“Here,” the Kingpriest agreed. “I’m sorry, my friend. I forgot you know this place. But it is safe now-the wizards are long gone.”
Cathan swallowed, glancing behind him. The people of the Lordcity had not built any houses near this grove, even now, and even the crowd that had followed him and Beldinas from the Temple hung back at the edge of the broad, open area surrounding the trees. The superstitions about the olive grove ran deep, and with good reason: There had been a time when magic flowed in the sap of these trees, an ancient enchantment to keep out the unwelcome. Anyone who wandered into the grove unbidden soon found his memory muddled, so that he had no idea who he was, or why he had come. Cathan knew those tales were true, for he had felt the olives’ sorcery himself. He’d been here before, in the months before the war with the sorcerers.
The trees’ magic was still there; he felt a prickling that grew stronger with every step he took toward the grove. The spell had dimmed over the years, though. He looked up, above the spreading boughs at the Tower within.
The spire of the High Sorcerers-once one of five in the world, now one of three-soared high, a column of white stone topped with five crimson turrets and black parapets. Men called it the Bloody-Fingered Hand, and forked their fingers against evil whenever they gazed at it. Once, the greatest wizards in Istar had dwelt within, and it had seethed with the power of the three moons. But the wizards were gone now, fled to their sanctuary at Wayreth, and the Tower was a dead thing, stone only, devoid of enchantment. The sight of it still made Cathan’s mouth go dry.
“What better place to house the relics of heathens?” Beldinas said, leading the way around the grove. “There were no greater heretics than the wizards, after all, and none who did greater harm to our empire.”
“Why house the relics at all?” Cathan asked. He said nothing about the wizards, though memories of Leciane flashed through his head. He knew he could not sway the Lightbringer from his belief that sorcery was an evil thing. “Why not destroy them, leave them lost to history?”
The Kingpriest spread his hands. “We did that, when you were with the Hammer. But one can learn much from one’s enemies. The Dark One himself has taught me this. When light triumphs, the tokens of evil will lose their usefulness. Until then, though, it is good that those who fight the darkness have a place to see what it is they face.”
“The clergy, you mean,” Cathan said.
“And the knighthood. All who serve the church can benefit from this place, if they dare enter.”
They stopped at the south edge of the grove. There had not been a path through the olives years ago, but there was one now, running straight through their midst. White stones marked with the triangle and the burning hammer lined it on either side. On the far end stood slender gates of gold and iron. Beldinas gestured down the trail, and after a moment’s hesitation Cathan led the way. He tried not to look at the trees around him as he walked, tried not to listen for the words they whispered.
The Kingpriest reached to the throat of his robes and produced a medallion. With a nod to Cathan, he pressed it to the gates. There was a shimmering sound, a faint glow of a color Cathan couldn’t name, and the golden bars swung open, letting them pass. Beyond, the Tower soared above them: A sweep of broad black steps rose to tall doors of what looked like solid jasper, as red as heart’s-blood. Cathan’s heart thudded as he and Beldinas climbed the stair, the doors opening without a sound at their approach.
“Solio Febalas,” declared the Kingpriest as they stepped inside. “The Halls of Sacrilege.”
The shadows were thick inside, and even with Beldinas shining beside him, Cathan could see nothing but blackness for a time. Then the doors boomed shut and his god-touched eyes adjusted. Dim shapes appeared amid the gloom, cold and colorless in the Kingpriest’s silver light: terrible shapes, some that he knew, and some he did not. Here stood a huge dragon’s skull, the brainpan emptied to make a sacrificial bowl that still retained a crust of rusty blood. There was a massive pair of merchant’s scales, wrought of bronze and bent so they would never weigh true. Beyond was the shell of a giant tortoise, and past that a statue of black onyx, in the form of a hooded man with garnet eyes glinting within the depths of his cowl. The idols filled the Tower’s wide entry chamber; they were tokens of gods dark and false. When Cathan was a knight, he had destroyed many such icons. Now they came here instead. Somehow, that seemed the greatest sacrilege of all.
But there weren’t just the relics of evil. Among the foul artifacts, his eyes picked out objects that had been holy to other gods-an anvil of Reorx, made of cold steel set with glittering emeralds, and sapphires; a tree of Zivilyn, once a living thing but now gray and leafless; a fire-caldron sacred to Sirrion the Flowing Flame. These were faiths that had never done harm to any man, but had not striven against the darkness either. He had never understood them, how they could stand apart from both good and evil.
Beldinas saw him staring at the tree, and bowed his head. “They would not join us in our struggle,” he said. “Some even helped the evil ones, giving them shelter from the Hammer.”
“I remember” Cathan murmured. The purges of the gray faiths had been just beginning during his last days in the knighthood. “Was it necessary to wipe them out?”
“Scafo casi scafam boniat.” Beldinas’s voice was solemn. “A gray shadow remains a shadow, my friend.”
Cathan bowed his head. He thought of the priests, the faithful, who had gone to death or slavery because of that proverb. He and Ebonbane had sent their share howling to the Abyss-but their foes had been evil, Chemoshans and Sargonnites and Hidduki. The gray ones, the Sirriites and Shinareana and Chislev-kin… had they deserved the same fate? He thought of Idar and his family, who had suffered because they placed their faith in Zivilyn, and he remembered what Tancred had told him in the tunnels, what he must see here.
“Fan-ka-tso,” he whispered.
Beldinas looked at him sharply. “What did you say?” Cathan turned to gaze at him. “Fan-ka-tso. I want to see it.”
“Where did you hear of that?”
“Some of Tithian’s knights were talking about it,” Cathan replied evasively. “They wouldn’t tell me what it was-only that it was here.”
He had never lied to the Kingpriest before. As the eyes within the silver glow stared at him, he was sure the deceit showed in his face. He sweated, his heartbeat grew quick. Beldinas knew, had to see through him … then, against his breastbone, he felt the malachite amulet tremble, just slightly. It must have masked his thoughts, as Tancred had promised, for the Lightbringer bowed his head with a sigh.
“Very well,” he said. “I will show you. Better that you learn the truth, rather than hearing nothing but rumor and lies. Follow me.”
He turned and strode past the idols, toward a white door studded with sunstones. Cathan gave the heathen idols one last look, shuddered, and hurried after, following the Kingpriest’s light.
The statue had been large, towering more than twice the height of a man. It was hewn of golden jade, a stone found only in the jungles of Falthana, which the natives of that province claimed was made from the frozen tears of the last gold dragons. Cathan had never seen so much of the stuff, which glistened as if warmed from within. It was sculpted into a mannish form, though it differed from a human’s in several ways. For one thing, it had six arms, two of which held a chisel-tipped sword and a beaked war axe; three of the others had broken, and the weapons that remained were only hilts and stubs; the last was gone at the elbow. It was covered with scales: Armor or flesh, it was hard to tell. But the strangest thing of all was its head.
Fan-ka-tso had three faces, arranged about its head, each sharing one eye with the next. They all had different expressions: one laughing, one pinched with sorrow, one contorted with rage. Their eyes were chips of some deep blue stone Cathan didn’t recognize. Their teeth were sharp, almost tusks, and their tongues were pointed like spears.