Slowly and soundlessly, those high gates drew back. Nothing mystical or potent in it: there were men at either leaf to open them. The men were gowned and hooded in the Sharai manner, which was the Ransomer manner also, although these pale yellow robes were no more Sharai in design than they were Ransomer in colour. Elisande was not the only one who tried to peer beneath the hanging rims of the hoods to see what manner of man it was that wore them; she was perhaps the only one who let her attempts be obvious, as was also her frustration when she failed.
As slow and as silent as the hinges of the great gates, another man came to lead them across the court beyond. He seemed to be a man at least, as the others did. They moved like men, though Julianne for one found herself wondering once more where the King found his servants, and how, and why they came to serve him. They might be slaves, they might be devotees; they might be lords of the Kingdom giving secret service in some undeclared bond of brotherhood They might equally well be men of clay, animated by magic.
Had it still been a place of faith and worship, the Dir'al Shahan must have been the most striking, the most overwhelming of man's work on the earth. Within its walls it was a complex in itself, and all its complexity was a wonder that spoke more and more loudly to the glory of God. There were stairs and archways, lesser temples and rising platforms, all of a golden stone with veins that glittered under the sun; all leading the eye onward and upward to the grand consummation that it sought, the great domed temple with its spiring minarets, needle-fine and sky-piercing. If there were another such dome in the world, none there had seen or heard speak of it.
And the King sat there, or so rumour said and his Shadow had never denied it:
crouched like a toad beneath a stone
some said, or
poised like a spider at its web's heart, waiting
or simply
still as a rock, purposeless, stretching an overlong
life
still longer, and to what end?
To this end, perhaps, the end that they had all pursued this fan to answer the questions of his own generation and another, to bring at least some sense of ending to a terrible adventure. The Princip
’
s country was in ruins, many of his people were dead and the survivors were dreadfully exposed; he trusted the Ransomers' truce precisely as far as he trusted Fulke. And he believed in causes, here in the Kingdom; he believed that whatever happened had its reason and that very likely, that reason was the Kings. The 'ifrit had invaded his little land, which was unheard of; they had let the Ransomers in first, and the Sharai had been there to take advantage, and he did not believe that any of this was coincidence. His son also was dead amongst his people, and he had come to ask for explanations. The Princip had all the claims of an old comrade, of a history shared, of hurts taken and gifts received; his granddaughter and her friend had the claims of youth and vulnerability, the rights of the world to come, fresh candies lit from dying flames.
So they broached the Kings privity, his sanctity, his dome. His servant seemed almost to invite them, leading the way not to the great closed door but to a long arch, almost a tunnel at one side. In the blackness of its shadow, they found another door; this one stood open, and there were lights beyond.
The servant gestured them through. The King's Shadow was first, and would have entered then but that the Princip delayed him with a word.
'No, wait, Coren. I would see this man's face, before we go further.'
'Does his face matter? He serves the King; what more do you need?'
'I saw—' He was not sure what he had seen, but he thought it might have been the faintest gleam of red in the darkness beneath the hood. At any rate, 'I should like to see his face.'
'Well.' Coren raised no further objection, only seemed genuinely bemused. 'If he is content to show it to you, I am quite content that you should see it. If the King objects, no doubt he will let us know.' He turned to the man and said, 'Of your courtesy, sir? Would you lift back your hood?'
The man said nothing, but his hands did what the Shadow asked.
The girls gasped, and so did Marshal Fulke; it was he who said the name, which meant nothing to the older men.
‘
Blaise...
’
His eyes were dully red, which made the girls gasp, draw back, press closer to each other.
'Blaise,' the man repeated. ‘I
served you once, when I was Blaise,' spoken slowly, as if the truth of this were buried deep, drowned deep in memory's well and must be grappled for in darkness, 'and called you Magister.'
'You did; nor did I release you from my service,' though Fulke's memory of it at least was fresh and bitter.
‘I
was released. I served you too,' the man who had been Blaise went on, turning to Julianne, 'and called you my lady'
'You were my sergeant,' she murmured, willing him to remember it, only hoping that her voice and this little information might give him an easier path back to what had
been his life. 'At Roq de Ranco
n, and on the way there. Do you remember?'
‘I
remember Roq de Rancon. I served the God there once, till my brothers drove me out. Now I serve the King. Will you go in to him?'
Julianne may not have been the only one there who thought for a moment that his red gaze fell more balefully on Fulke, when he spoke of the Ransomers; for certain she was not the only one who hoped that his current service was happier than those he had known before. That could almost seem to matter more than how his eyes were red, or why, or how it was that the King came to have such a man as servant, and in such a condition.
But then the Kings Shadow strode through the brief darkness and into light, and the others followed him; and now for a while they could forget Blaise entirely if they chose to, as they had chosen before.
This place had been holy to the Patrics since their God had blessed it, choosing this of all the places of the earth to set His foot when He walked as a man. It had been holy to the Catari long before that as the seed of all creation, the first place their God had made and the source of all the rest, the last of the rough rock from which the world was moulded. Before them there had been others, other faiths - as witness the pavement where this temple stood, wide monument to a forgotten worship - and each had known something different about the Mount of Ascariel, but each had known it holy.
The Patrics who owned it now, who owned or claimed possession of all the Sanctuary Land, maintained that possession by strength of stone as much as strength of arms; they had built massively up and down the land, castles and walls and fortifications. Their architects understood power and endurance and resistance, none better. It took the Catari before them to build for beauty; and here at least, that beauty had been let live.
Fulke would not have had it so; Fulke saw the heresy in every curving line, in every gilded word he could not read. He had been offered tutors, but he would not learn the tongue: 'We have the language given us by the God; what would I need of another?' In his heart, he had been afraid. There were those who said that to understand all was to believe all; here especially, in this cradle of faith where men could run mad from a simple excess of belief, he feared to find it true. Serving a God Divided - and serving as he had, as inquisitor and judge - he knew the dangers of a divided soul. Better to be ignorant and safe, not to offer his intellect as hostage
...
Now, in this dim and smoky lamplight after so much sun, he gazed around him, he gazed up and up and was afraid again. He could not understand the messages on the walls, but he could read beauty, he could feel its influence. More subtle perhaps than a sword, but no less powerful in time: and the King had spent years and decades here, had chosen to make his home amid the strictures of a forbidden faith, and the King could surely read them. Like Fulke, he had been a monk before ever he was a warrior; report said that he had been damnably curious even as a novice, always reading, reading, asking questions and reading more. Fulke didn't believe that any man could live among so much beauty and not be sw
ayed, not be tempted into false
hood.
This must be why the King lived in seclusion, apart from all his priests and ministers; this must be why he had so tolerated the heresies of Surayon. Fulke had not come to the Kingdom in expectation of smoking out the King himself, but he was ready for it. He'd denounce the man here in his own palace if it proved necessary, and would not fear for himself although he died for it. It was the Sanctuary Land that he feared for, if its King were turned from the true religion.
To Julianne the beauty was a tangible thing, as solid as the tiles of the floor beneath her feet, as fixed as the colours in those tiles, as calculated as the patterns in which the tiles were laid. Men had made this, and her soul rejoiced at their skill. She supposed that they had been devout, inspired; it seemed not to matter any more. There was no worship here now, no habitation for their God or any. Rather it was a man who lived here, and she didn't understand why he would want to, how he could bear to clothe himself in such a wonder or to hold himself alone beneath its majesty.
The Shadow had as many questions as the others, or more perhaps: half a lifetime of questions dammed up behind a stubborn determination not to ask, never to ask.
He at least was not overwhelmed by the place where they found themselves. Nor was the Princip at his side, though it had been many years since he was here. They'd both learned long since not to be oppressed by space, not to be uplifted by any work of man, not to be borne down by any overhanging darkness.
The dome rose above them, or closed down around them, like a sky at a human scale. Its horizon was glazed in that midnight blue that the Sharai claimed for their own colour: a gift of their God, a sign of His favour and their
service. The height of it was lost in a night deeper than any that the Sharai might know, the black of shadow far beyond the touch of lamps. This was a place removed from daylight, with its high doors locked and its walls, its dome unpierced. That was another symbol, but one that turned inward here; the King showed himself how near his own grip was, how tight the shell he'd closed about himself.
To the girls, it didn't seem so small or cramped a space. There must have been room here for a thousand men to pray
, more, without any of them jostl
ing their neighbours. In the half-dark they could barely see the curve of the further wall.
Or the same wall, rather, where it curved around. Sharai tents were long and low, black shadows that clung like leeches to the sand, that made tunnels overground, but Julianne had known the bright silk pavilions of the Marasson court at play. Those were round and high, and there was something here that reminded her of them, although they were filled with light, so fine that the sun could still dazzle through their fabric. She'd been in other circular chambers, temples even; it wasn't that, or not that alone. Perhaps it was the sense of presence, of coming under the gaze of someone greater than herself. She'd been in many temples, and never felt it at all; among the nobles and the Imperial family at Marasson a girl could not escape it, not even to shelter behind the greatness of her father. Her private giant, even he was reduced to mortal stature where he knelt below the Emperor's gaze.
She felt the same way here; she felt like a little girl who might have sought the comfort of her father
’
s hand, except that experience had taught her to recognise those situations where that hand could give no comfort. Which was a comfortless thing to know, and worse to experience. She held Elisande's hand instead, and wondered if she could interpret its tremble as rage held barely in check. And thought not but was willing, eager to be proved wrong, to spare her having to believe that her friend was as nervous as she was.
There were pillars in a wide slow circle within the wider circle of the space. There were lamps and braziers everywhere, the air was full of smoke and shifting shadows, a constant tugging at the corner of the eye; there were
men like Blaise who moved silentl
y over the dense rugs underfoot, who caught the ey
e more solidly but were still go
ne before they had been properly seen; there was no doubt, there was never any doubt where in all this blurring beauty they must go to find the King.
To the centre, of course: to the point of balance, to the focus of the eye, to the heart of what had been so long hidden.
Here at the hub - where it was not at all ha
rd to believe that this was still
ness and all the world else spun around it, where what was hard was not to feel dizzy with
that sense of being poised exactl
y at the point, with a long fall down on every side - there was a raised platform, a dais, what the Catari called a divan. Once, surely, there must have been an altar here; now there was an ancient chest of black wood, bound with iron where it had long since split.
On the chest, a man was sitting.
His face was on no coins, neither drawn nor described in any text. Against history's silence, legend had painted him unnaturally tall, which he was not; unnaturally broad of shoulder, which he was not; unnatur
ally strong and handsome, startl
ingly clear of eye and voice and skin, and he was none of these. Other legends - Catari legends - had him hideous, brutal, deformed by the weights of his own cruelty. They were no more true than the Patric hagiographies. Where the man was not known but his actions were, where the power of his word abided in the absence of his voice, it was hard to be utterly certain that he was not at least a hand's span higher than his confreres and a
little
too wide to pass through a normal doorway, one part giant and one part wizard, sparks in his eyes and sparks in the tips of his fingers.