Rigid discipline held Kestar at attention. Beside him Celoren stood stoic-faced, only a twitch to his jaw betraying the same unease now roiling through Kestar in a fervent prayer. Blessed Mother, get us through this and I’ll light a dozen candles in Your name. “We were investigating the possible presence of magic on His Grace’s estate, Father.”
“The possible...presence...of magic.” Enverly bit off each word as he pronounced it, stumping around the desk to stand before Kestar. The priest took full advantage of his greater height, leaning forward to pin him with his gaze, contempt turning his eyes the hue of polished steel. “The Knights of the Hawk do not concern themselves with the possible. Either there is magic, or there is not. The sacred amulets speak, or they do not.” His hand shot up, seizing the knotwork pendant at Kestar’s neck. “What did yours have to say about this possible magic?”
His throat dry, Kestar said, “It didn’t speak, Father.”
“I must have misheard you again, boy. What did you say?”
Nothing about Father Enverly looked amiss. His white cassock was immaculate, the amulet he wore brightly gleaming, his iron-hued hair humbly tonsured. Decades of sedentary duty in Camden’s church had merely blurred the fitness of his youth rather than erasing it, and military service as well as Hawk training still showed in his carriage.
But Kestar was exhausted. He and Celoren had ridden with the Lomhannor guardsmen and the Camden watch for most of the previous day and night, scouring the countryside for the escaped assassins. They’d found nothing save a bewildering trail that split and rejoined itself over and over again, while their amulets slept beneath their uniform shirts. They’d returned to Camden only to receive a summons to the town church, where they discovered that Camden’s resident priest was beside himself with wrath at their involvement in the search. Nor was it a summons they could refuse, for any priest or priestess of the Church held higher rank than a member of the Order—especially when that priest was himself a former Hawk.
Enverly’s outrage made Kestar feel like an errant cadet and, moreover, it made no sense. Resentment stirred beneath his unease. It needed no further impetus than the scent of the man, rich but sour underneath, like too little incense burned to chase away the smell of something unclean—and the man’s hand on his amulet, a contact that felt inexplicably wrong. Kestar had to struggle to keep from pulling it from his grasp as he repeated, “It didn’t speak.”
“That’s what I thought you said.” The priest flicked the amulet back at him and shot his gaze to Celoren. “And you, sir? Your amulet also remained silent during this escapade?”
Hazel eyes fixed on the wall he faced, Celoren reluctantly replied, “It did, Father.”
The truthful answer only deepened Enverly’s scowl. “Thus you took it upon yourselves to intrude upon the private estate of a nobleman of unimpeachable repute, in the middle of the night, without the slightest indication from your amulets that magical activity was taking place?”
“It wasn’t like that,” Kestar cried.
“Pray tell me, then, what it was like?”
“I received information that strongly implied that acts of magic would be committed at Lomhannor.” It was the same half-truth he had offered to Holvirr Kilmerredes, and for no reason he could name, Kestar balked at the thought of offering more. “Celoren elected to search with me despite the hour, but the decision to search was mine.”
“Received information from whom?”
“I can’t reveal the identity of my source, sir.” That too was truth, as far as it went. That Kestar had no idea where his premonitions came from was, to his mind, also not anything the priest needed to know.
Undeterred, Enverly leaned toward him once more. “Then how did you receive this information?”
The man’s pernicious scent clashed with the memory of radiance in his dreams, and Kestar wrestled back panic, searching for an answer and finding none. But before Enverly could press him further, Celoren interjected, “Kestar received a message in the night, Father, while we slept. We didn’t rouse in time to see who came to our door.”
Enverly’s gaze whipped to the older Hawk. Kestar flashed his partner a grateful smile, and as Enverly rounded back on him, Celoren winked.
“So this mysterious missive,” said the priest, disbelief dripping from every syllable, “led you to believe that possible magical activity might occur at Lomhannor Hall, and you took it at its word and intruded upon the privacy of the most influential nobleman in the western provinces?”
“We had no intention of intruding upon His Grace’s privacy.” Enverly had every right to emphasize that point—Kilmerredes was the most powerful lord in the western half of the realm—and yet Kestar was disturbed. No Adalon citizen was above holy law, man or woman, wealthy or indigent. Why then this insistence that Lomhannor was inviolate? “We rode up the mountain to see what our amulets might tell, and only when we met the guards hunting the assassins did we seek permission at the Hall to search the grounds.”
“The assassins might have used magic,” Celoren said. “The duke owns many slaves. He must have enemies among the elves.”
“Did you find any evidence to support such a theory?”
Now it was Celoren’s turn to hesitate, Kestar’s to uncomfortably confess, “No, Father.”
“And did this message you received claim that the heathen, inhuman rebels would attack Lord Kilmerredes’s Hall?”
“No, Father.”
“Did it provide any evidence whatsoever to justify your presence on private land? Names? Locations? Descriptions of the alleged magic which would be committed?”
Kestar’s hands tightened their grip on one another behind him. “No, Father.”
Enverly’s patrician features twisted into a profoundly expressive sneer, honed by the traceries of wrinkles at the corners of his eyes and mouth. “Have you at least retained the message, so that I might peruse it with my own eyes?”
There was nothing to retain but the memory of sunlight shining like a star within him. Kestar could have offered that, but every last one of his instincts clamored against it. “No, Father, I have not.”
“We destroyed the note,” Celoren hastily supplied. “It pled for us to do so, as though the author feared discovery.”
Enverly paced, and at last lashed out at them both. “In other words, you interrupted your assigned patrol to investigate an unsubstantiated warning of possible magical activity, and you can’t even substantiate the warning itself. Therefore I’m back where I began—with two Hawks who invaded a private estate on the strength of nothing more than their own whims.”
“Sometimes the Blessed Anreulag guides us in unfathomable ways, Father,” Celoren said.
“Do not preach to me about the Voice of the Gods!” His face livid, Father Enverly thrust his amulet forth like a blade between his fingertips. “I saw Her in Her glory on the battlefields of Tantiulo when the two of you were still learning your prayers. Do you think me ignorant of the workings of Her will?”
Celoren’s eyes grew more earnest as he dipped his head. “We wish only to serve our all-seeing Lady. The course we took seemed the only one.”
Kestar followed his partner’s example, bowing his head and closing his eyes. “If we’ve erred, Father, we must of course ask absolution.” That allowance was difficult; the part of him that had withheld the premonition insisted that he and Cel had done the right thing. “But wouldn’t it have been a greater sin to fail to seek and perhaps fail to find users of magic upon His Grace’s lands? To be the Blessed Anreulag’s eyes to see and Her swords to strike is our duty.”
“Arach shae,” breathed Celoren.
“Indeed,” Enverly grunted. “Keep this within your sights, then. Holvirr Kilmerredes is a powerful man—not only in Adalonia but in Tantiulo as well, for he married into one of their greatest noble clans. If he takes offense at your excursion, it’ll be you, young Hawks, who’ll be struck.”
“We’ll remember, Father.” That too was difficul
t, for even as Kestar spoke, fury rolled through him. He couldn’t lay a finger on the why of it, but he didn’t doubt what he heard in the priest’s tone and saw sparking in his eyes.
A threat.
“See that you do.” Enverly scrutinized Kestar. “Your father was in the Order, boy, was he not?”
His tone was strangely casual given his earlier ire, and it prickled uncomfortably along Kestar’s taut nerves. Just barely, he refrained from growling as he answered. “Yes, Father.”
“See that you do not disgrace his name. That will be all.”
* * *
“Do you want to tell me,” Celoren said as they left Father Enverly’s office and made their way out into the nave of the church, “why I’ve just lied to a priest?”
“I don’t care for it either,” Kestar said. Agitation propelled him down the aisle between the pews, and his hands were as restless as his feet, pulling his handkerchief from a pocket and wiping his amulet as he walked. “But I couldn’t tell him the truth. I just...couldn’t. Something’s wrong here, but gods forgive me for a wretched pair of eyes, I can’t see what.”
“Wrong with Father Enverly?” Celoren’s longer legs easily matched his stride, and his gaze, already grim, went sharp.
“With Enverly, or at Lomhannor Hall. Perhaps both.” They reached the narthex doors, but rather than continuing through them Kestar paused. His right hand slid his handkerchief back to its pocket, but his left gripped his amulet tightly. “Cel, you’re my partner, my friend. Do you trust me?”
“That’s a ridiculous question—”
“It’s one I must ask. You said yourself you’d find the nearest priest to excommunicate me if we found nothing that warranted Hawks’ eyes on the mountain—but we’ve found nothing yet. And we just left a priest.”
Celoren cast a pensive glance back the way they’d come, but to Kestar’s heartfelt relief his uncertainty seemed momentary, giving way to swift resolve. “Kes, I don’t understand this gift of yours, but it hasn’t led us wrong yet. I trust it. I trust you. Besides, for a man who was once one of our own, the good Father seems overly enamored of reminding us where humble Hawks such as we stand against a duke.” Then he paused. “Not to mention that he had to bring your father into it.”
With a grimace Kestar released his amulet and rubbed his brow. “That sat ill with me,” he admitted. His head hurt, from weariness and from the mere passing mention of Dorvid Vaarsen. All around him was the beauty of a lovingly tended church, needing only the sunlight glowing down through the stained glass windows high upon the walls to give it the sanctity of the divine. Yet he found no peace in it. It was bad enough that the light reminded him of the premonition. Shaymis Enverly’s invoking of his father’s name had wrecked what little composure he’d had left.
Would he ever be able to stand before a Hawk, priest or priestess over the age of twenty-five who would not look at him and see only the son of the Deliverer of Riannach?
Put it aside. “But that isn’t the problem. If you trust me, Cel, then trust me when I say that there’s a...a light at Lomhannor, and when I saw that man he was like a cloud across the sun.” His hand shot out to point back toward Enverly’s office with all the vehemence he dared not release into his voice lest he be overheard. “There’s something at that Hall we’re meant to find, and he doesn’t want us to see it.”
“Kestar, that man’s a priest, and before that he was a Hawk. If you mean to charge him with obstructing our sworn holy duty I’ll stand with you, but we’re going to need—”
The deep groaning of the church’s heavy outer doors and the crash of them swinging shut again cut him off, and both Hawks snapped up their heads at the cry of an anxious voice.
“Father Enverly! Father Enverly!”
As the inner doors before them opened, Kestar and Celoren jumped back just in time to avoid colliding with the lanky orange-haired young man who barreled into the nave. The youth froze as he saw them, his freckled countenance flooded with awe and somber purpose. “M’lords, praise the gods I’ve found you! I was going to ask Father Enverly how I could get you a message, but here you are, and—”
“You’ve found us.” Celoren stepped forward again, lifting a hand to invite the newcomer to speak. “I’m Celoren Valleford. This is Kestar Vaarsen, my partner. And you, sir?”
“Gilbard Hetch, m’lords.” The man tugged his forelock at them both. “I’m a gardener up at Lomhannor Hall. Tend the grounds for His Grace, I do.”
“How may we help you, Mister Hetch?” Kestar asked, with as much calm as he could muster. But he knew what the gardener would say even as he asked the question, and if the sudden stiffness of his partner’s frame was any sign, so did Celoren.
“It’s like this, sirs. I’m here to report a mage.”
* * *
In the end they had to suffer Shaymis Enverly’s presence on the ride to Lomhannor. The gardener’s shouts drew the priest from his office, and when Gilbard Hetch gave him the same fervent report, Kestar could find no excuse to prevent the man from accompanying them. While it was the Order of the Hawk’s pledged duty to seek out the elf-blooded users of magic, it fell to the priesthood to purge them of the abomination that gave them their strength. So the gods, and Their Eternal Voice the Anreulag, had always decried. Father Enverly was the nearest priest at hand, and it was his duty, right and privilege to conduct the Cleansing that would purify Lomhannor’s mage.
Enverly in fact uttered those very words as he sent one of the boys who tended the nave out to fetch his horse. Yet Kestar noticed cold determination in the priest’s eyes, a look that convinced him that against all the Church’s teachings, the man wished them far away from their quarry at Lomhannor Hall.
Celoren was right, though. They couldn’t confront him without proof. And as long as Enverly seemed intent on upholding his sacred duties, Kestar could only ride at his flank as befitted a Hawk accompanying a priest of the Father on Church business—ride, and keep a steady face while his instincts thrummed a warning with each step of Tenthim’s hooves.
At Lomhannor the astonished footmen who met them in the drive relayed with dismay that Holvirr Kilmerredes and his family were at their noonday meal. Father Enverly sent one off to request an urgent audience of the duke and another to attend to the horses; Hetch the gardener he bade remain with them before either Hawk could say otherwise. Hetch tagged along as they strode through the entry hall and on to the front parlor, but his nervousness was plain. He wrung his hands behind his back, chewed at his lower lip and strove to look as unobtrusive as possible.
They didn’t wait long. Kilmerredes stormed into the parlor scant minutes later and stopped short three paces into the room. “Father Enverly,” he said, the thinnest veneer of politeness over his voice, barely hiding the rage beneath. This time there was no offering of the old ritual greeting to the Hawks, only the same curt acknowledgement he gave the priest. To the gardener he gave no acknowledgement at all. “Lord Vaarsen. Sir Valleford. What is the meaning of this?”
Enverly inclined his head in apology. “The blessings of Father and Mother, Son and Daughter upon this Hall, Your Grace, and a thousand pardons for the intrusion. I regret to inform you that by the holy authority vested in me by Her Majesty the Bhandreid Ealasaid, in this year 1876 of the Blessed Anreulag, and in the sight of Her Ordained Hawks, I’ve come to apprehend a reported mage upon these grounds.”
“Mage?” The single word was a soft but still audible snarl.
And far too unsurprised. There was no amazement on the duke’s face, no horror, no change in the anger palpably crackling from him. Something was wrong here, Kestar no longer had any doubt—but he’d have to tread with extreme caution to find out what.
Drawing the gardener forward, he said, “Lord Kilmerredes, this man bears witness to the mage’s presence on this estate, and identifies her as a young woman. Given his testimony, my partner and I have the authority for a formal search.” A search they should have already conducted, which should hav
e given them the girl the first time they’d come. He wanted to shout; he wanted to demand of Kilmerredes and Enverly what they were concealing, why they were determined to keep two Hawks from carrying out their duty, why even now they were exchanging stares that seemed full of unspoken significance. Kestar did none of these things, and forced himself to say instead, “Out of deference to your lady wife, we’d prefer to have your leave and cooperation. Any assistance you can provide will make this easier for all.”
Hetch burst out, tugging at his forelock so desperately that he nearly pulled it from his scalp, “Begging your pardon, m’lord, please don’t be angry!” As the duke’s attention shot to him he broke into a sweat, but stood his ground. “What with the assassins breaking into the Hall and all, and Your Grace’s life being in danger and Her Grace the Duchess too, it only seemed like you must’ve not been able to give the girl over yet. I wanted to help. Please don’t turn my sister out, m’lord, it was me that decided to do it.”
Kilmerredes’s features didn’t ease as his servant made his plea. “Ah,” he rasped, more to himself than anyone else in the room. “That girl.”
“The unfortunate young wretch you’ve kept confined, Your Grace?” inquired the priest.
Enverly radiated wise, paternal serenity—an interesting switch for a man who’d seethed in the privacy of his own office, Kestar noted. “There is a girl, my lord?”
“A half-elf slave,” Kilmerredes rumbled. “She lost her wits four years ago. I’ve kept her locked up for her own good ever since. She hasn’t been a problem before now.” He slanted the gardener a narrow glance. “Look a little less like a frightened rabbit, Hetch. I won’t be turning you out today. That’ll be all.”
Hetch swallowed hard, tugged his forelock one more time, and fled. No one watched him go. “If she has magical ability, I must take her into custody—and pray that as she’s Cleansed of the taint of unholy power, the gods may see fit to rid her of madness as well.” Enverly piously bowed his head and starred himself. “Ani a bhota Anreulag, arach shae.”
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