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‘So you keep telling me. But he will stand alone when we are done. There will be no Consort at the court of Father Light and Mother Dark.’
‘You do not yet grasp the danger he presents, High Priestess. It is my fate to go unheeded. He journeyed to the lands of the Azathanai. He spoke with the Lord of Hate. He holds congress with unknown powers. Consider his gifts to Mother Dark! Whence came such things? A sceptre to command darkness. A mere pattern carved by sorcery upon a floor – that opens a gate into a nether realm!’
‘Cease your shouting, old man. I am not blind to the threat posed by Lord Draconus. Yes, there is mystery about him. I believe he has indeed conspired with the Azathanai, and we as yet know nothing of the bargain’s cost. But consider the one named T’riss, and the gift she in turn gave to me. Without her, there would be no Light.’
‘Then,’ muttered Sagander, ‘the Azathanai but play both sides, seeking discord. Seeking the ruin of Kurald Galain.’
‘Too bad,’ Syntara murmured, ‘that you were unable to accompany Draconus into the west.’
‘He sought no witness to his deeds there. They all worked against me. In all innocence, I fell into their trap.’
Syntara affected a bemused frown. ‘I thought it was a falling horse that broke your leg.’
‘Yes,’ he hissed. ‘A broken leg. What of it? When do such minor injuries demand a severing of the limb? But I was unconscious. I could not assay the damage for myself. I was deprived of choosing my treatment. They were … opportunistic.’
‘Have you no words left for the book?’
He flung the stylus down. ‘Not now, High Priestess. The pain has grown worse again. I must seek my draughts.’
Yes, your draughts. Your potions of forgetting. In this way, you pledge fealty to your gods of pain. You kneel to them. You offer up a drunken smile to their dulled retreat. As upon an altar, you wet your throat with libations, and sicken the temple of your flesh. ‘Of course. Be gone, then, scholar. Take your rest.’
‘Renarr needs to be removed,’ Sagander said, reaching for his crutches. ‘She stands too close to Father Light. She whispers words of poison.’
‘Perhaps you are right. I will think on the matter.’
She watched the scholar hobble from the chamber. Her thoughts of Renarr quickly fell away, as she turned her mind to Lord Urusander. At his heart a common soldier. He knows well the artifice of his noble title, the puerile claim of an invented ancestry. In that at least, Sagander has the truth of it. The lowborn suffer the inadequacies of their impure blood, and we see it clearly in Urusander.
Still, I must make him Father Light.
Duty, Urusander. Even the ox knows its demand.
There was something there, then, that indeed echoed Sagander’s assertions. When musing on the notion of duty, it was undeniable that the virtue’s strength waned the higher one climbed through the classes. And yet, was it not the highborn who spoke most often of duty, when demanding the service of the commonalty, upon farms and among the ranks of soldiery? In the building of cobbled roads and the raising of estates and keeps? Duty, they cried, in the name of the realm.
But usurpers do not come from the common folk. No, they are the rivals standing too close to the throne. They are the pledged allies, the advisers, the commanders.
Think on this, Syntara. How will you tread this narrow path ahead? The closer we get to the throne room of the Citadel, the greater the risk of betrayal.
Urusander, you must learn again the meaning of duty. In the name of peace, recall your low origins, and be assured that I will blunt the fawners who would stoke your fires of personal ambition, of unnatural elevation.
I must reconsider my conversation with Emral Lanear. Let our aspects achieve a proper balance, to make the queen temper the king and the king temper the queen. To make the god and goddess exchange fealty, and in time come to need the weaknesses of the other. For should they lock gazes and feed mutual strengths, both faiths will be lost, and Kurald Galain with them.
Emral. We need to work in concert. Mother Dark was a Tiste once, a mortal woman, a widow. Urusander was a commander in a legion. These are their ignoble legacies. It falls to you and me, Lanear, to invest them both with proper humility.
And to watch, with a multitude of spies and assassins, those who would crowd too close to either of them.
Perhaps, in fomenting aloofness, Mother Dark has the right of it. None shall draw too close. In the distance of their st
ation, we can ensure their sanctity. This will need to be perfectly played. We shall be as sisters, you and I, Lanear.
And yet again, Sagander spoke truly. Draconus stands too close to Mother Dark. He holds too many of her secrets. It will not be enough to banish him. A knife in the back, or poison in the cup, or, if luck holds, a pathetic end in the mud of a battlefield.
We High Priestesses, we shall stand between our rulers and everyone else. We must be the raised dais, the guardians of the portal, and the veil through which every word must pass, from below to above, from above to below.
Syntara gestured with her mind, a flare of power, and a moment later a priestess entered the chamber.
‘Analle, attend my words.’
‘High Priestess,’ the young woman said, gaze averted as she ducked her head.
