Chapter 317: I Have Seen Her

They went down through the library and out into the cloister, where the rain fell straight and silver into the courtyard and ran off the roof tiles in thin bright threads. Tavish walked fast, and didn’t talk. It wasn’t like him. Usually the young man chattered all the way across the grounds, about a manuscript he’d found or a quarrel in the refectory or the price of lamp oil.

Tonight he held the damp bundle against his chest and stared at his feet.

"You’re quiet," said Kael.

"Am I?"

"You are never quiet."

"I’m tired, Master."

"You’re afraid."

Tavish said nothing. His step faltered, just slightly, and then went on.

They crossed the courtyard and climbed the long stair to the Founders’ Gallery, a high vaulted corridor lined with portraits that ran from the temple’s first stones to the present day. Kael had walked it every evening for thirty years. He knew each face the way one knows the cracks in a ceiling. A stern woman with a plait. A bearded scholar holding a globe. A row of old men in white, each with a black sash, each with his name in gold on a small brass plate.

Tonight, for no reason he could name, his eyes went to the very first.

It was the oldest painting in the gallery. The paint had darkened to the color of tea. It showed a tall figure in white standing before a tower, with a lamp in one hand and a long silver braid falling over his shoulder. His face was narrow, and smooth, and unsmiling. His eyes, even under four centuries of varnish, were a very pale, very clear blue.

Ormund, first Warden of the Lantern.

Kael had passed it ten thousand times.

He stopped.

"Master?" said Tavish.

"It’s nothing." He frowned at the portrait. "It’s only that I never noticed before. The resemblance. I suppose the Order passes the name down."

"I suppose so."

"It’s remarkable, though. The same eyes."

Tavish didn’t answer.

Kael looked at him. The young man’s face had gone the color of candle wax. He was gazing very deliberately at the far end of the corridor, with a stillness that was almost comical.

"Tavish," said Kael slowly.

"We should hurry, Master. He doesn’t like to wait."

"Tavish. Is there something I ought to know?"

"No, Master."

"You’d tell me."

"Of course." The young man’s voice was barely audible. "Of course I would."

He walked on.

Kael stood a moment longer before the painting, with the rain loud on the roof above. Then he turned, and followed, and put the thought away with the others. He’d had a great many of those, lately. He had begun to keep them in a place at the back of his mind where he didn’t have to look.

***

The Lantern Room was at the top of the north tower.

It was a round chamber of white stone, with no windows and a domed ceiling painted with a map of the stars. Seven lamps hung from the dome on long silver chains. In the center of the floor stood a low stone table, and on the table, shallow and wide and black as a pool at midnight, sat a scrying bowl.

Six men stood around it.

They were robed in grey, like Tavish, with their hoods thrown back. Kael knew them all. He had known them for twenty years. Two had taught him in his student days. One had stood godfather to a child that died. None of them looked at him as he came in. They stood very still, with their heads bowed over the dark water, and the cold light from the bowl lit their faces from below.

The seventh man stood at the head of the table.

He was tall, taller than anyone else in the room, and thin as a staff. He wore white, with a black sash across his chest, and his hair, long and fine and silver, fell straight to his waist. His face was narrow and smooth. It might have been forty. It might have been four hundred. His eyes were a very pale, very clear blue, like glass with the sky behind it.

High Priest Ormund.

"Kael," he said. "Thank you for coming."

His voice was warm. It was always warm. It was the voice of a man who loved you and wanted what was best for you, and had never once, in all the years Kael had known him, been less than perfectly kind.

"Of course, Your Grace."

"Come. Stand here, by me." Ormund laid a hand on his shoulder, light and dry. "We have news."

The bowl was not empty.

As Kael came to the table, a face swam up out of the black water. It wavered and cleared, a handsome, silvered face with a pleasant smile and pale grey eyes, and Kael had to look twice before he recognized it.

Carrick Greythorne.

He was sitting in a room Kael didn’t know, a plain bedchamber with a fire in the grate and a half-drunk glass of wine at his elbow. He looked tired. But his eyes were bright, and the smile on his face was the smile of a man who has played a very good hand.

"Your Grace," said Carrick, and inclined his head. "Masters. I trust I find you well."

"Well enough," said Ormund. "You have news."

"I have."

"Then tell us. Kael has joined us."

Carrick’s gaze shifted. It slid across the bowl and settled on Kael with a flicker of polite interest, and Kael felt, as he always did under that look, a faint cold prickle between the shoulder blades. It was like being weighed by a merchant.

"Master Kael," said Carrick. "A pleasure. I have just come from the council hall."

"And?"

"And I have seen her."

The room went still.

Kael felt it before he understood it. It started in his chest, a slow, strange lurch, as if the floor had tilted under him. His hand, resting on the edge of the table, tightened until the knuckles went white.

"Tell it plainly," said Ormund, gently.