He gave Tier an apologetic look. “I am more emperor in name than in reality or I could just order your release. The twentieth—nineteenth by common reckoning—had real power.”
Tier grinned, “That’s because he’d ordered the death of fifteen Septs by the time he was your age and accounted for another three or four personally.”
“I’m rather finicky in my food choices,” said Phoran with mock sadness. “I’ll never manage to be properly terrifying.”
“You wouldn’t have to suck the marrow from their bones the way the Nineteen—ah, excuse me—Twenty did,” said Tier solemnly. “I suspect a cooked heart or two would do just fine.”
“I don’t eat heart,” said Phoran firmly. “Though I suppose I could feed it to the grieving heir—that might have a similar effect.”
Tier and Phoran gave each other a look of mutual approval.
“I already owe you a favor,” said Phoran, “but your experience is different than my own. I’d like your opinion on my problem.” He waved at the Memory.
“I am, always, your servant, my emperor,” Tier was rather pleased to find that he meant it.
“For the past three months,” Phoran began, “I’ve had this creature. Not that it follows me all the time, you understand. Usually, it just visits me once a night.” He smiled grimly and sat down on the bed.
Tier followed his example and collapsed on the other end of the bed. He should have waited until the Emperor bid him sit, but between whatever happened during the time he couldn’t remember and the jolt the doorway had given him, his joints were all but jelly.
“Sometimes when I can’t sleep,” Phoran said, “I go exploring the shut-off places in the palace. I have this key,” he took one out of his pocket. “It’s supposed to open every door in the palace. It didn’t do yours, but it opened the turnkey’s box that had your key in it.”
He put it away and began his story again. “Anyway, one night a few months ago I was wandering through the Kaore wing—that’s one of the ones my father shut down, I’m told. It’s usually pretty boring: long corridors with identical rooms on either side, that sort of thing. But this time I heard some noise at the end of one of the corridors.
“No one’s supposed to be there—but sometimes people are. I sneaked down to a door that was ajar.” He pulled the velvet fabric of his pants and absently rubbed it between thumb and index finger.
“There were a number of people in dark robes with hoods over their heads. They were standing in a loose circle, chanting. A seventh man was kneeling, blindfolded and bound in the center. If I’d known what they were going to do, I’d have tried to stop it somehow. But by the time I saw the knife it was too late. One of the robed men had already slit the bound man’s throat.”
Phoran got off the bed and began to pace restlessly. “There was blood everywhere—I hadn’t realized… It was too late for the dead man, and I thought that they might not be too excited at having a witness so I left as quickly as I could. The Memory came to me the next night.”
Phoran looked at the creature solemnly, then sank back onto the bed and began rolling up his sleeve. “It comes to me every night,” he said, showing Tier marks on the inside of his wrist that climbed in fading scars to the hollow of his elbow.
“After it feeds it tells me that in return it owes me the answer to a question. Usually its answers aren’t very useful. Tonight I asked if it knew someone who could tell me something about the Sept of Gerant’s lands and it brought me here.”
Tier said, “You think that you interrupted them killing their last Traveler prisoner.” He considered it. “I think you are right—how many groups of dark-robed men do you have going around killing people in the palace?”
“There might be as many as five or ten,” he said. “But not that manage to summon or create something like this.” He pointed at his dark comrade. “This is wizardry.”
Tier nodded slowly. “I’m not a wizard, but I’ve dealt with them. If this was something that might result from their meddling, I’d think they’d be careful that it would not attach itself to them. Maybe some magic. That would mean that you were the only one there it could attach itself to.”
He got off the bed and walked closer to the Memory. His eyes wouldn’t quite focus on it, reminding him forcibly of the way Jes could fade into the shadows when he wanted to.
“How did you know that I could answer the Emperor’s question tonight?” asked Tier.
The thing shifted restlessly. “You fed me true,” it said at last. “I know you as I know Phoran, twenty-seventh emperor of that name.”
“I fed you?” Tier asked.
“ ‘Numberless were the heroes who fell,’ ” whispered the Memory in a voice quite different than it had been using: it was no longer without inflection. The change was remarkable.
“You were my listener?” said Tier.
“I was Kerine to your Red Ernave,” agreed the Memory.
“What else are you?” Tier took a step nearer to it.
“I am death,” it said and was gone.
“Did you understand what it meant?” asked Phoran.
Tier rubbed his hands together lightly. “Only a bit of it,” he said. “Apparently it feeds on more than just blood. I gave it a story and it took more than I offered—which is how it knew that I’d been one of Gerant’s commanders.”
He’d invoked magic in that story—more magic than he’d ever brought forth before—and it had only been shortly after that when Telleridge had informed him that his magic was contained. He’d thought that Telleridge had meant that they’d taken his magic away—but perhaps it was more subtle than that.
“Would you tell me a lie?” he asked Phoran.
“My stallion is cow-hocked,” he said immediately, apparently unfazed by the abrupt change in subject. “What are you doing?”
“Well,” said Tier. “I misunderstood what Telleridge meant when he said they had contained my magic. I can tell if you lie—but not Telleridge or Myrceria.”
“Your magic works, but not on the members of the Path,” Phoran said.
“So it seems.”
“I have two more requests before I go,” said Phoran. “First, I ask that you not tell anyone about the Memory.” He gave Tier another bleak smile. “It’s more than a social problem for me, you know. If a whisper of the Memory got out I’d face a headsman’s axe. The Empire cannot forget the lessons learned from the Shadowed: the Emperor must be free of magic.”
“Without your permission, no one will hear it from my lips,” promised Tier.
“Would you see if you can find out if your Sept, Avar the Sept of Leheigh, is a member of the Secret Path?” He sighed. “Telleridge is… a spider who avoids the light of day while he spins his webs and sends his friends and foes whirling in deadly earnest, unaware whose threads pull them this way and that. If he is involved with the Secret Path, then they are a threat to me and vice versa. I need to know who I can trust.”
“If I can discover it,” Tier agreed, then gave his emperor a wry grin. “Since I don’t have any choice about staying, I might as well make myself useful.”
He slept for a while after Phoran left. He had no idea how long because his cell allowed for no daylight, just the endless glow of the stones that lit his room.
Longing for home brought him to his feet. Frustration sent him pacing. He hadn’t been able to ask if Phoran could get a message to Seraph. His tongue wouldn’t shape the words.
By Cormorant and Owl, I bind you that you will not ask anyone to help you escape… Seraph would help him escape if she could. He supposed that was enough to invoke Telleridge’s magic.
If Seraph knew where to find him… but she did not. She probably thought him dead after all this time.
He probably would die without seeing her again: there was something in the arrogance of Telleridge that told Tier that many Travelers had died here.
Tier closed his eyes and rested his face against the cool stone wall. Without the distraction of sight, he could pull her into his heart’s thoughts. Owl memory, she called it, when he was able to recall conversations held months before. Gifted, his grandfather said, when he could sing a song after the first time he’d heard it. Blessed, he thought now, visualizing the pale-faced child Seraph had been the first time he’d seen her. Blessed to have his memories to keep in his heart in this place.