The Silver Lake (68 page)

“Yes, Sayin.”

The tinge of disbelief in his voice made her smile.

She felt rather than heard him withdraw a moment later, and took the opportunity to tug at a fold in her cushion which was irritating her left buttock in a very undignified manner. She’d forgotten about the many sacrifices made to appearances at Incasa’s main temple, but it was of little importance. She wouldn’t be here that long. With a sigh, she gave the cushion a final, irritated tug.

When she’d left, she’d felt as old and used up as a candle stub, but the year spent at Adasi-Koy had given her the strength and clarity needed to face the coming trials. It had given Bessic a chance to solidify his position as First Oracle as well, she allowed, which was all to the good. Ineasa-Sarayi needed a strong, single hand at the rudder if it was to weather the coming storms in one piece. She had no intention of undermining his authority; however, she was old enough to realize that intention and actuality were two entirely different streams, which power and appearance had a habit of silting up all too often. She would be glad to return to the more peacefully retired world of Adasi-Koy’s lighter duties and softer cushions when this was all over. Reaching for the glass of salap at her elbow, she allowed her mind to return there ahead of her body.

As it was here, her own small meditation room back home held windows on all four sides, the specially made and very expensive glass panes lightly tinted with color to represent the four directions of prophecy contained within the passage of time: yellow to the east for the dawn and for the past, pink for the north and south and the choices they offered in the clear, high light of the present, and blue to the west for the setting sun and its journey into a shadowed and enigmatic future. As a delinkos she had used those colors to hone and focus her gift; now they existed only in her memory and in the variations of warmth the sun cast through them and onto her face and hands. She remembered how the pink and the blue glass had transformed the shining, silvery waters of Gol-Beyaz and how the yellow had covered the slopes of the Degisken-Dag Mountains with a fine golden-wrought mist.

She snorted suddenly. She’d never much liked the look of that. Mountains should be green—clean, healthy green. Of course, to her eyes now the mountains would always be black as would the rest of the physical world. With a sigh, she returned her frosted, prophetic gaze to the west and the blue-and-silver-streaked Citadel below.

After months of careful sifting through a hundred streams, she’d finally sorted out the vision Incasa had sent her a year ago. A child of great potential, still unformed, born under the cover of Havo’s Dance; a child, a God, created by the raw and uncontrolled power of the wild land spirits, solidified by hunger and by bloodshed, and fashioned out of madness, quickened by battle, and ready to be brought into the physical world by Anavatan’s champions or by its enemies; a God for whom creation and destruction were two very real possibilities in equal measure. A God who stood poised on the edge of a dark place no God had any business going. And so, armed with the first and possibly only clear message she’d ever received from the God of Prophecy, she’d returned to His main temple with one simple directive: raise a High Seeking so that Incasa might ensure this child took its place beside the Gods and thus maintained the safety and security of Their people and Their city.

Or perished before It could be used against Them.

“Oristo and Usara’s temples are responsible for the
well-being of the city
and Estavia’s for its safety.”

Freyiz sniffed as the First Abayos-Priest’s words from a year ago filtered through her mind. Temple politics always muddied the streams. The Healer, Hearth, and Battle Gods might be responsible for such things as the well-being and safety of Anavatan, but Incasa temple-seers were responsible for its future and without that there was no Healing, Hearth, or Battle.

Staring out the southernmost window, Freyiz watched the prophetic waters of Gol-Beyaz turn from silvery-pink to silvery-blue as the final afternoon of winter began to wane. The future was still muddy and uncertain, so all the chosen champions of the Gods must be protected and all those who dipped into the streams made use of, both old and new. Brax and Spar were covered by Oristo, that left only Graize. To that end she had sent a dream to the golden-haired one from the south. Graize must be protected if the streams were to flow cleanly to any destination at all. She must do it, Freyiz had seen that clearly, and so they must form a tenuous alliance for now and worry about future conflict when it came. Creation or destruction was too close for more than just a God-child of prophecy this night.

Far to the west, standing with a small, mounted complement of Yuruk on an escarpment overlooking Anavatan’s great walls, Graize flung his arms wide with a howl of laughter as he felt the preparations of Incasa’s temple wash over him. The rising wind sent his ragged brown hair whipping about his face, and he swept up a handful of newly born spirits and flung them toward the Godling. It snapped them out of the air much as a seagull might snap up a spray of tiny hamsi, then shot down to wrap Itself about his shoulders. His pony sidestepped nervously as the Godling passed its head, and Danjel glanced over, her green eyes showing a flash of annoyance in the more feminine face she’d chosen for this night.

“Control yourself, Kardos,” she hissed. “They’ll see us if you keep that up!”

“Nonsense!” Graize shouted, sucking in a mouthful of spirits of his own, delighting in the cold burst of power that shot down his throat. “The God of Sharks already knows we’re coming! He’s holding out His hand and almost begging us to do it! It’s going to be like snapping up fish in a barrel!”

The confusing comparison threatened to send his thoughts skittering off in a dozen directions, but he slammed the image of his stag beetle up before his mind’s eye and jerked his thoughts back to business.

“Eight people; that’s all we need, my swallow-kardos,” he said, his uneven pupils glowing with an unnatural light. “That’s what I saw, and that’s what we’ve got. Eight. You and I for the present, bird and beetle, flight and fight. Rayne and Caleb for the future. That’s a sharp-toothed marten and a cunning little mouse. And Kursk and Ozan for the past, fox for craft and nightingale for song. Oh, wait. That’s six. Oh, well, the Godling can count for two. It needs to be two anyway for creation and destruction, doesn’t It?” He tipped his head to one side. “Or Brax and Spar can join in,” he allowed, “if they live through the night.” He began to giggle to himself. “Which one, which one, which one has the spirit-turtle-dragonfly-pea beneath it,” he said in a singsong voice. “Place your shine; place your shine, which one, which one.”

“Graize.”

Kursk’s firm voice snapped him back to himself for a moment, but as the setting sun suddenly shone through a break in the clouds to illuminate the blue-cast God-Wall anchoring Anavatan’s great defenses not a hundred yards away, he began to giggle once again, remembering.

As Danjel had predicted, it had taken some time to convince Kursk and Timur of the plan they’d beaten out: to take a small kazakin to the very walls of Anavatan during this, the most dangerous time of the year. It took even longer for Kursk to agree to Graize’s choice of combatants. The leader of the Rus-Yuruk had scratched at a thin scar running through the beard by his upper lip before shaking his head.

“Rayne’s
old
enough,”
he’d agreed, “but Calebask’s still very young and very reckless. If he came to harm, his abia would skin us both. He
can’t come.”

Forcing his wayward mind to stay on topic, Graize had fixed the kazakin leader with an intense stare. He needed Caleb for the game, to balance the Godling’s birthing with the mouse balancing the marten, otherwise there would be too much spleen, so youth or no youth, he needed him.
“Caleb won’t come to harm if
you’re
with us,”
he’d stated with as much sincerity as thirteen years conning delinkon on the streets of Anavatan could muster.

Kursk had frowned.
“And you’ve seen this, child?”

And she had seen it—just as the spirits had told Graize she would. That future stream was wide and fast flowing, almost a certainty with Incasa’s plan pushing it along. And within that stream Caleb would come to no harm if Kursk were with them. But Timur hadn’t seen the trickle of blood carried along by the stream, the trickle of blood that washed over the older wyrdin’s features. Only Graize had seen that.

Now, he returned his attention to the present as Rayne poked him in the ribs to bring him back into the present. “Don’t worry, my kardon,” he said carelessly. “Everyone’s so afraid that the spirits will attack Anavatan again this year that they’ll miss our attack until it’s far too late.” Slipping off his pony, he caught up a stick and drove the point into the ground at his feet. “They’re crouched beside this deep, dark, little pool that they think is the sea monster’s front door,” he said, removing the stick to peer down at the indentation in the dirt. “And there they wait, weapons at the ready for when it pops its head out, and when it does ... wham!” He drove the stick back into the ground with so much force that it snapped in half. He glared at it for a moment, then tossed it aside. “But what they don’t know is that there’s a back door and that Incasa’s going to open it for us. The old bastard wants my Godling all to Himself, but He can’t have It. It’s
mine.”

Craning his neck to see past Ozan’s mount, Caleb frowned at him. “How are you going to stop Him?” he asked.

“The same way you stop a well from eating a bucket,” he answered. “You tie a rope to the handle and draw the bucket back up after it’s drunk its fill.”

“Won’t the well see the rope?”

Graize raised a lecturing finger at him. “The best way to defeat a well, Kardos, is to use Its own arrogance against It.” Climbing back into the saddle, he turned his mount and headed down toward the God-Wall at a gallop, following a great host of silvery spirits, the Godling still wrapped about his neck like a mist-colored scarf.

Danjel glanced over at Kursk, who nodded, then she turned her own mount to follow him, Caleb and Rayne close behind. “We’ll keep that in mind, Kardos,” she said thoughtfully.

Behind her, Ozan and Kursk exchanged a cautious look.