Swords of Waar (25 page)

Lhan bowed to him too. “Thank you, Gaer-Zhau. It is this. That it is time at last to strike the church as you have always meant to.”

Cheekbones curled his lip. “Really? With Rian-Gi under surveillance? With you and your companion accused of kidnapping the Aldhanan’s daughter? With the church looking everywhere for you? I cannot think of a worse time.”

“And yet, in truth, there has never been a better time.” Lhan took a step forward. “Though you know it not, we are stronger now, and better allied than ever before. And when I tell you—”

“What do you know of our strength?” Cheekbones flicked a hand at him. “Did someone speak of it in a brothel? You haven’t—”

“Let him speak, Sei.” Shal-Hau trundled back in with a tray of crunchies and some kind of wine in a clay jug, then motioned for us to take a couch across from Sei-Sien and his pals. I felt like I was sitting down at the defendant’s table in a courtroom, and shivered. The last time I’d felt like that I’d done a year in county for assault.

Shal-Hua helped himself to the vino, poured some for me and Lhan, then crossed to another couch and sat down.

“Go on, Lhan.”

Lhan nodded thanks to Shal-Hau, then licked his lips and turned to the others. “First you must know that it was not Mistress Jae-En and I who kidnapped Wen-Jhai and Sai-Far, but the church itself.”

Gaer-Zhau raised an eyebrow. “And why would they do that?”

“As bait.”

Sei-Sien laughed. “To catch what fish? You? They wouldn’t waste the effort.”

Shal-Hau gave him a warning look.

Lhan shrugged. “At first, I admit, we thought their aim was to lure Mistress Jae-En into their clutches, but soon we learned the truth. It was the Aldhanan they wanted.”

That perked up everybody’s ears.

“The Aldhanan?”

Lhan leaned forward. “The church told the Aldhanan that Mistress Jae-En and I held his daughter and her consort in Durgallah, and meant to sacrifice them to the ancient gods of the sea. In reality, a large group of priests disguised as heretics waited there in ambush, intending to kill him.”

“What!”

They were all staring now.

“Mistress Jae-En and I were to have been named the Aldhanan’s assassins, and used as an excuse for a
new Aldhanan
, a puppet fully under the control of the church, to wage war against true heretics such as yourselves and further tighten the Temple’s control of Ora and its water.”

Shal-Hau put down his cup. “You—you speak of these things as if they have already happened. Do you say that the Aldhanan is dead?”

Lhan smiled. “If not for the courage and strength of Mistress Jae-En, I believe he would be. Fortunately, she warned him in time, and the false heretics were defeated and exposed, and the Aldhanan’s daughter and her consort rescued as well.”

Sei-Sien coughed. “Forgive me, do you say that the Aldhanan is aware that his daughter was kidnapped by the church? That he knows they meant to kill him?”

“He knows worse than that.”

“What could be worse than that?”

Lhan looked at me, then back to them, then coughed. “This is the second thing you must know, a secret that could destroy the church if it was revealed.”

Sei-Sien didn’t look impressed. “There have been so many of those over the years. All failures. What might this one be?”

Lhan smiled. “One of your main complaints against the church is that, though it creates water using the gifts of the Seven, it distributes it only to the rich, leaving the poor to die when the droughts come, correct?”

Sei-Sien and the others said nothing, but Shal-Hau played along.

“Correct, Lhan. It is the greatest of their crimes.”

“Not so. There is one greater, for, despite their claims, they do not in truth create water. They steal it, from us. The Temple of Ormolu and the six others are not temples at all, but immense moisture gatherers. They suck the moisture from the air and store it in great tanks. The only thing the priests of the Seven create is drought.”

Gaer-Zhau’s eyes bulged out of his head. “By the One, is this true? This is what we have waited for since—”

“I do not believe it.” Sei-Sien sat back. “How could anyone know this? One would have to enter a temple to see it, and no one enters the—”

I tapped my chest. “I have. I’ve been in the Temple of Ormolu. I saw the machines.”

Then it wasn’t just Sei-Sien rolling his eyes. It was everybody.

“She is a liar like her friend.”

“None enters the temple!”

“And those that do never come out again!”

“Only the priests can go in and out.”

Shal-Hau held up a hand and everybody shut up. He looked me in the eyes.

“Describe it.”

This again? “Yeah, okay. Fine. Uh, white walls, sliding doors, elevators—ah, I mean rooms that move up and down between floors—a big tank of water in the middle with see-through walls, and, uh, ‘living stones’ that let you pop in and out without going through the walls. There’s also big fans and condenser coils behind the scenes, but…”

I trailed off as Shal-Hau blinked. It was the first time since I’d met him that he looked like anything had surprised him.

“She is correct.”

His posse all started babbling at him at once. He cut ’em off again.

“There is one other man besides a priest who can return from the temple. Once each year the current Aldhanan is brought within to confer with the high priests and receive their blessing. It is said the priests swear the Aldhanans to secrecy with such terrible vows that they fear to speak of what they saw, but there have been one or two who have written of it in private correspondence, and I have been privileged to read two such accounts.” He smiled at me. “Both match Mistress Jae-En’s description in nearly every detail.”

Sei-Sien stared at me. “And you told your tale of moisture gatherers to the Aldhanan?”

Gaer-Zhau did too. “And he believed you?”

I shrugged. “Well, I had to go through the same rigmarole with him, but once he realized I’d been in the temple too, yeah. He believed me. He knows the priests are stealing water and causing drought, and he’s mad as hell about it.”

Lhan nodded and looked around at them all. “You see? For the first time since the reign of his grandfather, Kor-Karan, Ora has an Aldhanan who understands the true nature of the church, and is prepared to fight it with all the resources at his command. But unlike Kor-Karan, he has the ammunition that will bring them down. The secret of the stolen water.” He stabbed the little coffee table in front of him with a finger. “That is why I am here. The Aldhanan will soon go on a covert journey to beg his Dhanans for their support in the coming war, but he knows that even all their money and troops will not be enough. Without the people behind him, he will not win. And to win the hearts of the people, he needs you. As he travels from city to city, visiting the Dhanans in their castles, the Flames of Truth will travel with him, meeting in secret with other far-flung heretic groups and urging them to spread the word in the tap rooms and halga houses of their—”

All of a sudden everybody—well, everybody except Shal-Hau—was on their feet, shouting at once.

“You come from the Aldhanan?”

“You have told him of us?”

“You have
led
him to us?”

Gaer-Zhau was looking for the exit. “We’ve been trapped!”

Sei-Sien had turned red in the face, which, since he’d started off kinda blueberry yogurt, meant he was now more of a blackberry sorbet. “You have betrayed us! Given our names to our enemies! We are ended. The Flame is extinguished!”

I stood up and punched the ceiling, which shook the room and rained plaster dust down on everybody. It did the trick, they clammed up like I’d fired a gun.

“What the fuck is wrong with you fucks? Lhan told me that all you’ve ever wanted was to bring down the church, and now you’re gonna chicken out when you’ve finally got the chance?”

“There is no chance,” said Sei-Sien. “I see it now. You have come here with a lie—a finely crafted lie, I admit—fed to you by the Aldhanan, and designed to make us walk into his dungeons of our own free will. You will forgive me if I do not take the bait.”

“You are a fool, Sei-Sien.” Lhan stood too. “If the Aldhanan wished to arrest you, he would arrest you. He would need no lie, nor would he send someone you hate and mistrust to try to trick you into some snare.”

Gaer-Zhau curled his lip. “So why would he send someone we hate and mistrust to try to win our support? That makes even less sense.”

“Because I was witness to the ambush that nearly killed him. Because Jae-En knows the truth of the water. Because I know you. Because he has
no one else
!”

Sei-Sien waved all that away. “More lies, but let us pretend for a moment it is true. Why should we agree to help? Even if the church were somehow defeated,
we
certainly would not live to see it. We will not even live to see the beginning! You tell us the Aldhanan would woo his Dhanans—his personal friends—in their castles, but we would be seeking out unknown conspirators, never knowing if we spoke instead to a Temple spy, and risking arrest and torture at every turn. Did you truly think we would fall all over ourselves to volunteer for that?”

Lhan snarled. “You see, Mistress Jae-En? This is why the church still stands. Because these dilletante demagogues see the great cause only as a diverting thing to discuss over wine and issae. They may talk blood and fire, but they have always been more interested in saving their own skin than risking it out in the wider world.”

“As were you, if I recall,” sneered Sei-Sien.

Lhan blushed at that, but didn’t look away. “At least I had the decency to leave the society when I realized my cowardice. You aspire to lead it, and yet you will not—”

Old Shal-Hau stood at last. He didn’t look like anybody’s grandfather anymore. “There is none here without fault! We have all let our ease and comfort keep us from taking the steps that might win us what we talk of so fervently.” He turned to Lhan. “Well no more. If the offer you make is real, if the Aldhanan wants our help against the church, if our voices might turn the tide, then I will gladly—”

“If.” Sei-Sien spit it out like it was a cockroach he’d found in his salad. “If! We still have not one shred of proof that any of this is true. You line up for the slaughterhouse, Shal-Hau. I will not follow. Not without proof.”

Lhan threw up his hands. “And what proof would suffice? Had the Aldhanan himself come to you, you would have said it was but another ruse. I—”

I’d had enough. “You know what, Lhan? Fuck these guys.” I kneed past the coffee table, then stomped for the door. “Why would you want ’em anyways? Who would listen to ’em? They’re all just a bunch of whining pussies. Let’s get out of here.”

I looked back and saw Lhan trying to hide a smile behind a snotty look as he started after me. “Yes, Mistress. An excellent idea. The Aldhanan has no need of limp weeds such as these. There are other heretics in Ormolu, younger, more stout-hearted fellows—the Third Moon, the Rain Makers, the Voice of Dead. We will see what they say.”

Well, I hadn’t meant it as a trick. I’d really wanted to get out of there. Those guys were making me sick. But if Lhan thought it would work, fine.

We went into the entry hall and started pulling on our cloaks and masks, and I thought we weren’t gonna get any takers after all, but then, just as we were reaching for the door, Shal-Hau came in.

“I will go with you, pupil. Perhaps Sei-Sien is correct, and you lie, but the chance to finally see an end to the church—I cannot turn away from it.”

And once the boss said yes, pretty soon the rest of ’em trickled in and said they’d come too, even Gaer-Zhau, until it was just Sei-Sien standing all by himself in the living room, trying to look dignified, but shaking like a dog shitting a peach pit.

Finally he came too. “Very well, I will come. How could I bear to be free knowing all my fellows were in chains?”

I opened the door. “Whatever you gotta tell yourself, dude.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

PREPARATIONS!

W
e slipped back into the palace the same way we’d slipped out, and one of the Aldhanan’s servants led us up a lot of back stairs and passages until we ended up right where we’d started, in the Aldhanan’s private suite, twiddling our thumbs in some kind of fancy waiting room with chairs all around.

Lhan gave Sei-Sien a smug smile. “Not the dungeons after all, eh, brother?”

Sei-Sien shrugged. “Not yet.”

Finally, after a half-hour or so, the Aldhanan strode in with Sai, Wen-Jhai, Captain Anan, and two guys I didn’t recognize. The first one was a big, beefy bastard with a hard jaw and harder eyes. He was dressed like a civilian, but had ex-military written all over him, mostly in scars. The other guy was the Don Knotts to his Andy Griffith, a goggle-eyed little goop who looked like he’d shit himself if you looked at him hard. I didn’t want to look at him at all. He kept licking his lips. They were red from it. Made me kind of queasy.

The Aldhanan was something to look at too. He’d had an extreme makeover. His beard was gone, his hair was shorter and died black, and he was dressed in a navy uniform. He looked like a completely different person.

“Welcome, friends, I am very pleased to see you. Your help in this endeavor may be the saving of Ora.” He rubbed his hands together like an excited gameshow host. “You have heard what we intend to do from Lhan-Lar and Mistess Jae-En? Good. Good. Now let me tell you how we will accomplish it. As you know, I mean to visit each of my Dhanans personally to enlist their support. This, of course, must be done in secret, or the church will move against us before we are ready. So I have asked the help of my old comrade Aur-Aun.”

He motioned to the military guy, who gave us a tight-lipped nod.

“Aur-Aun was once my standard bearer in battle, as brave and fierce as a ki-ten, but is now a tax collector for my treasury. With the help of his assistant, Yal-Faen—” He indicated the nebbish with the red lips, who twitched at the mention of his name. “He twice yearly visits my Dhanans, and takes from them the tithes they have gathered from their people. Now, to protect his person and the tithes, Aur-Aun is accompanied by an armed retinue. I and my guards will become this retinue and travel with him, allowing us to make a complete tour of Ora without the church any wiser.”