Chapter 20 #3
On the ground, and lining both sides of the path on which we trod, reaching as far back as the feet of the steps to the pipe organ, washing up in shoals that nudged the ankles and knees of the Saints, were cups.
Tall and thin, squat and wide, stemmed, fluted, belled, cabochon, carven, enameled, bejeweled or plain as a farmer’s water ladle, they lay waiting.
Upon his platform, the Majester raised a cabochon cup and then slotted it into the hand of his statue. It fit with a click. And suddenly the poem made sense.
“Choose a vessel,” it had said. Easy enough.
Is it, though?
“Be careful,” it had said. Not as easy.
Caution laughs at you, little treat. She whispers in my ear and we giggle together.
I was being mocked by my own dog.
“Who’s a good boy, then?” I whispered grimly.
Brindle’s tail thumped against my leg.
Still not me.
“But which one is the cup?” the Inquisitor asked, aghast. Not too bright, our Inquisitor.
In the distance, Hefertus sat down at the instrument. I hadn’t even noticed the stone lace bench that was fitted beneath the six rows of keys. They seemed like too many for one man to play.
Unless that man had six arms. I spy with my diabolical eye someone with six arms.
I wasn’t in the mood to play games.
I’m always in the mood, but my toys never last long. It’s such a shame. Maybe when you are weak, you’ll let me in and I’ll play with you, little morsel. Maybe you’d like to be a Saint after all.
“The cups fit in the hands,” Sir Owalan called from where he stood beneath a towering version of himself, a cup in one hand hovering over the hand of his statue. “Watch.”
He set the cup onto the palm of his doppelganger. Even from afar I could hear the snick when he twisted it and it seated, and then — in a way that defied sense — his statue seemed to glow. It was faint, so faint it could be my imagination, but I didn’t think so.
“I think it will show us which one is the cup,” he said, smiling. “But it needs all of us.”
The High Saint had placed his cup, too, though now he sat at the feet of his statue, bent double in prayer.
That was three. There were six more that could be placed. The Engineers’ statues were depicted together, and their hands were joined with a place for two cups there.
“We ought to consider this with care,” I said at the same moment that the Inquisitor called out.
“How did you choose out of so many?”
Good luck reining them in, my girl. They’re already caught. Flies drawn to blood. They can’t be called back now.
But I already could see that the High Saint and the Majester had chosen cups like the one Adalbrand had shown me, short and squat with cabochon gems. They were not taking any risks.
“Choose wisely. We might not get another chance!” the Penitent called down. “We all need to make our guess and then see what happens.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t guess for us, my dear boy,” Sir Coriand called up, but there was an edge to his words.
“The icon only accepts the cup from your own hand,” the High Saint said, finally straightening from his prayers. His face was lit with holy ecstasy. “This is how we know this is from the God. It is tuned to each of us as only a creator could tune it.”
I like the proud most of all. They are always certain they cannot fall into my snare and then, trapped, they taste the saltiest.
“The instructions did indicate to be careful and clear,” Sir Sorken said in that way of his that carried across the huge booming room. “I think it best to heed them, hmmm?”
“There were instructions?” the Majester asked, at the same time that a whooshing sound went through the room.
From beside me, Sir Coriand sighed far more loudly than required.
The game is now run by the moths, the demon said from inside my head. How long will it take before all singe their wings in the flame? I hope it’s soon. I’ll drink their despair. I’ll bathe in their loathing and I’ll laugh when your heart breaks for their foolishness.
“Sit,” I said firmly. “Stay.”
The dog Brindle chose to obey.
“How will you choose?” the Inquisitor called to Hefertus across the wide gallery, his forehead wrinkling in cautious concern.
Hefertus called back as he shifted, hands hovering over two keyboards. “Easy. I’ll choose the most lovely.”
“But …” The Inquisitor looked at the rest of us, and this was the most human I’d seen him. His lips moved a few times before he finally pushed the words out. “But that is farcical. Surely, you will use a better method. Or you’ll ask the God to make your hand choose the correct one.”
“I like the pretty one,” Hefertus called, and then his hands fell to the keys. From the mouths of the Saints came a ghastly moan that was half music and half agony, and with a creaking snap, something fell behind us.
I spun. Behind us, on either side of the door from the hallway, were a pair of winged figures with swords in their hands.
The sound we heard was the sound of their lifted sword arms descending.
They hit the floor so hard that the room rocked and a fine sparkle of dust spat upward.
Their swords, which had dangled precariously over the doorway before, were jammed across it now, and I did not think any of us could wriggle through the gaps left behind excepting perhaps Brindle.
Hefertus, unconcerned, played on. And now the mouths played hollow, breathy notes, with a yearning melancholy that wrung my heart.
He perched before the great instrument, hands spidered out and shoulders rolling with every stanza he played.
The light from above seemed to shiver as if the whole room breathed in the music and awoke to it.
And whether it was the air forced through the ancient pipes and rippling out the mouths of the Saint statues, or whether it was some great power raining down blessing or curse upon us, dust motes spun into the air and twinkled over everything like the birth of stars.
“I think we should be looking for the real cup,” the Inquisitor said, breaking the spell.
You could bargain with me and I’d tell you which is the true cup.
But that was a trick. None of these cups was the real one. Obviously.
Or all of them are.
It amounted to the same thing.
Or you put your cups on there and you have to drink from them and you all burn up like Sir Whatever-His-Name-That-Will-Not-Be-Remembered, and won’t that be fun.
My heart was in my throat, choking me, strangling me.
It wasn’t the challenge. What was picking a cup?
It wasn’t being locked in, though I was.
It was realizing my hand was forced, that I had no option but to play out this pantomime.
That I was just a piece on a board played by hands not mine.
Every shred of me fought against that, clawing up my throat and biting through my skin.
I could not accept it.
I was mistress of my own destiny and I always had been, with nothing but the road before me and the horizon behind, hands empty, heart full. The idea that I could be shuffled and prodded into a cattle chute for slaughter made my blood feel too thick and the world around me swim.
Sometimes there are no choices.
But there had to be. There had to be a choice.
The Engineers had moved farther into the room and the Inquisitor bounded after them, searching side to side like a hunting dog ferreting out the scent of the cup.
I was spinning, my mind frantic, heart in my throat.
Something gripped my arm suddenly and I was wrenched into the burning cinnamon gaze of Adalbrand.
His face was hard, strength radiating from the bones of it, and I remembered, as I sometimes did around him, that he had a decade of experience that I did not have.
And it showed now in his measured look. He also had the hard strength of a man given to daily training since childhood.
Though I was strong and capable, too, I could feel his greater strength in how he held me.
“Fly to your rock, little bird,” he whispered to me, so quietly no one else would hear.
I clung to the feeling of his hand on my arm. I clung to how strong and real it was.
“How,” I gasped.
“Find your faith. Build your nest high in the rock and fly.”
His voice was barely louder than his breath. He made a self-deprecating moue with his mouth before leaning in closer.
“It’s what I tell myself. It’s what I think when the world seems to overwhelm me.”
He was giving me a talisman then, something of his held up against the darkness.
He had grabbed my non-sword-arm. He held it still, my sword hovering between us like a wall that could not hold in the tide. And all my wanting for warmth and closeness flared up hot and tight, washing over me even as his sad eyes burned.
The music swelled, strange and strangling, like the Saints were being choked to death as they gasped out Hefertus’s tortured song.
“We have no choice now, Lady Paladin,” Adalbrand said gently, and I realized that the way he was standing blocked me from the view of the others, kept this weakness to just the two of us.
My heart swelled with the kindness of that.
“We are in this. You and me both. We dance to the tune or we die under the rock.”
“Both?” I asked.
“Both.” His tone was very certain and his eyes burned with something.
Devotion. They burn with devotion. I have seen it before. But toward you or toward the God?
“Fly up to the rock, little bird. Let the God protect your heart. And let me guard the rest.”
He looked sharply to the side for a moment, as if checking again that we would not be heard, and then leaned in closer, making a kind of a shelter over me out of all that muscle and knightly strength. I could feel the warmth of his flesh radiating out to me.
“I feel it, too,” he confessed. “Something is not right and we are trapped, but what else can we do?”
“We can always fight,” I snapped, but I was snapping at myself, at my own limitations.
“We can die,” he said gently. “Or we can play our part in this.”
“I can’t seem to make myself submit to a force I cannot see.” I couldn’t quite keep the wobble out of my voice.
He shook his head. “You’re courage and fire. I’ve watched you.”
“In physical things. But I cannot grasp faith and I do not like uncertainty. How can I be brave when there is no path under my feet?”
He swallowed, and for a heartbeat, the aching look he gave me was so full of untold words, so full of bridled passion, that it shot something hot and wanting through me.
“If you have no faith then let me be your faith for now. Walk on me as your path. I promised myself to you until this quest is completed. Take my strength now as your own.”
This felt like more than what he’d promised before.
This is indeed more. He offers not just chivalry, not just alliance. I think, perhaps, my girl, that he offers you his heart.
I didn’t dare believe that.
“And what would that make me, if I fought with borrowed strength?” I asked wryly.
“A holy warrior,” Adalbrand said softly. “Like me. Like all of us, empty on our own, filled only by the light of the God.”
Adalbrand’s hand gripped my arm tighter and something in me melted.
“I’ll borrow your faith, Sir Paladin.”
He nodded and his smile grew until it was almost painful.
“So we choose cups and we place them,” I said grimly. “And we let whatever trap this is spring on us.”
“Trust I will stand with you in arms, whatever grief on us descends. Have I not stood for you so far?”
“I don’t need to be coddled,” I said. One last attempt at dignity.
“I’m not coddling you.” His voice was rough and pleading. “Is it impossible to believe that I want to defend you? That while I know I cannot have you, I want you all the same?”
I swallowed. That was … exactly how I felt and it was forbidden. He could not have it and I could not take it.
“Let me give you what I can in place of all that I cannot.”
I nodded hesitantly, but at his sad smile, I drew myself upward and stepped slightly to the side, sliding from his grip.
He let me go, but I felt how his body turned to angle toward me as I moved past, how he inhaled sharply when I was close as if he wished to memorize the scent of me, how he trailed after me as I searched through the cups like a swan trails after its mate.
What had I done to this man?
What have you done, you minx?
What had I done to myself?
You’re broken. A paladin with no faith. A woman who will not take a man held out to her on a golden platter. A holy one who will not end the life of a dog to destroy a demon. Broken souls are my favorite kind.
Just for that, I chose a broken cup. And when I lifted it, Adalbrand lifted an eyebrow, but he said nothing to me, merely snapping up a black, narrow tumbler of his own.
The piece he chose was carved all over with owls and ravens.
Mine was unadorned except for a fat scar that ran the length of it.
It would not hold water well with such a crack. I did not care.
A throat cleared and I looked up to see that the others were already in their places. Even Hefertus. The music had stopped sometime during our whispered conference and I had not noticed.
“If you’re about done defying both your aspects,” Sir Sorken said grimly, “I think you’ll find your places on the ends. And then we shall see which of us is right and which of us is dead, hmm?”