Lucien now walked toward them, his eyes fixed on Anna. “This is the one Aldebaran wrote about,” he muttered, then raised his eyebrows in the same way Ryan did, but with none of the humor. “Where is the silver eagle?” Lucien asked, turning to Ahira.
“She does not have it,” said Ahira. “We have already—”
“She does,” interrupted Darius.
“Quiet!” said Lucien, and he turned again to Ahira. “You are certain?”
“Yes.” Anna wondered why he was saying this. He was not certain. He had barely spoken to her.
“ We should search her,” said Darius. “ We cannot be certain else.” Lucien nodded. Darius smirked and proceeded to search her, putting his hands into the back pockets of her trousers and running them down her legs. She stepped away from him.
“She does not have it,” said the youngest soldier. “Get away from her. She’s only young and she’s scared of you.” He was only a couple of years older than her himself.
“He’s right,” said Lucien. “Darius, I sometimes wonder about you. Have you no sense of pride?”
“Calm yourselves,” said Darius, laughing and raising his hands.
“Are you talking to me?” demanded Lucien. “That is no way to talk to me.”
“Forgive me, Your Majesty … I did not …”
“You are forgiven.”
“I thought, Sire,” ventured Darius, “that it might be wise to kill the girl. She is a part of the prophecy too, is she not?”
“I don’t think that killing the girl would give any clear message to the people,” said Ahira.
“He is right,” said Lucien. “The silver eagle is real and solid. If we had it, Aldebaran’s prophecy would mean nothing.”
“Sire …,” murmured Darius. “Under torture, the girl might tell us where it is.”
“ We have no time for that,” Lucien said, his voice rising. “Have you failed to understand the situation? The president of Titanica has sent half his army to the Alcyrian border. The common people are growing rebellious. We must fight two enemies, and Talitha has not the time to hunt for the silver eagle because of a prophecy that may or may not be valid.”
“But, Sire …,” said Darius. “If you try to do too many things, you may end up doing nothing at all. That is something Ahira often tells you.”
“Don’t tell me what to do. If we suppress the people, the Alcyrians will break through the lines. If we beat back the Alcyrians, the people will rise up against us.”
“Then perhaps killing the girl is the only choice left to us,” Darius persisted.
“No!” Lucien said. “What will that solve? Nothing! We don’t want the girl; we want the silver eagle.”
“But has she given it to him yet?”
There was a pause. Then Lucien spoke again. “I will not take any action until I have spoken with Talitha.” He seemed to be thinking for a moment. “Lock the girl in a cell; use an empty room if the dungeons are full. Do not give her food or water; we will need all the stores if we are besieged. I will ask Talitha what she sees fit to do next.”
Ahira stepped forward. “Shall I take her?”
“I will,” said Darius.
Lucien shook his head. “Ahira will do it. But go quickly; I need you back here.” Ahira nodded, took hold of Anna’s arm, and steered her out the door.
Thunder had begun outside, and lightning flashed, illuminating Ahira’s face as they passed a window. The scar and his empty eye socket stood out starkly in the colorless light. Ahira led her through the castle, then into a dim room. He bolted the door, lit an oil lamp on the table, and said abruptly, “Sit down.”
Anna went to the corner of the room. Ahira watched her in silence and the lightning flashed again. “Listen,” she said suddenly, hearing her voice shaking. “Tell me, was Ryan all right? You didn’t kill him after we went down through the trees? Please tell me …”
He stared at her as though he was surprised. “He is not harmed. He was waking when I left; I made sure of that.”
Anna sat down and could not get up again. Ahira looked at her for a moment, then sat down himself, opposite her at the table. They stared at each other. “Your name is Anna,” said Ahira then. “Am I right?” He laughed shortly at her expression, then stopped and frowned. “And shall I tell you how I know? Because the prince opened his eyes and said your name.”
“Ryan did?” she said. “Ryan said my name?”
“Is that what you call him?” said Ahira.
There was a silence. “Why are you here?” said Anna. “I thought you were going back to them straightaway.”
“I need to speak to you first.” He got up heavily and untied her hands. Then he went to the window. Outside, somewhere beyond their sight, horses were moving through mud and men were shouting to each other. “I had never been to England before,” said Ahira. “Seeing the prince there—it was strange. I had not seen him for ten years. Since the day I shot his parents. Listen to me.”
“I’m listening,” said Anna quickly.
She did not dare to look away. “You know that there is a prophecy concerning that boy?” he said. “Aldebaran wrote that whoever harmed the prince would receive the same harm. Do you know it?”
“Ryan has told me about it.”
Ahira nodded. “I used to believe in that prophecy. The day we took the castle, I was the one who stopped the others from harming the prince. And then I began to forget it. In any case, I thought only of physical harm. But what harm more could I have done to that boy than shoot his family in front of his face? I realize it now. And they are talking of shooting you as well.”
He turned to stare out at the storm. “After I hit that boy, I suddenly had—I don’t know—a vision. That was why I remained on the hill. I could not move. I thought I was dying. This scar on my face—it is all the retribution that has fallen on me. I shot his mother and father. And the prince cares about you—I know he does—probably more than anyone else. I have one relative. The rest of my family disowned me when I joined Lucien’s government. You probably do not blame them for it. You probably think I am an evil man. But I too have cared about people. I too have loved.”
Anna did not reply. He turned back to her. “It may just be superstition, but I am afraid. There is something strange in the air. Riding here through the city, I heard the wind and the rain calling my name. It was not just my imagination; I really heard it.” He sat down again opposite her and leaned forward, breathing fast. “You know Aldebaran; you have met him. Is he capable of doing that? Tell me what he can do.”
“He can see what you’re thinking,” Anna answered carefully. “And the future.”
Ahira leaned back and covered his face with one hand. “He is a very powerful man. My mind has been in torment since I hit that boy. I know that the prophecy will soon take effect; I am sure of it. These ten years have been borrowed time for me—escaping a punishment that will surely come, while all the time I thought that I was safe. Will I lose the only family I have? Would that be justice? I don’t know how these great ones think when they write their prophecies, and I have no power to change destiny.” He stood up again. “I will not let them kill you,” he said. “That is why I cannot let them kill you. I can’t have your blood on my hands as well as his mother’s and father’s. Do you understand what I am saying?”
“I don’t know.”
“I care about my family just as much as the prince cared about his,” Ahira went on. “Perhaps I should write to my one relative. Perhaps I should let him know …” He turned to her. “Should I? Tell me.”
He was leaning forward on the table in front of her, waiting for an answer. “Yes,” she said eventually. “You should write to him.”
He nodded. “Because if I do this—if I protect you from harm or even help you to escape—it will become dangerous. And I may not come out alive, and then it will be too late to set anything right. Our country is in a bad situation—you must see it. If the rebels bring the boy back and overthrow the
government, I will be one of the first to be executed. But if I do not try to set right what I have done wrong, a worse punishment may fall on me whether we keep hold of the country or not.”
There were footsteps outside suddenly. Someone was in the corridor. They both fell silent, listening.
There was a hammering on the door. Ahira crossed the room and opened it. Darius was there. He looked at them both and smirked faintly. “And you say that I have no pride,” he muttered, catching Ahira’s glance.
“What do you mean by that?” said Ahira.
“Nothing, sir. Nothing. The king needs you. At once.”
Ahira stood in the doorway, still watching Anna, while Darius tied her to the chair and blew out the lamp. He watched her until the door closed between them and the younger man bolted it. And then she heard them both march away.
That night I woke up about eleven. I had gone to sleep early, for the rain had brought a cheerless dark over the city, and I slept without dreaming. I was wide-awake now, and everything was suddenly peaceful. I could not explain it. I felt as though everything was going to be all right. There was no reason for the change, but I was calmer than I had been since Stirling had died, as though if I had picked up the newspaper, I would have been able to read it straight through.
Then, suddenly, I knew that Grandmother was gone. She was not in the house. I tried to hear her breathe, but I couldn’t from this distance, so I got up and went into her room. I was right. Her bed was empty, the covers cast aside. She was nowhere in the apartment. I ran back to my room and pulled on some clothes. I picked up my keys, checked one last time—she was gone for sure—and went out.
The apartment door was ajar, and so was the front door downstairs. I shut them behind me as I went. Perhaps she had gone to the graveyard. I turned into the street, blinking against the light of the streetlamp. There was no sign of her. I turned left and broke into a run.
I found her in a narrow, dark street nearby. She was wearing only her nightgown, which clung to her thinly in the night breeze. I was so frightened I didn’t even think about not talking. “Grandmother?” I called. “What are you doing?” She didn’t hear. She was muttering furiously to herself. I reached her and took off my jacket and put it about her shoulders to cover her. She did not seem to see me. “Grandmother, come home.”
She allowed me to lead her away, but suddenly she began shouting. The words she yelled weren’t recognizable as real ones. They were harsh in the silence, and I tried to quiet her, but she shouted all the louder. A man came to the window of one of the houses and frowned sleepily out at us. “Shh, Grandmother,” I told her.
Then two soldiers rounded the corner. Our eyes met. I tried to pull Grandmother away, but she stood still in the middle of the street. Casting a hasty glance behind me, I saw the soldiers turn from their route and begin to approach us.
“Grandmother,” I muttered. “Shh. Be quiet. Quickly, let’s go home.”
“Hey!” shouted one of the men.
“Keep walking,” I muttered to Grandmother.
“Hey—lad! Where are you going this time of the night?”
“Home,” I called.
“Wait here,” one muttered to the other, and he strode down the street toward us.
“Stop where you are!” the soldier told me. I stopped. “Where are you going with this madwoman?”
“She is not mad,” I said.
“She is an Unacceptable. She ought to have proper care taken of her.”
“She is not mad,” I told him again.
“She is disturbing the peace,” he said.
“That’s why I’m taking her home,” I said wearily.
He was beside us now, and he pushed at my shoulder aggressively. “Do not dare to take that tone, arrogant young bastard.”
I stumbled and swore at him.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.” We began to walk away, Grandmother hurrying ahead of my guiding hand and glancing back fearfully at the soldiers.
“What did you say?” he demanded.
“Nothing.”
“Hey! Stay where you are, I told you. Do you want to be arrested also?”
“You are not arresting either of us,” I said. “ We are leaving now.”
“Stay where you are.” He caught hold of Grandmother and stopped her. Immediately her screams shattered into the wet quiet. “Shut your mouth,” he told her. She went on screaming.
“Stop!” I cried. “Let her go!” I grabbed at him.
“Get off me!” he shouted. Grandmother went on screaming. The jacket fell from her shoulders, and her gray hair slid from its tight knot, wild about her frightened face. I grabbed the soldier’s rifle across his back, the closest thing I could catch hold of, and pulled at it hard. “Get off!” he yelled again.
“Let go of her!” I shouted. The rifle strap was choking his neck; he coughed, and his hands loosened their grip. I went on tugging at it. Grandmother’s screams grew wilder.
Suddenly the strap broke. I fell down in the mud and so did Grandmother, from the sudden force. Her screaming stopped abruptly. I got up, dripping mud and still holding the soldier’s rifle, wiped the water and earth from my eyes, and ran to her. She did not move. “Grandmother?” I said. I fell down on my knees beside her. She had fainted and was still unconscious. I turned her over, wiped the mud from her face, and shook her by the shoulders. The soldiers had disappeared into the night. “Grandmother!” I went on urgently. “Wake up!”
While I knelt there, I heard a sound, louder than the hushed drips from the sleepy houses, and getting louder still. It was footsteps. Steady footsteps, coming closer. I looked up and saw that a dark figure was approaching steadily. The figure glided up the street, with long strides, and all the while its face was in shadow. But by the inclination of its head, I could tell that it was looking straight at me. The whites of its eyes glinted in the light of the streetlamp as it approached. I stayed still, crouched on the ground like an animal, shivering in the mud.
Then, “Leo?” said the figure. “Leo! I did not recognize you. What are you doing here?” It took down its hood, and I saw that it was Father Dunstan. “Leo! What is going on?”
“Father!” I exclaimed. “It’s Grandmother. She collapsed, and I cannot wake her. The soldiers came and—” He dropped down beside me.
“Margaret?” he said, taking hold of her shoulders. “Margaret, can you hear me?”
“Father, Father,” I was saying suddenly, as though I was a child and he was my own father. I clutched his arm.
“All right. Calm down, Leo. Go on trying to wake her.”
I tried to talk to her, but my voice sounded so feeble that I barely heard it myself. Father Dunstan took Grandmother’s wrist, sat motionless for a moment, then nodded quickly. “I can feel a pulse.”
“Then why won’t she wake?”
“It must have been the shock,” said Father Dunstan. “It can bring on attacks like this.”
“Attacks like what? Father—”
And then, suddenly, she coughed and blinked. I let go of the priest’s arm and caught hold of her hand. She did not grip it back. Her face was colorless, flecked with a few dark spots of mud. Eventually she looked up at me and mumbled, “Harold?”
“It’s me, Leo,” I told her. She began to cry.
“All right,” said Father Dunstan. “Let’s get her back home.”
We managed to support her between us, though she was hardly able to walk. She was covered in mud and her face stood out pale, trembling and glistening with tears in the lamplight. She muttered, “Harold, Harold,” over and over as we walked, like a prayer. “All right,” I said, and gripped her arm more tightly. “We are almost home.”
I heard myself say that from a long way off. My ears were ringing suddenly with a strange silence.
Back in the apartment Grandmother went on shaking and crying. She collapsed on the sofa, staring into the cold fireplace with tears running down her muddy face. I fetched blankets and c
ushions and propped them around her, but that didn’t stop her shivering.
Father Dunstan lit a lamp. Something in my left hand glinted, and I realized I was still holding that soldier’s rifle. I dropped it by the door. The sound made Grandmother start and cry out. She went on asking for Harold and then mumbled something about Arthur. It occured to me distantly that she must mean Aldebaran. Father Dunstan boiled water for tea, and Grandmother drank some, still crying. “You have some tea too, Leo,” he said, pushing a cup into my hand. “You have both had a shock.” I drank some automatically and noticed that my hands were shaking. I stood up to ask him what to do, but I could not speak.
“How old is your grandmother, Leo?” Father Dunstan said then, drawing me aside.
It was stupid, but I couldn’t remember. I had known once, before all this. “Sixty?” prompted Father Dunstan. “Or older?”
I started counting on the fingers of my right hand. “Sixty-one?” said Father Dunstan. “Sixty-two? You do not have to speak.” He went on guessing. At sixty-five I nodded.
He stood silent for a long time. In that silence I heard Grandmother begin to tell me some story about her childhood, in a high, weak voice that did not sound like her own. “She is old, Leo,” Father Dunstan said then. “And shock is not good for someone so old.”
I just looked at him in silence. And then Grandmother came back. She stared at us, felt the mud in her untidy hair, and started up from the sofa. “Leo!” she said. “What happened? Father?”
Father Dunstan knelt beside her and took her hands. “Rest there for a moment, Margaret,” he said. “You have had a shock; that is all.” He began to tell her, and she listened, tears rising in her eyes again.
“I was never like this before,” she said, crying again, when he had finished. “What are we going to do without Stirling? I never had these strange turns, or felt so tired, when he was here.”
“It is understandable that you are not quite yourself,” Father Dunstan said. “These past days have been very difficult for you, Margaret. You need to rest, and you will begin to feel more normal.” He went on talking to her, and she listened anxiously.
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