Then he did look. “Not him. And the Crow has work still to do here.” For a moment the hardness of his eyes softened. “Don’t tempt me, Carys,” he whispered.
Shoving her aside he said to Solon, “Go quickly.”
The Archkeeper wiped his face. He took a small bronze ring off his finger and dropped it into Galen’s hand. “Choose a better Archkeeper,” he whispered, and turned and climbed the stairs as if each one was an effort of will. When he reached the top, the door slid open.
And for a second they glimpsed another world; a pale sky, green fields, a warm breeze that lifted Solon’s hair as he walked fearfully into it, fluttering his coat in a scent of alien leaves, lighting his face so that in the instant before he vanished he seemed young, laughed, held his hands out to someone, and Galen had taken two steps after him before the door closed and the light was gone and the staircase dissolved into moon-shimmer.
It was very quiet in the arena. The snow had stopped. In the black sky the moons hung, each in its appointed place. “I wish Marco could have seen that,” Carys muttered.
She bent and picked up a leaf that lay there and handed it to Galen. It was long and narrow, some sort of willow, Raffi thought. And alien.
“It seems to me,” the Sekoi purred, looking up at Agramon, “that I moved her.”
“It was me.” Carys threw the bow down.
“Me,” Raffi said.
“All of us.” The Sekoi stared at the Coronet. “How can I tell you how it felt? Like the joining of many stories, all at once.” It looked up, yellow eyes sharp. “The Karamax are coming down.”
“Will they let us go?” Carys asked.
It shrugged, laying the Coronet reverently between Kest’s hands. “It may be they will. Things have changed now.” Suddenly remembering, it took off its money belt and emptied a stream of coins onto the heap. They tinkled and rolled. “Though I fear all this must be moved to a more secret place.” It looked at Carys sidelong. “I have to say, Carys, that I have been wrong. I am sorry.”
She nodded. “So you should be. Mind you, at one point I suspected you.” She grinned at Raffi, who was pale and still. The Sekoi turned. “And you, Galen, don’t let the darkness fill your soul. Despite the deaths, we have achieved our aim.”
The Relic Master came forward. He put both hands down and gripped Kest’s coffin, and Raffi felt a sudden sickening jolt of terror.
“Galen!” he muttered.
The keeper’s face was harsh and set. “I swear,” he said, “by Kest and Flain and all the Makers. By all the Moons. By all the Books of the Order . . .”
“Galen, don’t!”
“. . . By all that I’ve ever believed—I swear the Crow will hunt the Margrave down into the deepest pit of hell for this.”
His fists clenched. “And when I find him there, I’ll kill him. Because of what he did to Solon. And for Marco.”
He turned, his hair glossy as a bird’s wing. “I swear it, Raffi. I will never forgive this.”
Raffi felt as if all his nightmares were drowning him. He looked at Carys.
She shrugged and picked up her bow.
“Be careful, Galen,” she said quietly. “I somehow think that may be just what he wants.”
The story concludes in
RELIC MASTER
Book 4: THE MARGRAVE
I think you should confide this fear to your master, the tree said gently.
Raffi gave a sour laugh. “No point.”
He is, I admit, difficult to approach. A small sparkbird, brilliantly red, fluttered among the branches; the tree rustled thoughtfully over Raffi’s head. If he was one of my kind, he would be holly. Or dark firethorn that grows in the chasm of Zeail. Such a one is Galen.
Raffi nodded. He lay on his back in the dappled green light, eyes closed against the sun. The tree was a birch; young, and very curious.
Tell me where it takes you, this Deep Journey.
“It’s a vision.” Raffi sat up and gazed out hopelessly into the depths of the warm spring woodland. “It happens in your mind. The Litany says there are different stages—the Cosmic Tree, the Plain of Hunger.”
Hunger is a sensation?
“Emptiness. No food.”
Indeed. The tree sounded fascinated. Our roots are always storing. Rootless creatures, it seems to me, are most vulnerable. The Makers were wise, but sometimes we feel you were something of a failed experiment.
“And then,” Raffi said, half to himself, “comes something called the Barrier of Pain.”
The tree was silent. Finally it whispered, You fear that.
He nodded. “And the last thing even more. To be a keeper every scholar must pass through utter darkness into something the books won’t even describe. They call it the Crucible of Fire.”
Fire! The birch shuddered down to its very roots, every leaf quivering. The sparkbird flew out with a cheep of alarm. Fire is the worst of enemies! The Watch burned the forest of Harenak, every leaf, every sapling. Who could fail to mourn so many deaths?
“Raffi!”
Galen had woken in a black temper. He came out of the shelter, still looking tired, and snapped, “Any news?”
“Nothing.”
“As soon as there is, let me know.” The keeper turned, tugging his black hair loose from the knot of string. “And stop wasting your time. Read! Flain knows you need to.”
Raffi picked the book up without glancing at it. “He’s a nightmare,” he muttered, “since Marco died.”
The tree was silent.
Galen limped between the birches to the stream. He waded in, scooping the cold water up to drink, splashing it over his face. For weeks he had been working on the sense-lines, driving himself nonstop. Already they had a chain of lines between a few known keepers and through re-awakened channels of tree-minds and earth-filaments that reached to Tasceron itself; in fact last night, after days of effort, Galen had spoken with Shean, the keeper of the Pyramid in the Wounded City. It had been a triumph. But it had worn him out.
Looking down on him, Raffi thought of the night of Marco’s death, of Galen’s terrible oath, that he would seek out the Margrave. That he would kill the Margrave.
“That’s why he’s so desperate to set the sense-grid up. And to get me through the Journey. He thinks he won’t come back alive.”
Now, the tree said gently, you are really afraid.
Raffi jumped up, brushing pollen from his clothes. Already it was back, that sickening terror he could never lose for long. He felt the tree’s consciousness spiraling into him, intrigued.
Do you really believe, it whispered, curious, that this Margrave is hunting especially for you?
“I can’t talk anymore.” Raffi turned abruptly, blocking its voice out. Sickness was already surging in him, a choking stress, blurring the tree-words to a crackle of leaves. He started to stumble through to the stream, then swung around for the book, feeling the sweat on his back chill as he bent, dizziness making his vision spin. He gasped and leaned on the tree.
Raffi, it said urgently, its voice bursting through his panic. Someone comes!
Bewildered, he felt for the sense-lines. They were intact.
“Galen!” His voice was a whisper, a croak, but the keeper was already racing up; a firm hand grabbed him. “The Watch?”
“Can’t be. Can’t feel anything.” Weak, he crouched on the tree roots. Galen spun around, facing the footsteps.
It was the Sekoi.