This was the strangest greeting in the world.
“You know the story of the Damsel and the Saint. You know how a knight rescued a princess from a dragon and took her away to a kingdom across the sea. You know that they founded a great city and lived happily ever after.” He smiled. “Everything you know is false.”
It was so quiet in the room that Loth heard the sand eagle ruffle its feathers.
“You are a follower of the Dawnsinger, Your Excellency,” he finally said, “but I ask that you not blaspheme in front of me.”
“The Berethnets are the blasphemers. They are the liars.”
Loth was stunned into silence. He had known Chassar uq-Ispad was an unbeliever, but this came as a shock.
“When the Nameless One came to the South, to the city of Yikala,” Chassar said, “High Ruler Selinu attempted to placate him by organizing a lottery of lives. Even children were sacrificed if their lot was drawn. His only daughter, Princess Cleolind, swore to her father that she could kill the beast, but Selinu forbade it. Cleolind was forced to watch as her people suffered. One day, though, she was chosen as the sacrifice.”
“This is as the Sanctarian tells it,” Loth said.
“Be silent and learn something.” Chassar selected a purple fruit from the bowl. “On the day that Cleolind was meant to die, a Western knight rode through the city. He carried a sword named Ascalon.”
“Precisely—”
“Hush, or I will cut out your tongue.”
Loth closed his mouth.
“This gallant knight,” Chassar said, voice soaked in disdain, “promised to kill the Nameless One with his enchanted sword. But he had two conditions. The first was that he would have Cleolind as his bride, and she would return to Inysca with him as his queen consort. The second was that her people would convert to the Six Virtues of Knighthood—a code of chivalry that he had decided to turn into a religion, with himself as its godhead. An invented faith.”
To hear the Saint described like some roaming madman was too much to bear. Invented faith, indeed. The Six Virtues had been the code all Inysh knights had lived by at that time. Loth opened his mouth, remembered the warning, and shut it again.
“Despite their fear,” Chassar continued, “the Lasian people did not want to convert to this new religion. Cleolind told the knight as much and refused both his terms. Yet Galian was so overcome with greed and lust that he fought the beast nonetheless.”
Loth almost choked. “There was no lust in his heart. His love for Princess Cleolind was chaste.”
“Try not to be irritating, my lord. Galian the Deceiver was a brute. A power-hungry, selfish brute. To him, Lasia was a field from which to reap a bride of royal blood and adoring devotees of a religion he had founded, all for his own gain. He would make himself a god and unite Inysca under his crown.” Chassar poured more wine while Loth seethed. “Of course, your beloved Saint fell almost instantly with a trifling injury and pissed himself. And Cleolind, a woman of courage, took up his sword.
“She followed the Nameless One deep into the Lasian Basin, where he had made his lair. Few had ever dared enter the forest, for its sea of trees was vast and uncharted. She tracked the beast until she found herself in a great valley. Growing in this valley was an orange tree of astonishing height and untold beauty.
“The Nameless One was wrapped like a snake about its trunk. They fought across the valley, and though Cleolind was a powerful warrior, the beast set her afire. In agony, she crawled to the tree. The Nameless One crowed in triumph, certain of his victory, and opened his mouth to burn her once more—but while she was beneath the branches, his fire could not touch her.
“Even as Cleolind wondered at the miracle, the orange tree yielded its fruit. When she ate of it, she was healed—not only healed, but changed. She could hear the whispers in the earth. The dance of the wind. She was reborn as a living flame. She fought the beast once more and plunged Ascalon beneath one of his scales. Grievously injured, the Nameless One slithered away. Cleolind returned in triumph to Yikala and banished Sir Galian Berethnet from her land, returning his sword to him so he would never come back for it. He fled to the Isles of Inysca, where he told a false version of events, and they crowned him King of—”
Loth slammed his fist down. The sand eagle shrieked in protest.
“I will not sit at your table and listen to you sully my faith,” Loth said quietly. “Cleolind went with him to Inys, and the Berethnet queens are their descendants.”
“Cleolind cast away her riches,” Chassar said, as if Loth had not spoken, “and journeyed back into the Lasian Basin with her handmaidens. There, she founded the Priory of the Orange Tree, a house of women blessed with the sacred flame. A house, Lord Arteloth, of mages.”
Sorcery.
“The Priory’s purpose is to slay wyrms, and to protect the South from Draconic power. Its leader is the Prioress—she who is most beloved of the Mother. And I’m afraid, Lord Arteloth, that this great lady believes you may have murdered one of her daughters.” When Loth looked blank, Chassar leaned forward, his eyes intent. “You were in possession of an iron box that was last held by a woman named Jondu.”
“I am no murderer. Jondu was captured by the Yscals,” Loth insisted. “Before she died, she entrusted the box to the Donmata of Yscalin, who gave it to me.” He groped for the back of the chair and stood up. “She begged me to bring it to you. You have it now,” he said, desperate. “I must leave this place.”
“So Jondu is dead. Sit down, Lord Arteloth,” Chassar said coolly. “You will stay.”
“So you can insult my faith still further?”
“Because whomsoever seeks the Priory can never leave its walls.”
Loth turned cold.
“This is a difficult thing to tell you, Lord Arteloth. I am acquainted with your lady mother, and it pains me to know that she will never see her son again … but you cannot leave. No outsider may. There is too great a risk that you could tell someone about the Priory.”
“You—” Loth shook his head. “You cannot— this is madness.”
“It is a comfortable life. Not as comfortable as your life in Inys,” Chassar admitted, “but you will be safe here, away from the eyes of the world.”
“I am the heir to Goldenbirch. I am a friend to Queen Sabran the Ninth. I will not be mocked like this!” His back hit the wall. “Ead always said you were a man of good humor. If this is some jest, Your Excellency, say it now.”
“Ah.” Chassar sighed. “Eadaz. She told me of your friendship.”
Something shifted inside Loth. And, slowly, he began to understand.
Not Ead, but Eadaz. The feeling of sunlight. Her secrets. Her obscure childhood. But no, it could not be true … Ead had converted to the Six Virtues. She prayed at sanctuary twice a day. She could not, could not be a heretic, a practitioner of the forbidden arts.
“The woman you knew as Ead Duryan is a lie, Arteloth. I devised that identity for her. Her true name is Eadaz du Zāla uq-Nāra, and she is a sister of the Priory. I planted her in Inys, on the orders of the last Prioress, to protect Sabran the Ninth.”
“No.”
Ead, who had shared his wine and danced with him at every Feast of Fellowship since he was two and twenty. Ead, the woman his father had told him he should marry.
Ead Duryan.
“She is a mage. One of the most gifted,” Chassar said. “She will return here as soon as Sabran births her child.”
Every word drove the knife of betrayal deeper. He could take no more. He pushed through the curtain and blundered into the passages, only to come face to face with the woman in green. And he saw, then, that she was not holding an oil lamp.
She was holding fire.
“The Mother is with you, Arteloth.” She smiled at him. “Sleep.”
33
East
They were ensconced in the highest room of Brygstad Palace, where they often stole a night alone when the High Prince was away. The walls were hung with tapestries, the window clammy with the heat of the fire. This was where the royals would give birth. Beneath a starry vault.
On other nights, they would abscond to the Old Quarter, to a room Jannart held at an inn called the Sun in Splendor, which was known for its discretion. It sheltered many lovers who had fled from the laws of the Knight of Fellowship. Some, like Jannart, were locked in marriages they had not chosen. Others were unwed. Others had fallen for people who were far above or below their station. All loved in a way that would see them pay a price in Virtudom.
That day, Edvart had set off with half the court, his daughter, and his nephew to the summer residence in the Bridal Forest. Jannart had promised Edvart they would join him soon to hunt the fabled Sangyn Wolf that stalked the north of Mentendon.