Kieran nodded.
“My arm was all burned,” Sara murmured, sitting back. She looked at her hand, at the black ring.
Ha’kan’ta reached forward and scraped a fleck of black charring free. Under it, the gold still gleamed yellow.
“See?” the rathe’wen’a said. “Evil can cloak us, can do all it can to cover us with its own corruption, yet if the heart remains true, it cannot prevail. It can slay the body, but it cannot slay the soul. There is no shame in sharing Mal’ek’a’s blood. The shame would be in fleeing life. In giving truth to Mal’ek’a’s lies. Show the world that Mal’ek’a’s blood means nothing. That it is what is in here”—she touched her breast—“that counts. The silence within. The stillness born of the something-in-movement that we call up with our drumming.”
“I. . . .”
“You must be strong, Saraken, Little-Otter. You must be strong enough to give meaning to the sacrifices offered this night.”
“I . . . I’ll try.”
“It will not be easy,” Ha’kan’ta said sorrowfully.
Sara stared at her uncle’s body, remembered Pukwudji. No, it would not be easy at all.
Chapter Four
2:30, Sunday afternoon.
Madison and Collins pulled in beside a police cruiser on Patterson Avenue and looked at Tamson House. The crowds had dispersed, but the House remained the same. No way in. Nothing came out. The local residents were starting to complain about the police barricades. No one seemed to remember Friday night anymore. Or if they did, they weren’t talking about it. The film crews from CJOH and CBC could add nothing. The last searing flash of blue fire had wiped clean their videotapes. The newspaper photographers only had shots of the police barricades, the dark House.
But it had been real. There was no question of it in Madison’s mind. Collins still had his hand in bandages—try to convince him it hadn’t happened. And they had the three bodies of the whatever-they-weres back in the labs.
“You think anyone survived in there?” Collins asked.
Madison knew by anyone, Collins meant Inspector Tucker.
“I don’t know, Dan,” he replied.
On the seat between them lay yesterday’s edition of The Citizen—the headlines screaming: “SOLICITOR GENERAL DIES WHILE SIGNING RESIGNATION.” The body of the article gave the cause of death as a heart attack, but Madison wasn’t buying it. It was too much like Hogue’s death to suit him. And Williams had been connected to what went down at Tamson House and the PRB. Just like Walters was. Madison knew it. He just didn’t have anything hard to prove it. He needed physical evidence, documentation, and he didn’t have it. But he’d keep digging.
The events at Tamson House had made the front page, but strangely enough, the paper was still using the press release that Madison had drafted on Friday night—even though their reporters had been right on the scene. He supposed what couldn’t be explained was forgotten. By Monday’s edition the story would probably be buried somewhere inside the paper. There was also the possibility that Walters had his hand in the silence. He could be pulling a few strings, only what the hell he hoped to gain from it Madison still couldn’t figure out.
They had made a connection between Walters and Hogue. The connection between Walters and Williams was even easier to make. After all, a man who was known to advise the Prime Minister was just as likely to know someone in Williams’s position. What they didn’t have was Walter’s hold on Williams. There had to be something, but so far it was eluding them.
Madison sighed. “All we’ve got is questions. No answers.”
“Maybe we’re asking the wrong questions.”
Madison lifted his eyebrows quizzically.
“Look at it this way,” Collins said, lighting up a cigarette. “Walters is the one we want to talk to. Maybe we should just pay him a little visit—off the record.”
“The end justifies the means?”
“You don’t hear about him quibbling because he’s got to dirty his hands. Remember that natural gas deal last year, when he—”
Madison shook his head. “We’re not stooping to his level. We’ll get him. It’ll take a while, but—”
“—we always get our man.” Collins laughed bitterly. “Shit, Wally. Do you think he’d hesitate for a minute if he knew we were onto him?”
Madison looked away. “Is that . . . ?” he asked, pointing to a man walking down Patterson from Bank Street.
“Gagnon,” Collins agreed. He accepted the change of subject. “He lost someone in that hell House as well.”
Blue found Sara in the garden, sitting on the stone benches by the fountain. He was supposed to be resting, but though he ached from head to foot, he couldn’t lie in bed any more. He was afraid if he didn’t start moving soon, he’d never get up.
Sara didn’t look up as he approached. Her gaze was on a row of graves, five freshly turned mounds of dirt that were all that was left of the ones they had lost. Jamie. Sam. Thomas Hengwr, whose body they’d found in the east wing. Traupman. And Fred, who’d been found in the garden.
Someone had cleaned the dress that May’is’hyr had given her and she was wearing it now. The pouch that Blue had found when Pukwudji’s body had vanished was in a pocket. In it were the House keys that she’d left behind in the round tower and a curious Y-shaped tuning key made of brass. It was the tuning key to Taliesin’s harp.
The quin’on’a had come in answer to Ha’kan’ta’s summoning. They had dug the graves and lowered the bodies in, covered them with the thick dark earth. Gannon and Chevier’s bodies had been burned with those of the tragg’a. This second pyre, built on the ashes of the first, burned twice as high and for twice as long as the one Blue and the others had made a few days ago. The bodies of the slain rathe’wen’a had been carried away—so that their own people might honor them in their own way, Blue supposed.
He sat stiffly down beside Sara. The quin’on’a had been able to do a lot with their healing medicines and drumming, but he’d been cut up so bad that he knew it’d be a long time before he felt up to par again. They’d had better luck with Tucker. Left arm broken. They’d set it and put it in a sling. Three cracked ribs. They’d bound up his chest in a tight swath of bandage and told him to take it easy for awhile. Leg sprained—it had twisted under him when he hit the wall. More bandaging.
“Mind some company?” Blue said after a bit.
Sara turned to look at him. Her face was all hollow angles. Dark rings circled eyes that were red from crying and lack of sleep. She reached out a small hand and he took it in his own.
“I can’t believe they’re all dead,” she said softly. “I can’t believe what we went through. How come they died and we survived? I wanted to die. I’m still not sure if that’s the way I feel now because I don’t know who I was that night, Blue. I don’t know who I am.”
“I know,” he said.
And he did. He didn’t remember much about his berserker stand on the stairs—just flashes that still left him shaken. Sally had never told him how close he’d come to attacking her, but somehow he remembered that the clearest of all. He’d been asking himself the same questions as Sara did ever since. How come he was alive and Jamie was dead? Jamie and Fred. Sam. Traupman.
“I don’t think there is a reason,” he said finally. “Not one that we’ll ever understand.”
Sara nodded mournfully. “But, Blue. Will it ever stop hurting? I look over there and see those graves and it hurts so bad. . . .”
“They’d want us to carry on,” Blue said.
The words sounded as hollow to him as they probably did to her. He wasn’t sure there was any point in carrying on.
They stood in amongst the garden’s trees, observing Sara and Blue on the bench. One was the Forest Lord who had come to Kieran’s trial by combat. The other was a grey-haired man, his eyes solemn, deep and old. He had a cloak over his shoulders that looked like it was made of oak leaves, woven together.
“See what sorrow you have wrought, Gwydion?” the Forest Lord said heavily. “It might have been a game to you, but it has sundered the fabric of their lives. So many hurt. So many dead. You might have prevented this. You had but to act.”
“And you did not?”
The Forest Lord turned to face him. “Do not seek to entangle me with your riddles. Had I known what Mal’ek’a’s death would entail, I would have slain him myself. I take no pleasure from sorrow—be it my own children’s or that of another’s.”
“And you think I do? You think it was all but a game? Twice I slew him and twice he returned, stronger than before. Only one of his own bloodline could cleanse the world of his presence forever. I knew that, but twice I intervened nevertheless. Each time he came back, he left more sorrow in his wake. Should I have let him return a third time?”
“You might have warned them.”
“I could not. You saw yourself how she reacted when she learned the truth. She was willing to die rather than accept it. Even now she hovers between life and the kiss of forgetful death. Do you think she could have faced him, knowing what she knows now?”
“She would have been the stronger for it,” the Forest Lord said.
“No. It would have weakened her.”
“Did your grandson know as well?”
Gwydion shook his head. “He would never have let her go.”
The Forest Lord sighed. “I do not like you, Gwydion. You take a simple thing and make of it a tangled web. You take a truth and hide it behind riddles. I think it is time you left my lands. Left them to return nevermore.”
“Still you fail to understand.”
“I understand,” the Forest Lord said. “All too well. Mark what I say: Strength comes from knowledge, from understanding and from truth. Deny your children those, and you deny them their right to grow. I admire this Sara, for striving still, for reaching when her right to know was denied her. And I admire her uncle who gave his life to end Mal’ek’a’s evil. But you, you I do not admire. I understand your fears. I understand why you did what you did. But I believe you underestimated the woman; underestimated them all. Had they known what they faced, they might have planned their attack better. So many need not have died. Many of my children died, Gwydion.”
“Still I maintain,” the grey-haired man said, “that faced with the truth, they would have been overwhelmed by it.”
“You are a fool. It was not until they learned the truth that they prevailed. Now I ask you again: Leave my lands.”
“Your lands? How many people remember you in the World Beyond? There are as many of my people dwelling in what remains of your forests and plains as there are of yours. More!”
The Forest Lord frowned. “You forget yourself, Gwydion. You and I are not the same. I am kin to the lords who rule you—not kin to you. I ask you for a third and final time: Begone.”
“I go. My work here is done.”
“Aye,” the Forest Lord sighed. “While mine begins.”
He stood alone under the trees then, rueing the day he ever allowed Taliesin to set foot on his lands. It was not the bard’s fault. He was a good man. But he came with threads that still bound him to his homeland. Threads that drew Mal’ek’a, drew Gwydion, and brought with them the one’s evil and the other’s misguided ideals. It would have been better if he’d not listened to his sea-brother and allowed Taliesin to land on his shores.
He looked again to where Blue and Sara sat. Her small form was almost hidden by his larger one, yet both of them were diminished by sorrow and confusion.
“Come, my sister,” he called with a voice like wind. “The one is a warrior and the other a child of your own heart. Yet they both need your healing touch.”
For a long moment the leaves of the trees in the garden were still. Then there was a sound like the whisper of distant thunder, a low drumming, and in amidst its rhythm, he heard his sister reply.
“I come, brother.”
Blue saw them first, the tall woman walking towards them and the child she held by the hand. The woman’s hair was the pure white of moonlight, her coppery skin smooth and young, her body slender under the white doeskin dress, moving with a supple grace. The child was broad-faced, with a horned brow and dark brown hair that hung in a Rastaman’s dreadlocks. He moved with a skip to his step, his eyes twinkling and a grin splitting his features.
One moment they weren’t there and the next they were. Blue had been looking in that direction and he could swear that they’d just appeared out of nowhere.
“Heads up,” Blue murmured to Sara. “We’ve got company.”
Sara looked up. She saw the woman first and felt the moonheart air start up inside her. She was suddenly aware of a low drumming. It had been there for some time, she realized, only she hadn’t noticed it until this moment. And then she saw the woman’s companion.
“Puk—Pukwudji?” she said in a small voice.
She stood, wanting it to be him so badly, but knowing that it couldn’t be the little honochen’o’keh. But the little man’s grin grew wider. He pulled his hand free of the woman’s and cartwheeled the remaining distance before throwing himself into Sara’s arms.
“Hey!” he whispered in her ear as she tightened her arms about him.
“Oh, Pukwudji. . . .”
They sat down together on the bench. Sara was crying and laughing at the same time. Blue looked up to see that the woman had stopped a half dozen paces from the bench. She was smiling at him.
“You must be he that Ur’wen’ta names Blue-Rider-of-Thunder,” she said.
“Yeah. I . . . I’m Blue, all right.”
“And you are Sara Little-Otter who befriended the bard Redhair.”
Sara nodded. Pukwudji had grown very still at her side. He held her hand tightly.
“May I sit with you awhile?” the woman asked.
Sara smiled uncertainly and nodded again. “Who are you?”
“I have been called Ketq Skwaye by some. Most name me Grandmother Toad.”
Blue started to say that she certainly didn’t look like either a grandmother or a toad, but decided to keep his thoughts to himself. Grandmother Toad smiled at him again, as though she’d read his thoughts, but she said nothing, and sat down in the grass and regarded both Sara and Blue in turn. For a long while they sat in a silence that no one felt obliged to break.
“It was indeed a terrible night,” Grandmother Toad said finally.
Sara squeezed Pukwudji’s hand. “How did . . . ?” she began.
“Pukwudji survive?” Grandmother Toad smiled. “The little mysteries never die. They were born in the world’s heart, from the drumming of stone against stone, of root against earth, the crack of antlers against a tree trunk. But the others . . . they did not fare so well.
“You both lost those you loved last night. As did my brother—so many of his drummers. And Red-Spear. He would have been a great leader, that one, if he had not been so filled with anger. You would have understood Tep’fyl’in,” she said to Blue. “You are much the same as he was. There is a storm in you as there was in him—only you have learned to bind your thunder.”
Blue shook his head. In control? When he almost killed Sally?
“But there was a need for it to be loosed then, was there not?” Grandmother Toad said. “Do you stride across the face of the world like a thundercloud, or do you keep that storm bound? And you did not strike the woman. You have no need to know shame. Rather, know a certain pride that you are what you are. A strong man who does not need to flaunt his strength.”
“I used to. . . .” Blue began, then hesitated. She wouldn’t know what he meant if he told her about the colors of the Devil’s Dragon, and the bikers he used to ride with. But . . .
“You used to indeed,” she said, “but no longer. And I know,” she added, “that you ask yourself, what use is this strength if it could do nothing to aid those who died? Think of this, Blue-Rider, when that question arises to trouble you: Are you responsi
ble for all that goes on in the world? Even the Great Spirit allows its children to be responsible to themselves. You may not have saved all, but what of those you did save?”
“But Jamie . . .”
“Ah.” She sighed. “Him you could not have aided, unless he had asked you to. He knew what he did. He chose to do it. Remember him with gladness and know that he has found a place amidst the Dreaming Thunder.”
There was something so comforting about her words, that Blue felt himself truly relax for the first time since this had all begun.
“Grandmother Toad?” Sara asked. “Is Jamie really in . . . in the Place of Dreaming Thunder?”
“Indeed, child of my heart. He and the rathe’wen’a—all save the druid. I know not what fate awaits that one’s spirit. As the one half did great evil, so did the other great good. He is gone, I think, to the afterworld of his own people.”
“Is that where I’ll go now? We’re the same bloodline. . . .”
“But you are not dead.”
“I’m not so sure that what I am is all that much better,” Sara replied.
Pukwudji shifted uncomfortably beside her, upset at the turn that the conversation had taken, but before he could speak, Grandmother Toad said softly: “It ill becomes you to speak so, Little-Otter.”
Sara felt that Grandmother Toad didn’t understand, but didn’t know how she could explain what she meant when she wasn’t exactly sure what she meant herself. She felt betrayed. By her ancestry. By Jamie for dying and leaving her behind. By Taliesin who’d tried to bind her to him with his moonheart air.
Taliesin. He’d let her go to confront Mal’ek’a as part of some test. Certainly she’d left the tower on her own and, with Pukwudji’s help, made it back to Ottawa. But how could the bard have expected her to confront Mal’ek’a and survive? What kind of a test was that? In God’s name, how could he say that he loved her on the one hand and throw her to—to such an evil on the other? How could she even care about this mystic Way anymore, when to follow it she had to lose her friends and her family first? Were they the cost of enlightenment?
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