The Seekers of Fire (27 page)

"Oh." She looked up to meet his eyes, then sighed and rested her wounded hand on his other shoulder. "Why do you think you would have won if we had fought, my lord?"

"I do not think. I know."

"You, irritating ... Oh, now I've got you. You were so angry with me before for acting because I felt something was not right, without mentioning "
thinking.
" And how can
you
know now, without thinking first?"

He smiled, the first teasing smile she had seen from him in a long time. "Did I say that I had not thought, earlier? I said that do not, now. Listen carefully, my lady."

"All right, my lord." She smiled back. "Now you've got me. Anyway, we cannot know who would have won, but that does not matter. Wondering about it only diminishes the point of
choosing to not fight.
" You wanted to fight me, too, didn't you?"

"This is a part of what I wanted, yes." She took a quick, shallow breath as his thumb brushed a lock of hair away from her throat. Then his eyes narrowed again. "Linde, who did this to you?"

"What?" She touched her throat herself, but felt nothing unusual.

"You are bruised."

"The Mentor two days ago ..."

"I know about
him.
" If voice could kill, the Mentor must die now. "This is new."

"It must be me doing it to myself, then. In the Inner Sanctum, clutching my throat while I could not breathe. The Aetarx did—Oh, wretch it!" She shook her head hard. "Stupid, stupid, how can I be so stupid! It did nothing! I did everything to myself. And I did some things to you, too. The Aetarx cannot do anything. It can make images, but they are empty by themselves. I thought I had found the trick—I thought I could protect myself—but in the end, it almost got me. Why, I made a wretched sword!"

"Calm down." The arm around her waist tightened. "You are trembling again."

"I deserve to be trembling. I should slap myself."

"If all got what they deserved, the world would be an interesting place. Calm down now. Then tell me."

She leaned to pick the folder Rianor had given her before from the floor, then took his hand in hers and walked back to the sofa. "I will, but let me show you something first." She put the folder beside the bread, then looked around, confused. "Where is my notebook?"

"What notebook? The one you had in the Inner Sanctum?"

"So I left it there." She clenched a fist in irritation. "Any other stupidity that I must have done tonight?"

He took her fist in his hand and unclenched it. "Stop distressing yourself, will you? I will bring it back to you later."

"Rianor, no." She placed her unclenched fingers on his wrist. "Please. I don't want you to go there."

He sighed. "Linde, I have been going there forever—since I became the High Lord at thirteen, so it has been ten years now. I am still alive and relatively sane. I know how to deal with it."

"Since you were thirteen?" She shuddered. His parents dead and the Aetarx on top of that. "I am sorry. It must have all been terrible."

"It was not the most pleasurable time of my life, but this is a whole different story. I am more interested in your Aetarx story right now."

"My story ... Yes, "
story
" is a good term to use for what seems to happen there. Or, rather, stories. This is where I got the sword from—stories."

She told him then, about the tree-tied witch and merchant Pierre's labels; about images that meant little in themselves but meant too much when the mind wove a web of fears, thoughts, and dreams around them.

"My mind made stories about the women I saw—the women I imagined myself to be—horrible stories that I in no way wanted it to make, but it did. A mind with a mind of its own, you can say, but I thought that I had prevailed upon it. I made another story about the witch, and I would have made another one about the lord ..." She felt herself flushing; she had not told him about that one. "Anyway, the Aetarx reacted to my writing; I started seeing light and perhaps would have seen the door and ran away, but then you came and did what you did, and I lost control."

She took his folder and propped it on her knees, absentmindedly tracing the engraved crest with her finger. She did not yet dare open it.

"And when I lost control—what did I do? I made yet another story. With swords in it. I have read and heard countless stories about the old times, about power conquered by the sword, and about the one and only ruler of a House or a village. You know, those stories that old people whisper to children, that books clearly label as "
unreal,
" and Mentors hate? Perhaps Mentors do have a reason to hate them."

She sighed. "Who would have thought that I might ever agree with Mentors, about anything. But, a sword I got. Even though"—she raised her eyes to his again—"I never liked those stories. I did not like the Ber tale about the first High Lords and Ladies, who became such because they were the only ones who could slay Lost Ones, with swords of fire bestowed to them by the Master. Or the whispered, Ber-disapproved tale about the new ruler of some House who sword-murdered the old ruler first and all other possible rulers second. I hated the fairytales where some boy or girl became a village chief because it butchered the poor old
zmay
whose only fault was that it drank a little water from the village's waterwell. Or the story where someone killed the old so-called witch only because she had no teeth and smelled funny. Cruel stories about merciless, power-hungry people with whom I like to think I have nothing in common. Yet, when I found myself in a trial, I turned to those stories myself.

"However"—she opened the folder now, her eyes taking in the first yellow, brittle page—"the '
it needs not be you
' part and attacking myself was a surprise of its own." She gave a small laugh. "As if the stories fought me back. And this is all. I haven't even had the time to ask myself—or you—how on Mierenthia the swords became physical. Or how the Aetarx does what it does with the images. Or why I could enter the Inner Sanctum, when only the High Ruler or an especially successful enemy is supposed to be able to. I don't want to be an evil, stupid, power-mad High Ruler."

The High Ruler laughed.

"Oh, don't laugh at me, Rianor, you know I do not mean you. You at least did not scrabble for this position; you were born to it." She was confused even before she had finished saying this. She despised rights and privileges based on naught but birth, usually. She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. "I don't know what I am talking about any longer. But I do know that I want to control my own story and I don't want any wretched swords in it."

"Then it is you, me, and old Audric the Insane."

Linden laughed again. It was strange, the way they had both started laughing. She had been so sad before, and he had not been happy, either. Was she happy now, after all that had happened? Or was it sleep deprivation and the aftermath of shock? Still, she laughed. "So you, too, don't know what you are talking about, my lord? And old Audric as well?"

He smiled. "Perhaps that, too, my irritating lady. Do look at the page you are holding."

Small, smoothly-shaped letters in faded blue ink were spread thickly over the ancient piece of paper, interspersed here and there with bolder, sharper, skewed letters in black.

Today, Day 88 of the First Quarter of Year 116 of our Blessed Master, the Powers That Be took my beloved older brother Ayden to the Eternal Place. I, Darion, am now High Lord.

This was
old.
The oldest writing Linden had ever seen, perhaps one of the oldest writings at all, for teachers and librarians claimed history had left little or no trace of the first hundred years after the coming of the Master. Of course, teachers and librarians never explained why, and they did not know what traces might still lie beyond the thick walls of Noble Houses and Ber towers. Still ... It was so old. Hands trembling slightly, Linden touched it, and her finger tingled. Linden's lack of sleep and imagination? History itself? She read on.

The Aetarx is singing in my name. Niamh, who was Ayden's betrothed, is now my beloved wife, and the child she carries will be my son. (
: Or daughter, my great-grandpa, you blessed stinking moronic usurper.)

The words prefixed with the Qynnsent symbol
were written in sharper black letters, squeezed in between the paragraphs and in the margins.

"Audric?" Linden pointed at the black text. "That is his, isn't it? I think I am starting to know the man."

"Oh, yes." Rianor smiled. "The only one daring to write the symbol in his own hand, as far as I know. He has, for lack of a better word,
commented
every single document in this folder that was written before him."

Today, Day 63 of the Third Quarter of Year 116 of our Blessed Master, I have sought refuge in the Inner Sanctum. For 157 days now, I have been the High Lord, and today is the glorious day my wife gave me a daughter.

But she cries. Oh, how she cries! She is little and wrinkled and red, but her eyes are as bright as the steel of a sword, and her voice is no less strong than the voice of a grown man who is falling. I can hear her. I can hear him. Even here ... (
: Here! And there! At your trousers' dense behind, where the Sun will never shine ... Listen! ) Oh, the voices in my head! Oh, the sorrow! The Aetarx tells me I should give my wife back to Ayden. This is how all voices but the hallowed (
: hollowed! ) voice of the Aetarx will become quiet. And I know—I know that deep in her traitorous heart Niamh still doubts. Yes, I will listen to the Aetarx again. Yes ... I will send Niamh to the Eternal Place. (
: bye, bye, Grandma, you dumbbell )