by Shannah Jay
The deleff trumpeted once more, then walked into the healers’ garden to join Risslin, who was waiting for him at the rear beneath a bell-flower tree.
There was a moment’s silence then the crowd cheered loudly and swept the newly-declared couple back to the inn to celebrate.
So were things done in Tenebrak before Discord, Karialla thought with satisfaction as the line of laughing people came to a halt before the inn and broke up into groups. So shall we do things again from now on. We’ve begun a new era, where we shall create joy once more. This I vow.
Her eyes caught Deverith’s and he nodded once, as if in approval, then turned to ask Evril to offer everyone a drink at his expense.
***
Only Rojan was missing from the celebrations, Rojan, who should have been leading them today. He went to sit in his richly-furnished house behind locked doors, scowling. ‘They shall acknowledge me master before I’m through,’ he vowed out loud. ‘The gods have chosen me to lead the people back into decent, sober ways - me, not a foolish woman and a worn-out old man.’
No one was going to usurp his authority in the One Circle or encourage sinful people to be carefree and heedless, either. That was no way to serve the gods. There should be solemnity and awe, not frivolity.
However, he’d learned to bide his time when he wanted something, to present a calm face to the world and await a suitable moment to strike, so he would do nothing in haste.
But the anger festered within him, growing stronger every time he set eyes on Karialla and saw her radiant happiness, for he’d wanted her for himself ever since he had first set eyes on her.
Deverith he avoided when he could, for the man made him feel uneasy.
He would wait as long as needed but once he saw his chance, he’d act swiftly - and mercilessly. He was the First Elect, after all! It was frivolous ways that had brought Discord to the land. It was a solemn dedication to duty that would end it finally.
CHAPTER 22
The next morning Karialla awoke to the warmth of a body next to hers and saw Deverith leaning on one elbow grinning at her. When they were together, he lost his air of authority and showed her the eager young spirit who had set out to explore their world, pushing always at the boundaries of knowledge. She wished suddenly that she’d known him then, that fate had allowed them to share their youth.
It’s more comfortable making love in a bed, isn’t it?’ Deverith teased. ‘Though that grove by the waterfall was nice, too. The grass was very soft.’
She couldn’t stop herself from blushing. Pavlin had been a gentle and considerate lover. Deverith was inventive, energetic and demanding. ‘I think you’ve been telling me lies about your age,’ she declared in mock anger. ‘A hundred and twenty, indeed!’
The grin broadened. ‘Experience shows - and besides, I’m only doing my duty. We do want to pass on our Gifts to
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our descendants, don’t we?’
The amusement vanished from her face. ‘I still can’t believe it’s possible! Pavlin and I tried so hard for a child, and for ten years, nothing! Then a machine tells me . . . ’
‘I know, lass, I know.’ His arms enfolded her and she relaxed into them with a happy murmur. ‘And we really did conceive our first child in that grove in the wildwoods. Have you not realised that yet?’ He kissed away the tears those words brought.
‘Are you sure?’ She hadn’t dared trust her own senses about that.
‘I’m very sure, Karialla. I knew it the instant it happened. I felt the joy rippling through the soul of the new being we created together. Our daughter.’
‘Can you tell that already?’
He nodded. ‘Oh, yes. And you will, too, as your skills grow. What shall we call her, this little daughter of ours.’
‘Herranna,’ she said without hesitation. ‘After my mother.’
They lay for a while in a close embrace, savouring the knowledge that already they were following the path indicated by the gods, then they rose and began their first full day together in Tenebrak.
***
That morning the stranger visited them. ‘They tell me you’re going to build a temple up on the ridge,’ he said, in his abrupt way.
Karialla nodded.
‘My name’s Balas and I’m a stoneworker. I’m very good at my work and I want to build that temple for you.’
She and Deverith exchanged glances of amazement. ‘We still have to get enough coin,’ she explained. ‘We aren’t ready to start yet.’
‘Some of the stone is there already. It just needs cutting from the ground.’
They must have both shown their puzzlement, because Balas hurried to explain. ‘You’ll want good foundations for a big building, cellars, too, so we can cut them out and provide some of our own building blocks in the process.’
‘You can do that?’
He nodded, impatient to get their agreement. ‘Of course I can.’ Then he decided he’d better warn them about his unusual ways. ‘I talk to the stone, though. I don’t just cut it.’
‘Talk to it?’
‘Yes. You can feel how it lies, sense the faults.’ He shrugged, not finding the right words, trying to mould the shapes he was describing in the air with his big lumpy hands. ‘I work with it.’
Deverith stood up and came across to him. ‘Look me in the eyes.’
Balas did as he was told and the room seemed to whirl around him for a moment. He couldn’t pull his eyes away. It was as if a link had formed from Deverith’s soul to his. Then the moment passed and his mind became his own again.
He blinked and stared at the healer, but there was nothing in this man to frighten anyone.
Nodding in satisfaction, Deverith moved back to join Karialla. ‘I would trust him absolutely.’
‘I only need my food and somewhere to live as I make a start.’ Balas looked in the direction of the ridge. For a moment, his eyes were lost in dreams, then he turned back to them. ‘This is a big house. I could live here. I could make a start this very day, get to know the land - and the stone.’
Deverith smiled. The lad was very direct in his demands.
‘There is one other thing you need to know before we decide,’ Karialla told Balas. ‘I’ve already been shown what the temple will be like. It can be built in no other way.’
‘Tell me.’
She took him into the stillroom and they sat down together at the counter with a piece of paper. She drew out the rough shape, the lines flowing easily as her charcoal stick followed her memories, and she was pleased at what she had produced. No detail, but the shape was exactly as she’d seen it. She pushed it towards Balas.
He studied it for a long time, closing his eyes and squinting at it, then nodded. ‘Yes. It’s a good shape. The stone would hold it well and the pressures would balance out. A building like that would endure over many years.’ He hesitated. ‘I can do that shape for you, but I can’t do the carvings on the stone.’
She looked down at her sketch in bewilderment. ‘I’ve drawn no carvings.’
He grunted. Would she ridicule him if he told her? ‘I’ve dreamed of this place already. It looks like your drawing and it has carvings all over the walls. They’re very beautiful. They’ll take many years and many lives. I can’t do carving. I work with pieces of stone. I’m not,’ he stared down at his hands, ‘not good at detailed work like that.’
She smiled at his earnest face. This time the deleff hadn’t brought him to her, but something else had. Perhaps, though, the deleff had sent him the dreams of what she was beginning to think of as Temple Tenebrak. She pushed back her stool. ‘Let me show you your bedroom. You can begin as soon as you like. You’re very welcome to live here.’
Only then did Balas let himself smile, the dazed, happy smile of a young man who has been granted his most
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cherished dream.
The next day he wrote to his foster-parents for the first time, telling them of his years
of travels, telling him how they could send messages to him, or even, perhaps, visit him one day. For all roads led to Tenebrak, did they not?
***
That afternoon, Deverith and Karialla called a preliminary meeting of the town’s Elders. They wanted to discuss ridding Tenebrak once and for all of the raiders. Together, they explained how Gerrell and his bullies had set up a camp in the hidden valley behind the rocky outcropping, a camp from which to launch their attacks on Tenebrak, and how Gerrell had, even in this time of returning peace, managed to come into town and capture Karialla without much difficulty.
‘They must have been helped by someone in the town,’ Deverith ended, ‘someone who’s been selling them supplies.
People would have seen them if they’d been back to town themselves, or at least noticed that things were missing if they’d been stealing the big amounts of food they needed.’
‘Surely no one would pass information to such scum?’ Evril asked, shocked. ‘Let alone sell them provisions.’
‘I’m afraid it’s the only way to explain it,’ Deverith said. ‘That’s why we’re telling only you Elders the details of what happened. We didn’t return to town immediately because we didn’t want to risk being captured by the raiders, nor did we wish to precipitate a full-scale attack on Tenebrak before you were prepared for it. When Karialla escaped, they must have been puzzled about our whereabouts and our intentions. Perhaps they even thought we’d been lost in the wildwoods. That may have prevented them from trying to attack the town openly.’
His eyes turned towards Rojan, whose expression was scornful and whose eyes were dark with hatred as he stared back. A sudden suspicion made Deverith catch his breath. Was it possible that this man was involved? Rojan? No, surely not? He wasn’t a pleasant person, but he wasn’t tainted with discord madness. Deverith would have sensed that.
Still, he felt uneasy and couldn’t dismiss the idea out of hand.
Rojan stepped forward. ‘How can you possibly know that Discord is ending?’ he scoffed, addressing Deverith. ‘By your own admission, Healer,’ and he made this title sound like an insult, ‘you’ve been skulking out there in the wildwoods during the years when troubles plagued our land.’
He threw out his arms and raised his voice. ‘Oh, my brothers and sisters, do not listen to this man! There is still danger creeping around us, and there always will be. There can be no joy, no relaxing of our watchfulness until all are brought into the One Circle, until all people acknowledge the power of the gods and turn to them humbly for help.
Only then, on that far distant day, when all have acknowledged their own frailty, shall we truly be able to overcome Discord.’
He opened his mouth to continue the tirade, but was seized with a sudden fit of choking, turning dark puce and straining for breath, unable to force a word out.
Deverith watched his own intervention stop the tirade. As a healer, he didn’t often use his special powers to harm people, but this small meddling surely could be forgiven, in view of the importance of what he was doing?
While Rojan’s choking fit continued, Deverith made his own comments on the situation. ‘If Discord hadn’t suddenly started to decline, then Gerrell’s group of raiders would have taken over this town by now and you’d be facing another reign of terror. In spite of what happened to the Healers’ Courts, Tenebrak has been lucky and has felt the burden of Discord only lightly. I’ve seen whole villages destroyed for sport by crazed raiders.’
Karialla stepped forward to stand beside him. ‘Our whole settlement was one of them. My first husband, my friends, even the babies and pet animals were killed. Only discord madness would make people do that.’
‘I just don’t understand what gets into them,’ a woman called Chiralin said, her eyes blind with painful memories.
‘Even my son . . . ’ Her voice broke for a moment and someone moved to comfort her, but she shook off the hand, determined to continue. ‘If I cannot believe that Discord is being vanquished, then for me there is no purpose in living, no purpose at all.’
Tears welled from her eyes. ‘I was so ashamed of my son and his wicked behaviour! Glad when he died! I asked myself what I’d done wrong when I reared him and could find no answer, save that Discord must be a sickness which attacks the mind. He was such a loving little lad, such a kind son as he grew to manhood - and then, quite suddenly, he changed.’ Her voice broke and this time she did accept the neighbour’s shoulder to sob against.
There was silence. Chiralin wasn’t the only one to have lost a family member to discord madness, or the only one to carry a burden of shame.
Karialla decided it was time to change the subject, to focus on something more pleasant. ‘Deverith has some precious stones to sell. With the coin from that, we plan to start building a stone temple on the ridge. And the stranger, Balas, has agreed to help us, for he’s a stonemason from Harrak.’
Rojan stepped forward again. ‘Why up on the ridge? We already have a meeting house here in the town.’
‘Which is in sorry condition and crowded cheek by jowl against other domains. There’s not enough space around it to extend the building.’
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‘Why should you need more space? When our congregation grows too large, we can build other meeting houses on the outskirts of town and the people who live nearby can go to them.’
As Karialla stared him in the eyes, for a moment, the power within him sapped her will. She fought it off, a silent battle which only the two of them and Deverith were aware of. Once she had full control of herself again, she turned her back on Rojan and included the whole group in what she was saying. ‘My husband and I intend to set up a centre of learning in the temple, as well as new Healers’ Courts. Everything must be located in one domain so that ideas can be exchanged, knowledge stored, and the art of healing passed on from one generation to the next.’
Again, there were exclamations of pleasure from everyone except Rojan. The Tenebrani had all missed the old Healers’ Courts, not only for the business the Courts had brought to the town, but just for the comfort of knowing that expert help was available to those in need. If these two healers felt confident about starting up such a centre again, it could only be a good thing.
‘Is there no end to your ambitions, Karialla?’ Rojan demanded, as soon as the exclamations died down, but this time the burning darkness in his eyes didn’t affect her. ‘What about people’s souls? Surely they should come first. Only when all are gathered in to the One Circle should we - ’ Again a coughing fit prevented him speaking.
‘You should take some throat soother for that,’ Deverith offered. ‘I can let you have a bottle, if you like. My charges are quite modest.’ With a wink, he gestured to Karialla to continue.
Rojan might have been unable to speak, but he was able to glare, showing such animosity that some of the other Elders looked at him in surprise.
‘Now, just a minute here!’ A much older man called Fresler stepped forward to stand beside Rojan, aligning himself with the First Elect. His jowly face wobbled in annoyance and his words were puffed out on hot gusts of indignation.
‘You’ve already been told you can’t have that land up on the ridge, woman. Rojan and I told you that months ago!’
Rojan folded his arms and nodded, still husking on a cough or two. That didn’t prevent him from smiling triumphantly at Deverith.
Chiralin and another woman exchanged puzzled glances. ‘The Council of Elders knows nothing about this,’ Perrissa said. ‘I haven’t missed a single meeting, so how could Karialla have been refused permission by us?’
Fresler looked at her and gave a scornful sniff. Obviously no love was lost between the two of them. ‘There was no need for a full Council meeting. We’d already decided the land on the ridge was going to be used in future for the best domains and houses. It was logical, therefore, to deny this woman’s request.’
Chiralin stepped forward. ‘This is yet another example of the way some of yo
u have started taking decisions without consulting the rest! I’ve complained about it several times already. And don’t you dare try to treat us women like fools, Fresler! We’re as much Elders as you are and we’ll have a proper discussion about using the ridge for this temple idea before we decide on anything!’
‘She’s right there!’ declared Perrissa. ‘Absolutely right! There had better be some changes made from now on, or we women will start a new form of Discord, believe me! Try creating your children without us!’
Deverith nudged Karialla and signalled to her to keep silent. His eyes were dancing with laughter as he listened to Chiralin and Fresler conduct an argument which quickly dredged up years of grievances dating back to their childhood.
Eventually the other Elders managed to stop the quarrel, and it was suggested by Evril that the two healers should present their case for using the land on the ridge in three days’ time at a formal meeting of the Council of Elders.
Rojan stepped forward again. ‘I object to wasting the Council’s time. That decision about the ridge was taken over a year ago. There is no need to go over the same ground again.’
Perrissa glared at him. ‘And that’s another thing I’ve had enough of. You can just stop trying to dominate this Council, Rojan! You may be First Elect of that Circle of yours, but we’re not all members of it, and I, for one, never will be while you’re in control, with that miserable wool-nerid face of yours. It’s about time you realise you don’t run the whole town! Nor ever will you as long as I have breath in my body! The idea of it, you making decisions for the rest of us!’
‘My good woman . . . ’ began Rojan.
‘Don’t you “my good woman” me! I’m not your woman - and I’ve been an Elder for far longer than you have, young man, long enough to have learned a bit of sense about dealing with people. And a bit of compassion, too. Calling me "my good woman" like that! And me old enough to be your mother - which I’m thankful I’m not. Deeply thankful!’
As Perrissa ran out of steam, Chiralin turned to Karialla. ‘What exactly do you want to build up there, dear? Give us a quick description now, so that we can think about it.’