Finally the templars withdrew and the Primate entered the cell.
It seemed the templar from the Pinnacle had been accurate in his judgement of the old man's mental state. He was hunched in a corner of the cell, cowering awkwardly. Drool ran down the pilgrim's chin, and a feeble grin tugged at the corners of his lips. He had intense blue eyes, eyes that now squinted against the shine of the nightlamp. Ragged white hair tufted from the top of his head, and a scraggly grey beard flecked with ginger covered his chin.
He looked quite mad.
"You," Primate Melovar Aspen said to the old man. "Answer my questions or you will die a slow death."
The pilgrim looked up at him, and then hurriedly looked away. "Salvation," he muttered.
"You're from Salvation?" the Primate asked.
"Salvation. When you die. That's what you say."
"That's correct, old man. Yet answer my questions or the Evermen will grant you no peace, I assure you. What happened when you were at the Pinnacle?"
"Came to see the light. Heard rumbling sounds."
"Did you see anyone?"
"Saw a shape, like the shimmer of a hot day. A cloaked shadow. Primate, what was it?"
Melovar was growing increasingly frustrated. If the second intruder had also been cloaked, there was little the old pilgrim could know. Then the Primate saw something, hidden by the old man's body.
"What's that you're hiding there?"
The old man cowered further into his corner, but the prison guard came forward and kicked him until the pilgrim took the thing he was hiding and scampered along the wall, holding it in his hands.
"He had it with him when we brought him in," the guard said. "He won't let it go, and it doesn't look like much, so we left it with him."
The old pilgrim was once more trying to hide the object with his body.
"Bring it to me," the Primate said.
After some scuffling with the pilgrim, one of the Primate's templars brought Melovar the object. It was mostly destroyed, curled at the edges and withered like a flower left in the sun, but Melovar immediately recognised the metallic fabric.
It was a book of the Evermen. The pilgrim must have found it in the wreckage at the Pinnacle.
Primate Melovar Aspen took the book in his hands, cursing that it was so badly damaged, but fascinated nonetheless.
"Keep the old man here, see that he's fed. I don't care when I come back, or if I never do. I want him here in this cell."
"Yes, Your Grace," the guard said.
Melovar would see what Templar Zavros had to say about this.
~
AS SOON as he was alone again, Evrin put his head in his hands. The act had been hard to keep up, as weak and in pain as he was, yet it had come to nothing.
The knowledge he had been trying to destroy, or at the very least protect, was now in the very hands he had tried to keep it from.
The book was partly destroyed. Yet what was left might be enough.
The Primate didn't know it, but the scraps of metallic fabric he held in his hands were the key to the most powerful relic the world had ever known.
A relic Evrin must protect at all costs.
4
ELLA stood by the bank of the Sarsen, upriver from the Crystal Palace, soot on her cheeks and an expression of concentration on her face.
"Don't bring your wrists so close together," a woman in a rust-coloured robe admonished her. "Slowly condense the flame until you can feel it coiled tight. Then bring your elbows together. No, your elbows."
Sweat broke out on Ella's brow. She wore a red cuff on each wrist, and the pulsing colours on each indicated they had been activated. Between her wrists was a ball of fire, red with fiery heat and writhing as if possessed of a life of its own. It was strangely heavy, and Ella's arms ached with the effort.
"Get down!" Ella cried. The ball of flame shot out from between her wrists, fortunately away from her body, or she wouldn't have been alive to warn the two onlookers.
The woman in the red robe dove to the side, while the other onlooker, Bartolo, fell off his seat, the fireball barely missing him. The ball of energy hit the river with a sound like a crashing wave and water shot up into the sky in a cloud of steam.
Once again, she had lost it.
"You're terrible," said Shani, the woman in red.
Bartolo picked himself up off the ground, making a show of dusting himself off.
"Don't worry, bladesinger, your pretty silk blouse is still nice enough to wear to the dance," Shani said.
Bartolo paused, mid-way through pushing back his curly dark locks and smoothing his tiny moustache. He opened his mouth to retort when Ella interjected.
"What am I doing wrong?" Ella asked.
Shani came over and looked the young enchantress up and down. Ella wore her green silk dress, and she was slimmer and slightly shorter than the woman in red.
"You're too weak," Shani said, squeezing Ella's upper arms. "You're too accustomed to having big burly men like this oaf here do your dirty work for you. You make the zenblades and give them to others to wield for you — that's the enchanter's way, isn't it?"