Fierce winds buffeted the trees and Druss saw a herd of deer running from the woods, their movements seeming disjointed and ungainly against the flaring lightning bolts. A tree was struck and seemed to explode from within, splitting into two halves. Fire blazed briefly from the ruined trunk, but died within seconds in the sheeting rain.
Dulina crept alongside him, pushing herself against him. He felt the stitches in his side pull as she snuggled in, but he lifted his arm around her shoulders. 'Is is only a storm, child,' he said. 'It cannot harm us.' She said nothing and he drew her to his lap, holding her close. She was warm, almost feverish, he thought.
Sighing, Druss felt again the weight of loss, and wondered where Rowena was on this dark and ferocious night. Was there a storm where she lay? Or was the night calm? Did she feel the loss, or was Druss just a dim memory of another life in the mountains? He glanced down to see that the child was asleep, her head in the crook of his arm.
Holding her firmly but gently, Druss rose and carried her back to the fireside, laying her down on her blanket and adding the last of the fuel to the fire.
'You are a good man,' came a soft voice. Druss looked up and saw that the old tinker was awake.
'How is the leg?'
'It hurts, but it will heal. You are sad, my friend.'
Druss shrugged. 'These are sad times.'
'I heard your talk with your friend. I am sorry that in helping me you have lost the chance to help others.' He smiled. 'Not that I would change anything, you understand?'
Druss chuckled. 'Nor I.'
'I am Ruwaq the Tinker,' said the old man, extending a bony hand.
Druss shook it and sat beside him. 'Where are you from?'
'Originally? The lands of Matapesh, far to the east of Naashan and north of the Opal Jungles. But I have always been a man who needed to see new mountains. People think they are all the same, but it is not so. Some are lush and green, others crowned with shining ice and snow. Some are sharp, like sword-blades, others old and rounded, comfortable within eternity. I love mountains.'
'What happened to your children?'
'Children? Oh, I never had children. Never married.'
'I thought the child was your grand-daughter?'
'No, I found her outside Resha. She had been abandoned and was starving to death. She is a good girl. I love her dearly. I can never repay the debt to you for saving her.'
'There is no debt,' said Druss.
The old man lifted his hand and wagged his finger. 'I don't accept that, my friend. You gave her - and me - the gift of life. I do not like storms, but I was viewing this one with the greatest pleasure. Because until you entered the hollow I was a dead man, and Dulina would have been raped and probably murdered. Now the storm is a vision of beauty. No one ever gave me a greater gift.' The old man had tears in his eyes and Druss's discomfort grew. Instead of feeling elated by his gratitude he experienced a sense of shame. A true hero, he believed, would have gone to the man's aid from a sense of justice, of compassion. Druss knew that was not why he had helped them.
Not even close. The right deed . . . for the wrong reason. He patted the old man's shoulder and returned to the cave-mouth where he saw that the storm was moving on towards the east, the rain lessening. Druss's spirits sank. He wished Sieben were with him. Irritating as the poet could be, he still had a talent for lifting the axeman's mood.
But Sieben had refused to accompany him, preferring the pleasures of city life to an arduous journey across the mountains to Resha. No, thought Druss, not the journey; that was just an excuse.
'I'll make a bargain with you though, old horse,' said Sieben on that last day. 'Leave the axe and I'll change my mind. Bury it. Throw it in the sea. I don't care which.'
'Don't tell me you believe that nonsense?'
'I saw it, Druss. Truly. It will be the death of you - or at least the death of the man I know.'
Now he had no axe, no friend, and no Rowena. Unused to despair Druss felt lost, his strength useless.
Dawn brightened the sky, the land glistening and fresh from the rain as Dulina came alongside him. 'I had a wonderful dream,' she said brightly. 'There was a great knight on a white horse. And he rode up to where grandfather and I were waiting, and he leaned from his saddle and lifted me to sit beside him. Then he took off his golden helmet and he said, "I am your father." And he took me to live in a castle. I never had a dream like it. Do you think it will come true?'
Druss did not answer. He was staring down at the woods at the armed men making their way towards the cave.
*
The world had shrunk now to a place of agony and darkness. All Druss could feel was pain as he lay in the windowless dungeon, listening to the skittering of unseen rats which clambered over him. There was no light, save when at the end of the day the jailer strode down the dungeon corridor and a tiny, flickering beam momentarily lit the narrow grille of the door-stone. Only in those seconds could Druss see his surroundings. The ceiling was a mere four feet from the floor, the airless room six feet square. Water dripped from the walls, and it was cold.
Druss brushed a rat from his leg, the movement causing him a fresh wave of pain from his wounds. He could hardly move his neck, and his right shoulder was swollen and hot to the touch. Wondering if the bones were broken, he began to shiver.
How many days? He had counted to sixty-three, but then lost track for a while. Guessing at seventy, he had begun to count again. But his mind wandered. Sometimes he dreamt of the mountains of home, under a blue sky, with a fresh northerly wind cooling his brow. At other times he tried to remember events in his life.
'I will break you, and then I will watch you beg for death,' said Cajivak on the day they had hauled Druss into the castle Hall.
'In your dreams, you ugly whoreson.'
Cajivak had beaten him then, pounding his face and body with brutal blows. His hands tied behind him, a tight rope around his neck, Druss could do nothing but accept the hammering.
For the first two weeks he was kept in a larger cell. Every time he slept men would appear alongside his narrow bed to beat him with clubs and sticks. At first he had fought them, grabbing one man by the throat and cracking his skull against the cell wall. But deprived of food and water for days on end, his strength had given out and he could only curl himself into a tight ball against the merciless beatings.
Then they had thrown him into this tiny dungeon, and he had watched with horror as they slid the door-stone into place. Once every two days a guard would push stale bread and a cup of water through the narrow grille. Twice he caught rats and ate them raw, cutting his lips on the tiny bones.
Now he lived for those few seconds of light as the guard walked back to the outside world.
'We caught the others,' the jailer said one day, as he pushed the bread through the grille. But Druss did not believe him. Such was Cajivak's cruelty that he would have dragged Druss out to see them slain.
He pictured Varsava pushing the child up into the chimney crack in the cave, urging her to climb, and remembered lifting Ruwaq up to where Varsava could haul the old man out of sight. Druss himself was about to climb when he heard the warriors approaching the cave. He had turned.
And charged them. . . .
But there were too many, and most bore clubs which finally smashed him from his feet. Boots and fists thundered into him and he awoke to find a rope around his neck, his hands bound. Forced to walk behind a horseman, he was many times dragged from his feet, the rope tearing the flesh of his neck.
Varsava had described Cajivak as a monster, which could not be more true. The man was close to seven feet tall, with an enormous breadth of shoulder and biceps as thick as most men's thighs. His eyes were dark, almost black, and no hair grew on the right side of his head where the skin was white and scaly, covered in scar tissue that only a severe burn could create. Madness shone in his eyes, and Druss had glanced to the man's left and the weapon that was placed there, resting against the high-backed throne.
Snaga!
Druss shook himself free of the memory now and stretched. His joints creaked and his hands trembled in the cold that seeped from the wet walls. Don't think of it, he urged himself. Concentrate on something else. He tried to picture Rowena, but instead found himself remembering the day when the priest of Pashtar Sen had found him in a small village, four days east of Lania. Druss had been sitting in the garden of an inn, enjoying a meal of roast meat and onions and a jug of ale. The priest bowed and sat opposite the axeman. His bald head was pink and peeling, burned by the sun.
'I am glad to find you in good health, Druss. I have searched for you for the last six months.'
'You found me,' said Druss.
'It is about the axe.'
'Do not concern yourself, Father. It is gone. You were right, it was an evil weapon. I am glad to be rid of it.'
The priest shook his head. 'It is back,' he said. 'It is now in the possession of a robber named Cajivak. Always a killer, he succumbed far more swiftly than a strong man like yourself and now he is terrorising the lands around Lania, torturing, killing and maiming. With the war keeping our troops from the area, there is little that can be done to stop him.'
'Why tell me?'
The priest said nothing for a moment, averting his eyes from Druss's direct gaze. 'I have watched you,' he said at last. 'Not just in the present, but through the past, from your birth through your childhood, to your marriage to Rowena and your quest to find her. You are a rare man, Druss. You have iron control over those areas of your soul which have a capacity for evil. And you have a dread of becoming like Bardan. Well, Cajivak is Bardan reborn. Who else can stop him?'
'I don't have time to waste, priest. My wife is somewhere in these lands.'
The priest reddened and hung his head. His voice was a whisper, and there was shame in the words. 'Recover the axe and I will tell you where she is,' he said.
Druss leaned back and stared long and hard at the slender man before him. 'This is unworthy of you,' he observed.
The priest looked up. 'I know.' He spread his hands. 'I have no other . . . payment. . . to offer.'
'I could take hold of your scrawny neck and wring the truth from you,' Druss pointed out.
'But you will not. I know you, Druss.'
The warrior stood. 'I'll find the axe,' he promised. 'Where shall we meet?'
'You find the axe - and I'll find you,' the priest told him.
Alone in the dark, Druss remembered with bitterness the confidence he had felt. Find Cajivak, recover the axe, then find Rowena. So simple!
What a fool you are, he thought. His face itched and he scratched at the skin of his cheek, his grimy finger breaking a scab upon his cheek. A rat ran across his leg and Druss lunged for it, but missed. Struggling to his knees, he felt his head touch the cold stone of the ceiling.
Torchlight flickered as the guard moved down the corridor. Druss scrambled to the grille, the light burning his eyes. The jailer, whose face Druss could not see, bent and thrust a clay cup into the door-stone cavity. There was no bread. Druss lifted the cup and drained the water. 'Still alive, I see,' said the jailer, his voice deep and cold. 'I think the Lord Cajivak has forgotten about you. By the gods, that makes you a lucky man - you'll be able to live down here with the rats for the rest of your life.' Druss said nothing and the voice went on, 'The last man who lived in that cell was there for five years. When we dragged him out his hair was white and all his teeth were rotten. He was blind, and bent like a crippled old man. You'll be the same.'
Druss focused on the light, watching the shadows on the dark wall. The jailer stood, and the light receded. Druss sank back.
No bread . . .
You'll be able to live down here with the rats for the rest of your life. Despair struck him like a hammer blow.
Pahtai felt the pain recede as she floated clear of her plague-racked body. I am dying, she thought, but there was no fear, no surging panic, merely a peaceful sense of harmony as she rose into the air.
It was night, and the lanterns were lit. Hovering just below the ceiling, she gazed down on Michanek as he sat beside the frail woman in the bed, holding to her hand, stroking the fever-dry skin and whispering words of love. That is me, thought Pahtai, staring down at the woman.
'I love you, I love you,' whispered Michanek. 'Please don't die!'
He looked so tired, and Pahtai wanted to reach out to him. He was all the security and love she had ever known, and she recalled the first morning when she had woken in his home in Resha. She remembered the bright sunshine and the smell of jasmine from the gardens, and she knew that the bearded man sitting beside her should have been known to her. But when she reached into her mind she could find no trace of him. It was so embarrassing. 'How are you feeling?' he had asked, the voice familiar but doing nothing to unlock her memory. She tried to think of where she might have met him. That was when the second shock struck, with infinitely more power than the first.
She had no memory! Nothing! Her face must have reacted to the shock, for he leaned in close and took her hand. 'Do not concern yourself, Pahtai. You have been ill, very ill. But you are getting better now. I know that you do not remember me, but as time passes you will.' He turned his head and called to another man, tiny, slender and dark-skinned. 'Look, here is Pudri,' said Michanek. 'He has been worried about you.'
She had sat up then, and seen the tears in the little man's eyes. 'Are you my father?' she asked.
He shook his head. 'I am your servant and your friend, Pahtai.'
'And you, sir,' she said, turning her gaze on Michanek. 'Are you my . . . brother?'
He had smiled. 'If that is what you wish, that is what I will be. But no, I am not your brother. Nor am I your master. You are a free woman, Pahtai.' Taking her hand, he kissed the palm, his beard soft as fur against her skin.
'You are my husband, then?'
'No, I am merely a man who loves you. Take my hand and tell me what you feel.'
She did so. 'It is a good hand, strong. And it is warm.'
'You see nothing? No . . . visions?'
'No. Should I?'
He shook his head. 'Of course not. It is only . . . that you were hallucinating when the fever was high. It just shows how much better you are.' He kissed her hand again.
Just as he was doing now. 'I love you,' she thought, suddenly sad that she was about to die. She rose through the ceiling and out into the night, gazing up at the stars. Through spirit eyes they no longer twinkled, but sat perfect and round in the vast bowl of the night. The city was peaceful, and even the camp-fires of the enemy seemed merely a glowing necklace around Resha.
She had never fully discovered the secrets of her past. It seemed she was a prophet of some kind, and had belonged to a merchant named Kabuchek, but he had fled the city long before the siege began. Pahtai remembered walking to his house, hoping that the sight of it would stir her lost memories. Instead she had seen a powerful man, dressed in black and carrying a double-headed axe. He was talking to a servant. Instinctively she had ducked back into an alley, her heart hammering. He looked like Michanek but harder, more deadly. Unable to take her eyes from him, she found the oddest sensations stirring within her.
Swiftly she turned and ran back the way she had come.
And had never since sought to find out her background.
But sometimes as she and Michanek were making love, usually in the garden beneath the flowering trees, she would find herself suddenly thinking of the man with the axe, and then fear would come and with it a sense of betrayal. Michanek loved her, and it seemed disloyal that another man - a man she didn't even know -could intrude into her thoughts at such a time.
Pahtai soared higher, her spirit drawn across the war-torn land, above gutted houses, ruined villages and ghostly, deserted towns. She wondered if this was the route to Paradise? Coming to a range of mountains, she saw an ugly fortress of grey stone. She was thinking of the man with the axe, and found herself drawn into the citadel. There
was a hall and within it sat a huge man, his face scarred, his eyes malevolent. Beside him was the axe she had seen carried by the man in black.
Down she journeyed, to a dungeon deep and dark, cold and filthy, the haunt of rats and lice. The axeman lay there, his skin covered in sores. He was asleep and his spirit was gone from the body. Reaching out she tried to touch his face, but her spectral hand flowed beneath the skin. In that moment she saw a slender line of pulsing light radiating around the body. Her hand stroked the light and instantly she found him.
He was alone and in terrible despair. She spoke with him, trying to give him strength, but he reached for her and his words were shocking and filled her with fear. He disappeared then, and she guessed that he had been woken from sleep.
Back in the citadel she floated through the corridors and rooms, the antechambers and halls. An old man was sitting in a deserted kitchen. He too was dreaming, and it was the dream that drew her to him. He was in the same dungeon; he had lived there for years. Pahtai entered his mind and spoke with his dream spirit. Then she returned to the night sky. 'I am not dying,' she thought. 'I am merely free.'
In an instant she returned to Resha and her body. Pain flooded through her, and the weight of flesh sank down like a prison around her spirit. She felt the touch of Michanek's hand, and all thoughts of the axeman dispersed like mist under the sun. She was suddenly happy, despite the pain. He had been so good to her, and yet . . .
'Are you awake?' he asked, his voice low. She opened her eyes.
'Yes. I love you.'
'And I you. More than life.'
'Why did we never wed?' she said, her throat dry, the words rasping clear. She saw him pale.
'Is that what you wish for? Would it make you well?'
'It would . . . make me . . . happy,' she told him.
'I will send for a priest,' he promised.