by Anne Perry
When Tathea woke in the morning she was aware that her sleep had been different from usual. There was no sense of half-remembered dreams, no consciousness of the night. She sat up abruptly and saw Kor-Assh standing above her, his face solemn and pale in the white light of sunrise. He was looking at her, and there was something in him which had changed irrevocably. The pretence, the veil between them was stripped away.
Suddenly she was afraid, with an incomplete memory of some pain so dreadful it negated every other beauty and all but swallowed purpose: light on water, ancient stones, the gold of the sun. She dimly remembered welcoming the thought of death.
She looked at his face and her heart lurched inside her. Her body was trembling so much it took all her self-control to speak. “What is it?” The words were a whisper.
He kneeled down beside her, but still a yard away. The rising light half shadowed his face and fell in brilliance on her. She felt as if her heart were naked to his gaze, but there was no escape. Everything that mattered was here. This was the heart of it all.
“I know that the Flamen myth will become truth if we do not prevent it, and that it matters—not for the earth, which God can make whole again and remove the memory of its pain, but for our souls, who do such things, or watch and allow them to be done. Those will be marred for ever.”
“Armageddon?” she said doubtfully. “Is that what it is? How can there be time?”
“I don’t know,” Kor-Assh answered. “I think perhaps God will hasten time. Does that sound ridiculous? Blasphemous?”
“No ...”
“Our chance to love the earth enough is short,” he went on, frowning. “Whether that is our doing or not, I don’t know. The Silver Lords came to me in the night ...”
Tathea stiffened, ice touching her.
“No!” he said quickly, disappointment in his face for an instant. “They are not of God. Did you think I should be tempted?” A tiny smile touched his lips, and his eyes were soft. “You are right ... I was. But not now. I know my calling is to love the earth so completely that I share its life and its pain, perhaps its death.”
Looking at him, she knew it also. It was high enough, close enough to God, large enough to encompass all he could do,
“Good,” was all she answered.
Something inside him eased also ... She realised with a flood of joy how intensely it had mattered to him that she should understand. But was it for herself, or because of who she was—the Bringer of the Book, the one person whose knowledge was greater than his own?
She climbed to her feet and, without meeting his eyes again, walked over to the deep shadow where the dew was wet, and bent to wash her face in it. Then she found roots and berries for them to eat, and without referring to the subject again, saddled the horses and continued south.
The longer she thought of it, the more certain she was that Kor-Assh was right in the understanding of his mission. Snatches of memory came back to her of walking through the forest towards the Eastern Shore with Immerith, High Priest of the Flamens, more than five centuries ago. He had taught her so much of the love of the earth and its creatures. She had come to understand the Flamen belief that even the stones were precious, made of intelligence, the handiwork of God, not random, insensate chance. Immerith’s reverence for it had left an indelible print on her soul, and she realised only now how profoundly she had accepted it.
If it were Ishrafeli’s calling to love the earth, protect it from the ignorance of man, it would take all his strength, because its defilement would wound him far more than he could have any conception now.
She was still pondering this in the deepening sunlight of the late afternoon, when she sat alone in a copse on the edge of the Heartland. Kor-Assh had gone to seek food. She was aware of someone else standing in the shadow beside her. Her instinct was to be angry at the intrusion. She jerked her head up.
The figure that moved now before her was lean to the point of gauntness, yet oddly graceful. He was clothed in jerkin and hose, parti-coloured in quarters of purple and gold, and his absurd shoes had curled-up toes with bells on the ends. His face was thin, his eyes brilliant, his lips full of humour and tenderness.
She knew him immediately. From the beginning he had come to her at the darkest hour, when it seemed there was nothing left but despair, every course had been tried and found wanting. He was Menath-Dur, Lord of Hope.
“You are quite right,” he said softly. His voice was always in the heart more than in the ear. “Ishrafeli’s mission is to love the earth and all its life, to love it with his whole heart ... and that means he must weep with it, and when the time is come, bleed with it also. He must watch with it in the long night of its grief, and climb the steps of sacrifice so that it may die, and be reborn of God, when all is renewed in its eternal glory.”
“Can’t I ...?” Then the words died on Tathea’s lips. She stared at him, seeing the ache of gentleness in his eyes, and afraid of it. He knew her too well, he could read her heart, the light and the darkness in it, the fear from which she drew back even now.
There was denial in his face. He knew what she was going to ask, and even before she put words to it, he refused.
“Hope,” he said softly. “I have always told you to hope, even when the sky is at its darkest and there is no star to follow. Now I say to you also—have faith. Trust in God, Who is wiser than you are, and can see the heavens and the earth and everything that is in them, and has ordered it all from the beginning. No matter how it seems to your human vision, who love and fear, who believe and do not know, doubt not the power of God Who holds you in the palm of His hand. He has trodden the path before you and knows every cut and bruise of the way.” He turned and walked towards the trees again, the bells on his shoes tinkling faintly, and the next moment he was gone.
Kor-Assh returned with bread and apples, pleased with himself, and Tathea smiled back at him. They ate side by side in the sun, staring in silence, almost touching, feeling the warmth. She breathed in the scent of dry grass, remembered the blue sky and the tingle of heat on her skin, storing it in her heart.
That night, only a few hours from Tyrn Vawr, Tathea kneeled alone in the moonlight and poured her heart out in prayer, pleading with God that she might take Ishrafeli’s place and carry his burden.
“He does not know what he has promised to do!” she cried. “He has no idea what the pain of it will be. I know he has ruled in Lantrif and seen all kinds of corruption and deceit. He’s seen people fall, probably people he loved, but he doesn’t know Asmodeus! He can’t even imagine the pain of the earth, the betrayal, the ruin, the innocence and beauty lost! Let me do it!”
She knew that what she dared not say, even to God her Father, was that she loved Ishrafeli so much she would protect his soul from failure, from the dark terror that might ruin what he had been in the days before life, all the passion and beauty of the love he had felt then. What if in the griefs of mortality he could not keep that fire inside him alight? The strength of his generosity of heart, the wholeness of purpose, the purity of his soul’s honesty, was more precious to her than anything of her own. To have it again, to love and be loved was the star she had seen and followed all the existence she knew. If that were spoiled by the Enemy, then there was nothing left.
She waited, almost crouching on the dry earth, simply for the comfort of it. There was only silence. Eventually she crept back to her bed in the grass and lay with the tears running down her face, not daring to sob in case he woke and heard her, and yet her whole body ached to let go of the agony inside her.
Why was there no answer? Where was God?
She must have drifted into sleep. She saw the earth corrupted as Kor-Assh had said, its beauty spoiled, its beasts tortured and dying, its plants and great trees withered. Slowly it perished into a broken thing, and Asmodeus stood upon it, covering it with his filth until all goodness and beauty was violated. It became a dark core of inconceivable evil to pollute the stars, and spread forever outward with e
ndless suffering. The hosts of hell streamed from it like liquid shadow, to devour everything in violence, chaos and annihilation. All reason, passion and loveliness was gone. In pain more than she could bear she saw it twist and spin down into an abyss and disappear from her sight.
She had no idea how long she lay there before she opened her eyes again and saw a new earth, shining with a glory that healed all wounds and blazed into the furthest reaches of the universe, and yet wrapped the innermost heart in the arms of love unimaginable. Worlds beyond worlds were spread like dew on the grass, with no end to their increase in knowledge of everlasting truth. The light of God shone in the faces of men as they trod the galaxies with life eternal, and a radiance of joy which could not be bounded. Their hearts became wide as infinity, and God called each one by name.
When she awoke, understanding filled her mind as the morning sun washed the sky. These were the choices. As the Book had said long ago, there was no middle ground—only the darkness or the light. There was no escape for her, or for Ishrafeli. She could not walk the path for him. She must stand back and allow him to fulfil his destiny, as God Himself must with all those whom He loved, whatever the cost.
The dearer they were, the greater would be their task, their suffering ... and their reward.
For a long, shattering, sublime instant, between one beat of the heart and the next, she had a glimpse of the soul of God, and the burden of His love as He watched the children of His spirit struggle and hurt and strive to return to Him through brilliant flashes of faith and dark agonies of doubt, crying out to Him, and so often imagining themselves unheard and alone when He was closer to them than their skin.
And yet He could not relieve them of the toil, or He also took from them the prize which was beautiful beyond dreams to form.
She knew that she must offer the Book to Kor-Assh. There was a deep certainty growing inside her that he would open it again, just as it was he who had closed it before. Even so, he would grasp its fullness only step by step, learning by passion and joy and pain, as had every living soul since the first dawn of light in heaven.
She chose the first evening back in Tyrn Vawr to do so. Taking the Book out of its cupboard, but keeping it still wrapped in its blue silk Lost Lands cloak, she carried it to the quiet courtyard where she had asked Kor-Assh to meet her.
He was waiting in the soft light by the pool. He turned the moment he heard her footsteps, his face tense. He saw what she held in her arms and knew from its shape what it must be. His eyes widened.
She let the cloak slip off into a bright mound on the stones, and left the beaten gold surface shining in the last of sun.
Still he did not speak, but his face was filled with awe, and he made no move to touch it.
Tathea held it out towards him, offering it.
He stared at her, in his eyes questions he dared not even frame.
“Take it,” she whispered. “It is time.”
He hesitated still.
She did not move, and the Book grew heavy.
At last Kor-Assh put out his hands and accepted the weight from her. The gentleness of the fading day made the pearls milk white and shot fire into the star ruby in the hasp. More as if drawn by its beauty than anything else, he put his fingers on it, and the hasp fell open.
The knots inside her unloosed. The waiting was over.
A tremor shook his body, questions teeming inside him. Already, even before lifting the cover, he knew a fragment of the sublime truth.
She nodded, afraid to speak.
He bent his head and began to read.
He did not look up, and she watched his face, the passion, the pain, the glory of all life reflected within him as the words of God settled on his heart. She saw understanding come to him, incredible, stupendous, that he himself was Ishrafeli. At last he lifted his eyes and gazed at her, and in them was such love as had shone in her forgotten dreams, from the day they had parted in Hirioth, more than five hundred years ago. The passion, the tenderness, the soul’s need that had filled her, was echoed in him till it was a music between them that was more than sound or feeling, a fire that wrapped around and held them both.
He put the Book down and stepped towards her and took her in his arms. The touch of his skin was warm, the smell of him sweet and exciting and familiar, as if she had spent all her life waiting for this moment. She let herself go utterly and answered his need with all the longing of her own, his lips, his cheek, his eyes, his brow.
There was no need for questions, and yet he did ask her, as if it were conceivable she could refuse.
“Will you walk by my side now and through eternity?”
“Yes,” she said with certainty as simple as a blaze of light.
“I will.”
“Covenant with me, before God, and on the Book ...”
She rested her hand on the Book, and he placed his over hers, slender and strong, and together they promised before
God and all His angels to walk the path upwards together, all the days of time and eternity.
From Erebus there came a howl that shivered out to the furthest stars and into the empty spaces between.
Chapter VIII
SADOKHAR STOOD SHUDDERING, SICK with horror, and then overwhelming fear. What had he done? The portal was closed. Return was impossible.
He had broken the barrier and let the creatures of hell into the beautiful, vulnerable and infinitely precious world, and now he could not even be part of the struggle against them. He was as imprisoned here as they had been.
How would Tathea manage without him? She had known at least some of these fearful beings before, but long ago. Had she still the power and heart to fight against them? Before having seen the black keys of Asmodeus he would have had no doubt ... but now he knew her weakness as well as her strength. She was human, tired after the long years alone. One more battle might be too much.
And what of Sardriel, and Ardesir? They had been refined by the fires of life, but could anything human prepare them for what he had seen in this place?
And Kor-Assh, when he came? He was an unknown force, believed in, but not yet tested.
Should he, Sadokhar, have taken this terrible, irretrievable step? The decision had been the hardest of his life, but the way had been so easy. Was that because Asmodeus himself had willed it?
He stood staring at the broken archway with its closed door, already seeming to blend into the shattered rocks with their half-obliterated designs, as if centuries of wind and dust had eroded the meaning they had once had. But there was no wind in the leaden air, no sound, no movement of anything at all.
He turned, and everywhere he looked the same flat, glaring light showed only endless variations of rock and splintered stones. There was no sun and no shadow. A standing monolith was surrounded by flat pebbles whose height and size he could not judge because without shade they had no dimension.
There was no point in remaining here. At last he began to walk slowly out into the landscape that stretched endlessly in front of him. He did not know how long he trudged across the sand and stones—there was no way to mark the time. He passed nothing alive. Each rock formation was only a variation of the last, taller or shorter, single or broken, but always the same dun-grey colour.
Still there was neither plant nor insect anywhere and the white sky never varied, nor was there the slightest wind. He was breathing, yet his lungs ached for air. He felt neither hot nor cold, and the only sound was that of his feet on the pebbles, and even they slithered and fell without echo.
Eventually he came to a jagged line of low cliffs, but there was an easy way up, and no other path to either side, so he began to climb. He half hoped there would be a different view when he reached the top and he increased his effort accordingly, leaning forward, slipping every now and then and sending little spurts of stones flying.
But when he reached the crest there was nothing ahead of him but more dun-grey dust and rocks and shale to the horizon in every direction, except for
the drop behind him. Perhaps he should not have expected other, but still his heart sank as if he had hoped for some escape from the imprisonment of the mind in the endless sameness.
Was this all there was? Was hell a wide-awake oblivion, a blistering awareness of being alone in an eternal desolation?
He started forward because it seemed like action, however pointless. It gave him the delusion of having mastery over something, even if it were no more than his own acts.
There was still no sense of perspective. The light deceived. Distant things grew little closer even after what seemed hours of travel. He passed an outcrop of rock, and although he walked without turning, he seemed to pass it again. He had no idea whether it was the same one, or any of countless others that looked alike.
Once he tried marking one, intending to write something on it so he would know, but the loose rock he picked up made no imprint whatever on the surface, and he threw it away in disgust. At the next mound he tried instead to place stones in a pattern he would recognise if he passed them again. He laid them carefully in a star and continued walking.
Eventually he grew tired and sat down, leaning his back against one of the lower upright rocks. The whole pile above him looked vaguely as if it might once have been something designed by man as a form of shelter, except that there was nothing to shelter from, neither heat nor cold, wind nor rain, only the unceasing light.
He closed his eyes, and perhaps drifted into sleep, or maybe only a lessened awareness. When he opened his eyes again he saw the first other life since the Lords of Darkness who had passed through the portal into the world. A lone man was staggering towards him, his back bent by the weight of stones he was carrying. His clothes were covered in dust and his hands and forearms were bloodied with gashes, his nails torn. He stared at Sadokhar with fury.
“Get up and work, you idle pig!” he snarled, his face distorted. “What do you think makes you different, eh? Lying there at your ease, like some damn slave master.”