“I am sure. Have I not been reborn?”
“That's not how I'd have phrased it.”
“Belief is a personal experience, Jean. Each individual will see the same thing in different ways. I choose to see the gift you have given me as just that, the gift of rebirth, though I must confess I had doubts whilst in the custody of the grey woman.”
“Chantelle.”
“Yes, that is what they called her. She is not a very pleasant person.”
“She's French,” said Walter.
I ignored the dandy and continued with Sunyin's dissection. “I don't suppose she revealed her master plan, did she?”
“She spoke of it many times.”
“Really!”
“Yes, but it will fail.”
“Might I ask what she revealed?”
“She wishes to rule everything and everyone. They all do at some point,” he said as if to elaborate.
“Who do, old friend?”
“The insane.”
Hearing Sunyin disparaging anybody so bluntly took me aback. So much so, that Sunyin got to his feet, bowed and left, before my mouth remembered how to work.
“He really doesn't like her, you know,” Merryweather said.
“Does anyone?”
“You did – once.”
The Britannian sidled over and sat beside me, whilst sucking on what looked like the deer's liver.
“I presume you've already grilled him?”
“Of course, we had a long run. I carried him all the way despite my bad back. Not that anyone's calling me a hero,” he bemoaned.
“And?” I said, ignoring Walter's back clenching antics.
“Same old, same old.”
“What does that mean?”
“Much what he said. Chantelle wants to rule the world. The Marquis is fat. Serena is moody, and her children are spoilt. I think the tanned one he referred to must have been Raphael.”
“Not anymore,” I said.
“Indeed.”
“And I suppose it was Violante who betrayed us.”
“Well, I warned you.”
“I know, Sir Walter Merryweather is always right and all that.”
“Can I have that in writing?”
“No.”
“Damn, it was worth a try.”
“Do we have any idea how she contacted Chantelle?”
“Well, it's funny you should say that. When I left you to your Hierarchical gazing…”
Before he could finish everything came flooding back: Gorgon's palace, the Hierarchy, and most of all Merryweather's desertion.
“You left me! You left me when I needed you most!” I bellowed. My world turned red. I could no more control my fist than I could the mind that powered it. All I wanted, all I could concentrate on, was smashing that stupid, smug look from his Britannian face.
Merryweather flew back as though attached to a hundred wild stallions all pulling in one direction. He shot through the darkness like a bomb from Vladivar's war machine and out of the cave entrance into the light. I pursued him.
I charged out of the cave like a crazed, blind bat staggering from right to left as the ruby light momentarily dazzled me.
“Wait!” cried Merryweather from the edge of some deep cleft in the earth.
“You deserted me!” I raged. “You left me to them!”
“I did not. Let me finish, Jean. You are always jumping to the wrong conclusions.” Merryweather edged closer to the abyssal drop.
“You can't skulk your way out of this. I'm going to do what I should have done years ago. I'm going to kill you, and I'll be glad I have.”
I raised my fist with the anger of the ages swelling my veins; Merryweather caught it.
“Have you any idea what I did for you? Have you?” Merryweather squeezed; I collapsed to my knees.
Like a vengeful god, the man who was more hapless hairstyle than a hero, stood enraged. He appeared somehow taller in the gorge's half-light. Merryweather's shadow trailed behind him like a cloak of night, the elongated mantle of some dark angel. But I was not about to give in without a fight. I lashed out with my free hand; he caught that too.
“You petty, little fool!” Merryweather spoke the words with a venom I had only seen displayed towards shoddy clothing. “Have you any idea what I gave up? For you, I might add. Have you, Jean? Have you?” he roared in my face.
I wanted more than anything to rip out his dead heart, but I was as an ant before the proverbial boot. I was nothing to him. Merryweather swung my hands down and my body followed as I collapsed to the ground.
“I had not seen her for millions of years and yet still I aided you. You!”
“I didn't ask you to,” I gasped.
“No, you did not. Yet, I did. When others would have deserted you, I remained your friend. When others would have turned their back on you, I did not. Yet still, you moan and writhe like a petulant child. You think your love is so special. You know nothing of longing. You know nothing of pain. And most of all, you wicked little man, you know nothing about me.”
I wanted to say something, but could not, because deep in the caverns of my heart, I knew what he said was true. Yet still, for some ingrained reason, I couldn't bring myself to care.
“Walter.” The voice echoed around the gorge like an angel descended. “Walter,” it came again.
If Merryweather heard it, he chose to ignore it. He swung me like a rag doll to dangle me over a bottomless drop.
“Let's see if the chosen one can survive this, shall we?”
His words were quiet, calculated, devastating, as for the first time, I looked him straight in the eye: he was mad, mad beyond all reasoning.
Toying with me, Walter released one hand and left me to swing above certain death like a skewed pendulum, his grip on the other loosening. Like a cat with a mouse, he toyed with his dinner.
“Walter,” came the voice, more urgent this time. “Walter.”
I was slipping.
“Walter.”
“I was going.”
“Walter.”
A stirring in those eyes of a demon made manic.
“Walter, this is not what mother would wish.”
And just like that, Merryweather was himself again. The rage subsided, the eyes cleared from a stormy November evening to a quiet May morning and with the gentleness he would have afforded a rose, he placed me back on the solid rock.
“Thank you.” The voice came from the girl who materialised at his side, sweeping her famed cloak from slim shoulders. Aurora took hold of the dandy in her arms who burst into immediate tears. His weeping would have filled an ocean.
Chapter Nineteen
-
Patience
There was something about the sight of the two of them together that stirred. Almost personal, more reunion than sympathy, love than consolation, they embraced as though there was nothing left to do but embrace. The world might have crumbled around them, the cavernous split we resided in opened further, and still they should have held each other. If they'd fallen into the veritable pit, as one day all our kind must, they'd have still clung like limpets. I envied them that caress.
I turned away ashamed for my visual intrusion. It wasn't right to spy on them, not right at all. Instead, I looked up, my eyes traversing the dark, cave entrance, up beyond the crumbling facade of rock to the ruby light that swamped the sky and perforated the gloom of our hideaway. She was there, my angel, my goddess watching from above. I wanted nothing more than to be with her, as I had throughout this whole sordid affair, and like a crab, I inched my damaged body towards her.
Linka, nervous in her exposure, took one sharp look about and then alighted at my side. She twitched with something akin to pain, her body perhaps jarred by the sudden descent. But that should not have been? The drop was less than twenty feet, nothing to such as she.
Her personal discomforts banished, replaced by concern, she touched her fingertips to my empty chest. Delicate lines traced the sides o
f her eyes like crow's feet gripping a branch. They cut into her beautiful visage causing her lips to give an involuntary twitch, again the pain brief but noticed. She smiled a weak, washed-out look.
Linka offered a smooth palm to my forehead, but I dismissed her attentions with a sad wave.
“You're hurt,” she said.
“It's nothing.”
“If nothing is almost gone, then yes.”
“Walter couldn't kill me even if he wished to.”
“It did not look that way.”
“I was being kind.”
“In allowing him to murder you? We have been apart for too long to lose each other so soon.”
Linka folded her Nordic robes beneath her and sat down at my side.
“Is it too much to ask for a little peace and quiet, perhaps, a small slice of eternity to call our own?” I rested my head on her shoulder, Linka's garments still holding a residual scent of lavender; the smell sickened me, but I tried not to show it.
“You would not think so, but apparently it is,” she replied.
“I kind of hoped you might have found some in my absence.”
“Far from it.”
“I take it you were not quite the honoured guest Serena guaranteed.”
“I would not trust her with my hairbrush.”
“Is that bad?”
“To a woman, yes. One's hairbrush is an important accessory in modern society.”
“Modern! Don't make me laugh. Society's getting older by the day.”
“One must still strive to remain beautiful.”
“But I thought your beauty natural.”
Linka cast a worried look, which I presumed down to my state, before re-evaluating my words and continuing. “Is this really a time for jokes?”
“I'm trying to get them in whilst I can.” I coughed blood into my palm, an ashen-faced Linka wiping it away with the edge of her cloak.
“Having Chantelle for a sister is as nothing to the evil that consumes that woman.” Linka tensed beneath me and shuddered. The tremor started at her toes, the aftershock working its way through her torso right up to the tips of her luxurious, raven hair.
“I'm sorry,” I said.
“For what?”
“Leaving you.”
“You believed you had no choice.”
“There is always a choice.”
“We are all destiny's pawns, Jean, and there is nothing we can do about it.”
“True, but one can wish.”
“I did, and you're here.”
I would have responded to her, but Walter and Aurora stirred. The princess released her grip on the Britannian who appeared more composed. She took him by the hand and led him away along the rock shelf we perched upon.
“Looks like we're off,” I said.
“About time. A cave is an inappropriate haunt for a lady of class.”
“How would you know?”
Linka gave a contemptuous look.
“I'm going to regret that at some later stage, aren't I?” A raised eyebrow was my only response.
Linka helped me to my feet and hooked an arm under my shoulders. I tried to dismiss her aid but was no more able to than could a feather have drifted against the wind. We followed our departing companions out around a bend in the rock, the abyssal drop to our left far too close for comfort. There was no need for visual reference as the two paced on ahead, for Merryweather's heartbroken snivelling drew us forward.
We trailed in their wake until achieving a staircase of sorts made from a pile of displaced rocks that led up out of the gorge. Here we left the dark shadows behind and climbed back into the light.
There before us like the entrance to some magical wonderland stood the gates of Shangri-La. I was not a man prone to displays of utter relief, but I did then, my legs almost giving way beneath me.
Aurora strode up to the pair of wooden protectors and knocked hard twice upon them. She stood back as they swung out at her touch. There, trailed by a flotilla of drifting brown robes was the old Sunyin. Even though all but their father were as alike as blades of grass, their swollen numbers suggested those we'd left on the mountain had been regathered.
“You said they would find you,” I grinned.
The old monk nodded. “There was no more chance of them not finding me than there was of you not fulfilling the prophecy.” His renewed eyes glittered in the ruby light of day, his white orbs shed to a gentle brown.
However, I was too far gone to reply. My unceremonious entrance to Shangri-La was one secreted in unconsciousness, where all I should have wished was to have entered with a smile.
* * *
“He passes out an awful lot these days. Do you think it could be his hormones, he is at that funny age?”
The voice was Merryweather's, but the hand that held the glass of synthesised blood was my love's.
I finished my drink, then two more, and then staggered to my feet. My hands ached as though crushed under great boulders, same as the rest of me, but it did not stop me offering one to Walter. The Britannian frowned, looked about as if to check it not a prank, then accepted it with a surprised smile.
“I have wronged you Sir Walter Merryweather of Britannia, and I am truly sorry.”
“That's the first time you've ever given me my full title,” he said shaking me a touch too vigorously.
“It is the first time you've deserved it.”
“Probably,” he sniffed. “I've not deserved much in this life. Neither have you, I might add. We are very similar in many ways you and I.”
“Too many,” I agreed.
We were in Shangri-La's main throne room. Nothing had changed except for the throne itself, which had been removed. In its place, the monks, who were numerous, and all knelt before us in rows of twelve, had covered the stone floor in cloth and laden it with decanter after decanter of blood. The old Sunyin himself sat cross-legged at their head sipping away merrily, as his children looked on with an admiration usually reserved for deities.
“That was the right thing to do,” whispered Linka, as I returned to her side. Merryweather's smile intimated he heard, but for once, he stayed silent.
“Shall we try again, Walter?” I asked.
“Yes, let's.”
“Where were we?”
“Violante.”
“Ah, yes, how did Violante contact the grey one?”
“Ooh, I like that name,” he purred.
“Chantelle,” I corrected before he could become too distracted.
“Well, like I tried to say, it was because I'd spotted this in the corner of the chamber.” Merryweather pulled another of the communication devices out of his pocket and turned it over in his palm. “I'd have told you at the time, but you'd have made a fuss.”
“Where was it?”
“At Serena's feet.”
“I didn't see it.”
“My eyes are sharper than yours.”
“And how did you extract it from Serena's feet?” I asked, ignoring his going cross-eyed.
“I didn't, Aurora did.”
“And how did Aurora know it was there?”
“I told her.”
“When did you tell her?”
“That's why I left you, difficult though it was, so I could talk to her without her mother hearing.”
“How did you know where to find her?”
“She was with us all the time just outside the door. She really is very bright. Aurora knew her mother might sense her, so lingered remaining close but not too close.”
“I hadn't considered that.”
“Beats me how you've lived as long as you have,” he said in a most exasperated fashion.
As one, the gathered Sunyin monks giggled and for once I felt less than inclined to rip out Walter's larynx.
“Hm,” I replied. “And where was Linka in amongst all the madness?”
“In the Zeppelin with…”
“With who?”
“They'd done quite a number on her,”
he said changing the subject.
“Yes, you avoided that one,” I said tuning to my grimacing princess. “So?”
“So, what?”
“Who struck you?”
“I hoped you'd forgotten that.”
I shook my head.
“Well, you're going to see them some time, so here goes.”
Linka got to her feet and removed the white jacket she'd procured in Hvit. In waves of rolling blushes, the Sunyins all turned away. She continued her disrobing setting aside first her dress, then blouse. I'd have protested, so many others being present, but the sight shocked me into silence: Linka was one mass of discoloured skin.
“Now don't go getting all worked up,” she insisted. “The bruises are much better now, they fade a little every day.”
My eyes narrowed.
“I know that look and it's unnecessary,” she continued.
My fists bunched.
“Oh, I should never have shown you.” Linka hurriedly redressed as my heels dug into the stone floor.
“I shall carve my name into his chest,” I growled.
“Whose?” she said.
“The Marquis, of course!” The words came out as a violent storm and I regretted them that instant.
If I offended her, Linka did not show it. Her smile was as radiant as the long-lost, golden sun.
“It was not the Marquis. Believe it or not, Vincent was most apologetic about the whole affair. He often checked on my well-being even to his own cost on several occasions. He would moan about the way they'd treated him and how he'd had to do it. Apparently, he's had little choice in any of what's occurred.” Linka's voice trailed off as she chose her next words with care.
“What is it?” I asked hoping to provoke a response.
“He said he worked on behalf of others, but it was all very hush-hush. I think he wanted to be free of them, Jean, almost as much as you wanted them back.”
“Who?” I urged.
Linka looked to Merryweather who looked away.
“Your parents, Jean.”
“Don't you dare say a word,” I said pointing at the Britannian.
“I wouldn't dream,” his subdued reply.
“So, you believe Walter now?”
“I think I knew even before he told me. I didn't want to believe it, but in my cold, dead heart, I did.”
“Not that dead,” Walter replied. “You do yourself an injustice.”
Into Eternity (The Eternals Book 3) Page 17