by Anne Perry
But he could save Verrani.
“Yes, I am sure,” he answered her.
“I’m afraid,” she whispered, her voice catching. “If I defy him he’ll hurt me. He might even kill me! You don’t know how strong he is.”
“I’ll protect you,” he promised. “I have power also, both physical and spiritual. If it is what you want, I can take you away from the island altogether. When we sail, you may come too, to Camassia, if you like, or anywhere else.”
She shook her head, but her eyes still pleaded with him. He saw a strange mixture of honesty and despair in her.
“Do you want the freedom to choose for yourself what you will do, to follow your own beliefs and answer honestly to your own spirit, to befriend whom you will?” he pressed.
She bit her lip and her voice was no more than a whisper. “Yes, of course I do.”
“Then you can,” he said fervently.
She stiffened, fear gripping her. She swallowed convulsively. “I must go to Nastemah now. But come for me!”
“I will gather soldiers I can trust and follow you,” he promised.
“Tonight?”
“Yes, within the hour.”
“Do you swear it?”
“I do.”
She nodded, the rigidity easing out of her. With the shadow of a smile she turned and walked away, glancing back at him once, a tumult of emotions in her face, a darkness and a terror he meant to free her from forever.
He went immediately to the legionary captain who had fought beside him suppressing the rebellion on the eastern shore. He was willing to bring ten men and come that moment; indeed he was eager. He had no love for Nastemah and believed him to be the dark hand behind many of the island’s troubles. Alexius left a written message for Tathea, and rode out to keep his promise to Verrani, his last act on the island before he sailed for Camassia in the morning.
They traveled east and south along the imperial road. It was not far, no more than two or three miles. The lights were still blazing in Nastemah’s great house although it was not long till morning. Alexius posted the soldiers in the grounds and went alone to the great iron-studded door.
The servants admitted him without showing more than slight surprise. Inside the hall, fires leaped in the hearth, crackling bright. The walls were hung with tapestries, and the gold of ornaments reflected the flames. Verrani stood slender as a sapling, still dressed in silver with a dark rope of silk round her waist. Behind her Nastemah smiled and stared with his fox eyes at Alexius.
“You have ridden far, my lord,” he said softly. “Let us offer you wine. Verrani! Fill the goblet for Lord Alexius.” He gestured with his arm towards a ewer of blue enamel chased in gold and a crimson goblet beside it.
Meekly Verrani obeyed and brought the goblet over, offering it to Alexius with averted eyes. Then she poured another and gave it to Nastemah.
For Alexius to decline would have been rude to Verrani, and he was thirsty from the ride in the chill night air.
“Thank you.” He looked beyond her at Nastemah, knowing his enemy, seeing the evil in his face. “Lady Verrani does not wish to remain with you.” He would not deceive by evasion. “Your acts and your thoughts are repellent to her. I have come to give her safe escort to wherever she pleases. I have soldiers outside, and you would be unwise to offer violence.” He sipped the wine; it was delicious.
Nastemah’s eyebrows rose in surprise, not in anger. “Indeed! How little you understand. But Camassia is so young.” He shrugged. “So very young. And your wisdom is wrought with much foolishness, my lord.” He was standing by the mantel, the firelight bright on his head and shoulders. “A lovely face, a seeming victim—and you rush in where wiser men pass by. You think I hold Verrani here against her will?”
“Not any longer,” Alexius answered firmly. “I have made provision for her. I will be her guardian until she is able to choose for herself another husband and what manner of life she will.” He would not mention the ship or any voyage. Let Nastemah think she would remain here.
“Oh, brave!” Nastemah was smiling. There was no outrage in his face at all, only mockery. “But such a fool!” He spat the last word and turned his goblet over and poured its contents on the floor. “You know nothing of me! My power is not that of the sword. I do not keep Verrani, or anyone!” He laughed—a cold, ugly sound. “You think I have her in thrall? I do, but it is of her own choosing. I serve the darkness. I am a son of Asmodeus, the Great Angel of the Pit. But I hold no one against their will.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “The darkness has no force, only seduction.”
Alexius swung round to Verrani, and for the first time he saw shadows in her face. Under the fair skin there was grayness; the eyes were hollower, the lips had petulance and a sourness invisible before. It might have been no more than a change in the light, and yet suddenly she was repellent. He felt cold inside.
“Verrani is with me because in her soul she chooses to be,” Nastemah said softly and with infinite pleasure. “It is not I who make her miserable, it is the war within her. She wants the light, and yet she has not the courage to take it.”
Alexius stared at him. The slim, golden, vulpine figure seemed to sway in the hard flamelight, the eyes and the hair to become richer, more obvious.
“She has chosen the dark,” Nastemah said again.
Alexius tried to say “no,” but his lips would not form the word.
“Ah, yes!” Nastemah spoke as if he had heard the cry of his mind. “That is why she herself offered you the poisoned goblet. She betrayed you, Alexius, Lord of the Book, as she betrayed herself. That is why she will remain with me. I spoke the truth: darkness has no power over light. Those in bondage to me have chosen it. And you have not seen the least part of their number!”
Poison. The room wavered and blurred and drifted into a haze as Alexius sank to his knees. The floor rose to meet him, not with violence as he had expected, but with a softness as if it were a bed; and he knew no more.
Nastemah walked over and stood above him, looking down at his body where it lay and at the peace which was even now smoothing out his features, laying a grace upon them as if the weariness and the conflicts of the years had slipped away and were resolved in understanding of such beauty it consumed all pain and transfigured it.
Suddenly Nastemah’s features twisted in a paroxysm of envy so violent it seemed it must destroy him. His body shook as if with an ague. His teeth bit his lips till they bled, and his nails gouged the flesh from his palms. He let out a wail of fury and despair that so filled the night that in the far fields even the beasts in their burrows fell silent, huddling together. In the trees all birdsong ceased.
Chapter XX
THE SOLDIERS CARRIED THE body of Alexius back to Sylum. It was the ashen-faced legionary captain who brought the news to Tathea.
Horror gripped her even before he spoke. He stood in the doorway to her rooms in the early morning light, haggard and wretched.
His voice was very low, rough with the strain of his emotions. “Lord Alexius is dead, my lady. Nastemah slew him ... with poison.”
She could not grasp what he had said. It could not be true.
“Dead?” she repeated.
“Yes, my lady. He went in alone. It was poison in a goblet of wine.”
She stood motionless. In a few sentences the whole world had changed. Suddenly it was colder. Something immeasurably sweet had been taken away. She was hardly aware of the room around her, or that she was shaking and the legionary captain had come to her side and was guiding her to a seat.
He stayed with her, silently. There was nothing to say. At last she gathered her thoughts and, leaning on his arm, rose to her feet again.
“Where is he? What have you done with his body?” It was her duty to see that he was buried properly. His wife—his widow—was the Emperor’s sister.
“I’ll take you to him,” he offered.
She stopped, pulling against him. “I—I don’t want to see ...” She c
ould not bear to look at his dead face, especially if the poison had disfigured him. She wanted to remember him alive, as he had been.
“You should, my lady,” he said, for the first time without awkwardness. “There is a peace in him perhaps you will understand. You should carry that back to his family.”
She looked at him. She had not even thought of that. He was right—it was she who should go and tell Eleni. Everything in her rebelled at the thought, but there was no argument; there could be none. The last thing she could do for Alexius was to tell his widow, and she owed Eleni that and more—debts she could not pay.
“Of course,” she agreed, following him as he led the way out of the room and along the stone passage down to the main stairs and the great hall. Ortelios was there, white-faced and grim. He bowed his head, but he did not go with her. The moment was one on which he would not intrude. He did not know what lay between Alexius and Tathea, but his perception told him it was more than a common faith or purpose.
She went past the guard and entered the room. Alexius was lying on a simple table. He was dressed in the same robes as the evening before, but his sword was by his side, and he had simple chest armor over his shirt and breeches. Someone, perhaps Ortelios, had laid his scarlet-crested imperial helmet by his side, and his cloak was folded neatly at his feet.
None of that mattered. She saw them only on the edge of her vision. His face was so familiar it tore at her with a pain that made her gasp for breath, and yet it was also different. Peace spread around him like a light, enfolding her as well, smoothing away the sharp knife edge of grief. He had left her, and nothing would be the same again knowing that he was no longer somewhere in the world, thinking of her as she was of him, remembering. But his spirit was in a brighter place, beyond the reach of the Great Enemy. His battle was over and won. She could not doubt that. The victory was in his face. She could not weep for him, only for herself.
She looked at him for a long time. She would not see him again, and when she left, it would be the last good-bye. She must remember every line, every part of him—his mouth, his cheek, his hands. She must never find she could not picture him in her mind.
Finally she knew it was enough. Alexius was no longer here, and she should leave also. It was time to thank Ortelios for all he had said and done during her long years on the island. Alexius’s ship was waiting and she must go. He had come to take her back to Camassia for some reason he had not told her, but that did not change her mission. Menath-Dur had warned her there was a greater conflict ahead, and she knew she had not fought it yet.
She arrived in the City in the Center of the World in early summer. It was thirteen years since she had first come here, carrying the Book in her arms. She had forgotten how bright the sun was, how strong the heat of it on the stones. Once again she was alone. There were no courtiers, no army, not even Tugomir as companion. And now there were none of Kol-Shamisha’s jewels left.
It had been hard to leave the island. She had loved the people, and in a deep and unexplained way she had loved the land itself. Hardest of all to part with had been her home. It was the one farewell she had not been able to make without weeping.
She passed unnoticed in the teeming streets, a woman darker skinned than Camassians but with a scattering of silver at the temples of her black hair and a certainty in the way she held her head which was more than pride, more even than courage. She was only fleetingly aware of those she passed or the changes in the city, subtle to the eye. All her mind was inward.
Ortelios had given her the money Alexius had had, and she used what was necessary to pay her way to Eleni’s house. There was a strange servant at the door who asked her name.
“Ta-Thea, of Shinabar,” she answered. “Tell Lady Eleni that I have news from the Island at the Edge of the World, and have her maids wait on her.”
There must have been something in her face or her voice, some knowledge of grief, because the man obeyed without argument or question.
She was conducted to the same quiet, earth-toned room overlooking the cypress garden which she and Eleni had shared so many years ago, before Shinabar, when the Book was new and exciting. They had had a kind of innocence then, which was gone, and now they had new losses to share, or to separate them. Alexius had gone to the island to bring her back. If he had not, he would still be alive.
Eleni came in quietly. She too had changed. There was gray in her hair, and she was not so slender as in the past, but the gentleness was still there and the warmth in her skin, her eyes. The lines in her face were good ones, born of laughter and time. If there had been anger, it had been resolved, if bitterness, it had been overcome. She looked pleased to see Tathea and walked towards her eagerly, until she saw her face more closely, then she stopped.
“What is it?” Her voice was rough-edged, catching in her throat. “Where is Alexius?”
There was no answer that would not hurt. It was ridiculous, Tathea reflected, that even now, with all her knowledge, it was so hard to say.
“He met an emissary of the Great Enemy,” she answered softly. “They fought a battle and Alexius won, but it cost him his life. I saw him afterwards. The peace of God was in his face. You could not weep for him if you had seen him, only for those who loved him and are left behind. I ... I wish I did not have to tell you this ...” That sounded like an excuse, and it was not what she had meant.
Eleni was staring at her. Anger, confusion, and grief showed in her face. “Why?” she said, shaking her head in denial. “There’s no war there! How could he be killed?”
“There is war everywhere,” Tathea answered, aching to be able to cross the gulf between them but prevented by her own guilt, not only that Alexius had gone to the island to find her, but for all the things they had shared which had excluded Eleni: the marches and the battles in Shinabar, the horror of victory and the slaughter of the dead, the comradeship which was like nothing else, the silence of the desert night, and the moment when they had resisted temptation. Perhaps they had been closer then than at any other moment in all their years of sharing. And she had seen his darkest moment also, when he understood how he had broken the higher law and then seen a greater mercy, and understood that too. She had seen him after death and known something of his spirit’s peace, and that also should have been Eleni’s, not hers. None of it could she give to Alexius’s widow or even speak of. To do so would be an injury in itself.
“What do you mean?” Eleni was angry. It was her denial of loss. “There isn’t war everywhere!” Her voice was sharp.
“A war of the spirit,” Tathea answered. Eleni had been a warrior in that as much as anyone, with her own courage and her own wounds.
“Thank you for coming to tell me,” Eleni said stiffly. “It must have been difficult for you.”
Tathea flinched. The coldness in Eleni’s eyes was undisguised. The words were oblique, polite, but their meaning was not lost. How should she answer?
“There was no one else who could have told you ...” she fumbled for the right way to phrase it, “... of the peace in him, that it was greater than that of most men who die in battle, that—”
“That you knew him better than I did?” Eleni’s eyebrows rose.
Tathea felt the heat surge up her face. “Of course not. I had not seen him for seven years. It is simply that it happened where I was.
Eleni’s expression did not change or soften. “And you could not help?” She gave an abrupt little laugh. “I used to think you could always defeat the Enemy.” Now there were tears in her eyes. She blinked rapidly. “How did you let him take Alexius?”
The question was absurd in a dozen ways. She had not been in Nastemah’s house; she had not even known Alexius’s intention to go there. She had no power over the ability of the Enemy to cause physical death. She had proved fallible all too often even to avoid his corruption of the spirit or his power to deceive. She had the same path to walk as everyone else. But Alexius had gone to the island for her. And he had loved her. They
had never spoken it between them, but they had known it far more surely than any word could have expressed. In that she was guilty. To argue over any of the lesser issues was a dishonesty neither of them deserved.
“I wasn’t there,” she answered. “Alexius went to help a woman who seemed to be held against her will. He took soldiers with him, but he went into the house alone. No one knows what happened except that the Enemy lost the battle of the spirit, and in his rage he killed Alexius.”
“How do you know he won?” Eleni asked. “Don’t lie to comfort me.” Her voice was hard, full of warning and fear.
“We used to know each other better than that!” Tathea accused. “I haven’t changed. Have you, that you could forget?”
Eleni turned away and walked over to the long window, staring at the sun on the cypresses. A golden-flowering vine trailed over the steps.
“I am not lying,” Tathea said more gently. “I saw his face afterwards, and that was why I came rather than anyone else. I wish I had the words to let you see his expression. The peace of God was in him. I grieve for his loss, but the pain I feel is for myself, not for him. To feel pain for him would be to deny that what I have seen is true. You cannot wish to hold anyone back from the great journey upwards if you ... if you love them.”
There was silence in the room. It was hot. The sunlight fell in bright patterns on the smooth floor. There was a perfume of cedar-wood and flowers in the air. The breeze from the open windows carried the smell of cypresses. It was a world away from the island, a beauty almost from another creation, no rain-wet blossoms; no full-throated birdsong; no wild, dark heaths and wind-ragged skies. And yet love and loss were the same.
At last Eleni turned to face Tathea. There were tears on her cheeks. “You did love him, didn’t you?” It was half a question, half a statement. She wanted an answer, but she knew what it must be if it were honest.
“Yes,” Tathea said softly. “And I loved you also. But most of all I love the light I have seen, and I never forgot that.”
Eleni took a quick breath and closed her eyes. She walked over towards the windows, her back to Tathea. “I did. I forgot for a season ... then I remembered again.” She took a long, shaky breath. This time when she spoke her voice was gentle, the anger was gone. “I remembered who I am, and who I must be if I am to keep my gift. It can be held only with love, when it is hardest as well as when it is easiest. I thought I had lost it ... but it has returned, stronger and sweeter because of my knowledge.”