The Dragon's Path

and flake away in his fingertips, but he needed to get as close to the original texts as he could. It seemed to him that there had to be something—some word or phrase that could havebeen translated in more than one way—that would mention the existence and history of the goddess.
    The door of his sitting room swung open and Basrahip came in. He still wore his robes from the temple in the mountains, but he’d accepted a pair of leather-soled boots for walking on the cobbled streets of Camnipol. Among the rich red tapestries and soft upholstered chairs of the Palliako room in Camnipol, he looked entirely out of place. A desert weed in an arrangement of roses. He smiled at Geder and bowed.
    “Been walking again?” Geder said.
    “I knew tales of the great cities of the world, but nothing I had imagined could be so grand and so corrupt,” the priest said. “A child not more than seven summers old lied to me. And for no reason.”
    “What did he say?”
    The huge priest lumbered to a chair just across from Geder and lowered himself into it, the wood creaking under him as he spoke.
    “That he could tell my future for three copper coins. He knew it was untrue. A child.”
    “He was a beggar,” Geder said. “Of course they’re trying to cheat you. They need the money for food. I think you should be careful where you walk, though. There are parts of the city that aren’t safe. Especially after dark.”
    “You live in an age of darkness, my friend. But this city will be beautiful beyond measure when it is pure.”
    “Have you been to the temple?”
    “I have,” Basrahip said. “It is a beautiful building. I am looking forward to the day when I can make it my own.”
    “The paperwork shouldn’t take long. Before the close of court, certainly, and that’s less than a week now. But there’s not much to do in Camnipol over the winter months.”
    “I have tasks enough.”
    “So I’ve been reading,” Geder said, “and there’s something bothering me.”
    “Yes?”
    “The goddess is eternal. She was there at the birth of the dragons. She was there all through the Dragon Empire, but the only references I see to the Righteous Servant or the Sinir Kushku come at the very end, during the final war. And then they talk about it as if Morade created it, the way Asteril made the Timzinae or Vailoth made the Drowned. I just don’t understand how that can be right.”
    “Perhaps then it cannot,” the priest said. “You should put less trust in written words, my friend. They are the stone eggs of lies. Here. I will show you. Read something from your book there.”
    Geder flipped the pages, fingertips shifting across the words until he found a passage that was easily rendered.
    “It was the fourth century of the Dragon Vailoth’s rule when these policies changed.”
    “Is that true?” the priest asked him. “Is it untrue? Do you mean what you say? No, old friend. It’s neither. Your voice carries nothing. They are only words you repeat emptily. To write a thing down is to kill it. Only in the living voice can the truth be known. My brothers and I have listened to one another, passing the voice of the goddess down from generation to generation, and with every new speaking from the start, we have known what we heard to be true. These books you have? They are ink on paper. Objects. Soulless. You would be wiser not to put your faith in them.”
    “Oh,” Geder said. “That’s… I’d never looked at things that way. Does that—?”
    “Geder?”
    Lerer Palliako stood in the doorway. His tunic was theblue and gray of House Palliako, formally cut with silver buttons on the sleeve. His hand clutched the doorway, as if he needed it to keep himself steady.
    “What’s the matter, Father?”
    “We have a visitor. You should come with me.”
    Geder rose to his feet, alarm tightening his skin. Basrahip looked from the doorway to Geder and back.
    “Stay here,” Geder said. “I’ll come back as soon as I can.”
    Lerer walked in silence through the halls. The servants, usually buzzing through the rooms like bees in a meadow, were gone. At the door to the private meeting chamber, he stopped. For a moment, Geder thought he would speak, but instead he shook his head, opened the door, and stepped in.
    The private chamber had been designed for comfort. Candles glowed from polished silver sconces, doubling their light and filling the room with the scents of honey and heat. A fire grate sat unlit and