‘Then I will guard her most carefully,’ he said, realising the honour that had been placed in his hands and adjusting his strategy accordingly — he must not give Ellega to her brother.
‘She will be safer with you than among the Northmen,’ Kraal said, turning his volcanic eyes back to Djahr. ‘Keep her here and I will send for the child when it is born.’
Djahr bowed. ‘My Lord I am at your service.’
‘I leave you now,’ Kraal said, beginning to shimmer around the edges. ‘Though the Northmen seek to conquer your kingdom, they will not harm you here. And when you give me the talisman I will hand you Ennae to do with as you please.’
‘My Lord Kraal,’ Djahr said again, and straightened. In the next moment Kraal was gone and the rays of sunlight fell uninterrupted from his lattice wall onto Djahr’s robe.
A second later the door to his chambers swung open and one of his Guardsmen entered, halting two steps in when he recognised the room’s occupant. ‘My Lord Be’uccdha,’ he said hastily and bowed. ‘I heard noises in your chambers —’
‘And came to investigate. Well done,’ Djahr said, stepping forward. ‘What is your name, guardsman?’
‘Tulak, My Lord,’ the guardsman replied with a surety of voice that named him older than Djahr had first suspected. His thick hair, braided in clumps as was the fashion in Be’uccdha Guardsmen, stole years off his appearance, yet he was dark of skin which meant his line was close to that of the nobility of Be’uccdha. ‘I am newly installed as the head guardsman on this floor. Had we known of your return —’
Djahr held up a hand for silence and Tulak instantly obeyed, his broad shoulders straightening inside his stiff house-guard tunic embellished with the swirling pattern of Be’uccdha which Djahr, as their lord, wore as a right-face tattoo. ‘You will shave your scalp,’ Djahr said, knowing this would add a sharpness to his features that would more readily reveal his age, ‘and return to me in the cloth of a lieutenant Guard Captain. You will be the right arm Mooraz has lost.’ He pointed to his naked and slumbering Guard Captain.
Tulak glanced at Mooraz, then looked back to his lord. ‘I will be swift,’ he said with quiet obedience, though the joy of his fast promotion must be singing through his veins. ‘Would My Lord Be’uccdha have me bring a uniform for his Guard Captain also?’ Thinking ahead. Djahr liked that.
‘And maids to attend to our Lady of Verdan who is now our guest.’
Tulak nodded but did not look at Ellega. He merely continued to hold his lord’s gaze until Djahr looked away, indicating that their audience was at an end. With that, his new lieutenant bowed and left.
Djahr was alone then, save for the two slumbering nearby. Exhaustion crept back and he walked to his couch and lay upon it, breathing the rich salt-laden air and listening to the repetitive moaning of the ocean below his castle, feeling the comfort these simple pleasures brought him.
His new lieutenant would return soon and decisions would be made. He must send search parties out looking for the talisman, finalise his story about Ellega’s rescue and perhaps administer a drug which would calm her when she woke. She must be convinced that any terrors she remembered were hallucinations, lest she babble of Kraal and ruin Djahr’s plans.
All this and more he must arrange before slumber could claim him, but for now he lay still and listened to the ocean, satisfaction within him that the time would soon come when he would be King of Ennae at last.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
‘So when are you pair going to tie the knot?’ Reg asked.
Sarah rolled her eyes, then noticed Glimmer was cross-legged on the floor beside the bread stand having her usual silent conversation with Reg’s dog. Sarah moved down the counter, pretending to inspect the magazines so Reg would have to turn away from Glimmer to continue harassing her. ‘We’re not getting married,’ she said, thinking that fact must be obvious to everyone in the town by now.
‘It’s been over a year …’
‘Fifteen months, to be exact, since Pagan’s wife died.’
Reg was silent for a moment, no doubt thinking about Beryl and how much he missed her still. But rather than that being the end of it, he said, ‘The poor motherless toddler,’ and hooked a finger towards Glimmer, while thankfully keeping his attention on Sarah. ‘Do her little heart good to have a proper mother.’
Sarah put the magazine down. ‘I’m not a proper mother?’
Reg heard the tone. ‘Of course you are, Snug, but it’s not … secure,’ he said. ‘That’s what I meant. Her dad might up and leave, and then where would the little mite be? Motherless again.’
Sarah had no idea how she’d let Reg start this conversation, but she could certainly tell when it was time to stop it. ‘What I do is my business.’
‘It’s the little one I’m worried about. Not you,’ Reg shot back. ‘If the man’s going to stay, you should make it legal. Make it right.’ Despite the snappy tone, he had that endearing belligerent look on his face that was meant to disguise a marshmallow heart.
She patted his hand, ‘I know you think that would fix everything, but marriage implies love … among other things,’ she said tactfully.
Reg was immune to tact. ‘He’s not doing it with anyone else, my girl, so it may as well be you. Unless you don’t like the look of him?’
Sarah simply raised an eyebrow.
‘Not a girl in twenty miles who wouldn’t have him in a minute,’ Reg said.
The district nurse had found out about Glimmer and been most insistent on seeing her for regular weighing and checkups. Pagan, in turn, had insisted on being present to protect her, and each week there seemed to be more women in the waiting room, eager to gawp at him. True to his word, he never returned anyone’s attention, and to avoid conversations he used awkward silences and a preoccupation with Glimmer’s safety. These traits were generally accepted as signs of inconsolable grief and Sarah encouraged that idea.
‘He’s yours for the taking,’ Reg said.
She glanced back at him. ‘You think so?’ She wished.
‘I know so,’ Reg said, then leant forward on the counter and lowered his voice. ‘I’m a bloke too, you know.’
Her eyebrows went back up.
‘An old bloke, granted,’ he said. ‘But I know the look of a man fraying at the edges when I see one.’ He nodded as though imparting a great truth.
Sarah had lost the thread. ‘Fraying at the edges?’
‘Missing his wife. The conjugal bed.’ Reg looked at her as though she must be stupid. Maybe she was.
‘Oh.’ Sarah didn’t know what to say. ‘You think so?’
It was Reg’s turn to raise his eyebrows and Sarah had to look away to think. Pagan? Sexually frustrated?
‘He does run a lot,’ she admitted.
‘And takes nice long showers afterwards, I’ll bet,’ Reg said, adding a wink to his nod this time. ‘All you’ve got to do, my girl, is put yourself in his path. Leave your robe in your room and be stepping out of the shower when he comes in the door. Just an accident …’
Sarah could piece together the rest of the scene. She’d fantasised about it often enough, but it had always been Pagan coming on to her, never her luring him.
‘You’re frowning, Snug,’ Reg said. ‘Do you want the man in your bed or don’t you?’
She put a hand up over her eyes. ‘I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with you.’
Reg pulled her hand away, looked her straight in the eye. ‘You’re having this conversation with me, Sarah McGuire, because I’m the one person in town who isn’t polite enough to accept your lies. Everyone knows you’re mad for him. And he’s got to have someone soon or he’ll explode. It may as well be you, luv.’
Sarah tried to look exasperated. ‘How do you know he’ll explode,’ she said, wondering what it would be like to be near an exploding mass of testosterone. ‘It’s not as though he’s confided in you.’
Pagan barely talked to anyone apart from Sarah and Glimmer. When he came to town he was p
olite, but brief. He’d realised not long after Reg’s barbecue that lengthy conversations invited trouble. There would always be some comment or question he could not understand, and without Sarah to cut in or change the subject, he floundered.
‘I know the type,’ Reg went on. ‘There’s a lot in the military like him. Strong, tough, more courage than a whole battalion.’ He shook his head. ‘Great soldiers, but they’re not made for celibacy, luv. They’re only happy when they’re killing or …’ He looked at her pointedly.
Sarah turned away again. What Reg said had a ring of truth to it. Pagan had told her about his glorious battles and his face had come alive with excitement, the same way it did when he and Glimmer practised sword-fighting. Wooden swords, admittedly, but that was frightening enough and no amount of arguing on Sarah’s part had made any difference. ‘The Champion’ had the last say. So much for equal parenting.
‘You’ve got a lot to think about,’ Reg said, slapping his age-mottled hand down on the counter. ‘Let’s get the rest of your order together and put it in your truck.’
Sarah nodded absently and looked at the glossy magazine in her hands. WANT TO BE IRRESISTIBLE? WE’LL SHOW YOU HOW! the byline screamed. She pushed it towards Reg. 'I'll take this too.’
Half an hour later she was driving home, casting surreptitious glances at Pagan who sat relaxed on the other side of the air-conditioned cab with Glimmer on the booster seat between them, both wearing brown. Again. Today that irritated her. ‘You know, if Glimmer wore green it would really bring out the colour of her eyes,’ she said, thinking of the gorgeous pair of lime overalls she’d seen in a mail-order catalogue.
‘We have discussed this before,’ Pagan replied.
He and Glimmer might have to return at any time and he didn’t want them to arrive back on Ennae in colours that would make them stand out. Glimmer would be hard enough to hide with her royal colouring.
‘But people have noticed,’ she argued. ‘It makes you stand out here.’
‘You have told them that it was Lae’s favourite colour. They believe that.’
True, but it still irked Sarah. Worse than irked, in fact. It set them apart from her. It accentuated the fact that they were different and constantly reminded her that their time on her world was finite. It rubbed her nose in the fact that she should never have fallen in love with them both.
She glanced at Pagan again and noticed that his eyes were closed. Was he performing one of his self-healings? Glimmer sat like that sometimes too, her eyes closed, as though intent on some inner world. Sarah had thought she was only copying Pagan’s behaviour, but last month … She shuddered to remember.
It had been impossible weather, a scorching day straight after an overnight frost, so she’d taken Glimmer with her to the office to play in the air-conditioning while she’d made some phone calls — well, play wasn’t the right word. Glimmer's idea of play was performing dexterity exercises designed to teach her infantile body to function with the same agility as her adult mind. In any case, Sarah had just tracked down a copy of the christening certificate she’d needed so that reclusive old Barney Weatherby would be allowed to have a requiem mass. She’d put down the phone and realised Glimmer was no longer on the floor behind her.
The building had been locked so Sarah hadn’t panicked. At first. She’d simply looked: in reception, the tiny kitchenette, the equipment storage room, the loft where the coffins were stored, the broom cupboard, the toilet. With each empty room she traversed, her anxiety had risen. By the time she’d reached the preparation room she’d been sick with fear, and then horrified to find the adjoining cold room door ajar. Two bodies had been put in there. One dressed and sealed in its coffin. The other simply covered by a sheet.
‘Glimmer …’ she’d called faintly, suddenly unable to push her legs forward.
The child had come to stand in the cold room door, her wide eyes untroubled by the interruption. Sarah had swallowed sickly and held out a hand. She hadn’t wanted to know. Instead, she’d taken Glimmer to the preparation sinks and washed her hands three times with disinfectant, then marched her back to the house.
The next day Sarah had gone back to the cold room with some trepidation. The sealed coffin had appeared untouched, however the unprepared body had been uncovered and the crisscross of operation scarring Sarah had noticed on internment was gone, healed. God knows what would have happened if Sarah hadn’t interrupted her. Would she have … revived — No! She had to stop thinking about that.
She took a deep breath. ‘So, how was everyone’s morning?’ she asked instead.
Glimmer raised her small head and her white-blonde curls, so unlike Pagan’s dark straight hair, glistened in the sunlight pouring through the windscreen. ‘Rufus let me heal his osteoarthritis at last,’ she said in her lisping toddler voice.
Pagan’s eyes snapped open. ‘Did anyone see you?’ he asked her.
Glimmer shook her head. ‘And I warned him not to make his new mobility evident, lest his companion Reg become suspicious.’
Sarah had long ago stopped shuddering at the sound of five syllable words emerging from the mouth of a one year old. As long as Glimmer kept her vocabulary a secret between them, her anonymity was safe. Pagan had warned the child, and she hadn’t made any mistakes so far. ‘My own little Doctor Dolittle,’ Sarah said and found she could smile. With relief. Curing dogs seemed safe enough.
Pagan wasn’t smiling. ‘I know you have a fondness for this animal,’ he said to Glimmer, ‘but you risk our safety by —’
‘I have no fondness,’ Glimmer replied, her wide green eyes as innocent as any toddler’s. ‘Familiarity drove my actions,’ she said. ‘Just as I am familiar with you, and Sarah, and Claude. I am incapable of fondness. It is an emotion.’
And that was exactly why the district nurse thought Glimmer was autistic.
‘Very well then,’ Pagan said. He appeared to have no problem with a child who never smiled, never laughed. Never connected.
Sarah, however, did have a problem with that. And if Pagan’s Great Guardian had put them in her backyard for a reason, maybe it was to teach Glimmer love. ‘So did it make you happy to know that Rufus wouldn’t be in pain anymore?’ she asked.
Glimmer was silent beside her for a long moment but Sarah waited patiently. ‘I took satisfaction from the fact,’ she said at last. ‘I must practise my powers and you will not let me use them on humans.’
The shudder was back but Sarah quashed it. ‘Satisfaction comes from your mind,” she said. ‘What about your heart? Did you get a warm feeling inside?’
Pagan smiled and looked out the window. He’d heard this line of questioning many times before and had told Sarah it was pointless.
Glimmer shook her head. ‘As I have told you in the past, my digestive processes create heat. Beyond that I feel nothing.’
‘Nothing here?’ Sarah said and rubbed her own midriff. ‘No achey little kernel of happiness?’
‘I am not as other children.’ It was Glimmer’s standard closing statement. She went back to looking out the windscreen and Pagan caught Sarah’s eye over her head.
‘If she had been a normal child,’ he said, ‘we would not now be in Magoria.’
‘I know that, I just …’ Sarah shrugged.
‘You want to change her to suit your own ideal of childhood.’
‘I want her to be happy,’ Sarah countered.
‘She is not miserable,’ he pointed out. ‘Surely the absence of misery is —’
‘Not necessarily.’ Sarah dodged a pothole in the decaying bitumen road. ‘You don’t look miserable, but does that mean you’re happy?’
‘I am content that my duty to the child of The Light is being discharged to the best of my ability,’ he said stiffly.
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Sounds like you’re dancing on the ceiling.’
‘I have never understood this Magorian obsession with happiness,’ he said. ‘It is all illusory. Surely satisfaction, and the knowledge of a p
urposeful life, is more fulfilling than —’
‘What about glory?’ she said, shooting him a glance. ‘The excitement of battle? Is that illusory? What about —’ sex, she’d been about to say but cut herself short. ‘Those emotions are real and you crave them. What’s wrong with me craving happiness?’
‘I did not say that you should not strive for happiness,’ he said quietly, in what she had come to recognise as his conciliatory tone. ‘But to expect it of Glimmer is unreasonable. She does not require emotions to fulfil her destiny. She need only stay alive and be strong.’
‘Love can make you strong,’ Sarah said, keeping her eyes on the road, not daring to look at Pagan.
‘Love can also make you weak,’ he replied softly, and when she glanced at him a moment later he was gazing out the window, not seeing the cattle that grazed contentedly in the paddocks they passed.
They arrived home and Pagan unpacked the groceries while Sarah put Glimmer to bed for her afternoon nap. Then he went out to try the new axe he’d bought. Sarah sat on the end of her bed, the magazine she’d bought in her lap. She didn’t bother opening it. There would be pictures of beautiful models in seductive poses and that would only make her feel worse. She wasn’t beautiful, or striking. When you had short sandy blonde hair and freckles all over a button nose, the best you could aim for was wholesome. There was no seductive lingerie either. Pagan would probably be more embarrassed than aroused if he ‘accidentally’ caught her in her pink cotton panties and matching crop-top bra.
Reg was sweet but he didn’t have a clue what was happening, and Sarah was damned if she’d sacrifice her pride by throwing herself at Pagan. What if he laughed at her? Sarah closed her eyes, gritting her teeth at the thought. No, there was nobility in unrequited love. She’d rather hang onto that. So she put the magazine aside and headed for the kitchen. Chocolate fixed even problem.
‘Sarah.’
She stopped at the small bedroom Pagan had refurbished for Glimmer when she had turned one. The first night Glimmer had slept in it. Sarah had lain awake all night thinking of Pagan finally alone in his bedroom. Now it appeared Glimmer was the one who couldn’t sleep.
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