by Anne Perry
Sadokhar was startled. “Work at what?” he asked, straightening up, not with any intention of obeying, but in order to be less vulnerable, in case the man should attack him, as he looked ready to do.
“Anything! Help me! I’ve got far too much!” The man glared back with mounting rage, his face red, his eyes bloodshot.
Sadokhar was surprised by the sense of purpose in him. What could there be that made any difference in this wasted place?
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m moving those damned stones, of course,” the man shouted at him. “Are you blind, or are you trying to provoke a quarrel? You’re just as stupid and perverse as everyone else. Why did I ever imagine you might be different? No one ever is.”
“I don’t see anyone else.” Sadokhar looked around.
“Well, they’re in the hole, aren’t they!” The man’s temper finally exploded and he slashed wildly at the air. “We don’t sit around all day, as if there were for ever, you know!”
“Isn’t there?” Sadokhar said bitterly.
Now the man was confused.
“Isn’t there what?” he demanded. “What are you talking about?”
“Isn’t there for ever?” Sadokhar said patiently. “Anyway, why are you moving the stones? What does it matter where they are?”
“If we don’t move them far away enough they’ll fall back into the hole, idiot!” The man was still shouting. “I’d have thought that was obvious enough, even for you!”
“What hole?” Sadokhar had seen none.
“The hole we’re digging, of course!” The man’s voice was almost a scream now, and his face and neck were scarlet. “You’re just deliberately trying to pick a fight, aren’t you? What do you want of me? Eh? Why are you doing this to me? What did I ever do to deserve it, answer me that?”
Sadokhar was beginning to get angry himself. “I’m not doing anything to you!” he snapped. “You are doing it to yourself. I asked you a perfectly reasonable question. I don’t see any hole. I don’t know why you’d bother to dig one. What for?”
“That’s it!” The man hurled the last rock he was holding. It narrowly missed Sadokhar’s head, striking the outcrop behind him and falling into the dust with a thud, sending up a little cloud which settled exactly where it had been before. There was no movement of air to carry it.
Sadokhar bent and picked it up, ready to use it as a weapon.
“That’s right, attack me! Go on!” The man put up his arm to shield his head. “You’re twice my size, you coward! Everybody picks on me! No matter what I try to do, no one gives me any credit.” There were tears running down the dust on his face. “Everything goes wrong! It always has ... and it’s not my fault. Even you are trying to pull my work apart and say it’s no good. Destroyers, the lot of you!” With that accusation he turned and stumbled away, slipping on the loose scree, and still calling out abuse over his shoulder.
Sadokhar went after him, not from any desire to catch up with the man himself, but with the faint hope that the others he spoke of might have found some purpose in this place, and because they were the only life he knew of, other than himself. He still had seen no bird or beast, no insect, not even a patch of lichen on the stones.
Down the slope and past a vast, crumbling slab he saw in front of him a staggering sight. At least a hundred men and women were labouring in a hole, a thousand yards across and more than fifty feet deep. Bending, heaving and staggering, they moved every size and shape of rock from the floor of the hole, while others swung stone axes, chips flying in all directions, cutting out more chunks of rock. Yet others scooped up dust in bloodied hands and carried it bound in shirts and skirts up the paths that led out of the hole, emptying it out in mounds around the edge. Every one of them was cursing themselves, their neighbours, the injustice of life. Above all they cursed the God Who had made promises He had not kept, and not forgiven the sins they still hugged close.
Their faces were gaunt and they worked with a pent-up rage that spilled into everything they did, every movement, every word.
Sadokhar stood on the edge and watched them, trying to understand what they hoped to achieve. He asked, but no one answered.
Slowly he went down the steep steps dug into the side of the wall. Finally he reached the bottom and stood amid shards and splinters of rock. Many of the facets of the wall were smooth and their surfaces polished. He was startled to see shadows reflected in them, as if ghostly figures moved within the stone, taunting them, aping the gestures of those outside.
He stood watching for several minutes before he noticed that others also kept glancing at them as if it were not a trick of the light, but something of importance. He looked from the reflections to the reality, and back again, and slowly it dawned on him that they were not exactly the same. Every now and then one inside the stone was different, an effort succeeded, and something appeared like a doorway. Work redoubled, arms flew frantically, splinter and slab alike was hurled aside.
And then he looked again, and the doorway was gone. It was an illusion, an eccentricity of light and imagination. And yet the workers began again, cursing, digging, blaming.
He turned and began to climb back up the steps to the rim, a weight of despair inside him as if he were carrying lead in his heart. He would immeasurably rather have been dead, gone into nothingness, than survive in this crushing, sterile place where all life but human was gone, all labour and hope futile and nothing but anger and hate remained.
But hell did not offer the escape of death, or the peace of oblivion. Existence was the punishment ... and a never-ending awareness of it all.
He walked on, not so much in the hope of arriving anywhere as the desire to leave the great hole and its labourers behind him. There was no sunrise or sunset, no day or night. The flat glare never changed, so he had no sense of time.
His legs grew tired and he sat down, leaning against a pile of shingle, and drifted into a half-sleep. His mind wandered and he dreamed he had fallen off his horse and was lying bruised on the hard ground. Waking was worse than anything he could have imagined. For a few moments he had been in the world again. Hell did not exist. Now the full horror of it returned with a violence that stunned his heart and crushed the light out of his spirit. It came back with the shock of the new, and yet the depth of knowledge of the familiar. He swore he would never sleep again.
But he did, measureless time later, lying in a hollow in fine, ash-like dust, as exhaustion overtook him.
He dreamed, vividly and with total, overwhelming sensation. He was drowning in mire. Dark slime covered his skin, sucking him down, the foulness of it filled his lungs, the taste clogged his mouth and throat. Bubbles of gas broke the surface with a stench that sickened him. He thrashed around in desperation to find a foothold, anything solid to cling on to, but there was nothing but the oily, viscous filth.
Then suddenly he felt a hand, slender, but pulling him with amazing strength. He jerked his head up, and through the miasma saw Tathea. She was up to her waist in the clinging ooze, but she must have been standing on something firm, because her weight was balanced so she could lean away from him and draw him forward.
His heart surged up inside him. Suddenly he could fight again, he could believe that anything and everything mattered. He opened his mouth to speak her name, but no sound came. Then she was gone and he was awake in the dust, and alone.
He staggered to his feet and started to walk. Time was meaningless. He had no idea how long it was until at last he came to a shallow cliff and slid and stumbled down it on to a flat sea of dust. It stretched to the horizon without feature, without height or shadow. It was like an ocean in its endlessness, and yet in everything that mattered it was utterly unlike. He had loved the sea, its passion, and fury, and beauty, the teeming abundance of its life.
He could remember the first time he had seen it, when Tathea had taken him from Hirioth to the Eastern Shore, having realised she could no longer teach him all he needed to know.
It had been time for him to learn from other men the arts of leadership. To do that he had to be taught first how to obey, how to follow, how to work with others and often to sacrifice his own will and ambition.
That had been so hard! He winced now at recollection of it. He also stubbed his foot against a rock and, looking down at the slow trickle of blood, realised with a sick dread how little it hurt. In this consuming sterility, even sensation was dying. What was there left when even pain was not real? Existence without life?
He sat down on the hard ground. He would like to have wept, but he had no energy, no tears.
He remembered the great storm he and Tathea had faced on the promontory. The sky had darkened and the sea risen in howling mountains of destruction. Tathea had known what it was, even though he had had no idea then. The Great Enemy had promised her that if she would turn back, taking Sadokhar with her, away from his destiny, then he would never be hurt. Long life and prosperity in the world ... in exchange for forfeiting his promise to God.
Tathea had defied him. There had been years of peace, love and learning in the halls of Aelfrith. He could remember them now with an aching clarity—Aelfrith standing before the great fire, his mane of yellow hair grey-streaked, his battle-scarred face shining with goodwill, while he told tales of courage and the sea. He had talked of fighting on pitching decks, with the wind and water to ride, and how they had taken the long ships, a willing crew, and put to sea to chase the pirates to the world’s edge.
Sadokhar had loved Aelfrith as he would have loved his father—with awe and a burning loyalty, a fierce knowledge and denial of his weaknesses. His stories fired the imagination, his courage was the ideal, his laughter filled him with wellbeing, his praise was the final accolade.
Perhaps Tornagrain had loved him as much. He was his brother’s son, Sadokhar was only his sister’s. Tornagrain had grown up on the Eastern Shore, and it was not unnatural he should expect to inherit the earldom, on Aelfrith’s death. He was the heir in everyone’s eyes, until Sadokhar came, and then what began as friendship and a bond of blood, had ended as rivalry, and in that terrible last day, betrayal.
But before that Sadokhar too had committed his own betrayal because he had fallen in love, not only with Yldyth, to whom he became betrothed, but with the life and loyalties of the Eastern Shore, with its beauties and its simple, daily decencies. He had told Tathea to leave him, not to try to force him to fulfil her dreams of uniting the Island, or fight her war against Asmodeus. She had been so angry. But she had not argued. She had used no pressure to force him. Perhaps even then she had had some foreknowledge of the weight he would bear, and part of her had been willing for him to set it aside, and grasp at happiness instead.
She had been gone for four years. By the time she came back he had regretted his denial. He understood better what it meant to serve a calling higher than one’s own peace.
And two nights after Tathea’s return the pirates had raided again. They had swept down out of the darkness with blood and fire. Everyone in the village had taken up whatever weapon he or she could to fight them. It had been years since there had been such a raid, and the surprise was crippling. They were caught on every side.
Only in the morning, in the smoking ruins, had it been so plain to see the path of the attack, and that it must have been aided by someone who knew the village.
Sadokhar remembered charging through the broken timbers, the charred remains of homes and storehouses, and then his amazement that the ships had not been touched. He could see the faces of the men who had come to say that Aelfrith was dead, and beautiful Yldyth too, who had wanted him to give up his calling, to deny Tathea, and for her he had done it ... and it had lain like a stone between them.
Even now in this place of despair the grief of that night could still touch him, the sudden blaze of understanding that it was intended that Aelfrith be the victim as clearly as if it were a solitary murder. Then he had felt as hollowed out and empty as the endless dust and rubble under his feet.
After had come the rage as he realised it was Tornagrain who had betrayed them, leading the pirates in over the sea defences. Sadokhar had taken his dagger and gone after him into the fen country beyond the inland wall, miles of mists and foetid pools between shifting and unstable islands, bogs that sucked down all unwary enough to tread in them.
Hour after hour he had trailed Tornagrain until at last they had stood waist-deep in the slough, face to face.
They fought as only men can who have tested each other in practice, time without number. They knew every strength and every weakness, every move before it was made. Back and forth they struggled in the slime, tripping, falling, rising again, striking until they were bloody and exhausted. In the end it was Sadokhar who had overcome, and carried the senseless body of his enemy and brother over his back. It had weighed him down, almost drowned him. Again and again his legs had buckled and they had sunk together, but always he had found a last ounce of strength, a last breath to raise them both and stagger on.
It wan only when he had seen in the dark the torches of the men coming to meet them, then felt their arms heave him out of the sucking water, that he had realised Tornagrain was dead. He would never be tried for his betrayal. Sadokhar had exacted the justice the tribe had a right to. But it had been in rage and grief, not in judgement.
No one held him to account, no one blamed him. Aelfrith was buried in his own ship and the great funeral pyre lit the night as it set to sea on its last voyage. Sadokhar had spoken the final words of farewell—“Safe harbour. Soft seas on the morning tide”—then he had stood on the shore watching, the tears wet on his face as the light of the pyre was lost on the horizon and the sea swallowed its own, until that day when the waters give up the souls of its children.
Tornagrain was buried in a traitor’s grave on the land down by the edge of the fens where nothing grew but sedges and the white bog cotton, and they left him in silence to the wild birds.
Sadokhar was made Earl in Aelfrith’s place, and the village was rebuilt. It was the beginning of his path to uniting the whole Island, and becoming King to all the tribes.
Now he stared at the bleak and terrible waste around him. Had his treachery also brought Tornagrain here to hell? He surely deserved that it should. Was there any blacker sin than to betray a man who had been to you father, friend, and King? Sadokhar clenched his teeth. It was a sour satisfaction to think that somewhere in this desolation Tornagrain was also wandering hopeless and alone. And as anger filled him, so did despair. His own soul felt as arid as the destruction around him, as if in his torment he had created it.
He walked as long as his strength survived. There was no light or shadow, no day or night for him to judge time. Finally, legs aching and his feet bloody, he sank down and drifted into an uneasy sleep.
He became aware of a dry prickling on his skin and struggled to sit up, peering through the greyness. A wind had arisen and the dust was flying in clouds, acrid and sharp. He must find shelter or it would abrade his skin.
He staggered forward, the ground soft and shifting under his feet. He lost his step and fell, landing hard, bruising his hands. He had no idea which way to go. He could not remember any feature in the land at all. Perhaps he should simply lie down? He would be buried, choked, but what did that matter? If he could die, so much the better!
“Get up!”
It was a voice—a woman’s voice!
“Get up! Come on!” it urged.
He knew her! It was Tathea!
He staggered to his feet, overbalancing in the violence of the wind and dust, but feeling for her in the gloom. His hand caught hers and clung to it.
“Come with me!” she commanded. “Come!”
He struggled to obey, longing to be closer to her, to make out her form in the blinding dust, to see her face, but it was impossible. He could only grasp on to her hand and beat his way through the suffocating clouds.
He did not know how long he floundered forward, desperate
to keep up with her, falling and crying out, gulping mouthfuls of air that choked him.
Then at last the dust cleared and he saw her, covered in fine pale powder as he was, but smiling at him.
He wanted to thank her, but what words could ever encompass the love for a human face in the wasteland of hell?
“Where have you been?” It was a child’s cry, desperate and throbbing with fear.
“I’ve found Ishrafeli,” she answered softly. “He has opened the Book.”
“Found him?” Now, stupidly he could weep. The tears sprang to his eyes and his voice was thick with them. “He’ll fight beside you ...”
“So will you!” Tathea urged. “I know it now. There is a way to escape!”
“Escape?” He breathed the word as if he had forgotten its meaning.
“Yes ... you can, but it will be very hard.”
“How?” His voice was harsh, torn out of his dust-clogged throat. “Tell me! I’ll do anything ... anything!” He meant it. Nothing could enter the mind of man worse than remaining here. “Tell me!”
“Tornagrain is here also.”
“Good!” He meant that.
“Yes, it is good,” she agreed with a tenderness he could not understand. There was sorrow in it and passion, and hope. “Because you can find him,” she went on. “And when you have done, you can forgive him for betraying Aelfrith.”
Sadokhar did not believe it! It was impossible ... monstrously unjust! God Himself could not forgive such a sin.
“I can’t!” he protested, scalded with rage and grief. “You can’t ask it!”
“I don’t, my dear,” she said so gently he heard her words more with his heart than his ears. “But God does.”
“But it’s unjust!” he cried out. “It’s ...” He stopped. If that were the price, it was too high.
“It is not justice for him, it is mercy.” She did not move her gaze or even seem to blink. “But for you it is what you need. Find him. Forgive him. And come home!”
“I can’t!” he cried. “It’s too much! He betrayed us all! Can’t you remember?”