Orders Talis was not allowed to give if he was to honour the Guardian code.
A vision of Laroque came to him then, instructing his nephew that he must not control the minds of others lest the Guardians be suspected of leading the throne, a fate which would surely mean their death. Yet here Talis used the forbidden power deliberately.
‘You did not see me,’ he whispered, looking directly into the vacant eyes of the guard, trusting that his duty towards The Light justified any action. The guard nodded in reply, yet Talis felt unsure. Never before had he used this power, and to ensure all trace of his discovery at the Hightower was removed, he searched within the guard’s mind for remnant memories.
Once inside, his apprehension grew. Within this guard’s mind lay memories of The Dark and a heavily cloaked woman visiting The Light. Fear lay in the guard’s memories of this woman, yet Talis imagined she must be a healer brought to care for the health of The Light and her precious child. Outside the closed door, the guard heard nothing of what they said, yet after these visitations, The Light was heard to cry so wretchedly that even the guard was moved to pity.
Hearing this, Talis felt a renewed conviction that he must remove himself from The Light’s presence, thus ensuring the return of the happiness she had shared with the husband she loved.
‘You did not see me on this stairwell,’ he repeated to the guard, who nodded slowly. Then, when he should have taken his leave, a reckless longing caused Talis to add, ‘Though if I should come to take the watch from you tonight, you will speak of it to no-one and make as though you held the guard yourself.’
Again the guard nodded. ‘I will obey,’ he said, his voice as empty as his eyes.
Talis nodded and withdrew his hand, gazing at the silent guard, wishing his own heart would obey him as readily.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The Elder Sh’hale had ordered his sick bed moved into his courtyard garden, yet even the heady fragrance of his beloved lorthen flowers could not extinguish the stench of approaching death that hung upon him.
Kert would not come. A secret petition had been sent to him at the Volcastle and a decline had been returned. It galled the Elder that he must die without his firstborn present, yet what retribution could he bring upon his son that would not harm his House? Neither was there any advance to be made in the area of the throne. The Elder’s dreams would be unrealised, for though Kert had inherited his viciousness, the boy was without ambition and appeared content to Champion a throne he could have possessed.
The Elder’s daughters, married off quickly to rid him of their presence, would happily come to fawn over him, dabbing perfumed kerchiefs to their noses as they smiled prettily and strove to curry his favour. Yet he would not have them.
Better to die in honest loneliness than to fill that void with false love.
Friends? He had none. Acquaintances?
Barrion of Verdan would come and not show him a false face. Perhaps he would even offer some jest to ease his passing. A dry, trembling smile touched the Elder’s lips as he remembered offering Verdan his youngest daughter in marriage. How that barrel chest had resonated with laughter. ‘I am too young,’ he had cried, though he was twice Kert’s age at the time.
‘My Lord, a man comes.’ His steward’s voice broke this idle reverie and the Elder struggled to open his eyes. ‘He bears himself like an old friend, and comes —’
A guttural cry cut this speech short, followed by the sound of a body falling. It was a noise the Elder knew well.
‘Friend or foe?’ he called softly, his fading vision of less use than his sharp ears.
Footsteps to his right, a step into the soft earth of the garden, perhaps skirting the body, then a crunch onto the pebbled walk. The Elder saw only a garden full of shadows, one of them moving.
‘Which would you have me be?’ the intruder asked, his voice deep and tantalisingly familiar. ‘I am yours for the naming.’
‘Executioner, I surmise,’ the Elder replied, feeling relief at this visitation. A quick end would, after all, be a welcome respite from pain. And his death must be so near that a day earlier would make little difference.
‘Yet questions will be asked, and answers given,’ the voice said, and again pebbles crunched underfoot.
The Elder fought to move his head yet lethargy still gripped him.
‘I am known to you,’ the deep voice went on. ‘We have shared the battle brotherhood.’
A warrior then, voice strong from shouting across the battlefield. Older than Kert yet younger than himself. Some accent to the speech, an inflection. Its shape was familiar, yet the Elder could find no recollection to match it.
‘Are we not friends if we have bled together?’ the Elder asked.
‘You have no friends, Sh’hale,’ the warrior replied. ‘You have drowned their love in bitter dregs.’
‘Yet you come to me,’ the Elder, countered. ‘You come to honour my passing.’
The pebbles crunched again. Closer. ‘I come to attend your passing.’
‘This and more, I’ll warrant.’
‘There is a reckoning to be made,’ the warrior allowed.
‘I am on my death bed, and you come to punish me for past misdeeds.’ The Elder coughed, to give evidence of his pitiful state, and then wished he hadn’t. Sharp pain stabbed him low and he could not halt the moan of pain that bubbled from his lips, foaming the blood his spasm had ejected. Its sharp, metallic taste scoured his tongue.
‘If you are the one I seek, there is not time enough to punish you for what you have done,’ the warrior said, and for the first time the Elder heard malice in his voice. ‘Yet the length of your ailment consoles me. You have suffered much.’
‘Indeed, I still suffer,’ the Elder replied.
‘I wish that I could prolong your suffering,’ his executioner said. ‘But I fear it is at an end. Still, before you die you will admit your guilt to me.’
‘In what matter?’ the Elder replied. ‘There have been so many evils committed.’ He grimaced a smile, knowing it would be full of rotting teeth and blood.
‘Kill a king and steal his throne,’ the voice said, closer now and yet still a blur without details the Elder could discern.
‘You have found me out,’ the Elder whispered, even his voice failing him now. ‘For the good of Ennae I wanted to take his throne —’
‘And for that you will die …’ the warrior said.
The Elder felt cool air as his adversary flipped up the quilt and uncovered his naked form. Even then he could find no will to move. Death was upon him and he would face it with courage.
‘No more will you conspire with our enemies in the north,’ his executioner hissed.
The Elder’s resolve faltered. ‘Northmen?’ he said, confused. He had conspired to put Kert on the throne to protect Ennae from the barbarians at the north. Not to ally with them.
Cold steel pressed against his throat and with a final effort of will, he focused on the large blur above him. A face loomed near and in that moment, clarity of vision came to his eyes. ‘You!’ he croaked, and flailed on the soft bed. Yet to no purpose. There was no escape from the strong arm that wielded that sword, and with the turning of a wrist, his attacker opened the Elder’s neck. The sting of that wound barely penetrated the Elder’s pain, yet he felt the warmth flooding his chest, sapping the final remnants of his mortality. ‘You … were … dead …’ he gasped.
Roeg shook his head. ‘Not while vengeance lives in me, Sh’hale,’ he said, gazing down at him with hatred. ‘And now that I know who the true villain is, I wil
l not rest until your House is destroyed.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
‘This is wrong beyond common stupidity,’ Talis told himself softly as he watched the vacant-eyed guard descend the stairwell, instructed to take up a position halfway to the bottom. ‘This is recklessness even Pagan would not condone.’ Yet he could no more stop himself turning to knock on her door than he could still his own breath.
The Dark and his cloaked healer had come and gone, as had Khatrene’s evening meal. Talis had watched from the shadows of the corridor below, convinced that Khatrene would now be lost in grief, which the guard’s memory told him her husband’s visits precipitated. To walk away from her now when his presence might offer some shred of comfort was not within his power. This, he told himself, was his only purpose in approaching her.
A few steadying breaths brought him calm and he raised his head to address the door. Two sharp raps on the body of it, and then he spoke. Softly. ‘My Lady, are you within?’
‘Talis?’ Her voice was faint, and came from directly behind the solid timber panel. ‘Is that you?’
‘My Lady, yes,’ he replied, suddenly afraid that she might send him away in anger, blaming him, and rightly so, for her current lack of freedom.
Yet her words, when they came, were not furious but confused. ‘Talis. Is that really you? I’ve been waiting for years … It’s so dark in here and so scary …’
Talis looked down to the shard of bright light escaping from beneath the door and frowned.
‘… I knew you’d come … I mean, I hoped you’d come to rescue me. But it’s been so long …’ Her voice trailed off.
‘My Lady, I am here in your service,’ he replied, his voice strong though his mind swam with questions. Rescue her? From her husband? His treacherous heart leapt at the thought even as he wondered at her words. Years? It had been only seven days.
‘He doesn’t love me,’ she said, her voice like that of a child surprised by a playmate’s snub. Then more softly she added, ‘He never loved me.’
‘Yet I saw —’ Talis stopped himself before he could reveal exactly what he had seen in the Altar Caves.
‘He didn’t want me. Only the child. I think … he’s so cruel. I’m sure he’s going to kill me after it’s born.’
Kill The Light? Talis had suspected The Dark of jealousy, but murder? It was true that sometimes the decisions of The Dark appeared cruel, but they served Ennae, as did the man himself. Talis easily remembered The Dark’s expression of grief when he had announced that the Plainsmen must be killed to maintain The Balance. He had demanded that the killings be merciful. Would this same man kill the King’s sister to gain possession of his own child? Her accusation made no sense.
‘My Lady, do you know absolutely this intent against your life? Has The Dark spoken of it to you?’
‘He doesn’t have to,’ she said slowly. ‘His Shadow Woman makes the threats … He’s … I want to go away, Talis.’
Talis looked at the door before him, hearing madness in her words despite his love for her. ‘His … Shadow Woman, My Lady?’
‘The thing he keeps. It’s not human …’ She said nothing for a moment, then spoke again with desperation in her tone. ‘It can take any shape. A beautiful woman. And sometimes it’s invisible. He brings it with him each time he comes, to torment me …’
The cloaked woman?
‘… it was in our bedchamber and …’ Her words stopped and Talis held his breath, wanting, and yet not wanting to hear what would follow. ‘Even the first night,’ she said softly, ‘it was there. I can’t bear to think about it. When we joined, it would … it was part of the joining … touching …’ She said no more.
Talis turned and lay his back against the door, staring down the stairwell. He had seen Khatrene join with her husband in the Altar Caves. There had been no shadow between them. Though in truth, legend told about such beings. Was he to see madness in his Lady or some devious plot he had no knowledge of?
‘You have to get me out of here, Talis,’ she said, her voice now frantic. ‘Take me back to my brother. He’ll protect me. He loves me. He’s the only one. I can’t trust anyone else.’
Talis closed his eyes and struggled against the pain her words caused him. He swallowed many times before he could reply in a clear voice. ‘My Lady, I am your servant,’ he said, then tried to reason with her. ‘Yet I am also obligated to the lord of these lands. I cannot take you from his care without his permission.’ Never mind that they would not make the Plains, let alone reach the Volcastle with The Dark’s men on their trail. And if The Dark were to hear that Talis had fled with his wife he would surely suspect Khatrene of returning her Champion’s love.
Despite Talis’s longing, this was not the case.
Silence followed his measured words and he wondered if he had spoken too softly.
‘My Lady, are you there?’
‘You’re not really Talis, are you?’ she said, her words colder than the Northern Mountains. A long pause followed. ‘This is just another torture, isn’t it? Get my hopes up and then open the door and laugh in my face.’
Talis shook his head. ‘My Lady, it is I,’ he said.
‘If you are Talis … tell me something only he would know,’ she demanded.
Talis gazed at the door between them, wishing he could see her to judge whether these startling words came from madness or some physical malaise. ‘Very well,’ he replied, and thinking to placate her he cast his mind back to the times they had spent alone. There, to his surprise, such happy memories came that they all but overshadowed the anguish her marriage had brought him. He remembered with pride his efforts which had kept her safe. Remembered too the sincerity of her gratitude, the moments of humour they had shared, the simple courtesies, and also the hardships that had forged their friendship.
An unbidden, yet welcome rush of tenderness brought forth a memory no-one else could own.
‘I recall a stranger to our land,’ he said, ‘stranded on the Plains, surrounded by enemies. She spoke wisely when she told me I must trust her as she had trusted me.’
For a moment there was no reply, then through the heavy wood panel he heard a calm voice reply, ‘I remember. And you said “I will die with that trust in my heart�.’ Before Talis had time to bask in the pleasure of knowing his words had remained in her memory, she said, ‘Do you trust me still?’
He ached to say yes, yet he knew her mind to be deeply troubled. ‘I am your servant, My Lady,’ he replied.
Silence followed, and in desperation Talis looked at the sturdy lock, then tested the door handle but could gain no entry. The guard below would be no help. Talis had seen in his mind that the key to the chamber arrived with the meal and left with The Dark.
‘I wish I could enter your prison, My Lady, if for no other reason than to use my Guardian power to assure us both of your health.’ And sanity. ‘And to confirm that you are with child.’
‘Can’t you open it somehow with your magic?’
Talis shook his head, then remembered she could not see him. ‘Guardian powers can only affect the living,’ he said, his concentration more on how to get to The Light.
‘Is that the same with the Great Guardian?’ she asked.
Talis paused. ‘I believe so, My Lady.’
‘He can’t do anything himself. Only if he gets people to do it for him.’
‘My Lady, I do not understand.�
�
‘Neither do I.’
Talis tried to ignore her rambling. ‘My Lady, will you lie on the floor and let your hair spill beneath the door? I shall attempt to send my power through its strands.’
‘I guess …’
Talis sat on the steps to wait. Soft sounds came from beyond the door and then into his waiting hand fell a clutch of silken strands. Unable to help himself, he lowered his head to breathe the scent of her hair, dizzying himself with it before he pressed the lock to his forehead and focused his mind on the task he had set himself.
‘My scalp … it’s tingling,’ she said, wonder in her voice.
Talis barely heard her, so strong was the will he brought to bear on his task. Through the thin strands of hair his mind found a path to her own, there to track through her body; breath, blood, pathways of consumption, and lastly to the unformed child which lay curled, a seed of life, within her womb. Yet he could probe no further before the connection was lost.
‘My Lady, you are with child,’ Talis said, her hair cool against his calloused palm.
‘I knew that,’ she replied, and through the opening beneath the door Talis scented an odd, syrupy fragrance on her breath.
‘My Lady, what do you eat?’ he asked.
‘Not babies,’ she replied smartly, to which Talis had no answer.
Painstakingly, he retraced the connection and searched her mind for the madness he knew had prompted such a reply, yet found instead an overlay that matched his perception of the fragrance of her breath. A smoky tincture that had settled on her mind like the mists of Rue Marsh. ‘Have you been drugged, My Lady?’ he said to himself, as much as to her.
‘Did you know that he had my wedding dress made of human skin?’ Her voice sounded hollow. ‘He eats people. Children. He told me so himself.’
Talis swallowed tightly. He knew this could not be true. Yet how did The Light come to say such things if she was not mad?
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