Vault Of Heaven 01 - The Unremembered (93 page)

“Late or no, the Wynstout Dominion, the Principality of Aiyrs, and several other thrones ignore the call.” Malick spoke bitterly. “It is enough for them that Quietgiven have not yet assailed their vales and hamlets. It is the curse of the Second Promise. This age of rumor makes cautious men silly.

“But an audience at the regent’s High Office will be difficult.” Malick bent his attention to the table to think. “Artixan might be petitioned to use his influence with Helaina, but if news of it got out, he would be in a hot kettle.” Malick looked up. “The Sodality’s seat at the High Table is tenuous at best. Reforms suggested by the League would remove our presence there. If we bring up the desire of a Sheason to free a traitor, days would not pass before we would join the order in being as openly scorned and denied the practices that define us. Some even fear exile.”

“Speak carefully when you speak of exile,” Grant said coolly.

Malick went on. “They might be snatched from the prison. We have friends among the soldiery. Van Steward’s son studies our ways. The general’s men are taught respect for the Sodality. It gnashes at the gums of the League, but Van Steward’s men are fiercely loyal to him, and have less love for Exigents because of it. With proper preparation, the Archer and his friend could be plucked from their chains.”

“No,” Grant said, seething.

The air seemed cold with his words.

“This is why you’ve brought me, Vendanj.” Grant turned to Malick. “Take a message to the Halls at Solath Mahnus at first light. Announce that justice demands a hearing on the conduct of this Archer. That there is evidence this leagueman is not guilty and was rightly saved from execution. Claim the law of Preserved Will against the protestations of any who try to deny the hearing.”

None spoke. The room looked very like the garden beyond the door—pale statues in the pallid light.

“Can this argument prevail?” Malick asked, uncertainty thinning his voice.

“If it does not,” Vendanj said, “there is yet more the regent might consider on behalf of this criminal.”

Grant turned a heavy brow on the Sheason and nodded once. The Sheason then looked to Mira. “Go to the convicted leagueman’s family. Bring them here so that we may speak with them.”

Without hesitation the Far went out the door; she could not be heard racing away into the Recityv night. Braethen saw a wan look steal over Grant’s features. The exile appeared to feel the weight of time in his face, as he had not in the Scar. Or perhaps it was memories written there that Braethen saw.

“You will take the message yourself, Malick,” Vendanj said, breaking the silence. “Trust no one else with the things we have spoken, even your brothers.” The Sheason said this with a note of finality.

Malick nodded. “There are rooms upstairs, if you are ready to rest.” He turned to Braethen. “I will stay behind to talk if you would like.”

The sodalist from the Hollows licked his lips with a dry tongue. “I would, yes.”

Vendanj and Grant followed a hall deeper into the home and could be heard ascending the stairs. Braethen did not speak, nor did Malick as the sounds of trod floorboards came to a halt. Braethen had longed for the day when he might speak with one who shared his ideals, the hopes that had grown in him under the tutelage of A’Posian.

“What do you carry in the satchel?” Malick asked as a beginning.

Braethen looked down at Ogea’s books, having forgotten them. “The books and scrolls of a reader. He came late to Northsun Festival, attacked by Quietgiven on the roads. He went to his earth after breaking the seal on a parchment and telling his last story. He entrusted them to me.”

Malick eyed Braethen with reservation, but said no more.

Braethen then remembered something this sodalist had said. “Earlier you told Vendanj that you stand behind both him and this other Sheason, Rolen. Vendanj spoke of an oath regarded differently. What does that mean?”

Malick arched one eyebrow. Braethen wondered if the man was impressed or dubious. “The order was conceived too many seasons ago to count, and it was conceived as a way to serve. But as the world moves on,
how
to serve is not always a matter of agreement. The veil of the Bourne grows thin, treachery inviting Quietus like never before. Men undo themselves in their own self-interest: as the League does in forbidding the drawing of the Will here in Recityv; as nations do by adding their silence to the quiet voice of the Whited One.

“Against these changes some Sheason continue patiently to serve in the way Rolen did, accepting what need the people have of them, even if it comes as a law that prohibits their use of the gift. I admire Rolen, Braethen.” Malick’s face rose as he turned to look into the moonlight. “There is courage in his steadfastness. He chose to see his covenant as one tied in harmony with the laws of the people he served.”

Braethen looked at the ceiling, beyond which Vendanj took his rest. “And what of Vendanj?” he asked. “Is he not true to his covenant?”

“Those aren’t words that you should ever speak,” Malick said in reproach. The stern look in his face faltered quickly. “Some serve as Rolen, but others believe their oath is to ensure what is best for this world, for today and all the skies to come. This they do regardless of the laws and disfavor of those they serve. It is said of them that they give ‘What is needed, not what one
thinks
is needed.’”

“But who decides what is needed?” Braethen asked, speaking almost to himself as he considered the question.

“Indeed. That is the division we fear.” Malick returned his gaze to Braethen, fixing him tightly. “But we stand beside a Sheason, Braethen, no matter how he chooses to serve. That is our calling. To step into the breach that allows a Sheason the time necessary to make his own sacrifice.”

Braethen shook his head. “What if their intentions are not proven by their actions? Or what should happen if two Sheason come against one another?”

“It has never happened. Nor will it. What one man of Will does is easily recognized by another man of Will as an act of hope. If it were otherwise, he should cease to be Sheason, and would be called something darker.” Malick considered. “Perhaps simpler than that even. If it were an act of greed or pride, he would not take the company of other Sheason in the first place. It would not suit his spirit.”

“Then Vendanj is Sheason of the second kind?”

“And a powerful one. I’ve heard other Sheason say they marvel at his gift. The authority to render is conferred upon those deemed worthy, but it does not come in equal measures. Vendanj understands the potent blend of Forda I’Forza as naturally as you or I breathe. I trust him implicitly, but his path is one that men do wisely to avoid. When he looks upon you, he sees beyond the flesh, beyond the spirit. He looks upon the soul—the marriage of Forda I’Forza.”

Braethen recalled a hundred looks he’d had from the Sheason, and wondered what Vendanj knew of him from them. He remembered his feelings when Vendanj prepared to draw on the Will in their defense, and the words that had boiled unbidden to his own lips when danger and need pressed in about them:
I am I
. The thought of those words sent chills racing through him. Declaration. Defiance. Certainty. Braethen’s heart stirred and he understood the tone Malick had taken when regarding Vendanj in the company of Mira and Grant. There was singleness of purpose, unclouded. All of it invested in the simple phrase that he’d come to on his own.

One question remained.

Braethen rested his hands on the table to steady them and looked around the room in order to mark this moment before putting his query to Malick. So much had changed since he’d left home. He felt like a single blade of grass on an ashen plain. Alone, fragile, needing nourishment. At last, his thirst to understand consumed him most. But he also sensed that some knowledge brought further expectation, and this moment (this next question) had weight enough to crush him under.

Braethen stared straight at Malick. “And what of this?” He put his palm to the sword on his hip. Malick did not follow the movement. It was not necessary. The man’s face looked back at Braethen, impassive, unreadable. The muscles in his back and chest tensed.

Malick let a quirky half grin move his lips. “That, my friend, is more than I could tell you … more than I know, myself. Vendanj gave you its name. I dare not repeat it. The blade itself is a threat I do not understand. Guard it, Braethen. Raise it if and when you must, but learn by it as surely as you have by your books.” Malick’s eyes seemed to see something through Braethen, past him. “My final Sky … you are only a boy.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

Dreadful Majesty

The morning of his Standing, Tahn opened his eyes to blackness so complete he could not be sure he had opened them at all. The familiar pallor of the lamps beyond his cell door was gone. Beneath his cheek, a twist of chain served as an unfortunate pillow, and reminded him where he slept. The chill of the stone urged him to sit up, and he slowly obeyed, his muscles quarreling with him over the movement. His hips and shoulders ached from bearing his weight against the hard rock surface.

Tahn turned his head, hoping to catch any glint of light. He blinked, and studied, and saw emptiness. Yet it felt like those same hours each morning when he considered another day. He peered into the impenetrable gloom about him and remembered sunrise from the top of Windy Peak. For the briefest of moments he was there, and saw the eruption of light into a pale blue sky over the Selia Hills. But the moment passed, replace by the sable depths that surrounded him. It seemed not even memory lived long here, the darkness absorbing light even in thought. Tahn sat and listened to himself breathe, and knew by that sound that he still lived.

If his reckoning was correct, the lesser light had come full last evening, a full cycle since his day of birth. In the Hollows, preparations would have been made for a ceremony at the Fieldstone Inn. The town elders would have gathered in the private room. Tahn had imagined his nervousness about passing out of melura to the mantle that awaited him beyond. He’d thought about what it would mean to the girls, how they might glance differently at him. And he wondered what new wisdom might dawn inside him once the ceremony was complete.

Afterward, there would have been food, music, men gathering around him to speak sage advice in quiet, serious tones. The womenfolk would have appraised him anew, especially those with daughters. Younger boys, anxious to have the secrets of the Change, would have crowded in and asked endless questions, just as he had done to boys who had Stood before him. And deep inside, Tahn had hoped that the memories of an insistent voice, the one belonging to the man in his dreams, would disappear forever, or that he’d finally understand what those cryptic words meant.

Today his sunrise came as guards passed in the hall and lit an oil lamp back out of sight. Today there would be no ceremony. The smell of ovens preparing goose and lamb and vegetable pies, and fruits baked with honey and cinnamon, were not here; in their stead here were the smell of old stone, human waste, and his own sweat coating his skin and clothes. No crowds attended here—friends, townsfolk—only another prisoner, a man capable of escape, but unwilling to use his power to free himself.

What choices have I made that brought me here? On this day of my life, I have none of the things I hoped to have.

Tahn began to consider the possibility that he could die here before Vendanj or the others found him. Nearby lay Rolen, a Sheason of the order, a strong man whose arms, Tahn could tell even without seeing them, were too weary to be held up for more than a moment. If the Sheason went so quickly to death’s door, then Tahn might join Rolen in the earth in a week’s time.

In his solitude of darkness and cold and pain, the thought was a comfort. It sated him as a cold drink after a day’s labor. Yet, in his weariness, even death seemed too much to wish for. Tahn rested his head against the wall and waited, resigned. He abandoned expectations without deliberate thought; behind so many barriers, they seemed now inconsequential.

The sound of a key in their cell door throwing back tumblers echoed down to him. Tahn looked up and saw a prison guard through the window. The door swept inward and a larger wash of light spilled into the cell. The brightness hurt his eyes, and he shaded them from the intrusion. The first man through carried a tray of bread and a carafe. A second guard followed bearing a short spear. The man who had opened the door replaced the keys on his belt and drew a short sword, following the others down toward Tahn and Rolen.

Their booted feet stamped loudly to the bottom of the stairs. The first man approached Tahn cautiously, stooping to place the tray on the floor just beyond a line chalked across the stone to mark the limit of the chain’s tethering distance. Tahn stared at the bread and small decanter, then raised his eyes to those of the guard still hunkered down before him. A maniacal grin touched the man’s lips. With a playful slowness, he began to tip the carafe over. Tahn realized there would be no more for perhaps several days, and his heart jumped in his chest. The guard tipped the container nearer a spill, his eyes regarding Tahn with wicked delight. The two men behind him began to laugh openly.

Tahn lurched from the wall and fell to his chest. His cheek cracked against the stone floor, bringing an intense explosion of laughter from his jailers. The man’s fingers still tipped the carafe ever closer to a fall. Tahn struggled to crawl forward. His muscles strained, cramped from the cold and still bruised from his beating.