Orla looked at him questioningly.
‘Trust. Reader’s do not learn it any other way. They do not understand it. They can always see, always know. A harsh existence, yes, being confronted almost every moment by the lies that people tell, large and small. But trust is something precious. The seed of love, an antidote to loneliness.’
‘I don’t understand.’ It was Ged who spoke this time, not Orla. ‘You say loneliness but how can it be lonely when you can hear people’s thoughts, sense their feelings?’
‘There is a difference between standing out in the cold spying in a window at people in a room, and sitting there amongst them by the warmth of the fire,’ Roland said.
Orla looked at Roland. He had expressed perfectly how she had felt for almost her whole life. She was always on the outside looking in. She could hear everything, see everything, but she was always apart.
Genevieve’s voice broke her contemplation.
‘Well this is all very nice, Roland, but don’t you think it is time for us to get moving?’
Roland ignored her and spoke in a low voice. ‘There must be so much you want to know, Orla. Take it now, if you wish. I permit it.’ He held out a hand to her.
Orla paused a moment, and studied him. Then she shook her head.
‘I would like it better if you tell me yourself,’ she said. ‘When you’re ready.’
He smiled.
‘Though there is one thing I need to know right now. Why is she here?’
Chapter fifty-six
All eyes turned to Genevieve.
‘She voted for my banishment. She tried to have me killed.’
Genevieve smiled and seemed to stand taller, so she towered even over Roland.
‘It was you, wasn’t it? The snake, and the poison?’ Orla did not break her gaze.
‘They were a test,’ Roland said, his voice stern.
Orla turned to him, outrage flushing her cheeks.
‘You knew?’
‘I would not have permitted you to come to any harm.’
‘Other than, you know, dying horribly,’ Orla said, her voice hard with anger. An image of the poor cat flashed through her mind, the way its mouth had foamed, the rigidity of its limbs, its rolling eyes.
‘We suspected what you were for some time. Proof was needed. Nekrotien are not easily killed,’ he said. ‘You stretched yourself, tested your powers.’
Orla was standing, mouth open, staring at Roland, and at Genevieve who stood behind him. The look on Genevieve’s face was even more poisonous than the snake that Orla had found in her quarters.
‘She hates me,’ Orla said, her voice suddenly quavering like a child’s, anger burning her the moment the words had come out. Anger at herself for having spoken them.
‘Alliances are not always built on friendship,’ Roland said evenly, ‘We have… mutual interests, though sometimes different views on how they should be pursued.’
‘It is not you she hates,’ Ged spoke from where he sat. ‘It is what you are. My mother exposed her father for a traitor. He was on the Council. He had dealings with the Uruhenshi before the Treaty was signed. He was executed on the King’s orders, on my mother’s word.’
Orla recalled the vision she’d seen in Genevieve’s room: a white-haired man falling, blood pooling around him. She recalled the waves of hatred she had felt from the woman.
‘It is true, Orla, you would be too insignificant even to hate,’ Genevieve said, her voice lilting in the shadowy evening, her expression smoothed to silken calm, ‘if it were not for the accident of what you are. Your power. If you had not come, Death-Bringer, would we be standing in this forest, our King dead, watching the distant flames of our Kingdom burning?’
Orla swallowed. Genevieve had spoken her own fear, exactly. Everything she touched turned to ash. Without her, the Treaty would be intact, the Council would have held, Aderon would be alive, the King would be alive. So much death, so much loss, on her head. Din. Merryn. The names of the dead that she had loved, that she had failed, tolled within her.
She looked at the ground.
‘I have worked and waited all my life for a place on the Council. My brother knows nothing of work. He smiles and banters and things just fall into his lap. He thinks that ruling the Kingdom is something that you do mid-morning, after cakes and before a long nap. Our father, before his death, always intended that Kynan would take his place on the Council. It was by pure will and effort that I gained the seat beside him. And not for power alone, though that might be your judgement. For the betterment of the Seven Isles. Our rulers have no subtlety, no sense of strategy, no ability to make the right bindings to carry us towards a future that we deserve.’
‘You were always in favour of collaboration, weren’t you? Of letting the Uruhenshi in, allowing them to take root…’ Ged’s voice was bitter.
‘My father was executed for a traitor but really he just saw what was to come. It was the only way. The Dryuk were the greater threat. We had to be rid of them. We could not have done it on our own. We needed the Uruhenshi. We needed the Treaty.’
‘Until we did not,’ Roland said quietly.
‘The sinking?’ Orla wondered aloud.
‘Was not intended to cause the Treaty to be torn up,’ Genevieve said.
‘We could not give them an Ashkar ship,’ Roland said. ‘Whatever had been promised. It goes against every tenet of truth that the Gods have given us. To give it over to the Uruhenshi, to allow them to use it to pass through the Turmoil and carry the disease of their faith further than it has already spread? It could not be done. There would have been an explanation for the sinking, a reason why the ships would no longer make the passage. And none more would have sailed, rather than allow them that.’
‘We would have given up the Ashkarai?’
‘The Ashkar trees grow slowly, Orla. The Ashkarai tend them painstakingly over many, many years. Sometimes a single lifetime is enough. Sometimes it takes generations. The trees would have waited. The Ashkarai would have waited. The Uruhenshi would not.’
Orla shook her head slowly. She did not understand. So the sinking, all those people drowning in the deep ocean…. She thought of Shiiaan, the girl who’d been in her class for those few weeks, who’d sat before her with her intricately braided hair, her straight spine, her way of asking questions that nobody else thought of.
She had been blameless, a child. She had not chosen to be born to her parents any more than Orla had chosen her own mother, or the slum beside the river as the place in which she would enter this world. And her death was Roland’s doing?
‘I did not like to do it,’ he said in a low voice, ‘I know many died that day who should not have. But a flat-out refusal would have led to war, and many, many more would have been killed. This was a way through. Or we hoped it would be.’ He frowned, and Orla sensed the depth of sorrow, of disappointment, of exhaustion that he carried.
‘So,’ Ged’s voice was hard. ‘Now what?’
✤
They had to get as far from the Palace as they could. They would be sought by the Uruhenshi, Orla had no doubt of that. She had seen enough of Piroxi’s mind to know; he would never give up. Roland had already arranged a safe-haven, a place where they might rest for a night or two, but he would not speak of what they might do or where they might go beyond that. His eyes were shadowed and he looked old and tired beyond measure. Genevieve spoke of war and signal fires to be lit, of marshalling forces for battle.
Everything was out of step from where it was meant to be, Orla knew. They had moved too soon and were unprepared, and because of that, all might be lost.
After Roland laid out the bare bones of the plan, Orla had suddenly realised that there was something missing.
‘What about Lyria? Is she coming with us?’
The other girl was sitting on the far outer limits of the circle, looking away, fiddling with a twig between her fingers.
‘They have Galed,’ she said. ‘I have to try to find hi
m.’
‘With all respect to my fellow Councillor, you’re making a mistake,’ Genevieve said. ‘By now my guess is that your father has been executed. He made a public stand against the High Commander. There’s no way he will be permitted to live.’
‘Last I saw he was still alive and until I know otherwise I’m going back for him.’
‘When they had my sister, I would have done anything to free her,’ Orla said. ‘I understand.’
‘And we all know how well that worked out,’ Genevieve said glibly. ‘Lyria, your father would be the first to counsel you not to make this useless errand…’
Lyria stood. ‘Useless errand?’
‘If, as I suspect, he is already dead then, yes, it is nothing but that.’
Lyria shook her head, paced back and forth between the trees.
‘I must know,’ she said finally. ‘Even if you’re right, I must know.’
‘If anyone can get in and out safely and return to us with information, it is Lyria,’ Roland said and there was a respect in his voice that made Orla take another look at her companion. ‘And if there is one thing we are lacking right now, it is information.’
‘What would make her survival even a vague possibility?’ Genevieve asked.
A quick look passed between Roland and Lyria. Roland cleared his throat gently.
‘I think that is for you to declare, Lyria, if you so desire,’ he said.
‘Galed is not my father,’ she said. ‘He is my sponsor. I am a Varin. I was picking locks and shadowing targets before I could read or write. I can get in or out of almost anywhere, and I can discover the truth about almost anyone. That is my speciality, you see. Most people think of us as petty thieves, on the lookout for loose change or a ring or a goblet. They forget that the most valuable thing in this world, that for which people will pay the most, is always information. Galed was my target. My first. I was captured and would have been put to death, but he saw something in me. I was the same age his own daughter would have been, had she survived. He took a risk in taking me in, teaching me, giving me opportunities. I owe him everything. My life.’ She did not meet their eyes.
It made sense, Orla realised. That was why Lyria was always so quick to judge the mood of a room, to identify a clear exit. That was how she’d disarmed the guard and stolen the keys. A Varin. Orla studied her a moment. She’d never met a Varin before, though she had heard rumours about them for as long as she could remember. They were secretive, lived in their floating villages in what seemed like a shadowy, parallel world to that of other inhabitants of the Archipelago.
Genevieve breathed out through her nose and smiled. ‘Well, my dear, you are an interesting specimen.’ She looked at Lyria more closely. ‘Oh Roland, you did well with this one. Our very own thief.’
‘I am not a thief,’ Lyria said evenly.
‘Oh, but you are,’ Genevieve said. ‘You stole a Reader from beneath the noses of the Uruhenshi High Command. You stole our future King from his likely death…’
Ged blushed.
‘Lyria, as much as I hate to let you go alone, I suspect you will be safer that way than if any one of us were to accompany you,’ Roland said.
‘That’s true.’
Orla looked back to the Palace. She wondered what horrors would be found there.
When she turned back, Lyria was already gone. She could just make out the grey of her hood vanishing into the shadows of the forest.
‘You will see her again,’ Roland said, his voice stern as though he could command it to be so. In his hand, he held a fine metal chain. It caught Orla’s eye and then she felt the aura that emanated from it. Silence. Something deeper than silence. Nothingness. And then Roland raised it up and slipped it around his neck once more, tucked it under his robes, and she reached a moment but knew already what she would find. His mind was shrouded, as it always had been.
‘Well then. Let us go,’ he said, and they turned and made their way single file through the forest.
✤✤✤
The only thing Orla fears more than her enemies is her power.
Fleeing the destruction of the Palace, Orla and Ged have begun a perilous journey.
Ged must face for the first time what it truly means to be the son of the King.
Orla burns with a secret that might destroy them both.
Together, they seek an uncertain safe-haven on Koralis. Known as the Grim Isle, Koralis is a place of dark legend. The reality will prove to be darker still.
The signs of Darkfall are all around them: in the oceans, the mer are waking; deep within caverns of stone, dragons stir. And with the return of magic to the world, Orla’s power too is growing.
With danger all around, they must each draw on their deepest strengths to survive. But what will they do when they realise the greatest threat doesn’t come from outside them?
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
I’ve worked as a bakery assistant, cleaner, telemarketer, receptionist, yoga instructor, university tutor, researcher and public servant. I’ve studied philosophy, Spanish, law and have a PhD in history. I co-wrote a documentary film, The End of the Rainbow, which won the First Appearance Award at the 2007 International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam. I live in Canberra with my partner and son.
www.rlsandersonauthor.com
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It takes more than one person to write and publish a book. As always, I am so grateful to my beta readers for sharing their thoughts and insight with me and helping the story to find its shape. Huge thanks to Sarah Bourne, Theresa Buetre, Amy Donaldson, Lisa Moran, Rhedyn Ollerenshaw and Jason Prichard.
Special thanks to Jemimah Halbert of Oddfeather Creative for editing the manuscript, and removing mountains of unnecessary commas.
Thank you to all the wonderful self-publishing writers I’m so lucky to have connected with online: for advice, encouragement and understanding. It means so much to know you and to be part of the indie community, and I honestly don’t know if I could have done it without you. Thanks also to my dear Twitter buddies for keeping me sane and sharing the ups and downs of the creative process. You know who you are!
Thanks always to my family for their support, to my work colleagues for their enthusiasm for reading what I write, and especially to Gavin for sharing my excitement about this story.
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