Mother of Lies (18 page)

“You can, but will you?”

She chuckled. “I will try, when we get to Bergashamm.”

He was too young to be even a postulant, but he became a sort of mascot—and also a teaching aid in the lectures on seasoning. Later that year the Maynists located the Celebre daughter, who had vanished with her wet nurse during the sack of Jat-Nogul, and now turned up in Skjar as putative daughter of Master Merchant Horth. Some furtive prying soon confirmed that she was another seasoner. Four of them!

Rather than return to Skjar, Tranquility accepted a roaming commission to investigate other Florengian hostages scattered around the Face. She established that most were being well treated, and that none had seasoning. Accompanying her on her travels, Dantio saw his brothers from afar and was comforted. He learned a great deal about Vigaelia, the way the Werists were ruling it, and the subtle art of snooping without being noticed. When he was sixteen, they returned to Bergashamm, and he was accepted as a novice, although he was still younger than all other novices and even most postulants.

He put up with the discipline for four sixdays. Then he came calling on Tranquility one evening and brazenly asked her to sponsor him for initiation. He was tall, slender, with the perpetual restlessness of an adolescent, but he was still a child. In one sense he always would be.

“You are insane!” she said. “At your age? The elders will never approve you. They would laugh me to shame if I put you forward.”

He had a confidence far beyond his years, and he grinned at her doubts. “They won’t, you know! Half of them are convinced that the goddess has chosen me to avenge the harm Stralg did to Her cult in the year I was born. The other half can’t stand the sight of me and will rely on the All-Knowing to throw me out on my ear, what’s left of it.”

Holy Mayn rejected about one candidate in five. The discards were sent away, and it was known that few of them ever prospered afterward—how could they, when She did not want them and they had forsworn all other gods? But Dantio’s confidence was as solid as rock, and Tranquility could not fault his logic. Ordinary rules did not apply to him.

The council agreed to consider his application, and even that was a surprise.

By tradition, examinations were held in the crypt below the chapel, in pitch darkness. Tranquility led him in, whispering a warning to watch his step, for a thick layer of black sand covered the floor. When they reached the center, she told him to kneel. The Eldest sat on a tall stool in the center like a mummified monkey, her twisted fingers clutching her staff. Eight elders stood on either side of her, in a crescent facing the applicant.

Darkness and silence. Tranquility had never known a mere initiation to raise such emotions. The chapel seemed to shake with them, and her own doubts rang as loud as any. She expected a refusal. He was the youngest novice ever put forward and the first Florengian to apply to the Vigaelian mystery, but his age and color barely mattered. Everyone knew that he was a brilliant student. What concerned the examiners was his history, and that rubbed salt into the gaping wound dividing the cult. Half the elders wanted to abrogate the Werist compact; the rest supported the Eldest, who was adamant that it must be preserved. The old crone did not like it, though, and she played fair in her appointments to the council. It was as evenly divided as the mystery itself.

She began the ritual without preliminaries. “Who seeks the goddess?”

“Honored mother, I bring Candidate Mist.”

Hearing his new name for the first time, Dantio grinned in the darkness, unaware of the others’ smiles and frowns. His own, joking, suggestion had been Garlic, but the choice was Tranquility’s and she thought she had chosen well. He could pass for man or woman; he was fluent in Florengian, Vigaelian, and Wroggian. His dark complexion and cropped ears made him extremely visible, yet slaves were so unimportant that few people noticed him.

“Surely,” whined the bitter voice of old Agate, “a Witness with seasoning is a contradiction of all the cult stands for?” She had been primed to ask this as the first question, to resolve the matter right away.

“Flavor is merely a potential,” Tranquility said. “It may never be expressed in action, or it may act entirely by accident, with no intent on his part. The All-Knowing may even accept him and negate his seasoning—we have no precedents to judge by.”

(doubt—relief—anger)

Also
fear
, because a seasoner Witness might change the flavor of the cult itself. The Eldest was already very old, so Mist-Dantio was too young to be her direct successor, but a generation after that …? Aging childless spinsters do not accept change easily.

“How can he possibly be impartial?” Vihuela demanded. “After what that woman did to him? Can he take the oaths without reservation?”

Not completely. Tranquility knew that from their rehearsals, and her own emotional reaction to the question was an instant answer—there were no secrets in Bergashamm. “I have known candidates be less certain,” she said. “If the goddess is not satisfied, She will not accept him.” That argument sounded weak even to her.

Limpid agreed, though. “If holy Mayn cannot accept a seasoner into Her mystery, She will refuse him.”

Carillon said, “Irresponsible thinking! We are supposed to stand behind the candidates we submit. Any time the All-Knowing refuses one of our candidates, we are disgraced!”

There were more questions about sincerity, integrity, dedication, until Ember asked, “It is customary for new-sworn Witnesses to be posted to obscure, faraway places. Is he reconciled to spending the rest of his youth at the back of beyond?”

(alarm)
from Dantio.

“I have not asked him that,” Tranquility admitted, “and the matter seems to trouble him. May the candidate speak to the question?”

(shock—disapproval—indignation)
were gradually overruled by
(approval)
as this outrageous suggestion was considered. The Eldest nodded her little skull head.

Tranquility said, “Speak.”

“Honored Witnesses,” Dantio said softly
(resignation)
, “it is my intention, if accepted, to apply for posting to Zorthvarn.”

(
bewilderment
) flowed into (
amusement
) …

“The novice shames us,” Ember said. “Where is Zorthvarn and why does he care?”

“Honored Witnesses, it is a very small settlement in the south. It is rumored to have been the birthplace of Hrag Hragson, the Fist’s father, although I am told that this is not recorded in the Wisdom. At Zorthvarn I would hope to discover who Hrag was, where he came from, and where he has gone, for his death is no more recorded than his life.”

Implications rolled like thunder through the crypt.
(amazement—distaste—anger—jubilation)
The split yawned open.

Outspoken Carillon said, “We should know these things!”

Thou shalt not compact with the Evil One.

“Sisters,” mumbled Starfire, who was almost as shriveled as the Eldest. “You see how this candidate might do his duty to the goddess as She requires and yet change the flavor of the world? What can he tell us of the death of the saintly Healer Ferganfar?”

Dantio’s silent scream of agony filled the crypt, making every elder cringe. He was no longer the callow child who had failed to appreciate the old man’s sacrifice. Tranquility squeezed his shoulder in warning.

“That question is improper!” The Eldest never spoke at this stage of an initiation, but rules were for breaking, she often said.

“But it is most relevant!” Starfire said. “If it was nothing else, that event was a message to us.”

(shock—outrage—jubilation)

Painfully, leaning on her cane, Starfire plodded forward through the sand to stand with Tranquility. Soon others followed. The silent movement continued until a clear majority had lined up behind the candidate. Would the goddess accept the verdict?

When the movement ceased, the Eldest whispered, “The candidate may offer allegiance. Is he ready?”

Unnecessarily, Dantio said, “He is,” in a shaky voice.

This was the moment of truth, holy Mayn’s truth. This was when the goddess would either grant him the powers of a Witness or refuse them. The elders would all know Her decision from his reaction, and if he had been refused they would banish him from the lodge instantly and forever.

The Eldest administered the oath, Mist repeating the words after her. When he pronounced the final ‘Amen,’ his amazement exploded through the crypt like a thunderbolt. He cried out in joy … blinked a couple of times … smiled widely … then leapt to his feet and turned to bow to his supporters.

Part III
D
ARK
N
IGHT
AND
D
ARKER
D
AWN

FABIA CELEBRE

could hear the hunter’s breath behind her. Not literally. She was still sitting in the grass with her three brothers, but with her fingertips dug into the cold earth she could sense the Old One sending her warnings. She knew now why Dantio had told her all this. He was clever, her eldest brother, and she was being hunted.

She said, “And what did you discover at Zorthvarn?”

On other islands, riverfolk were singing. They would not be doing that if they knew how many Heroes were camped nearby, or that a horde might be on its way.

“Not much.” Dantio had talked himself hoarse. “I found some old-timers who remembered an evil man called Hrag. He was suspected of being a Chosen, so the village drove him out, him and his daughter. No one remembered her name, or knew where they went.” Even in the darkness, his bitterness showed sometimes, in a quaver of voice, a tightness. His prayer that the gods would let him watch Saltaja die seemed very reasonable now.

The night was windless, very quiet. Voices murmuring around the campfires at the far end of the clearing seemed scarcely louder than the whine of insects and the occasional plop of a fish jumping.

“No wife? Hrag had no woman?”

“No.”

“And what happened to Hrag in the end?”

“Nobody knows. He may still be around.”

“Is Saltaja the satraps’ sister or their mother?” rumbled Benard, a human boulder in the darkness.

Dantio said, “Possibly both. I heard old gossip that it was indications of another child about to appear that resulted in their banishment.”

That felt right to Fabia. Incest was horrible enough to make sense in this grim, chthonic situation.

Ever wary, Orlad said, “And why have you been entertaining us with all this?” He could sense the prowler too.

“I’ll tell you why,” Fabia said. “Because Horold is camped downstream and the seer he has with him is Tranquility, or Dantio thinks she is.”

“It is known,”
Dantio said sadly. “It is she. She did not come with him willingly, for she is the only Witness there and she is not veiled. She stayed in the boat tonight, did not go ashore.”