Morghiad nodded slowly, but waited while Silar rubbed at his chin in thought. “I’m sorry, Mor – it could not be avoided; it had already come to pass,” he said eventually, “Sometimes the future forms rings around us that touch the past. I considered him a son of my own. And I remember now - why I came and what I must do. It’s my business. As for Artemi, I recommend you find the Law-keepers, and if they’re no good, try one of those pools. I saw her in them once or twice during my travels. Unavoidable, really.”
“Pools?”
Silar shrugged. “Windows to other worlds or similar. I expect you’ll know better than I about how to get there. Perhaps, if you find them, you could ask the Law-keepers if they’d be so kind as to come and see me again soon?”
“They’re not generous beings, Si.”
“I have met them. I’ll talk them into becoming generous beings this time.”
“Why don’t you come with me? Artemi is sure to be missing you, I… ah… miss you and there are so many more things-”
Silar’s joviality dropped from his features almost immediately. “No. There is something else I must solve here first: a puzzle. You’ve reminded me what it is, and I am close to the answer now…” His eyes became distant, almost as if he were looking into the future again.
“It is your decision,” Morghiad said plainly. “Be safe, old friend.” He embraced Silar as he would have done with his brothers, and as he released his grasp, felt a shadow move through him. It was not a darkness brought on by the creatures in his head, but rather a sensation of sorrow. How many more decades and lives would pass before they enjoyed a good beer together again? “A shame I cannot stay longer.”
Silar nodded. “I hope you’ll have better hair when I next see you. Goodbye, Mor.”
“Goodbye.”
Perhaps Silar’s ideas on style were not always so well-informed, Morghiad thought as he walked away. Artemi had told him she admired his lidir, anyway.
The azure waves rolled in with such perfect regularity that her eyes would frequently lose their focus as if hypnotised by a feast day magician and his tricks, but Medea could have listened to the ocean breathe its life into the shore for eternity. It was a wonderful sound; an unerring sound. And now it would forever be a sound she associated with Tallyn Hunter.
Though the skies were sun-filled, the breeze was strong at the top of the cliff, and she shivered as she huddled deeper into the cloak he had given her. Of course, The Hunter had only provided her with clothing he deemed suitable, which invariably ranged from undergarments that might as well not exist to nothing at all. Medea could not even comprehend where the man had obtained such things. At the very least he saw sense and donated his cloak when she wished to venture outside. That was something to be glad for.
After years spent following most of the orders she had for him, he seemed to be exploiting every opportunity he had to give her orders of his own. Medea did not mind it particularly, and especially not when it seemed to entertain him so.
“The sea is beautiful, and yet it is also horrific, I think,” he said, seating himself next to her.
“I’ve never sailed,” Medea replied. “Only on rivers.”
“Then I shall have to take you one day.”
She smiled thinly, but knew that the likelihood of that happening was small. If she lived through whatever revenge Mirel undoubtedly had planned for her, then she could expect to spend the rest of her years locked on land and in Calidell. But all thoughts of a glorious death on the battlefield could be banished if this peace treaty went ahead. Likely she’d meet her end through poison or some other form of assassination now.
The Hunter leaned across her lap and kissed her on the lips, interrupting her thoughts. It was not at all unpleasant when he did that, and he seemed to like doing it rather often in this place. Not remotely unpleasant, she thought.
“You cannot accompany me back into Gialdin when I return,” she said to him when he had finished bestowing his affections.
His moss-coloured eyes blinked, and his smile fell from his face. “Why?”
“Because it is unseemly. I cannot be seen to have been larking about by the sea, dressed only in… this when there are people who are starving, or who have no homes. And you… I can never marry you, so you would be seen as nothing more than…” She allowed the sentence to finish there.
“I could marry you,” he said softly.
“Be quiet, Hunter.”
“My name is Tallyn.”
Medea sprang to her feet to march back to the lodge. Suddenly the waves were not so calming. “That was my brother’s name.”
“I think you’ll find I had it first,” he said, striding after her.
“Do you think this is funny?”
“No.” He caught her by the arm. “But this is you being difficult. You are allowed to be happy, Medi. Your people do not want to see you suffer, or be alone.”
“They will think I am stronger if I am alone. This cannot and will not be.”
The Hunter folded his arms. “This is about sex again, isn’t it? We should have sex.”
“No,” Medea said firmly, and went into the lodge to locate something that she could travel in. She had no proper clothing of her own, but some of The Hunter’s would probably do. He definitely had a coat or two that was tight enough not to look like a kefruit sack on her, and some breeches that could be rolled up.
“I have not told you that you can go, Medi,” he said from behind her.
But she continued to rifle through the saddlebags he had brought. Soon, there was clothing scattered all about the bedroom floor, but none of it seemed to be the items she sought. “Where is the grey pair?” she demanded.
The Hunter shrugged. “I’m burned if I know.”
Medea lifted her chin so that she could lock eyes with him. “Find me some clothing.”
But The Hunter sat on the bed instead. “If you make an eisiel of me here, or kill me, no one will see, and you will not be dragged into gaol for it.”
“And what about your next mother?”
His mouth thinned and he looked away then. They had been through the same discussion many times, but he did not seem to register or retain any of the points made in it for long. Tallyn Hunter may have been heroic and brave and wise, but all of those things would be forgotten in an instant when his manhood decided it ought to rule his mind. “I don’t believe you will kill me,” he said eventually. “Your father survived.”
Medea went to sit next to The Hunter on the bed. “My mother once told me it was because of something she did to link their minds, but I am not so sure. He is different.”
“You have his blood in you too, Medi.”
She shook her head. “It is too much of a gamble.”
“Did I ever tell you,” he said as he leaned back on the bed, “About the time I found the Heart of Glass?”
Of course he had, but only ever when there had been other guards around, or at dinner when he could show off in front of Silar. Medea smiled as she realised her own foolishness, promptly forgot what it was she had intended to do, and cuddled up beneath one of his arms. It would only be a short story, she told herself. Just a few more minutes here. “Go on.”
“Well, many millennia ago, before even I was first born, the world was torn apart by constant war and battles that raged for centuries. They were conflicts involving hundreds of thousands of men and women rather than tens of thousands, with half of each army wielders and the other half kanaala. There were more of us about back then, and people born without fire in their blood were seen as weaklings – with no better purpose than to serve the world’s warriors. And so those battles continued on and on, scorching the earth and burning the skies, with neither side willing to give way to the other, until one very talented wielder came along. She had the ability to make such powerful weapons that numbers and fireballs no longer mattered. Her name was Parisepha, and she was employed by a queen named Sarinda.
“Some stories said that she loved her queen in a manner
more commonly seen between a woman and a man, while other stories claimed they were sisters. In any case, she was driven to do anything and everything she could to see that her Sarinda would win the war. It is said that she experimented with a great many horrors before she happened upon her finest creation, and the most powerful weapon across all the continents of the world.”
“The Heart?” Medea asked.
The Hunter nodded sagely. “It could level entire cities in a blink, wipe out whole armies before they had thought to take the next breath, and it could turn the skies inside-out before the winds could blow through them. It was deadly, and in the hands of the powerful Queen Sarinda, it led to the end of all wars. Why? Because she had killed virtually all the people who were left to fight in them, and the rest were too afraid to rebel. Now, Parisepha loved Sarinda, but she became distraught when she saw how drunk Sarinda had become on the deaths of millions of others. Sarinda was crazed with it, and chanted daily about crushing bones and tearing flesh.
“And so, when Sarinda was preparing to destroy the last of her enemies, Parisepha hid inside her bedchamber one night, and cut through the queen’s throat as she slept. After that, Parisepha was so inconsolable that she touched the Heart of Glass and attempted to destroy herself, her queen’s body and the Heart all at once.”
“Why did she fail?” Medea asked, stroking the silver buttons on The Hunter’s coat.
“For many years, people thought that she hadn’t. Parisepha had been powerful enough to annihilate the castle and all its inhabitants with it. The Heart was believed to be lost forever, and peace reigned for enough years to cause most to forget it had ever existed. But some remembered or read the old stories, and one particular individual – a man called Torvalen – started digging for it. He claimed his interest in it was purely academic, but who can say?
“In any case, he searched ancient maps and read every version of the story he could find to locate the exact position of Sarinda’s destroyed castle. What he discovered was nothing more than a grassy mound, but he stuck his spade into it, and out came the Heart.”
“What then?” Medea asked.
The Hunter kissed her hair briefly, and continued, “Then he took it home to sit in his collection of curiosities. He wasn’t kanaala, so he was rather disappointed when he touched it and nothing happened. It wasn’t until he had a visit from a friend that he saw what it could do. His friend had brought along his daughter, who just so happened to be a wielder. But of course, no one knew that, because she wasn’t quite as detectable as other wielders -”
“Mother?”
The Hunter shook his head slowly. “Mirel. She was only little, which we can be thankful for, but she was left to explore Torvalen’s tiny museum of curiosities alone. Of course, she touched the Heart, melted most of the things within immediate reach, and then sank into the ground before anyone could stop her. After that, she ran about the town collapsing houses and killing people’s pets – even killing a few people. One of them was Torvalen’s wife. When Torvalen and Mirel’s father finally caught up to her, the town was full of screaming citizens – all because of a little girl, and it was then that he realised the stories had not been full of exaggerations at all.
“He took the Heart back from Mirel, and he decided he would hide it where no one would ever find it again. It was too dangerous a thing to be allowed to fall into the hands of bad men and women, or even their children. Weapons in the hands of fools – this is no good thing. But it was too late – already witnesses to the event spoke of it, and when Mirel matured, she wanted it for herself. I heard of it too, and suddenly there were hundreds of us looking for the thing. Some wanted to use it for power, and some wanted to make sure it remained hidden.”
“How did you know where to start?” Medea asked.
He looked at her through narrowed eyes. “I’ll tell you the rest of the story if you sleep with me.”
She sat up then, screwing a handful of the sheets up in her fist. Blazes, but it would have been satisfying to slap the man across his face for his impudence! Instead she gripped the sheets harder, before leaving to renew her search for proper clothing. Now, if she had been The Hunter, where would she have hidden something she wanted?
Medea strode into the next room to look about it, but found each of its cabinets and the wardrobe empty. She knew he had other clothes with him. She had seen them.
“You really want to go back there?” he asked, leaning against the door frame.
“It is not a case of want. I have to.”
A hissed sigh escaped from his lips, but he brought some neatly folded cloth items from behind his back. “You’ll need these. There’s a spare horse for you in the village. I’ll follow you back at a distance, so that nothing appears too… unseemly about our virtuous queen.” He held onto the clothing as she tried to take it from him. “Let me pleasure you at least one more time before you go. You are too tense again already, and it will relax you.”
“I-” Medea tugged on the clothing. “Fine. Just… don’t do anything too-” Her sentence broke off as she felt something shift in the current of Crux power. “Did you sense that?”
“Hmm?” The Hunter’s eyes were still sparkling with excitement.
“In the ether. Did you see anything change?”
His eyes lost their focus momentarily, but soon returned to their glittering selves. “No. Looks the same to me.”
Medea shook her head, and knew that she had not imagined it. Something was different. “I need to do the flares test. Now.” She ran outside, still in nothing more than the strange underclothes The Hunter had seen fit to provide her with, and began wielding. The form she required was not too complicated, and she had done it enough times to know what the result should be, but she needed something to write her calculations on. She had no quill or parchment, and so she crouched down to draw a few numbers in the dirt.
“What, in all the blazed, red sands and skies of this earth, are you doing woman?” The Hunter asked from behind her. She was aware that he was setting something about her shoulders, though she hardly cared what it was.
“Forty-seven, forty-eight... Oh… bloody light! It’s happened again.”
“What has?”
Medea spun to face him. “My father. It must have been him. He’s changing it – the balance of fire in this world - there’s less of it. We must go to Gialdin immediately.”
Danner was still outside in the garden, looking mournfully up at the window that Kalad held open. Kalad felt like talking some sense into the wolf, but of course he knew that would be a waste of time. One would think that if a wolf could overcome his anger at a man who had once slain him, then he certainly could learn to forgive his master’s new wife for the things she had done in the past.
“Is he still there?” Mirel asked.
“Yes,” Kalad said, turning to the woman who now masqueraded as Yulia. The Blaze forms to hide her features had not been replaced, but she had dyed her hair and styled it just as Yulia would have done. Her dresses were the same, but her manner was far more agreeable. And the love-making… Kalad tried not to think too much about that for fear he might become aroused again. “Yulia-”
“Hmm?”
“Do you truly believe that this will continue to work?” Kalad asked.
She had told him that no mask of Blaze would be necessary while they lived in the house together. Servants barely even glanced at the faces of their lords and ladies, and as long as a husband or wife pretended to notice no difference, there would be no reason to question her altered features. If they ever had to return to Astalon or Gialdin however, a wielder would need to be recruited.
“Lannda has your wife’s body preserved, my darling, so we will always have the opportunity to recreate our disguises should we need to. For now, the servants will believe whatever we tell them. Happiness can change a woman’s looks, you know.”
He drew a finger through her hair and pulled her close. Blazes, but there was not much of her! She had seeme
d so large and terrifying in the tales he had heard told, but this small creature appeared no more threatening than a mouse.
“Why did you kill Queen Dorinna?”
Mirel shook her head. “I do not know. I was given instructions to assassinate her, and to leave her head on a spit. Those were my orders, and I followed them.”
“Truly?
“Truly.” She regarded him levelly with her frosted sapphire eyes, and he knew that she was not lying to him.
“Then who told you to do it?”
“My master.”
Kalad’s encounter with that man had been enough to provide him with a greater understanding of true evil than he ever cared to have. “He is locked away. He cannot give orders, and you should not be following them if he had.”
Mirel kissed him softly on the lips and smiled. Her fingers began to work through his beard. “Sweet, naive boy. All of his instructions were passed to my sister before his imprisonment. And even if they had not been, do you truly believe such trifling things as walls could prevent him from communicating with his soldiers? He sees the future; we must side with him if we want this world to survive.”
“He tried to have me killed – by my own father!”
“No.” Mirel shook her head. “That was never his plan. The outcome was his plan. This was his plan.” She kissed him again. Her lips were cool and soft, like silk over ice water.
Kalad remained unconvinced, and it was clear to him that Mirel had been drawn in by The Daisain just as his father once had. And still she did his bidding without question. “I am your master now,” he said. “I am your husband.”
One of her eyebrows arched more severely, if that was possible. “Think on this, Kahr Kalad of Calidell: if Master could not foresee that your father would disobey him, that he would not kill you in front of your mother, then how could he have foreseen the events that happened after it – events that led to this moment? How could he have known that your mother would go on to re-marry your father, die in battle with him, and that your father would be reborn a Hirrahan? How would he have foreseen the peace talks that would come, and that Queen Dorinna would attend? How would he have known to send me there to kill her, and then here to replace your wife, if he had been blind to any of it?”
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