Trinity Rising: Book Two of the Wild Hunt (Wild Hunt Trilogy 2) (53 page)

Then for the first time in almost a year and a half, he dropped to one knee and genuflected before the Oak. Right hand over his heart, left palm held up and out.

Forgive me, Mother
.

The burning did not lessen.

Gair pushed himself back to his feet and walked towards the altar. He was halfway there when Resa stirred. Scar tissue shone briefly on her cheek, then she tugged her cowl forward and shuffled sideways, out of the light spilling around her from the high windows.

He stopped, not wanting to intrude. ‘I came to apologise, Sister.’

Her posture remained tense, uneasy, like a wild thing poised to flee.

‘It was wrong of me to stare. Forgive me.’

A slim hand gestured him forward and indicated the steps next to her, then she folded her hands together and bowed her head again. Gair guessed she was asking him to pray with her. Carefully looking nowhere but straight ahead, he walked the rest of the way to the altar steps.

In front of the great bronze Oak on the wall stood a smaller, leafless tree, set in the centre of the pristine white altar cloth. It had been fashioned from nails as long as his hand and as thick through as his index finger, dull and black as oak galls. Threaded through the iron tree’s branches was a silver chain, from which hung a medallion no bigger than his thumbnail.

A lump formed in his throat, big as a fist, and he knew, with numbing certainty, that the tree held two nails for every man and boy who had once called this Daughterhouse his home.

Goddess be with you, Brothers
.

After ten years at the Motherhouse, he couldn’t help but be moved by what the nameless blacksmith had done, taking the cold iron of a horrific death and transforming it into a symbol of life. He bowed his head and said a prayer for them, but the words echoed hollowly inside him, as if spoken into an empty room. After the final amen he waited, but all he heard above the rippling sound of the Song was his own heartbeat.

Making the sign of blessing over his breast, Gair looked up towards the Oak. Should he really expect anything different? The Goddess had been silent for many years. Perhaps it was now too many.

He reached for the rail to push himself up to his feet. Quick as an adder, Resa’s brown hand caught hold of his left wrist. He looked at her.

‘Sister?’

She kept her head down, hiding the worst of her scars, and turned his hand palm uppermost.

Seeing the brand no longer shocked him. He’d become accustomed to its ugliness, the lingering stiffness in the small muscles underneath it that made him think, after a year and a half, he would probably never regain full flexibility in that hand. To a believer like Resa, it was a symbol of everything she had been raised to shun.
Suffer ye not the life of a witch
.

But unlike Sofi, she did not recoil from it. Instead she tilted his hand towards the light and slowly traced the witchmark with her fingertip as if committing it to memory.

Lifting her head, she looked him full in the face.

The Cultist’s knife had taken a path from the left corner of her mouth almost to the angle of her jaw. On the right, it had slashed up towards her cheekbone and the cut had tightened as it healed, distorting her upper lip into a sneer.

Dark-brown eyes watched him for his reaction. Not challenging, not defiant, as Aysha had been, but composed. Only a little redness around her eyes betrayed that she had been weeping.

He had no name for what he felt. He wasn’t sure if it even had a name. It was dark and hot and surged up from his gut in a wave, making his palms itch for the hilt of a sword.

‘Sister, I’m so sorry.’

She wagged a finger in the gentlest of admonitions. He had nothing to be sorry for, it said. Then she pointed up at the Oak, bronze leaves shimmering in the candlelight. What had happened was the Goddess’ will – or maybe she meant Holy Eador would judge the culprits when they came before Her. Either way, there was nothing he could do.

Or was there?

Even as the thought entered his mind the Song rose up, a glorious cascade of possibility. Its potential thrummed in his every nerve, waiting for his will to give it shape.

A voice at the back of his mind cautioned that there might be a witchfinder in El Maqqam, but the voice was as small and buzzy as a trapped insect, easily ignored. What had been done to this girl was barbaric. Inhumane. So many different kinds of
wrong
that it offended every principle he had. He had to do something, somehow, to put it right.

With the power singing inside him, he reached out his free hand to Resa’s cheek. She shied away from it, frowning, fearful.

‘I won’t hurt you,’ he said, ‘but this will feel strange.’

What do you think you’re doing? We’re—
He pushed Alderan’s voice away, blotting it out. The weaving required all his attention.

The Song tingling through his fingertips, he cupped his hand over Resa’s cheek. Her eyes flew wide. Her spine stiffened, then her mouth fell open as shock melted into a spreading wonder. She looked exactly as Gair imagined it must feel to be touched by the Goddess’s grace.

Her own Song was a fragile thing, pale and weak as a plant kept too long in the dark. It shivered at his touch, its few clear notes almost drowned by the jangle of pain at its core. With only his instinct and a memory of Tanith’s Healing to work from, he wrapped his Song around it and turned it towards the light.

The buzzing intensified. It had grown from the barely audible whine of a biteme to the harsh, sawing drone of a horsefly. Frowning, Gair renewed his focus on the Song and the joyful rush of it along his nerves. He never tired of this. It was exhilarating, so alive—

Pain seared across his mind, blank and white as if he’d struck his head. His nerves screamed, the music of the Song transformed into a shrieking cacophony. He recoiled from it and his weaving broke apart into whirling white-hot shards that drove into his brain like the talons of a predator.

Holy saints, it hurt. Every beat of his heart sent hot pulses of pain through his head; he only barely managed to catch Sister Resa as she fainted. Holding her against his chest, he screwed his eyes shut and waited for the pain to pass.

When it had diminished enough that he dared to move, he checked the nun’s pulse and respiration to be sure she was just in a faint, and laid her carefully on the floor with her cowl folded into a pillow. Then he sat on the altar steps with his head between his hands.

He must have made a mistake, got something seriously wrong. Hardly surprising, attempting something as complex as Healing without any instruction – if Tanith ever found out, she’d tear strips off him up one side and down the other. Besides, Resa’s wounds were old, already closed. He doubted anyone could have helped her, not even Tanith or Saaron. Why had he ever thought that he could?

Propping his chin on his hand, he looked over at the unconscious nun. Thick red furrows still distorted her cheeks, so at least his clumsy meddling hadn’t made anything worse. His skull felt as if it had been rung like a chapel bell; he could only hope he hadn’t hurt her.

He raked his fingers back through his hair and let his hands fall. Time to face the consequences.

Ask Sister Sofi to come down here
, he sent to Alderan.
Resa needs somewhere quiet to rest
.

She’s already on her way
. A pause.
You and I need to talk. Now
.

I’ll be there in a minute
.

Make it sooner
.

When Sofi arrived, Gair told her Resa had fainted when she stood up from her prayers. It was only a small untruth, but the elder nun accepted it though her eyes remained hard with suspicion. Not long after that Resa woke, and Sofi became too concerned with the girl’s well-being to spare a thought for him. He lingered long enough to be sure the young nun had come to no harm, then took advantage of Sofi’s distraction to slip quietly away.

He climbed back up the stairs and walked along to the storeroom that held the Knights’ books. On the way he tried to sort through what he might have done to cause that sudden discord in the Song. The most likely explanation was that he’d simply been careless: too caught up in his emotions and his concentration had slipped. It wasn’t the first time his temper had got the better of him.

Alderan was busy shelving books when he let himself back in, though the piles of texts on the table and against the walls looked no smaller. The old man glanced at him then turned his attention back to the stack in his hands.

‘I hope you’re proud of yourself,’ he said, thumping the books into place.

Gair’s head was still throbbing with the after-effects of the failed Healing. ‘Not particularly.’

‘We’re supposed to be hiding our presence here. You do remember that?’ More thumps punctuated Alderan’s words. ‘If there’s a witchfinder within a hundred miles of El Maqqam – or, Goddess help us, if Savin is – you just lit a signal fire for them. You’re strong, boy, but by the saints you’re about as subtle as a rockslide. You can’t just pour everything you’ve got into the weaving and hope for the best.’

‘Well, excuse me,’ Gair bit back. ‘I haven’t had the benefit of all your years of experience.’

The old man snorted. ‘Clearly.’

Frustrated, already angry with himself, Gair slammed the door behind him. ‘Damn it, Alderan, what was I supposed to do – just leave her disfigured like that? Leave her in pain? I had to try to help her!’

‘And did you?’

‘No.’ The anger drained away and left him feeling raw, scoured out. He leaned on the back of a chair and let his head fall forwards. ‘I failed.’

‘You can’t Heal a wound once it’s scarred, Gair,’ said Alderan.

‘I know.’

But he’d tried anyway, too moved by Resa’s scars not to. He’d taken a reckless chance, perhaps betrayed their location, and seen no gain from it. Alderan said nothing but the reproof was there anyway, loud as a shout. The old man fetched the next stack of books from the table and sorted them onto the shelf.

‘Is she all right?’ he asked eventually, not looking around.

‘She seems to be. Sister Sofi’s looking after her.’ Gair straightened up and scrubbed his hands over his face. ‘I know there is a point beyond which Healing doesn’t work. I don’t know what I thought I could achieve. I simply had to try.’

Turning towards the light, Alderan studied the last book. It was a fat, heavy thing, the size of an heirloom Book of Eador, and its binding had flaked so badly that whatever title had once been blocked on its spine was now almost impossible to read. He rubbed his fingertips lightly over the remaining letters then stood it carefully on the shelf next to the others.

‘Maybe you thought that if you could Heal Resa’s scars, there would be some chance for yours.’

Gair opened his left hand. Sweat glistened in the creases of his palm, almost as if the eye-shaped witchmark was weeping.

‘That hadn’t occurred to me,’ he said. He wiped his hand dry on his trousers. ‘She saw it. Sister Resa. Then she showed me her face.’

Alderan hefted another stack and began filling the next shelf. ‘She’s a brave girl. Many wouldn’t have wanted to live on after an attack like that.’

Inside, Gair felt a lick of that dark fire again. ‘I think she finds a lot of comfort in prayer.’

‘The faithful usually do.’ Book after book slid onto the shelf. ‘Do you miss it? Prayer, I mean. The round of the hours.’

As a child, the morning service had simply been a part of Gair’s day. He’d been too young to question it; the household went to prayers so he went to prayers, and sat in a pew behind the family with the other foster boys to listen to Father Drumheller fulminate at the lectern. Later, at the Motherhouse, where the full liturgy was observed and attendance was mandatory, he’d had no choice – even though he no longer heard the Goddess speak.

‘I missed the routine at first – I still can’t shake the habit of waking up early. But prayer?’ Gair lifted another pile of books from the table to help Alderan. ‘No, I don’t miss it. The Church holds nothing for me any more.’

Before today he had been in chapel only once since he left the Motherhouse. After Low bell, when all of Chapterhouse was sleeping, he had knelt in the faint glow of the sanctuary lamp with grief scalding his cheeks and tried to open his heart to the Goddess, but his hands had stayed in fists at his sides. He had known then that his faith, such as it had ever been, was gone.

One by one he shelved the books, then returned to his seat and the next unsorted pile. The book of verse, twin to the one under his pillow in the guest hall, remained where he had left it. He touched the scarred cover, the ragged edges of the pages that had come loose from their binding, then added it to the appropriate stack for shelving and opened the next book.

Perhaps he would read some more tonight, when he couldn’t sleep. Try to puzzle out a few more words by the clear silver light of Lumiel, or just hold the book in his hands and remember Aysha’s voice. It didn’t salve his pain, but it gave him more comfort than prayer had ever done.

32

TIME TO DANCE

The labourer’s tunic was coarse and scratchy, and more than a little tight across Gair’s shoulders. He also suspected that he was not the only creature inhabiting it. But a disguise was necessary to be out in the city, and a deep desertman’s
barouk
would not help him pass for a humble carter. With a homespun
kaif
to hide his fair hair and veil his face, he slouched on the wagon-seat to minimise his height and steered the two plodding mules through the streets under the direction of the spare-framed, angular Sister Avis sitting next to him.