by Sharon Green
“Which the chosen noble Blendings weren’t,” Lorand said with a nod. “Are you telling us that your people knew we would enter the competitions and lose, then manage to come back and win? How could they have known so far in advance, and what exactly did they do for us?”
“My people didn’t know any of that,” Ardanis denied with a short movement of his head. “They were only able to tell that certain people would be involved in the crisis, and that you were some of those people. And as for what was done for you, not all of you were given help. You, Dom Coll, along with Dama Domon and Dom Ro weren’t given immediate assistance because you didn’t require it. Dom Mardimil and Dama Hafford did, so it was supplied. There was a servant in your mother’s house for a time, Dom Mardimil, who took more than a slight interest in you. Do you remember him?”
“Of course I do,” Rion answered with a frown. “Are you saying that he was one of you?”
“You needed someone to teach you certain things and to be a friend of sorts,” Ardanis confirmed. “Just as Dama Hafford needed a warm, loving family to be a part of. They grew to consider you one of their own, Dama Hafford, and I’m delighted to tell you that they’revery proud of the woman you’ve become. If you like, I’ll carry a message back to them for you. They’reno longer living where they were, you know.”
Jovvi nodded to show that she did know, and the surprise on her face said that she probably would send a message. I, however, still hadn’t had my question answered.
“What you’ve said doesn’t explain why I got a scared-to-death Warla,” I pointed out. “That was your idea of help?”
“Of course,” Ardanis responded with a grin. “Didn’t you use Warla’s presence as an awful reminder of what could happen to you if you faltered in your resolve? That was what we were told you needed the most, so that was what Warla gave you. Are you saying it didn’t work?”
I couldn’t say anything of the sort, and both Ardanis and Warla seemed to know it. Warla’s gentle laugh was a sharing rather than ridicule, and realizing that finally let me give her a return smile.
“And last but not least we have Naran, who should have been brought to our community but wasn’t,” Ardanis continued, gazing at Naran fondly. “We knew her mother would refuse to bring her, of course, and when something like that happened we usually used one of our people in an official position to force the parent to part with the child. This time, however, all indications showed disaster if we interfered, so we merely followed and watched and helped when it became necessary. Naran was the one all our hopes hung on, for once she joined you it wasn’t possible for her to use her talent and yet keep it a secret. With the example of the first Five hung vividly before our eyes, we had to know how your Five would react when you learned about the sixth aspect.”
“So how did we do?” Vallant asked, an edge to his voice despite the very neutral tone he used. “Since you’rehere and talkin’ to us, are we to assume that we passed the test with flyin’ colors—or that we have to be put out of the way as the first fivefold Blendin’ was? I take it you are strong enough to keep Naran from knowin’ about any danger ahead of us?”
“Actually, no single one of us is quite strong enough for that,” Ardanis replied, pretending he noticed nothing of the way we all tensed. “Your lovely Naran Whist is truly the strongest among us, especially now that she’s opened herself so fully to the power. Just as the rest of you are the strongest and best in your various aspects, not to mention much more honorable than the average. If you weren’t, you would already have engineered your own downfall.”
“Would you care to explain that?” Jovvi asked, the only exception to the general air of tension. “It’s not difficult to tell that you’restill speaking what you consider the truth, but I don’t understand what you mean.”
“It’s perfectly simple,” Ardanis said with his usual smile. “The time during that last confrontation was the true crisis point for you, and because Naran was so tired we were able to hide sight of the possibility from her. When your other two Blendings mistakenly attacked the Blending from Astinda, your own Blending had the choice of protecting only yourselves, or protecting people who were supposed to be your enemies as well. If you had chosen to protect only yourselves despite the warning that the Astindans had to survive, two of the other Astindan Blendings would have destroyed you on the spot. They had just enough strength to do it, and seeing their leader struck down completely after already being bested would have triggered that final attack. There was a very strong possibility that that was what would happen, and if it did then we would have had to wait for our next opportunity to rejoin the world.”
“And it didn’t matter that we would be dead?” Lorand asked, clearly as upset as I felt. “All that mattered was that your people would be all right?”
“You miss the point,” Ardanis said, his face and voice a study of calm. “If you were the sort to think only of yourselves, it was made very clear to us that you would be just as bad as the first fivefold Blending. But if you went so far as to put your own lives in danger to protect people who were still your enemy, then we could safely trust the secret of our existence to you. And it all links in with the fact that you haven’t moved yourselves to the palace yet, which you have every right to do. If you were likely to betray us the way the first Five did, you’d already be there.”
“We aren’t there because we don’t yet know if we want to be the Seated Blending,” I said, needing to disagree with him in some way. “Doesn’t that fact change your reasoning just a little?”
“No,” he denied, his smile changing to a grin. “Actually it reinforces the theories, since you’renot grabbing for the reins of power the way almost anyone else would. When you finally do let yourselves be Seated, you’ll be the best rulers this empire has had in five hundred years or more. And you’ll be Seated on the Sixfold Throne, which is really the clincher for us. Once you introduce Naran to the world, the rest of us can come out of hiding.”
“No, don’t bother arguing with him,” Naran said as Vallant, Rion, and Lorand all began to speak at once. “The possibility of our not being Seated has all but disappeared, so he’s not guessing. I think what he said about all of us really being the strongest has chased away our doubts, so now we’reready to do as we’resupposed to. And since everyone already considers us the Chosen Blending…”
“Everyone will simply go along with it,” Vallant said in a sour—but defeated—tone. “But at least now we know that we’renot Chosen, since the original Prophecies were just general warnings. Isn’t that true, Dom Ardanis?”
“Certainly it’s true,” Ardanis agreed with his grin still in place. “It was a useful ploy to have people think the Prophecies were real, so we encouraged that belief. And I, for one, can’t wait to see what a Sixfold Blending will do for the empire. Things are going to change very radically, but certainly for the better.”
“Just a moment,” Jovvi said slowly while everyone else began to comment about that aloud. “The thought of a Sixfold Blending is exciting and all, but I’m afraid I still have a question. If all that noise about the Prophecies was simply a ploy, then what about the signs that would indicate to the world that the Chosen Blending had come to be? Was that also supposed to be a ploy?”
“Of course,” Ardanis said, but his grin had faded quite a bit. “I see something that I don’t in any way understand, so I must ask what you’retalking about, Dama Hafford. There’s something … looming in the future, but I can’t tell what it can possibly be—except that it’s related to the question you just asked. What about the signs that were supposed to be manifested?”
This time we all looked at one another rather than just glancing about, and no one answered Ardanis. I’d been expecting the man to say that his people were responsible for what we’d experienced, but it was obvious they weren’t. And yet those incidents had happened, something none of us could deny.
So if the Guild people weren’t responsible for the manifestations, the hidd
en people weren’t, and we certainly hadn’t imagined them… Something had caused them, and I couldn’t help wondering just when in the future we might manage to find out who that was—
And did we really wanted to know…?
