‘Speaking of legs,’ his father said loudly, ‘shake yours and go down to the river, you ill-mannered boy. We need more water.’
In the end Kilfor took all three of his guests down to the river, an easy ten-minute walk that allowed them to ease the aches from their muscles. Down from the trap and amongst the shoulder-high grass, the world was reduced to the size of a tent. Only the cirrus-streaked sky stretched any distance.
Kilfor wielded a forked stick. ‘Snakes,’ he said. ‘It’s a good idea to ride in a wagon. We have fifty types of snake here on the steppes. Vipers, whipsnakes, arrow snakes. Venomous, most of them. See the leather wrappings around my ankles? Thick enough to keep me safe. This stick will keep all but the worst of them away, but if you go walking on the steppes again, wrap your ankles in leather if you can get it, cloth if you can’t—and don’t go exploring in the long grass.’
Conal picked his feet up off the ground as quickly as possible, as though walking on hot coals. He was somewhat mollified to see Stella adopt a similar ridiculous gait. Robal and Kilfor, at ease in this environment, refrained from passing comment, though an occasional smile twisted their lips. The priest wondered what would happen to Stella should she be bitten by a poisonous snake. More to the point, what would happen to the snake?
‘Here’s a beauty,’ Robal said, pointing to a dark, curled shape lying amongst rocks at the edge of the tallest grass. Doubled and tripled back on itself, the black-and-white serpent must have been ten feet long. It wore a white star above its eyes. ‘A young one. Adults get up to twice this size.’
Conal edged to the far side of the path and feigned an interested look over at the monster.
‘Good for the crops we grow,’ Kilfor said. ‘They eat the karakurt spider, deadliest thing I know. Paralyses its victims and lays its eggs in their mouths. The young feast on the tongue first, then work their way…No matter. No defence against something that can drop down your neck. We lose someone every now and again to the cursed spiders.’ He stood still for a moment, lost in thought.
Conal moved back to the centre of the path, equally distant from both walls of grass.
The river water was cold and pure, and the weary travellers soaked their limbs for a few minutes before returning to the camp.
‘It’s a beautiful landscape,’ Stella said to the old man.
‘Beautiful?’ Sauxa replied, his grin so wide Conal felt sure he could count every black tooth in the man’s mouth. ‘The place is an abomination, a portal into the Destroyer’s arse. One day I’m going to leave these fools and move back to the city. What’s beautiful about wind that blows your treasures all the way to your neighbour? Or snakes that compete to see who gets to nibble on your leg? Did Kilfor tell you about the spiders? They paralyse their victims, then lay their eggs—’
‘He told us,’ Stella said, laughing.
Kilfor leaned towards her. ‘My father has cursed the grasslands for fifty years, every year louder and longer than the last. He always reminisces about the few months he spent in Ehrenmal a while back; but the way my uncle tells it, he couldn’t get back here fast enough. Now, be patient and listen to my father’s stories. All you have to do is nod in the right places and he’ll carry on all day. I have to go and cook the pilaf.’
Rather than talking, the old man asked genuine questions about events in the wider world. They, in turn, asked him about life on the steppes. From time to time Kilfor would join them, inserting himself into the conversation with ease, then returning to his meal preparations.
After a while the most delicious aroma began to waft through the tent, making it difficult for Conal to concentrate on the discussion. He found himself half-asleep, as comfortable as the dull ache in his arm allowed him to be, his eyes resting on Stella’s throat, watching it move as she spoke. The scar was faintly visible, but only to one who knew it had been a gaping wound through which her lifeblood had flowed.
Had she died and come back to life, or had her immortal blood kept her from dying? Was the answer merely semantics, as so many of his scholarly debates tended to be, or was there an important truth at stake? How could one find out? Would Stella herself know?
Her porcelain skin was so perfect. The scars from where the Destroyer had struck her had, after all these years, faded into virtual nothingness. How could such a beautiful vessel feel such pain? Such alleged pain. Had she really suffered, or was this a manifestation of the weaker sex? It was well known that men could bear much more pain than women. Had she sincerely overstated the price of immortality, or was she trying to keep it from others, to hoard it for herself?
A thousand questions. He put them aside when the meal was served: wheat grains mixed with carrots, and pieces of mutton dripping with fat. ‘You are a genius,’ he said to Kilfor.
The man smiled at him. ‘My father thinks so too. He praises my cooking to everyone he meets.’
‘Aye. Good for lining the stomach so one can drink the foul brew he makes,’ Sauxa said. ‘So bad it is that even the snakes won’t bite anyone who’s had more than a sip of it.’
‘Clean the dishes, boy!’ the parrot squawked, sending Robal and Kilfor into paroxysms of laughter. Some joke from their shared childhood, no doubt.
Eventually the drink was passed around, a smooth but potent spirit, too strong for Conal’s palate but remarked on favourably by Stella. ‘He’ll make a good wife for someone,’ Sauxa said of his son.
‘My fiancée will be pleased to hear it,’ Kilfor replied.
‘His fiancée!’ Sauxa exclaimed. ‘Travels around half of Faltha, does my boy, squeezing the rumps of the most beautiful women in the world, and he comes back here to marry a Chardzou. Can you believe that?’
‘An Austapan, Papa, not a Chardzou. I’m not that inbred.’
‘Oh, an Austapan. Horseradish is no sweeter than beetroot, boy.’
Robal choked on his drink, and Stella had to pat him vigorously on his back before he could take another breath. ‘His own wife was an Austapan,’ the guardsman said. ‘Sweetest woman you would ever meet.’
‘What happened to her?’
‘Snake bite. Went down to the river—not this one, somewhere west of here—just as she had hundreds of times before, and stepped in a nest. Sauxa found her, cold and dead. He went and lived in Ehrenmal for a while after that, but the grasslands called him home.’
‘I was driven out of the city by a mob of jealous husbands,’ said the old man flatly. ‘If you can’t tell the story right, don’t tell it at all.’
The evening drifted to a close, the simoom having abated, leaving them snug and warm in the strange tent. Conal felt a gentle contentment wrap itself around his heart. What would it be like to be part of a family such as this?
He lay awake long into the night, unable to answer his question.
CHAPTER 18
DECISIONS
STELLA AWOKE TO A BRIGHT morning and crushing pain. Outside, diffuse sunlight illuminated the open space where they had talked the previous evening, and a finger reached the rug on which she rested. No doubt the sun would have woken her had the pain not done so.
Her headache was severe; her eyes burned with it. She squeezed her lids closed, which served only to intensify the agony. Tears dripped down her cheeks, disappearing into the soft weave of her sleeping rug.
It hadn’t been this bad for years. How had she put up with it, day after grinding day? A strange hollowness in her mind nagged at her like a missing tooth. It reminded her of something. She pursued the memory, clouded by pain and a rising fear: it reminded her of the months she had spent in the Destroyer’s camp, when he drew on her strength with his magic. All those years ago, yet the memory remained fresh. He had set a hook in her, enabling him to draw on her at will, dampening her own volition, using her up as he fought the Falthans in the pursuit of his mindless revenge against the Most High. Every time he drew from her, the result was a painful emptiness that lasted for hours, sometimes days, accompanied by physical weakness.
Yet
he had been merciful to her, after a fashion. She had been his unwilling accomplice in his headlong flight from Instruere amidst the ruin of his plans, after his defeat by Hal. He had retained barely enough sorcery to draw from his Lords of Fear, and with that strength had used them up one after the other, emptying them completely and discarding them as they made their escape over the city wall and across the river to safety. Yet he had never drawn on her so completely.
And now someone had drawn from her during the night. It was the only explanation for how she felt this morning. Then a more embarrassing possibility came to mind. The cognac Kilfor had shared with them had been near enough to raw spirit. But I consumed only enough to be polite. Surely this is not a hangover?
Stella grimaced at her own foolishness. She had still not shaken off the dread from her encounter with the Lord of Fear at Vindicare; no wonder she had allowed herself to be so easily frightened. And it had been years since she had last indulged in alcohol, though it didn’t normally affect her so profoundly, and she couldn’t remember having had more than a few sips last night. Of course you don’t. The more you drink, the less you remember.
The tent spun around her and the light fractured into a thousand dagger-like prisms as she pushed herself into a sitting position. After a few minutes’ panting the pain softened into an ache. It wasn’t hard to imagine Kilfor brewing that ghastly liquor, his father at his shoulder offering genial and completely inappropriate advice. You’ll need more snake venom, boy, if you want it to have a kick. None of that Instruian stuff, mind. If it don’t scald the skin off your throat it’s nothing but lolly-water. Stella found herself repressing a giggle, afraid to shake her head.
As the hollow thumping in her ears settled into the background, she began to hear voices coming from outside the tent.
‘…settle down here, or in one of the other communities. It would be the best thing for her.’ Stella struggled to place the speaker.
‘For you, maybe. But you’ve never lived like a king.’ Definitely Robal, his tone defensive.
‘And how can she live like a…like a queen now?’ The first voice was Kilfor’s. ‘She must make herself as ordinary as is possible if she’s to survive.’
‘Come to the right place, then,’ said Sauxa.
‘No one could call you ordinary, you old buffoon. She has to accept some change, at least until people have forgotten about her.’
‘That will take some time,’ Robal said.
‘But what I don’t understand is how she can look as…well, as young as she does. How long ago was the Falthan War? Forty years? She must have been twenty at the end of the war. That makes her…what? Sixty years old. She looks half that age.’
‘Don’t know how you can tell, boy. I don’t think you looked at her face once the entire evening.’
‘I have no doubt all women look impossibly young to you, old man.’
‘Seventy years, actually, since the Falthan War ended,’ Conal said, his cultured tones cutting across the banter as though it wasn’t there. ‘If the records are correct, Stella Pellwen is in her eighty-eighth year.’
Sauxa grunted, a distinctive sound. ‘Something not right about that. I know all that fancy living preserves a body, but this girl you’ve brought to my tent could pass for my granddaughter. If I had a granddaughter.’
Stella could recognise a significant pause when she heard it. She barely had the energy to raise any anger at the fact that these men would discuss her affairs amongst themselves.
‘I thought it was common knowledge that she made a deal with the Destroyer,’ Kilfor said. ‘Magical powers in exchange for the betrayal of her friends. Looks like immortality might be one of the benefits.’
Stella gritted her teeth and staggered to the opening. When the world righted, she found herself staring down at the four men sitting at the points of a deep red rectangular rug. Conal was in the middle of saying something that sounded even more pompous than usual. All four heads turned towards her.
She opened her mouth to speak, and her stomach, still some distance behind events, finally rebelled. Her gorge rose and she barely managed to turn away before vomiting onto the grass.
I’m sorry, she tried to say, but the words were overwhelmed by a rising darkness. Her legs folded underneath her, she landed with a huff on the rug amidst the men, and the spinning world faded away.
‘You are ill. Argue all you want, but you are not moving until we are satisfied you are well again.’
Stella stared at her loyal guardsman, trying to assemble his blurred features into some sort of pattern. ‘I’m not ill,’ she said. ‘What is wrong with your ears? It’s a hangover. I’ve had hangovers before, Robal.’
‘This is no hangover.’
‘Then what is it? The Chardzan physic could find nothing wrong.’
‘You muttered about poison while you were feverish. We all drank Kilfor’s elixir and you were the only one to react like this.’ The guardsman lowered his voice and leaned over her, his mouth near her ear. ‘Did the priest come anywhere near your drink? Do you think he might have slipped something in your cup?’
‘No!’ Stella said sharply, pushing him away. ‘Robal, you had better overcome your dislike for Conal, otherwise harm will come of it. He’s had plenty of opportunity to attempt to kill me, including once when, according to your testimony, all he had to do was fail to risk his life. And now he knows my so-called secret, why would he think poison would kill me anyway? Come, Robal, you are better than this. I got drunk and now I’m suffering for it. Nothing more sinister than that.’
The guardsman shook his head. ‘I would have said you consumed less than any of us.’
‘As if that makes any difference. I’ve seen habitual drunkards throw back tankards of ale with little outward effect, and others fall prey to a glass of wine. Something in the brew didn’t agree with me; I’m getting better, and it’s time to move on.’
‘There is another kind of sickness women can suffer from…’
It took a moment for the meaning of his hesitant words to sink in. ‘Are you trying to say that Conal and I—that we…well, are you?’
‘You and the priest?’ Robal laughed. ‘Hardly! No, I was thinking, ah…’ He swallowed, obviously reluctant to voice his thoughts, picking his words with care. ‘I was thinking of the Lord of Fear, actually, or one of his sons. We don’t know how long they held you before we…before the priest came to your rescue. Is it possible? Were you conscious at all times? Might one of them have attempted to acquire immortality…ah, another way?’
Stella shuddered, remembering her fear when the Maghdi Dasht approached her with his knife. ‘No,’ she said. ‘He was intent on my blood, nothing else, thanks be to the Most High. I have nothing else of worth to the likes of him.’
‘You are a prize, you know,’ the guardsman said, his eyes unfocused. ‘Clever, wise, beautiful, inheritor of an empire, possessed of immortality; if any man should lie with you…’
He flinched, as though realising he had spoken aloud; looked at her for a moment; then coloured, a raw redness rising from his neck to swamp his stricken face.
‘Oh, my lady, I…I am a fool with nothing to offer save a brain too easily detachable from my mouth. Please forgive me.’ His body hunched slightly, as if expecting a blow, but he did not turn away from her.
A deep pain flooded through Stella, an agony totally unrelated to her illness. An agony of despair. Such a worthy man.
‘My dear, I don’t know what to say to you. Surely you have worked it out already? I don’t know whether I would infect others with my curse by lying with them. With Leith…’ She choked back tears. ‘Leith died; shouldn’t that have told you something? When we were young, before we fully understood all that immortality meant, Leith might have…but I loved him too much to take the risk. He understood; he remained faithful to the wreck he took as his wife. I heard the gossip. I knew that serving maids and highborn women alike offered themselves to him. They always used the same line, how he nee
ded to have an heir. None of them understood that Faltha doesn’t need a king, not in the long run. Leith saw himself as filling in until the Sixteen Kingdoms pulled themselves together after the war. The Falthan kings wouldn’t have tolerated a dynasty in Instruere, we both knew that. So he turned them down—sometimes in my hearing, the brazen things. We would laugh about it, but it wounded me afresh every time.’
She forced herself to look up into the guardsman’s expressive, hurt-filled eyes.
‘King Leith, he never touched you?’ Robal whispered, obviously appalled for her. ‘You have remained…are still…’
‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘I have nothing to offer any good man. No empire, no wealth or dowry apart from a few polished stones, an intelligence marred by cynicism and anger, and such beauty as I have doomed to remain a reminder to any husband of his own mortality. An illusive, untouchable beauty, unsoftened by intimacy. Dear Robal, turn your thoughts towards someone worthy of you.’
Brave words, but her heart bled. So yet again am I punished. Oh, Most High, why do you hate me so?
Conal approached them, a plate of stew in his hands. ‘My…Stella, Sauxa says you should try to eat.’ He glanced at her face and that of the guardsman. ‘Has he been upsetting you, my lady?’
‘Yes,’ Robal said, just as she said, ‘No.’
‘It is no business of yours,’ Robal growled.
‘Very well,’ said the priest, clearly offended. He placed the plate by her rug; the aroma was tempting.
‘My thanks to you, and to Sauxa,’ she said. ‘I will attempt it in a moment. Now, tell me: when will we be ready to leave? And no nonsense about remaining here forever.’
The priest cast an anxious glace at Robal, who returned it with a flat stare that fell just short of an outright threat.
‘Stella, the others consider you too unwell to travel.’
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