Naamah's Blessing - Jacqueline Carey [233]
Prince Thierry surveyed the room. “There are many backdrops to this tale,” he began. “One of which bears citing. Although my father did his best to keep the incident quiet, rumors abounded nonetheless. Many of you will remember the scandal surrounding the Circle of Shalomon some seven years gone by.”
Lianne Tremaine paled. “Focalor?” she whispered to me.
I nodded.
“You will note that I have reinstated Mademoiselle Lianne Tremaine to the post from which she was dismissed after that incident,” Thierry continued. “After what I have witnessed, and after the suffering my own youthful ambition engendered, I think it is only fitting that she be forgiven. And I think it is fitting that she among poets be given the task of transcribing this tale. The Circle of Shalomon attempted to summon spirits, fallen spirits, did they not, my lady?”
She met his gaze without flinching. “Yes, your highness. We did.”
“Did you succeed?” he asked her.
“Yes.” Her cheeks flushed slightly. “With Lady Moirin’s aid, we did. But she did not give it willingly.”
“I gave it nonetheless,” I murmured.
“I do not seek to cast blame,” Thierry said in a gentle tone. “Only to establish the chain of events. One of these spirits gave each of you a gift, I believe. Can you tell us what form that gift took?”
Lianne lifted one hand unconsciously to rub at her nose. “The spirit Caim taught us the language of ants.”
A faint titter of laughter ran through the salon.
Thierry waited for it to subside. “I would laugh, too, if I knew only the ants of Terre d’Ange,” he said mildly. “And not the black rivers of ravenous death that inhabit the jungles of Terra Nova. But I am getting ahead of the tale. It is also true that one of the fallen spirits, a powerful one, freed himself from your binding and sought to take possession of Raphael de Mereliot, is it not?”
“Yes, your highness,” Lianne said. “Focalor, a Grand Duke of the Fallen.” She glanced sidelong at me. “But Moirin, along with Messire Bao and his mentor, succeeded in banishing him.”
“Not entirely, it seems.” Thierry took a deep breath. “That is the backdrop to the tale I would have you hear today.”
It took hours to spin out the tale in its entirety, hours in which our audience sat entranced and horrified, journeying with Thierry and his companions to the blood-soaked and disease-racked Nahuatl Empire where Raphael de Mereliot intervened with his physician’s skills, and then deep into the wilds of Terra Nova in search of the empire of Tawantinsuyo, where Raphael fell prey to madness and learned to summon and control the black river.
When it came time for our second expedition to pick up the thread of the tale, Balthasar spoke on our behalf, his voice unwontedly candid and matter-of-fact as he chronicled our journey following in the footsteps of Thierry’s party, all the way from the betrayal aboard the Naamah’s Dove to the Emperor’s patronage to the shock of our arrival in Vilcabamba, and Raphael’s cold-blooded murder of Denis de Toluard.
Lianne Tremaine, scribbling notes to aid her prodigious memory, shuddered. “I take your meaning,” she said to me in a low tone.
It was impossible to convey the profound strangeness of our captivity in that jungle city, surrounded by Raphael’s army of ants and hostage to his mad ambitions, but Balthasar and Thierry between them did their best. Still, there were parts of the tale they could not tell.
“Moirin, will you tell of the Maidens of the Sun and the prophecy they guarded?” Thierry asked me.
I glanced at Bao.
His face was shuttered and unreadable, and I thought that his role in this story was one that no one who had not lived through it could ever possibly understand.
“Aye, your highness,” I said to Thierry. “As much as I understand it myself, and deem fitting to tell.”
A look of understanding crossed Thierry’s features. “Of course.”
And so I told the tale of the Quechua’s prophecy of the ancestors; but I left out Bao’s role, telling only