The Golden Key (21 page)

“Helped you, yes. Before—and again, no doubt!”

He did not acknowledge her attempt at irony. “You burned Tomaz’s
Peintraddo.
”

No humor in him at all. He seemed to want something of her, a promise made, an oath sworn, some sign of commitment greater than she had offered before, or believed was necessary.

Abruptly she said, “You ask too much.”

He recoiled. She had shocked him deeply.

I didn’t mean it like that.
“I can’t know what I would do,” she explained, trying to soften the blatancy of her declaration. “Until the time, until the moment …” Saavedra looked at Seminno Raimon’s paintings, automatically marking color, technique, composition; he was a master, of course. “We put ourselves into our work, Sario, a little piece of ourselves each time. You can see Raimon in there, if you look for it.” She gestured, indicating with a sweep of her hand the shadowed collection. “But I wonder, is there enough? Do we use too much of ourselves—” Saavedra stopped short. She had spoken figuratively, not literally, the way an artist uses imagery, but now a door unlocked itself and opened before her, swinging wide from out of the darkness. “Is that—is
that
why we die?”

Sario understood instantly. His mouth opened, worked, shaped words, but no sound issued forth.

“No one knows,” Saavedra said intently, picking her way carefully as what had been idly said blossomed into speculation, into extrapolation. “They blame the Nerro Lingua … but what if it’s more? What if it’s something else?” She looked again at Raimon’s work, feeling hollow and light inside—and close, all
of a sudden, far too close to a flame whose heat she could not feel. “Sario, what if a man paints too
much
… and uses himself up?”

“Then—then—” His voice was hoarse. He saw it as she did, acknowledged the brutal suspicion no matter how preposterous the theory sounded, and did not insult her by refuting the possibility. “If that is true, and we
didn’t
paint…”

“Would we live a normal life?” A chill walked her spine, slowly and deliberately, setting the hairs on her flesh to rising. “We all of us paint, Sario—every Grijalva born. But only the Gifted die so very young.”

He was frightened.
She
had frightened him. “All Grijalvas die young!”

“Not all of us. Not women. Not men who lack the Gift.” She turned to stare at him, at the golden key hanging from its chain. “None die so soon as the Viehos Fratos, who bind their images with—themselves.”

With spittle, she knew; and sweat. She recalled how damage done to his
Peintraddo
manifested in his flesh, but only to a minor degree, as if what was damaged was not fully empowered. He had implied it, had begged her to burn him with candlewax so the manifested damage would look legitimate. So there must be other things, ingredients he undoubtedly had not told her. She knew more than most, too much; he had shared with her what his world was like, now that he had left behind the trappings of their mutual childhood.

But he knew more. Unequivocably. “Matra—” he whispered, “—Nommo Matra ei Filho …”

Now she was frightened. “If you stopped—”

“I can’t!”

“If you were to
stop
painting—”

“I
can’t!
”

“If you were never to paint again—”

“
I would sooner die than never paint again!
”

Saavedra shivered. He knew more than she, but he did not deny what she feared was true.

“I will stop,” she said hollowly. “Women do—we learn, we paint, and we stop. We bear children. I am not meant to paint—and I will stop, and I will live longer …”

“’Vedra,
bassda!
”

It was not enough. She had to speak it all, to bring it into the light where they could both see it. “But you will not, and your Luza do’Orro will blaze more brightly than most, and you will die.”
Blindly she gazed at the paintings. “Raimon will die too soon.
All
of you die too soon, every Gifted Grijalva.”

A shudder convulsed his slender body. “I won’t stop. I can’t. Stop painting? I would
die
—”

It escaped before she could stop it. “And so you will. Die.”

He pushed past her then, bumping her shoulder. It was not rudeness, nor insult; she had shaken him so badly he could barely walk. She watched him go, watched the hunched line of his shoulders, watched the wavering steps. Then she turned back again to Seminno Raimon’s paintings.

“If,” she said, trembling, “if I destroyed them all as I destroyed Tomaz’s
Peintraddo
—would he live longer? Would Raimon not die?”

And Sario, whom she would outlive, because Grijalva women, who did not paint, lived substantially longer than Gifted males.

She could not imagine the world without Sario in it. And nor, she knew, could he.

Fuega Vesperra. A heathen month, a heathen festival to celebrate heathen rites … the old man took solace in his own rites and rituals celebrated for the true god, Acuyib, Father of Heaven, Lord of the Golden Wind, whom he was quite certain found such apostasy affront and abomination. But then
he
knew it as well, and also found it so, and therefore did what he could to mitigate it by performing his own private prayers frequently so as to soften the slight to Acuyib.

In his paneled Tza’ab tent, girdled about by the stone palassos, plasterwork Sanctias, the brick and tile zocalos of Meya Suerta— hard, everything hard, subjugating sun, and soil, and wind!—the old man worked the latch on a casket of waxed and polished thorn-wood, bound and tacked by brass. Swollen fingers were not so adroit as they once were—cursed be the humidity, so different from his beloved desert!—and so it took longer than anticipated, but at last the latch was released and he lifted the lid.

Green silk lay beneath, its edges freighted with glass and gold, beneath a scattered mantle of protective elements. Tza’ab magic incarnate: dried stalks of desert broom, for Purity and Protection; a fragile netting of cress, for Stability and Power; leaves of lemon, holly, and hearts-of-palm, for Fidelity and Health, Foresight, Victory. He gently folded aside the silk, taking care not to crush the scraps of plants, and took from beneath the shielding a tube of finest, thinnest ivory-hued leather.

Other tubes remained undisturbed as he loosened the gold wires stitching the cap to the tube and slipped it, allowing it to dangle from one glinting wire, then with careful fingertips drew the rolled parchment from its protective insulation. A faint whiff of carnation, cedar, and honeysuckle accompanied it, denoting several of the scents symbolically linked to Acuyib: Magical Energy; Strength and Spirituality; Devoted Affection.

In Tza’ab Rih, the holy texts had not been stored so. But that was in the days of the Diviner himself, when the world had been at peace and such things as a collection of illuminated pages could be safely bound inside a book … but times changed, and war decreed differently; the
Kita’ab
now, that which remained of it, was in his keeping, one old man in the lap of the enemy. No true book remained, no flat illuminated pages bound by leather and gold and gemstones, merely a few sheets, some torn, some scorched, some stained—blessed!—by Tza’ab blood, carefully rolled and stored in spell-stitched leather tubes, and hoarded in a thornwood casket bound by brass and belief.

He did not know what had become of the leather book covers. He was certain the gold inlay had been scraped away, the gem-stones pried out of their settings. Probably the leather had been burned altogether; so much had burned that day, including human flesh, when the Grijalva Apostate had surprised the caravan and stolen from it, from Tza’ab Rih, from every man, woman, and child of the desert, the most sacred of texts, the most holy, the wise teachings of divine Acuyib set down in inks, in images, in words of such power only the select were permitted to read them.

Others, of course, were
told
them, through the offices of the Diviner.

So many pages lost, so much text, so much of Acuyib. So much of the magic. But the power remained, as did one member of the Order permitted to read the words:
Al-Fansihirro.

The old man smiled tremulously with relief and gratitude. One alive, only one—but one was enough, because one could teach another. It mattered no longer that he had been driven out by the defeated of his own people who cursed him for worshiping a powerless god, for serving a holy man weak enough to die. That he was exile, outcast, estranjiero within his own borders. The task remained, and he carried it out.

He brought the rolled parchment to his lips, briefly touched them to the tubed page, barely a breath of a touch—he smelled old smoke, and death—then cradled the page gently in gnarled hands against the paucity of his chest, swathed in Tza’ab robes.

Green, of course. Rich, brilliant green. The color of Al-Fansihirro.

The lush vegetation of Tira Virte—literally “green country”— was of a different hue, and a far different spirit. Its people were barren of belief, empty of Acuyib’s blessings, and did not know it. They prated of their Mother and Her Son, of their sacred dual deity, and did not realize what fools they were, what ignoble children, to ignore the God who had made the world.

Sometimes it was easy to forget why he had come, why he remained. His heart yearned for the sere heat of the desert, for its spare, desolate beauty that shaped and made a man. But his duty lay here, here where he disdained the enemy even as he called them friends in their own language. Because among them were his own, albeit they were tainted with the enemy’s heathen rites, the enemy’s blood, and were thus blinded.

Those of his people,
his
blood, were born here, lived here, died here. And in between remained ignorant of their God, their heart, their heritage.

But mostly of their power.

She had ridden him hard, cajoled him, roused him,
used
him, proving the stallion had more miles in him than he suspected, albeit the labors were of an impatient and wild young animal, wholly unschooled. He scented the mare, wanted the mare; knew what he was to do, but not how to do it properly. The first lesson therefore had been hers to teach, and so she had taught him.

He slept now, sated, sprawled across two-thirds of her bed in unthinking, selfish abandon, cutting her off with a diagonal slant that offered no room for her feet. But she had no mind to sleep and sat up instead, leaning into silken cushions stacked against the ornate headboard shrouded in gauzy draperies, festooned with tasseled cords. The day began to die; they had been hours abed.

She wondered which of his country manors the Duke would deed to her, added to the townhome he had already bestowed. She wondered how much of an annual allowance he would settle upon her. She wondered of what quality—and quantity—the jewelry would be.

She wondered who shared his bed now, while his son shared hers.

“Pluvio en laggo,” she murmured, as tears started up in her eyes. She dashed them away bitterly; no, no protests for her: that rain was in the lake. Baltran would offer her a sturdy boat with good
shelter against the storm, but he would never now grace the decks with his ducal presence.

“I told him,” she murmured tersely. “I
told
‘Gosa it would be this way … a Lord Limner he will keep, but a mistress he will not!”

Alejandro stirred. Gitanna sealed her mouth against further complaint; let her say such things in her head, where the Heir could not hear them.

But even as she made the decision, he opened his eyes. Pale brown, flecked with green; fine counterpoint, when coupled with dark brown hair and lashes, to the olive complexion of their shared Tira Virteian ancestry.

He came awake smiling, briefly displaying teeth in a sweetly boyish smile. One was slightly crooked, she noted now with eyes instead of with her tongue, turned a little on edge so that the squared tip was layered somewhat aslant atop its neighbor. She wondered if any of the official portraits showed the imperfection, or if her brother had avoided portraying such things as physical flaws in his duties as Lord Limner. She had never paid any attention to Alejandro beyond what was required for courtesy’s sake; Baltran was her world.