The Seekers of Fire (11 page)

"Then let us go." At least as grateful for the distraction as for the surging hope, Linden reached towards the door. Just as she grabbed the unyielding handle, Rianor snatched her and dragged her back.

"You heedless—" He squeezed her shoulders, seemingly unaware of her pain as he imprinted his fingers into her flesh. She suppressed a shiver as his furious steely eyes fixed hers. "Just how can you do something like that!?"

Linden did shiver now, fighting to keep her strength. He looked as if he wanted to hit her, and she bit back a counter-insult, suddenly feeling lost and completely alone. She did not know what he would do to her, or what his reasons would be. Despite everything that he had done for her and the thoughts and experiences they had shared, she could not know.

This night has been too long. Nothing made sense any more. This man here was a stranger she could not trust, and even her own father had not trusted
her.
And she did not even know if he and Mom were alive ...

Now shaking uncontrollably, Linden still succeeded to swallow all tears but one, which warmed a trace on her cheek. Aware that it still demonstrated more feelings that she cared to show, she bit her lip.

"Wretch it," she murmured, feeling the lord's fingers loosen their grip so that it did not hurt any more. Whatever nobility rules she had trespassed with her rush towards the door, it was demeaning to cry her way out of the consequences.

Lord Rianor seemed to echo her thoughts.

"No, you are not going to cry now," he said softly, anger still evident in his voice. "Now you are going to listen to me very carefully, and then act accordingly."

No, you are not going to command me,
she wanted to reply, but it would be stupid, for opposing him in this would mean that she was defending her crying. Linden despised crying. She had so rarely cried before tonight.

"Just what did I do, if you care to explain!" She jerked back from him and winced as her head met a stone bulging from the wall. There were two such stones, she absentmindedly noted, as her legs weakened and wetness crept down her neck. Two stones, like guards, on both sides of the door.

"Let me see." Rianor advanced upon her and carefully parted the hair at the back of her head, assisting her with his other hand. "It is just a scratch, fortunately. And to answer your question, you did yet another thing that might have killed you. Linde, damn it, how much mind does a person need to know that these doors might be protected?"

"And how much mind does a person need to warn me?" Linden stared at him, fury growing with the pain in her head. Doors were just doors. They were either locked or unlocked, either opened or did not open, and there was nothing special or dangerous about doors except in fairytales ...

But other things happened only in fairytales, too. She had been
in
a fairytale tonight.

"I cannot be aware of every stupid healer's or noble's whim," she whispered, trying to keep the anger for it was better than the alternative feelings. "How does one protect a door, anyway? What did you do to yours?"

"How
I
protected it? And did you even think to ask yourself how much I knew about the doors before tonight?" He shook his head, chasing an instant shadow in his eyes, and with a pang she realized that he was still in pain. "As for stupid nobles' whims, I do not doubt that the Lord of Waltraud has had his door taken care of so that something very nasty happens to people like you."

"And what,
my lord,
are people like me?"

"People,
my lady,
that are connected to me. What did you think that I meant?"

She did not reply, but the answer was obvious. She had thought that he had referred to her as a commoner, a lower quality person to whoever the Lord of Waltraud was.

Rianor sighed. "Never think that again, will you? And I do have a reason to tell you to listen carefully and act accordingly." The shadow was back in his eyes, and Linden found herself simultaneously desiring to hit him, and embrace and comfort him.

"I told you that most probably this was our door. If I were certain, I would have said so. It might be the door to any House. Or it might lead somewhere else entirely."

"I see." Linden thought to apologize, but this was interrupted as Rianor held her more tightly and then released her and stepped in the direction of the door.

"Well," he said just as he reached for the handle, "let us see if it will open for me."

The door screeched open just as Linden threw herself against it. The twilight beyond glimmered with silhouettes of dishes, pans, pots, and an image on the wall that looked much like that on the vial and the handkerchief; then her shoulder collided with the steel, and the door slammed closed.

"And who is heedless now!" she shouted as Rianor murmured, "This is my House, all right."

Linden gripped his shirt. She wanted to shake him and did not do it only because of his broken ribs. "Rianor, how much mind does a person need to know that attacks that do not work on another might still work on him?" She inhaled sharply, resisting the urge to scream. "I don't have whip-marks on my face, but you do!"

Rianor was watching her with a strange expression on his face. At the same time, a part of his attention seemed to be somewhere else, and finally Linden did shake him. "You don't know me and what may or may not hurt me! I might even be one of the Waltraud people and this the door to my House!"

Now all of his attention snapped back to her, and he gently but firmly caught her wrists.

"Linde, you are right, and I do owe you an explanation about why I would do the same thing I was angry with you about."

Linden sighed, disengaging her fingers from his clothes.

"An explanation? You owe me many of them."

Rianor smiled faintly.

"You will get two for now. The first one is that I certainly knew that you were not connected to Waltraud. Or to any others I would not have liked you to be connected to, for that matter. As for the second one,"—he reached his left hand towards her—"look at this."

Slowly, he traced his wrist with his thumb, making sure that she was watching. A moment later, a glittering watch of white metal emerged on his wrist. Its hands moved, but its face showed not numbers but the engraved symbol
.

Linden suddenly found it hard to open her mouth and speak. "Oh, Master ..."

Rianor nodded, the hint of a smile gone.

"Yes, if you are going to mention the old man's name in connection to anything, this is it. What do you know about it?"

Linden regarded the symbol carefully, revulsion fighting sharp curiosity inside her, then both feelings were displaced by something else.

"How much does it hurt you?" she whispered, grateful that her voice was not shaking.

"It does not hurt me at all, my fair lady," Rianor replied softly, then seemed to read something in her eyes and added, "not any more. Now tell me what you know."

"I don't know much." Linden gave the watch a look of mixed feelings, then lightly placed her fingers on Rianor's elbow. "I have only seen symbols of that kind on Mentor Maxim's whip." She swallowed, the memory of the Mentors' attack and the old Mentor's unmoving body still too fresh.

"I am not supposed to have seen them, I think, but I wanted to know as much about the whip as I could, so I sneaked close to him once, after Confession. He was just talking to my mom about me, telling her"—Linden laughed nervously—"what a good girl with a spotless quintessence I was. He had whipped everyone in the temple but me that day, and the whip was still out, as if he had forgotten about it."

She shivered. "There was a moment when I thought that he had seen me—that I would taste the whip for the first time then—but he must have not, for he did nothing. I also noticed that the whip was not the only strange thing about him, that he had something on his hand, which was, however, hidden by his sleeve. I do not know if you noticed, but tonight, too, they were talking about something on the young one's hand." She shivered again. "Also, I once heard Factory clerks talking about symbols on the doors to the Factory's Inner Sanctum. Something, they said, must be important about symbols and the days new wretches arrive—Do you know what they say about Factory wretches, that even if they ever go out again, they are never the same?"

"I do." His face was yet again, unreadable. "But I did not know about there being such symbols in the Factories."

"Well, this is all I know, it is not something you are encouraged to learn about. Someone—" She sighed. "A woman who later disappeared told me once that the Bers used glyphs of pain, meant to punish those who deserved it."

"And what do
you
think of that?" There must have been something on her face or in her voice, for now there was something in his and it seemed a reaction.

She met his eyes.

"I do not doubt the pain part. As well as I do not doubt that it should not be up to the Bers to decide who deserves what."

Rianor nodded. "I would really like to hear more of your opinions once we are at the other side of this door. Now listen." He glanced at his watch, then back at Linden. "This here is the proof that I am the real Lord of Qynnsent, and your parents asked to see it. You should have, too. Were I an impostor, I could have stolen the clothes and everything that bears the Qynnsent crest. But not the watch. It cannot be removed."

"May I touch it?"

"I do not mind if you try."

Still holding his elbow, Linden slowly moved her other hand towards the watch. When she brushed Rianor's wrist with her finger, the watch was gone as if it had never been there.

"Interesting," Rianor murmured, "it would not let most people so close before disappearing. Well, you see that it cannot be stolen. Even cutting my hand would not help."

"I do hope that anyone considering cutting your hand would think of that first," Linden said softly. "Why it is in the shape of a watch, when it doesn't show the time?"

"Oh, it does measure something. Only, I do not know what." There, the anger was in him again, this time deeper, more hidden and controlled, barely a breath of an emotion, and yet a breath that made her cold.

"Linde, I want you to know about the watch before we go through this door. I need to use it to make sure I get you inside safely, and I would not use it on you before telling you first. You are getting one as well, by the way, when you are officially a Qynnsent lady. The Bers will make it. It will not hurt you—I hope—and yet no one else will be able to take it from you. It will open doors and do other useful things, but it will not give you the protection this one gives me."

He fell into silence, his eyes focused far, and Linden tried to not interrupt his thoughts, knowing already how irritated he became if she did. Then his breathing became slightly uneven, and with a sinking heart she realized that his last reserve of strength was waning fast.

"Rianor, tell me later."

"Do not worry, my caring apprentice. I will tell you most of it later anyway, it is too much. The watch, or more accurately my status as a High Lord of Qynnsent, was the reason that trying the door was less dangerous for me than it was for you. You see, noble Houses are not always friendly towards each other, and you can expect a dagger in your back even from the ones that are supposedly allied to you. Because of that, throughout the centuries some Houses have almost been obliterated by others. But never completely obliterated. The Bers want all Noble Houses to persevere. So, one thing they did was to protect the doors to Noble Houses from those who neither belong to the respective House nor are guests or workers who are there with the High Ruler's blessing."

He sighed.

"Other doors are protected in similar ways, but now is not the time to talk about them. As for the House doors, a correct House wristwatch will open them, but invaders will be stopped. The doors themselves would determine how much invaders suffer in the process, and some High Rulers had been known to convince the Bers to make them some quite nasty doors. Selective, too, sometimes, hence my comment regarding Waltraud. Yet, in all these cases, a High Lord or High Lady of another House would only be repelled, with no suffering at all."

"Isn't that fair," Linden said with a twisted smile, and steel and something that looked like a hint of pain glinted in Rianor's eyes.

"Would you care to give me a definition of '
fair,
' Linde? I thought it fair enough when I became a High Lord. And you did not complain that it could never be you who entered a Factory's Inner Sanctum, either. Your fairness, my dear lady, is never the same as somebody else's. Together with freedom, justice, and other such things that Bers, Mentors and poets love to throw in your face as Master-crafted to suit them, it exist in your mind and nowhere else."

Linden stared at him, shocked by the aberrant opinion so similar to the ones she'd had throughout her life but always kept to herself.

"Rianor, were you not a noble, these words would have doomed you," she whispered, with both fear and respect.

"I would not advise you to share similar viewpoints in public even after I have presented you as a lady," he replied softly, then a small smile flickered on his lips. "But you can always share them with me."