Phoran walked back to his bed and perched on the end, offering a nearby padded bench to Avar with his hand. "Tell me everything you know."
"Does this have something to do with taking the proposals?" asked Avar as he availed himself of the offered seat and leaned back against the wall.
"I don't know," said Phoran truthfully.
"Well then." Avar put his head back and relaxed. "They choose young men of noble blood when they're fifteen or sixteen and induct them in some sort of secret ceremony. They don't pick a lot of boys - no more than five or ten a year. I don't know what they do at the ceremony - but my brother carried bruises from it for a week or more. The people they choose are usually the ones who are... well, problems for their families."
He looked at Phoran a moment, then sighed. "I know they had something to do with that mess last year when some young thugs destroyed the weavers' market. I saw Toarsen coming home in the wee hours of the morning, dead drunk with a hatchet in his hand. I should have said something, but" - he shrugged ruefully - "he's my brother."
"Do you know any of the older members?" asked Phoran. "The Raptors?"
"Some," answered Avar with a quick grin. "The ones my brother gripes the most about. The council leader - the Sept of Gorrish is one of them and Telleridge is another. My father was - I think that's how my brother was selected."
Phoran closed his eyes and thought. "Didn't the Weavers' Guild file a complaint against Gorrish just before the market was destroyed? They dropped it because he was instrumental in getting funds to help them rebuild it."
"You're right," said Avar in an arrested voice. "I never thought to look for a deeper motive. I've always thought of the Secret Path as a game for boys who are at loose ends."
"I have heard that you cannot be an heir to a Sept and belong to the Path," said Phoran.
"Gorrish's father and three older brothers died in the plague that hit the Empire about twenty years ago," said Avar. "He's not the only younger son who has inherited." He smiled. "My own father was a second son."
Phoran had a terrible thought. Maybe it was because he'd just spent the night talking to a bard that he'd thought of the old story of the Shadowed. How the first magic the Shadowed had loosed was plague. Maybe it was all the talk of magic - or maybe it was his current affliction of Memory. "How many of those second and third sons, or cousins who inherited a Sept were members of the Path?" he asked.
"I don't know exactly - I was about four at the time, Phoran. The younger sons who inherited unexpectedly... oh, Seal Hold, Telleridge, Jenne, and a few others. You aren't going to tell me that the Secret Path is responsible for the plague, are you?" Avar shook his head. "A lot of people died, Phoran. Most of them weren't Septs with heirs who happened to be members of the Secret Club."
"Doubtless, you're right." Phoran smiled and changed the subject. "I am calling a Council Seating for tomorrow," he said.
"You are?" asked Avar, surprised into insult.
Phoran smiled at him grimly. "It may have become usual, since my uncle died, for Gorrish to call the Seat, but it is the imperial prerogative he uses. I am calling it, and I'd like you to deliver the messages. See if you can convince them that it's just a silly whim of mine - that I said something about being bored."
Avar stared at him for a long time, then nodded his head. "I'll do that. Tell me what time you'd like to meet."
The Memory came again that night. Phoran waited impatiently for it to finish. At last the cold tongue licked the puncture wounds clean and the Memory gave him the usual offer.
"Were you a Traveler held by the Secret Path?" Phoran asked.
"Yes," it said and was gone with its usual abruptness.
Pale and a little dizzy, the Emperor went to his closet and pulled on a robe. With only a little caution - because the Path's rooms were in an obscure corner of the palace - Phoran made it back to the bard's cell with little trouble. He found Tier's door unlocked, but when he went in, Tier lay unmoving on his bed and nothing Phoran could do would awaken him.