Come Armageddon Read online

  Then she had returned to the Island, knowing that she must try again with Sadokhar. The lesser part would never be enough for the hunger in his soul, no matter how it glittered before him now.

  He had stood before her a little abashed, uncertain how to acknowledge the change in himself, and yet his eyes were shining with joy to see her. He had asked softly for another chance, but she knew that he would have wrested it from her had she not given it willingly. They knew each other so well!

  Then years later, when the Island was at peace and its fame spread wide, Ardesir had come to Tyrn Vawr and found the perfect field for the arts he had perfected since.

  It was Sadokhar who insisted Tathea show Ardesir the staff.

  “I can’t read it!” he had said with confusion. “Can anyone?”

  Tathea had felt a plunge of disappointment. But before she could answer, he had looked at it again. “Except this one!” he went on. “‘When the man of faith embraces terror to himself’! What does that mean?” Then his face had paled and his voice dropped to a whisper. “Why can I read that, and not the others?”

  “Because that one is for you,” Sadokhar had answered. As the first is for me, the third for Sardriel, and the last for Tathea.”

  “And the others?” Ardesir had asked.

  “We don’t know ... not yet, but we will.”

  “When?”

  “Before the final war with the Great Adversary.”

  “Before its beginning?” he had asked. “Or before its end?”

  “I don’t know,” Tathea had said, barely above a whisper.

  Now they were still waiting for the last two warriors, but Tathea felt the urgency grow within her that time was brief.

  She looked from one to the other of them as they sat talking now, Sadokhar telling a story, his face animated, on the edge of laughter, Sardriel listening, his lips curved in a slow smile. He knew he was being teased and the acceptance in it, the knowledge of his rational scepticism was part of the joke.

  “I feel we have little time left,” Tathea said aloud.

  Sadokhar stopped his tale and looked at her with sudden gravity.

  “We have two of the inscriptions still unread,” Ardesir reminded, but apologetically, his face tender. “And Ishrafeli has not yet come.”

  It was the one thing Tathea could not ignore or reason away. It was the single, bright certainty she had clung to all the long centuries. Awake or asleep she had waited for him.

  “He has not come to us,” she said quietly, “but we don’t know that he is not alive somewhere.”

  “There are other things,” Sardriel said reasonably, his voice soft so that those at the further end of the great table would not hear him. “It grows dark, certainly. Every new word from the east brings more news of the barbarians attacking, but the great empires still stand. Asmodeus does not yet walk the earth again, and most of all, we cannot open the Book.” His eyes were steady, not wavering from hers.

  “I know, but it will be soon. We must prepare.” She turned to Sadokhar. “You said Kor-Assh of the River covenanted with you to come to Tyrn Vawr. When?”

  “Lantrif is not an easy land,” he answered, his eyes careful and bright. “He cannot leave until he has made all provision for its peace in his absence. But we have yet to speak with Ulfin of Kharkheryll also. Knowing all you have taught me of the Flamen belief, I am sure he will be with us. They above all others love the earth. How could they not join in the last war to save it from Asmodeus?”

  “If he comes then we will be five, and if Kor-Assh does also, then all six,” Ardesir agreed, turning a little in his chair towards Tathea. “But that is not Ishrafeli, nor does it open the Book. Without that we don’t have the knowledge of God; we understand only a shadow of the truth and it won’t be enough! We dare not start until we have every weapon and every shield!”

  He leaned across the table, his elbow against the empty pewter bowl where the sweetmeats had been. His face was pale. “We fight not only envy, ignorance and evil in the world, but the forces of hell and beyond from places unimaginable. We will be tested to the end of all we have.” He looked at each of them. “Don’t go into the last conflict as if it were something we cannot lose. We can! All eternity depends upon us. Every step must be with prayer, and certainty that we are obeying God, not our own impulse.”

  What he said was true, and yet it did not dispel the conviction inside her that the Enemy was closer. It was not faith like Ardesir’s, reason like Sardriel’s, nor courage like Sadokhar’s, it was memory in the soul of wars lost in the distance of time, the touch of darkness closer than the skin.

  Sadokhar leaned back in his seat, resting his elbows on the arms of his chair, watching Tathea. “We need more news of Camassia, and of Shinabar. Are they preparing for war? Are they even aware that the threat is real? Or do they imagine it is no more than the sporadic troubles they have had for centuries, and it will all die down again as it has in the past? There are travellers among us, especially one old man who has recently come from the City in the Centre of the World. Shall I send for him?” It was a courtesy that he asked; he needed permission of no one.

  “Yes,” Tathea said immediately, not certain what she expected to hear. She had loved the City long ago. Its golden stones, its teeming streets and cypress-crowned hills had been her home in the days of the height of the Empire. It had sheltered her when her own land had cast her out. “Yes, send for him.”

  “Bring the traveller Eudoxius,” Sadokhar ordered.

  The page he had addressed bowed and went to obey.

  Within minutes an old man walked the length of the hall from the bottom table. His head was high but his body gaunt and round-shouldered, his features battered by wind and sun. Only as he was feet away was the humour clear in his faded eyes, and the bitterness about his lips.

  “Sit with us and take wine,” Sadokhar directed him, indicating one of the vacant high-backed chairs opposite.

  “Sire ...” The old man obeyed, but he did not incline his head. He was a citizen of the world and he was bowing to no Island king.

  “Tell us of your travels,” Sadokhar continued. “What news do you bring of the world?” He was courteous, but there was no mistaking the command in his voice.

  “You have fed me well,” Eudoxius replied. “And given me shelter. What would you hear?”

  “The truth!” Sadokhar snapped. “When I want tales I will send for a bard and have them to music!”

  Eudoxius’ weary eyes opened a little wider, there was an instant’s black laughter in his face, and then it was gone again. “Shinabar is rotten to the core,” he said very quietly. “They deal in bribery and lies as other men deal in bread. No man knows what another is doing. Camassia still has a coating of civilisation, and a kind of spurious vitality that is thin as the colour wash on the walls of a tomb.” He glanced at Ardesir’s dark, desert face. “Painted scenes of the dead, for the comfort of the living, who know as surely as sunrise tomorrow that they too will one day inhabit those same mansions of oblivion. The barbarians of the flesh are at the borders, pressing closer with every season, but the barbarians of the heart are already there.”

  Tathea looked at Sadokhar and saw the shadow cross his features, the merest tightening of the lips as if the words had touched an old understanding inside him, memories of things she had taught him long ago. It was another shard of prophecy fallen into place.

  “Is that new, sir?” Sardriel asked Eudoxius gravely. His courtesy never wavered—he would have considered that a gross weakness, a betrayal of the inner self—but neither did he stay his hand in pursuing reason to the end. To have done that would be to insult both speaker and listener. “Or are you merely referring to the nature of mankind, perhaps darkened by your own exile?” he pressed. “Forgive me, but I perceive that you are much travelled, and yet you bear no embassy nor do you carry the goods of trade. You are past the years of being a soldier and your bearing suggests you serve no master, and yet you have the marks o
f both hunger and ill-use.”

  “You observe well,” Eudoxius said without self-pity, but there was a bitterness in him. “But my path is self-chosen. I have no desire to live in Camassia any longer.” He looked beyond the few dark plums left in the burnished dish in front of him. His voice lowered a little. “What I saw in Camassia was not honest greed, as in the long past, it was evil pretending to be good.” He twisted the stem of the glass goblet in his fingers, the light red through the wine. “The Emperor is weak. He loves the glory and the praise of men, and in his eagerness to satisfy the crowds he has forgotten any beliefs of his own. He appoints his friends to power, and accounts it loyalty to protect them at any cost.”

  “In what way?” Sadokhar asked sharply.

  Eudoxius shrugged. “He does not stop corruption or incompetence if the perpetrators are his friends,” he replied. “No one admits fault any more. There is little honour left.” He looked from one to the other of them, his expression suddenly darker and openly edged with fear. “Irria-Kand lies directly on our northern borders right from the far east across to the forests of the west. It is not a united empire but a series of city fortresses, and already half of it has fallen to the barbarians sweeping in from the lands on the rim beyond.”

  No one interrupted him. Sardriel sat motionless. Ardesir was tight-lipped. Sadokhar leaned a little further forward, his attention total. This was military news of the gravest kind, and he had been too long a soldier, left too many good men on bloody fields, to weigh lightly a word of it.

  “The Emperor has been told,” Eudoxius continued, watching Sadokhar’s face. “Word comes almost weekly, but he chooses to disbelieve it. He says our armies have never been beaten and it is treason even to think they could be now. But they are untrained for anything but garrison duty, and parades. They have never seen war. If Irria-Kand falls and the barbarians reach the great forests of Caeva to the west, they will find nothing there for them, and they will turn south into Camassia. Who wouldn’t? The whole land lies in front of them, all but unprotected! Hundreds of miles of wheat and vines, orchards and woodlands there for the taking, all the way to the City in the Centre of the World, and the sea.”

  No one had interrupted him. One of the dogs stirred briefly by the embers of the fire.

  “Leadership requires that your first debt is to the demands of honour,” Eudoxius continued. “If you are not prepared to do that, if you must be praised at all costs, then step back and leave the crown to someone who will.”

  His eyes did not leave Sadokhar’s. He did not see the sorrow in Ardesir’s eyes, nor the flash of pity in Sardriel’s. “We overlook faults we should not, because we are too afraid of invasion to admit that it could happen.” He waved away a servant with a bowl of honey cakes. His voice was thick with anger he no longer tried to conceal. “The barbarians will cross the borders one day. We shall be conquered and all the beauty and sophistication, the buildings, the art and the inventions of a thousand years will be lost under the tide. But perhaps we will drown ourselves in our own filth before that, and when the savages come they will find only more savages, no better than themselves ... merely different.” Then he smiled suddenly, but there were tears swimming in his eyes. “Only I will not live to see it.”

  A coldness filled Tathea, as if she had swallowed ice. Could that be what Armageddon was—not consuming war at all, but the corrupted heart eaten away, until when the barbarians came in the end, there was nothing for them to conquer but decay? Was the end not violence at all, but a living rot?

  Then what were all their preparations of wisdom, self-discipline and the arts of strategy worth? The Book of God could not be opened, but Tathea remembered much of it and had written it out again, disconnected, precept by precept, but still a light to the soul. At every step they had prayed in humility, and retraced each mistake and sought to mend it.

  For a decade Sadokhar had ruled so that there was a surplus of food, and safety from violence or need. There had been space for thought and to learn, to take months apart from daily tasks in order to enrich the soul. He, Sardriel and Ardesir had argued and discussed, explored the natures of good and evil. They had ridden together, built, known failure and success, quarrelled, tested each other and forgiven. There had been experiences which had winnowed the wheat from the chaff, refined the compassion and the integrity. Each had in one manner or another walked an inner path which had learned his courage of the soul, and found it enough.

  They knew who they were, not only in this mortal life, but from eternity to eternity, children of God on the wild and dangerous journey home. Each had committed himself irrevocably to the conflict and forged his covenants with heaven.

  The servants moved around Tathea, fetching and carrying. Light winked on polished metal and glass. The sound of chatter came dimly and she barely heard it.

  Where was the war? What weapon was there to strike an enemy which was a nameless horde a thousand miles away?

  She looked at Eudoxius sitting opposite her, and saw the torchlight shine through his thin hair, and the marks of age on his skin. Once he had been as young as Sadokhar, in the prime of his strength. Now he was already too tired to fight.

  For all their passion and courage, even purity of mind so they could face any evil, Asmodeus had the ultimate weapon against which there was no defence—time. He needed only to wait.

  The room swam around Tathea in a haze of flame and shadow, golden reflections on pewter and shining wood. The familiar faces blurred. Voices were a sea of sound like waves on a shingle beach, and over them all she heard laughter, cruel and soft, not in the ears but in the heart. She knew his voice. He had cursed her before, and promised he would never forget the injury she had inflicted on him, once, long ago, nor forgive it.

  “Tathea ...”

  It was a sound almost without meaning.

  “Tathea!” Now there was anxiety in it.

  She blinked and forced the room into focus again.

  Sadokhar was staring at her, his grey eyes clouded.

  Should she say that all was well? He would know she was lying, he always had, even as a child. Habit forced her to smile back at him; put off the moment. “I’m sorry,” she apologised. “I was thinking of what Eudoxius said of Camassia.” She turned to the old man. “Is Shinabar like that also?”

  He bit his lip, equivocated. “I have not been there lately, my lady. They have barbarians on the southern borders, but then they always had.” He shook his head. “In half a millennium they’ve not been conquered, not since Ta-Thea returned with the Book. Perhaps the fear of it hasn’t given anyone the power to abuse, as it has with us.”

  Sardriel leaned back in his chair. His expression gave nothing away, but Tathea knew him well enough to be aware of his contempt for evasion.

  “Do you know if they are mobilising armies?” Ardesir asked, frowning and pushing his hair back unconsciously with his fingers.

  Eudoxius shook his head. “No more so than usual. The army is a good career, especially if you have no land.” He smiled fleetingly. “There is always a kind of comfort in having someone else tell you what is right and wrong. It saves all the energy of thought, and the blame for any decision that turns out badly.”

  Tathea did not argue. She had seen the reality of war herself and knew that even a battle won is terrible beyond the imagination to conceive. And she had no certainty what kind of war they were facing now. Surely it would be more consuming than even the clashing of gigantic armies, tens of thousands wounded or dead? It would be weapons of the spirit as well, the blinding and maiming of souls.

  Eudoxius was given leave to depart. The torches guttered against the sunset-coloured walls. Others departed also, friends and guests, among them the eleven Knights of the Western Shore who had kept the faith whole since Drusus and Merdic five hundred years ago. Finally there were only Ardesir, Sardriel, Sadokhar and Tathea left.

  Sadokhar was looking at her, his gaze unwavering. The flickering lights picked out the fine lines of h
is face, with its strong nose and broad mouth. She felt the strength in him, the purpose that through all the horror of battle and the grief of personal loss had become fixed. Nothing in him now rebelled against the weight of his task and the hideous certainty of it. He was quick-tempered, arrogant at times, but never a coward. He faced any enemy no matter how powerful, and any truth, the bitter with the sweet. A warmth filled her, and sudden tears sprang to her eyes. She remembered Asmodeus walking away from her on the edge of Hirioth the night Sadokhar was born. She saw again the swagger in his stride, and heard, with a chill of the flesh, his laughter. Now she understood it.

  “Eudoxius believes he will not live to see the barbarians conquer Camassia,” she said quietly. “We’ve thought of defence against all kinds of weapons Asmodeus might use against us, and prepared to face them—but we have no shield against time.” Her voice was raw with the edge of despair. “We might be here with sword in hand and hearts ready for a war which never comes. He knows we cannot wait.”

  They stared at her, horror dawning slowly in each of them as they grasped the terrible meaning of what she said.

  “There must be a way!” Sadokhar protested, his voice thick with defiance. “We are meant to fight! God has chosen us for it and we are covenanted! It’s years since you’ve tried to open the Book. Try it again!”

  She rose from her chair, the room swimming around her.

  “And if you succeed?” Ardesir whispered. “What then? Armageddon?” There was faith in his voice, and fear also. He was not blind to what it meant.

  She did not answer, but turned and led the way out of the hall, through an antechamber and up the wide, curving stairs to the upper chambers. They followed her in silence, hearts pounding.

  She unlocked the doors to her apartments and went in. They followed, Sardriel closing the doors after them. Inside was full of warm, golden colours, deeper now in candlelight, shadows like burned earth. She crossed the floor to the far wall and the alcove, and with a key from around her neck opened a heavy cupboard door and lifted out an object about a foot square, and wrapped in a blue silk cloak. All three watched her as she carried it across and laid it on a small table.