She would never have believed that a bird could look skeptical until she saw his face.
“I know. It isn’t actually golden.”
Sarsun bowed his head.
The engraved letters gradually filled, as if they were inlaid with ruby. Ead waited. When the blood reached the end of the final word, the riddlebox split down the middle. Ead flinched away, and Sarsun fluttered back to his perch as the box opened like a night-blooming flower.
In it was a key.
Ead took it from its bed of satin. It was the same length as her forefinger, with a bow shaped like a flower with five petals. An orange blossom. The symbol of the Priory.
“Faithless creature,” she said to Sarsun.
He pecked her sleeve and flew to the doorway, where he sat and looked at her.
“Yes?”
He gave her a beady-eyed stare, then took wing.
Ead shadowed him to a narrow door, down a flight of winding steps. She had a caliginous memory of this place. Someone had brought her here when she was very small.
When she reached the bottom of the stairs, she found herself in a vaulted, lightless room.
The Mother stood before her.
Ead lifted her lamp toward the effigy. This was not the swooning Damsel of Inysh legend. This was the Mother as she had been in life. Hair shorn close to her skull, an axe in one hand and a sword in the other. Her dress was made for battle, woven in the style favored by warriors of the House of Onjenyu. Guardian, fighter, and born leader—that was the true Cleolind of Lasia, daughter of Selinu the Oathkeeper. Between her feet was a figurine of Washtu, the fire goddess.
Cleolind had never been entombed in the Sanctuary of Our Lady. Her bones slept here, in her own beloved country, in a stone-built coffin beneath the statue. Most effigies lay on their backs, but not this one. Ead reached up to touch the sword before she looked at Sarsun.
“Well?”
He tilted his head. Ead lowered the lamp, searching for whatever she was meant to find.
The coffin was raised on a dais. At the front of this dais was a keyhole with a square groove around it. With a glance at Sarsun, who tapped his talon, Ead knelt and slid the key into place.
When it turned, sweat dampened her nape. She took a deep breath and pulled on the key.
A compartment slid out from beneath the coffin. Inside was another iron box. Ead rotated the orange-blossom clasp and opened it.
A jewel lay before her. Its surface was white as pearl, or fog trapped in a drop of glass.
Sarsun chirruped. Beside the jewel was a scroll the size of her little finger, but Ead hardly saw it. Entranced by the light that danced in the jewel, she reached out to catch it between her fingers.
As soon as she touched its surface, a scream leaped from her lips. Sarsun let out a scream of his own as Ead collapsed before the Mother, her fingers bound to the jewel like a tongue to ice. The last thing she heard was the skirr of his wings.
“Here, beloved.”
Chassar handed Ead a cup of walnut milk. Aralaq was lying across her bed, head on his front paws.
The jewel sat on the table. Nobody had touched it since Chassar, alerted by Sarsun and finding her insensible, had carried her back to the sunroom. Her fingers had only released it when she woke.
Now she held the translation of the scroll that had been in the box. The seal had already been broken. Written on brittle paper with an odd sheen to it, the scholars had deemed the message to be Old Seiikinese, interspersed with the odd word in Selinyi.
Hail honorable Siyāti, beloved sister of long-honored and learnèd Cleolind.
On this the third day of spring in the twentieth year of the reign of all-honored Empress Mokwo, I with Cleolind bound the Nameless One with two sacred jewels. We could not destroy him for his fiery heart was not pierced with the sword. One thousand years he will be held and not one sunrise more.
I send to you with sorrow the remains of our dear friend and this her waning jewel to keep until he returns. You will find the other on Komoridu and I enclose a star chart to lead your descendants there. They must use both sword and jewels against him. The jewels will cleave to the mage who touches them and only death can change the wielder.
I pray our children, centuries from now, will take up the burden with willing hearts.
I am,
Neporo, Queen of Komoridu
“All these years the warning lay with the Mother. The truth was right beneath our feet,” the Prioress said, voice scraped thin. “Why did a sister in the past go to such lengths to conceal it? Why did she hide the key to the tomb and bury it in Inys, of all places?”
“Perhaps to protect it,” Chassar said. “From Kalyba.”
Silence rang out.
“Do not speak that name,” the Prioress said very softly. “Not here, Chassar.”
Chassar dipped his head in contrition.
“I am certain,” he said, “that a sister would have left more for us, but it would have been in the archives. Before the flood.”
The Prioress paced back and forth in her red bedgown. “There was no star chart in the box.” She stroked a hand over her gold necklet. “And yet . . . we have learned a great deal from this message. If we can believe this Neporo of Komoridu, the Mother failed to pierce the Nameless One’s heart. In her lost years, she damaged him enough to somehow bind him, but it was not enough to prevent him rising anew.”
One thousand years he will be held and not one sunrise more.
His absence had never been anything to do with Sabran.
“The Nameless One will return,” the Prioress said, almost to herself, “but we can determine an exact day from this note. One thousand years from the third day of spring in the twentieth year of Empress Mokwo of Seiiki—” She made for the door. “I must send for our scholars. Find out when Mokwo ruled. And they may have heard legends about these jewels.”
Ead could hardly think. She was as cold as if someone had pulled her from the Ashen Sea.
Chassar noticed. “Eadaz, sleep for a little longer.” He kissed the top of her head. “And for now, don’t touch the jewel.”
“I’m a meddler,” Ead muttered, “not a fool.”
After he left, Ead curled against the furry warmth of Aralaq, her thoughts a morass.
“Eadaz,” Aralaq said.
“Yes?”
“Do not follow stupid birds into dark places again.”
She dreamed of Jondu in a dark room. Heard her screaming as a red-hot claw raked away her flesh. Aralaq nosed her awake.
“You were dreaming,” he rumbled.
Tears wet her cheeks. He nuzzled her, and she huddled into his fur.
The King of Yscalin was said to have a torture chamber in the bowels of his palace. Jondu would have met with death there. Meanwhile, Ead had been in the shining court of Inys, paid a wage, and decked in finery. She would carry this grief to the end of her days.
The jewel had stopped its glinting. She kept a cautious eye on it as she sipped the sapphire tea that had been left for her.
The Prioress came sweeping into the sunroom.
“We have nothing about this Neporo of Komoridu in the archives,” she said, without ceremony. “Or this jewel. Whatever it is, it is not our sort of magic.” She stopped by the bed. “It is something . . . unknown. Dangerous.”
Ead put down her glass.
“You will not like to hear this, Prioress,” she said, “but Kalyba would know.”
Once again, the name stiffened the Prioress. The set of her jaw betrayed her displeasure.
“The Witch of Inysca forged Ascalon. An object imbued with power. This jewel may be another of her creations,” Ead said. “Kalyba walked this world long before the Mother drew her first breath.”
“She did. And then she walked in the halls of the Priory. She killed your birthmother.”
“Nevertheless, she knows a great deal that we do not.”
“Has a decade in Inys addled your senses?” the Prioress said curtly. “The w
itch cannot be trusted.”
“The Nameless One may be coming. Our purpose, as sisters of the Priory, is to protect the world from him. If we must treat with lesser enemies to do that, so be it.”
The Prioress looked at her.
“I told you, Eadaz,” she said. “Our purpose now is to shield the South. Not the world.”
“So let me shield the South.”
With a sigh through her nose, the Prioress laid her hands on the balustrade.
“There is another reason that I think we should approach Kalyba,” Ead said. “Sabran dreamed often of the Bower of Eternity. She did not know what it was, of course, but she told me she had seen a gateway of sabra flowers and a terrible place beyond. I would like to know why it haunted an Inysh queen.”
The Prioress stood by the windows for a long time, stiff as a turret.
“You need not invite Kalyba here,” Ead said. “Let me go to her. I can take Aralaq.”
The Prioress pursed her lips.
“Go, then,” she said, “but I doubt she can or will tell you anything. Banishment has embittered her.” She used a piece of cloth to pick up the jewel. “I will keep this here.”
Ead felt an unexpected stirring of unease.
“I might need its power,” she said. “Kalyba is a stronger mage than I will ever be.”
“No. I will not risk this falling into her possession.” The Prioress slipped the jewel into a pouch at her side. “You will have weapons. Kalyba is powerful—no one could deny it—but she has not eaten of the tree in years. I have faith that you will overcome, Eadaz uq-Nāra.”
42
East
Sweat quivered at the tip of his nose. As Niclays wet his brush and cupped his hand beneath it, unwilling to spill ink on his masterpiece, Laya brought a cup of broth to the table.
“I hate to interrupt, Old Red, but you have not eaten in hours,” Laya said. “If you fall flat on your nose, your little chart will be destroyed before the captain can spit on it.”
“This little chart, Laya, is the key to immortality.”
“Looks like madness to me.”
“All alchemists have madness in their blood. That, dear lady, is why we get things done.”
He had been hunched over the table for what felt like a lifetime, copying the large and small characters from The Tale of Komoridu on to a giant roll of silk, ignoring those of middling size. If it proved to be a fruitless endeavor, he would most likely be on the seabed by dawn.
As soon as he remembered the starry vault in Brygstad Palace, he had known. First, he had tried arranging the oddly sized characters in a circle, as Mentish astronomers did, but only nonsense had come out. With a little coaxing, Padar, the Sepuli navigator, had surrendered his own star charts, which were rectangular. Niclays had continued, from that point, to translate each page of text to a pane he had sketched on the silk, keeping them in the order that they appeared in the book.
Once the panes were full of the large and small characters, he was certain they would form a map of part of the sky. He suspected the size of the character was a measure of the radiance of the corresponding star, the larger ones being the brighter.
Somewhere below, the dragon began to thrash about like a beached fish again, rocking the ship.
“Damned creature.” Niclays marked the position of the next character. “Won’t it be quiet?”
“It must miss being worshipped.”
Laya pulled the silk taut for him. As he worked, she scrutinized his face.
“Niclays,” she murmured, “how did Jannart die?”
His throat filled with the usual ache, but it was easier to swallow when he had something to occupy his mind.
“Plague,” he said.
“I’m sorry.”
“Not as sorry as I am.”
He had never spoken to a soul about Jannart. How could he, when nobody could know how close they had been? Even now, it made his insides flutter, but Laya was part of no court in Virtudom, and he found that he already trusted her. She would keep his secrets.
“You would have liked him. And he would have liked you.” His voice was hoarse. “Jannart adored languages. Ancient and dead ones, especially. He was in love with knowledge.”
She smiled. “Aren’t all you Ments a little in love with knowledge, Niclays?”
“Much to the distaste of our cousins in Virtudom. They often wonder at how we can question the foundations of our adopted religion, even though its bedrock is a single bloodline of no great exceptionality, which hardly seems sensib—”
The door snapped open then, letting in a gust of wind. They rushed to pin down the pages as the Golden Empress walked in, shadowed by Padar, whose face and chest were dripping in blood, and Ghonra, self-styled Princess of the Sundance Sea and captain of the White Crow. Laya had assured Niclays that her rare beauty belied an equally rare bloodlust. The tattoo on her brow was a puzzle they had yet to solve; it simply read love.
Niclays kept his head down as she passed. The Golden Empress served herself a cup of wine.
“I hope you are almost finished, Sea-Moon.”
“Yes, all-honored Golden Empress,” Niclays said brightly. “Soon I will know the whereabouts of the tree.”
He concentrated as best he could with Padar and Ghonra breathing down his neck. When he had transferred the last of the characters, he blew lightly on the ink. The Golden Empress brought her cup of wine to the table (Niclays prayed very hard for her not to spill it) and studied his creation.
“What is this?”
He bowed to her. “All-honored Golden Empress,” he said, “I be- lieve these characters from The Tale of Komoridu represent the stars—our most ancient means of navigation. If they can be matched to an existing star chart, I think they will lead you to the mulberry tree.”
She studied him from beneath the frontlet of her headdress. Its beads cast shadows on her brow.
“Yidagé,” the Golden Empress said to Laya, “do you know Old Seiikinese?”
“Some, all-honored captain.”
“Read the characters.”
“I do not think they are supposed to be read as words,” Niclays offered, “but as—”
“You think, Sea-Moon,” said the Golden Empress. “Thinkers bore me. Now, read, Yidagé.”
Niclays held his tongue. Laya hovered her finger over each of the characters.
“Niclays.” A line creased her brow. “I think they are meant to be read as words. There is a message here.”
His nerves evaporated. “There is?” He pushed his eyeglasses up his nose. “Well, what does it say?”
“The Way of the Outcasts,” Laya read aloud, “begins at the ninth hour of night. The . . . rising jewel—” She squinted. “Yes, the rising jewel—is planted in the soil of Komoridu. From under the Magpie’s eye, go south and to the Dreaming Star, and look beneath the—” When she reached the last character of the final pane, she let out a breath. “Oh. These are the characters for mulberry tree.”
“The star charts,” Niclays said, breathless. “Can these patterns be matched to the sky?”
The Golden Empress looked to Padar, who spread his own star charts on the floor. After studying them for a time, he took up the still-wet brush and joined some of the characters on the silk. Niclays flinched at the first stroke, then realized what was forming.
Constellations.
His heart pounded like an axe into wood. When Padar was finished, he set down the brush and considered.
“Do you understand it, Padar?” the Golden Empress asked.
“I do.” Slowly, he nodded. “Yes. Each pane shows the sky at a different time of year.”
“And this one.” Niclays pointed at the last pane. “What do you call that constellation?”
The Golden Empress exchanged a look with her navigator, whose mouth twitched.
“The Seiikinese,” she said, “call it the Magpie. The characters for mulberry tree form its eye.”
From under the Magpie’s eye, go south a
nd to the Dreaming Star, and look beneath the mulberry tree.
“Yes.” Padar strode around the table. “The book has given us a fixed point. Since the stars move each night, we must begin our course only when we are directly under the Magpie’s eye at the ninth hour of night, at the given time of year.”
Niclays could hardly keep still. “Which is?”
“The end of winter. After that, we must steer between the Dreaming Star and the South Star.”
A silence fell, taut with anticipation, and the Golden Empress smiled. Niclays distinctly felt his knees wobble, either with exhaustion or the sudden discharge of days of fear.
From the grave, Jannart had shown them the star they needed as their point of navigation. Without it, the Golden Empress would never have known how to reach the place.
There was that flicker of doubt again. Perhaps he should never have shown her. Someone had done their best to keep this knowledge from the East, and he had handed it to its outlaws.
“Yidagé, you spoke of a jewel.” Ghonra had a gleam in her eye. “A rising jewel.”
Laya shook her head. “A poetic description of a seed, I imagine. A stone that rises into a tree.”
“Or treasure,” Padar said. He exchanged a hungry look with Ghonra. “Buried treasure.”
“Padar,” the Golden Empress said, “tell the crew to prepare for the hunt of their lives. We make for Kawontay to replenish our provisions, and then we sail for the mulberry tree. Ghonra, inform the crews of the Black Dove and the White Crow. We have a long journey ahead of us.”
The two of them left at once.
“Are—” Niclays cleared his throat. “Are you content with this solution, all-honored captain?”
“For now,” the Golden Empress said, “but if nothing waits at the end of this path, I will know who has deceived us.”
“I have no intention of deceiving you.”
“I hope not.”
She reached beneath the table and presented him with a length of what looked like cedar wood. “All of my crew bear arms. This staff will be yours,” she said. “Use it well.”
He took it from her. It was light, yet he sensed it could deliver a shattering blow.
The Priory of the Orange Tree Page 45
