been as an ignorant girl before he’d met me. I didn’t respond, sorry for having been such a poor student, far more wretched even than my lessons as a child had given me reason to believe. The arts and sciences, diplomacy and history, these things I could master, but discipline I could not. As I descended the stair I thought to reach out for Gannet if he was here, but I could feel Paivi waiting like someone outside of a locked door and I didn’t dare turn the key.

What I hadn’t seen from above were the details along the spiraled stair that descended deep within the city. Characters like the ones in the book Gannet had given me, like those embroidered in my clothing, fled silvery down the stone walls, given a haunting glow when I employed my dark-sight. Paivi noted my attentions.

“He didn’t teach you to read,” he presumed, and for a fleeting moment I was grateful that the other icons were well ahead of us and couldn’t hear. If I was to belong here, I wanted them to know me at least for who I was, if prejudice against Theba was something that could be surmounted.

“I know how to read,” I snapped, not surprised at his ability to raise my ire, but ashamed of it. My next words were more level. “Morainn told me that these weren’t words, anyway, but symbols.”

Shrugging, Paivi touched a hand against one of the characters, and a little spark formed between his fingers and the symbol.

“
Dresha
Morainn isn’t one of us,” he explained, which was no explanation at all. My attentions narrowed with my eyes.

“And what does it mean, to be one of you?” It was a question I had asked Gannet in many ways, with and without words, though his conspicuous absence showed me that whatever Paivi and the rest were, Gannet was set purposefully apart. Again I wondered what terrors he stirred if even I were welcomed among them.

Paivi, however, seemed prepared to give a more direct answer. As his lips parted so did a little his mind, so that I could see him even as I guarded so closely my own thoughts.

“We preserve the future, we plan for it,” he spoke, and as he did so I could see the icons as they were, as living memories of what had been and what would be again. I could see that Paivi was much older than he appeared, or carried with him the lives and experiences of other, older men. I saw births and deaths of icons, saw the flare in them that confirmed who they were, why they had come, and why they must again depart. Men and women and children whose lives were given freely in service of what must be. To live as I had done, in ignorance, was to squander a gift. As I loved stories, they lived them.

Though I hadn’t intended it, my wonder and greed at what lay within him broadened the perception between us, and he spoke to me again in my mind.

You cannot know what it means to us, Eiren, to have you with us again.

Confused but hesitant, I didn’t wall him out again, but stood my ground like a sentry at a gate. Paivi knew something lay beyond, but not what.

Again?

You will remember us soon. Theba will remember within you.

I kept my eyes fixed upon our footing, which had changed from stair to smooth stone, more tunnel than corridor, and unsettlingly like what I remembered from the Rogue’s Ear.

I don’t know what I’m meant to do.

My thought was more honest than any tone of voice could have conveyed. I saw Paivi, then, my image of a sentry become me, armored, and he stood with his hands open in a fashion that reminded me of Gannet’s, just before we had held each other. Did Paivi know? My armor flashed and hardened.

You will change things, Eiren. Our time has come, the old time. Aleyn and Ambar will know again the pleasures of unity, of hands joined in common work.

I started, thinking of what Gannet had said, that we’d once shared a king, Shran. We’d known peace. Paivi must’ve known how this would appeal to me, which made me think he couldn’t be telling me the whole truth. Ambar didn’t seem to be a kingdom interested in peace, and if the icons had as much power as I suspected they did, they had even more to do with warring than their war-mongering king.

“If you’ve been as patient as I’ve been lead to believe, then you can stand to be a little longer,” I said aloud, my mind hurriedly closed, all images and metaphoric landscape drenched in black. I didn’t want him to know anymore, and so I couldn’t ask for anymore, either.

Paivi seemed not in the least disturbed at having been so violently ousted from my mind. No doubt he expected it, or appreciated my display of strength. The tunnel gave way to a floor of bright, mosaic tiles shining under torchlight that allowed for me to drop my dark-sight and revel in the warm, natural glow. The characters on the walls had been replaced by shelves carved at a comfortable height and filled with books, instruments, and curiosities. The corridor widened first into a foyer, and then into a room proper, with low tables and chairs and braziers positioned about that gave off a comfortable heat but no smoke. The icons that had arrived ahead of us had taken seats here, heads together talking or given over to study of some kind. Like a wheel, the room opened on to other corridors on many sides, no doubt leading to other common or private apartments. Paivi gestured that I take a seat at the table where three icons, including the pair who had smiled at me earlier, were seated.

Though I expected him to join me, he didn’t, and we four were left looking at each other.

“Hello, Eiren,” said the young man, my name a little strange on his tongue, as though the emphasis were misplaced. “I’m Jaken, icon of Alber. This is my twin sister, Shasa. She’s also the icon of Alber.”

My surprise prompted Shasa to continue seamlessly where her brother had left off.

“Alber has a dual nature. We’re not the first twins, but the first in many generations,” she said, smiling at her brother. “It is easier this way, to live as two minds, instead of one at war.”

Her voice was light, but I sensed she was alluding to darker things. I didn’t know this Alber, at least not by that name. He, or she, could perhaps be a variant on the mad carpenter, a figure who built his house up every day only to tear it down each night, driven by hope while the sun shone and plagued by demons when it set.

The third icon that sat with the pair filled the awkward silence. She had a few years on each of us, though not many.

“They think it the most natural thing in the world, though I remember when they were born, and how difficult it was to explain to everybody else what they were,” she observed. Her tone, too, was as sisterly as Shasa’s had been. I was surprised both by their openness and their honesty. Their minds, though lightly guarded, didn’t seem to disguise fear or disgust. “I am Najat, the Dreamer.”

That she announced no name beyond that of her icon made me shudder, her words planting a spreading chill in my bones. Najat I knew well, and it occurred to me that if Paivi wasn’t their leader, she must surely be. If they were preservers and protectors of history, as they claimed, of what had passed and what would come, she who could see all of hope and consequence in every moment would fall naturally into that place. Najat rewarded those who were generous and kind with fine dreams, and gave nightmares to those she deemed deserving of them. Unlike Adah, however, her judgment I trusted.

Najat smiled, oblivious of my considerations.

“Your birth I didn’t witness, Eiren, though I would not have needed to say a word for all to know you.”

I wasn’t sure if this was meant as a compliment or not, and so I didn’t reply at first. To delay would have been rude, or perhaps might have driven all three away, so I spoke up when I could formulate a thought I wouldn’t be ashamed to utter aloud.

“My mother always said I wasn’t an attractive child, so perhaps it’s for the best you neither witnessed my birth nor were forced to herald it,” I said breezily, grateful for ready, if weak, wit. Their laughs were generous, however, and Jaken rose to lift a pot that hung above one of the braziers, and as he brought it closer, I could smell the petal scent of flowery tea roll off with the heat. It smelled like home.

“We’ve heard that you are a great keeper of stories, Eiren,” Shasa said softly, producing from clever compartments within the table itself palm-sized bowls for tea. I was happy to have a cup to look into when next I spoke.

“I am, though I’ve been lead to believe they would not be to your liking.”

It was neither true nor fair, really. Gannet had never said that he didn’t like my stories and had sat through every one. It was only his response sometimes, or his lack of response, that never settled with me as well as the comfortable appreciation of my family, their praise and their little additions of sentiment or embellishment.

Najat didn’t read me as he might have, but rather as a woman who has seen much and understood the nature of the heart, her next was pure human intuition. Even if she wasn’t entirely human, and neither was I.