Trial of Intentions (60 page)

“You are a circus of fools,” he began. “Answer the question of why you came here to begin with. If you no longer believed in the dangers that brought your forebears to this hall to discuss matters of war against the Bourne, you wouldn't have come. And yet you sit here and let a politician mock that purpose.”

Grant shook his head in disgust. “Many of you may lack the grit your ancestors possessed, which would explain why this exigent hasn't yet been thrown out on his ass. Or, maybe some of you are
just like
your forebears, and would let others go to fight a war on your behalf. Whichever is true, wake up! You stand at a crossroads and you can't afford to waver. There's too much at stake.”

“Another friend of the regent's,” Roth exclaimed. “Is it any wonder that civility is lacking under her rule?”

There were a few low chuckles.

Grant whirled and strode back toward the Ascendant, causing the leagueman's band of armsmen to raise their weapons toward him. He lifted his gaze and looked at the wide round gallery of secondary seats. “Did you know that this leagueman has called for an end to the Song of Suffering?”

The muttering of voices now came louder than any that had come before.

“Yesterday, when Maesteri Belamae addressed this Convocation so eloquently, the Ascendant decried his testimony but carefully omitted this detail. Why? Because even if everything else Roth says is true, he would find it hard to convince you that we should let go the singing of the Song.”

He looked at Roth, expecting rebuttal. None came. Grant showed the Ascendant a crooked smile.

“Why should we listen to you?” said Queen Ela Valstone of Reyal'Te. “You occupy no seat among us. Who are you?”

“I am Grant,” he announced in a deep rough voice. “Known before as Denolan SeFeery, Emerit guard … and husband to Regent Helaina Storalaith.”

Rather than a rise of gossiping voices, Grant received several narrowed, critical stares. He'd expected as much. His irreverence was part of the reason others wanted him here. But some couldn't accept what they were seeing when they looked at him.

Grant laughed bitterly. “Those of you who knew me before don't recognize me, because your own eyes have grown old … while mine have not. Friends,” he said, softening his voice in appeal, “change is coming. The march of time in the Scar … has slowed. It's an effect that follows from when the Quiet stripped those lands of life. The natural order of things is changing.”

“This is foolishness!” Roth cried.

Grant turned on the man. “And it grows!” he declared. “The borders of the Scarred Lands are expanding. The silence of the heavens takes root in the earth beneath our feet. Soon—not today, or tomorrow, but soon—even the possibility of war as an answer to these changes”—he looked around at those seated at the convocation table—“will be lost to you. To your people.”

“Fear,” the Ascendant said, coolly. “Fear is the last refuge and manipulation of those who have no other argument left to convince you. It's the tool of dictators and religionists, and has no place in the halls of civilized men. You, yourself, Grant,” the Ascendant said, pointing an accusing finger at him, “take your name from the defiance and denial of arcane practices. You are a hypocrite to stand before us and argue that we should bow to the same myths you rejected.”

Grant leapt from the table. Roth's guards gave ground as he strode by them. In a quiet voice, he said, “Don't ever again twist my past to help your own argument.” He then strode by the leaguemen to the open floor nearer the gallery. “You here in these outer rings, you're a step closer to the men and women and children who will die first when this tide of Quiet comes. What do you say? Will you condemn them to the life I have led, walking in dry places, waiting for death?” He looked back at the convocation table. “Or will you have greater wisdom than those whose chairs are larger and softer and further removed from the hard realities that common men must face?

“Because, make no mistake,” he said, coming around again to the cluster of armed men surrounding Helaina and Roth, “a sea of trouble is coming. You have only to decide how you'll defend against it. Will it be as it has been in times gone by? Will you make a promise to each other? Or will you ignore the past, silence the Song and Sheason, and hope that this arrogant leagueman and his untrained, dispersed army can answer the threat when it steals into your homelands?”

As Grant glared at Roth, the other's face grew suddenly relaxed. He turned, and in mockery of Grant's dramatic walk around the outer ring of the hall—appealing to the gallery of second seats—he began the same walk, retracing Grant's path, and offering his own argument.

“The exile is a powerful speaker,” Roth complimented. “If I were sitting where you are, I'd be moved to consider his words. Certainly, you are nearer the families whose protection we are
all
entrusted to provide. But let me tell you something about this man who would ask your allegiance to unsubstantiated myths and rumors of war.”

Roth looked down at his feet for a moment as he paced, holding his chin thoughtfully, as though considering just how to say what he needed to say. Then, raising his gaze again, he began in a solemn, almost regretful tone. “I think you mean well,” he said to Grant. “Yours is a bitterness I understand. There is nobleness in how you care for children whose own parents cannot or will not. But your methods of guardianship make me wonder.”

He raised a hand, whereupon the doors to the Convocation Hall opened, and a man entered. The stranger slowly came into focus, and Grant realized it was the adoptive father of one of his wards, whom he had visited not long ago. An abusive man. Roth pointed at the one-armed adopter now standing beside him.

“This gentleman took in one of Grant's foundlings, brought the child into his home and cared for him. Without provocation or explanation, Grant returned to this man's home and cut off his arm, because he believed him an abuser. He never sought to understand the circumstances in the home. He simply came and dealt his own brand of uninformed justice. And this is the gentleman whose persuasive tongue we have just heard call for your sons to ride into war without a hint of our foreign neighbor's intention. Never mind the question of whether there's an enemy at all.”

Roth strode back to his seat at the great table and pounded his fists on the lacquered surface. “No! The regent and exile may mean well, but their sordid past has compromised their wisdom. And now they would compel us to wrong actions,
uncivil
actions.”

The Ascendant took a long, steadying breath. When he spoke again, he filled his voice with reminiscence. “I've known the taste of bone broth as my only meal, listened to a moneylender offer a mere plug for my mother's good things when we had nothing left to pawn.… But it makes me want to be sure our own children never know such things. And so,” he said, sitting with dignity and resolve, “not only do I question the intentions of this Convocation … I propose that we disband it entirely. Its purpose belongs to the past. We'll find new solutions to new problems, and we'll be better for it.”

Grant laughed. It carried into the vaults of the Convocation Hall. It had nearly echoed its last when Roth simply said, “I call for a vote of dissolution.”

Almost immediately, hands began to rise. Many around the great table, and one by one hands in the outer gallery were likewise going up. Voices began to mutter. The Convocation was going to fail to answer any promise at all.

Roth slowly raised an arm, and pointed at the man whose arm Grant had removed. The gesture brought silence again to the hall. In a low voice, Grant made one last argument. “This is your evidence. This
man
beat his wife. Beat the child I trusted to his care. Again and again he beat them. He's lucky I didn't take both his arms.”

He then took a long, measured look at those seated around the convocation table. “Tell me that if you found someone abusing your child you wouldn't do the same. Tell me that your heart doesn't whisper that I was right to do it.” Grant looked up at Roth. “You may once have known the ache of an empty belly and the hardships of poverty. But don't sit there and pretend you understand them now. Your empathy is a mockery, since you use it for political gain.”

Grant looked around again at these kings and leaders. “A man can only truly know the state of another's heart if he bears the same condition at the same time. The rest is sophistry. Maneuvering. This
man
with all his tenderness,” he pointed now at Roth, “claims the interests of the people, but would let a child die rather than allow a healer whose art he doesn't understand to restore that child's health. This
man
decries others as dictators and religionists, and yet has published his own creed and tried to have the regent assassinated. This
man,
” Roth sneered the word, “would let this Convocation fail and your people consequently die, to advance his own ideas of reform.”

Grant's voice softened. “Think, my friends. Your ancestors came to this same place for this same purpose. They weren't deceived. They didn't always make right decisions. But they came here with an understanding that some threats are real, and need to be met. We don't wish it so. But we have strength enough to meet these threats.… If we do it together.” He paused, coming to the simplest truth he knew. “You wouldn't be here at all, if part of you didn't believe that was true.”

When he'd finished, there was a deep silence. The kind in which you can hear true things.

Roth must have heard it, too. He'd just begun to interrupt that silence, when beyond the doors and windows, the distant sound of trumpets filled the air, hailing some arrival. They continued their call for several moments, until the doors opened once again, and for the first time in the history of Recityv, a Far king strode the halls of Convocation.

Behind Elan came ten of his closest guard. They peeled off several strides back, leaving their king to approach Helaina alone. Roth and Grant stood back as the Far came on and extended a hand to the regent. Helaina received his hand and bowed her head. Then Elan, as if accustomed to the place, moved in beside the empty seat next to Helaina's and leaned forward over the convocation table, placing his hands on its surface and staring around at the leaders of nations.

Helaina retook her seat just as Elan began to speak.

“I am not a myth.” He gave Roth a dark look. “Nor is the commission my people have borne for ages. We were entrusted with keeping the Language of the Covenant safe until the time came, if ever, that it should be needed.… That time has come.”

Roth waved a hand. “Surely, you don't—”

“You will let me speak, Ascendant Staned; the blood of countless Far gives me the right.” Elan's eyes invited Roth to challenge him. Roth waved his hand again for the Far king to continue.

“If it is not yet known to you, the library at Qum'rahm'se has been destroyed. Your attempts to reconstruct the Covenant Tongue have been burned to ash. This comes at the hands of Velle, dark renderers of the Will who believe that your only hope against them is the use of this forgotten speech.”

“More magic and mysteries,” Roth interjected. “When will this end?”

It was Elan's turn to hold up a hand, signaling his men to drag forward something Grant hadn't noticed. Before anyone knew what was happening, several Far heaved a great form and cast it on the table, ripping free the dark shroud that had concealed it.

Men and women around the table and in the gallery shot to their feet at the sight of the slain body of a Bar'dyn.

Elan waited for the muttering voices to calm, for most to reclaim their seats, before resuming. “The Quiet have crossed the Veil. Some of them, anyway.” Elan shared a look with Grant, then stared back at Roth. “This very turn of the moon a host of them descended out of the Saeculorum, crossed the shale plains, infiltrated the heart of our city, and destroyed the Covenant Tongue.

“My friends,” Elan said, casting his gaze around the table, “you see the proof of the enemy before you. These events are not random. The Quiet have destroyed the greatest weapon we possessed to fight them. The time for deliberation is past. War is coming, whether you choose to answer its call … or not.”

In the silence that followed came the slow clap of a single pair of hands. Roth's. “Fine theater, gentlemen. Oh, I have great respect for the Far.” He looked at Elan. “For your steadfastness, if not the reality of some lost language. But this”—Roth stood and looked over the body of the Bar'dyn—“proves nothing.”

“Certainly looks like something to me,” Grant said.

Mild laughter filled the table.

“A foreigner,” Roth said, hunching his shoulders. “He looks different. Smells different.”

More laughter.

“But,” Roth said, raising a finger, “is he an enemy? That's the question, isn't it. He needs to be an enemy for Helaina's Convocation to succeed. But what if he's just … a foreigner?”

Elan stood tall. “Thousands of my people died at the hands of these
foreigners
.”

“And what if that could have been avoided,” Roth said, and started to pace again around the backs of those seated at the convocation table. “What if through negotiation no battle need have been fought? Or be fought again? This is what we have to decide. Do we arm ourselves again for some great war? Do you put your children in armor and stick a sword in their hands and pray to dead gods that they return?” He paced faster. “And when was the last time a dead god answered one of your prayers?”

“Roth—” Helaina began.

“No, think on it. I've never doubted there were nations beyond the Pall. I simply don't believe they mean us harm. Or there's some old misunderstanding. A misunderstanding I'd rather us fight with diplomacy and leave our swords home.”