Her mouth was dry again. Something in his tone, the way he was sitting, the discontinuity of his reply.
‘No,’ she said. She tried to think of something witty to add, but failed.
‘Finavir, or Finvair,’ he went on, not really waiting for her response, not looking over at her. ‘When I grew older and looked in the books of such tales it was written either way, and in one or two other fashions sometimes. That often happens with the stories that come from before the days when we wrote things down.’
He leaned the iron against the chair arm again and sat back, still gazing into the flames. Rhun had walked a little nearer to them, as if drawn by the story. He was leaning against one of the heavy window draperies now, kneading a bunched fold of it in both hands.
Brandin said, ‘In Ygrath the tale is sometimes told and sometimes believed that this world of ours, both here in the southern lands and north beyond the deserts and the rain forests—whatever lies there—is but one of many worlds the gods sent into Time. The others are said to be far off, scattered among the stars, invisible to us.’
‘There has been such a belief here as well,’ Dianora said quietly when he paused. ‘In Certando. In the highlands they once had a teaching that was much the same, though the priests of the Triad burned people for saying as much.’ It was true; there had been mass burnings for the Carlozzini heresy in the plague years, long ago.
Brandin said, ‘We never burned or wheeled people for that thought. They were laughed at sometimes, but that is another thing. What my nurse used to tell me was what her mother told her, and her mother’s mother before, I have no doubt: that some of us are born over and again into various of these worlds until, at the last, if we have earned it by the manner of our lives, we are born a final time into Finavir or Finvair which is the nearest of all the worlds to where the true gods dwell.’
‘And after that?’ she asked. His quiet words seemed to have become a part of the unfolding spell of this day.
‘After, no one knew, or would tell me. Nor did any of the parchments and books I read when I grew older.’ He shifted in his seat, his beautiful hands resting on the carved arms of the chair. ‘I never liked my nurse’s legend of Finavir. There are other kinds of stories, some of them quite different and many of them I loved, but for some reason that one stayed with me. It bothered me. It seemed to make our lives here merely a prelude, inconsequential in themselves, of importance only for where they would lead us next. I have always needed to feel that what I am doing matters, here and now.’
‘I think I would agree with you,’ she said. Her own hands were gentle in her lap now; he had shaped a different mood. ‘But why are you telling me this, if you have never liked the story?’
The simplest of questions.
And Brandin said, ‘Because during the nights this past year and more I have had recurring dreams of being reborn far away from all of this, in Finavir.’ He looked straight at her then for the first time since beginning the tale, and his grey eyes were calm and his voice was steady as he said: ‘And in all of those dreams you have been at my side and nothing has held us apart, and no one has come between.’
She had had no warning. None at all, though perhaps the clues had been there all along and she too blind to see. And suddenly she was blind now, helpless tears of shock and wonder overflowing in her eyes and a desperate, urgent hammering that she knew to be her heart.
Brandin said, ‘Dianora, I needed you so much last night I frightened myself. I did not send for you only because I had to somehow try to come to terms with what happened to me when you blocked Camena’s arrow. Solores was a court deception, no more than that: so they might not think me unmanned by danger. I spent the whole night pacing or at my desk, trying to riddle out where my life has now come. What it means that my wife and only living son should try to kill me, and fail only because of you. And thinking about that, consumed by it, I only realized near dawn that I had left you alone all night. My dear, will you ever forgive me for that?’
I want time to stop, she was thinking, wiping vainly at her tears, trying to see him clearly. I want never to leave this room, I want to hear these words spoken over and over, endlessly, until I die.
‘I made a decision on my ride,’ he said. ‘I was thinking about what Isolla had said and I was finally able to accept that she was right. Since I will not, since I cannot possibly change what I am committed to doing here, I must be prepared to pay all of the price myself, not through others in Ygrath.’
She was shaking, quite unable to stop her tears. He had not touched her, or even moved towards her. Behind him Rhun’s face was a twisted mask of pain and need, and something else. The thing she sometimes saw there, and could not face. She closed her eyes.
‘What will you do?’ she whispered. It was hard to speak.
And then he told her. All of it. Named for her the fork in the road he had chosen. She listened, her tears falling more slowly now, welling up from an overfull heart, and at length she came to understand that the wheel was coming full circle.
Listening to Brandin’s grave voice over the crackle of flames on an Ember Day, Dianora saw only images of water in her mind. The dark waters of the pool in the garden, and the vision of the sea she’d been given there. And though she had no gift of foreknowing she could see where his words were taking them, taking them all, and now she understood the showing of the pool.
She searched her heart and knew, with an enormous grief, that it was his, it had not come back to her after all. Yet even so, and most terribly of all, she knew what was about to come, what she was going to do.
She had dreamt on other nights alone through her years in the saishan of finding a path like the one that was opening for her now with the words he spoke. At one point, listening to him, thinking thus, she could bear the physical distance between them no longer. She moved from her chair to the carpet at his feet and laid her head in his lap. He touched her hair and began stroking it, down and down, ceaselessly, as he spoke of what had come to him in the night and on his ride; spoke of being willing, finally, to accept the price of what he was doing here in the Palm; and spoke to her about the one thing she could never have made herself ready for. About love.
She wept quietly, she could not stop weeping as his words continued to flow, as the fire slowly died on the hearth. She wept for love of him, and for her family and her home, for the innocence she had lost to the years and for all that he had lost, and she wept most bitterly of all for the betrayals yet to come. All the betrayals that lay waiting outside this room where time, which would not stop, was going to carry them.
C H A P T E R 1 4
‘Ride!’ Alessan cried, pointing towards a gap in the hills. ‘There’s a village beyond!’
Devin swore, lowered his head over his horse’s neck, and dug his heels into the animal’s flanks, following Erlein di Senzio west towards the gap and the low red disk of the sun.
Behind him, thundering out of the brown twilight hills, were at least eight, possibly a dozen brigands of the highlands. Devin hadn’t looked back, after their first startled glimpse of the outlaws and the shouted command to halt.
He didn’t think they had a chance, however close this village might be. They had been riding at a bone-jarring pace for hours and the horses Alienor had given them were tired. If this was to be a flat-out race against fresh-mounted outlaws they were probably dead. He gritted his teeth and rode, ignoring the ache in his leg and the sting of reopened cuts from his leap in the mountains earlier that day.
The wind whistled past him as they rode. He saw Alessan turn in his saddle, an arrow notched to his fully drawn bow. The Prince fired backwards once and then again into the twilight, his muscles ridged and corded with the effort. An improbable, desperate attempt at such speed in the wind.
Two men screamed. Devin quickly looked back and saw one of them fall. A handful of erratic arrows dropped well short of the three of them.
‘They’ve slowed!’ Erlein rasped, glancing back as
well. ‘How far to this village?’
‘Through the gap and twenty minutes beyond! Ride!’ Alessan did not shoot again, bending low to urge more speed from his own grey. They fled into the wind along the track of the sun, between the shadowy bulk of two heathery hills and into the gap between.
They didn’t get out.
Just where the path bent to follow the curve of the encroaching ridges eight riders were waiting in a line across the gap, bows calmly levelled at the three of them.
They pulled their horses to rearing halts. Devin flung a glance back over his shoulder and saw the pursuing outlaws entering the pass behind them. There was one riderless horse, and another man clutched at his shoulder where an arrow was still embedded.
He looked at Alessan, saw the desperate, defiant look in the Prince’s eye.
‘Don’t be a fool!’ Erlein snapped. ‘You can’t run through and you can’t kill this many men.’
‘I can try,’ Alessan said, his eyes darting across the defile and up the steep hills on either side, wild to find a way out. He had stopped his horse though, and did not raise the bow.
‘Straight into a trap. What a splendid ending to two decades of dreaming!’ His voice was corrosively bitter, raw with self-laceration.
It was true though, Devin realized, rather too late. This pass between the hills was a natural place for an ambush, and the Triad knew there were enough outlaws in the wilds of southern Certando, where even the Barbadian mercenaries seldom went, and honest men were never abroad this close to the fall of night. On the other hand, they hadn’t had much choice, given how far they had to go, and how fast.
It didn’t seem as if they were going to get there. Or anywhere. There was still enough light to make out the outlaws, and their appearance did not reassure. Their clothing might be random and carelessly worn, but the horses were far from the beaten-down creatures most brigands rode. The men in front of them looked disciplined, and the weaponry levelled at the three of them was formidable. This had also been, very clearly, a carefully laid trap.
One man rode a few paces forward from the silent line. ‘Release your bows,’ he said with easy authority. ‘I don’t like talking with armed men.’
‘Neither do I,’ Alessan replied grimly, staring at the man. But a moment later he let his bow fall to the ground. Beside Devin, Erlein did the same.
‘And the boy,’ the outlaw leader said, still softly. He was a big man of middle years, with a large face and a full beard that showed deep red in the waning light. He wore a dark wide-brimmed hat that hid his eyes.
‘I don’t carry a bow,’ Devin said shortly, letting fall his sword.
There was mocking laughter at that from the men in front of them.
‘Magian, why were your men in arrow range?’ the bearded man said, more loudly now. He himself had not laughed. ‘You knew my instructions. You know how we do this.’
‘I didn’t think we were,’ came an angry voice behind them, amid a clattering of hooves. Their pursuers had come up. The trap was closed, before and behind. ‘He fired a long way in half-light and wind. He was lucky, Ducas.’
‘He wouldn’t have had a chance to be lucky if you had done your job properly. Where’s Abhar?’
‘Took an arrow in the thigh and fell. Torre’s gone back to bring him.’
‘Waste.’ The red-bearded man scowled. ‘I don’t like waste.’ He was a dark, bulky presence, silhouetted against the low sun. Behind him the other seven riders kept their bows levelled.
Alessan said, ‘If waste offends you, you won’t like this evening’s work at all. We have nothing to give you beyond our weapons. Or our lives, if you are the sort who kill for pleasure.’
‘Sometimes,’ the man named Ducas said, not raising his voice. He sounded unsettlingly calm, Devin thought, and very much in control of his band. ‘Will my two men die? Do you use poisoned arrows?’
Alessan’s expression was contemptuous. ‘Not even against the Barbadians. Why? Do you?’
‘Sometimes,’ the outlaw leader said again. ‘Especially against the Barbadians. These are the highlands, after all.’ He smiled for the first time, a cold, wolfish grin. Devin had a sudden sense that he wouldn’t want to have this man’s memories, or his dreams.
Alessan said nothing. It was growing darker in the pass. Devin saw him glance over at Erlein, a sharp query in his face. The wizard shook his head, a minute, almost invisible gesture. ‘Too many,’ he whispered. ‘And besides—’
‘The grey-haired one is a wizard!’ came an emphatic voice from the line beyond Ducas.
A chunky, round-faced man moved his horse forward beside the leader’s. ‘Don’t even think of it,’ he continued, looking straight at Erlein. ‘I could block anything you tried.’ Startled, Devin glanced at the man’s hands, but at this distance it was too dark for him to see if two fingers were missing. They would have to be though.
They had come upon another wizard; much good it would do them.
‘And precisely how long do you think it would take a Tracker to find you then?’ Erlein was saying, his voice silken. ‘With the backspill of magic from the both of us leading to this place?’
‘There are a sufficiency of arrows trained on your heart and throat,’ the leader interjected, ‘to ensure that such an event would not happen. But I confess this grows more interesting every moment. An archer and a wizard riding abroad on an Ember Day. Aren’t you afraid of the dead? What does the boy do?’
‘I’m a singer,’ Devin said grimly. ‘Devin d’Asoli, lately from the company of Menico di Ferraut, if that means anything to you.’ The thing, obviously, was to keep the talk going somehow. And he had heard stories—wishful thinking on the road, perhaps—of outlaw bands sparing musicians in exchange for a night of song. Something occurred to him: ‘You thought we were Barbadians, didn’t you? From a distance. That’s why you laid the trap.’
‘A singer. A clever singer,’ Ducas murmured. ‘If not clever enough to stay indoors on an Ember Day. Of course we thought you were Barbadians. Who in the eastern peninsula but Barbadians and outlaws would be abroad today? And all of the outlaws for twenty miles around are part of my band.’
‘There are outlaws and outlaws,’ Alessan said softly. ‘But if you were hunting Barbadian mercenaries you are men with the same hearts as ours. I can tell you—and I do not lie, Ducas—that if you hinder us here, or kill us, you will be giving such comfort to Barbadior—and to Ygrath—as they could not have ever dreamt of asking of you.’ There was, not surprisingly, a silence. The cold wind knifed into the pass, stirring the young grasses in the growing dark.
‘You have a rather large opinion of yourself, it appears,’ Ducas said at length, thoughtfully. ‘Perhaps I should know why. I think it is time for you to tell me exactly who you are, and where you are riding at dusk on an Ember Day, and I will draw my own conclusions.’
‘My name is Alessan. I am riding west. My mother is dying and has summoned me to her side.’
‘How devoted of you,’ Ducas said. ‘But one name tells me nothing, and west is a big place, my friend with the bow. Who are you and where are you riding?’ The voice was an uncoiled whip this time. Devin jumped. Behind Ducas seven bowstrings were drawn back.
Devin, his heart pounding, saw Alessan hesitate. The sun was almost gone now, a red disk cut in half by the horizon beyond the pass. The wind seemed to be blowing harder, promising a chilly night to come after this first day of spring.
There was a chill in Devin as well. He glanced at Erlein, and discovered that the wizard was staring at him, as if waiting. Alessan had not yet spoken. Ducas shifted meaningfully in his saddle.
Devin swallowed and, knowing that however hard this was for him, it had to be easier than it would be for Alessan, he said: ‘Tigana. He is from Tigana, and so am I.’
He was careful to look straight at the outlaw wizard as he spoke, not at Ducas or the other riders. He saw out of the corner of his eye that Alessan was doing the same thing, so as not to have to see the blank
look of incomprehension they both knew would follow. The wizard would be different. Wizards could hear the name.
A murmur rose from the gathered men, before them and behind. And then one man spoke aloud amid the shadows of falling dusk in that lonely place. A voice from the line behind them.
‘By the blood of the god!’ that voice cried from the heart. Devin wheeled around. A man had dismounted and was striding quickly forward to stand in front of them. Devin saw that the man was small, not much bigger than himself, perhaps thirty years old or a little more, and that he was moving awkwardly and clearly in pain, with Alessan’s arrow in his arm.
Ducas was looking at his wizard. ‘Sertino, what is this?’ he said, with an edge in his voice. ‘I do not—’
‘Sorcery,’ the wizard said bluntly.
‘What? His?’ Ducas nodded towards Erlein.
‘No, not his.’ It was the wounded man who spoke, his eyes never leaving Alessan’s face. ‘Not this poor wizard’s. It is real sorcery, this. It is the power of Brandin of Ygrath that keeps you from hearing the name.’
With an angry motion Ducas swept his hat off, revealing a balding dome with a fringe of bright red hair. ‘And you, Naddo? How do you hear it, then?’
The man on the ground swayed unsteadily on his feet before replying. ‘Because I was born there too, and so I’m immune to the spell, or another victim of it, whichever you prefer.’ Devin heard the tautness in his voice, as of someone holding hard to his self-control. He heard the man called Naddo say, looking up at Alessan, ‘You have been asked for your name, and you only gave him a part. Will you tell us the rest? Will you tell me?’ It was hard to see his eyes now, but his voice told an old story.
Alessan was sitting on his horse with an easiness, even after a day in the saddle, that seemed to deny even the possibility of weariness, or the tension of where they were. But then his right hand came up and pushed once, unconsciously, through his already tangled hair, and Devin, seeing the familiar gesture, knew that whatever he himself was feeling now, it was doubled and redoubled in the man he followed.