City of Night (38 page)

While he was thus occupied, Sigurne approached him at the side of another member of the Order.

“This is Matteos Corvel,” she said. “Matteos, this is Ararath. His style of dress is entirely a courtesy to the Exalted.”

Rath bowed. “Member Mellifas felt that speed was advisable and I was not otherwise able to come up with suitable attire on short notice.”

Matteos Corvel raised a dark brow. His hood did not obscure his face; it was dark, and the lines across his brow, white in comparison, spoke of battles that had not managed to kill him.

“Matteos,” Sigurne told Rath, “is often charged with my safety. Member APhaniel is not currently in residence,” she added. “But in any event, Member APhaniel is not always the ideal choice for the formality of the Church of Cormaris.”

At this, Matteos Corvel grimaced and looked as if he would speak; he held his peace, but with some effort. Instead of words, he offered Sigurne his arm, and she nodded gracefully, placing her hand upon it.

 

The cathedrals of
Averalaan Aramarelas
could be seen by travelers long before they had reached the demiwalls which girded the outer City itself. At that distance, they were evocative; they hinted at wealth and the serenity of distant, benign power. It was not, however, as such a traveler that Rath now approached them.

Nor was it as such a traveler that he was granted entrance. Unlike the palace, with its obvious guards, its obvious foreign dignitaries and the wing of
Avantari
occupied by its multiple bureaucracies and their attendant employees and visitors, the cathedral was dramatically silent. What bustle there was existed behind the walls of the open nave. Visitors, of course, did not use those halls. They walked, instead, beneath the spread wings of an eagle in flight, and passed beneath the rod he clasped in curved talons. That all of this was done in stone was expected; that the stone did not rob the eagle of intelligence, focus, and the sense that it was living, was not.

But here, of course, the maker-born had toiled. If any could afford their services, it was the cathedrals upon the Isle.

Gold leaf had been laid upon the carved runes of welcome, and startling blue stones had been laid at their points. Rath gazed at them a moment, but did not linger. It had been years since he had come to sit on the magnificent and gleaming benches that spread out within the space formed by three walls. The cathedral was never dark. Even in Henden, at midnight, magelights shone, reflected in gold and warmed by aged ivory and polished silver. The Mother’s cathedral observed the strict tenets of the Six Dark Days, as did the cathedral of Reymaris, but Cormaris was the Lord of Wisdom, and in the darkness, wisdom was light.

Or so Rath had been told. Funny, to think of that here.

Sigurne had passed beneath the towering arch that led to the pews, Matteos by her side. The younger mage—Rath had no doubt he was mage-born—had relaxed perceptibly upon entering the cathedral. Rath envied him; he hadn’t.

Nor was it required. Sigurne had not been in the building long before two Priests came from the recessed doors to either side of the great nave. They wore robes that were not dissimilar to the Order’s robes, but where the Order’s robes were functional and plain, the robes of the Priesthood were subtly embroidered with gold. The men were silent as they approached, but they tendered Sigurne a deep bow; it was also genuine.

“Member Mellifas,” one man said. “The Exalted is waiting.”

She nodded in turn, and Matteos offered her an arm.

“Your companion?”

“Ah. He is, as you have divined, new to the Order, and he is here at my request.”

“Very well.” He glanced once again at Rath, as if words were about to spill into the silence and he hoped to catch them. The silence, however, remained unbroken. Long past the point it would have been awkward under merely social circumstances, the Priest nodded and turned.

 

The halls that were traveled by Priests and novitiates were not as finely accoutered as the areas meant to instill awe in visitors, but they were by no means plain, and they did not suggest humility. They were wider than the servants’ halls that wound like warrens through any of the great manors, and the sconces that held torches—or, in this case, magestones—were gleaming in the light. The floors were stone, as were the walls, but they were broken by any number of architectural flourishes: small alcoves in which statues resided, arches that were not structurally necessary, molded cornices. There were also hanging tapestries and framed paintings; the halls were not short, and they followed the halls until they reached a set of narrow stairs.

The stairs were winding stairs, girded in the center by a stone pillar around which were engraved emblems of the god. The Priests led up those stairs, and the mages followed in single file. Rath brought up the rear, pausing to glance up toward the pillar’s height where eagles were, indeed, in perpetual flight.

He approached those eagles as he climbed; the stairs, like the halls, were not short. Although halls branched from the spiral, they were not taken. Rath wondered why it was that even Priests loved the heights. Then again, this was their job, their place of employ; it was no doubt to entirely more humble—and thankfully less steep—stairs that they repaired at the end of their day’s service.

But the stairs did end, and with them, the climb and the building ache they caused in the leg he favored. As Sigurne did not trouble to pause to catch breath, no one else could. Vanity was foolish that way, but it drove far greater men than Rath, and he acknowledged this with a wry smile.

The Priest noticed, of course. The one thing about Priests that made them so daunting was the utter lack of humor they indulged in while on duty. Not that humor on this particular day was required—but the lack of humor implied a certain self-importance that on the best of days annoyed Rath.

He let it go, and followed Sigurne down the hall. It was in all ways finer than the halls on the first floor, and windows graced it, colored light illuminating both walls and floors. Here, sun behind their insubstantial wings, eagles soared above both mountains and City, watching from a remove of flight, untroubled by the things that could not touch them.

And what,
thought Rath, as he paused to watch their captured flight,
troubled gods?
Why, if they existed as they did, in their perfect distant lands, did they care about the fate of mortals, whose lives might end before they finished a thought?

He reached up with his right hand, and paused an inch from the surface of the window under the watchful eye of Sigurne, who had stopped and turned back. Embarassed, he lowered his hand. She simply waited, and her expression when he turned to meet her gaze reminded him, in ways that he could not define, of Cormaris, the god in whose service this entire cathedral had been built.

She held out her hand, command in the silent gesture, and after a moment he understood the grace she offered, and he extended his arm as naturally as if he had never left the patriciate for the hovels of his later homes in the holdings. She placed her hand upon that arm, and by simple presence, it steadied him.
What we ask for,
Rath thought,
and what we give
.
Both sustain us.
She smiled, as if she had heard the thought, and she inclined her head slightly.

Nor did Matteos resent his replacement; he simply fell into the position Rath had occupied, and continued to walk.

So it was that they came at last to the chambers in which the Exalted ruled the churches of Cormaris across the Empire. In the center of the chamber, in the center of a mosaic of stone, stood a throne. It was so tall in back that it seemed at first to be narrow; it was not. The rests were heavy and dark, and the seat itself could not be seen because it was occupied by the Exalted of Cormaris.

Robes of white and gold fell from his broad shoulders to the floor; his hair, in the light that streamed in from the ceiling, seemed pale, as gold was often pale, although it could have been brown, or even gray; the light was transforming. He wore a simple circlet, and it
was
simple, compared to the more complicated headdress that was required by official functions outside of his own domain. His fingers were ringed, and he did, indeed, carry a rod, which lay now across that brilliant lap.

But it was his eyes that drew the attention, and his gaze that held it.

“Sigurne,” he said, dispensing in a word with formality.

She was trusted, Rath thought, that much.

She bowed to the Exalted, as did Rath and Matteos; they held their bows longer, but some consideration was due her age and the rank granted her by the Order of Knowledge. And yet, in the eyes of the god-born son of Cormaris, there was no obvious acknowledgment of her power.

“Exalted,” she said, as she rose. Rath smiled slightly; if informality had been offered, she had very politely rejected it. Nor did the son of Cormaris seem surprised or displeased.

“Have you come to have daggers reconsecrated?”

“No, Exalted. I have come to beg an audience with your father, if you deem it wise.”

A pale brow rose in the light. “Speak plainly, Sigurne.”

“I have received word from my associate of a dreaming Wyrd,” she replied. “And it is significant, if indeed it
is
a Wyrd.” She turned to Rath. “Ararath,” she said quietly. “Tell the Exalted what you have told me, and let him judge.”

Rath bowed to her. “With your permission, Exalted,” he said quietly.

“Granted.”

He told this man in his room of light and gold what he had told Sigurne in her room of magery and silence.

 

The Exalted of Cormaris was quiet when Rath at last finished speaking. He had interrupted Rath only a handful of times, and only for clarification or wording. Since the exact wording was in Rath’s room in the thirty-fifth holding, this was frustrating; Rath seldom felt the awkward child, and it was not a reaction that he appreciated.

But the god-born did not seem to notice; he merely absorbed the information he had requested. Only when it was clear that Rath had come to the end of the words he knew how to offer did the Exalted leave his throne. He rose.

To the silent Priests who had led them this far, he now gestured.

They stepped forward, to either side of his throne, and uncovered small braziers that rested on stout legs against the tiling. These, they lit, and incense began to trail thin smoke toward the ceiling. Caught in beams of light, the smoke was striking; if the dead cast shadows, they would be these trails, these rising streams.

To the Priests, however, they signified little; once the braziers were lit, they walked to the doors, and these, with some obvious exertion, they closed.

Sigurne moved to stand closer to Rath. “I don’t know if you’ve experienced this before,” she said quietly. “But if you haven’t: don’t speak to the god until, or unless, he addresses you. Let the Exalted ask questions. If the Exalted asks a question, speak to him; the god will hear your answer.” She smiled a small, weary smile. “I have been between worlds many times, but I admit I have never grown fond of it. There is something about it that is not quite comfortable.”

As if she were talking about the ache damp weather caused. He could not help smiling at her. Even here.

But it was brief; he turned to watch the Exalted. His face was shorn of expression, but his eyes—his eyes had turned gold into something liquid that captured the essential nature of light. It was hard to look at him. It was impossible to look away.

Even when the mists began to roll in, in lazy, billowing clouds that, unlike normal mist, were neither damp nor wet, Rath could not look away. The floor vanished, the braziers disappeared, the throne wavered—but the man with shining eyes did not. He was the bridge between worlds.

God-born.

He had not raised his arms, had not lifted his face to the heavens where the gods were reputed to dwell. Nor had he raised his voice. He stood, and only when he slowly turned was Rath free—if a man could ever be said to be free in the presence of a god.

It was said that gods chose their forms when they appeared in the lands between. Without experience, Rath could not divine the truth in that belief. But the god appeared robed, much as his son was robed; he carried a rod in one hand, and in the other? A staff. His hair was gray, but not the gray of age; it was almost silver. His face? Neither young nor old, or perhaps all of these things, for his face was hard to look upon. It shifted, rippling constantly, as if it were the surface of a lake. On his left shoulder, an eagle sat, an eagle the color of mist, with blue eyes.

The god’s eyes were all colors or no color, and in their way, they, too, were hard to look upon. But it was his voice that made the deepest impression: it was a chorus of voices, all speaking at the same time, and to the same beat, but all distinct enough that he could peel each back by layer—if he wanted to ignore the actual words.

It was, however, for those words that he’d come.

“Father,” the Exalted said quietly.

Cormaris nodded. “Why have you summoned me?”

“We seek your counsel,” was the soft reply. The Exalted then turned. “This is Sigurne Mellifas, and her two companions, Ararath of Handernesse and Matteos Corvel.”

“Sigurne,” the god said. He inclined his head, and the eagle spread its wings a moment before settling.

She inclined her own head in turn; bowing in these mists would have made her momentarily invisible. “It has been some time,” she said softly.

“And yet, not enough time? Were it up to you, Sigurne, I believe you would gratefully never come to this place at all.” He spoke, in all of his multiple voices, with affection.

“We seldom disturb the gods to share either peace or happiness.”

“No. And I will not even call it selfish. What is of enough concern that you present yourself here?”