Second Sons - Lord Of The Shadows Part 55

Antonov looked at her in amazement. "You can understand this... Why didn't you tell me this sooner?"

"I was never allowed in here before long enough to see the writing," she lied.

"Not even Belagren was able to tell what was written here."

"Perhaps the G.o.ddess had other plans for the Lady Belagren, your highness. She gives us only those tools we need to serve her."

"Of course..." Antonov agreed absently, still staring at the walls in wonder.

"So I can tell you whatever you want to know," she pointed out, a little impatiently. "You don't need Dirk."

"Is there anything here about what happened in Bollow?" he asked anxiously. "About her test?"

G.o.ddess! Doesn't he think of anything else? "I won't know what the inscriptions say until I've had time to study them further, your highness." She smiled at him with touching concern. "Why don't you go back to your tent for tonight and then tomorrow we can have a good look around?"

"No. I want to stay awhile. I want to pray."

Oh, for pity's safe! Don't you ever get sick of praying?

"Of course. Did you want me to stay with you?"

"Don't you need to pray?" he asked, a little concerned.

Idiot, Marqel scolded herself. You're supposed to believe this s.h.i.+t even more than he does. "The G.o.ddess is with me wherever I go, your highness," she replied, hoping that was enough to cover her error.

"Of course," he agreed, as if he should have known such a thing without asking her. "Will you see I'm not disturbed?"

"Take as long as you like," she said understandingly, while silently cursing him under her breath.

Antonov walked back to the middle of the hall, falling to his knees in the very center of the golden eye etched into the floor. He bowed his head and began to mutter under his breath, begging the G.o.ddess to forgive his doubts.

Marqel watched him for a while and then quietly left the cavern, issuing orders to the guards outside on the way out that the Lion of Senet was not to be disturbed. She walked back out through the torchlit tunnel into the red sunlight, looked around the busy camp as she emerged and smiled with a deep sense of satisfaction.

It wouldn't take much, she knew, to convince Antonov the G.o.ddess expected him to right the wrongs of this world. And now he believed she could read the writing in the cavern; how hard could itbe to think up some dire prophecy foretelling the failure of the eclipse and those d.a.m.ned fires going out?

If she thought about this, she could even work in the death of Belagren and Paige Halyn. Something along the lines of the "Mother and Father of the Suns being taken and replaced by the true daughter and the false son..."

That would be the best part. The part where her false prophecy declared Dirk Provin an evil tyrant, bent on distorting Antonov's faith and destroying all his beloved Belagren's hard work. If she put her mind to it, there was no end to the prophecies she could supposedly translate. Since meeting Eryk in Nova more than a year ago, she'd known about a young girl in Mil named Mellie Thorn, too; a small, hugely valuable fact she'd kept to herself against the day the information might be useful. She could reveal it now and n.o.body could prove she'd gotten the information from any other source than the G.o.ddess. Dirk's demise was all but guaranteed. She would make up something that foretold the Shadow Slayer rising up to rid the world of him...

And then, when Antonov had served his purpose, she could dispose of him. Kirsh would become the Lion of Senet and now that he was divorcing Alenor, he would be free to marry Marqel.

The future looked brighter than the second sun.

She sighed with satisfaction and decided to get something to eat before she went back to her tent. It was going to be a long night and she had a lot of work to do before the second sunrise.

Chapter 75.

Kirsh arrived back in Avacas, stiff, weary, dirty and fed up with civil disturbances. There was no honor to be found facing a mob. No glory in beating back a rampaging crowd bent on destroying something that had, until very recently, been sacred to them. Kirsh didn't waste much time wondering why they were rioting. If he thought about it at all, he reasoned it was because since the end of the Age of Shadows, the people of Senet had lived according to the edicts of the Shadowdancers. That included the Landfall Festival and everything that went along with it. But when the foundation for their beliefs had been proved doubtful, the pious self-righteousness with which they had partic.i.p.ated turned to shame, and that shame very quickly turned to anger. Kirsh despised what Dirk had done, while at the same time he begrudgingly admired the skill with which he'd done it.

Had Kirsh been in Dirk's place, with his ambitions, he would have raised an army and tackled the problem head on. Just as Johan Thorn had done. And probably have been just as unsuccessful, he realized. That didn't justify what Dirk had set in motion, but he thought he understood why.

What he couldn't understand is how anybody could conceive of such a plan and then have the b.a.l.l.s to carry it through.

He was met at the palace entrance by the usual bevy of servants come to attend his every need. He shook them off impatiently, tired from the long ride from Talenburg and in no mood for any of them.

"Where is Lord Provin?"

"In your father's private sitting room, I believe, your highness. He's with Prince Misha."

"Misha's here?"

He didn't even wait for the man to answer. Kirsh ran down the hall, skidding to a halt on the polished tiles, before bursting into the room. He stopped dead when he saw his brother. Dirk was seated in a chair by the unlit fireplace. Misha stood beside it, leaning on the mantel, nursing a half-empty winegla.s.s.He was standing.

"Ah! Our hero returns from the battlefield!" Misha exclaimed.

Kirsh crossed the room in three paces and crushed his brother in a bruising hug before holding him at arm's length and studying him closely.

"You're alive!"

Misha smiled. "So everybody keeps reminding me."

"G.o.ddess! I can't believe it! You look so...so well! And you're walking again! When you were kidnapped, we feared the worst."

"I wasn't kidnapped, Kirsh."

He let his brother go, and stared at him in confusion. All his earlier doubts about Misha and the news that he was a poppy-dust addict, all those unpleasant details he'd learned in Tolace-that he'd killed people to conceal-suddenly rushed back to haunt him.

"What do you mean, you weren't kidnapped?"

"You'd better sit down, Kirsh," Dirk suggested. "Misha's got quite a tale to tell and I don't think you're going to like it very much."

"You knew where he was all along, didn't you," he accused.

"Tia knew. I sent her to fetch him the day of the eclipse."

"When I get my hands on that b.i.t.c.h-" Kirsh sputtered angrily.

"You will thank her profusely, Kirsh," Misha cut in sternly. "I wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for Tia Veran. She deserves your grat.i.tude, not your anger."

"Sit down, Kirsh," Dirk repeated. "You need to hear the whole sorry saga before you start lopping heads off."

"I need a drink," he growled.

"I'll get it," Dirk offered. "You sit down and listen to Misha."

Kirsh took the seat opposite Dirk and looked up at his brother. He was still stunned by the change in him. It was almost as if he were a different person; as if Tia Veran had stolen away his brother and replaced him with a newer, better version of the same man.

"I met up with Tia in the Hospice in Tolace," Misha explained.

"I know. She was hiding there after she escaped from us on the way back from Omaxin."

"Escaped?" Misha asked curiously. "Dirk says he asked you to let her go."

Kirsh glared at Dirk. "How many other people have you told?"

"Only Misha. I told Tia, but she didn't believe me." He handed Kirsh a gla.s.s of wine, along with the decanter, to save him asking for a refill.

"Dirk and I have talked a great deal in the last day. We have few secrets left, Kirsh. We can't afford them anymore."

Kirsh downed the wine in a swallow and looked back at Misha. "I heard some disturbing things about you in Tolace."

"That I was a poppy-dust addict?" Misha asked, unsurprised. "Well, if you were shocked, brother, imagine how I felt when I learned the truth.""They said you asked for it. Why would you do that if you didn't know you were an addict?"

"You need to listen to the whole story, Kirsh."

By the time Misha had finished relating his tale of his meeting with Tia, of learning he was an addict and asking her for help, of his trip to Mil and his subsequent flight to Damita, where he was finally able to get free of the drug, Kirsh had finished the decanter.

The implications of Misha's tale were horrific. If he believed his brother-and he could think of no reason why Misha would lie-then the Shadowdancers had systematically poisoned him, hoping to kill Misha and clear the way for Kirsh to inherit his father's seat.

Whether Antonov had known what was going on was something not even Misha was willing to speculate on. What was certain was Misha's support of the terrible thing Dirk had done to bring the Shadowdancers down. Kirsh had reluctantly released Dirk because he needed his help. Misha obviously thought him a hero.

"With all this talk of plots and intrigue, you sound like a heretic, Misha," Kirsh accused when his brother was done. "All those months among the Baenlanders have turned you from the G.o.ddess."

"Several months of agonizing withdrawal from poppy-dust turned me from the G.o.ddess, Kirsh. And I didn't suffer through that just to come back here and thank the Shadowdancers for all they've done for me. I came back to expose them. Dirk beat me to it."

"And what about Antonov?" he asked. "Dirk's little game has all but destroyed him."

"Do you think if I'd walked into Avacas like this and told him about the plot to poison me that he wouldn't have had his faith shaken just as savagely?"

Kirsh wasn't able to answer that. He turned on Dirk, who said nothing the whole time Misha was speaking. "Did you know about this?"

"None of it," Dirk replied. "Although I wasn't as shocked as you are. I knew what the Shadowdancers were capable of."

"And now I suppose you're determined to put an end to them, too?"

"More determined than Dirk, probably."

"We have to tell Antonov. Insane or not, none of us is the Lion of Senet. If he wants to destroy the Shadowdancers for what they did to you, Misha, then it has to be his decision."

"It's a decision he's not capable of making, Kirsh," Dirk warned.

"Nevertheless, he's the one who must make it."

"I fear the decision is already made in our father's mind," Misha said. "He's gathering an army in Omaxin. If the High Priestess has his ear, you can bet he's not doing it to disband the Shadowdancers."

"What army?" Kirsh scoffed.

"He's called all the troops in Bollow north to Omaxin," Dirk explained. "He's got nearly two thousand men up there."

"And has anybody thought to ask him why? Or is it just easier to sit here and place your own interpretation on events? One that suits what you believe?"

"We've sent countless messages to Omaxin," Dirk a.s.sured him. "He's replied to none of them."

"And does he know yet that you're back, Misha?"

His brother shook his head. "I've only been back a day. We thought to wait until you came home before deciding how to break the news to him.""It's not the sort of thing you scribble down in a message," Dirk added. "And we have no way of making certain the news actually reaches him. It could easily be intercepted by... someone else."

Kirsh scowled at him. "Intercepted by Marqel is what you really mean."

"That's your conclusion, Kirsh, not mine."

"We're not going to start arguing about it, either," Misha ordered impatiently. "I think the only way to handle this is for one of us to go to Omaxin and speak with Antonov in person. There is no possible way to make him believe this any other way."

"I'll go," Dirk volunteered. "Now that you're back, Misha, I'm probably better off out of Avacas anyway. Antonov will believe me."

"Just as he'll believe you when you demand Marqel be held accountable for the actions of her predecessors?" Kirsh asked bitterly.

"I'd be happy if Marqel was called to account for what she's done recently," Dirk retorted. "Never mind what her predecessors got up to."

"Enough!" Misha snapped at them. "The three of us are all that stands between Senet and anarchy at the moment. I've neither the time nor the patience for your bickering."

"I'll go to Omaxin," Kirsh said, a little surprised at Misha's commanding tone. "I'll tell Antonov what's happened. And I'll find out what he plans to do with his army."

Misha glanced at Dirk, who shook his head. "I don't think that's a good idea."

"Why not?" Kirsh asked. "Do you think I can't explain what's happened as well as you or Misha?"

"I'm more concerned about your...bias on the matter, Kirsh," Dirk replied.

"You think I'm biased? As opposed to what, Dirk? Your patently objective stance? This from the man who thinks the Shadowdancers ruined his life? Yes, I can see how your bias would be so much less than mine."

"At least I won't confuse the facts with what I feel for Marqel."

"I beg to differ, Dirk. Your whole sick little scheme is influenced by what you feel for Marqel. The difference is that I don't hate her."

"No, you think you're in love with her, which is likely to be far more damaging. It's blinded you to-"

"Enough!" Misha commanded again, halting the argument with a word. "If Kirsh wants to go, then he can. Anyway, Dirk, I need you here."

"But Misha..."

"That is my decision, Dirk. Kirsh will go north to Omaxin."