Dark Dreams (50 page)

Imoshen shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea what he meant. I don’t have a fraction the gifts he has. I’m only really good at healing. I was just going to offer to brush your hair.’

She selected a mandarin and began peeling it. The skin came away easily and juice dripped down her arm.

Selita’s golden eyes studied her thoughtfully. ‘You know, I’d trust you less if you pretended to go along with all this. But you make no pretence of wanting to be here. What do you see in this Ghebite General? Surely he can’t compare with T’Reothe!’

The girl was impudence herself, but Imoshen laughed and licked the juice off her wrist.

‘What a question. What does any woman see in a man?’ She offered a mandarin wedge to Selita.

The girl bit into the fruit and spoke around it. ‘But the General is only a Mere-man and you are pure T’En like T’Reothe. He will not bed a Mere-woman. He says it is but a pale imitation.’ Resentment tinged her voice. ‘What does he mean?’

‘I’ve no idea. I think he boasts!’

Selita giggled, then frowned. ‘You can’t charm me into letting you go. I love T’Reothe. I think you’re mad to refuse him.’

‘You can think what you like,’ Imoshen said. She offered the girl another wedge, concentrating on the tenuous contact they shared. Already she could taste the mandarin’s tang on Selita’s tongue. ‘Tell me, how did you join the rebels?’

Selita hugged her knees and stared out the window. As she began her story, Imoshen sifted through the upper layers of her mind, careful not to disturb the girl with her presence.

When Selita paused, Imoshen made encouraging sounds while she continued searching for Reothe’s plans. While much of Selita’s mind was occupied with thoughts of Reothe, they were not the kind Imoshen found useful.

She discovered the rebel fighter resented her and was sceptical about her ability to satisfy Reothe. But it was hard to find an errant memory when the mind was thinking of other things. Perhaps she should ask Selita a question to trigger the right thought? Imoshen settled in, waiting for the right moment.

The door swung open and Reothe stalked in. Striding across the chamber, he grabbed Selita by the arm, dragging her upright. ‘Get out, Lita!’

‘Why? I’ve done nothing wrong.’

Heart thudding, Imoshen snatched up Ashmyr and scrambled to her feet.

‘You little fool. She nearly had you!’ He dragged Selita across the room, pushed her into the passage and slammed the door after her.

Chapter Twenty-One

R
EOTHE TURNED TO
face Imoshen. She backed off. He advanced. ‘Put the baby down.’

‘No!’ She held him closer.

‘Put him down, Imoshen. You don’t want him to get hurt.’

She blanched. Silently, she tucked her son into his basket.

‘Come here.’

‘You can’t bully me.’ But her heart hammered painfully as she stepped around the basket towards him.

‘Closer.’

‘This is close enough.’

A gasp escaped her as he covered the distance between them in one long stride. His hands grasped her shoulders. ‘That was very foolish, Imoshen. I could feel you using your gifts from the other end of the citadel.’

‘Then why don’t I feel you when you use yours?’ It was out before she could stop herself.

His eyes narrowed and he smiled slowly. ‘Why do you think? I am no novice. I cloak my gifts. Don’t you try to turn Selita or anyone else into your tool. I’ll feel it. I will stop you and it won’t be pleasant.’

Fear made her heart skip a beat. Did she want to force him to hurt her? No, better to...

‘Good. I don’t want to hurt you, Imoshen.’

Reothe didn’t want to hurt her, but she knew he would if he had to. She tried to divert him. ‘Whose ship is in the harbour and why do they fly no flag? What will you do when Tulkhan gets here?’

‘So many questions. Do you really expect me to answer any of them?’ He tilted his head, watching her.

Imoshen noticed the tip of one of the snow leopard’s scars peeping through the gap in his shirt.

‘Why do your scars show when mine don’t? The leopard’s claws marked us both yet they only touched you. What price did the Ancients ask of you?’

His hands tightened on her shoulders. She thought she detected a flicker of fear in his eyes. Then he pulled her close, until their bodies touched.

‘If you would only trust me, Imoshen, I would share my knowledge with you.’ His arms encircled her. She wanted to back away but she felt drawn to him. His breath tickled her face as his fingers stroked her hair.

His voice was rich velvet rubbing across her skin. ‘Trust me, Imoshen.’

A soothing, sweet warmth flooded her. It would be so easy to accept his lure. He promised everything, his love and the gift of knowledge. Together they could unfold the mysteries of the T’En.

But the price was too high.

‘Trust?’ Bitterness tightened her throat, thinning her voice. ‘That is a strange thing to ask when you threaten my son and hide so much from me. You give and take in the same breath. How can I break the encryption of the T’Endomaz when you have the key? I know you stole the T’Elegos from the Basilica.’

His eyes widened and he laughed with delight then shook his head sadly. ‘The T’Elegos does not contain the key to the T’Endomaz.’

She ignored this. ‘The T’Elegos is my heritage, too. Where have you hidden it?’

Immediately she felt him think of the hiding place – a cavern appeared in her mind’s eye. Then the thought was shut down like a door slamming closed. Her mind reeled with the impact and everything went dark.

When the blinding pain eased she found herself lying across the bed with Reothe kneeling at her side.

‘Are you all right?’ he whispered.

She nodded and winced.

‘I told you it would hurt if I used my gift to limit yours.’

Tears stung her eyes. She would not cry in front of him. ‘I had to try.’

‘Imoshen!’ The despair in his voice made her flinch. He pulled her into his arms, stroking her hair, pressing her cheek to his throat. ‘When will you stop fighting me?’

There was no answer to that.

She felt him lower his head and inhale her scent.

‘Only three more days,’ he whispered brokenly.

She stiffened. Three days until Tulkhan got here? Three days until Reothe murdered him?

‘Reothe, I was thinking...’ Shakily she pulled away from him to kneel on the bed, taking one of his hands in hers. ‘What good is Fair Isle? It is just one small island. You have ships and loyal followers. Why stay here to battle for an ungrateful land? Why not go east into the dawn sun? I’ve always wanted to see our homeland. There must be more like us. You could... Why do you look at me like that?’

His hand slipped from hers as he swung his legs off the bed and strode to the semi-circle of windows. The setting sun’s rays gilded his fine features and pale hair. She could see the tension in his shoulders as he gripped the sill.

‘You must know the truth, Imoshen. We are outcasts. We have no homeland.’ He did not turn to face her and his voice vibrated with contained pain. ‘You know that Imoshen the First brought her people here, but you don’t know there were three ships. Two did not survive the crossing.

‘Our ancestors weren’t brave explorers, Imoshen. There were old people, women and children on those ships. They were outcasts, selected for their T’En traits and banished. I have read the first Imoshen’s own account of their flight and the reasons for it. Terrible things happened in the name of the T’En. The people could no longer suffer us to live. They banded against us, they offered us death or banishment.’

‘No. It is a lie.’

‘I have read the T’Elegos, written in her own hand.’ He turned to her, glowing with the intensity of his emotion. ‘The T’En are fallen angels.’

‘You must have misinterpreted the T’Elegos. High T’En is designed to carry many shades of meaning. And even... even if Imoshen the First’s people were banished for some reason, it has been more than six hundred years. If you were to make the journey to our homeland beyond the dawn sun, they would not deny us.’

‘You don’t know what I know.’

‘How can I, when you hide things from me? Why did you give me the T’Endomaz and where does it fit in?’

He hesitated. ‘I believe the T’Endomaz is the hidden lore of the T’En. During the Ages of Tribulation and Consolidation the pure T’En left their parents at ten years of age. They were taken by a pure T’En mentor who trained them in their gifts. I believe the T’Endomaz is the very book they would have been trained from.’

Imoshen moaned. ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why not share the T’Elegos with me? Why hide it?’

‘I didn’t hide it from you. The leader of the Tractarians hates me, Imoshen. I saved Imoshen the First’s history from Murgon’s prying eyes.’ He grimaced as though even the man’s name tasted foul.

She could easily believe Murgon hated him. ‘But why?’

Reothe shuddered. ‘When I was a boy of ten, raw with the suicide of my parents, I was sent to the palace to be reared by the Empress. Because Murgon was three years older and related through my father, she gave me into his care. We took our lessons with the royal heirs, explored the palace and attended functions at their side. We were being groomed to become royal advisers.

‘Murgon was mad for T’Ysanna and she used my adoration of her to keep him at a distance. He took out his spite on me. At first it was little cruelties which might have been accidents. But he grew bolder until I was nearly killed by a jest gone wrong. He startled my horse, causing it to throw me. The Empress must have suspected because she arranged with the Beatific to have the church request his services.

‘I thought that was the end of it. We gave him gifts and he was inducted into the priesthood. But he bided his time. The day before the Harvest Feast, he forged a note from Ysanna asking me to meet her in the underground passage we had discovered below the portrait gallery. When she did not appear I tried to leave but found the door locked. What with the festivities, no one missed me for two days. And then when they did begin searching they could not find me.

‘I wandered alone in the dark without food or water. I tried all the false panels I could trigger until I discovered the catacombs. To be sure I could get out, I wedged the entrance open with my shoe.’

Imoshen’s gasp made him pause, but she indicated he should go on.

Reothe smiled wolfishly. ‘If only he knew, Murgon did me a favour. I believed I was dying. I lay on the slab like legend says T’Sardonyx used to, and said the words for the dead, for my soul. The horror of it triggered my gift and I left my body behind. The Parakletos came, some curious, others resentful.

‘The Parakletos found me wandering lost in death’s shadow and led me back to this world. In my dealings with them I have learned all is not what it seems.’

‘You said they have no power in this world.’

‘They don’t. Some are filled with a thirst for revenge and will try to steal your soul, but others pity the True-men and women they escort into death’s realm.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Woe betide the caller who summons them without the will to withstand them!’

‘Yet you say they were kind to you?’

His sharp eyes met hers. ‘Did I say kind? One day I may tell you what passed between us before they returned me to this world.’

‘So they returned you to the catacombs. How did you escape?’

‘By then Ysanna had revealed our dangerous games and the underground passages were being searched. When they found me I had been lost for five days. The Empress was furious. But I did not reveal Murgon’s role. For one thing I had no proof – Ysanna’s note had disappeared – and for another Murgon had been transferred into the Tractarians. Anything I said against one of their number would have been suspect.

‘Besides, I thought that was the end of it.’ Reothe grimaced. ‘I was wrong. When the old leader of the Tractarians died, Murgon was named his successor. He promised to make them a power once more and they loved him for it.

‘For most of the Age of Discernment the Tractarians’ strength had been fading. The only living pure T’En was your great-aunt, and she was no threat. But with my birth they began to lobby for more resources, more priests. There is nothing like a threat to make True-men and women band together. The T’En blood runs strong in Murgon. He has the eyes and six-fingers. In any other branch of the church, he would be treated with caution. He joined the Tractarians because he saw it as a route to power. As their leader he meant to discredit me.

‘But when the old Beatific retired I made sure I had the new Beatific’s ear. I had picked her for her potential, had been cultivating her for years.’ Reothe smiled across at Imoshen. ‘Yes, politics. I can see you despise the power play, but you must learn to use it for your own survival as I have done. Murgon and his Tractarians fear us. What True-people fear, they destroy.’

‘You speak as if we were at war with True-people.’

‘Except for the occasional throwback like us, the church has almost succeeded in wiping out the T’En. For centuries they’ve kept us in ignorance. What right did T’Abularassa have to rewrite our history? She and Imoshen the First’s own daughter, the Beatific, deliberately hid the T’Elegos. They used the T’Enchiridion to bind us to serve them. I heard how you gave your Vow of Expiation. What crime have you committed that you must ask for expiation?’

He stepped closer to search her face. Though he did not touch her, the force of his presence made her body thrum.

Reothe held her eyes. ‘Do you know how lonely it is to live in a palace full of True-people and know that while they laugh with you and love you with one breath, they could turn on you with the next and stone you to death? A decree from the Beatific is all it takes to declare one of us rogue.’

So that was why he had ‘cultivated’ the Beatific. Imoshen could understand self-preservation.

‘The last rogue T’En was stoned over a hundred years ago,’ she objected. ‘Murgon may be a fanatic, but this is – or was – the Age of Discernment.’

‘Discernment? Age of Denial more like!’ Reothe muttered. ‘They thought we T’En had died out. They had your great-aunt cowed. They claimed to be enlightened because they believed us a spent force.’