Page 140 of The Priory of the Orange Tree

To hear the Saint described like some roaming madman was too much to bear.Invented faith, indeed. The Six Virtues had been the code all Inysh knights had lived by at that time. Loth opened his mouth, remembered the warning, and shut it again.

“Despite their fear,” Chassar continued, “the Lasian people did notwantto convert to this new religion. Cleolind told the knight as much and refused both his terms. Yet Galian was so overcome with greed and lust that he fought the beast nonetheless.”

Loth almost choked. “There was no lust in his heart. His love for Princess Cleolind was chaste.”

“Try not to be irritating, my lord. Galian the Deceiver was a brute. A power-hungry, selfish brute. To him, Lasia was a field from which to reap a bride of royal blood and adoring devotees of a religion he had founded, all for his own gain. He would make himself a god and unite Inysca under his crown.” Chassar poured more wine while Loth seethed. “Of course, your beloved Saint fell almost instantly with a trifling injury and pissed himself. And Cleolind, a woman of courage, took up his sword.

“She followed the Nameless One deep into the Lasian Basin, where he had made his lair. Few had ever dared enter the forest, for its sea of trees was vast and uncharted. She tracked the beast until she found herself in a great valley. Growing in this valley was an orange tree of astonishing height and untold beauty.

“The Nameless One was wrapped like a snake about its trunk. They fought across the valley, and though Cleolind was a powerful warrior, the beast set her afire. In agony, she crawled to the tree. The Nameless One crowed in triumph, certain of his victory, and opened his mouth to burn her once more—but while she was beneath the branches, his fire could not touch her.

“Even as Cleolind wondered at the miracle, the orange tree yielded its fruit. When she ate of it, she was healed—not only healed, butchanged. She could hear the whispers in the earth. The dance of the wind. She was reborn as a living flame. She fought the beast once more and plunged Ascalon beneath one of his scales. Grievously injured, the Nameless One slithered away. Cleolind returned in triumph to Yikala and banished Sir Galian Berethnet from her land, returning his sword to him so he would never come back for it. He fled to the Isles of Inysca, where he told a false version of events, and they crowned him King of—”

Loth slammed his fist down. The sand eagle shrieked in protest.

“I will not sit at your table and listen to you sully my faith,” Loth said quietly. “Cleolind wentwithhim to Inys, and the Berethnet queens are their descendants.”

“Cleolind cast away her riches,” Chassar said, as if Loth had not spoken, “and journeyed back into the Lasian Basin with her handmaidens. There, she founded the Priory of the Orange Tree, a house of women blessed with the sacred flame. A house, Lord Arteloth, of mages.”

Sorcery.

“The Priory’s purpose is to slay wyrms, and to protect the South from Draconic power. Its leader is the Prioress—she who is most beloved of the Mother. And I’m afraid, Lord Arteloth, that this great lady believes you may have murdered one of her daughters.” When Loth looked blank, Chassar leaned forward, his eyes intent. “You were in possession of an iron box that was last held by a woman named Jondu.”

“I am no murderer. Jondu was captured by the Yscals,” Loth insisted. “Before she died, she entrusted the box to the Donmata of Yscalin, who gave it to me.” He groped for the back of the chair and stood up. “She begged me to bring it to you. You have it now,” he said, desperate. “I must leave this place.”

“So Jondu is dead. Sit down, Lord Arteloth,” Chassar said coolly. “You will stay.”

“So you can insult my faith still further?”

“Because whomsoever seeks the Priory can never leave its walls.”

Loth turned cold.

“This is a difficult thing to tell you, Lord Arteloth. I am acquainted with your lady mother, and it pains me to know that she will never see her son again . . . but you cannot leave. No outsider may. There is too great a risk that you could tell someone about the Priory.”

“You—” Loth shook his head. “You cannot— this ismadness.”

“It is a comfortable life. Not as comfortable as your life in Inys,” Chassar admitted, “but you will be safe here, away from the eyes of the world.”

“I am the heir to Goldenbirch. I am a friend to Queen Sabran the Ninth. I will not be mocked like this!” His back hit the wall. “Ead always said you were a man of good humor. If this is some jest, Your Excellency, say it now.”

“Ah.” Chassar sighed. “Eadaz. She told me of your friendship.”

Something shifted inside Loth. And, slowly, he began to understand.

Not Ead, butEadaz. The feeling of sunlight. Her secrets. Her obscure childhood. But no, it couldnotbe true . . . Ead had converted to the Six Virtues. She prayed at sanctuary twice a day. She could not,couldnot be a heretic, a practitioner of the forbidden arts.

“The woman you knew as Ead Duryan is a lie, Arteloth. I devised that identity for her. Her true name is Eadaz du Zala uq-Nara, and she is a sister of the Priory. I planted her in Inys, on the orders of the last Prioress, to protect Sabran the Ninth.”

“No.”

Ead, who had shared his wine and danced with him at every Feast of Fellowship since he was two and twenty. Ead, the woman his father had told him he should marry.

Ead Duryan.

“She is a mage. One of the most gifted,” Chassar said. “She will return here as soon as Sabran births her child.”

Every word drove the knife of betrayal deeper. He could take no more. He pushed through the curtain and blundered into the passages, only to come face to face with the woman in green. And he saw, then, that she was not holding an oil lamp.

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