Warbreaker (Warbreaker #1)(123)

“It’s a complete misnomer,” Lightsong said. “Obviously you’re intelligent enough to see that. Our names and titles are assigned randomly by a small monkey who has been fed an exceedingly large amount of gin.”

“Now you’re just being silly.”

“Now?” Lightsong asked. “Now?” he raised a cup of wine toward her. “My dear, I am always silly. Please be good enough to retract that statement at once!”

Siri just shook her head. Lightsong, it appeared, was in rare form this afternoon. Great, she thought. My husband is in danger of being murdered by unknown forces and my only allies are a scribe who’s afraid of me and a god who makes no sense.

“It has to do with death,” Lightsong finally said as the priests began to file into the arena floor below for this day’s round of arguments.

Siri looked toward him.

“All men die,” Lightsong said. “Some, however, die in ways that exemplify a particular attribute or emotion. They show a spark of something greater than the rest of mankind. That is what is said to bring us back.”

He fell silent.

“You died showing great bravery, then?” Siri asked.

“Apparently,” he said. “I don’t know for sure. Something in my dreams suggests that I may have insulted a very large panther. That sounds rather brave, don’t you think?”

“You don’t know how you died?”

He shook his head. “We forget,” he said. “We awake without memories. I don’t even know what work I did.”

Siri smiled. “I suspect that you were a diplomat or a salesman of some sort. Something that required you to talk a lot, but say very little!”

“Yes,” he said quietly, seeming unlike himself as he stared down at the priests below. “Yes, no doubt that was it exactly . . .” He shook his head, then smiled at her. “Regardless, my dear queen, I have provided a surprise for you this day!”

Do I want to be surprised by Lightsong? She glanced about nervously.

He laughed. “No need to fear,” he said. “My surprises rarely cause bodily harm, and never to beautiful queens.” He waved his hand, and an elderly man with an extraordinarily long white beard approached.

Siri frowned.

“This is Hoid,” Lightsong said. “Master storyteller. I believe you had some questions you wished to ask . . .”

Siri laughed in relief, remembering only now her request to Lightsong. She glanced at the priests below. “Um, shouldn’t we be paying attention to the speeches?”

Lightsong waved indifferently. “Pay attention? Ridiculous! That would be far too responsible of us. We’re gods, for the Colors’ sake. Or, well, I am. You’re close enough. A god-in-law, one might say. Anyway, do you really want to listen to a bunch of stuffy priests talk about sewage treatment?”

Siri grimaced.

“I thought not. Besides, neither of us have votes pertaining to this issue. So let us spend our time wisely. We never know when we will run out!”

“Of time?” Siri asked. “But you’re immortal!”

“Not run out of time,” Lightsong said, holding up his plate. “Of grapes. I hate listening to storytellers without grapes.”

Siri rolled her eyes, but continued to eat the grape slices. The storyteller waited patiently. As she looked more closely, she could tell that he wasn’t quite as old as he seemed at first glance. The beard must be a badge of his profession, and while it didn’t appear to be fake, she suspected that it had been bleached. He was much really younger than he wanted to appear.

Still, she doubted Lightsong would have settled for anyone other than the very best. She settled back in her chair—which, she noticed, had been crafted for someone of her size. I should be careful with my questions, she thought. I can’t ask directly about the deaths of the old God Kings; that would be too obvious.

“Storyteller,” she said. “What do you know of Hallandren history?”

“Much, my queen,” he said, bowing his head.

“Tell me of the days before the division between Idris and Hallandren.”

“Ah,” the man said, reaching into a pocket. He pulled out a handful of sand and began to rub it between his fingers, letting it drop in a soft stream toward the ground, its grains blown slightly in the wind. “Her Majesty wishes one of the deep stories, from long before. A story before time began?”

“I wish to know the origins of the Hallandren God Kings.”

“Then we begin in the distant haze,” the storyteller said, bringing up another hand, letting powdery black sand drop from it, mixing with the sand that fell from the first hand. As Siri watched, the black sand turned white, and she cocked her head, smiling at the display.

“The first God King of Hallandren is ancient,” Hoid said. “Ancient, yes. Older than kingdoms and cities, older than monarchs and religions. Not older than the mountains, for they were already here. Like the knuckles of the sleeping giants below, they formed this valley, where panthers and flowers both make their home.

“We speak of just ‘the valley’ then, a place before it had a name. The people of Chedesh still dominated the world. They sailed the Inner Sea, coming from the east, and it was they who first discovered this strange land. Their writings are sparse, their empire has long since been taken by the dust, but memory remains. Perhaps you can imagine their surprise upon arriving here? A place with beaches of fine, soft sand, with fruits aplenty, and with strange, alien forests?”