“Alfred, you and the dog must leave my house this night.”
Yes, that would be best. Sighing, not holding out much hope that this would work, she returned to the terrace.
Alfred wasn’t there.
“He’s gone to the library.”
Orla knew it as well as if she could look across the miles and peer through the walls and see him inside. He’d found a way to enter that wouldn’t alert anyone to his presence. And she knew that he would find what he sought.
“He won’t understand. He wasn’t there. I must try to make him see my images!”
Orla whispered the runes, traced the magic with her hands, and departed on its wings.
The dog growled, warningly, and jumped to its feet. Alfred looked up from his reading. A figure clad in white was approaching, coming from the back of the library. He couldn’t see who it was: Samah, Ramu? . . .
Alfred didn’t particularly care. He wasn’t nervous, wasn’t assailed by guilt, wasn’t afraid. He was appalled and shocked and sickened and he was, he was startled to discover, glad to be able to confront someone.
He rose to his feet, his body trembling, not with fear, but with his anger. The figure stepped into the light he had magically created to read by.
The two stared at each other. Quick indrawn breaths slipped to sighs, eyes silently exchanged words of the heart that could never be spoken.
“You know,” said Orla.
“Yes,” answered Alfred, lowering his gaze, flustered.
He’d been expecting Samah. He could be angry with Samah. He felt a need to be angry, to release his anger that bubbled inside him like Abarrach’s hot lava sea. But how could he vent his anger on her, when what he truly wanted to do was take her in his arms? . . .
“I’m sorry,” Orla said. “It makes things very difficult.”
“Difficult!” Fury and indignation struck Alfred a blow that left him reeling, addled his brain. “Difficult! That’s all you can say?” He gestured wildly to the scroll lying open on the table before him. “What you did . . . When you knew . . . This records everything, the arguments in the Council. The fact that certain Sartan were beginning to believe in a higher power. How could you . . . Lies, all lies! The horror, the destruction, the deaths . . . Unnecessary! And you knew—”
“No, we didn’t!” Orla cried.
She strode forward, came to stand before him, her hand on the table, the scroll, that separated them. The dog sat back on its haunches, looking at each with its intelligent eyes.
“We didn’t know! Not for certain! And the Patryns were growing in strength, in power. And against their might, what did we have? Vague feelings, nothing that could ever be defined.”
“Vague feelings!” repeated Alfred. “Vague feelings! I’ve known those feelings. They were … it was . . . the most wonderful experience! The Chamber of the Damned, they called it. But I knew it as the Chamber of the Blessed. I understood the reason for my being. I was given to know I could change things for the better. I was told that if I had faith, all would be well. I didn’t want to leave that wonderful place—”
Why, if Samah feared the scroll’s discovery, didn’t he burn it?
“I believe,” writes Alfred, in an addendum to this section, “that Samah had an innate regard for the truth. He tried to deny it, attempted to suppress it, but he could not bring himself to destroy it.”
“But you did leave!” Orla reminded him. “You couldn’t stay, could you? And what happened in Abarrach when you left?”
Alfred, troubled, drew back from her. He looked down at the scroll, though he wasn’t seeing it; his hand toyed with its edges.
“You doubted,” she told him. “You didn’t believe what you’d seen. You questioned your own feelings. You came back to a world that was dark and frightening, and if you had caught a glimpse of a greater good, a power vaster and more wondrous than your own, then where was it? You even wondered if it was a trick. . . .”