The Sacred Hunt Duology (113 page)

He said nothing.

“It is a shrine to the memory of Moorelas; a monument to the forces of justice, of courage, of sacrifice. Each year, upon the four quarters, wreaths are placed at
the foot of the statue that guards the city's bay. There
are
no doors into it, no windows—until today I did not realize that it
could
be entered, although perhaps I should have; it
is
called the Sanctum of Moorelas. Few, if any, know what lies beneath its facade.

“You know.” In the last two words, everything.

“It is an edict,” Meralonne replied, with a guarded expression, “that was decreed by Cormaris, Reymaris, and the Mother; those who serve Cartanis have also upheld the law, and I believe that the Mandaros-born do so as well. In fact, if you take the time—”

“I will find that there is not a single God who does not wish the Sleepers to remain undisturbed.”

“Indeed.”

“In fact, I will find that there is not a single God who will even make reference to the Sleepers without indelicately applied pressure.”

Again he bowed his head, lifting his hands in a familiar steeple.

“If you'd like,” she said softly, “Morretz will bring you a pipe.”

“He will not bring me
my
pipe,” was the mock-grave reply. “Terafin, you put us in a difficult position.”

“How much does the Council of the Magi know?”

Silver-gray eyes grew distant. “The Council? I cannot say for certain. Krysanthos knew, although he was not one of the wise. The Kings know. The Exalted. Certainly the Astari.”

“But not The Ten.”

“It is not relevant to The Ten.” It was, of course, the wrong thing to say.

“It is relevant to The Ten now,” she said sharply. “It is relevant to all of Averalaan.”

“What do you mean?”

“It is through the Sanctum—and the secret that the Sanctum contains—that we will find our way into the undercity.” There was no doubt in her voice.

Meralonne's pale face grew ashen, his silver eyes wide. “Of course,” he said softly, but his voice held only apprehension. “We should have known it.”

“Tell me, Meralonne—why do the Gods fear the Sleepers?”

His expression grew remote, almost cold; his eyes touched the distant wall as if it were a thin veil drawn over a history that could be seen if one stared hard enough. “I . . . do not know,” he said at last, after some thought. “And I will not venture to guess; it would take years, and a better understanding of the relationship between the Gods and their followers than you or I possess.”

The answer was not to The Terafin's liking, but she let it pass, granting Meralonne the respect that was his due as a member of the Council of the Magi. “And is the fear of the Gods for the Sleepers greater than the fear of
Allasakar's
coming?”

He bowed his head slowly, and then rose. “I believe it is time to answer that question,” he said gravely. He walked to the door, paused, and turned. “Terafin.”

“Yes?”

“If you worship those Gods, you might wish to pray that the Sleepers do not awaken.”

Before she could demand an explanation, he was gone.

J
EWEL KNELT AGAINST THE GROUND,
pressing her forehead into the stone for perhaps the hundredth time that morning. She was heartily sick of it, but Ellerson had been quite strict in his admonitions—the Exalted were only second in rank and power to the Kings themselves, and they were to be treated with the same respect, measure for measure, that one would give the Kings.

She no longer had any desire to ever meet the Kings in person.

Or, she thought sourly, she had no desire to meet the Kings until she was ATerafin—for it seemed that The Terafin and her Chosen did not have to bow, scrape, bend, and kneel at every change of position the Exalted made. Luckily, she was enough of a commoner that the bowing and scraping was pretty simple; total abasement left very little room for mistakes.

Devon nudged her sharply and she looked up into the grave face of the Exalted of Cormaris. His peppered hair was drawn back from his forehead; nothing hid the piercing glow of golden irises. Who would have thought gold could be so icy?

“Describe again the halls you traversed to reach this supposed crypt.” He motioned the Exalted of the Mother forward; she was the only one who had not yet heard Jewel's full story. At once, the former den leader bowed her forehead—again—to the ground and left it there until she was told to raise it. Then she described the hall to the best of a memory that didn't seem to satisfy either the Exalted of Reymaris or the Exalted of Cormaris. In fact, it didn't seem to satisfy the Exalted of the Mother either, which disheartened Jewel.

When she got back to Terafin—if they ever let her leave the palace grounds again—Ellerson was going to pay.

The Terafin said nothing at all; her Chosen said nothing—in fact, the only friend she seemed to have in the entire hall was Devon. Certainly the warrior-priests who attended the Exalted looked upon her—when her eyes were raised enough that she could see their expressions—with a cool distrust. It was a crowded hall; there was a lot of suspicion in it.

Tell them
, he'd said.
Tell them all.
Oh, Ellerson was going to suffer somehow for this.

It was when a door that didn't even look remotely doorlike opened, and two men and two women, attended by eight strangely uniformed guards stepped in, that Jewel truly understood how miserable she could be.

Because even though she'd been born and raised in the twenty-fifth with no hope of ever reaching a noble rank, she recognized the Kings and the Queens when she saw them.

The Queens came first: Marieyan the Wise, robed in simple midnight blue, and Siodonay the Fair, in morning white. But the materials were of a kind that Jewel had only seen The Terafin wear, and at that, seldom; they glimmered, catching a subdued light as they fell. Queen Marieyan wore a slender tiara through hair frosted white, and she wore a wide belt into which was embroidered the rod and the crown.

Queen Siodonay was called the Fair as a play on words; she was both fair in her dealings, as was demanded of the Queen of Justice, and fair in complexion as the Northerners. Her hair was a platinum spill of light, pulled back and twined in a braid upon her head; she wore no crown, but carried instead a sword with jewel-encrusted scabbard that told the tale of her rank. It was said she knew how to use it, and well.

King Reymalyn came next, his golden eyes narrowed, his face cast in a grim light. Fire-haired and fire-bearded, he was the tallest man in the room; across the breadth of his shoulders he wore an emerald cape, and beneath it, simple attire. But he, too, carried a sword, and his wrists were banded with an odd metal that caught the light and seemed to absorb some of it. Jewel would have taken a step back, but she was kneeling. Not to King Reymalyn would she go for mercy, if mercy were ever required.

But perhaps she might plead with the wisdom-born King: Cormalyn. Dark-haired and golden-eyed, he was younger than his Queen, but no less regal. Of the four, it was King Cormalyn who drew the eye and held it longest, although he wore no heavy mantle, no jeweled crown, no emblazoned crest. He carried the rod of his office, and the color of his eyes was sunrise; there was a sadness to his face, and an air of peace, that made one want to trust him.

And Jewel badly wanted to trust someone here.

• • •

“And what makes you think that this . . . this crypt is located beneath the Sanctum of Moorelas?”

Because you're giving me such a hard time about it
—
where else could it be?
But she bit her lip on the words as Devon applied a gentle pressure to the small of her back—a pressure that could not be seen by her questioners. “I don't know it for certain,” she told the Kings' questioner softly. The man glanced beyond her shoulder—at Devon, she thought, since they seemed to know each other well.

“Yet you've told your Lord that this is the case.”

“Yes.” That was said through clenched teeth. Couldn't be helped. Something about the man made her edgy.

“Why?”

This dark-haired, pale-eyed man was so intense it was almost easy to forget that there were other people in the room: the Exalted, the Crowns, The Terafin. “Because I couldn't think of where else it could be. The Sanctum stands alone. The library closest to it doesn't have a crypt.”

“Who else have you told about this?”

She was silent, weighing the question; weighing the decision that would be made by answering it.

“I asked you a question.”

“I heard it.” Devon's hand was at her back again; she stepped an inch or two forward, denying it without exposing his support. If support it was. The guards moved in at her sides, but she ignored them, as if they were no more than common beggars, and she the Queen.

“Terafin,” she said quietly, the softness of her voice masking its lack of strength.

The Terafin stood forward. Jewel was not certain what the older woman would do; here, she was outranked by seven people, or eight if you counted the man who questioned. But her Chosen—Torvan among them—stepped forward as well, subtle in their protectiveness. The Exalted made way before her, polite but cool; the Queens paid her the respect of a slight nod. Only the Kings were remote.

“Jewel,” The Terafin said.

“Terafin.” She bowed quite low. “I've told them everything I can tell them. I serve the House.”

“You have not,” the questioner said, rising from his chair in a quick and supple motion, “told us everything we wish to know.”

“I have told you,” Jewel repeated, her voice more strained, “all that I
can
.”

“It is not for The Terafin to decide that; it is for
me
. The Crowns are not yet satisfied with your response. We would ask you to resume your place.” Jewel had heard death threats that contained less menace.

She did not move. Because she understood—although it had taken the better part of two hours—that the Exalted and the Crowns' inquisitioner were not questioning her because they did not believe her; quite the opposite. They were
afraid
that what she had to say was truth.

Jewel knew that it was dangerous to know too much. In the streets of the thirty-fifth, Old Rath's hunting grounds, it had often been the death of some hapless young thief, at least until the magisterians had done their work. There were no magisterial guards that could protect her here; she knew too much, and she knew it in front of the people who
made
the laws and could change them to suit their whim. But she'd be damned if she'd speak the names of any of the rest
of her den. She'd be damned to the fires, thrown out of the Hall of Mandaros without so much as a second chance. She was their leader, after all.

“Jewel Markess.” The man's voice was ice.
“Sit.”

“Hold.”

The Terafin frowned at Jewel, but the expression that molded the contours of her jaw was distinctly cooler when she looked at the Kings' servitor. A moment passed; The Terafin's expression deepened, as did her annoyance. At last, she spoke. “Astari,” she said, measuring each syllable, “the girl is a member of my House. She answers to me by the covenant between The Ten and the Crown, and I do not choose to press her response.”

Silence. Then:

“We were not informed that this was the case.”

“I was not aware that the permission of the Astari—or the Crowns—was required. Nor was I aware that prior knowledge was a legal imperative.”

“It is—”

“It is not, of course, required.” It was Queen Siodonay who spoke. Her voice was softer than her expression, but strong for all that. “But as a courtesy—both to ourselves and the young ATerafin—it would have been appreciated.”

“It would,” the Astari who was responsible for questioning Jewel said coldly, “have been impossible.”

“Lord of the Compact,” Queen Marieyan said quietly.

The Astari turned to face her; his face twisted a moment in frustration and then eased into a remote neutrality which fooled no one. “As you say, Majesty.” He stepped aside to give Jewel room to move, and then turned lightly on one foot. “But, Terafin, you understand your responsibility in this matter. If this young girl's information were openly known—”

“Then what?” The Terafin's voice was, measure for measure, as clipped and icy as his. “I have heard nothing today that indicates—to me—that you have any idea whatever of what will happen. If history—that remote and sullied record of events past—is to be trusted, these Sleepers have existed as they are now for eternity; they have not once woken, they have not once been disturbed. And there have been wars, and worse, that have played themselves out above them and around them since the dawn of time. Vexusa fell around their ears—and such a fall as that city faced woke the very dead.

“Therefore, unless your purpose is to intimidate a young girl, I believe your interview here is at end. Is that clear?”

“Terafin.” It was Queen Marieyan. “Lord of the Compact. Our grievance is not, and must not, be with each other. Terafin, you must forgive the Lord of the Compact; his purpose is the protection of the Crowns, and he is zealous in his pursuit.”

“And arrogant. And ruthless.”

“It seems to me,” the Exalted of Cormaris said quietly, appearing from the far end of the hall without warning, “that history, both ancient and recent, plays its hand. Terafin. Lord of the Compact. You do not serve your best interests, or ours, by this. Cease.”

The Terafin bowed at once, low and proper in her respect; the Astari grudgingly gave way as well, but with an obvious lack of grace.

“Who knows now matters not; more will know than we could possibly deal with before this matter is closed. This does not grant dispensation for any further spread of this tale by anyone in this room—or in House Terafin.” He turned to Jewel, the full weight of his ceremonial robes trailing across the ground. Aside from the warrior-priests, he had no attendants—and the warrior-priests did not lift or carry a train, even if it be the Exalted's. “Young one, we believe your story, although we wish it otherwise.” He turned to the Exalted of Reymaris. “Son of Reymaris?”

“I concur,” was the short reply.

“Daughter of the Mother?”

“I also concur.” But her full lips were turned down at the corners, her eyes narrowed. She turned to the Kings, who had remained silent throughout. “Your Majesties,” she said, bowing low. “I speak for the triumvirate.”

“As is your right,” King Reymalyn said.

His voice was a shock. It was low and deep and musical; it filled the hall as if it were a shout, yet it was soft in tone—almost gentle.

“What would you have of us?”

“If there were another way, we would ask nothing,” the Reymaris-born King replied. “But it seems to us that the Crypt of the Sleepers must be disturbed if Allasakar is not to walk again. We would ask that you open the Sanctum to our forces.”

She lowered her head a moment. “It will not be an easy task, and the triumvirate alone cannot accomplish it; we must bespeak the Church of Cartanis and the Church of Mandaros, and their leaders must be in agreement.” She paused. “There are reasons why the very ground would deny a making or an unmaking, such as our enemies have done, that did not have the keys of the Gods behind it.” She paused. “All keys.”

“Let it be done,” the King replied.

“As you command.”

• • •

Devon was stiff and weary. “You took a risk,” he said, as he sank back into the wide, high-backed chair in his office.

The Terafin raised a dark brow before accepting his lack of formality; it had been a most trying morning. “
I
was not the author of that risk.” Glancing at Jewel, she smiled; the young thief sat meekly on the window ledge, attempting to hide in the very scant shadows.

Jewel had the grace to blush under the scrutiny. “I'm sorry,” she offered at last. “But thanks for covering for me. I owe you.”

Devon and The Terafin exchanged glances.

“I don't think you understand,” Devon said quietly. “Did you think that she was merely trying to save you some time at the hands of the Lord of the Compact?”

Jewel stared at him blankly.

“The name ATerafin is not offered lightly.” It was The Terafin who spoke. “And it is never offered in jest or in subterfuge. You
are
ATerafin, Jewel. This is no game.”

Speechless, Jewel gaped; it caused Devon to laugh, and the mirth was genuine, if somewhat edged.

The Terafin waited patiently for the sound to die out; it did not take long. “Why do they believe it?” she said to Devon, as if the interruption—and the slight to her House—had not happened.

“Because,” he said soberly, “the Sleepers
are
history, and they have slept, unchanged and unchanging, forever. I do not believe that our enemies somehow missed this entrance into the undercity; I believe that they unmade it—as they unmade the rest.