Dark Heart Part 39

He sat down next to her. She s.h.i.+vered in the cold, and he put a burly arm around her. Her dress had been torn in places, as though she had blundered through th.o.r.n.y bushes, and blood stained one bare arm.

'Don't touch me,' she whispered, but he didn't let her go and she said nothing further.

Another life destroyed.

Gradually he became aware she was mumbling to herself. He knew he should leave her, that she wouldn't want anyone to overhear, that she was likely not even aware of his presence, but he stayed. The honest truth was it did him good to comfort someone. It reminded him that he could still be of use.

'Mahudia,' she said. 'Mahudia, she is nothing. Nothing. I have seen her numbers. Slavery. Sold into slavery. One mother sells, the other buys. One eaten by a lion, the other by guilt.'

The words plucked at Robal's soul. 'Merla, don't.'

'Don't call me that!' she said, lifting her head and fixing him with bleary eyes. 'And don't touch me.'

'I'm sorry, Lenares.'

He let her go, and she promptly plunged back into his arms.

'Why me and not my sister?' she cried, then burst into tears.

'I don't know,' he said, racking his brains for something to say. He was not much for giving words of comfort. 'Perhaps it was necessary. Maybe you wouldn't have developed your skill with numbers had you stayed here.'

He cupped her pale face in his hands. 'Don't you think you have had a lucky escape? What sort of life would you have had here?'

She looked up at him, blinking furiously. 'What? I was poor all my life. Mahudia found me in an alley, eating sc.r.a.ps from the midden heaps. The cosmographers gave me a home, but we always lived with nothing. What sort of life would I have had here? I could have had anything I wanted, you silly man.'

'Except love, seemingly,' Robal replied. 'Don't forget that.'

Her face crumpled. 'You are right. My father slept with all his daughters. I would not have wanted that. I have no memory...no memory of anything-of this place, of parents, brothers or sisters.'

'But you are certain the story is true?'

'Oh yes. I knew even before Heredrew told me. I listened carefully to Martje and checked her numbers. She has built this place on lies. Every brick of it was earned through deception. She sold horses doctored to hide their infirmities, s.h.i.+pped them off to far away places where they could not be traced back to her. She held her sons here with false claims about her health, when they would rather have left to seek their fortunes. Her daughters she kept home with threats. Only Cylene has escaped her. I know so much about my mother, and everything I know makes me hate her even more. I wish Heredrew had killed her. I wish it wasn't true.' She swallowed. 'I wish I had never found out.'

He pulled her forehead to his lips and kissed her gently. 'Not all truth is good,' he whispered.

A noise behind them. He turned to find Stella staring at him. She said nothing, but she didn't need to: he could read the message written there. He wanted to cry out, to explain himself, but for some reason he held back.

Why should I bother? Why so desperate to appear virtuous in her eyes?

'What's wrong?' he said. 'Isn't a man allowed to offer comfort to a travelling companion? Or were you waiting for me to claim that this isn't what it looks like?'

She smiled weakly. 'Not what it looks like? It looks like you care for someone who needs caring for. Of course you can offer her comfort. But please be careful; she's vulnerable.'

Robal laughed. 'I've never met anyone less vulnerable in my life,' he said. 'Except, perhaps, the man you offer comfort to.'

Stella pursed her lips together. 'Do you really expect me to stand here and answer such accusations? Or have I misjudged you? Robal, you are my guard. You've been close by me ever since we left Instruere. Even if I'd had a mind to, I could not have shared intimacy with the man.'

'But you love him all the same,' he told her, as if revealing a truth of which she was unaware. Which perhaps she was. Many people denied things they shouldn't feel.

'If you know my feelings as well as you claim, you know it's much more complicated than that,' she said. 'I cared for him at the end of the Falthan War, nursed him back from the brink of madness. And he and I are two of a kind. That makes for bonding, Robal. It doesn't necessarily lead to love.'

'Fair enough,' he said. 'He's the kind of man best loved from a safe distance; if any distance is safe enough, that is. My first wife was like that.'

Turning his head, he sneaked a sidelong glance at Lenares, the truthfinder. She wasn't wearing the disgusted expression she adopted when in the presence of lies, so maybe Stella was telling the truth. Of course, the girl's mind may have been somewhere else, but Robal doubted it. This one was sharp.

'So tell me, guardsman,' Stella said, sitting on the bench next to him. 'What do you think is really going on?'

'What do you mean?' He swallowed.

'I mean, do you really believe this is coincidence? Lenares just happening to find out she is some long-lost child of a wealthy family? A secret twin sold into slavery? Robal, it doesn't feel right.'

He nodded at the girl in his arms, her eyes closed as if asleep. 'Don't you think she would know if there was some sort of confidence trick being run? Anyway, who benefits from this?'

'Many parties, if Lenares remains behind, as her mother is suggesting. Particularly the Daughter, who will undoubtedly break free if Heredrew withdraws his support for her.'

'I am growing stronger,' Lenares said, her voice m.u.f.fled by Robal's tunic. 'I don't need his help.'

'Lenares, Robal, please consider this. The hole in the world interferes with the proper running of the earth. Earthquakes, fireb.a.l.l.s, storms, whirlwinds. We've seen this. What if it-if the G.o.ds acting through it-can interfere with time as well as s.p.a.ce? What if they can mess with our memories? What if they can change what has happened? Could they not have engineered this?'

'No, Stella, no,' he said gently. 'If we start doubting our memories, we can never know anything for certain. I won't live in a world like that. Besides, do you think your immortal friend would be fooled?'

Stella sighed. 'Right now, Robal, my belief in the Undying Man is the only thing keeping me sane,' she said. 'That, and the earthy good sense of a certain guardsman.'

She smiled as she rose to her feet, and his poor heart turned over, just as it always did.

Earthy good sense? He watched her walk away, her body silhouetted in the light from the stained-gla.s.s door. Good sense was exactly what he lacked, he thought, when it came to earthy things. For, as he traced the outline of her with his eyes, he knew he'd do anything to make her his own.

CHAPTER 17.

NIGHT OF DESIRE.

CONAL HAD BARELY DRIFTED off to sleep when the knock came. Soft, gentle, on the edge of hearing, the tapping was a sound he would undoubtedly not have heard had he been more deeply asleep. A woman's knock.

It could be her.

He remembered Stella's fierce avowal earlier in the evening: she would see the task completed, then see the Destroyer dead. He now saw her complicity for what it was: a sham designed to encourage the Destroyer to lower his guard, to let her slip under it. Courageous woman!

He felt his manhood stiffen at the mere thought of her. She had obviously kept her true feelings well hidden, so she might well feel for him what he felt for her. Certainly he had no real rival for her affection. Not the boorish, ignorant guard, nor the lout from the prairies. And certainly not the suave charlatan who specialised in destroying lives.

He imagined her at the door, begging admittance. Once inside his room, she would outline a bold and dangerous plan to put an end to the Undying Man, then seal it with another offer...

'Are you awake?'

His heart sank. Not Stella. Some other voice, some other woman, but something to which he had to give reply. Awkward, given he was still embarra.s.singly tumescent.

'Just give me a moment, please,' he answered, gritting his teeth, willing things to soften. As always, thinking of his mother did the trick. Eventually Conal was composed enough to crack the door open.

'Yes?'

It was Martje, and someone else, hidden behind her.

'Oh, please come in.'

He opened the door and the matriarch and one of her daughters walked in, both wrapped in woollen rugs. The daughters had all looked much the same, but this was surely the one who sat beside him during the meal. Sena.

'I understand you are a priest,' Martje said as soon as the door clicked shut behind them. 'Tell me, what kind of priest are you?'

'Please, take a seat,' Conal said, indicating a long couch. He found himself a seat on the edge of his bed. 'I don't understand the question. What kinds of priest are there?'

'There have been no priests in the Fisher Coast for a long time now, not since the Undying Man tightened his grip on these lands with the aid of Deorc of Jasweyah,' she replied.

Her daughter said nothing, just stared at him with those intense blue eyes. His hand went involuntarily to his crotch, but things there were under control for the moment.

The mother continued: 'But once there were dark priests, familiar with sacrifice and blood and invocation. Are you a dark priest? Do you have such knowledge? Do you require a sacrifice?'

His heart chilled in his chest. Sacrifice? Was that why the woman had brought her daughter?

'No,' he replied carefully, 'I am not that kind of priest. Falthan priests do not make human sacrifices. But we are not without power, though it is of a different kind. Please, tell me what you require.'

A familiar flaming in the back of his head alerted him to his sorcerous pa.s.senger. Ah, the magician said. I have been hoping for something like this.

Like what?

Proof that the old powers are still known, still practised. We have need of them.

'I have a thirst for revenge,' Martje said. 'My eldest son and heir lies dead on a cold stone bier, while his murderer lies in my most opulent room, sleeping off the excesses of my forced largesse. Perhaps those of the Fisher Coast or of your own milk-livered land would let such a grievous insult pa.s.s, but not I. Not someone from the Hanseia Hills.'

'He's immortal, you know. You can't kill him.'

'No, but there are other things I can do. I can incapacitate him, weaken him. I can bind him to a place, any place, so that he cannot leave it. The cost will be high, but I-but we-are prepared to pay it. Are you?'

There was no mistaking the look she gave him. Conal cleared his throat.

'What makes you think I have the power you require?'

'I can sense you, priest. You have great power, buried deep. Though young and inexperienced, you are very strong indeed. Not as strong as he who sullies my honour by sleeping in my house tonight, but as powerful as any Maghdi Dasht I have met. Perhaps even as powerful as my own great uncle, lost many years ago in your land in the vanguard of a futile war. Old magic runs in my family,' she said. 'So I can see yours. Well, priest? I heard you wish him dead. Will you help me?'

His manhood had risen again, but this time he made no move to halt it. Both his visitors had their eye on him. They knew.

'I need to pray,' he said. 'To ascertain the will of my G.o.d.'

'No doubt you do,' Martje said, a one-sided smile on her face. 'My daughter Sena is very good at praying. Together I am sure you can gain the ear of your G.o.d. I will leave you, and return in one hour. We will then discuss what to do about our mutual enemy.'

'One...one hour,' he croaked. 'I will be ready.'

She cast an eye over him, her gaze coming to rest on his groin. 'No doubt,' she said.

Sena had risen from the couch, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng, fingers working the b.u.t.tons of her s.h.i.+ft, and was upon him even before the door had clicked shut.

Eventually Lenares fell asleep in Robal's arms. He had been patient, solicitous of her need to talk, a listening ear, but her shock and sorrow had sapped her youthful strength to the point of exhaustion. Fortunately she had not been reading him closely. He had been as genuine as he could; indeed, he truly cared about her sorrows, and wished to do something about them. And he could, now she was drowsing.

Robal eased himself out from beside her, gently guiding her head to the rough wooden bench. He flicked off his blanket and laid it under her hair, then checked her breathing. Steady, rhythmical. Now, where would she keep it? He didn't want to have to search her thoroughly. Though as a guard, he knew how to search a prisoner, normally they were awake when he did it, and he'd never been known as a gentle man.

He found it in the third pocket.

The thing about these great people, he reflected as he pocketed the huanu stone, these immortals, these sorcerers, scholars and savants, was they eventually ceased paying attention to those without their gifts. They a.s.sumed that normal people were just part of the landscape, not able to influence events in the manner of the great. He would make one of them regret this lack of attention.

It was a risk, he acknowledged to himself as he eased closed the stained-gla.s.s door and padded quietly down the hall past sculptures that would have graced the Hall of Meeting in Instruere. But if he had read everything right, if he understood correctly the power of the stone in his hand, the threat posed by the Destroyer would end tonight.

A short detour to his room to change. A younger Robal would not have hesitated: with such an advantage in his hand, he would have charged into battle, and not taken the time to slip on his leather tunic and strap his sword around his waist. The small knife against his hip would have been enough. But there had been times when the younger Robal had nearly not become any older, and he was a more cautious man now.

He ran his fingers over the hilt of his sword, visualising the next few minutes. The only risk involved his interpretation of what his companions had said about the stone. This Noetos of Bhrudwo had such a stone, apparently, a large one, though Robal had not once talked to the man directly: their paths had crossed only twice, at Lake Woe and at the Yacoppica Tea House. There had been some hints as to what the stone meant, but he'd not paid much attention to it. He wished he had now.

Lenares, on the other hand, had been much more forthcoming about her stone. It was precious, clearly, as the alchemist's desire for it had cost him his life. It was powerful, as it had kept the Daughter from destroying Lenares. She had then been able to capture the Daughter, to make the G.o.d obey her. Robal had no esoteric way of capturing the Destroyer and bending him to obedience. He would have to make do with a more direct plan.

This was the door. He'd noted it earlier in the evening: one of Martje's sons had been told to fetch a portrait from the lady's bedroom. Robal had been sitting at the corner of the table closest to the door of the dining room, and had seen the son stride along the hall and enter the room at the far end. Later, Martje had offered the Destroyer her own accommodation, an offer that had been accepted. So this had to be the door.

A faint blue glow leaked out from underneath. Some sort of night light? Or the magical blue fire?

He put his hand to the door handle. Tell the truth, he didn't expect the door to open. He expected to be thwarted here, forcing him to enter through the fancy windows at the far end of the room, the ones he'd seen as he walked through the rose garden. There would be noise, no doubt, and after he'd done the deed Robal fully expected to have to fight for his life. As yet, he was unsure whether he'd bother.

The handle gave way, the blue glow winked out and the door opened in silence.

Clutching the stone in his left hand and the sword in his right, Robal stepped into the room.

It was large, and shrouded in almost complete darkness save for a small candle burning on a dresser by the bed and the light coming from the hallway behind him. The candle would give enough light, he decided, so he closed the door and waited a few moments for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.

A strange rhythmic noise came from his right, from the far corner of the room nearest the window, away from the candle. Some arcane device to generate magic? An animal grunting, about to be sacrificed? Every one of Robal's senses tingled, heightened by his awareness of what he was about to do. Robal Anders, slayer of an immortal.

He flicked his eyes to the enormous four-poster bed, partly obscured by a large wardrobe. There ought to be a lump, the outline of his quarry's body, but he could not see it. He stole across the room, eyes down, noting the luxurious rugs he walked upon, checking each step carefully so as not to make any untoward sound.

There was no one in the bed. The covers had not even been turned back.

Was he mistaken? Did the Destroyer not need sleep? Or was he even now engaged in some other tryst, his mouth on hers? Was that the source of the noise? His head snapped up.

'I am over here, Robal.'

It wasn't magic that froze him, but simple surprise. One of the side effects of carefully planning an attack was that it took a few seconds to adjust to changing circ.u.mstances. In those seconds the Destroyer spoke.

'I know why you're here, Robal; I know what you have in your hand. I can feel it. Should you come at me with your sword, I will have no magical defence. But I hope you might speak to me, and let me talk to you, so we can resolve-'

Don't let him wrap his words around your mind, Robal told himself. He launched himself at the Destroyer, his sword coming around in a vicious sweep aimed at the man's neck.