The Makers of Light (32 page)

"Is Hannelore telling you your thoughts now, instead of old Maxim? Is Gabriel Flint? Some woman from your Order told me that the Mother must be better than the Master because of some gender stupidity, something like the feminine being kinder and higher than the masculine, and a mother thus being better than a father figure. What does it matter, I say? Either way, if you look up to a mother or a father, if you wait on them,
you
are nothing but a child.

"And children, Katrina, are weak. Children cannot take care of themselves, let alone save a fading world. You can save the world, at least pieces of it, one piece at a time. If you
want
to save the world. Will you teach me how to heal? Will you teach others? I think that in the days to come it will be needed. But don't answer me now. Think of what it is that you want. And right now, I want one thing from you, too: I am no Mentor, I have no whip, I have no power over you. Ignore whether I can or cannot see your thoughts, and if you can, treat others in the same way, will you?"

There was more silence, and he waited. In a way, he had not been fair to her. He knew that she was a very skilled and focused healer, and he knew that maybe she had joined the Order of the Mother because she sensed the coming changes—because she knew that in time her skills might be needed there more than elsewhere. He knew that these days it hurt her to heal, for she had been unable to heal the person she had most wanted to heal. He knew that, in a way, her being here was a sacrifice, and he used the knowledge that she would sacrifice herself.

She and her quiet, thickheaded husband had perhaps unwittingly given him that knowledge fifteen days ago in the basement with the statue, especially after he had told Calia what had happened to her friend.

Calia had cried. "She never sent a single message," she sobbed, Gerard's arm around her shoulders, Gerard staring at Dominick as if he were the one at fault.

"Kat, did you hear? Lind is alive, she's a lady!" Calia pulled Katrina's sleeve and made Katrina look at her, Calia's eyes wide and eager, Katrina's narrowed, with the color and consistency of ice. He knew it then, in the way he had learned to judge people, that both these women were or had been related to the woman he was seeking, but while one was moved by worry, sadness, and perhaps love, it was anger that burned in the other. Anger, and perhaps hate.

"I knew that." Katrina pulled her hand away.

"You knew? Why didn't you tell me? I've been so worried, I've been so ..."

"Why indeed? Should I always tell you everything I know? Trust me, you don't want me to. Sometimes there is knowledge that you don't need, knowledge that might poison you, and knowing about this person is like this. You are in the right place, you are where it matters, and perhaps you will do what matters. She is not and has not." Katrina's voice had risen now. "She has left us and betrayed us. Forget her!"

"Leave her alone, will you?"

Katrina stared at Dominick. "Leave whom alone?"

"Calia, of course. You were staring at her as if you wanted to hit her."

Katrina opened her mouth, but he was faster. "As for Calia's friend, you should
not
leave her alone." He hurried ahead, gripping at some not yet clear combination his mind was making of events and circumstances—something that could blend his duty, the charge Maxim had laid on him to take care of these stray sheep here, with finding the woman he wanted to find. "This woman is a Science apprentice. Her master is a both a High Lord and a Scientist, did you know that?"

"Science." She spat the word. "A suitable activity for those with too much time and money to waste. They don't go naked and hungry, but Science cannot feed a body, or clothe it, or heal a wound ..."

"Can it not? Are you sure? I do not know, myself, but I know that it can do other things. Building door locks, for example. Even lifting heavy things that a person cannot lift alone—yes, some of this is possible without Magic, as I know from a trusted Mentor." He stared at Katrina, neither his eyes wavering, nor hers. "If Magic is going away, do you not wonder what might be coming? Or do you people only dig up ancient caves and gather pebbles to dry plants on? Even if you don't want to participate, don't you at least want to know?"

Dominick stopped, taking a breath, that little pause giving him time to wonder at what he had just said. It had not been his intention to speak so passionately about Science. It had not been his intention to lead their thoughts—or to let his own thoughts wander—in a direction so perilous and unclear, a direction that he, himself, did not fully understand. But he had said what he had, and there was no turning back.

"Calia, there is a Science Guild gathering on Guilds Day, the first for the year. They are going to introduce the new apprentices then. Your friend has had a great change in her life—"

"So have I." So the girl was hurt, but she said nothing else, just sighed and let him continue.

He did. "Perhaps she is waiting for that gathering, for her to be introduced to society in her new role, before she contacts you." He did not know if this was true; it was plausible and, in any case, he could use it. "Keep in mind that the High Lord may have also imposed restrictions on her about contacting her old friends, but he should not be as arrogant as to refuse you if you contacted her yourself."

Calia's head snapped up from where she had been staring at the floor, sorry for herself. Yes, she would understand a woman restricted by a man, even if she would understand few other things—even if she did not much understand the world.

A master or a Master, each seemed to cloud the mind, to take the strength away from other thoughts, to take away
the world
these thoughts would have formed. Dominick shivered and hoped no one noticed. This was the kind of thought that sent reprobates straight to the Bers. And perhaps not having worlds formed by random, faulty humans' thoughts was the Bers' reason for this—just look at what world these here would form if let loose, just look at the atrocity beside the wall.

Dominick had not wondered about the reasons of Bers and Mentors, for years. It had been, and perhaps still was, dangerous because it meant letting his own thoughts loose.

"You want me to contact Lind for you—because you want to get in touch with her High Lord and Science. I don't mind."

Dominick looked at those large, clear, trusting green eyes, and was suddenly worried. He had not judged Calia correctly; he had expected her to emotionally run to the Linden woman and not think of much else, let alone poke into his reasons. It was Gerard he had been more concerned with, but Gerard was saying nothing now, watching his concubine in a way that gave Dominick a sudden realization.

The boy loved her. He must, or else he was an insecure, controlling fool, to have made her a concubine and assumed her transgressions—but the way he was looking at her, the way his eyes emitted warmth, protection, and concern for her troubles with her friend, meant that even if the second was true, the first was undoubtedly so. This was powerful knowledge. It could certainly be used, and the very thought made Dominick feel dirty.

That woman was to blame. She had swept into his life, with that little wind of hers, and she had overturned his world, which she would pay for. She was the reason he was here, at this stinking, moldy, ruined place, with people either dull or desperate or both, whose feelings he was even now thinking of how to use and abuse in order to get to her. She was at fault. She was ...

But had not Maxim played a role in him being here, too? Had not Maxim sent him? Had
he
not chosen to come, be a Mentor, and bring the lost ones back? He wanted to hit something. He wanted to hit the statue, dead eyes brazenly staring at his back even now, to smash "
the Mother
" like he had smashed "
the Master
" in the temple.

* * *

Anger. Uncontrolled emotion. It was a Mentor's second greatest enemy, right behind doubt—and perhaps a human's first. Anger had muddled Dominick's thinking at that sad place in the Steel Factory neighborhood—anger was the reason he agreed to Katrina's whimsy, and chanced encounters that he should not have chanced.

Now, in the Healers' Passage, he could not afford this any longer. He had to think, to focus on thinking, and never to be angry or let anger control him again.

* * *

Katrina had put her hands on Calia's shoulders, telling her quietly that they would contact Linden later but that now Katrina and her husband, Mark, would talk to Dominick alone.

Mark came to Dominick, meanwhile, his face sad and his voice even quieter than his wife's. "Science, you say, Brother. But what is Science compared to our Mother? What can Science achieve? Science, like the Master, might make some things, but it can never make life or bring it back."

After these words he looked away, as if he had said all there was for him to say, as if he wondered why Katrina would even bother with further conversation. "
A woman's purpose in life,
" the man had said, before. Dominick knew then, from the man's few words and actions, that a child had been indeed his purpose in life and that the child had been taken away. The word "
mother
" and the personal hope that this word would bring to him was perhaps what had called him to this sorry group, unless he had simply been brought by Katrina.

So many beliefs, so many little personal paths, crisscrossing the Dark Forest, until it was no longer simply dark but was trampled, gray, and dirty. Had Dominick truly thought that it was the Master that people believed in? Had he truly been so naive as to think that it was easy to set people on a single right path that all followed and followed right? Then again, perhaps it was easy, with
people.
But it was reprobates he was dealing with—and yet the doubt of whether the rest were not like them, too, lingered, feeding his anger even further.

"This way, in the side room, will you?" Katrina said, leaving Calia and joining him and Mark, pointing to the left of the "
Mother
" statue. Her voice was brisk, a thin line cutting through her forehead. After his conversation with Mark, Dominick knew who she was. Maxim had once told him about a woman who had made Confessions to him; one of Mierber's best healers, who had lost her baby and became an alcoholic. Such a dependence on a substance, even if not aberration itself, was something that needed to be exterminated in a human, but Maxim had not whipped her even once.

Dominick remembered this, for it had disturbed him, as had Maxim telling the woman something he would not share with Dominick, making her leave Mierber in haste. How could Maxim let one such as her go freely, a danger to herself and others, to some province or other far from the City of the Master? To some place where Mentors mixed with rustic citizens and peasants and sometimes forgot what they had learned? Maxim's ways were sometimes unfathomable. But perhaps in this case his recklessness had worked, for there was now not a trace of alcohol in the dry, angry woman. Did Maxim even know she had returned?

Dominick wondered if he should tell him, and what he should tell him of the things he had seen and done after leaving the temple.

Katrina set Dominick a test—a dangerous test and one with dubious usefulness, for he did not know how it could make her trust him or what exactly it would prove to her—but, his mind made unstable by his anger and paths, and the Dark Forest unclear before him, he agreed to it.

"You come from the Master," she said to him in the little side room, where the stone was even more worn out and dusty, and spiderwebs adorned the corners and walls. So, the spiders had come back, too.

"I do."

"But where are you going, I wonder?"

"I am seeking a way." It was actually the truth, and she seemed to understand that, but did she understand the unsaid part that if there was no way, he would build it—and that he planned on leading them along this same way, too?

"You are talking about Science, a way that comes and goes to neither the Master nor the Mother, a slippery, unwatched way. You are also talking about an old friend of mine who took that way as well as another way, no less slippery, to a great detriment."

Katrina knew, the way she was looking at him; she was aware that he knew something about Linden, daughter of Kelley and Ellard, now a lady of the House of Qynnsent, that he was not telling. Perhaps she even knew that he had something in common with Linden's disappearance and rise in power.

And that he did, he knew it himself. An exemplary young woman, Maxim's records said—records that Maxim had given to Dominick after the first Order of the Mother meeting—an exemplary woman who had made Confessions to Maxim himself all her life and never shown a single thought that was not right.

This
was the kind of woman who would attack Dominick, with wind and more. A young and naive Mentor Dominick, had he met her before that fateful night, would have thought her a woman to rely on. It made the whole world askew. But at least she was a woman Maxim and Calia and Katrina knew, not a
samodiva
out of a Balkaene forest. Something strange had happened that night, and he, too, had been a part of it.

Or was she not a
samodiva?
Dominick did not know what the
Byas
harridans that he had until last quarter refused to believe in truly were.

"Your friend might be our way to that Science path," Dominick said, and Katrina narrowed her eyes. He might have been too eager; he might have just confirmed the healer woman's suspicions of him. Thus he added, "To her High Lord, as well, who, being what he is, has access to Magic."

"So you believe in the old tale of nobility being different from the rest of us? Or of High Lords and Ladies in some mysterious way putting their very lives in danger so that Mierenthia can hold together and we can all live in peace? Do you, really?"

Did Dominick believe in this? Mentors knew about the existence of something called the Aetarx that nobles, especially High Rulers, were charged by Bers to care for even at the price of their minds' and bodies' soundness. Did it, indeed, keep Mierenthia whole? And was perhaps Magic failing not because of
Bessove
or some ineptitude of Bers but because nobles were not doing their duty as it should be done?