The Born Queen - J. Gregory Keyes [8]
Mylton was just turning from the dead prismo, his jaw dropping.
“How?” he asked.
“The saints rejected him,” Hespero wheezed. “They chose me.”
“But you haven’t walked the faneway,” Mylton objected. “How could you use the holy source?”
“The saints make their will known through me directly,” Hespero asserted.
“That’s impossible.”
“It is a fact,” Hespero managed. “You all saw. You must have felt.”
“Yes,” another of the tribiceri—L’Ossel—said. “Don’t you see? Don’t you remember? It’s true. The prophecy says, ‘and he will draw the power of Saint Diuvo, although he has not walked in his steps.’”
A general murmur went up from what had been a stunned silence.
“He is the real Fratrex Prismo,” L’Ossel went on. “He is the one meant to lead us in the final days.”
Hespero rallied what little remained of his strength and shook himself free of the supporting hands.
“I will not brook doubt,” he said. “Time is short, and too much has to be done. If anyone else would challenge me, let it be now.”
He lifted his chin. Against all odds, he had survived both the fane and Fabulo. He had nothing left now. If even the weakest of them challenged him, it was all over.
But instead, they all went to their knees.
And a few days later, he was titled Fratrex Prismo Niro Marco.
It had a nice ring to it.
DARIGE
Stephen snapped awake, his heart thundering in his chest.
“What?” he gasped.
But no one answered. Something had awakened him—something loud, or bright, or painful—except that he couldn’t quite remember whether it had been a sound, a light, or a feeling. Had it been in the waking world or across the night divide? His scalp and palms tingled, and he felt like an insect mired in molasses.
Then the wind came in the open window, cool and clean, and the liminal moment faded.
He pressed the page of the book he’d been studying, realizing that he’d literally fallen asleep with his nose in it, and, as the waking terror faded, felt like chuckling at himself. What would Zemlé say?
She would make some joke about him being obsessed, but she understood. He tucked a ribbon to mark his place in the tome, then regarded the sheet of lead next to it with its faded engravings. It was the epistle, the letter that had led him to this place. Although he had translated the cipher it was written in long before, he felt something basic was escaping him, hidden in the text, some clue to the secret for which he was searching.
He rose and went to the east window and then paused. Hadn’t he left it shuttered?
A glance around the room revealed no intruder or any place that might conceal one. It was an open, airy space, carved of living stone but with enormous windows for each direction of the wind, hung with framed crystal thicker than the length of his thumb. Closed, they were translucent, suffusing the chamber with ample pleasant light during the day, but open, they offered a rare view. So far as he could tell, this was the highest room in the vast complex of caves and tunnels that riddled Witchhorn Mountain, hollowed out from a spindly upthrust on the east side of the peak the Aitivar—the inhabitants of the place—called the Khelan, or “spit.” He didn’t know what they called this upper room, but he’d named it the aerie. Sunrises were splendid from there, pulling above the jagged peaks of the Bairghs, and he fancied on a clear day he could see almost to the Midenlands south and as far east as the inlet of Dephis, because at times he thought he saw the liquid shimmer of a great water, although that could well be a trick of the light.
He shrugged. He must have left it unlatched, and the wind had blown it open.
It was dusk now, and the Witchhorn cast its long shadow out toward the blue haze of the horizon. North and south of the mountain’s umbra, the pikes and ridges burned orange, and a few stars were furtively appearing in the deep of the sky.
He savored a long, happy breath and put his palms on the marble sill, leaning forward a bit.
It was as if he had placed his hands on a hot