Night guild 2, p.24
Night Guild 2, page 24
“He pays well,” she said, “and that’s the only reason I keep putting up with him!”
Just as they were finalizing the deal, the door opened and a familiar figure stepped in; Brother Cadfael, Keeper of the temple on the hill. Ronan and his friends slipped quietly out the other door, feeling pretty certain that the Silent Brother had not seen them.
“Come on,” Ronan said. “Let’s not wait. We don’t know if that man sleeps in the temple or in town. If he does sleep at the temple, then we’ve got a good opportunity now while he drinks his fill at the inn.”
“All right,” Tanya said. “Let’s go. But once we get on the way, I want some answers from you lot. I’m beginning to wonder whether I did the right thing in linking up with you. I figured you were into something big, but I’m starting to think that it might be a bit too big for me.”
“On the contrary,” Ronan said. “From what you’ve told us, I think that you’re probably in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. The fates are with us. I was beginning to wonder whether we had gone off track, but your appearance has changed my view.”
They walked swiftly, avoiding the main road until they came to the edge of town. From here, there was a clear ten minutes of dark road between them and the temple.
Ronan was thinking about his vision, the clarity of it, the depth and power of his immersion in it. There was no telling where that magic had come from. What was the vision? What was that magic?
He had no doubt that what he had seen was the incident in which Tanya’s grandparents had died. How he had come to see it he didn’t know, but there it was. He had seen it, or been shown it, and minutes later the significance of it had been revealed. She was, like them, a person who’s life had been shaped by the loss of family at the hands of the brotherhood.
“Your grandparents were murdered by the Silent Brotherhood of Ghennet,” Ronan said.
“What of it?”
“I lost my father to them. Diana lost her father and brother. Eric lost his entire village, indeed, his entire clan. That’s why we’re here, Tanya. We’re on our way to Ghennet, to the Silent Brothers, to find out what they have to do with the dragon eggs, and to stop them in the terrible magic they are doing. We are going to hunt them down, Tanya, and take them out.”
“You really are all from the Night Guild, then?” she said, her eyes wide, the whites gleaming in the dimness of the night.
Ronan looked from Eric to Diana, and there was no doubt in either of their eyes. “We are,” he confirmed solemnly. “And we are on a mission from the Night God himself to root out the plague that the Silent Brotherhood has become.”
“Then I am with you,” she said with feeling. “My grandmother and grandfather made the town of Eila, and the worship of the old gods was a simple and kind thing, bringing people together and making no trouble for anyone. The Silent Brotherhood destroyed all that, and for what?”
“I believe that even then they were looking for the dragon egg that is in this region. There’s no time to go into it in too much detail just now, but the brotherhood have been hunting the dragon eggs and gathering them to themselves. The deaths of our loved ones were all connected with the brotherhood’s desire for dragon eggs.”
“They want to have dragons for themselves?”
“Quite the opposite. We believe that they are trying to do everything they can to stop the dragons from becoming active again. For some reason that we do not fully understand, they are prepared to go to extreme lengths to stop the existence of dragons in the world. We’re going to make sure that whatever their plan is, it does not come to fruition.”
“I wonder,” Eric said quietly after there had been a long pause in the conversation, “how the egg managed to survive in this temple undetected for so long.”
“My guess is that when they failed to find it in the raid that killed Tanya’s grandparents, they gave up the search,” Ronan said.
“And then,” Tanya added, “once time had passed, they brought it out and put it on display again, probably not even realizing that the brotherhood was interested. Maybe not even realizing fully what it was they had.”
“Here’s the temple,” Ronan said, looking up at where the black shadow of the building loomed up against the sky. “There’s a lot more for us to discuss on this, but for now let’s take the opportunity to investigate the temple without that priest hanging about.”
They approached the building, intending to enter when they suddenly saw a pale figure standing near the trees off behind the temple. It was the figure of a man, but it glowed with a pale, eerie light, as if he had moonlight trapped within himself that glowed out from him. He reminded Ronan of the way the shrines to the night god sometimes glowed from within during prayer.
All four of them had stopped and were looking at the strange glowing figure.
“What is it?” Tanya whispered in obvious fear.
“It’s a spirit,” Ronan said, “but a spirit such as I’ve never seen before.”
“There’s something different about it, that’s for sure,” Eric agreed.
Diana took a step toward it. “I sense a powerful will behind it,” she whispered. “A powerful presence such as I’ve never felt from a spirit before.”
“Speak to it, Ronan,” Eric urged. “You have the most experience speaking with spirits.”
Tanya was watching their dialogue with increasing amazement and deepening unease. “You talk to ghosts?” she hissed.
“We do,” Ronan said, “but let’s leave any more questions until later, all right?”
“Right…” she said, trailing off as Ronan stepped forward. But before he could speak to the ghostly shining figure it moved forward and addressed him.
“You will not find the dragon egg in the temple,” the ghost said. “They came. They came and took it. They…killed me, and they took it. And they replaced me with that person, that Silent Brother.” The ghost almost spat the words, and Ronan could hear vehement hatred in the spirit’s voice.
Now that he was closer to the ghost, he could see it in more detail. It was the figure of a man in his late twenties, dressed in a long, well-made robe with a leather belt at the waist. The whole spirit—robe, gown, hair, and all—glowed with the strange internal light, making the entire figure appear to glow like a sheet of paper held up to the moon.
The figure retained no color at all except in his eyes, which were a rich hazelnut brown, the color made visible in the moonless night by his own internal light.
“They killed you?” Ronan said. “The Silent Brotherhood?”
“Cadfael,” the ghost spat. “He killed me. Knifed me in the back and buried me in the woods below the temple. Then told the town I’d been replaced, by order of the Malachite High Vizier back in Viam, but that was a lie. He killed me silently, in the night, with no one looking.”
“And then someone else took the egg?” Ronan pressed.
“They came the next day, two other brothers from the Temple of the Silent in Ghennet. They came and told the village that they had orders I was to be replaced. And they told the village that I’d snuck off because I was ashamed. And then they took the egg, the dragon egg, that I’d been so careful to hide for all these years.”
“You?” Diana broke in. “You kept it hidden from them?”
For the first time, the ghost smiled. “Aye, I kept it from them. All these years, any time one of the brotherhood remembered the old story or heard a rumor and came to visit, I slipped it into the hiding place under the floor and told them no, no, no eggs here. That’s what I told them, and it worked, it worked for years.” He looked suddenly crestfallen. “Then it didn’t, because they came without warning and killed me before I could hide it.”
The ghost’s narrative came out in jerky bursts, like someone who talks while distracted with another task, but the meaning was clear enough.
“Why did you hide it?” Ronan asked. “Were you not one of them?”
“Never!” the ghost spat. “I was a priest of Mala, a good priest, wishing to do good for the town and give the folk something to unite around, as a good priest of Mala should. I was sent by the High Vizier at the request of the brotherhood, after they burned the old temple and discovered nothing that they wanted within it. They lost interest then, but they needed to pretend they’d done it to spread Mala’s worship, not just to get the dragon egg, so they sent out for me and I came along and did the best I could.”
“But you hid the egg from them,” Ronan urged again. “Why?”
“Because I know the evil use they want them for. That egg was partly activated. It had been bathed in sacred fire—the fire of a temple. That is one of the three stages that an egg must go through if it is to birth a real dragon. It must be bathed in its element, it must be bathed in blood spilt in battle, and it must be occupied by a willing spirit.”
“But what do they do with the dragons?” Ronan pressed.
The ghost leaned toward him and lowered his voice. “They use them for their wicked magic,” the ghost hissed. “They corrupt them, debase them, make them into mad, evil creatures that exist only to do the bidding of the brotherhood.”
“Wait a minute,” Ronan said. “Let me get this right…you’re saying the brotherhood are actually hatching dragon eggs for their own uses?”
“Yes, yes, did you not know? Dragons are immensely powerful magical beings. They hold the key to many things. They are the only creatures on earth that can travel out of this realm into…into the other realm.”
“The other realm?” Ronan asked. “What other realm?”
But the ghost shook his head suddenly. “No more questions,” he hissed. “They killed me, and they took it, but…but…I don’t know when they took it. It was not long ago, I think, but I’m trying so hard to keep my memories and my purpose together, and it’s so hard!”
Even as they watched, the ghost suddenly began to tatter away, like rotten paper in a stream. He grimaced, baring his teeth, and made a noise like a man grunting with painful effort. A moment later he took shape again.
“You must help,” he said with sudden emphasis. “They took the egg, but I cannot tell time anymore. All seems one, and the threads of the universe are constantly trying to pull away all the bits of my identity that I have left!”
“What about this?” Diana said. She had stepped forward and was holding out something pale and long on her palm. Ronan looked closer and saw in the ghost’s light that it was a piece of cut crystal.
“It feels…attractive…” the ghost said. He began to flow toward it, then suddenly pulled back with a convulsive wrench. “No!” The spirit cried. “What is it? I can’t go into it! It’s trying to draw me in, like the next realm is trying to draw me away! Are you trying to trick me?”
“No, no,” Diana said. “I promise you, I’m not trying to trick you. I think it will help. I think ghosts can go into these crystals and keep the parts of themselves that make them who they are, the parts of themselves that you have been trying so hard to keep together. These crystals can store ghosts, give them a secure place to be where the next realm can’t draw them anymore.”
The ghost looked at Ronan. “Is this true?” he said.
“I’ve seen it happen,” Ronan said. He reached into his pouch and drew out the crystal that held the spirit that he had freed from the caryx. He held it out toward the ghost.
All three of them heard the rapid stream of communication running between the spirit in the crystal and the tormented ghost that stood before them. Then, to Ronan’s immense relief, a smile spread across the ghost priest’s face.
“She says you are to be trusted,” he sighed. “She says you saved her from torment at the hands of the Silent Brotherhood! Very well. I will go into your crystal on one condition.”
“What is that?” Diana asked, holding out the empty crystal as Ronan put the full one back in his pouch.
“The condition is this,” the ghost replied. “When you retrieve the fire dragon egg that I hid for so long, you allow me to be the spirit that animates it.”
Ronan nodded, and the others all smiled. The ghost let out a great sigh and, like sand flowing through an hourglass, he flowed into the crystal that lay on Diana’s outstretched palm.
A sound of sighing filled the air, as if a hundred people had all taken a much needed drink of cool water all at once. The crystal shone out brightly, and Ronan heard the voice of the ghost priest, quiet as if it was far away. “Do not fail me!” it cried, and then vanished into the crystal.
Deep silence filled the space around the temple, and the light of the crystal faded. Without that, or the light that the pale ghost had emitted, the hilltop was suddenly dark.
Ronan looked at the crystal in Diana’s hand. He remembered how he had been able to speak to the caryx spirit in her crystal and wondered if he could do the same for the ghost priest. Before he’d gone into the crystal the ghost had hinted at some very interesting ideas—the strange powers that dragons might have, the depth of the evil that the Silent Brothers were perpetuating, and even the reasons for the Silent Brotherhood’s actions.
But interrogating the ghost further seemed like the wrong thing to do right now. The ghost had suffered since the death of its physical body, and it needed some time to rest now that its identity was safe within the crystal. They needed to give the ghost a little time before asking it any more questions.
Besides, the only question that he needed the answer to urgently was how long ago the egg had been taken, and as far as he could see that was the question the ghost could not answer. The ghost’s sense of time had been warped by death. They would need to find some other way of discovering how long the egg had been on the road in the hands of the Brotherhood.
A faint moan, followed by a soft thud, broke the train of Ronan’s thoughts and made him look round. Tanya had sat down heavily on the grass, and was staring at Ronan and at Diana, one hand on the ground as if to steady herself, the other raised to her brow. Her eyes were wide and her mouth hung partly open, a picture of amazement and disbelief.
“I never thought to see something like that in my whole life,” she said faintly.
Eric crouched beside her, decanting a few drops of golden liquid into a water flask and handing it to her. “Here,” he said kindly. “Drink this.”
She did so, and then smiled as some of the color came back to her cheeks. “What is that?” she asked, nodding to the vial of golden liquid that Eric was putting away.
“Just a mild restorative,” he replied. “It should bring you back to yourself after a shock, without any dramatic side effects.” Then he glanced up from where he crouched beside Tanya. “Ronan,” he said, “it seems to be that we need to discover how long ago the priest died.”
Diana grimaced. “Do we need to exhume his body?”
Ronan did not relish the thought. “No,” he said, “I think there’s another way we could try.”
“What is that?”
“Let us ask the shadows.”
A few minutes later, Ronan stood by the rough grave of recently-turned earth. Tanya was feeling better, and stood with Diana a little way up the slope. Eric stood nearer, his left hand on Ronan’s right shoulder.
Ronan held his hands out flat over the earth, arms straight, palms downward. This was a technique that he had heard about, but had never tried. Eric had likewise read about the technique in the library. The technique was called the Shadow’s Question, and together Eric and Ronan were about to attempt it.
Shadows were everywhere in the darkness of the woods at night. The rustling of night animals and the steady chirring of insects was the only sound that Ronan could hear. The shadows felt full of potential, ready to leap forward and deliver power to those who were able to draw power from the shadows.
Ronan glanced briefly at Eric and then looked back at the recently-turned earth. He reached across the mental link between Eric and himself and felt Eric respond. Like two folk reaching across a narrow chasm to grasp hands, they gripped onto each other’s minds and held on.
As soon as they’d established the link, the power of the shadows flowed through them more powerfully than it ever had when Ronan was on his own. He felt charged up, as if the shadow power was water held behind a dam, and he and Eric’s connection was the sluice gate. The power rushed in through their link, traveled through them both, and then ran out to Ronan’s hands where it hovered, ready to be used.
Steady, Eric said to Ronan inside Ronan’s mind. Don’t lose your purpose.
That was why this technique required a partner. The sheer power required to enact the Shadow’s Question was dangerous to the user. For a fleeting instant, images had skipped through Ronan’s mind of all the things that he could have done with the immense power that now hovered at his fingertips. Visions of grandeur completely out of keeping with his usual motivations and desires had threatened to fill him and obscure any thought of mission.
Eric’s calm, detached voice in his mind recalled him with a snap to the task at hand.
Carefully, he looked at the grave, and then allowed the power to trickle down from his palms toward the earth. “By the shadows, by the God of the Night,” he said in a whisper, “hear my question. Who buried this body, and when? Who stole the treasure from the temple, and when? Show me their faces, show me their hands, and show me when they did this deed.”
The power of the shadows rolled through him like thunder, and the answer was in his hands.
With a suddenness that was jarring though not unexpected, Ronan was looking down on the scene. Brother Cadfael, the Keeper of the Temple who they had spoken to before, was wiping dirt from his hands by the graveside; he was in the temple, scrubbing blood from his fingers with a stiff brush and looking furtively over his shoulder.
Outside the temple, two men waited, conversing in low voices. They had something heavy in a bag, something that shone through the weave of the bag at intervals with a warm yellow glow.
The dragon egg.
The two men were not monks. They were dressed in white robes over steel plate and ringmail, with leggings and gauntlets of heavy boiled leather. Their faces were hard and merciless, and they had the symbol of the Silent Brotherhood on their robes.
