by Jude Fisher
Weak from his three-hundred-year imprisonment, Sirio squirmed in Fent’s grasp. At last, he gave a mighty cry. The four he had summoned from the corners of Elda had failed him at the last; and now all would be lost.
Saro felt the deathstone burning his skin.
‘No,’ he whispered. ‘No. I cannot use it again. Not even for this.’
And if Katla is dying, would you use it then?
Saro clenched his fist around the stone, tears burning his eyes. Would he? He did not know, though he thought he might, despite the worst consequences. Turning away from the struggle that was playing itself out in the pit, Saro stumbled across the smoking ground to where Katla and the redhaired man lay fatally entwined and cast himself to his knees beside them.
Neither figure moved. Blood had run across Katla’s face, pooling at her nose and mouth, giving her a mask of gore and streaks of darker red amongst the flame of her hair. Tam Fox lay face-up across her, a great rent in the flesh of his shoulder and chest. Let it be his wound which covers Katla in blood, Saro prayed guiltily. Let her be all right. Anything, I will give anything if she is all right.
The moodstone pulsed and shone.
With trembling fingers, he tied his tunic tight shut over the stone and tried to ignore its insistent presence. Would he turn her into one of these grey-skinned afterwalkers? Could he condemn her to the sort of shambling life-in-death he had seen of Alisha’s army? He knew he could not. ‘Katla,’ he said softly. ‘Katla, don’t be dead.’
There was no response. Gingerly, he touched her face. Her skin felt cool and unresponsive beneath his fingers, and slightly damp, like trodden mud. He laid his cheek to her nose and mouth, but could feel no breath. Nor, when he pressed the vein in her neck could he feel the slightest beat of blood there.
Silently, Saro wept.
And now a new voice rose in a wail. Saro’s head snapped up. He twisted around to locate the source of the sound; and there was Mam, cradling the body of the hillman who lay crumpled on the ground below the rock against which he had been flung.
Such a waste of life and love and effort; and all for what?
Misery melded with anger, a white heat of fury and despair. Saro flung himself to his feet, the tears running freely down his face now. The greatsword lay glowing just a few feet away. Without a single coherent thought in his head he strode over to it, wrapped his fingers around the fox-headed pommel and heaved it up. It felt massive, lumpen, awkward in his fist: a stupid piece of beaten metal made for destroying lives. Even its flames had gone out, and deep inside himself he felt the confirmation of the extinction of Katla’s flame, too: for it had been her touch which ignited it, her life which gave it spark: he was sure of that now.
No matter: nothing mattered.
He would kill the thing in the pit, and he would die; and then it would all be over. Wearily, he swung the sword onto his shoulder and trudged the twenty paces to the edge of the hole in the mountain and stared down. The god, it seemed, was proving hard to kill. Fent’s claw slipped over and through the shadowy figure trying to find better purchase. And now Katla’s twin was losing his temper. He stamped his feet in frustration and lava splashed up and fell back with a sizzle. He tried to dash Sirio’s head against the rocky walls of the chasm; but the deity’s form passed into the rock and then reappeared, apparently undamaged, though he hung limp and useless in the deformed creature’s grip.
Infuriated now, Fent caught Sirio by what appeared to be his feet and whirled him around and around his head, like the men Saro had seen at the Allfair games with a boulder in a sling, competing for the longest throw. When he finally let go, the god flew overhead like a great translucent arrow. He hit the side of the chamber without a sound, and vanished.
Fent stormed out of the pit. ‘Call yourself a deity?’ he cried. ‘You’re nothing but a sad excuse for a god! I have defeated you: I, Fent Aranson, of Rockfall . . .’ He paused, thought for a moment. ‘And of Sanctuary,’ he amended. ‘If anyone is a god here it is me!’
Bëte launched herself at him with a roar.
The attack was unexpected: Fent went down with a clatter like the sound of a hundred cooking pots tumbled over a cliff. Before he could recover himself, the great cat landed on his back, driving him into the ash. But even with Bëte’s claws lacerating the strange black skin the mage had given him, Rahe’s creature laughed.
‘And they say you are a deity, too! But in the end you’re just an overgrown farm cat, and I’ve killed a few of those in my time.’ He braced himself and made a bridge of his body so that Bëte could no longer reach the ground with all her paws. Slowly, he began to get to his feet while she growled and bit and grappled for a foothold. ‘Go and play with little mice!’ he jeered. ‘It’s all you’re fit for!’
Saro hefted the sword. Then he ran at the black figure with a mighty yell. At the last moment, Bëte leapt away. Flames blossomed suddenly down the length of the great blade – flames of crimson and scarlet, orange and gold and cleansing green – and crackled with life; and suddenly it seemed that a hand closed over Saro’s and took the sword away and a face gazed down into his own. It was Persoa; but he was much changed.
As the god inhabited his body, the hillman’s inked patterns began to flow and change. The tribal tattoos uncoiled themselves from his face, ran down his neck and across his shoulders, met the blaze of colours upon his back and smoothed the strange designs away until there was nothing left but fair, luminous, unblemished skin, skin that was lighter in hue than the hillman’s had ever been; and then his hair was evolving, too, turning from black to flaxen-gold; and his eyes changed suddenly from black to piercing blue.
The god, Sirio, touched the hilt of the sword briefly to his lips, and all the flames turned palest green like new ears of corn. Then in a blur of motion he turned upon the creature which had once between Katla’s twin and took his head off with a single clean stroke.
The head bounced once as it struck the floor of the chamber, red hair whipping over and over, then rolled into the pit and sank into the boiling magma. The body stayed where it stood, swaying gently; then at last crumpled to the ground with a crash. Sirio regarded its demise with minimal interest, then, as if cleaning away something unpleasant, he stooped, took hold of the terrible mutated limb, dragged the headless corpse to the pit and pushed it over the edge with his foot. Down it went with barely a sound. He stood there watching, but no bubbles marked its progress; nothing stirred.
He turned to face his rescuers.
His eyes went first to Mam, on her knees still where the hillman’s body had lain until so rudely purloined, her eyes round with grief and horror, and he smiled, a smile which might have been one of infinite compassion, or of faint amusement. It can be hard to read a god’s expression.
‘He says he is sorry for leaving you. He asks that you do not begrudge me his body and the strength I have taken from him. He says . . .’ Sirio cocked his head minutely as if trying to catch a distant sound. ‘He says, “Goodbye, Finna, and go with love.”’
But if this was meant to comfort and placate the mercenary leader, it did not have the desired effect. Mam leapt to her feet, eyes blazing, fists knotted. Then she ran at the god like a whirlwind. Blows rained upon his chest, his face, his arms. ‘I don’t want you in the world, I want Persoa! Give him back to me, you thief! Get out of his body: give it back!’
Sirio allowed her to hit him again and again and gave no sign of feeling the blows as they fell, safe now in his new body. Then at last, as the fury ebbed out of her, he caught her and held her to him, his hand cradling her head as a mother might cradle a child. ‘His body was his gift to me, as he had always known it would be,’ he said. ‘He has been connected to the Three since the day he was born, through the rock, through the bones of Elda: we have known each other always. An eldianna is marked as the gods’ own; did you not know?’ And when Mam turned puzzled, reddened eyes to him, he placed his palm on her forehead. ‘Here, feel him: he is still here, within me, as all ar
e who die in our name.’
Slowly, a tremulous smile touched the mercenary’s lips, then her face collapsed into anguish once more and she sank to the ground and wept softly with her arms over her head.
Now the god turned to Saro, regarded him for a solemn moment. ‘You bear something of my sister’s,’ he said wonderingly.
Saro, drained by misery and despair, raised hollow eyes to the god and his hand went instinctively to the place on his chest where the deathstone hung beneath his clothing.
The god crossed the ground between them. ‘May I?’ he asked.
Trembling, Saro untied the laces on his tunic and brought the eldistan into view.
Sirio’s eyes fixed on it; then he took a step back and averted his gaze. ‘Feya’s Tear – an accursed thing! So, she cried for me, then. What must he have done to her, that she could not come to my rescue? I have wondered that for three hundred years. Nothing could keep us apart. Nothing! She is mine and I am hers: we are part of each other. I thought he must have destroyed her; but recently I have sensed her in the world. I have sensed her here—’ He clenched his fist against his chest. ‘She has returned to Elda, I know it,’ he said fiercely. ‘She has returned and I must find her.’ Something butted against his leg and he looked down. There was Bëte, as vast as any jungle feline, rubbing her cheek against his thigh with all the fervid adoration of a domestic cat. ‘No, I have not forgotten you. You have returned, too. Yes, yes, I know.’ Absently, Sirio lowered a hand to scratch behind her ear and the great cat’s purr rumbled up through the chamber like the presage of an earthquake. ‘So, where is she, our lady?’ he said softly, to no one in particular.
‘They say she is on the coast of Istria,’ Saro replied.‘Brought across the Northern Ocean by the Lord of Cantara. But, my lord, I must ask—’
‘Cantara? Not Rahe?’
‘Tycho Issian is the Lord of Cantara. My lord, I have a question—’
‘A man, not a mage?’
Saro shook his head impatiently. ‘A terrible man, but no mage, my lord.’
‘The north coast, you say?’
Saro nodded. ‘Yes, lord, but—‘
‘And she is alive, and well?’
‘I have seen her only once, lord: when she touched this stone and made it deadly. Men have died . . . others been resurrected . . . Katla Aran—’
‘She cannot have been in her right mind. We do not willingly bring death to our people.’ But even as he said this, his fingers tightened around the hilt of the great sword.
Saro stared at him. ‘But can you bring life?’ The blue eyes pinned him to the spot, making him quail, but still he persisted. ‘Katla Aransen lies there, dead. She gave her life for you, though it would not have been a willing gift, for Katla was a fighter to the last. She said to me once that her god required no sacrifices in his name. But she has died for you, my lord—‘
‘I accept her gift, willingly offered or not. Do not ask for miracles, boy,’ Sirio said sternly. ‘Each life has its own length, and giving to one means taking from another.’
‘Do you have no gratitude in you, no grace? Is this what it is to be a god? To see the world as an endless round of living and dying, no one meaning more than any other, except as a way of keeping you alive?’
The mask of serene indifference was creeping back over Sirio’s face.
Suddenly furious, Saro shouted: ‘As you feel for the Rosa Eldi, so I feel for Katla Aransen! Do you understand that?’
The suggestion of a frown marred the god’s white forehead. ‘You are a mortal boy, and I – well, the gulf is vast. If she has died in my name, then she lives within me and shall abide there for ever.’
Saro’s expression shattered into one of rage. ‘What good is it to me if she exists as some sort of spirit within you? I don’t want her there, I want her here, with me, living and breathing, walking and climbing and running and loving. Here, in Elda. Here, in my arms!’ He tugged at the god’s arm, not caring now whether he might strike him down, not caring for anything.
Sirio regarded the strange scene contemplatively – a dead man lying almost naked across a dead woman – an unreadable expression on his pale face.
Saro, meanwhile, threw himself down beside Katla. He pulled her limp hand out from beneath her, chafed it, held it to his lips. It was barely warm, cooling fast despite the sulphurous heat of the cavern. He rubbed it harder, and harder still.
Sirio bent and touched the top of Tam Fox’s fiery head. ‘I remember you,’ he said curiously. ‘I know who you are.’ He withdrew his hand. ‘I brought him here,’ he said happily to Saro as if delighted by his own prowess. ‘I sent a monster to upset his ship and I brought him here just as he was drowning, to save me.’ Then he transferred his touch to Katla Aransen. ‘Ah,’ he breathed. ‘I know you, too, sword-maker.’ He straightened up. ‘I have helped each of them back to Elda once before,’ he declared. ‘Which is quite sufficient a disruption in the balance of the world. I do not care to intervene a second time.’ He regarded Saro’s stricken face and smiled, but his smile was not kind. ‘Besides, one of them still lives.’
Saro’s eyes became huge. ‘Which one?’
He was answered by a groan. Then Tam Fox blinked and groaned again. Stiffly, he brought his hand up to his face, regarded the drying gore on it distastefully, wincing as the pain from his great wound hit him. His eyes came to rest on the body of the woman beneath him.
‘Katla!’ Pushing himself upright, he looked down. ‘Ah . . . Katla, no . . .’
Saro stared in horror. He had thought the red-bearded man’s wound terrible enough, but Katla’s was worse. Her tunic had been sheared through below the ribs and he could see things shining in the gap, terrible, interior things that should never see the light. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, the deathstone was in his hand. It burned a sickly yellow. Tears were streaming down his face. He stared at it, loathing it. He did not know what to do.
Then he turned to the god, thrusting the eldistan at him. ‘Take the stone, and return it to your sister. Then take me,’ he said urgently. ‘Take my life for Katla’s. You said if you gave to one, you had to take from another: well, take my life from me and give it to her. She doesn’t deserve to die: she’s too full of life—‘ Sobs overwhelmed him.
Tam Fox shook his wild braids so that the bones and stones in them rattled and danced. He looked long upon the dead girl, and the planes of his rough-hewn face seemed to soften as he did so. ‘Ah, Katla,’ he said softly. ‘I had hoped to save you from such a fate.’ Then he transferred his attention to the sobbing Istrian. At last he sighed. He turned his lazy tawny gaze upon the god. ‘So there you are, Sirio, Lord of Men. This boy – who looks as if he has suffered enough, though he is barely old enough to know the meaning of the word – offers you the essence of his life if you will restore Katla Aransen. What has your world come to if such sacrifices are required of such tender lads?’ He heaved himself onto one elbow and looked sorrowfully down at his ribboned chest. ‘But I’ve had a good long run, and by the looks of this, I’m not going to be doing a lot of acrobatics from now on.’ He made a grimace which turned into a wry smile. ‘My troop are dead, my best friend lost to your Beast, and I have nowhere left to lodge my heart. If we’re talking bargains here, then I offer you a better one than the boy can ever make you, as well you know, given my parentage.’
Sirio glared at him. ‘Sons born of mages and seithers live long indeed; but it was your father’s action which caused my world to come to this pass,’ he declared. Then, quick as a snake, he wrapped one hand in Tam Fox’s braids and the other in Katla Aransen’s flame-coloured, bloody hair. ‘So I have few qualms in accepting this gift from you.’
Tam Fox, his head wrenched sideways, looked up at the god steadily, golden lights shining in his tawny eyes. ‘Take it, then, quickly,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘For her sake: take it now, before I change my mind.’
There was a brief shudder, a trembling, in earth and air, as if time was shiftin
g or energies were flowing; then the mummer chief’s eyes rolled up in his head and Katla Aransen writhed sideways, coughing.
The movement made her wound gape ever wider, so that a loop of intestine spilled, gleaming, out into the furnace-light of the volcano.
Saro stared at this abomination, then up at the god, disbelieving. ‘I thought you were going to save her!’ he cried in accusation.
Sirio frowned. ‘She is alive.’
‘But her wound is not healed—’
‘Healing of wounds is not my province.’ He turned to the great cat at his feet. ‘We have a long journey ahead of us, you and I,’ he told it. ‘If we are to be reunited with our Rose. Are you ready?’
Bëte opened her mouth in a vast red arc which might have been a yawn or a gesture of assent. Then she rubbed her cheek against his leg and lumbered to her feet.
‘You can’t leave us! If you leave her like this, she’ll die: no one can live a day with a wound like that.’
Sirio looked minutely irritated. ‘Your lives are so short: what difference does it make if she lives one day or another ten years? All you people do is to inflict harm on one another and seek power. And when you gain power all you do is seek more. Rahe had an entire kingdom in his thrall: why did he have to rape my sister and steal her magic? Just to live longer and take more power. And now I must find him and redress that balance.’
The Beast moved between them. It gazed down at Katla Aransen thoughtfully and for a long and terrible moment Saro feared that the scent of her warm blood had piqued its appetite, particularly when it bent its head and began to nose at the wound, making Katla cry out in agony.
Saro threw himself at the cat’s neck, tried to haul it away. It shook him off as if he were a gnat and went back to its task, immune to his pummelling and threats.