City of Pearl

by Alys Clare

  Thorfinn now approached, wordlessly wrapping me in his habitual enfolding hug. After a moment he said, ‘I shall miss you, my granddaughter. Life in the fens will be less interesting without your bright presence.’

  I stood with my arms round him, trying not to weep. He is old, I was thinking, and I am going to be away for a long time. What if he dies before I return?

  He released me and, holding me at arm’s length, looked into my eyes. ‘I know what you are thinking,’ he said. I guessed it must be fairly obvious. ‘I cannot say.’ He grinned briefly. ‘I shall do my best to stay alive. That’s all I can do.’

  I nodded. It was in the hands of the gods, as he might have added, and all we could do was pray that they looked upon us favourably.

  ‘Safe journey,’ I whispered.

  He grinned again. ‘It will be. You forget who Malice-striker’s master is.’

  Then he too kissed me and went to join Hrype by the water’s edge.

  And Jack walked towards me.

  He came to within a pace of me and then stopped.

  I stared at him, at last able to see him at close quarters. He looked well. His face and bare forearms were deeply tanned, his muscles firm and smooth. He had regained the weight he had lost after his near-fatal injury and once more looked like the fit, strong man I had first met on the quayside in Cambridge a year ago.

  Except that his expression was unsmiling, there were hollows under his cheekbones and shadows beneath his eyes.

  ‘You’re not coming with us.’ He hadn’t needed to ask for he already knew.

  I shook my head. ‘I can’t.’ I lifted my chin, trying to sound calm and firmly in control. ‘I have to stay here. It’s where I am meant to be, and this is the place to which the long road I’ve been unknowingly following for so long – and others before me – has brought me. People have died, and I think that the reason they did was to bring me to – to the person who’s going to show me the way.’

  ‘The way.’

  I didn’t know how to explain. ‘Jack, I’ve been put on a path. It began a long time ago, in my childhood, when I discovered I could find lost objects, and later when I realized I could see the hidden ways across the fens and the marshlands that were invisible to others.’ I paused, looking away, for his hard expression was all but unbearable. ‘Then I went to live with my aunt Edild, and she began to teach me the ways of the healer. Then I became Gurdyman’s pupil, and—’

  ‘Yes. I know what you were learning with him.’

  He did. I’d forgotten, but now the memory came rushing back. We – Jack and I – had narrowly escaped a meeting with a killer, and I’d so wanted to give him some hint about the deep matters beyond the veil that I was just beginning to learn about. I’d told him that Gurdyman was passing on to me the learning he had acquired in his youth in Moorish Spain, and Jack said quietly, ‘But that’s not all he’s teaching you.’ Then, when I’d said, ‘You know, don’t you?’ he’d replied, ‘Of course I know.’ And he’d added softly, ‘You cannot know how I envy you, being his adept.’

  ‘Well, then,’ I said lamely. ‘This is the next part of the instruction. Here there are such mysteries hidden away, and it’s as if the veil is thinner and I sometimes get just a glimpse of what it is she’s – of what it is I must discover. And then it seems to me that I know it already, and all I have to do is find a way to uncover it. Oh, it’s not easy to explain!’

  ‘Of course it isn’t.’ His voice was harsh. ‘And how in God’s name is someone like me meant to understand?’

  ‘But you—’ I began.

  His angry words drowned my protestation. ‘All these weeks since you left I’ve spent with people who seem to be aware of what is going on without even the semblance of a rational explanation! Can you imagine how sick of it all I am? How everything in me yearns for a few simple, straightforward words that I can understand?’

  ‘You could understand,’ I said quietly. ‘You can.’

  But I didn’t think he was listening. His anger beginning to fade, he added, ‘I tell you, Lassair, spending all this time with men like Hrype and your grandfather is going to make it hard to be with my own kind again.’

  But he is like them, said the voice in my head.

  I know, I replied. But I don’t think it’s the time to tell him.

  He was silent now, standing tense before me looking away along the shoreline. I thought about what he had just said; about how he was aware of the true nature of my studies. Not that it was going to make this moment any easier.

  But I had to try.

  ‘Jack.’ I spoke quietly, but instantly he turned back to face me.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It began with Gurdyman; with something he did. There was … a body of knowledge that became his, but that should have gone to somebody else. To Luliwa.’ I spoke hurriedly, trying to find the right words, all too aware that I was making a poor job of making him understand. ‘It became her life’s work to wrest it back, and in a way she did, only I believe she went even further and delved deeper. But for a while she was outside her own control, and people died because of it. It wasn’t intentional’ – I couldn’t have him believing Luliwa was a killer, although I suppose that’s exactly what she was, as were her son and her daughter – ‘the deaths happened because of a – a misunderstanding.’

  ‘A misunderstanding,’ he repeated tonelessly.

  ‘She was mad with fury and grief! She—’

  But, cool and quiet, I heard the firm voice inside my head: No.

  I met Jack’s eyes.

  ‘There are things she needs to learn from me,’ I said instead, ‘things that I have absorbed from Gurdyman, but in return, there is very, very much more that she will impart to me.’ I had a sudden vision of the deep cave, of the light on the figures, of the power that thrummed in the air when the chanting began. And, despite everything – despite Gurdyman, his heart beginning to fail and heading home for the last time; despite my grandfather’s strong presence and the deep sadness of knowing I had just said goodbye to him; above all, despite Jack whom I loved standing right in front of me – despite it all, I felt a stab of joy so pure and bright that it made me want to sing.

  This is where you must be, I heard my inner voice say. This is where the path of your life has brought you.

  The voice, as always, was right.

  And all at once I knew without having to be told that being taught by Luliwa was only a part of it, for I had been drawn to the City of Pearl and I had only just begun to absorb all that its generous people were willing to share with me when I had been dragged – summoned – away.

  But also there was Jack.

  I looked straight into his eyes. I understood exactly what he was feeling, for I felt it too.

  ‘You sent me away,’ I reminded him softly.

  His mouth twisted in a grimace. ‘I know.’

  ‘You went out, and you said, “When I get back, I’d like you not to be here.”’

  ‘I know,’ he said again.

  ‘And here you are,’ I said softly, ‘and you have come all this way because—’

  Because you feared I was in peril, I nearly said. But was that right? Was I assuming a sentiment he did not really have?

  ‘I came to save you,’ he said roughly. ‘I sensed that – that thing that came to Cambridge. Oh, yes, I’ve seen it – him – her, now, and I can see that she is flesh and blood. Or I think she is,’ he added in a mutter. ‘I felt the malign power that had been in Gurdyman’s house, that tore and broke and destroyed the place where you sleep’ – my little attic room! Oh, no – ‘and all I could think of was that it meant you harm, and that I had to find you to protect you.’

  To protect me.

  I wished so very much that he was going to be there with me when the true battle with the malign spirit that was within Errita truly began.

  But he would be far away, and I would face it – her – alone.

  I reached out and took his big, strong, warm hand.


  It was a mistake, for the touch of him nearly undid all my resolution. We stood like that for some moments, then slowly he leaned forward, bending down so that our foreheads touched. It was probably my imagination, but I thought I felt a flow of profound love between us.

  Perhaps he did, too, for when he straightened up again he no longer looked so devastated; in fact, I thought he might just have been smiling.

  ‘I will come back,’ I whispered. ‘Eventually.’ I held his hand up to my lips and gently kissed it. ‘I promise.’

  He stared into my eyes for a long moment. Then he nodded, let go of my hand and turned. I watched as he strode swiftly away down the shore; as he vaulted into the ship’s boat; as he went to sit beside Thorfinn and take up the second oar. Then, far too soon, they were alongside Malice-striker, and Einar and his crew were reaching down to help them aboard and to stow the boat.

  The sail started to climb the mast.

  As the wind began to fill it, the outgoing tide found and picked up the beautiful ship. Slowly at first and then with swiftly accelerating speed, the wind and the water began to take her away. I stood and watched, for I could not have moved, and aboard Malice-striker, a lone figure in her stern looked back at me. He was quite still. But then, finally, he raised his hand in farewell.

  My tears were blinding me by then and mercifully his face and the subtleties of his expression were lost to me.

  I waited until Malice-striker was a dot on the navy sea, her sail filled and bulging with the wind that would speed her home.

  Then I turned my face to the foothills rising up behind the cove, to the great spur that curved out from the mountain range to guard and protect the little settlement, to the peaks soaring up high beyond them. It was a long, hard path back to Luliwa, to the painted darkness, to all that she had to impart to me; then, some unguessable time later, to the City of Pearl that lay beyond the mountains, waiting patiently until I should return.

  I stood there for some time, finding my strength, shoring up my resolution.

  This was where I had to be; everything that had happened to me so far in my life had been leading me here. I did not need my inner voice to confirm it.

  I looked up the winding track that rose gently towards the settlement. Luliwa would be there, and Itzal; the thought gave me comfort. I would call in to say that our visitors had gone, and then I would go on to the lodging house and seek out my friends there.

  This was my life now. It was up to me to embrace it.

  I took a step towards the path, then another, and all at once I was striding swiftly, eagerly.

  For I couldn’t wait to start.

  FOOTNOTES

  ONE

  1 See The Rufus Spy.

  2 See Land of the Silver Dragon.

  TWO

  3 See Blood of the South.

  4 See The Night Wanderer.

  THREE

  5 See The Night Wanderer.