'Yes but—'
'But nothing, Ardu. None of them is a Pain Teller. None of them is going to be a healer of the calibre of Ossacer and he should not be telling them otherwise. All that will happen is that if there is a war, they will appear on the battlefield poorly equipped. That cannot be allowed to happen, for all our sakes. I may be the Mother of the Ascendancy but you are its leader in Herine's eyes. She is losing her patience and what with the pressure the Chancellor is beginning to exert, we cannot afford to make an enemy out of her. You do understand.'
'Of course I do.'
'Then prove you're the diplomat we all thought you were way-back-when in Westfallen. Make Ossacer see sense and stop Herine prowling our corridors making the students nervous.'
Arducius broke eye contact and looked away out of the classroom.
'I'll do what I can.'
'Good, in that case we don't have a problem.' Hesther pecked his cheek. 'That was a compliment, Ardu.' 'Oh, right. Thanks.'
He smoothed down his toga and walked away to speak to his brother. Ossacer wasn't far. His favourite classroom was only three doors away. It was converted from the grand office of the Speaker of the Earth and held some spectacular carvings of Kester Isle and Easthale's Dragon Tooth mountains.
The students had just left and he was alone in the room. Arducius could sense the energy of their lesson in the air and hear their excited babble echoing from somewhere nearby. They were good, all of them. Very raw at seventeen but with great potential. Arducius prayed daily that the war would never come. He was not confident the Omniscient was listening.
'Hello, Ardu,' said Ossacer, not looking up.
He was tracing his hands over the carvings on their display tables. 'A good lesson, Ossie?'
'They seemed to like it. Particularly Cygalius. He has a huge future, I think.'
'If he lives to see his eighteenth year,' said Arducius.
Ossacer ignored him. 'These carvings are sublime. The textures and contours hold such colour. It's like not being blind. Just for a moment.'
Arducius smiled. 'Then we should track down the sculptor. Get him to do some commissions for us.'
'I don't think so. Letting go is painful enough as it is.' Ossacer took his hands from the carved stone. 'And then all I am left with are memories and the violent, indistinct world that is energy maps.'
'What's brought on all this introspection?'
'Well, it's either that I'm trying to garner sympathy for my unfortunate plight or that I'm hurriedly trying to avoid what you've come to talk to me about.'
'I see,' said Arducius, feeling awkward. That was another knack Ossacer had.
'I didn't mean to upset Hesther. I would never want to do that.' 'So that was you, was it?'
'And it didn't take a genius to know where she would go next.' 'No indeed. She was very red-faced, really upset. So why did you do it?'
Ossacer moved across the classroom and sat in one of the dozen high-backed chairs that stood on the marble floor.
'Because no one seems to understand that we are simply being used like animals. Trained for a purpose to be cast on to the wheel of war. And with no thought for the future. So I was telling the emerged that they should be honing their healing and growing skills. Everyone has to help the war effort should it come to that and we are clearly best placed to keep men, women, animals and crops alive, fed and watered. I don't want them to wear blood on their hands like we did. Like we still do.'
Arducius worried at his lower lip for a moment before taking the seat next to Ossacer.
'I don't know what to say, Ossie.'
'You could agree with me.' Ossacer smiled and winked.
'You know it isn't as simple as that.' Arducius shifted, uncomfortable. 'We can't afford to make an enemy out of the Advocate. Not now, not ever.'
'So you're prepared to train our Ascendants to murder just to keep her smiling, is that it?'
'God-embrace-me, how many times have we been through this?'
'Not enough, clearly.' Ossacer's smile was a distant memory. He'd tensed and Arducius could see the stress in his life map as shimmering, chaotic clashes of colour. 'Because none of you see what's really happening here.'
'I think you'll find we all understand exactly what's going on,' said Arducius. 'It's just that one of us refuses to accept it.'
'Damn right I refuse.' Ossacer's voice pitched up a level.
'Your trouble is that you think you're untouchable. That you can push Herine as far as you like because you're an Ascendant. All she'll do is stop you teaching and then where will you be?'
'And your trouble is that you let us get used as weapons when we are born to be the opposite. If we all stood up to her, she would have to back down. And she can't stop me teaching.'
'No? You'll have to shout loud to be heard from the cells, Ossacer.'
'She wouldn't do that. She wouldn't dare.'
'God-take-me-to-my-rest!' Arducius slapped the arms of his chair and stood up, walking away a few paces while his temper calmed. 'How can you be so naive?'
'I am not naive.'
'Ossie, you think more deeply than the rest of us put together. Your principles are a guiding light for us all. But you mustn't let them blind you to reality. "Dare"? She's the Advocate, she can do anything she likes. And you have to start understanding the way she thinks.'
'Like what?'
Arducius bit his lip to stop himself tearing into Ossacer for his idiot belligerence. 'Like realising that she will do anything to keep the Conquord together. And she will sacrifice anyone who gets in the way of that. She used us in the last war even though she knew it would put her against the Chancellor. And she took us in because she saw our potential in all areas as much as for a reward. If we turn our backs on what she wants now, at her time of greatest need, what do you think she'll do?'
'We must be prepared to die for our beliefs,' said Ossacer evenly.
'But not toss our lives away for stubbornness. The Ascendants must be prepared for what will be demanded of them. What
will
be demanded.'
'I won't have you gag me, Arducius.'
'Then you will not teach, nor have contact with our emerged Ascendants.'
Ossacer gaped. 'You have no right—'
'When I see my brother walking the frayed tightrope I think I have every right,' said Arducius. 'And Hesther will back me. Don't make us do it. I'm not asking you to teach them anything bar Pain Teller skills. Just don't fill their minds with your rhetoric. You will drag us all down.'
'Down?' Ossacer's face betrayed his contempt. 'You can stoop no lower, brother. You're as much the Advocate's lackey as any consort.'
'I only do what is asked of me by my Advocate,' said Arducius carefully.
'And if she asks for lightning to smite our enemies and tempests to purge their blood from the field, you will do that?'
Ossacer was staring at him, his eyes carrying such passion, such ferocity that it was difficult for a moment to remember he was blind. Arducius knew Ossacer would be able to see the certainty in his aura. Still he could barely speak above a whisper.
'If it would keep our enemies from the gates of the Conquord, yes, I would do that.'
'I knew it. Sad to see one so strong driven so weak. Brittle bones, brittle will.'
Arducius started and a felt a wound-like pain in his stomach. Ossacer dropped his gaze.
'I'm sorry, Ardu. I lashed out. I didn't mean it like that.' 'Then how did you mean it, Ossacer?' 'I th—'
'I think you've said enough for one day.' Arducius turned to go but a thought struck him on the way to the door. 'Ossie, you are my best friend, you are my brother and I love you. But some days you test my
affection
sorely. Do you think for one moment in that high-and-mighty head of yours that I would not be crushed inside if I was asked as an Ascendant to kill for the Conquord? Do you think that somehow I escaped the nightmares of what we did in Atreska that day? A lesser evil to perpetuate a greater good is a choice that I will make and so should you.
'You know, I used to hate Gorian when he taunted you about your blindness. But I remember once he said you weren't just blind on the outside but on the inside too. I didn't understand at the time. Now I think he might be right.'
Arducius closed the door firmly behind him and almost walked straight into the man standing immediately outside the classroom.
'Sorry,' he said and stepped back, looking up to see who he'd encountered.
It was a face aged beyond its years. Kindly but broken. He was seventy but looked a hundred. All the thick dark hair was gone, replaced by thinning white wisps. The eyes that used to be brown and all-embracing at one time, were sunk into the skull and lined red. Sleep was clearly an uncertain friend. He was stooped a little and all the power was gone from his frame. Unrecognisable to many. But you couldn't change the base of your aura. No disguise would ever fool an Ascendant.
'Hello, Arducius.'
'My Marshal,' said Arducius, thumping his right arm into his chest. 'It's been too long.'
'You can drop all that nonsense, Ardu,' said Arvan Vasselis. 'It's a long time since I required you to call me Marshal.'
Arducius gestured towards the reception rooms away at the back of the Chancellery. 'Can I offer you some wine and food? There was a pig roast last night and the cold cuts are exceptional.'
'In a moment, perhaps.' There was no real power in Vasselis's voice any more but he retained the same easy pace to his speech which begged interruption, and the natural charisma which forbade it. He nodded at the classroom. 'Did he mean what he said?'
'You overheard our
...
discussion, I take it. All of it?'
'I made a career out of overhearing things,' said Vasselis. 'So?'
Arducius moved them a little way from the door.
'Of course he means it, Arvan. You know Ossacer. He can barely breathe for the principles and morals crowding him. He won't turn and it'll cause us trouble. I'll just have to manage him away from Herine as best I can.'
‘I
see.' Vasselis's face was grim and a chasm of sadness yawned in his eyes. 'An Ascendant should know better. Excuse me a moment.'
Vasselis walked back to the classroom and opened the door. Arducius heard a chair scrape and Ossacer begin to speak. Vasselis did not move from the doorway. He held up a hand.
'My son made a sacrifice that no one had the right to ask of him and the Conquord was saved as a consequence. No one is asking you to die, Ossacer, merely to uphold the meaning of the actions of those who did.'
Vasselis closed the door.
'Wine and pig, I think, young Arducius. Lead the way.' A single tear ran down his cheek.
Chapter Twenty-One
859th cycle of God, 30th day of
Genasrise
‘I
try not to let it consume me but every day it is harder, not easier. I cannot explain it.'
Vasselis's hand had a slight quiver as he raised his goblet. Arducius had chosen a snug room for them. Just two recliners and a table between walls lined with books The solitary window was closed against the late afternoon cold.
'But your words were well chosen and well said. Ossacer doesn't think widely enough sometimes. You might just have given him something to chew on.'
'Then it was worth my trip.'
'How is Netta?'
Vasselis's shoulders sagged. 'Kovan was our life, the future of our line. When it became clear Netta and I could have no more children, he became unspeakably precious to us. But you can't stand in a young man's way. Still, I never for one moment thought when I sent him away with you that day in Westfallen that it would be the last I ever saw of him. For Netta it is even harder. The heart of our house has stopped beating but she exists there still. I am only here because I will not suffer another to rule over my people.'
'God blesses us while that remains the case.'
'Not every one would agree with you.' Vasselis raised his eyebrows. Arducius sniffed. 'Let me guess
...
are we talking about the Order by any chance?'
'Who else? The public face is all about a Marshal needing a line of succession and that the family ethos of the Order is undermined if a senior figure in the Conquord cannot provide that. But we all know what it's really about. I have to fight my corner hard at the moment,