There was a heavy, dead pause, as the council registered what he meant.
Then everyone started shouting at once.
“Blasphemy!” Behn Argo was hollering. “Blatant blasphemy!”
“Carro, you can’t mean…?” Cullen began, but let the question hang.
“Madness,” Kallet Brern and Benala Forn could be heard echoing each other.
It was just as Petrük opened her mouth, obviously all too ready to make sure she got her quip in, that Jofrey held up a hand for silence.
Once more, all talk ceased immediately.
“Carro,” Jofrey started slowly, his voice kinder now as he looked upon his friend, “I understand what you are suggesting. I even understand why you are suggesting it. I can’t begin to claim that Syrah means as much to me as she does to you, but I hope you know that she still means much to me and more. Despite that… releasing that man seems not only a gamble to me, but a clear breaching of our cardinal laws.”
“He might not—” Carro started, hearing the desperation in his voice, but Jofrey cut him off.
“He will. He will kill, Carro. Of this I have no doubt. I’m still unconvinced that Arro is completely either the friend you claim he is or the animal he has proven himself capable of being, but of this I am certain. Beyond that… I think you are too.”
At that, Carro stood silently, possessing no response. All he could feel was the crushing weight of the options laid out before him, just as he had felt when Raz had given him the choice to turn his back on the Citadel or accept the cost of climbing the mountain.
Lives will be lost, he realized once again, no matter which path we take.
“By leaving her down there, you are sentencing her to death.” He met Jofrey’s eyes evenly as he spoke. “You realize that, don’t you?”
He expected the question to take some toll on the man, to exact some effect on him. All he saw, though, was a resigned sadness steal across the High Priest’s face, subtle as the shifting of snow.
“Most likely,” Jofrey said. “But I hold out hope. I’ve been going through every manuscript in the library that might give us an opportunity to negotiate with the Kayle, or at least whoever holds command at the bottom of the pass. There may be something they want more than Syrah.”
“There won’t be,” Carro said, desperately now. “It’s very possible Gûlraht Baoill is after her specifically.”
Jofrey nodded. “I thought the same. She was the key in the leap forward Emreht Grahst took for the Sigûrth.”
“Or the door that slammed shut on centuries of tradition, depending on how you look at it. The Kayle won’t want anything more than Syrah, Jofrey…”
The High Priest nodded again. “I know, but I still hold out hope.”
Carro felt his patience wear again.
“Raz could save her,” he insisted. “Trust me. Let me go with him. I’ll make sure he doesn’t—”
“You’ll do nothing,” Jofrey said firmly, making it clear that this conversation, too, was one he would see end. “At the very least the atherian seems nothing more than unpredictable and uncontrollable. Until he proves himself otherwise, he will stay where he is.”
His face softened once again, falling as though pulled down by the exhaustion Carro now suddenly saw mixing with sadness there. “I’m sorry, Carro,” Jofrey said quietly. “I will continue to search for another way, but as of now Arro stays put. I won’t allow the discarding of our laws for the sake of one life. We took the vow. If death is the price we pay for holding true in the reverence of Laor’s light, then it is a coin we must all be willing to produce when the time comes.”
“But this isn’t our life,” Carro insisted angrily. “This isn’t our decision. If Syrah were here—!“
“If Syrah were here, I have absolutely no doubt she would be standing by my side, echoing my words!” Jofrey responded just as fervently. “I’m surprised at you, Carro. To think you would have any other notion of what Syrah would wish concerns me. If you ever knew her at all then there should be no question as to what she would tell you to do in this situation.”
He paused, the look he gave Carro now a strange mix of suspicion and concern.
It was the look of a friend suddenly realizing something wasn’t right.
“What happened?” he asked slowly. “Carro… What happened?”
Carro—only a moment ago all too ready to smash aside the idea that Syrah would so casually nod her life away—felt himself go suddenly cold. He had the strangest sensation, like all heat were being stripped from his body, as he felt the blood go from his face. Unbidden, the hand slung across his chest began to quiver slightly, and he was thankful his fingers were mostly hidden within the cloth.
He didn’t think he would have had the strength to worry about hiding their shake and fight the rush of horrible images that were clambering up to the forefront of his thoughts.
Talo. The bear. The tree. The blood.
Raz’s sword, poised over the heart of the man he loved more than anything in the world.
Unable to handle the crushing wave of grief that ripped upward through him, Carro straightened up. Shaking bodily now, he reached down and lifted the staff from where it lay propped against the table.
Then he turned from the group, and slowly started making his way between then, heading for the arch of the great hall. He felt as though he were moving against the flow of some crushing river, fighting the current as it pressed back and down on him, redoubling with each new picture as they flashed across his mind.
Talo’s broken ribs. His final words. Their last kiss.
And the soul-wrenching, world-shattering sound of the man’s dying breath as steel slid home.
Carro barely noticed Behn Argo start to step in front of him, and Jofrey’s snapped order of “Let him go!” sounded muted and dull against the thrumming of blood coursing through his ears. He pushed past the shorter Priest, making his way down the table, along the wall and through the archway, then into the relative dimness of the hall beyond.
Only one thought permeated the grief that Jofrey’s pointed question had brought surging back. As he saw again the slick redness of Raz’s gladius pulling slowly, almost tenderly from Talo’s still chest, only one thing broke through the quickly-rising sorrow.
Not Syrah, too.
Jofrey watched his friend go with rising concern. When Behn Argo had made to stop Carro he had stepped in, ordering Argo to stand down. It had been an instinctual decision, one made as a man who shared a little of the wretchedness and despair Carro must be drowning in as Talo’s death and Syrah’s torment weighed on his shoulders.
Had Jofrey made the decision as High Priest, though, he wasn’t so sure he would have been as quick to let Carro leave…
Something was wrong. Something was off. More than Talo’s passing. More than Syrah’s situation. Much more, surely, than Raz i’Syul Arro’s incarceration. Whatever had happened somehow affected the Priest Jofrey had known, diminishing him.
No, not diminishing, Jofrey thought privately as Carro disappeared into the outer hall. Warping.
That was more accurate, he decided. Carro al’Dor had left the Citadel one kind of man, but appeared to have returned another. There was something bent now. Not twisted, per se—Carro certainly seemed to be there, somewhere buried beneath a layer of grief and sadness—just… off-keel. Unbalanced.
But Jofrey didn’t have more than a moment to contemplate what it was that could possibly have unfooted the normally so steadfast Carro al’Dor. As he stood there, looking toward the last place he had seen the retreating back of his friend, Cullen Brern gave a soft cough, bringing the new High Priest back from his distracted thoughts.
It must have been apparent that he had lost his train of thought, because Valaria Petrük smirked and Benala Forn spoke up gently.
“Jofrey…” she said. “The pass … If we assume the Kayle’s men are waiting for the rest of the army to arrive, this may be our only chance to act…”
Jofrey set his spectacled eyes at her for a long moment, collecting himself. Once he’d done so, he turned to the master-at-arms.
“Cullen, how many of the faith would you consider competent fighters?”
Cullen Brern frowned. “Two hundred? Maybe three, if we take into account promising acolytes.”
“Do so,” Jofrey said with a nod. “Every staff will count, if this is a fight we plan on taking down the mountain.”
“We’re going to attack them?” Behn Argo demanded, sounding shocked. “What madness is that?”
“The sanest sort,” Jofrey said slowly. “Whatever else he might have done, the atherian was right about one thing: we can’t stay in the Citadel. I for one can’t see any other way around it. We leave… or we die.”
XXXIII
“All men are destined to fall. It is only a matter of fate’s interruption, the obstructing factor that is death, that prevents the darkening of the soul within the span of a lifetime. I—in some twisted logic that only a mind as old as mine is capable of conceiving—envy the youth we gave to the Giving Grounds on this day. He was less man than boy, not even twenty years of age, a victim of the perilous footing along the path and the sheer drop of the cliffs. He was a true bastion of the faith, I am told. Pious, humble, kind, giving… Naïve. I envy him that. He did not have time to discover the seeds of doubt, nor witness the ravages they reap as they grow…”
—PRIVATE JOURNAL OF ERET TA’HIR
REYN AWOKE slowly, blinking away the ache as his eyes adjusted to a sudden, familiar brightness he did not expect to find as he rose from his slumber. He knew that light, knew that wavering, clean glow.
And he knew the familiar sensation of comfortable, humid warmth that surrounded him.
Rapidly Reyn came to, somewhat disoriented as he shoved himself up onto one elbow, intent to make out more of his surroundings. As he did so a jolt of pure, white-hot pain lanced along his left side, extending outward from the edge of his chest to shoot down his leg and up into his neck. He inhaled in shock, falling back down onto what he realized was a thin, feather-stuffed mattress, the blankets bunching up about him as he curled around himself, attempting to stop the agonizing throb.
There was a shout, followed by a hurried exchange of voices, and Reyn saw a number of figures in the white robes of the faith appear at the foot of the bed, moving to either side of him as he continued to groan.
“Easy, Hartlet,” a man’s familiar voice said gently. “You’re going to ruin everything al’Dor managed to do for you if you’re not careful.”
Slowly, gingerly, Reyn eased himself over onto his back again, eyes shut tight against the shifting pain that tore at him once more with even this simple motion. When he opened them again, three faces were peering down at him, one from the end of the bed and another on either side. He recognized all, two men and one woman. He’d been in the infirmary enough times in his years working in the practice chamber to be on good terms with most of the Citadel’s healers, after all.
“Wence,” he grumbled, eyeing the man who had spoken, hovering at his feet. “What am I doing here? What happened?”
Priest Wence al’Kars grimaced in a half-amused, half-annoyed sort of way. He was a tall man, thin but paunchy, with a small gut that awkwardly contrasted with the rest of his narrow frame. He kept his long, brown-blond hair loose and wild around his shoulder, and his square jaw clean-shaven. All in all Wence had a gaunt, unsavory look about him, but Reyn knew him to be deceptively good-natured.
And one of the few healers in the Citadel that was better at his craft than Carro al’Dor.
“Apparently you bit off more than you could chew,” Wence answered. “According to Kallet Brern and Benala Forn, your little expedition returned home early this morning with guests. al’Dor and some hulking lizard-kind come all the way from the Southern deserts. You were apparently trussed up across its horse’s saddle. Beats me how in Laor’s name it managed to get all the way here without freezing to—”
But Reyn was no longer listening. Wence’s words had brought his memory back in a rush. His argument with Cullen Brern. His rush down the mountainside. His encounter with the atherian.
The confused realization, as he lay on the icy stone struggling to breathe, that Carro al’Dor was there, working quickly to save his life…
Reyn winced involuntarily, his left hand moving up his side slowly, looking for the spot where the blazing hot knife had slipped through his ribs. He remembered wanting to die, then, wanting anything that would make that incredible, unending pain stop.
“Don’t you even think about it,” the short, plump Emalyn Othel snapped from beside the bed, her hand moving like a whip as she closed her fingers around his wrist. “Your stupidity already cost you a punctured lung. I won’t let you make it any worse.”
“May as well let him do what he wants while he can,” broad Vance Molder chuckled from his right. “When Cullen Brern hears he’s awake, he’s a dead man anyway.”
Reyn flushed at that. Clearly the council had heard the whole story, and hadn’t spared his healers any details. He felt like a fool, now. At the time he had allowed his rage to control him, hating the unnamed, unknown men below for whatever part they had played in Syrah’s taking.
“What happened to Arro?” he asked, wanting to change the subject.
All three of them gave him a bewildered look.
“The atherian,” Reyn said, lifting his head from the bed to meet the healer’s gaze. “Arro. Isn’t that his name?”
“We know who you mean,” Wence said, sounding bemused. “But how did you know that was his name?”
Reyn sighed, letting his head hit the bed again. Quickly he told them of the mission he, Jofrey, Talo, and Syrah had taken to the Southern fringe cities some years back, attempting to spread Laor’s light as far as they could. He couldn’t remember the atherian’s whole name—Talo had only briefed them briskly on why they had had to leave so soon, and only Jofrey more fully later—but it seemed too much of a coincidence that any other lizard-kind might have come across Carro al’Dor in the wilds of the North, not to mention one who spoke the Common Tongue to boot.
After he finished, it was the healers’ turn to fill him in. Wence did most of the talking, but only Emalyn thought she remembered the atherian’s full name confidently: Raz i’Syul Arro. It had sounded right to Reyn, and he nodded as they continued. They hadn’t yet arrived to what had become of the atherian, however, before Vance let slip much more pressing news.
“Talo Brahnt is dead,” the man said quietly. “Jofrey al’Sen has been voted in as the new High Priest.”
For a solid five seconds Reyn gaped at him, head rolled to one side so he could look up at the healer.
Then he turned back to Wence. “Is it true?”
Wence was frowning at Vance, but he nodded. “Aye, it’s true. Though I prefer that my patients not be burdened by such tidings whilst recovering.”
Vance had the decency to flush with embarrassment, but it turned quickly into a willful glower.
“He was going to find out soon enough anyway,” he said with half-a-shrug. “It’s not like Cullen Brern wouldn’t have told him about Talo, or about Brahnt.”
That confused Reyn outright, his uncertainty only magnified as Wence’s frown turned suddenly livid, mirroring Emalyn’s hiss of anger.
“Vance!” she snapped.
Vance shut up at once, looking suddenly mortified.
It was the last straw, for Reyn.
“What?” he demanded, looking around at Wence again. “What’s he talking about, ‘Talo and Brahnt’? What does he mean?”
Wence, in response, only looked at him, almost like he were waiting for something. Reyn stared at him, wondering what was going on.
He was just about to turn to Emalyn and demand she explain, though, when it hit him.
“Syrah!” he gasped, and suddenly he was struggling to sit up again, ignoring the pounding pain that raked his left side. “Syrah! What happened? What do
you know? Where—?”
“Reyn, stop!” Emalyn yelled, reaching out and trying to push him back down. “Stop! You’ll only make things worse!”
“Get off me!” Reyn yelled, shoving the woman’s arms away. “If Syrah’s alive then I need to speak to the council. Get OFF ME!”
He could feel himself spinning out of control again, but he didn’t care. Even when Vance’s arms reached out to help Emalyn try to keep him down Reyn only yelled and fought harder. He was bigger, stronger than them, and they found themselves quickly hard-pressed to keep him on the bed.
Woosh.
There was a flash, and suddenly Reyn felt himself wrenched back, slammed down into the mattress. Like invisible iron hands had materialized out of the air, something was pinning him down, pushing through his shoulders and thighs and pressing his wrists into the bed. Reyn roared, attempting to thrash his way free of the magic, trying to writhe himself out from under the spell.
“Calm down, Hartlet!” Wence yelled, and Reyn saw that it was he who was holding the spell in place, one hand extended over the bed like he were controlling a many-stringed puppet. “Calm down! When you’re ready, I’ll release you, but you need to stop trying to get up. If you break off a piece of rib there’s no telling what could happen!”
For almost a minute more, though, Reyn strained his considerable bulk against the spell, yelling and cursing at all three of them and continuing to demand where Syrah was, if she was alive, and what had happened to her. He fought and thrashed, feeling the mattress shift under him and stick to the skin of his back as it became slowly dampened by sweat. He howled and screamed, only barely noticing Wence shooing away healers and patients alike as they rushed over, the former to see if they could help, the latter just curious as to who was causing the commotion.
In the end, though, his recovering body exhausted quickly, and before long Reyn stilled again, forcing himself to calm, breathing hard and feeling his muscles wince and quiver involuntarily, unwilling to bear the strain and the pain in his side.
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