The Born Queen - J. Gregory Keyes [69]
The younger Sefry shrugged. “They are limited, it is true. Or were, I suppose. But they see things in the flow of the great powers that others cannot. And they have followers in the temporal world.”
“Yes,” Anne said. “I’ve met some of them. They kidnapped me.”
Nerenai frowned, and steepled her fingers together.
“The burning woman must be your arilac,” Mother Uun said. “It could appear as anything.”
“Arilac?”
“In the oldest stories about the thrones, there is a mention of the arilac, a sort of guide who appears to lead those who have the power to claim it toward the throne. She is your ally in that, at least.”
“But the question you must ask yourself,” Nerenai said, “is what advice the Faiths might have given you that the arilac did not want you to hear.”
“I spoke to their ghosts,” Anne said. “They didn’t tell me anything about why they died.”
“They may not have known. It might have been something your arilac feared they would learn later.”
“Then she isn’t to be trusted?”
“I would question everything she—or, rather, it—tells you. It wants you to find and control the sedos throne, and in the most direct manner possible. There may be other, more difficult ways that it withholds the knowledge of. If it asks you to do something you think is wrong, press it for an alternative.”
“So if she asks me to cut off my hand—”
“I would question that,” Nerenai said. “Follow the arilac, but not blindly. Stay skeptical.”
Mother Uun shook her head. “I anticipated the arilac, suspected it had already found you the first time we met, but I did not know enough to help you with it. That’s why I sent for Nerenai. Her clan holds those secrets. She can help guide you.” She smiled. “A guide to help with the guide.”
“I am at your service, Majesty,” Nerenai said.
Anne studied the two women for a moment. Part of her desperately wanted to believe that Nerenai was sincere, but another part of her feared the woman was a spy. That was the trouble with being queen: She couldn’t really trust anyone. Suddenly, where she had once had friends, she was surrounded by strangers.
But I did that on purpose, didn’t I? she thought. Her reasons for it were still good.
“Before I say anything, I’d like to ask you something else,” she said.
“I’m at your pleasure, Majesty.”
“You know I freed the Kept. Was that a bad thing?”
“Yes.”
“How bad?”
“Very bad,” Mother Uun said. “Although I can’t be more specific than that.”
“He promised to mend the law of death and then die himself.”
“And he will do both of those things. It’s what he does between then and now that is likely to be the problem.”
“It’s been months.”
The ancient Sefry croaked out a laugh, and Nerenai smiled that little smile that had been waiting behind her lips.
“He’s been waiting for two thousand years, Your Majesty. A few months are a breath to him.”
Anne sighed. “I know you warned me. But I didn’t see that I had a choice.”
“You didn’t,” Mother Uun said. “I knew you would do it.”
“You knew I would do it?”
“Well, I was pretty certain.”
“Why didn’t you warn me about that?”
Mother Uun placed her cup on the small table before her.
“I said it was very bad to have freed him. But things would be worse had you died. You must claim the sedos throne, Anne, not another. Only then can we be redeemed.”
“Redeemed?”
“It’s an old thing, a Sefry thing. I should not speak of it.”
“Is that why you’re serving me?”
“While the Kept was prisoner, we were bound to watch him. Now we are free to serve you, and so we do. The moment he was free, our warriors came to find you.”
“And saved my life. And helped me win back the castle. And now you want to give me a maid. But I don’t understand why, Mother Uun.”
“Because you can put things right,” the old woman replied. “And I won’t tell you more than that or it will go to your head and ruin you. Now, do you want Nerenai or not? You are free to refuse; it changes nothing else.”
Anne felt a sudden claustrophobic panic, the same sort that she had felt at the gates of the city.
I don’t want any of this! I don’t want to sit on any sedos throne or save the world.