CHOSEN (22 page)

Ambrose nodded to all that, but didn’t know what to say. It didn’t feel as much of a comfort as it should have. Maybe it was the reminder for the same outpouring that came in for his young wife, a few days before she died.

“I couldn’t help but discover the reason for Governor Alse’s visit,” the High Bishop went on.

“I want to ask you something,” Ambrose said then, wondering at the same time if he should. “You were there when my father died and heard what he said. He was consumed by fear of it. As you know, Dionin wasn’t a man frightened of much.”

“He wasn’t.”

“Nearly all the things he warned me about have happened.”

“The world has not ended, though I imagine it must feel that way to you,” Gradyn said, leaning down to pick up a single blue rose to smell. “I don’t know where Dionin had the idea it would.”

“He got it from Alurn,” Ambrose said, careful to keep his voice down. “Dionin heard it from his father, who was told by his father, and so on back down the line all the way to the First King is where.”

“Yes, I’m aware of those stories. I ask you to recall the games you played as a young boy, tell the secret, pass the secret or some such as that, where the end result sounded nothing like the original whisper. Think about the hundreds of people these stories have traveled through to reach us.”

“So it’s all just coincidence and not Alurn foretelling the end of time?” Ambrose thought those two choices were seriously lacking. He wanted other options, but the attack on his son seemed to have nothing of coincidence to it.

“How could Alurn know?” Gradyn said. “There’s little true evidence to make a reasoned judgment with. There was a group once.”

“Yes, the Disciples of Alurn,” Ambrose said. “They later changed their name to Disciples of the Word, who raised him up to be something more than a man. Some suggest they exist even today.”

“They thought of him as a God,” Gradyn said. “They claimed to have his written word and protected it with their lives.”

“They were executed for attempting to usurp the Throne,” Ambrose said.

“The book they claimed to have was thought to be destroyed.”

“Or taken from them,” Ambrose said.

“After all this time, there’s no way to know what Alurn said, or anyone else from that time. I don’t hold him up as a God, despite previous teachings from previous High Bishops who started that whole movement. Dynan will recover from this, and you’ll find Dain. The men responsible for this atrocity will be found and dealt with to the utmost extent of the law. The world will go on. It wasn’t ever in danger of stopping.”

Ambrose nodded, embarrassed now that’s he’d brought it up. Still there were stories that persisted down through the ages, of mythical creatures and savage times.

“You mentioned Governor Alse,” he said to get off the subject.

“I feel my presence here has given people the wrong idea, and maybe you as well. I would never want to do anything that caused you more difficulty. And if I may offer you some advice, which I know you don’t need, but if I may, I would suggest to you that there is no reasonable call to have Dynan removed as your heir, even while some question his survival. I hope you don’t listen to them.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

Gradyn seemed relieved to hear it, but he only nodded. “I’ll return later today for a visit, if you feel it appropriate.”

“Of course.”

“Then I’ll take my leave of you and wish you a pleasant morning,” he said, nodding to the sky and the coming dawn.

It really was exactly what Ambrose wanted. He wondered how the old man knew. “Thank you,” he said as the High Bishop turned. “We may not always see things the same, Gradyn, but I appreciate your being here.”

Gradyn smiled at that. “I will do whatever you need of me, Your Majesty. Rest assured of it.”

It was difficult to suppress the sigh of relief that welled up, but Ambrose managed it while the High Bishop was within sight and then still while the IB imagers recorded every movement. It wouldn’t do for the entire System to see him happy over the old man leaving.

Ambrose wasn’t left alone long. The other old man in his life joined him in the wake of the High Bishop’s departure. Xavier Illothian wasn’t as ancient as Gradyn Vall. No one was. He was the only Lord Chancellor in Cobalt’s history to serve two Kings, which made him old enough. His hair was solid gray, but his eyes were clear and his mind still sharp as ever. Ambrose considered him more a father than his real one had been. Nothing ever seemed to rattle him. He had never, in all the years Ambrose had known him, raised his voice in anger.

At the moment though, his lips were pursed and his brows drawn down. He glanced after the High Bishop’s transfer that had already pulled away, lost from view behind a sea of people.

“I just spoke with a gentleman,” Xavier said, “who tells me that on the night of the attack, he saw a man carry Dain to a transfer marked with the seal of the Temple and that a Palace Guard saw this too. The guard talked to the monk and then let him go.”

“That’s...No, that’s not possible,” Ambrose said, unable to believe it, except he knew Xavier wouldn’t bring him something like this if it wasn’t true.

“I hope that it isn’t,” Xavier said. “At the moment, I’d like you to come inside where you’re less in the open. Now, please, Your Majesty, in case the guard is compromised.”

“You’re saying the High Bishop has Dain? To what purpose?”

Xavier didn’t answer, taking him by the arm in a surprisingly firm grip, urging him to turn and move. “There’ll be time for questions in a moment.”

The movement drew Melgan’s attention, and Brendin and Roth, who immediately followed. “Xavier?” Melgan asked.

Instead of answering, Xavier drew out his comboard and using the optic function, sent them a silent message that stunned them all.

“The King’s life is at risk.”

~*~

Chapter 18

Carryn stepped back, afraid to try and stop Dain, he was that out of control, smashing his fist into the barrier, once, twice, three, and then four times before the pain of doing so seeped through. His knuckles were bloodied.

The wall encroached on them, until he gained some measure of control and pushed back. He was shaking from anger, and for a moment, when he turned on her, she thought he might strike her.

“Who was that man?” he said, and stopped in front of her, as close as he could get without touching her. She felt exposed. For a second, she wished she were armed. Dynan’s sapphire sword stood leaning against the wall. Dain looked at it too.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It was just darkness to me.”

His eyes narrowed at that, but he read the truth in her mind. Over the last three days she let him explore her thoughts, or some of them. He’d never been in anyone else’s head but his brother’s, so it was new to him, alien and enticing.

“You don’t know anything do you?” he said. “You just follow them, blindly going along with it.”

“I know some things,” she said, backing up a step. It was like being in a hot oven having all that rage directed at her. “I know that if you go through the vortex, the world will end. Literally.”

“He said he found Alurn.”

“The First King?”

“No, the butcher down the street. What other Alurn is there?” he said. “What does he have to do with any of this? He’s been dead forever.”

Carryn wasn’t sure she should guess. She didn’t understand how it would be possible that Alurn Telaerin was held there, but it made sense if he was and that was why they sent Dynan. She didn’t want to believe it either since having the two of them together just made the world that much more fragile. She realized this was information being withheld from her, and didn’t know why.

“I...”

“Don’t know?” Dain said. “Like I said.”

The wall took his attention again, and took her mind off things she didn’t want to think about. He was getting better at it, holding his concentration while he did other things like accuse her of being clueless. This time, it took some effort for him to make the advancement stop.

She wondered as she watched him what made him so angry all the time, not over this situation, but in general. Her vision blurred and she was shown Dain as a young child of five, walking behind the bier of his mother with Dynan right beside him, deep into the tombs under the Palace for her burial. The pain of that moment struck her, but while Carryn wondered if this was an answer to the question, the vision shifted to the present. The King stood outside in the glare of lights with the Lord Chancellor telling him that Dain was at the Temple.

“Oh...that’s...not...” Carryn blinked in the dull light, the stone wall returning into focus, replacing candle flame and flowers. “That’s not good.”

“What are you muttering about?” Dain said, and before she could stop him from reading these thoughts, he had them all.

“So, my father has figured it out,” he said, leaning against the dark wall, his arms folded as if at his ease. “You better think of what you’re going to do about it fast. There are going to be a lot of guards swarming all over the place very soon. They might be a little pissed off.”

She shook her head, but she was afraid he was right. “He won’t send guards to the Temple based off the story of one man, who in a short time won’t be able to remember what he said.”

“Is that what you do when the truth gets in the way of your plans?” Dain asked. “Make people forget? That’s convenient.”

“It’s necessary.”

“You change a man’s memory and make him seem a fool, or even crazy to suit your purpose. What about changing the Lord Chancellor’s memory? You’re going to have to. He’s already checked this guy out. If he took it to my father, Xavier believes him. Now you have to change the King’s memory, and all the Surrogates too. The entire top tier of Cobalt’s government. Didn’t you people get in trouble a few hundred years ago for this kind of thing? Come to think of it, there were a lot of executions, weren’t there?”

Carryn wanted him to stop talking. It was hard to think past the terrible list of actions he set out before her, measures she knew she’d have to go along with in order to stop a catastrophe.

“You need to come up with a different plan, lady,” he said, and turned back to set his hands against the darkness. “The guards are already deployed. When those men think that there’s danger to the King, they act pretty fast.”

Dain pushed against the barrier and gained a step. He was almost to the corner of the hall with the Room of Orbs. Carryn wondered how they would hide him.

“So what are you going to do when they get here?” Dain asked. “Have that plan yet?”

“What are you going to do?” she asked. “Leave?”

“You people kidnapped me, brought me here, put me in front of this thing, and said stop it.”

“We had to.”

“And you nearly killed my brother,” he said. “Exactly what do I owe you?”

“Dain—”

“It was the only way to get Dynan where he needed to be.” Maralt was already half way down the hall before they noticed him. Carryn didn’t think he was supposed to be there after what the High Bishop said. “We had to.”

“We? I seem to remember you were the only one there,” Dain said, leaving the wall again and going right up to him.

Carryn feared they would start fighting.

“All right,
I
had to,” Maralt said without backing down. “If I hadn’t, he would have been taken straight to the Gate. You would have followed him, which is what they want. They sent the talon to your brother to weaken him. It infected who knows how many others to their cause just by being here, in this world.”

“The talon,” Carryn said. “Where is it?”

Maralt turned to her. “I have it.”

“No! Maralt you can’t have it here.”

“You really
don’t
know anything,” Dain said, glancing at Carryn.

“I couldn’t leave it on him,” Maralt said. “He wouldn’t stand a chance with the memory of it. So I took it...”

For a moment, silence filled the hall, the only sound a distant drip of water and the strange high-pitched whine the darkness emitted.

“...after you attacked him,” Dain said, his hands balling into fists.

“So he would know he didn’t have it anymore.”

Carryn took Maralt by the arm, turning him from Dain to her. “Does the High Bishop know? Maralt, I can’t believe—”

“I lied about it,” he said. “He’d tell me to give it to him, Carryn. He doesn’t have the strength for it. I’m aware of the dangers. I’m guarding myself against it as best I can. We’ll figure out what to do with it later.”

Dain was shaking his head, looking back to the wall. “If you can guard yourself against the evil influence of this thing, then why not you instead? You’re older. You’re stronger. You actually know what the hell this is all about. Why did you send Dynan?”

“I volunteered to go in his place. I was told I couldn’t. You’re different from me. I’m not stronger. And there are other reasons I can’t tell you,” Maralt said while Dain was still talking. “It might make things worse.”

Maralt glanced at Carryn and she realized he was keeping something from her on purpose and she immediately blamed the talon for the deception.

“That’s not it,” Maralt said in answer to the thought. “The old man told me I couldn’t tell you, not the talon. It’s not like the thing is sentient.”

“Why would he do that?” Carryn said, not believing him. She wondered if it was true about Alurn, but managed to keep that thought to herself

“Because no one knows. Gradyn isn’t going to let me keep the knowledge either. He’s going to take my memory of it.”

“You’re the only one who can take memories, so how can you take your own?”

Maralt realized he had given away more than he should. He didn’t understand why it had to be secret anyway, especially since the knowledge would be taken. Carryn read that much before he stopped her.

“He said it would hurt,” Maralt said in an effort to dissuade her. “If I tell you, he’ll make me take it from you, Carryn.”

“You’ve never hurt me when you’ve taken my memory.”