VI. The Tuama

"Thou hast been very quiet," Seva said, looking down at Holland. The penitent was still walking while Fionn rode her horse. She had the reins for their pack horse wrapped around her hand, leading it as Ciar perched on its back. The baroness commented earlier that Holland looked unwell, but the warrior insisted that it was nothing. Fionn was in a good mood and had tried gently ribbing her, only to get a cold shoulder. Whatever tolerance for him the woman usually had was gone as they entered Tamaris.

"I'm fine," Holland said, forcing herself to smile for Seva's benefit. All she could think about was that wonderful, captivating, terrifying voice. Somewhere in Tamaris, Deus was waiting for her. What was she going to do? Once upon a time, she would have gladly leaped to do his bidding. Things had changed. She had changed. Another frightening thought reared its head. What would happen if she didn't agree? He knew about Seva.

There was something oddly surreal about Tamaris. It was as Holland remembered it: splendor surrounded by squalor. The vast stretches outside the city walls were filled with hovels and little farms, all of them wattle and daub buildings that looked precarious at best. Inside the tall, grey stone walls, what had once been the ruins of the ancients was given new life. Gleaming spires rose above verdant gardens and broad avenues less than a mile away from muddy alleys and the smell of cows. It was a very different kind of city than her native one. Tamaris had disorganized sprawl to it even in the nicer part of the city. Streets wandered and the estates stretched out within mural-covered walls ringed by merchants' shops and market stalls.

The Royal Palace was a tall, fortified building of light-colored granite, complete with walls and crenellations. Its six high towers rose above the rest of the city, the adapted remnants of a once great ruin. Callaecia, as the palace was called, was a good deal older than any other building in the area. The interior of the mammoth building was spacious and elegant, much of the interior marble with bas relief carvings of trees and flowers broken up by the occasional dragon, the royal symbol of heraldry.

They left their horses, a bit reluctantly on Ciar and Holland's part, at the royal stables. "They'll see to them better than anywhere else ever could," Fionn said when Ciar gazed up at him judgingly.

"I think I'm going to seek out the temple," Holland said quietly as Seva landed lightly on her feet beside the penitent. "I'll come find you this evening, shall I?"

"Thou art leaving?" Seva said with concern evident in her blue eyes.

"Only for a little while," Holland promised.

"Hurry back," Fionn said, waving over a squire to tend to Holland's armor. "I said that I would reward you, and now that we are in Tamaris, I can show you my gratitude properly."

"Again, I cannot accept a reward. I did what was my duty, nothing more," the penitent said, frowning slightly when the young man started taking her armor off the pack horse.

"Then accept my hospitality, as a friend of my affianced," the prince said as he slipped an arm around Seva's shoulders. "We need to go speak to my father immediately, but you are more than welcome to dinner when you finish at the temple, Holland."

She bowed, though not too deeply. She couldn't bring herself to like him yet. "I will be there," she said even though she wasn't even a little bit hungry. She could only continue to chant her new mantra inside her own head: Seva is happy. Seva is happy. The baroness really did look happy, in a love-struck kind of way. That was enough. Well, it wasn't, but it should have been enough.

She made it halfway down the street before realizing that she had a follower. "Coming with me?" Holland said with a small smile, holding out her hand to the boy who had been trailing her.

Ciar caught hold of her hand with a smile and swung their arms back and forth as he went with Holland, jumping from paving stone to paving stone. Holland considered herself to have the maternal instincts of a battering ram, but she liked the little boy. He needed a place where he would be cared for and taught. Maybe the temple would be a good place.

Should she tell them too about her dream? Holland hesitated. She believed that the priests here in Tamaris were good people, if occasionally blind to the faults of the nobility. Something in her, however, rebelled strongly against the notion of revealing her audience with Deus...if it had even really happened. Here beneath the bright sun, it seemed less and less real. It almost didn't feel like it had ever even happened.

She scooped Ciar up as she walked, smiling faintly when he grinned and threw his arms around her neck. Holland was going to miss not having the scamp with her, as frustrating as it could be to try and keep track of him when they made camp. "Still not going to say a word, huh?" she said amiably, studying his brown face.

Ciar shook his head.

"Suit yourself," Holland said.

They wound their way through the avenues to the Reverent District, a small but populous area dominated by the walled complex that was the home of the different gods. Holland read their names out loud to Ciar as they passed through the broad archway graven with the names and symbols of the gods, "There is Sol, the Light of the World, god of the sun and humans...Mode, the Shining Lord, god of the moon and elves...Tek, the Great Artificer, god of metal and dwarves...Aimti, the Giving One, goddess of life and healing...Nessa, the Eternal Watcher, goddess of death and knowledge..."

Around them moved throngs of believers. Tamaris was the center of worship for Yssa and so the district was well populated with pilgrims and locals alike. Holland set Ciar down, but held onto his hand tightly so she wouldn't lose him as she led the way not into the main body of the temple, but into the area of garden tended to by monks. It had been some time since she'd last passed this way. She wasn't certain if Alan's old friend was still living. Riaghán had been an older man when she met him, and that was almost twenty years ago now.

However, as soon as she became visible, a familiar figure hobbled over with a beaming smile on his face. "Holland!" he crowed.

Riaghán was a withered old man who had to be in at least his eighties, wisps of white hair forming a tonsure on a burned scalp. His whole face seemed sun-scorched brown and was virtually made of wrinkles. However, he moved with surprisingly good speed for a man of his age, wrapping his arms around the woman.

"I thought for sure you'd be dead," Holland said, delighted that her friend was still around. She hugged him back gingerly, both because she wasn't very good at hugging people and because she worried about breaking him.

"And I thought that of you," Riaghán said with a chuckle.

"Closer than I'd like," Holland admitted, feeling her ribs twinge in pain. They were still cracked and bruised. "This is Ciar. He's a foundling, like me. Aediobri was destroyed. He's all that's left."

For a moment, Riaghán looked serious, but he plastered on a smile. "Ciar, eh?" he said, beaming down at the boy. "Why don't you run along with the other lads?" He motioned to a group of boys, all wearing the brown of the monks, who were whacking each other with sticks as they played at being knights. The little boy needed no further prompting to run over. Most of his new playmates were either bastards or orphans, Holland knew. Fortunately, they were too young to really be cruel to Ciar just because he didn't speak.

"We should talk," Holland said softly.

"Most certainly," Riaghán agreed. He offered Holland his arm. "I'd say I almost didn't recognize you without the armor, but that'd have been a lie. You don't look a day older than that first day you turned up with Alan spouting western gibberish."

Holland smiled as they walked towards the back, shady part of the garden. He took a seat on a bench and motioned for her to join him. Their spot was quiet and secluded, but they still had line of sight on the courtyard and the boys playing. Other monks walked to and fro as they went about their daily business. None of them disturbed the venerable Brother Riaghán and his guest.

"So what's troubling you?" the old man asked, studying her with a critical eye.

"Oh, a hundred different things," Holland said, leaning forward and letting her elbows rest on her knees. She rubbed her hands together slowly and thoughtfully. Riaghán was the one cleric she was willing to tell about everything. He wasn't going to tell anyone a word without her permission. He was a good man that way. "I think my people attacked Aediobri."

Riaghán took a deep breath. He knew plenty about the Imperium from Holland's stories. He had spent twenty years prying them out of the woman, back before he retired to Tamaris. "This far east? That's a hell of a way to come. They'd have to go through Ethilir and Leus to get to us, not to mention crossing the Sundered Sea."

"I think they came the more direct way, across the Eye of the World," Holland said. "It might just be a stray ship that was pulled too far out and ended up cast across the sea. But..."

"But?" Riaghán said.

"I have a feeling that it's more than that," she said uncomfortably. She wanted to blurt out that she thought Deus was awake, but she couldn't think of a good way to couch that without fearing for the old man's heart. Besides, she hadn't decided how she felt about it yet. Most of her life, she would have immediately answered that call. It was still very tempting.

Be kind to me, my Ilex, and I will be kindness itself to you...

"Then you think the Princes of Iron are looking our way?" Riaghán asked. He didn't press and ask why. He just stroked his short, clipped white beard. "We have to do something about their forces in country. We can worry about the future when we are closer to that disaster. I can call up the Hooded Knights. They are few, but they are excellent fighters. Fortunately, many are here for the annual inductions of the new brothers."

Holland nodded. She had trained with a fair number of them and every time had been left with a significant respect for their mettle. They were few, however, and mostly devoted to guarding pilgrims on the different roads. "We're only facing a century, but we will need more than that," she said.

"We have about sixty hooded knights. If you could speak to the King..."

"I will," Holland said, combing her fingers through her brown hair. "I have an invitation to dinner from the Prince."

Riaghán gave her a curious look. "There is something in your eyes when you speak of him," he observed. "It is not a pleasant aspect, Holland. What bad blood is there between you?"

"None. He has given me no offense, nor have I antagonized him in excess of how I antagonize everyone I meet," the penitent said. She leaned back in her seat and tried to focus on the present with its smell of rich earth and harvest. The monks had baskets full of apples from the trees interspersed throughout the garden.

"My mistake," Riaghán said to honor her unspoken wish that it not be spoken of. She would either speak of it in her own time or keep her peace like the grave. He patted the warrior on the back. "It is good to have you back all the same, Holland. Will you be staying in Tamaris for any length of time?"

She sighed. "I don't know. I don't know what I want," Holland murmured. She heard a soft, familiar whispering in her ears, at the edge of her consciousness. "Riaghán, do you have access to the Tuama still?"

The old man rubbed the back of his head with a rough, gnarled hand. "This has to do with your western business, I assume. If it's for the kingdom's sake..." he said. He slipped off a lanyard that he wore around his neck. The pendant was an ancient, twisted piece of silver metal. "Bring me back the key when you're finished, Holland."

The Tuama, despite its eastern name, was very much a western ruin. Holland had only ever seen the vault door, covered in ancient markings she recognized from the images of the Desolate Throne. It had been oddly thrilling to find something so familiar and she had expressed a great interest to Alan when they visited Tamaris and passed its door. It was only years later—in the last of Riaghán's letters to her—that she'd learned that her friend had come to possess the key.

Holland gave his hand a squeeze when he passed over the pendant. "Thank you," she said.

"Be careful," Riaghán said quietly. "We do not know the powers of all that remains in those depths. Many of those relics are from the First World and all of them are dangerous."

The penitent smiled faintly, but not humorously. "I know." She put the key around her own neck and tucked it in behind her shirt. She'd pulled a tabard with the symbol of a knight penitent—a stylized weeping eye—on over her subarmalis to disguise the black cloth. It was too distinctive and she wasn't certain any longer that Tamaris was free of spies. "Will you take care of Ciar for me? I can't keep him. A life of battle is no place for a child and we both know that I am no mother."

Riaghán chuckled a little, breaking the tension that surrounded them. "At least you're honest," Riaghán said. It was strange, sitting next to Holland. Compared to him, she looked so young, and yet he knew that she was likely older than him. She had lived long enough that she no longer counted the years. They don't matter, she'd told him once. Death comes to us all and the length of the wait does not make the end any less certain. "I'll watch over the boy, though I hope you'll visit him often. If you took him from the ruins, he'll remember that."

"I will," Holland said. She sighed. "Teach him to be a scholar, Riaghán. The world doesn't need more sword-swingers."

"Of course," Riaghán said. He stood up and stretched his perpetually stooped shoulders. He spent most of his time either weeding here in the garden or inside with books. "Ciar, come here!"

The boy raced over when he heard his name, eyes flitting uncertainly from Holland to the old man. Holland knelt down and reached out, taking his hands. "I have to go into battle, Ciar. You need to stay here with Riaghán. He'll teach you many things, and I'll come see you as much as I can. Alright?"

The boy nodded, though he looked like he might cry. Even though their time together had been brief, Holland knew she represented safety from the enemy that had razed his home. She'd amused him by showing him how to move a stick like a sword, but that was just that: a game. She never wanted him to do it as a way of life.

"Good lad," Riaghán praised. He turned to Holland. "He'll be safe here."

After a quick thanks and a hug for the boy, Holland turned and let her feet take her into the temple proper and towards the inner sanctum. Somewhere, deep beneath her feet, lay the Tuama and all its secrets. She bowed her head to the two hooded knights guarding the door to the sanctum. They were armored in mail hauberks and armed with side-swords, their shields resting against the walls they stood near. They took their names from the deep grey hoods they wore over their visored barbuta helms. She was known to a lot of the older hooded knights thanks to Alan, and they were the ones trusted with this position. Even so, one stepped into her path with a hand on his sword. "Do you have permission to be here, Lady Penitent?"

She untucked the pendant, revealing it to the knight. "Yes, from Brother Riaghán."

"What is your business?" he asked. The questions were asked in a polite, neutral tone rather than the hostile interrogation one might expect—but he was fully prepared to kill her and Holland knew it. She could see the movement of eyes behind the visor. He was watching her carefully. He was younger than the usual, which meant he was a trusted knight despite his age and worthy of respect.

"Investigation. I wish to see if an item of the western traditions is contained in the Tuama," she said calmly.

"I will escort you to the door of the Tuama," the hooded knight said with a nod of his head. "Follow me, Lady Penitent. Would you like a lantern?"

She shook her head. "No, but thank you." He gave her a quizzical look.

They walked together through several archways and down a flight of ancient steps to a great vault door inscribed with symbols of the First World. Holland did not know the meaning of all of them, but she knew that together they formed words of warding and sealing. "What's your name?" she asked the hooded knight she was with, aiming for politeness.

"Ardashir, Lady Penitent."

Holland looked over. His name was as foreign as her own. "Is your family from Yssa?"

He shook his head. "From the north, Lady Penitent. But I was born here," the hooded knight said. His tone sounded slightly guarded, as if he wasn't certain what to expect.

"Thank you, Ardashir. Khoda hafez," the penitent said.

"You speak the language?" he asked quickly, with surprise evident in his tone.

Holland laughed. "You've just heard the extent of it," she said, taking off the pendant. She walked cautiously up to the vault door and presented it to the smooth, obsidian center of the door. There was a sound like the ringing of a glass bell and the door began to open like an iris, metal sliding against metal almost soundlessly, accompanied by a great grating from the walls.

"Good luck, Lady Penitent," Ardashir said. "Not all who enter leave again."

With those words echoing in her ears, Holland began to walk down the broad, smooth steps. The door closed behind her and immediately plunged her into a shroud of interminable, pervasive, silent darkness. She blinked hard and her vision again shifted as it had when she tracked the movement of the fleshwalker on the road with Seva. The world was painted in shades of grey, but she could see sparks of life energy flashing through the walls. The Tuama was alive, as she had suspected it might be. They were faint and weak lights, but lights all the same. The palace of Saraqael within the great citadel of Arcem Tenebris was this way too.

She walked through narrow cut passages past rows and rows of books and scrolls stored down here in the even temperature and sunless dark by the monks who intended to preserve the works for centuries. Most were religious texts, the messages of the different gods and the histories of their followers. Some were alchemical or medicinal tomes and some others described the nature of the First World, at least the little pieces that could be remembered. She herself barely knew the stories. Once, there had been a place filled with sorcery and rival gods. Then Deus rose, though his origins were conflicted in the stories. Either he was the intentional creation of the gods or a being that grew from their mistakes, crafting himself as he gained more and more power. The former was the tale of the east, the latter the tale of the west. Holland did not pretend to know which one was true. Whatever the case, the war between the gods and Deus with his princes at his back had utterly destroyed the First World. It was from the ashes that life as the world now knew it began.

She wove her way deeper and deeper into the earth, following the smell of cave air, until she reached the final chamber. It was a wreck of ancient metal, the twisted skeleton of some old building crushed half under the weight of tons of stone. Pieces of junk from the First World lay scattered around, none of it particularly interesting. But she could see the glow of the life-spark in the depths. A whispering started at the edge of her consciousness again, slowly growing louder as she approached.

...I've been waiting for you, my Ilex...

The source of the glow was a small, unassuming piece of jagged black glass about the size of a chicken's egg. There were faint grooves on it, the marks of writing in the symbols of a language long since forgotten. Just another piece of First World trash to everyone else who had come down here.

Holland reached out and picked up the shattered piece. It was faintly warm to the touch, but there was no flash of light or burn of life-force flowing into her body. It hummed with a faint resonance of her own heartbeat, as if it was falling into sync with her.

Take me away from here, please, the stone whispered. I'm so lonely, my Ilex. Be kind to me and you will be rewarded.

She knew this was only one of the many pieces of Deus. Taking this wouldn't reform him. More than that, it was dangerous for this piece to remain in Tamaris. If the Princes of Iron were hunting for his fragments, they would raze the city just to obtain this one. Better that she bear it to some far, remote place or destroy it. Her fingers tightened on the stone.

...She could see Fionn's body on the ground, lying broken and mangled from sword blows. The blade was in her hand, dripping red...

Now she's yours, the voice whispered in her ear.

"That's not what I want," Holland said harshly.

Of course not, my Ilex. You've changed. Grown. But that is what you will do without me. You need my voice, my Ilex. I can offer you a comfort that no one else will. Who else knows what you want in your heart of hearts? Who else will listen without judgment? Who else will work to aid you?

"I will take you from this place," the penitent said. Already she was thinking of where would be a good place to dispose of it.

Deus seemed to understand the unspoken words there. I will always be found, my Ilex. Hide me on the highest peak or the bottom of the sea, and still I will call to a listener. Let me stay with you. Let me guide you. You can keep me safe. You can keep me from the world. Keep me and I will be silent to everyone but you.

The longer she held the stone, the more it felt right to keep it. She recognized the danger that lay within. What if she took it to the palace and it called to the others? They were not as sensitive as she was, but if they were close enough they too could feel the lure of Deus. There was no reason he would keep his promise. He was called the Deceiver for a reason. Now she knew where the piece was. She could move it later if she had to.

"This is the safest place for you, at least for now," Holland said, tucking the shard into the corner of the room, behind other pieces of ruin.

I will not forget this, my Ilex, the voice said with honeyed menace. She could hear it echoing in her thoughts as she walked back towards the sunlit world.