“Truth,” Taul said.
“As you wish,” Kandah said.
“I will have the best tenders,” Taul said. “I don’t care where we find them, even nomads and barbarians if necessary. I don’t care if we must dye their hair and stain their skin to attend the high matron.”
At this, Kandah’s eyes smiled at him for the first time. “Truly? Are you prepared for it? It will require something quite different from you. Like the way a sheep herder decides which sheep to slaughter. You’ll need to tolerate inconvenience.”
“I can do it,” Taul said. “It must be done.”
“Let us work together, then,” Kandah said gleefully.
“We should go,” Taul said, reaching for the door handle.
“Stay, minister!” Kandah pleaded. “I may have questions about these new samples.” He glanced at Balniss. “That book there, at the end. The leather one with the silver frame. You may find it interesting, Master Diviner. Though be careful with its pages. Quite old.”
His eyes shone brightly as Balniss stepped toward the tome. Balniss opened the front cover and sat down, mesmerized.
Taul huffed.
Kandah only smiled. “Sit with me, minister. Let us look at these samples more closely.”
He inspected each sample, gently turning each over with his ink-stained fingers. The same as the care a tender took with a young shoot.
Taul leaned close and asked, “Can we save it?”
Kandah looked dazed, pulled back from a faraway place.
“What? The orchard?” Kandah shrugged. “Not my area of expertise. But as with all things, the goddess will decide.”
Taul’s brow furrowed, and Kandah chuckled.
“Don’t like that, do you? Neither does the High Matron. But it’s not my saying.”
“Why stay here, then?” Balniss asked, looking up from the tome.
“I thought I might be one to aid rather than hinder this time. The high matron is heavy-handed with her power. It happens to all with little sorcery. To those of us with power, well, it is like the air we breathe. A necessity. She is learning, but I fear it is too late. And her daughter…” He sighed. “But you,” he said to Taul, “you are what I have been waiting for.”
“How’s that?” Taul asked.
“Someone willing to stand in the face of ten thousand years of tradition and custom,” Kandah said. “To make the tough choices your ancestors made. Oh, if you only knew.” He shook his head. “Let us see if you can when the time comes. I am curious! There are three paths for my kind: to know, to aid, to destroy. To know… but to what end? There are only two paths then. Can knowledge truly stand still at the center of all things… inert? I think not. Until now, my goal had been to know.”
“And not truly aid the high matron,” Taul said.
Kandah pursed his lips, refusing to acknowledge. “My people have an extraordinarily long history, Taul. And our goals are our own, not so different from your ancients, but different enough. Unlike today’s Mornae, who can barely see beyond the next season, I am more like your ancestors, or they were like me. We must see the vast expanse, the long growth—like your orchards. Do you understand?”
Taul did. He knew the layers of history buried inside the ancient trunks, deep in the roots.
“What do you find in those depths, I wonder,” Kandah said. His pale-green eyes deepened.
“I don’t think there would be anything of interest there,” Taul said. “I think we’ve given you enough of ourselves.”
Kandah grinned. “Indeed.”
Taul recalled his baby’s pyre and others he’d seen. How the failed tenders clawed their way out of the pit, weeping, destined to be less, and fade from the goddess’s sight.
Kandah tilted his head, considering them both. “I shouldn’t tell you, but this is your project. We are all together in a cozy conspiracy within the wider conspiracy.” He sighed when they didn’t respond to his quips. “As you wish. I will tell you what five people in all Vaidolin know. It can only help, now that you have guessed what others refuse to see. When your people, the Alcar—yes, Alcar—first came here, they mixed with the locals. A normal thing, so diminished by countless years of wandering and warring. Not to mention the poison of the Dark, which later became like the very air they breathed. These natives had gifts of their own, gifts which became part of Hosmyr’s makeup. Together, they were glorious while seeking the Dark. Such a sweet and terrible thing, your gift. Once entered upon the race, we cannot leave. There is only moving forward or falling away to oblivion. It will take time, I’m afraid. People are like cattle.”
They frowned at him.
“One must herd them to get any outcome,” Kandah said. “Oh, you dislike me saying it? But alas, here we are. Herding! I know you want something of your own, Taul. Give it time. In six or seven hundred years, your beloved will have enough strength to produce a daughter of her own. I will do all I can for her.”
His smile repulsed Taul, but he’d endure it for Ryldia.
“What of these others?” he asked about the samples scattered on the worktable.
“There’s potential,” Kandah said. “We’ll want to make sure they have enough of the native quality to counter the taint but keep them looking like Mornae. Don’t count on the high matron’s support if you ask her to put obvious nomad scum in her precious branches.”
“She said to my face that she’d allow it,” Taul said.
Kandah chuckled. “We’ll do our best, neh? Be happy, pleased with your goddess, that you, of all these Mornae, will save the future for your people. Without this work, not only will we staunch the taint, but the gifts of the valley––the impossibility of the valley––will continue.”
He reached over to a bowl full of fruit pits.
“Who’d think such luscious things could grow in this place?” he said. “Not just grow but fill the body with such strength and vigor.”
“Don’t they make you ill?” Balniss asked. “I’ve seen nomads sickened to death from eating them.”
Kandah stared at him. “We all have our gifts.”
