“Divine One?” He glances over his shoulder, but something about my face must tell him there’s no use feigning ignorance. He sighs. “They grow bolder, the Graycloaks. She was here to ask about creating an experimental Haven, now you were …” The decanter stopper rattles, and he turns back to frown at it as if in chastisement for betraying the tremor in his hand.
“They wasted little time,” I mutter. “How many hours since they first believed I was dead?”
He begins moving again, pulling down a finely cut crystal glass and a number of different bottles and jars. “There was little time to waste,” he replies finally, his voice even and remote. “From their view. With the mist-storms increasing in violence and frequency, how could your people survive during the years it would take to locate your successor?”
I stroke the bindle cat again, and he tenses as though I’ve pressed too hard. “So they wish to create a city where no magic, not even divine magic, can enter—because better to live without magic than to live with the mist. I assume you told their emissary how foolish that would be.”
Daoman lets out a dry breath, a distant, sour relative of laugher. “Divine One, I did not get the impression she was asking me for permission.”
I frown at him. “How do they intend to locate enough sky-steel to construct such a place without the temple’s reserves?”
“By destroying a guardian stone and smelting the steel from its remains.”
The words are even and calm, but my heart gives a lurch as he speaks. “And leave an entire village with no protection against the mist?”
“They believe it better a privileged few should survive, in these Havens of theirs, than we all fall without the light of the divine.” A bottle clinks loudly, his movements a little too hasty, a little too jerky.
I hesitate, the horror of what the Graycloaks plan to do fading a little as realization strikes me. He believed, however briefly, that I was dead.
“I know you are angry with me, Daoman,” I murmur. “But I brought this matter before you and the Congress of Elders more than once. Ihadto go, with your support or without.”
Daoman’s hands still, and he bows his head a moment. “And how many people are dead now because of your decision? How much clearer is it to the people that we cannot control the Cult of the Deathless, because you decided you didn’t need my support?”
I straighten in my seat. “How many of them would still be alive if youhadsupported me?”
Daoman dashes something from a bottle into the cup, and then slams it back down on the cabinet’s surface in an uncharacteristic display of temper that makes me jump in spite of myself. The bindle cat’s claws come out, just pricking against my skin, his eyes going wide as he turns his head toward the priest.
His voice is taut and thin as he says, slowly, “How many new Graycloaks were forged today, do you think? Because they believed this cult of zealots could murder their divinity, because they believed they had no other recourse than to flee faith altogether and banish magic from their lives? Your mortality is what frightens them.”
And you, I think, although I do not say the words aloud.
I draw a steadying breath instead. “Youmade it sound in your reports as though the Deathless were nothing, just a handful of madmen hiding in the darkest corners of the forest-sea, where they could do little harm.”
Daoman reaches for a pitcher of water with which to dilute the tonic, and then turns, goblet in hand. “Many a creature is harmless unless and until one strolls into its den.”
“Why did you nottellme how it really was out there?” I concentrate on keeping my hands quiet in my lap, instead of balling them into fists.
Daoman approaches, placing the goblet on a silver tray so that I can take it without risking touching his fingers. The cat swipes a paw at it, but the priest moves the tray out of the way with the ease of long practice.
He inclines his head as I take the glass, as if I’m doing him some great favor by accepting the drink. “We have been dealing with the problem, Divine One. Delicately. Drawing attention to it benefits no one.”
I clutch the goblet, grateful to have something with which to occupy my hands. “I should have been made aware. Had I known …”
Daoman’s lips give a wry twist, the first sign of a thawing of his fury. “It never occurred to me that you would go on your own, Nimh.” The use of my name is a rarity these days. This time, it is a signal to lay down arms and call a truce.
I take a cautious sip from the goblet. For the most part, Daoman’s tinctures are quite tasty, although now and then they go down bitter and burning. I wouldn’t put it past him to make this one particularly nasty, as partial punishment for my recklessness. To my surprise, it is sweet and fragrant, smelling of serra buds and batala, and other herbs I have no hope of identifying.
Daoman seats himself opposite me, his posture mirroring my own, though his hands clasp in his lap rather than around the stem of a glass.
I know what he’s waiting for, and after another swallow of my drink, I draw a slow, careful breath. “I was right,” I say softly, keeping my voice as low as I can. This ancient temple is a honeycomb of secret passages and hidden spaces in the walls—a spy’s dream. Even I don’t know all its secrets. “I was right to go, Daoman.”
The high priest’s eyebrows shoot up. “You—what?”
Any other day, I’d be delighted to have surprised him. But what I have to tell him is too important. “I saw the Last Star, the omen described in the Song of the Destroyer and countless other prophecies—including the lost stanza from my vision.”
“Yourdream,” Daoman corrects me, his brows lowering again in a frown.
“It was no dream then, and it was no dream last night, when I saw the Last Star fall. I saw it, Daoman—the herald of the Lightbringer himself.”
