Daniel Abraham - The Dragon's Path

In the great halls of the Kingspire, the nobility of Antea broke into a hundred small groups. Dispersed, the din of the talk was less deafening if not particularly more comprehensible. He saw people pretending not to look at him, and he had some idea what they were saying: Palliako claims he was wandering the Keshet, but he came back knowing all about the plot on Prince Aster and burning Vanai was all part of his plan and I told you his bringing loyal soldiers back just before the mercenaries tried to take the city was no coincidence. He walked through the hall slowly, bathing in it.

“Sir Palliako. A word.”

Curtin Issandrian and Alan Klin walked up to him looking like bookends in the library of the damned. Geder smiled. Curtin Issandrian put out his hand.

“I’ve come to thank you, sir. I owe you a great debt.”

“You do?” Geder asked, leaving the man’s hand floating in the air between them.

“If it weren’t for you, I would still be in alliance with a secret traitor to the crown,” Issandrian said. “Feldin Maas was a friend, and I let that friendship blind me to his nature. Today has been a terrible day for me, but it has been necessary. And I thank you for it.”

Geder wished Basrahip had been there, just to know if Issandrian were what he pretended to be. Another time, though. There were months and years still to come when he and his Righteous Servant could ferret out every secret in the court. A little magnanimity now wouldn’t hurt anyone. He took Issandrian’s hand.

“You’re a good man, Geder Palliako,” Issandrian said, speaking just loudly enough to be overheard. “Antea is fortunate to have you.”

“Thank you, Lord Issandrian,” Geder said, matching him. “It is a strong man who can admit he was misguided. I respect you for it.”

They dropped hands, and Alan Klin came forward, his own hand extended. Geder grinned and took it, pulling the man close.

“Sir Klin!” he said, grinning. “It’s been too long.”

“It has. It truly has.”

“Do you remember that night on the march to Vanai when I got drunk and burned that essay I showed you?”

“Yes. Yes, I do,” Klin said, laughing as if they were sharing a nostalgic moment.

Geder laughed too, and then let the amusement drain from his face.

“So do I.”

He dropped Klin’s hand, turned, and walked away feeling like the ground itself was rising to meet his footsteps. Outside, the day was blue skies and chill winter wind. His father stood near the steps that led down to the carriages, watching the chaos of horses, wood, and wheels. He held a pipe in his hand, but there seemed to be no fire in it.

“So did the political process come to its logical end?” Lerer asked.

“Didn’t you watch?”

“I’m too old for blood sports. If the thing needs doing, then do it, but don’t make a theater piece out of it.”

“But the king has to make an example, doesn’t he? He’s trying to keep Asterilhold from interfering with us,” Geder said. He felt hurt that his father hadn’t watched Maas die. “They were going to kill Prince Aster.”

“I suppose,” Lerer said. “Still. I’ll be damned pleased to be home, get the stink of Camnipol off my skin. We’ve been away from Rivenhalm too long.”

If we are to understand the freedom of humanity, we must first understand its enslavement. The root of all races—even the Firstblood—exists in the reign of dragons, and the end of that reign must by necessity mark the beginning of a peculiarly human history. It is not an exaggeration to say that the last breath of the last dragon was the first moment of the age of humanity in all its variety. But like all freedom, it was bounded and defined by that which came before. Our knowledge of the Dragon Empire is imperfect at best, but I contend that the discovery of the cave-palaces beneath Takynpal gives us our best view into what I have chosen to call the Age of Formation.

Geder flipped ahead, rereading pages he had translated before. The paper was brown with age, and fragile. He disliked handling it for fear that the pages would crack and flake away in his fingertips, but he needed to get as close to the original texts as he could. It seemed to him that there had to be something—some word or phrase that could have been translated in more than one way—that would mention the existence and history of the goddess.

The door of his sitting room swung open and Basrahip came in. He still wore his robes from the temple in the mountains, but he’d accepted a pair of leather-soled boots for walking on the cobbled streets of Camnipol. Among the rich red tapestries and soft upholstered chairs of the Palliako room in Camnipol, he looked entirely out of place. A desert weed in an arrangement of roses. He smiled at Geder and bowed.

“Been walking again?” Geder said.

“I knew tales of the great cities of the world, but nothing I had imagined could be so grand and so corrupt,” the priest said. “A child not more than seven summers old lied to me. And for no reason.”

“What did he say?”

The huge priest lumbered to a chair just across from Geder and lowered himself into it, the wood creaking under him as he spoke.

“That he could tell my future for three copper coins. He knew it was untrue. A child.”

“He was a beggar,” Geder said. “Of course they’re trying to cheat you. They need the money for food. I think you should be careful where you walk, though. There are parts of the city that aren’t safe. Especially after dark.”

“You live in an age of darkness, my friend. But this city will be beautiful beyond measure when it is pure.”

“Have you been to the temple?”

“I have,” Basrahip said. “It is a beautiful building. I am looking forward to the day when I can make it my own.”

“The paperwork shouldn’t take long. Before the close of court, certainly, and that’s less than a week now. But there’s not much to do in Camnipol over the winter months.”

“I have tasks enough.”

“So I’ve been reading,” Geder said, “and there’s something bothering me.”

“Yes?”

“The goddess is eternal. She was there at the birth of the dragons. She was there all through the Dragon Empire, but the only references I see to the Righteous Servant or the Sinir Kushku come at the very end, during the final war. And then they talk about it as if Morade created it, the way Asteril made the Timzinae or Vailoth made the Drowned. I just don’t understand how that can be right.”

“Perhaps then it cannot,” the priest said. “You should put less trust in written words, my friend. They are the stone eggs of lies. Here. I will show you. Read something from your book there.”

Geder flipped the pages, fingertips shifting across the words until he found a passage that was easily rendered.

“It was the fourth century of the Dragon Vailoth’s rule when these policies changed.”

“Is that true?” the priest asked him. “Is it untrue? Do you mean what you say? No, old friend. It’s neither. Your voice carries nothing. They are only words you repeat emptily. To write a thing down is to kill it. Only in the living voice can the truth be known. My brothers and I have listened to one another, passing the voice of the goddess down from generation to generation, and with every new speaking from the start, we have known what we heard to be true. These books you have? They are ink on paper. Objects. Soulless. You would be wiser not to put your faith in them.”

“Oh,” Geder said. “That’s… I’d never looked at things that way. Does that—?”

“Geder?”

Lerer Palliako stood in the doorway. His tunic was the blue and gray of House Palliako, formally cut with silver buttons on the sleeve. His hand clutched the doorway, as if he needed it to keep himself steady.