Surrender to the Will of the Night - By Glen Cook Page 0,76

warmth on her part than his. Bright with concern, she demanded, “What’s going on?”

The Perfect gestured. “Your brother sent for you. Not I.”

“Sit, Isabeth,” Tormond told his sister. “Listen. This may be the last chance I get to speak.”

The Duke rattled along as though there was more in need of saying than he possibly had time to say. He had been having apocalyptic visions. Disaster could not be avoided but its harsher details were not yet fixed.

Twice Isabeth started to interrupt. Twice Brother Candle stopped her with a gesture. This would be a grim race. Tormond had no time for interruptions.

He did not get as specific as anyone wanted. Always the trouble with sibyls, though Brother Candle did concede that all futures were fluid as long as they still lay ahead. The Night saw possibilities and probabilities but could fix nothing to its place or temporal point before it happened.

Still, some things verged upon certainties. None of Tormond’s futures boded well for Khaurene.

Tormond’s flirtation with lucidity degenerated into a gurgling mumble. The Duke vainly trying to communicate, still.

Isabeth eyed the Perfect. He stared back. She said, “It will start before we’re ready.”

“The future always arrives before we’re ready. Whatever you do, the ambush comes when you don’t expect it. But he did tell you a lot that you can use.” In a way. The personalities set to dance in the coming storm thought too much of themselves to deliberate what might be best in the long term.

Isabeth said, “I’ll have to inform Peter. He’ll have decisions to make. And you. You can’t waste time. Go preach to your people.”

He had other obligations, too. And might succeed in fulfilling none.

The dying man’s most dire visions had presented as the most determined futures.

And Tormond was dying. No doubt about it. He had given them a choice of three dates, all inconvenient. Two could be beaten by taking action to prevent them. Action entirely within the domain of Father Fornier.

Brother Candle suggested, “Whatever you do, be clear and don’t sugarcoat. Your husband’s choices will be hard. He deserves the best information possible.”

Isabeth considered him for several long seconds. She was no child. And she was not her brother. If anything, she could be hasty making decisions. “You accept what he told us, Master?”

Brother Candle did not correct her usage. She had done that deliberately, for the benefit of her companions. Most Direcian nobles were solid Brothen Episcopals, if openly contemptuous and defiant of the Patriarch himself. They were willing to exterminate the inquestors of the Society—mainly because those fanatics presented a threat to the nobility’s temporal power.

Isabeth was suspect religiously. She sprang from this nest of heresy. She had to tread carefully.

Brother Candle said, “I accept his visions. My creed tells me I must accept what is. The Night is. The Instrumentalities are. None of us can deny those facts because they’re inconvenient.”

Nothing he said contravened Chaldarean doctrine. So long as no one accorded the Instrumentalities any status but that of devils or demons.

Truths like that did not please the kind of soul that found completion only in a Society for the Suppression of Sacrilege and Heresy. A soul determined to coerce God Himself to conform.

Brother Candle said, “I’ve played the part your brother created for me. Which was to make sure he got his say and you people listened.”

Isabeth was skeptical.

She was a tired, graying woman who had spent her adult years enmeshed in the politics of her brother and husband. She had seen little of the stylish court life enjoyed by most women of standing. From the moment the Connec went into continuous crisis she had scant opportunity to enjoy the company of her husband or son. Who would be walking and talking and making life an adventure for his nurses, now. And whose name, Brother Candle realized, he did not know.

Embarrassed, he asked.

Isabeth rattled off a string of names. Direcians liked to get their favorite ancestors and saints involved. “But just Peter, or Little Peter, for everyday.” Wistfully.

Brother Candle got away soon afterward. Bicot Hodier accompanied him to the citadel gate. “I can’t walk you all the way, Brother. Tormond will need close watching now. He sometimes suffers after using Fornier’s infusion.”

“I understand. I know the way. I’m not senile yet. I just walk slower.”

* * *

The Perfect did not walk alone. He soon realized that he had a tail, a brace of rogues who did not appear to be moved by benign intent. But they suffered a change of