Heaven's Needle (27 page)

“Shortly after I unsealed Ang'duradh, something … escaped. I dealt with it, but your comrades came upon me unexpectedly while I did. That distraction resulted in my visit to Heaven's Needle, and I was away longer than I had intended.

“While I was detained, it appears, Gethel came to Carden Vale and blundered into the unsealed fortress.”
The Thornlord paused. A troubled look flickered across his face, and he folded his arms, pressing his wrists over his elbows. “I believe that he stumbled upon whatever the Gray Brothers used to kill Ang'duradh, and may have loosed it into Carden Vale. I suspect, too, that Gethel might have caused, or encouraged, the distraction that led to my absence. If so, he manipulated your people as well. That is why my mistress said our interests aligned. We share an enemy in this. Whatever it was that Gethel released, we all want to stop it.”

“If you hadn't broken the seals—” Kelland began.

“If, if.” Malentir waved a hand dismissively. Barbed metal glinted in his sleeve. “Useless to wish for what might have been. If your fellows had not delayed me, I would have been able to stop him. But they did, and it is done. What matters is not what has happened, but what will.

“My mistress instructed that you should have time to decide your course. I will leave you to discuss that while I tend to other matters. Upon my return, we will begin our work or part ways, as you choose.” He inclined his head, mockingly courteous, and left.

“I'm for leaving,” Bitharn said as soon as the Thorn was gone. She leaned forward, frowning. “I don't trust him, I don't like him, and he's
said
he's after his own interests here. The only reason I dealt with the Thorns was to set you free. That's done. It's time for us to cut ourselves loose of their webs. Let him walk into Duradh Mal on his own.”

“I can't.” Kelland wanted to reach across the table for her hands. She was so
close
. A few inches. An arm's reach.

Easier if it had been a thousand leagues. He dropped his own hands into his lap, locking the fingers together. “I can't leave them to suffer, Bitharn. The people of Carden Vale, the children stolen from Cailan … you know my
oaths. I realize the Thorns are taking advantage of that, but it doesn't change their need. I would be unworthy of Celestia's blessing if I turned my back on them.”

“You wouldn't be turning your back on them. You'd be sending to Cailan for help.” She searched his face. Her eyes were wide and luminous and frightened; his heart ached that he couldn't give her the answer she wanted. “We've been dancing to Ang'arta's tune every step of this sorry dance. I want an end to it. I
betrayed our temple
to have you free. Was that for nothing?”

“No,” he said quietly. “But I have to stay. I'm sorry.”

“It isn't
fair
. Your oaths bind you. Theirs don't. They'll always have the advantage.” She pulled a hand away and dashed it across her eyes, not quite quickly enough to hide the welling tears. “I only just got you back.”

“I know,” Kelland said. “I'm grateful for that. I don't know if I will ever be able to say how much.”

Bitharn let out a shaky breath. “Then why are you letting them drag you back into their schemes?”

“Because their schemes don't
matter
. Put them out of your mind. If it were only you and I here, what would the right course be?” He reached out tentatively to touch her wrist, willing her to understand and to forgive him. “The evil in Duradh Mal is clear. I don't want to help the Thorns any more than you do, but I can't leave people to suffer because I'm afraid trying to stop it might give Ang'arta some advantage.”

She rubbed her eyes again, scowling. “They matter. They'll betray you again as soon as they have what they want, and what they want is bad enough on its own. If the Baozites had a foothold in these mountains—”

“Then what? Yes, they'll command the passes. Yes, they'll have the valley locked behind rings of iron, just as
they did in Ang'duradh's day. But the world has changed since then. No one lives here, Bitharn, apart from the people in Carden Vale, and we are here to help them escape. Who will the Baozites dominate? The Jenje Plains have been desolate for centuries; the windlords' kingdoms are turned to dust and blown away. We stand to the south. Us, and Calantyr strong behind us. We can keep them safely contained in the mountains.”

“You hope,” Bitharn muttered.

Kelland smiled. He couldn't help it; her tone was exactly the one he'd heard so often when he'd embarked on some foolish scheme as a child, and, later, whenever he'd followed his heart rather than his head during their travels. It meant that she was resigned to his latest crusade … and would guard his back as he plunged into it. “All plans are founded on hope. The good ones are tempered with caution.”

“No wonder I'm not convinced this is a good one.”

She seldom was. That, too, made him smile. “Why not?”

“Maybe the Celestians can keep them behind the mountains—maybe. At what cost? What if you're wrong, and they fail? What happens to
us
, long before that's a concern?” Bitharn tucked a loose strand of amber gold hair behind an ear. “I don't like it. You can't trust the Thorns.”

“I don't. It's one of the reasons I'm so glad to have you.” He hadn't meant to say that—but, having begun, Kelland plunged onward. “I shouldn't have left you in Tarne Crossing.” He'd relived that day a thousand times in the dungeons of Ang'arta. Cold winter light on his shield, the breath brittle as ice in his lungs, the crimson spatter of blood on the snow. The shard of doubt in his soul, more lethal than any blade. All Kelland had to do was close his eyes and the memories were there, vivid as the day he'd lived them.

“Kelland, I—”

He took her hand, silently cursing his earlier hesitation. Her fingers clasped his, holding on so tightly that he felt a heartbeat pulsing through them. Hers or his, he couldn't tell. “I need to say this. Please. I shouldn't have left you in Tarne Crossing. That morning, the only thing I could think of was the baker we'd found, and what the Thornlady had done to him. How badly he died. I couldn't let that happen to you. I thought, if I went out alone, I might win and I might lose, but either way you would be safe. It was … stupid, I
know
it was stupid, but I was so afraid.

“I failed because I tried to confront her alone, and because I was weakened by doubt.” He drew a breath. “What I am trying to say, clumsily, is that I need you with me. You make me stronger. You guard against the dangers I don't see. I was a fool to forget that. By trying to keep you out of harm's way, I only weakened myself and forced you into dealing with the Thorns. I am sorry. So sorry. And so very grateful to you.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. Tears were falling freely down her face, but she did not wipe them away.

They sat in silence for a time. Kelland didn't know what she was thinking; he struggled with his own turmoil, trying to find the words to bring some order to the confusion he'd wrestled with since leaving Ang'arta.

“Before she let me go,” he said at last, “the Spider told me that Bysshelios was right—that chastity is not a mandate from our goddess.”

Bitharn's nose wrinkled immediately. She pulled away a little, green-flecked eyes narrowing. “Do you believe her?”

“I don't know,” Kelland confessed. “But I don't think it matters.” He'd spent a long while pondering it, and although he had never found a clear way out of the maze
of those thoughts, he'd fumbled toward something like an answer.

Bysshelios, himself an Illuminer, had claimed that the Bright Lady was not as austere as the high priests claimed, and that her Blessed were permitted the joys of coupling. He had demonstrated this himself, publicly and graphically, several times; at the time the episodes had been well documented by scandalized witnesses. If their accounts were to be believed, he'd kept his powers afterward. Several of his adherents were Illuminers who had defected from the faith to join his schism. They, too, broke their oaths of chastity—and retained their divine gifts. For a time. As the years went by, Bysshelios granted himself ever-greater indulgences and privileges: he claimed that no wedding was sanctified in Celestia's eyes unless he had lain with the bride himself first, and that no healing could be given unless the patient, or someone on the patient's behalf, made a similar tithe to his faith. The tales of his abuses became so numerous and so vile that the Dome of the Sun could no longer overlook them, and finally the heresy had to be stamped out with sword and flame.

But he'd kept his magic to the end.

The histories taught at the Dome of the Sun argued that Bysshelios had not held
Celestia's
power, but had shifted allegiances to another god—perhaps Anvhad, whose ambit was treachery and deception—and received magic that mimicked the Bright Lady's in order to mislead the commonfolk and cause a bloody rift in their faith. Despite the Spider's claims, Kelland still believed that was true.

Perhaps it wasn't. Bysshelios might have kept Celestia's magic despite his sins. For Kelland, however, it didn't matter. He had sworn his oath. He was bound by it. The world was ever shifting and uncertain; the reasons he had been
given might not be true. But temptation led to heresy, and he was a Knight of the Sun. He would keep his word.

“I cannot be more to you than I have been,” he said to Bitharn, still holding her hand. “Not while I serve as a Sun Knight.”

“But—”

“I can only ask you to wait.” He searched her eyes, hoping she would understand, could give him even more after all she'd already done. “When my work is done, I'll step down from the order. Then—then we might have more.”

Bitharn looked down, took her hand back, turned her own sun medallion over on its chain. Inhaled, a little unsteadily, trying to hide whatever she felt. “How long?”

“I don't know.”

“A number. Give me a number, and I'll decide.”

“Five years.” He hesitated, shying away from the weight of that request. “It might be less. It won't be more.”

“Five years.” Bitharn nodded. “Fine. But if you ask for more than that …” She forced a tremulous laugh. “Well, then you had better
pray
the Thorns drag you back to their dungeons instead of leaving you to my mercy.”

“Devoutly.” He circled the table, gathering her in his arms so that he could press a kiss to the top of her head. Her hair smelled of pine and new leaves.

“Good,” she mumbled. There was a silence. Kelland kept his face buried in her hair, hoping the moment might stretch into eternity. Hoping, against all rational thought, that it might lead to more.

It did not. Bitharn pulled away, gently but insistently. “I thought you'd be angry when you learned what I'd done. I thought you'd be furious. I betrayed our
temple
, Kelland. I had to. They wouldn't help. The High Solaros was sympathetic … but all he offered me was prayer and
tears, and I'd had my fill of those on the ride to Cailan. He wouldn't
help
.”

“He couldn't have.” In the dungeons Kelland had had the luxury of infinite time to consider that problem. It was, he had concluded, impossible for the High Solaros, or any figure of authority in the temple, to negotiate for his release. Ransoming him from the Thorns would only have encouraged them to capture other Blessed. The wiser course was to turn their backs on him and show Ang'arta that they would not be manipulated so easily.

At the time, he had believed that meant he would languish in his cell until he died. He hadn't considered how bullheadedly stubborn Bitharn could be—or how brave.

“I know,” she said. “I can't do it again. Please don't make me.”

The simplicity of her plea cut him more deeply than anything else could have. She
would
do it again, if she had to. She would dismantle a mountain with her bare hands for his sake. And, knowing that, he knew with equal certainty that he could never put such a burden on her again.

“I won't,” Kelland promised, for himself as much as for her. “Whatever else happens.”

“I'd be more confident about that if we had some inkling of what we were facing.” She dried her tears and stood, red eyed but resolute. “Something better than ‘nightmares,' anyway.”

That brought back something he'd puzzled over earlier. “What happened to the family in this house?”

“Did Malentir kill them, you mean?” Bitharn shook her head as she walked toward the house's larder. “I'd wondered that too. I don't think he did. The kitchen garden's gone to weeds, but there are a few rows of unpulled carrots and turnips. I found barrels of cider laid up in the cellar, none
tapped, and dried apple pulp near the stables, none eaten. To me, that says these people left the house around the end of autumn. Maybe early winter. They didn't use any of their stores. That means they were gone before we left Heaven's Needle—so Malentir couldn't have killed them, nor could any of the other Thorns, unless their prophecies are a good deal more specific than we've been led to believe. Something else drove them out.”

“What?”

“Maybe they noticed their neighbors were turning into monsters and rotting from the inside out.” Bitharn raised a tawny eyebrow. “That would get
me
on the road right quick.”

“Fair enough.” Kelland followed her to the larder, looking over her shoulder as Bitharn rummaged through sacks of dried beans and barley. She twisted a bulb of garlic off one of the hanging ropes that crowded the ceiling, then dug up a fat yellow onion and a handful of long-whiskered carrots from a burlap-covered box in the corner.

“They left without taking their food,” he observed from the doorway.