Chapter 18: The Candle's Mystery

“Your Holiness, there is an Adept here to see you,” a knight announced, stepping into room and closing the door behind him. “Tyner Langste.”

The Candle sighed, and turned slightly when one of the Matrons nudged him indelicately. She adjusted something and slid a pin into place. His arms were getting tired from holding them out while a trio of ancient women fussed over his regalia.

“What does he want?” The Candle asked. It had been another restless night, and his digestion had been particularly poor that morning. Now he was trapped while the Matrons dressed him, and he suspected that this Adept knew as much.

“He did not say,” the knight said, “but he appears quite distraught.”

The Candle sighed again, and said, “Send him in.”

He did not know Tyner Langste, but as a rule he disliked distraught Adepts. Most of the Adepts in Merendir were young men of good birth, born and raised in the city. There was always a moment when they were suddenly faced with the prospect of spending the next five years in some distant backwater, eating fermented mudfish, or some other similarly distasteful local staple. Every Adept hoped that they would get one of the choice appointments— close to home in the civilized Highlands, or near a coastal town where the winds and waters were warm and gentle, or even fifteen hundred miles away in the frenetic border metropolis of Valen. But, of course, there were only a handful of these assignments, and hundreds of less desirable ones. Distraught Adepts had typically just been given their assignments in the barbaric Steppelands, or the stinking eastern marshes, or three hundred miles from anywhere in the middle of the prairie. They all assumed that they had run afoul of somebody powerful, and that they were being punished with their assignment. While it was true that Church leaders sometimes rewarded their favorites with choice posts and punished others with particularly awful ones, in the end every Adept had to do five years of service at some outpost, and there were far more undesirable outposts than good ones.

The Candle looked over his shoulder as Tyner Langste came into the room. The boy was trembling, with tear-stained cheeks and red eyes. The Candle turned away and rolled his eyes, muttering silently to himself. One of the Matrons saw his reaction and grinned toothlessly up at him. He had known the woman for years, and had secretly named her Bald Spot, but he did not know her real name, and they were forbidden from exchanging words.

“I thank you for your time, Your Holiness,” Tyner Langste spoke as if he were reading woodenly from a script. “As you must know, a Tribunal was recently convened against… against…” Tyner broke down and started sobbing. Bald Spot glanced excitedly at the other two Matrons and then up at the Candle. She was blocked from Tyner’s view by the Candle’s considerable girth. Her colleagues showed no expression at all.

The Candle looked around at each of the Matrons, to make sure he would not be stuck by a pin if he moved, and then shooed them back a step before turning to the weeping Adept.

“Tell me, Son,” he said, moving quickly to a chair.

The Adept sniffed and brushed away his tears. “I tried to do what was right…”

A circular skylight with a stone fin projected a sundial onto the floor, and the Candle glanced at the time and then nodded sympathetically to Tyner.

“Larie…” Tyner started, then sobbed again, then spent a minute composing himself before he continued. “Larie is a good girl. I’ve known her forever. It is Lucroy… Gian Lucroy… who is no good. He courted her, and she followed him to the meetings… to the Salon… but it was never in her heart.”

The Candle knew both of those names. Gian Lucroy had been arrested for heresy and then released, according to the demands of a blackmailer who threatened to expose the vices of the Lord Commander. That blackmailer turned out to be Larie Cahn, and she was now a guest of the Lash.

“Please spare her,” Tyner sobbed. “She does not deserve this. She would never practice dark rituals, or turn to… to… godlessness. I will take responsibility for her. I will take her punishments myself! I will show her the way.”

Larie Cahn had threatened to dishonor the Church and interfered with a Tribunal, and the Candle had little inclination to release her, even if both of these Tribunals smelled of politics. The Candle thought back to his conversation with the Lash, where he had learned of the Dark Council, and his subsequent correspondence with Mardis Dantley.

“What do you know of a man named Shervin?” The Candle asked. Tyner just shook his head, blankly. The Candle pursed his lips. Larie Cahn believed that Shervin had been responsible for her arrest. Shervin had then been taken and executed by the Hidden Guard, but it was not clear on whose orders, and Mardis Dantley was livid.

The Candle chewed his lip and Tyner, mistaking this for indecision, knelt before the Candle and clutched the hem of his robe to his lips. Bald Spot shuffled over quickly for a woman who must have seen eight decades, and pulled the weeping Adept off of the Candle’s meticulously arranged robes.

It was nearly time for the Candle to address the congregation. He struggled to his feet and resumed his pose, arms raised, in the center of the room. The Matrons came over to finish dressing him, and Tyner watched him hopefully.

“Thank you for coming to me,” the Candle smiled. “I will take this all under consideration.”

The Candle turned away abruptly and began mouthing some of the more emphatic parts of his upcoming sermon. His audience tonight would come from across the Empire. In addition to the faithful of Merendir, there would be dozens of lords and ladies, and even more of their servants and men-at-arms. Many would be faithful, but many more would just be curious. Out in the provinces, even when people did worship Quelestel, they often honored their old gods as well.

The Candle heard a final small sob from Tyner, and then the door opened and closed again. The Matrons spun him around slowly, examining his finery. Bald Spot licked her thumb and straightened the Candle’s eyebrows. The other Matrons left silently, but the Candle stopped Bald Spot with a touch and nodded to a tray of lemon honey cakes that somebody had sent him. Bald Spot blew him a kiss, took the tray of cakes, and hobbled out.

The Candle began to sweat as he took the short hallway to the door at the back of dais. He could hear the echoing murmurs of the assembled crowd. The dapper young choirmaster leaned against the doorframe, tapping his palm rhythmically and squinting at the floor, singing silently to himself. The Candle did not interrupt him.

The familiar blast of cool air hit the Candle as he stepped through the door and out onto the dais at the front of the cavernous basilica. The hall quieted as the Candle stepped forward and surveyed his followers. They were surprisingly few.

----

That night, The Candle lay in bed sweating for what felt like half the night. His half-waking thoughts were tangled with nonsensical tasks, both urgent and mundane, that he was helpless to complete. They featured the full cast of his antagonists— a sobbing Tyner Langste, ambitious young priests and their Tribunals, a fleeting shadow that was Shervin, Gian Lucroy and his heretical Salon, and Larie Cahn chained to Lash’s table.

He rose and splashed his face with tepid water from his basin. His stomach and his glands protested, but he knew he would not sleep that night. He dressed and went laboriously down the stairs to the landing, where he put all his strength into hurling the knocker against the door to his driver’s sleeping quarters. His driver slept with his head mere inches from the door, but he was almost entirely deaf. Convinced that he had heard some mutter of protest from within, the Candle huffed and grunted the rest of the way down the stairs.

By the time the Candle reached his carriage, his driver had passed him, belying his frail appearance with awkward, scuttling, speed. While the driver readied the horses, the Candle went across the street to the tea shop, where the large space above the counter was boarded and barred. Still, a cup of tea sat on the counter for him, in case he rose before the shop owner. It was cold, but the Candle drank it gratefully and shoved a folded piece of scrip into the gap between the counter and the boards.

Before long, the horses were ready and the driver climbed onto the carriage, skipping the formality of asking for a destination. The Candle managed to doze a little as they rode, and when he woke they were bouncing across the threshold of the Library courtyard, shaded from the moon by the ponderous stone walls. The guards stood drowsily at attention as the Candle climbed down from the carriage and went inside.

The silent stones of the grand entryway put the Candle at ease. He thought perhaps that if he were to lay down on the cool rock and cradle his head in his arms, he might sleep a full, sound, night. The tapestries hung heavy, unstirred by the breeze through the windows, with a stripe of moonlight across them. The moon illuminated a single isolated stripe of the masterful “Life and Works of Tyrus the Undying” that would have been meaningless to one who did not already know the work so well— a brown furrow of the battlefield, the silver of the breastplate of the fallen warrior, the hand that grasped the shaft of the spear that pierced the heart of the white stallion, and the brilliant golden radiance emitted by the god Quelestel.

There was lamplight ahead, diffuse and wavering in a way that was only seen, as far as the Candle knew, in the Library, where every lamp was mostly enclosed in a double-walled glass globe, and between the walls, a viscous liquid that could deaden flame in an instant. It was unusual for anybody to be working at this hour, particularly at the front desk. As the Candle drew nearer, he recognized the stature of Loche Mendlekker, broad in the shoulders and rigid in posture. Even as he read by lamplight, Loche did not hunch. The Candle noted, with some surprise, that Loche was studying the circulation logs and making notes on a wax tablet.

“Good morning, Candle,” Loche whispered, looking up from his work and piercing the Candle with his blue eyes. The blue eyes of the northwest coast were famous for their sparkling, and Loche’s sparkled wildly, but with none of the amusement one might expect.

“Good morning to you, Son,” the Candle replied, whispering also, even though they were alone. “What work keeps you here so late?”

The Candle looked at the scratches on Loche’s wax tablet. It seemed to be a short list of names. Loche followed his gaze.

“I am examining the records to see which texts have been requested, and by whom,” Loche told him. Almost nothing of the rural Highlands remained in his accent, though he had lived no more than three years in the city. “There are a handful of individuals whose tastes run toward the… questionable.”

The Candle gave the young man a tired smile.

“You are admirable in your devotion, but every man seeks knowledge, and in these gentle times, I believe…”

“I know what you believe.” Loche Mendlekker interrupted, coldly, his eyes still sparkling. “The Most Holy Confessor does not agree, and I am his servant.”

“As am I,” the Candle replied slowly, his eyes narrowing. It was true that the Most Holy Confessor was more strict in matters of heresy, but it was also true that the Most Holy Confessor had left Merendir and the Library, entirely in the Candle’s hands for many years.

“And, of course,” The Candle continued, “you are mine. Please be so obedient,” The Candle emphasized the word, “as to compile a bibliography for me. I am interested in texts concerning the Order of Learned Children of Old Blood, the Cult of Stelmarren, and the Host of the Ever Young. I believe that the histories on the fourth floor of the northeast tower will be the best starting point, but do be sure to look through the histories in the lower vault stacks, as well as Scribes Rebellion-era philosophies… I believe those are mostly located in the fourth room of the south tower, but there may be some in the central stacks as well.”

The Candle watched with pleasure as his speech turned Loche Mendlekker’s arrogant expression into a tight mask of barely-concealed anger.

“It would be my pleasure, Candle,” Loche Mendlekker bowed slightly and rose, taking a fresh wax tablet from the desk.

“Son,” the Candle stopped Loche as he began to walk away.

“Yes, Candle?”

“I read Imperial Standard, Old Plains, Siltian, a few of the more… cultured… of the Highlands dialects, Rhoudenian, and a bit of Fellnian.”

The Candle could not help smiling to himself as he climbed the stairs to his favorite reading room. It had been petty, dealing with Loche in that way— particularly his characterization of the Highlands where Loche came from— but it was nonetheless very satisfying. The rhythmic crashing of metal began somewhere near the stairwell, as a knight began his hourly patrol. It had taken many years of aggravation, but the Candle had become accustomed to the sound and now found it almost soothing.

Only a bit of moonlight filtered down from the skylight to the lower floors of the stairwell, but the Candle could navigate this part of the Library in complete darkness. The reading room was similarly gloomy. The smell of old vellum was stronger here than in any other room of the Library. The tomes that filled the shelves to the ceiling were soft and plain, not dyed, or dyed a simple red, labeled in thick ink strokes in the strong, angular, alphabet of Rhoudenian. He settled into his cushion on the bench at the lone table in the room and paused for a minute to collect his breath, before turning up the lamp and watching the shadows retreat to the corners of the room.

The pile of books and scrolls that had collected on the corner of his desk was growing precariously tall— a wonderful jumble of old and new, simple and ornate, local and exotic, in a dozen different materials. A Rhoudenian text, most likely from the shelves in this very room, caught the Candle’s eye. The title on its spine said merely “Old Blood,” in the efficient hand of an old northern Song Singer— a group which was now regrettably extinct. The Candle puzzled over the title as he worked the book delicately out from the middle of one of his stacks. “Oelt” would translate most directly as “Old,” but the author had chosen instead to use “Tauler,” with its connotations of depth, wisdom, and power. A faded garment might be “Oelt,” but the mountains were “Tauler.” Gods, and rivers, and the greatest Song Singers were “Tauler.”

The Candle opened the book carefully and pulled the lamp closer to examine the title page.

Prepared for the Satisfaction of the King’s Singer, the Examinations Distilled from the Southern Wanderings of His Most Humble Servant, the Singer of Saalhelm.

The text was simple, unilluminated, and precisely written. Even in their poetry, the Rhoudenians had always avoided the flourishes and word play that made other languages— Siltian, notably— difficult for foreign readers, and so all but the oldest Rhoudenian texts were nearly as easy for the Candle to read as Imperial Standard.

The Singer of Saalhelm had a disposition that was familiar because it was shared by so many early historians, prone to digression and embellishment, though of course the Singer was a contemporary of the very last historians of the Empire. The great histories of Merendir had been written centuries earlier, and were mostly lost, or safely contained within the Library. At the time of the Singer’s travels, the few remaining scholars in the Empire were cautious and literal in their writing, though not, the Candle noted with interest, in their private conversations with the Singer. If the Singer’s account was to be believed, the late Imperial historians, with their legacy of dullness and lack of interpretation, were vitriolic in their private discussions of the Church and Empire. This text must certainly never leave these walls. The Candle wondered idly if the Singer’s journey had been directly responsible for the Imperial pressure on the Rhoudenian King that led to the disbanding of the Singers, and eventually to war.

While the Singer recorded a broad variety of observations— from bawdy tavern songs and recipes for preserved meats, to descriptions of flora and detailed lineages of the lords who hosted him— the central object of his scholarship was “Old Blood,” to which he attributed a hereditary ability for sorcery.

The Candle was well-versed in the legends of the gifted few who manipulated the world around them with their thoughts and their words. He was certain that there was some kernel of truth in them, some body of lost knowledge that, coming from an earlier age, was necessarily steeped in superstition and mysticism. How else to explain the ancient works of engineering that so far surpassed modern abilities? And how else to explain the efficiency and totality of the destruction in the wars that had ripped apart the continent in the generations before Tyrus the Undying and the Church of Quelestel?

The Singer related a number of improbable anecdotes, some of which he claimed to have witnessed himself, of men and women with Old Blood manipulating the elements. He devoted an entire chapter to his own vain attempts to learn the art, and attributed his lack of success to a hereditary inability. The notion of Old Blood was, in the end, one more delusion of would-be sorcerers, legitimized by scholars grasping for importance as they were forced farther underground.

The Candle yawned and read on, only half-interested, until a particularly offensive section caught his attention.

The Library in Merendir, despite holding the greatest collection in the world outside of Imiatt, is no Library. It is maintained by the Church of Quelestel and its purpose is not to enlighten, but rather to withhold knowledge from the people. In order to promote the unnatural and inconsistent notions of monotheism and the divinity of the Emperor, the populace is discouraged from critical thought while all the previous progress of humankind is collected and hoarded in this citadel of ignorance.

The Candle winced at this characterization and thought about various dusty corners of the Library in which this book might be shelved and never seen again.

It is in this Library that the records of the Old Bloodlines are stored and maintained by the Imperial Seer, for the purposes of culling the gifted and arranging marriages to further concentrate mystical powers in the Imperial House.

The Candle chuckled. Even among the myriad conspiracies attributed to the Church and Empire by heretics, this was outlandish. The Candle was nearly ready to set the Singer’s book aside, when an odd alphabet on the facing page caught his eye. He had seen it occasionally throughout the years, and he had encountered it quite recently in a book that had been among the things confiscated from the blackmailer Larie Cahn. He had always been puzzled by his inability to identify the language, and by its dissimilarity to any of the other alphabets of the world. The texts he had encountered had all dated— in his best estimation— from around the time of the first incarnation of Tyrus. He had always assumed that these were the histories of some isolated tribe from the steppes or the mountains, which had been discovered only to be promptly annihilated in the war.

The Singer of Saalhelm described something very different, and the Candle’s disquiet grew as he read, because as much as he knew that he ought to dismiss the writing, he found himself wanting to believe it. The Singer described a type of manual that proscribed the procedures for changing the corporeal world with words and thought. That such manuals existed was little surprise. That proved nothing about the legitimacy of the fantasies of Old Blood. What disturbed the Candle, more and more deeply the more he pondered his discomfort, was that he had not encountered more of these manuals. He suspected suddenly that the books he had encountered in the past had been removed from circulation, with no command from himself.

The Candle pushed himself up from the table too fast and was overcome with light headedness. He tried to shake off the swoon, but combined with the broken reverie of reading, it was too much. His legs betrayed him and he fell. He heard an ominous crack as his knee hit the cold stone and he swore at the pain. He struggled to his feet and went as quickly as he could down the stairs. He knew that the pain should be more severe, that he was in shock, and that he was doing himself more injury by walking, but he pressed on toward the main desk, where new acquisitions waited to be classified, catalogued, and shelved. He knew what he would find, with growing certainty, as he staggered down the hall, leaning against the bookshelves. Even in the half light, from across the room, the Candle could identify every spine of every book, at least enough to see they were all in Imperial Standard or Siltian. The book that had been taken from the heretic, Larie Cahn, was gone. He kept moving until he could lean on the desk, where he examined the last page of the catalogue, and found no mention of the missing book.

The Candle fought the urge to get down on his hands and knees and crawl out to his carriage. He would not risk Loche Mendlekker seeing him that way. The shock had faded and the pain was arriving, and by the time he reached the carriage, tears were streaming from his eyes. He pounded on the door to wake his driver.

“The Penitentiary!” He yelled, startling the nearby guards, and pulled himself into the carriage. His robe was stained with blood, and when he gingerly pulled it up to examine his knee, he saw shards of bone emerging from puffy blue flesh. His head was swimming, and he would have vomited had there been anything in his stomach.

When the Lash opened the door the penitentiary, the Candle took one step and collapsed. The Lash caught him easily.

“You are hurt,” the Lash told him. The Lash took him up into his arms, as if he weighed no more than a boy, carried him down the hall, and layed him down on a cold stone table. The Candle cried out as the Lash’s hand pressed his knee. Consciousness began to give way to pain, and he cried out again when the Lash secured the manacles around his wrists and strapped him to the table. He felt the cold blade of a knife against his knee and gasped. He heard himself murmer, “The girl, Larie Cahn, I need her alive,” before the world slipped away.

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