The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, #1)(54)
The abbess spoke it before every Divination.
The king swore to be more supplicant than sovereign, that he would never take up the mantle of his faith for personal gain—never seek the Omens or their stone objects for his own power or vanity.
The king let out a labored breath. “My grandfather was brought to Aisling. Forced to endure a Divination. Five bad portents were Divined. After”—his blue eyes went cold—“he was stoned in the courtyard by the knights and the gargoyles.”
I bit down. Looked at the gargoyle, snoring next to me. “I’m sorry.”
He nodded. “He was Maude’s mentor. Rory’s deliverer.” His blue eyes flared. “And my namesake. So you see, Six, our hatred for the Omens is historical. Professional. Personal.”
I tapped my fingers on the table. “Say your grandfather is right about everything—that the Omens are mortal craftsmen who came to the tor two centuries ago and now playact as gods.” I spoke slowly, granting the question the import it was due. “How is it I dream of them in the spring?”
Benji thumbed through the notebook and found a page near the end, the scribblings faded with time. He pushed it in front of me.
I know not how the Diviners see the Omens in their dreams. It is a very strange kind of transportive magic. Indeed, there is very little I understand about Aisling Cathedral’s fetid spring. But the Artful Brigand, the beast, told young Rodrick Myndacious one essential thing:
There is eternal magic in the water upon the tor, and those who drink it are just that: eternal.
“It’s the spring, Six. That awful, rotten water. The Omens want it.” He nodded, as if coaxing me along. “That’s why I came to Aisling a week ago. It wasn’t for a Divination. We needed to get close to the spring. Rory stole the water like he used to for the Artful Brigand, and we used it to lure him out of Castle Luricht, then the Harried Scribe, here in the Seacht. The water…” He paused, his voice quieted by wonder. “It does something to the Omens, their bodies, maybe even their minds.”
What has been done to us?
I shoved the king’s notebook back at him. “I’ve been drinking that water since I was a girl. All Diviners drink it.”
The king fumbled with his cup. “Y-yes.”
“What’s going to happen to us?”
Red in the cheeks, Benji avoided my gaze. He looked like he wanted to throw himself into his ale. “I can’t be certain. But the Artful Brigand and the Faithful Forester and the Harried Scribe were, in some part, made out of stone—”
“You’re saying I’m going to turn into stone?”
He shook his head so forcefully the table wobbled. “I didn’t say that.”
“What does your grandfather’s notebook say becomes of Diviners after their service?”
“Very little.” Benji drank, pressing his hand over the notebook. “His obsession was with the Omens, I’m afraid. I was hoping—” He looked up. “I was hoping we could find out together. That you’d help me achieve what my grandfather never realized.” He tried to smile. “I want you to help me take up the mantle.”
I stared. “That’s asking me to betray everything I’ve ever believed in.”
“Yes.” Benji peered across the table at the snoring gargoyle, then me in turn. “You believed a story, and that story was a lie. The Omens are not divine. They are mortals who are paid like kings to live like gods. Imagine where all that money for Divination might go if it wasn’t spent filling Aisling’s coffers or wasted in the hamlets on the Omens.”
I thought of the impoverished, wandering the Seacht’s streets at night. “But doesn’t some of Aisling’s money goes to—”
“Foundling houses. It does.” Gentle, his gaze. “Have you considered that may not be such a fine thing? Foundlings are but another source of income for your abbess—to keep the facade going.”
I hadn’t thought of that.
Benji leaned forward. He was young and a little unsure of himself, but I was learning by the second that he was not stupid. He could sense that I was beginning to crumble. “The Faithful Forester, the Artful Brigand, and now the Harried Scribe have been killed, their wealth distributed in a way that will grant me favor when the time comes. I can change the hamlets with that money, and my own reputation as a Castor as well. But if your abbess is indeed the sixth Omen, I will need more than money, more than Rory and Maude, more than a magic coin and inkwell, before I return to Aisling to confront her. She has her gargoyles—and hundreds of years of trust—beneath her hand. If I am not very careful, I will meet the same untimely end as my grandfather.” He smiled. “But then, he never had a Diviner at his side, did he?”
The king read a final passage from his grandfather’s notebook. “‘Faith requires a display. The greater the spectacle, the greater the illusion.’”
He snapped the notebook shut. Pinned me with his blue eyes. “Come with me to the other hamlets,” he said. “Wear your shroud. It will lend you an air of prominence. Speak those pious words—ever but visitors. No one will suspect me of anything untoward if a Diviner of Aisling travels with me. Folk of the hamlets might even look upon me with respect I don’t often garner.”
“Because you are young.”