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  “A debt?” one of Halmar’s lieutenants asked, puzzled. “The barbarian?”

  “I gave him back his son,” Sardriel answered. “He is repaying me in kind. He will not kill me. It is against his honour.” He said the word bitterly, thinking again of Almerid. Honour was not a concept unique to civilisation after all, or even common to it, as he had believed only days ago. “Now!” he shouted furiously. “Go now!”

  As one man, they wheeled and rode away, westward, towards they knew not where. An hour before dawn, exhausted, they slept.

  Sardriel awoke to a muffled cry, and another, and another. He scrambled to rise, and found his arms pinned and felt the sharp prick of a knife at the side of his neck. The pale shafts of dawn lit a scene of horror that remained indelible in his mind. The barbarians ringed the camp and one by one they were slaughtering his men as if they had been cattle.

  “You told us we could go!” he shouted furiously, even as he knew it was pointless and hopeless. They did not understand him and they did not care. The butchery went on and he struggled in vain, an agony of grief inside him, his ears filled with the sounds of death, the smell of blood choking him.

  When it was over and he stood, sweat-drenched and shuddering with horror, almost supported as much as imprisoned by his captors, the barbarian leader picked his way through the dead and came over to him. His boots were scarlet and his breeches sodden red to the knees. He held up one finger and smiled, then pointed to Sardriel, and then to the distance westward where the sky was still shadowed with the last remnants of night.

  Sardriel was too shattered to move.

  The barbarian mimicked a tower in the air, then again and again, suggesting a city. Then he drew his finger across his throat and laughed. He pointed to himself, then to his men. He bent and picked up a handful of grass and let the blades slip from his fingers. His meaning was clear. He had as many men as the grass had leaves. He could wait, and he would. Then again he smiled and bowed, and pointed Sardriel towards the west. He was free to go. No one would harm him.

  Sardriel looked across the new grass heaped with the dead and bade them a last farewell, then turned and began his stumbling, lonely journey back towards Tyrn Vawr.

  Chapter VI

  KOR-ASSH STOOD AT THE window of the castle gallery and stared into the distance. He knew Tathea would be walking under the trees to the west of the courtyard, through the iron gate beyond the walls where the evening light would fall hazy and soft on the grass. Yet he remained where he was, gazing to the orchards and the open land rolling to the horizon. He was not ready to go yet. There was something unresolved in him which needed solitude.

  The rich peace and loveliness of Tyro Vawr touched only the surface of his senses, seductions of pleasure that did not reach his soul. He was restless to begin the battle, and understand his part in it. Time was short, and the earth, with its aching beauty, was the prize for which they fought. The touch of the wind on his face, the smell of grasses, the abundant life, unaware of its peril, reminded him with every breath that this was the final war. Beyond it there was no new chance, no other victory to dream of.

  The light began to deepen and colour burned across the sky. If he did not go soon she would join the others for the evening meal, and he would not see her alone.

  He went down to the courtyard and out up the slope. He found Tathea almost a mile away from the castle, standing under the trees looking up into the fork where a great branch split off. There was a tenderness in her face that caught his heart with an inexplicable ache of familiarity, as if he had seen something precious and long missed. His eye followed hers to see what she was looking at. It was a small squirrel sitting upright, staring back at her. For seconds Kor-Assh looked at them both, the little animal and the woman watching it, the last of the sunlight on her face picking out the tiredness deep inside her. There was a knowledge of pain in the fine lines around her eyes and lips, an openness to hurt that clutched at him like an iron hand.

  He thought of all that Sadokhar had told him of when he had spoken of the Book. How long had she been alone, waiting? How many friends had she loved and watched die, sacrificed to the cause, or falling from it? Any loneliness he could imagine must be a sheltered pool compared with the ocean she was sailing.

  Was the enormity of her mission enough to fill her heart as well as her mind? It would take all her strength, but what did it give her? What kept her all those aeons of time, all the hoping and the rejection and the fighting to hope again? Courage alone, or something more?

  He looked at her face again, and saw the wounds of loneliness in it. Why could he not reach across that distance between them, or at least try to?

  Then he marvelled at his own monumental arrogance. What made him suppose she would wish him to? That she was capable of suffering did not mean he had any power to heal it. Even to try might be no more than an intrusion.

  The squirrel must have caught some scent of him in the air. It jerked up sharply.

  Tathea turned and saw him. The nakedness vanished from her face and she smiled at him, masked and courteous again, waiting for him to approach her and speak.

  What should he say? What he was thinking—the strange confusion of emotions inside him, the sense of old loyalties, not understood? The grief he felt for Sadokhar? He had liked him in a unique way, not only for his nature, his passion and commitment, but because it was Sadokhar who had sought him out and told him of the Book, and its message, sealed but remembered through the centuries, until now, the time for awakening the soul, harrowing the spirit and refining it until it was bright enough to face the Great Enemy.

  Where was Sadokhar? Kor-Assh envied him his colossal calling, yearned for something as great, which would stretch the fabric of his being to the height and depth of its strength, and almost beyond. What value was anything less?

  Tathea was watching him, waiting for him to speak.

  “It’s so fragile,” he said quietly, “how the colour melts across the sky towards the oncoming night and the first pinprick of stars. I suppose it is the same each night, but it never seems to be.”

  She looked at him, and he saw from the shadows in her eyes that what he had said skittered across the surface, and did not touch the heart. He was ashamed of himself without understanding what better he should have done. There was a terrible void inside him, driving out all other thought, and he had no idea how to heal it.

  Word came of a great warrior on the Eastern Shore, not only of courage and skill, but of extraordinary wisdom. He was apparently a man of wide travel and knowledge of the ways of the sea. The traveller who told the assembled court of him did so with respect, even reverence, and he smiled when he spoke his name.

  Tathea glanced across the table at Kor-Assh, and he knew what thought was in her mind. Was this man the sixth warrior they awaited, and who would read the last hieroglyph on the staff?

  “Do we seek him?” he asked as soon as he could speak with her alone. Without thought he had included himself, as if it were already agreed he would go with her.

  She hesitated only a moment. They were in the gallery leading to the stairs. The torches were lit, flames wavering and bending as the open windows let in the summer night, dark and fragrant with the murmuring of leaves in the courtyard beyond. “Yes,” she answered. “We should go.” She too spoke in the plural, and he did not know if it were intentional but it was enough.

  They set out early the following day, carrying nothing but bread and water, cloaks to wrap themselves against rain, and, of course, the staff. Most of the time they rode in silence. Neither wished to speak of the warrior of the Shore, or the possibilities ahead. The sun was clear, the wind soft from the summer fields. The sky was the deep, burning blue of the middle of the year, and great cloudscapes piled light in towers and billows, high beyond imagination to the roots of heaven.

  As they neared the shore on the second day, sometimes they rode single file through the narrow paths in the heather, and Kor-Assh watched the ease with wh
ich Tathea sat in the saddle.

  He wanted to know more about her far distant past in Shinabar, and when they stopped to eat, he asked, watching her face as she answered him.

  “We had marvellous horses,” she said, her face quickening at the memory. “Our lives depended on them, far more than they do here.” She narrowed her eyes against the sun across the downs and the distant brilliance of the sea. “In the desert to be caught in the open through the day is death. And you have to know the tracks from one oasis to the next.”

  “Is it beautiful?” What he meant was, did she love it, but he would hear the answer to that in the words she chose to reply.

  Tathea dropped her head a little, smiling. “Oh yes.” There was passion in her voice. “You love the sand and hate it. It creeps into everything, itching and hurting. But when you see it stretch to the horizon, blue and indigo and purple as the white wing of dawn spreads across the sky, or ribbed with silver under the moon, or you smell the heat and the bitter herbs on the wind, it’s like looking into the morning of the world.”

  Kor-Assh did not answer. The past was in her dreams and he knew it as clearly as if she had spoken it.

  She turned towards him. “Do you have horses in Lantrif?” Then a shadow crossed over her face the moment the words were spoken.

  “A few. Mostly we travel by river,” he replied quietly, seeing it vividly in his mind—the great stretches like glass, shining, whispering, carrying the barges back and forth to the City of the Fallen Kings.

  She was waiting for him to continue, watching him as if she knew he withheld much. “You miss it ...” she began, then read him more closely. “You are worried ...”

  He looked away, guarding the wound inside him. “I have left good men to govern. And they are loyal to my wife, Marilla, if not to me.” He hesitated. He could not hide for ever. He lifted his eyes to meet hers and smiled a little, self-mockingly. “Every ruler in Lantrif has worried about the Silver Lords, who are reputed to have had powers of sorcery a thousand years ago. I think they keep the myth alive so we will always have one of them in our Council, and make very sure we do not entirely ignore his advice.”

  He could see she was not certain how far to believe him, but this was not the time to tell her of the quarrels, the rivalries, the manipulation, or how he hated it. He stood up, offering his hand to her.

  She declined with a smile, rising easily, and instead he held her horse for her to swing up into the saddle. Then he mounted his own and followed after her without speaking again.

  The Eastern Shore had a wild, sparse beauty unlike anything Kor-Assh had known. The land was low and level, its green meadows running almost imperceptibly into the rougher grasses above the dunes, and the heavy-scented wild, yellow sea-lupins. The marble-pale strand echoed the thunder of surf that drove in from the open water, great roaring walls of blue-green, glassy ocean. In winter it would be silver grey as molten lead, laced with spume and crowned with white.

  The settlements huddled into the inlets. Houses were low, built of timber, caulked and tarred like ships, bleached bone-white by wind and salt. The sea was the inhabitants’ harvest, their highway and their defence. It was both servant and master.

  This was like no place in Lantrif, and yet something unfolded inside Kor-Assh like an opening flower, breathing in the salt as if it were perfume, hearing the roar of waves as a familiar song, a music of living.

  They were further north than Tyrn Vawr. It was just past high summer and the days were so long the sun barely dipped below the horizon and the pale fires of the Wastelands sky burned in blues and greens like the spectre of sunsets from another age.

  Kor-Assh looked at Tathea as she gazed outward at the sea. It was white-crested now, whipped by the long, scythe-sharp winds that crossed the waters which stretched even to the Midnight Lands, and the endless ice of the ancient battlegrounds of legend.

  This time he did not break the spell of the moment by speaking of its beauty. She knew he shared it—it was in the way she looked at him with the light on her face and smiled, unashamed that he should see her emotion. She had spoken of the death of Aelfrith, Earl of the Eastern Shore, and Sadokhar’s uncle, without hiding from him how much it had hurt. Now staring at these thundering seas reopened memories in her and wounds still raw.

  “He used to tell us wonderful tales,” she said, gazing at the water and blinking. “Some of them were funny. He had a laugh that rattled the pewter mugs on the mantelshelf. He would glare at anybody who didn’t laugh with him.” She bit her lip and her eyes were bright with tears. “He exaggerated terribly about some of his battles, but no one cared. We all knew his courage was real, he just loved a story. He wanted us to taste it and smell it as he had, to feel the ice and see the splendour and the terror of it.” She stopped and took a shivery breath.

  She started her horse forward, keeping her face half away from him, and began to recount one of Aelfrith’s stories, and through it Kor-Assh heard the echoes of an older time, other light on water, and passion stamped on the soul and woven into the dreams. And in spite of his will against, and all his guarding, he loved her for it.

  Another mile and they passed the sprawling grey castle of Odomer. In the haze of late afternoon the lengthening sun melted the sharp patterns of the light. The jagged groynes breaking the polished surface of the water were cruel, sword-edged. The weed-darkened hummocks low as the tide’s margin lifted gently on the sucking swell, the rock’s storm-pitted faces disguised by a dusting of gold, shadows blurred.

  Kor-Assh knew Tathea had been here with Sadokhar, and he saw in the lift of her head and the stiff angle of her back that she was thinking of him now as she stared beyond the water to the horizon where one blue faded into another. He could not imagine what it had cost her to let him go.

  And yet if she were commanded this of God, what crippling of the heart and soul would there be were she to refuse? That price would be eternal.

  Without warning Tathea turned in the saddle and raised her arm, signalling him forward. Then, as he reached her, she urged her horse into a gallop, and together, neck and neck, they raced across the hard pale sand by the water’s edge, glorying in the speed, the sting of the salt, the horses’ manes whipping in their faces.

  She won by a length, and turned, for a moment victory making her laugh. It was shatteringly familiar. He had been here before, exactly like this with Tathea, before a storm which racked the skies, with a power so tremendous it broke open the roots of the earth.

  He saw it in her face also, but with her it was less clouded. She remembered it with a certainty he could only grope towards, and lose again.

  She turned away and spurred her horse up the slope towards the massive landward barbican. It was hewn of iron-dark stone and towered over the cullis gate and the wide, outer courtyard. The topmost battlements still looked beyond the groynes, the headland and the shoals far over the seaward approaches. But time and storms had eroded the once-titanic fortress, and the creeping tides now filled the eastern rooms, walls crumbling slowly, shell-encrusted, and the dungeons stretched far under the drowning sea, black, weed-tortuous, squid-inhabited.

  This was where the warrior lived whom they had come to see. They rode up to the cullis gates side by side. The watchman challenged them, and Tathea spoke her name. He hesitated only a moment before admitting them. The cullis was winched high and their horses’ hoofs clattered over the drawbridge and down into the castle yard.

  They were welcomed with grave courtesy by Ceawlin himself. He was a thin man, lean and dark-skinned, white hair like spume of the sea flying up from his brow.

  “Welcome to my castle, such as it is,” he said solemnly. “We have rich food and warm beds to offer you, and the beauty of the sky and the water. But our harvest is the sea, not the land, and all our wealth is touched with salt.” He smiled as he spoke. It was in no way an apology. He had the life he had chosen, and loved.

  They accepted with equal grace, and in the Great Hall Ceawlin’s hospitality
was indeed as good as he had intimated. The food was fresh and plentiful, but the wealth was of the mind rather than the body. Conversation was rich in the philosophy of the sea, tales of adventure and warfare, the arts of survival, and it held laughter and passion interwoven like a varied cloth. But Ceawlin’s wisdom was more evident in the peace of his people than in the overt pattern of his words.

  It was late in the evening and the moon was bright over the water, waves breaking luminous with foam, when finally Tathea rose to her feet and held out the staff for Ceawlin to see.

  He regarded it with interest, narrowing his eyes to look more carefully at the hieroglyphs, then he looked up at her, puzzled. “What does it say?”

  Kor-Assh should have been prepared, but he was not. Disappointment was sudden and bitter. He had been certain, and now the hope was dashed and broken like fine glass against stone.

  “It speaks of the future,” Tathea replied softly, her eyes downcast to hide her emotions. “I can read only part of it myself.”

  “And you thought I might read the rest,” Ceawlin responded. “My wisdom is only that of the present, a matter of knowing the worst in men, but believing the best also. I can see deeper than some, perhaps, but no further. But I can see a prophet in you.” He spoke very softly now, a little above a whisper. He looked at Kor-Assh. “And I think a priest in you. You will find the one you seek, but not here. But when the darkness comes, as it will, I shall hold the lights on the Eastern Shore for as long as I can. That I swear.”

  Tathea bowed her head in acceptance, then looked up at him and smiled. There was nothing else to say.

  Kor-Assh went to his room with his mind whirling. He had been caught up in too many emotions. Sadokhar had told him much of Tathea, and he had expected to find her extraordinary. Anyone who had sought the truth as she had could never be as other people. He would have failed himself had he not seen a mirror of all his own hungers and dreams in her. But he had not been prepared to care with the intensely personal urgency that he did. It disturbed him not only with confusion but with guilt.