It was enlightening, meanwhile, to hear the Holy Father talk about prosperity and victory in war… but everything the man said would have been far more convincing, Tristen thought, if he had had the least confidence the man knew that the other great Lines under the gods’ abode even existed. His Holiness talked about seeking wisdom. But meanwhile he kept walking on that single line, one that was quite unnervingly askew with the Line on the earth that a long-ago Mason had laid down true to the earth. But His Holiness went on declaring that new line sacred by his actions, his incense, and his pure water, his intentions and his assertion of presence, and most of all by its single, blue-shining disharmony with the land and the hill.
The shadows grew increasingly uneasy in this venture of Men above them, uneasy and restless, and Tristen restrained his anxiousness as the gray place increasingly, urgently cried for his attention. The air seethed with motion just at the corners of his eyes whenever he would dart a glance at the other lords or at Cefwyn and Ninévrisë. He was less and less sure it was safe for him in particular and in this place to be making wishes he did not understand, even wishes for the king’s welfare and the safety of Ylesuin, and even at the Patriarch’s behest, all the while he could not make sense of what the Patriarch was doing with his incantations. All the actions on this mistaken line, if mistaken it was, seemed to weaken, not strengthen the Lines that held back the shadows, which had begun to seep out along the glowing reds and roses and faded blues of the lesser lines, to seek along them and grow confused and baffled.
It seemed to him suddenly then that he understood what he was seeing: that Masons had laid out the lines of the Quinaltine and walked the Great Line where the walls would stand, and protected the places where doors and windows should be, and if those had been the only Lines that had ever existed here, all would have been well and safe and the shadows would have flowed along them and obeyed those doors and windows. But those latter-day Masons had for some reason laid their Lines over something that had used to stand there, some prior work of a master Mason that could not be removed, or at least had never been properly removed or reshaped. And those second Masons had done it not merely once, but many times, or falteringly. In his small experience of places on the earth he had met nothing like it; but to his understanding, it was almost certainly the source of the difficulty he had always felt with this building. The Lines on the earth were confused by the builders of the place, further confused by His Holiness, who had not the least idea what he was doing. The Guelesfort was always what it had been, so far as had ever impressed him; but the Quinaltine had had another, older beginning, and no one, no one, since its other beginning, had ever set it right.
More, years of priests kept attempting to establish yet another set of Lines by their observances, across a division in the building that had been a door, on one level, and yet had been a wall another time, and then yet a third time a wall, with doors and windows in that earliest age. Openings overlay walls all about this great hall. What should have let shadows flow entrapped them, and immured them, and created pockets of distressed souls that seethed and struggled behind the banners, behind the acorn-baskets of the table, especially where two of the previous efforts had made an unintended doorway.
He no longer saw the candlelit stone or the incense; he saw streaks of blue light, and shadows milling there in increasing violence, a darkness in motion, wailing, attempting to flow along the new, misaimed line the priest established, a line that failed to meet the ward of the vanished door on one side and that had only the slightest of barriers established there.
Foolish, he thought. So foolish. There was power here, although nothing acute, and it was no help at all to be walking back and forth, back and forth as the Patriarch was doing, with a very weak force, luring the shadows to one side and the other like hounds following a tidbit, leading them to desire their freedom and then, with a turn, frustrating them.
Perhaps the torment of the shadows had to do with the gods, who were supposed to be five in number, and somehow bright, as shadows were not—the very antithesis of shadows, as he understood from Efanor’s earnest but vague instruction; and he wished he had had the chance to ask Emuin, who had evaded him by having his door latched, which might have meant he was asleep, or might not. Emuin disapproved in general and yet refused him the excuse that might have prevented his instruction; Emuin disapproved the penny, too, he feared, or so he gathered out of that surly silence. Go ahead, Emuin seemed to be saying by this odd behavior: I disapprove in the extreme, but neither will I counterpose my will to your curiosity or Cefwyn’s insistence.
Emuin must have known about the Lines. Emuin spoke about gods, and salvation, and Emuin must have known about the Lines. Could both things be true, this blind show, and could the gods still exist?
Back and forth, back and forth paced the Holy Father in what Tristen knew now was folly. But he judged the temper of the Lines and their jagged traps and knew that, frustrated as they were, and angry, the shadows were far from breaking loose. Most of them were weak, and had no power to do real harm even if they did break free… certainly none could do so by daylight, when they had less power. It was the sheer mass of their accumulated anger that was daunting, and it vexed him that Cefwyn stood unseeing in front of this thing. Whether Ninévrisè, who was able to enter the gray place, might be aware or not… he doubted it. But his mere thought leapt suddenly to her thoughts: he felt her confusion and the oppression of the shadows around them, and was awareof her presence as a point of light amid the demishadows of others.
He felt another presence, too.
It was behind him. He felt three or four, enlivened points of light. Not shadows, but wizard-fire, the sort that ordinary men never saw, and fear leapt up in him so high that he clutched the rail in front of him. He was almost aware of Cevulirn… he had never known there was wizard-talent in Cevulirn. Not even Lewenbrook had provoked it. And in being aware of that very dimmest fire, he saw Ninévrisë like a blue-white star—and Efanor with ever so faint a spark. He was aware of Emuin, high aloft and some distance removed; and of six or seven very dim presences out among the guards, or the people, and one among the banner-bearers along the sides, also in the shrine.
What was it? he asked himself. Could he have failed to see what glowed softly in Cevulirn, or had the danger at Lewenbrook, so strong, so thunderously dark, blinded him? Or had the Patriarch’s folly encouraged the faintest sparks in two in particular he knew were not the Patriarch’s followers? Was it a defense their hearts raised? And if that was so, how must heseem, to anyone with eyes to see him in the gray space?
You burn, Emuin had told him once.
He was trembling as the Patriarch finished and took up the box that he hoped would hold the pennies and give them their escape. The Patriarch lifted it on high, then held it before him. The singing of women rose high and full, echoing around the hall. The sunlight speared through a heavy pall of incense, and oh, at last! the ceremony was ending. First Cefwyn, then Efanor, then Ninévrisë filed past and dropped a coin into the box as the lines of the assembled nobility began the recessional. Lord Brysaulin passed and dropped in his penny as the row emptied and Cefwyn led the procession out to the fanfare of trumpets. The Dragon banner of Ylesuin swept in from the side, the Prince’s personal standard, the black-and-white Checker and Tower of the Regency in Elwynor and the standard of Guelessar moved close upon them, the various king’s officers yet to come, and then the barons. The second rank of nobles joined the file past the Holy Father and now the column went out the door.