The Dragon's Path

you what? I mean, I’m not sure what you’re saying.”
    “Yes you are,” the man said, and started back toward the temple. Geder trotted to keep up. “Why did you come looking for the Sinir Kushku? What was it that drew you here?”
    “You mean…”
    “Through the ages, other men have found us here. Stumbled upon us. You came
seeking.
What was it that led you here?”
    Two of the younger priests passed them, heading towardthe well. Geder cracked his knuckles and frowned. He tried to remember what had started him. When was the first time he’d heard the legend? But perhaps that in itself didn’t matter.
    “Everywhere I turn,” he said, the words coming slowly, “it seems like things are lies. I don’t know who my friends are, not really. I don’t know who gave me Vanai. Or who in Camnipol would want me killed. Everything in court seems like a game, and I’m the only one who doesn’t know the rules.”
    “You are not a man of deceit.”
    “No. I am. I have been. I’ve lied and hidden things. I know how easy it is.”
    Basrahip stopped, leaning against a boulder. The wide face was impassive. Almost serene. Geder crossed his arms. A stirring of anger warmed his chest.
    “I’ve been a token in everyone else’s game,” Geder said. “My whole life, I’ve been the one they tricked into sitting on sawn boards over the shit hole. I’ve been the one they laughed at. They burned my book. Alan Klin burned my
book.
”
    “Did that bring you here?”
    “Yes. No. I mean, when I was a boy, I used to tell myself stories like the old histories. Where I led an army into a doomed battle and won. Or saved the queen. Or went to the underworld and pulled my mother back from the dead. And every time I’ve gone into the world, it’s disappointed me. Do you know what that’s like?”
    “I do,” the high priest said. “You didn’t come here to write an essay, Lord Geder. You came here to find us. To find me.”
    Geder felt his mouth in a grim, hard scowl.
    “I did,” he said. “Because I want to know the truth.Because I am sick to death of wondering. All the lies and deceits and games that everyone plays around me? I want to be the one man who can cut it away and find the truth. And so I heard about the end of all doubt.”
    “Would knowing alone be enough? Would it bring you peace?”
    “It would,” Geder said.
    Basrahip paused, listening. A fly whined around them, landed on the big man’s wide head to drink his sweat, and flew away again.
    “It wouldn’t,” Basrahip said, hauling himself back to his feet. “That isn’t what you want. But you are coming closer, Lord Geder. Much closer.”
    I heard them talking,” one of his servants whispered. “They’re going to kill us all in our sleep.”
    Geder sat in the darkness of his cell. The whispers were supposed to be quiet enough to escape him. If he’d been back in his cot, they would have. Instead, he’d slipped out and padded across the dark floor on silent feet. His back was to the wall beside the doorway, his servants not seven feet away.
    “Stop talking shit,” his squire said. “You’re just scaring yourself.”
    “I’m not,” the first voice said again, higher and tighter this time. “You think they want people knowing where they are? You think they’re at the ass end of the world because they want company?”
    A third voice said something, but he couldn’t make out the words.
    “And let them,” the first voice said. “What I heard, he burned down Vanai just because he could, and laughed while he did it.”
    “Keep talking about his lordship that way and it won’t bethese sand monkeys in priest robes that kill you,” his squire’s voice said. “I’ll face down a hundred false gods before I cross him.”
    Geder hugged his knees closer. He expected to feel hurt, but the pain didn’t come. Or anger. He rose to his feet, walking without any attempt to be quiet. He heard the silence of the servants outside his door, but he didn’t care about them. Not what they thought, not what they were, not if they lived. He found his tunic and a pair of leggings and pulled them on in the darkness. He didn’t bother trying to get the stays all tied. Modesty was preserved, and that was enough. Basrahip wouldn’t mind.
    When he walked out into the starlit dark, his servants were pretending to sleep. He stepped over them, walking the narrow path along the mountainside, the dirt cooling his feet and the stones biting them. In the first