The Hidden Coronet

8

Deep in the Underworld, Flain met many evils. He knew pain and shame and bitter loss. As he walked, all their shadows clustered at his heels.

Book of the Seven Moons

“I’M THE STRANGER,” Solon said quietly. “So I feel I should speak first.”

They sat around the table in the great wooden room. From the garden the sun streamed in, lighting the tall images of Flain and Soren and Theriss in the colored glass of the windows. One shimmer lit Solon’s hands and bony wrists, showing clearly the long, twisted scars.

“The choice is yours,” Tallis said to him kindly. “No one expects it of you.” Her shape had changed. Now she was a young woman, her long red hair plaited. He smiled at her.

“Yes, but I expect it. It will be a relief, in any case, to be able to speak freely after so long.” Looking around at their faces, he breathed out and said, “My friends, my full name is Solon Karner. I have been a Relic Master of the Order for over thirty years now. My master was Caradan Sheer of Tasceron. When I was very young, even before the Emperor fell, I studied with her at the Shrine of the Shells at Ranor.”

“The shrine!” Galen looked impressed. “Were you there when it was burned?”

Solon’s face went bleak. “I was seventeen.” He paused, fingering a bruise on his face. “I remember the columns of the Watch riding up the hill to us, the running, the panic, books being snatched up, relics hidden. But there were so many relics there, how could we save them all? The beautiful gifts the Makers had left—precious things, never to be made again in all the ages of the world! I saw the Watch sear them with torches, rip down statues and smash them. None of us could believe they were doing this. I saw keepers fixed by crossbow bolts to the walls of their own shrine, heard their screams, saw the Makers’ faces and hands hacked out and trampled. I saw such things there, my friends, that I prayed to God all my life for the power to forget them.”

They were silent. Carys flicked a glance at Raffi, but he was looking desolately down at the table, away from her. Galen’s face was set. In the next room, very faintly, they could hear Felnia chattering to Marco.

Solon took a deep breath. “It is so hard to forgive, Galen. Caradan was killed there. I had already made the Deep Journey, and I escaped. Sometimes that too is hard to forgive.”

“The Makers needed you,” Galen said gruffly.

“They did, my son.” He gazed over at the bright glass image of Flain, standing with his hands out in the Field of Gold. “And yet I have sometimes wondered why they let me live. I am not greatly learned, not . . .” He smiled and shook his head. “Well. Enough of that. For years I worked alone, among the people. I gathered relics, prayed the Litany, fought the evils of Kest. I made copies of all the books I could remember, beautiful copies too, brilliantly colored, when I could beg the paper or make my own.”

“What did you do with them?” the Sekoi asked curiously.

“The books? Gave them away, my friend. Many people hunger for knowledge of the Makers, now that the Watch have forbidden it. So much has been lost, so much destroyed.”

The Sekoi nodded, but Carys noticed its baffled glance and almost grinned. “Where did you live?” she asked.

Solon looked at her. “In many places. It wasn’t safe to stay anywhere long. Villages up in the Mara Kush, mostly, where people would hide me. I taught the children, held the feasts, worked with the trees and the land where such energies could still be reached. But relics were few and the Watch stronger every year. Also, Kest’s work is growing. The Unfinished Lands spread; there are many famines and diseases. I helped at outbreaks of these. Once or twice, I was given the privilege of Healing.”

Tallis looked at him closely. “That’s a high gift, keeper. You say you made the Deep Journey. May I ask what branch of learning you reached?”

Solon shrugged. He seemed a little reluctant. After a moment he said, “The twelfth.”

It obviously meant something. Raffi looked awestruck and Galen sat back, gazing at the keeper with dark eyes. “That was a great achievement,” he said, “for a man who is no scholar.”

“My son, the Makers give. The achievement is theirs.” Solon glanced sadly down at his scarred hands. “It was because of the Healing that I met Mardoc.”

Carys jumped. Galen sat upright in excitement, his face edged with the reflected colors. “Mardoc the Eighth? The last Archkeeper!”

“The same.”

“Where?”

“In a village not far from Tasceron, two days after the fall of the city.”

They waited. He seemed unwilling to go on, as if the memory were a devastating one.

“Mardoc was hurt?” Tallis asked gently. “It is said he was carried from the city, after the great explosion.”

“Yes. He was hurt. I thought that was why they sent for me.” Rubbing his face with the edge of his hand he tried to keep his voice even. “It was a terrible night, there was deep snow. The Archkeeper lay in a ruined barn, out on the hills, in great agony. Only two scholars were with him. A villager fetched me, then fled. The Watch were everywhere, searching the farms, the villages, closing all the roads. The smoke of the Wounded City could be seen for miles; the terrible stench, the broken lines of power.” He smiled wanly. “Mardoc knew the Watch would find him within the hour. One leg was shattered; he could go no farther. He ordered me to leave him and to take the two boys with me. He made me swear by the Book that I would take them and not look back.”

He put his scarred fingers together, folding them tight. When he went on his voice was hoarse. “We prayed together. I offered him something for the pain, but he refused it. He wanted his mind clear. We both knew that he would be tortured without mercy.”

“Then you should have killed him,” Carys said.

Solon looked up at her in horror.

“Did he explain,” the Sekoi put in hurriedly, “about what had happened in the city? About what had caused the great Darkness?”

“He said things. Meaningless phrases. Something about the fires, and Kest. He mentioned the Coronet of Flain.”

“What?”

Galen and Tallis said it together, and their eyes met in surprise.

Solon was too absorbed in his memories to notice. “He was such a small man, gray and shrunken and old. But he had no fear, Galen, not even then. And he said to me—he put his hand on my shoulder and sent the boys outside and whispered to me—that the Order must go on, even if there was only one keeper left alive.”

He looked up, eyes wet. “I have never told this to anyone, my friends. But this is Sarres, and now seems the time to make it known. Before I left him, Mardoc made me the next Archkeeper. He gave me the ring and prayed the words of Succession hastily over me while I kneeled in the muck, unworthy as I was. The Watch say the last Archkeeper is dead, but only I have known, all these years, that they are wrong. Because I am here. Solon the First.”

There was utter silence.

Then Galen stood up. He went around the table; Solon rose to meet him. For a second they were still, until Galen kneeled, and Solon, hesitating, put his hands around the keeper’s lifted hands, and said the words of Blessing; strange, meaningless sounds to Carys, but to Raffi syllables of power.

And around the linked hands they saw it form, the Ring of the Archkeeper, one of the Order’s most ancient relics, long thought lost. It was blue, fine as steel, and it rippled and ran as if it were a line of raw energy around the two men’s wrists and fingers; even as they stared at it Solon’s skin absorbed it again and it was gone, as if it had never been.

The Sekoi stood reverently.

Tallis had caught Raffi’s hand and they kneeled too, and Carys stood up awkwardly, because she didn’t know what else to do. She had rarely seen Galen so moved; for a long time he kept his head bowed as if unable to speak, and when he did his voice was raw with emotion.

“You should have told me.” He looked up, his gaunt face keen with joy. “On the way here. You should have told me.”

“I know.” Solon lowered his hands. “Sit down, my friends. Please. Raffi, Tallis, please.”

He seemed embarrassed. And yet the authority he claimed showed through; he was calm and could even smile now. “I can’t say how relieved I am to have told someone. Such a secret is a great weight. But it must go no further, and must make no difference here. I was only chosen because there was no one else.”

“You know the Makers act for a reason.” Galen stood slowly, easing his stiff leg. “You are the rightful leader of the Order.”

“Ah, but who knows how many are left?”

“How did you stay free?” Raffi blurted out. “How did you escape the Watch?” He was fascinated, Carys knew. His eyes shone as if he were hearing an old story come to life; she could feel the excitement in him.

Solon shook his head. “We left Mardoc. I’ll never forget looking back from the hills and seeing the black figures of the Watchguard that surrounded that place. Nor how they dragged him out . . .” He glanced again at Flain’s window, as if for help. “But he had outwitted them even at the end, and though he went to the torture, they say the Watch has never found the House of Trees. One old man defied them. I pray his sufferings were short.”

The House of Trees. Carys wondered what he’d say when he knew they’d been there. That she’d been there.

In the stillness the fire crackled. A leaf-scutter rummaged in the beech tree outside the window. Felnia put her head around the door. “Marco’s thirsty. Can I get him some ale?”

Tallis turned quickly. “Yes. Open a new flask. And Felnia!”

The little girl came back. “What?”

“Stop listening at the door.”

Carys grinned. Felnia stuck her tongue out and vanished.

Solon looked nervous. “Will she tell Marco?”

“No. She’s . . . been trained to keep secrets.”

He nodded absently. “I must finish my story. I’ll be brief. For years after Mardoc’s death I eluded capture somehow. One of my scholars died—my dear Jeros, shot by a Watchpatrol as we fled through a town at night. We had to leave his body lying there in the dirt, without even a blessing. The other . . . he lost faith. He renounced the Makers. That was an even more bitter blow.” He cleared his throat. “Finally, last year, I was caught, digging a relic up from some farmland. The farmer had his house burned and went to the mines. I was . . . interrogated.”

He sat very still. Carys bit her lip and looked at Galen, who stood up and stalked to the window, looking out.

“Where did they take you?” she asked.

“A Watchtower.”

“Number?”

“I’m not sure. Forty-five? At Feas Hill. A black, bitter place. I had no idea there were such places.”

“What was the castellan’s name?

“Timon. I think it was Timon.”

Galen half turned and glared at her. She sat back.

“I don’t know how long it lasted.” Solon’s long fingers rubbed the scars on his wrists; Carys knew he would have more, all over his body. “A stinking cell, endless beatings, torments. They have worms of Kest that devour flesh, burrow into the skin . . .”

His voice broke.

Tallis reached out and took his hand, and he smiled at her. After a moment he struggled on.

“All the brutality you have heard of the Watch, my children, all of it is true. I heard men tortured in other cells around me, screaming to die. And I was no hero. They broke me down soon enough. I would have told them anything they asked, because after a while there is only pain. The agony in your body fills all the world. I forgot the Order, but the Makers did not forget me. In one corner of my cell I scratched an image of Soren. No one else would have recognized it. In all the delirium and fear and darkness I sometimes thought she was there, speaking to me . . .”

Galen swung around. “And the Ring?”

“They never found that. As you know it cannot be seen or felt unless I wish it. I managed never to wish it.”

“You were lucky,” Carys said bluntly.

“I was. I knew so little that was of any use to them. I had seen no other keepers for years, knew no safe houses, no passwords, no networks of hiding places. In the end, I suppose they just grew tired of me. The Watch always have more prisoners to ill-treat. I was left alone for weeks. Then, one day, we were chained up and brought to Telman, to the Frost Fair, eleven of us. One died on the way. Marco and I were shackled together on the journey, the iron cutting into our legs. We became friends—unlikely friends, I admit, but then, we both fully expected to die, and I wanted to convert him. I thought I had accepted death. Until you came running up to me, Raffi, and the ice shattered. I still do not understand how that was done. But I thank Flain for his mercy.” He smiled gently at Tallis, drawing his fingers back. “And you, Guardian, for your peaceful island.”

She nodded, but from the window Galen said bleakly, “How much do you know about this Marco?” He turned, and they saw his face was dark. “Why were they holding him?”

“Ah.” Solon looked awkward. His fingers stroked his neck as if he felt for awen-beads that had been long lost. “Yes. Marco. He’s a good man, Galen. He tried to get free one night and they beat him with chains for it. He may not think quite like us, but . . .”

Galen came closer. He looked grim. “Archkeeper. What had he done?”

The older man smiled unhappily. “You won’t like it.”

“I can see that. Tell me.”

Solon scratched his cheek. Then he said, “It appears Marco went back on a business deal with them. He cheated them. I’m afraid he is—was—a dealer, Galen. He sold relics to the Watch.”