In the Hall of the Dragon King (23 page)

Quentin knelt down before the fountain and felt the smooth stone cool against his legs. In the quiet he heard the breathing of the elders behind him and the burble of the fountain dancing in its bowl. Then Yeseph, standing over him, said, “This is a place of power, the center of the Arigas' devotion, for in this room each young Ariga received a blessing when he came of age.

“They received many blessings throughout life, but this was a special one, delivered not by the elder or priest, but by Whist Orren, the Most High God himself.

“This special blessing they carried throughout life, and it became a part of their life. They did not earn it, nor did it require a ritual of purification or obedience. The blessing is a gift of the god. All that is required is a true heart and a desire to receive it.

“Now then, is there any reason why you should not receive the Blessing of the Ariga?” Quentin, his eyes focused on the fountain while Yeseph had been speaking, turned to look into the elder's kindly eyes.

“No,” he said softly. “It is my desire to receive the blessing.”

“Then so be it,” said Yeseph. Raising his hands above Quentin's head, he began to speak. “Most High God, here is one who would be your follower. Speak to him now, and out of your wisdom and truth, give him your blessing.”

Again Quentin was struck by the bare simplicity of the prayer—an unadorned request, spoken with calm assurance.

Yeseph stooped to the fountain and cupped his hands in the water. “Drink,” he commanded, offering Quentin the water.

Quentin took a sip, and Yeseph then touched his forehead with damp fingertips. “Water is the symbol of life; all living things need water to live. And so it is the symbol of the Creator of Life, Whist Orren.

“Close your eyes,” Yeseph instructed and lifted his voice in an ancient song.

At first Quentin did not recognize the words; the elder's quavering voice echoed strangely in his ears as it reverberated in the stone chamber. Yeseph's song seemed to swell, filling the chamber, and Quentin realized the others were singing too. It was a song about the god and his promise to walk among his people and guide them in his ways. Quentin found the song moving, and as the simple melody was repeated, he recited the words to himself.

Gradually Yeseph's song died away, and Quentin heard a voice. Was it Yeseph's or another's? He could not tell—it could have been his own. The voice seemed to speak directly to his heart, to some part of him that he carried deep within.

Quentin then entered a dream.

In the dream he still knelt upon the cool stone floor, but around him lay a bright meadow of limitless size. The lush green valley shimmered in honeyed light. The light itself seemed to emanate from no single source, but rather hung over the meadow like a golden mist.

The air smelled of pine and the lighter fragrance of sweet grass. Overhead the sky formed an arc of delicate blue iridescence, which fairly rippled with subtle shades of changing color, yet appeared always the same. No sun roamed the sky, but the heavens, as the whole of the valley, seemed charged with light.

A crystal brook burbled close by, joyfully offering up its music to his ears. The water seemed alive as it splashed and danced along, sliding over the smooth, round stones.

An air of peace breathed over the scene, and Quentin felt a surge of joy spring up like a fountain inside him. His heart tugged within him, as if struggling to break free and soar aloft on light wings of happiness.

The voice he had heard before called him again, saying, “Quentin, do you know me?”

Quentin looked around somewhat fearfully. He saw no one nearby who might be speaking to him; he was utterly alone. But the voice continued.

“In the still of the night you have heard my voice, and in the depths of your heart you have sought my face. Though you searched for me in unholy temples, I cast you not aside.”

Quentin shuddered and asked in a small voice, “Who are you? Tell me, that I may know you.”

“I am the Maker, the One, the Most High. The gods themselves tremble in my presence. They are shadows, faint mists tossed on the breeze and dispersed. I alone am worthy of your devotion.”

As the voice spoke, Quentin realized he had heard it many times before, or had so longed to hear it—in the dark of his temple cell when he cried out alone. He knew it, though he had never heard it this clearly, this distinctly, before.

“O Most High, let your servant see you,” Quentin pleaded. Instantly the peaceful meadow was awash in a brilliant white light, and Quentin threw his arm across his face.

When he dared to peer beneath his arm, he saw the shimmering form of a man standing before him.

The man stood tall, with wide shoulders, rather young, but his features bore the stamp of a wise, seasoned leader. The man's form seemed to waver in Quentin's gaze as if Quentin were seeing a reflection in the water. The man appeared solid enough, but his outline grew fuzzy at the edges as if made of focused beams of living light, or clothed in an aura of rainbowlike luminescence.

But his face held Quentin's attention. The Man of Light's eyes gleamed like hot coals, and his face shone with the radiance of glowing bronze. Quentin could not remove his gaze from the dark, fathomless depths of the man's burning eyes. They held his in a sort of lover's embrace: strong yet gentle, commanding yet yielding. Hunger of a kind Quentin could not name burned out from those eyes, and Quentin felt afraid for presuming to exist within the sphere of the radiant being's sight.

“Have no fear,” said the man. The tone was unspeakably gentle. “Long have I had my hand on you and upheld you. Look on me and know in your heart that I am your friend.”

Quentin did as he was bid and experienced a sudden rush of recognition, as if he had just met a close friend or a brother who had been long absent. His eyes filled with tears.

“Please, I am not worthy . . .”

“My touch will cleanse you,” said the Man of Light.

Quentin felt a warmth upon his forehead where the man placed two fingertips. The shame vanished as the warmth spread throughout his body. He wanted to leap, to sing, to dance before the Man of Light who stood over him.

“You seek a blessing,” said the Man of Light. “You have but to name it.”

Quentin tried to make the words come, but they would not. “I do not know how to ask for this blessing . . . though I know in my heart that I need it.”

“Then we will ask your heart to reveal what lies within.”

A sound of anguish and sorrow such as Quentin had never heard ripped from his own throat. It was as if a stopper had been removed from a jar and the contents poured out upon the ground in a sudden flood.

The cry ended as suddenly as it began, though for a moment it lingered in the air as it faded. Quentin blinked in amazement, shocked by the intensity of his own feelings—for that was what it was: the raw, unspoken emotions wrenched from his heart.

“Your heart is troubled about a great many things,” said the Man of Light. “You cry out for your friends. You fear what may happen to them if you are not with them. You seek the assurance of success in rescuing your king from the hold of the evil one.”

Quentin nodded dumbly; these were his feelings of the last few days.

“But more than this you seek higher things: wisdom and truth. You would know if there are true gods men may pray to who will answer their prayers.”

It was true. All the long nights alone in his temple cell, the anguished cries of longing came back to him.

“Quentin.” The Man of Light stretched out a broad, open hand to him. “My ways are wisdom, and my words are truth. Seek them and your path will know no fear. Seek me and you will find life.

“You ask a blessing—I will give you this: Your arm will be righteousness and your hand justice. Though you grow weary and walk in darkness, fear nothing. I will be your strength and the light at your feet. I will be your comforter and guide; forsake me not, and I will give you peace forever.”

Quentin, looking deeply into the Man of Light's eyes, felt himself falling into the limitless void of time—as if through the dark reaches of starless night. He saw not through his own eyes, but through the eyes of the god, the orderly march of the ages, time stretching out past and future in front of him in an unbroken line.

Then he saw a man he seemed to recognize. He was arrayed for battle, and his armor blazed as if made from a single diamond; he carried a sword that burned with a hungry flame, and a shield that shone with a cool radiance, scattering light like a prism.

The knight spoke and raised his sword, and the darkness retreated before him. Then the knight, with a mighty heave, flung the sword into the air, where it spun, throwing off tongues of fire that filled the sky.

When the knight turned again, Quentin recognized with a shock that the knight was himself—older and stronger, but himself.

“I am the Lord of All,” said the voice, “maker of all things.” Then the vision faded, and Quentin was once again staring into the Man of Light's eyes. But now he knew them to be the eyes of the god himself, whose voice he had heard in the night, who had called him by name.

“Quentin, will you follow me?” the Man of Light asked gently.

Quentin, bursting with contending emotions, threw himself at the Man of Light's feet and touched them with his hands. A current of living energy flowed through him, and he felt stronger, wiser, surer than ever before in his life. He felt as if he had touched the source of life itself.

“I will follow,” said Quentin, his voice small and uncertain.

“Then rise. You have received your blessing.”

When Quentin came to himself, he was lying on his side in the dark. A single candle burned in its shallow bowl. Before him the fountain splashed; the sound made the chamber seem empty. Quentin raised his head to look around and saw that he was alone.

As he got up to leave the inner room, he noticed that his right arm and hand tingled with a peculiar prickly sensation: both hot and cold at the same time. He paused to rub them and then went out.

27

T
he rain fell in a miserable drizzle from a low, gray, unhappy sky. The track underfoot had become a muddy rivulet that trickled slowly as it wound its way down the hill among the giant forest evergreens. Quentin, astride Balder, and Toli, mounted on a black-and-white pony left behind by the others, slid uncertainly down the trail in a muffled silence that hung on them like the heavy hooded cloaks they wrapped themselves in to keep out the rain. The trail from Dekra to the east was a much improved version of the boggy maze they had floundered through on their way to the ruined city. So Quentin let Balder have his head and allowed his mind to wander where it would. He thought again of their leave-taking from Yeseph, Mollena, and the others.

A sad parting it was, for in the short time he had been with them, he had grown very fond of them. They had said a few brief words of farewell—the Curatak do not believe in lengthy good-byes, since they consider that all who serve the god will one day be reunited to live forever together—and as the horses stamped the ground impatiently, Quentin embraced Mollena and hugged Yeseph a little clumsily.

“Come back, Quentin, when your quest is at an end,” said Yeseph. “We would welcome a pupil like you.”

“I will come back when I can,” promised Quentin, swinging himself into the saddle. “I am grateful for all I have received of your kindness. Thank you.”

“The god goes with you both,” said Mollena. She turned her face away, and Quentin saw the sparkle of a tear in the corner of her eye.

He looked on them for a lingering moment and then wheeled the big warhorse around and started down the hill into the forest. He looked long over his shoulder, etching the memory deep into his mind. He wanted to remember it always as it appeared then: the sun filling the sky with a joyous light; the high, bright sky scrubbed clean by white clouds; the red stone walls of the city rising gracefully into the heady spring air; his friends standing at the wide-open gates, waving him away until at last the slope of the hill cut them off from view.

Quentin had never experienced a more emotional departure. But then, he reflected, he had never known anything but the coldness of the temple priests, who never greeted nor bade farewell.

Inside, Quentin tingled with excitement; his heart soared like a bird freed at last from a long captivity. He quickly forgot his melancholy of leaving in the overflowing good spirits he felt at being alive, being back on the trail, and reliving again the vision of the night before.

He had found it extremely difficult to sleep at all the last night. After the feasts in his honor, where there was more singing and dancing and games, which lasted long into the night, he and Toli had returned to Mollena's rooms in the palatial governor's home. He had told them of the vision. Yeseph, and some of the other elders who had also gathered there, listened intently, nodding and pulling their beards.

“Your vision is a powerful sign. You are favored by the god,” he said. “He has special plans for you,” declared Yeseph.

“The Blessing of the Ariga,” mused Elder Themu, “is itself a thing of power, for it carries with it the ability to accomplish its own end. The Most High God grants to every pure heart a blessing in kind and the strength to carry out its purpose. In so doing you will find your own happiness and fulfillment.”

Quentin puzzled over this and asked, “Then what does my vision mean?”

“That is for you to discover. The god may show you in his own time, but most often knowledge only comes with struggle. You must work out the meaning yourself, for the interpretation comes in the doing.”

“This is indeed different from the ways of the old gods,” said Quentin. “In the temple the people come to the priest for an oracle. The priest takes the offering and seeks an oracle or an omen on behalf of the pilgrim. He then explains the meaning of the oracle.”