The Three Lands Omnibus Part 56

He said in a deceptively light tone, "I have spent today counting spiderwebs. I have not yet come to agree with Lord Carle that Koretia is a maggot-infested land, but there are certainly many spiders here. I counted twenty-four webs."

I made no reply. He added, "I also watched the spiders eating their food, and learned quite a lot about how they trap their victims. I could not think of any other sports to occupy myself with after that. How was your day?"

I walked over to the table and placed on it the emblem brooch. Peter glanced at it, and then turned his gaze back toward me.

"I went to the palace today," I said. Peter remained silent, so I added, "John sent me there to fetch your papers."

"Then I hope that John learned more from them than I did."

I waited, realized that I would once more be forced to speak, and said, "I met Lord Carle."

Something pa.s.sed over Peter's face then, but he merely said, "Poor Lord Carle. Did you take the opportunity at your final meeting to tell him what you thought of him?"

"He gave me a letter to deliver to you."

Peter smiled then, but it was not the smile I expected to see on his face. His smile was a cold, dark one that brought back the chill of memory to me, though I could not recall where I had seen the smile last. "Knowing Carle," said Peter, "I expect that he wrote something very cryptic that no one except myself would understand. And though I have had little time to get to know your Jackal, he does not strike me as the type of man to routinely pa.s.s on letters to prisoners. Moreover, I see that you are holding no letter."

"John burnt it. He said that you must not know the contents."

Peter tilted his head back against the wall, gazing at me with narrowed eyes. "Much as my opinion of you has been forced to change during the past few hours, I find it hard to believe that you have come here for the purpose of placing me under torture of the spirit. Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I wish to give you Lord Carle's message."

Peter's smile faded. His eyes grew darker. He said tersely, "I do not believe I wish to hear the message."

"He said that it might help you."

"Then I can be certain that it would. It might even save my life. If I were under normal conditions, I would consider it my duty as Chara to hear the message, no matter who the messenger was. But just now I am not being rational, and I do not particularly care to hear Carle's message if it is to be delivered by a man who has betrayed his old land and his old master and who now demonstrates that he plans to betray his new land and his new master."

I could not reply; my throat was clogged and my mouth dry. Peter pushed himself off of the wall, balanced himself delicately with one hand against the table, and said, in the same detached, frigid tone, "I had respect for you after you betrayed me. I told myself that this was your native land and that John was your blood brother and that you had a blood vow to fulfill. All of these things came before you ever met me, and I could respect you for returning to your first loyalties. But now I wonder whether loyalty is something you actually understand. You betray me, and then you come here to help me against the orders of the Jackal. I am not sure what you will do next. I see that you have the dagger I gave you a do you plan to kill me? I suppose that John gave the dagger into your keeping a will you kill him? I have reached the conclusion during the past few minutes that you are exactly what Carle told me you were on the day I came to beg him to sell you to me. He said that you were a dog, and worse than his own dog, who at least knew how to love one master. You, he said, were not capable of that type of love; you would lick a hand and then bite it, and do the same with the next master you served and the next. You were, he said a and you will appreciate the depths of his statement a more treacherous even than the Koretians."

I felt myself shaking inwardly, though my body gave no sign of this. I walked blindly back to the door and took hold of the door frame, half turned toward the door, half turned toward Peter, who watched me with unchanging expression. Finally I said, my voice low, "What Lord Carle said is right. I cannot understand what I do a it makes no sense, and it is more barbaric than anything he ever did to me. I heard a voice I thought was the G.o.d, telling me to do this. But the G.o.ds reward loyalty, not treachery, and so the voice must have been a base and evil demon who was wearing the mask of a G.o.d. Still, since I have already lost your friends.h.i.+p and will lose the friends.h.i.+p of John when he learns why I came here, it will do me no further harm to obey that voice and tell you Lord Carle's message, whether you wish to hear it from me or not. Lord Carle said: I have them."

Peter did not move. His voice revealed no thoughts as he said, "I would like to see the Jackal, if I may." Then he turned his back upon me.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

I found the Jackal in the sanctuary, standing by the window in conversation with Brendon. I waited by the door for a minute, trying to still my inner trembling, until John looked up and said, "I thought I asked you to stay with Ursula."

I walked over to him until I reached the patch of moonlight stretching out from the window. "I went to see the Chara," I said. "He wishes to speak to you."

John held my eyes for a moment. Then he picked up the mask he had laid on the windowseat and said to Brendon quietly, "Please go look after Ursula in her room. And on your way, see that the Chara is brought here to me."

Brendon nodded and left, and I was left alone with the Jackal, his mask now steady in his hands.

He said, "You told him."

"Yes." Though I had not defended myself to Peter, I found myself saying, "John-"

He brushed away my words with a gesture, then laid his hand on my shoulder and said, "I am to blame. It was too much to ask of you a I should have ordered the others to keep you from his cell. There is no need for us to say any more about this."

My eyes fell to the mask. "It was the G.o.d I betrayed."

John stepped back and began swinging the mask lightly in his hand. After a while he said, "Perhaps. But I spoke to you unmasked, as the Jackal's servant rather than through the G.o.d's own voice; it may be that I was wrong. We will see. In any case, I know that you must have had your reasons for doing what you did, and I doubt it was due to sentimentality or some other weakness."

"I don't know what it was," I replied wearily. "Peter said I was simply treacherous. All I know is that something spoke to me that seemed to care nothing about blood brothers or lands or any other loyalties. It demanded obedience from me."

For the first time, an expression I could not identify pa.s.sed over John's face. But he had no chance to say anything more, because the door opened and the Chara appeared, escorted by two thieves. John waited until Peter had come to stand near the window and the thieves had left before saying, "What does the message mean?"

"It means," said Peter in his neutral voice, "that Lord Carle has discovered the papers I asked him to find, the papers which prove that the governor was disobeying my orders."

John glanced at me before saying, with no note of accusation in his voice, "That does not sound like something Lord Carle would do, if I have understood rightly what Andrew reports. He said that Lord Carle hates the Koretians more than anything else."

Peter looked over at me and gave a cold smile. In the moonlight, his face looked as grey as the funeral bindings of a corpse or the tunic of one of the Living Dead. "Andrew would hardly know, would he? He has not been witness to my friends.h.i.+p with Carle."

I am not sure what my face revealed at that moment. All I knew was that John looked at me sharply. Relentlessly, Peter continued, with his gaze fixed on me, "Neither Andrew nor any other Koretian is ever likely to encounter Lord Carle's better qualities, and for this reason I have never spoken to Andrew of my friends.h.i.+p with Carle. I intensely dislike Carle's manner of speech, and I am much angered by his behavior toward those whom he considers his inferiors. But he is my most loyal subject and is now the only man whom I trust completely."

The small word "now" was like the slice of a dagger-thigh into my life's blood. I saw, stretched across my memory, the subtle, secret war that Lord Carle had been waging against me all these years. He had finally won.

For a moment more, the Chara continued to smile his council lord's smile a Peter had had many opportunities over the years to learn that smile, I now recognized. Then he looked back at John, and his expression grew serious as he said, "That is why I asked Lord Carle to accompany me on this trip. He shares the governor's opinion of the inhabitants of this land, and he therefore has gained the governor's confidence and received access to parts of the palace where I could not go. But one thing Lord Carle hates more than the Koretians, and that is anyone who disobeys the Chara. For this reason, he has been as eager as I have been to uncover evidence of the governor's treachery, no matter what benefits this might bring to Koretia. Lord Carle has already told me that he will enter a charge against Lord Alan, and that in doing so, he will take the governor out of the council's care and place him under my judgment. He plans to charge the governor with disobedience to the Chara so that I may place Lord Alan under the high doom. I now have the power to free Koretia."

The night was very quiet. Even the soldiers who patrolled the city streets below could not be heard. The wind, still making its deadly way down the mountain and over the city, gently rocked the mask that John held. He said, "And will you?"

"That," said Peter, "is a difficult question for me to answer right now." He turned away, as though he were among friends rather than his captors, and leaned against the window jamb, staring down the mountainside. He said quietly, "I am your prisoner, and you have told me that you intend to kill me soon unless I free Koretia. It is possible that I might go against my true judgment and give you the answer you want so that I could escape execution. As long as I am in your power, neither you nor I nor anyone else can be sure that the answer I give you will be the one the Chara would give or simply something that I, Peter, would say to save my life."

He turned his head slightly so that it faced John. "You have said that you cannot trust me. But unless you trust me enough to free me, I cannot give you my answer."

He turned his attention back to the view. I could no longer see his face.

"Trust ..." murmured John. He raised his mask slightly, and I wondered whether he would consult the G.o.d. Then he let his hand drop, and he said, "I trust Andrew, and Andrew knows whether you are to be trusted. I will leave it to my blood brother to decide."

Peter did not face my way. He continued to stare out the window a not at the city, I now realized, but at the mountains beyond. I said, my voice shaking with emotion and exhaustion, "No doubt the Chara will continue to believe that I am being treacherous, no matter what my answer. So I will not try to determine here to whom I should be loyal, as I have been struggling to do for the past day."

I paused, but Peter remained motionless. John was standing close to me; I kept my gaze focussed away from him and instead stared into the darkness of the sanctuary. "What I think is this," I said, my voice turning flat with dispa.s.sion. "The first time Peter spoke to me, I was a Koretian slave, and he spoke to me in friends.h.i.+p. I have never seen him show less care toward the Koretians than he does toward the Emorians. I do not know whether he will free our land, but I trust that he will make the decision he does from love, and you told me-" I turned to John and said, "You told me that there is nothing more that you and your thieves can demand of each other than love and trust. The Chara has shown that he loves this land by risking his life to come to Koretia. I think that you must match his sacrifice by giving him your trust." I looked back at Peter.

Barely audible over the whisper of the wind, John said, "You have heard Andrew. You are free to leave when you wish."

For a moment, Peter did not move. Then, as though he had been bodily released, he slid down the wall and sat with a thump on the windowseat, leaning his head back against the wall. The mask upon his face dissolved, and I saw the tears of my dream.

He said nothing for several minutes, but breathed raggedly, trying to swallow his tears. John and I waited. In the end, Peter's breathing calmed, and he turned his head toward John. "Now I can tell you what I was thinking in my cell in between counting those twenty-four cursed spiderwebs. I was thinking about the other difficulty I mentioned, of finding a Koretian ruler. I told you I knew no one whom I could trust to work with both me and the Koretians, no man who would be loyal to the Koretians' best interests rather than to some narrow view of Koretian independence. That was true until I met the Jackal today. Will the Jackal take over the government so that I can free Koretia?"

My breath catching, I turned my gaze toward John. I saw for a moment a look of shock in his eyes that matched my own. Then his eyes grew quiet again, and he scanned Peter's face, as though looking for something he had not seen before. For the first time that evening, a smile travelled onto John's face, one of his old smiles that transformed his serious expression. Without a word, he turned and walked beyond the patch of moonlight into the darkness of the sanctuary.

When he turned again, it was as though he had been swallowed up by the darkness. All that I could see were three lights: a red light burning from the G.o.d-mask badge above his heart, a silver light s.h.i.+ning from his dagger, and a gold light glowing from his eyes.

"Oddly enough," he said, "I too have spent the day thinking about this question, because of a conversation Andrew reported to me a a conversation he held with one of the governor's subcaptains. But as I told you not long ago, Chara, it is the G.o.d who must answer your question." And he put on the mask.

My eyes were fixed on the Jackal, but I heard the swift intake of Peter's breath as he rose to his feet. The G.o.d's power was all around us, surrounding us in its smoky fold, feeding upon us and transforming us through that feeding into something new. Fifteen years before, something had brought forth this power as I stood in the cave looking at Peter. Now it was John's eyes that captured my thoughts.

Then the Jackal reached up and pulled away his mask, as though he had only placed it there to give us warning of his approach. He spoke to us through the body of John, but his voice was that of the G.o.d in my vision.

"Place the Koretian people under my care, Chara Peter," he said in a voice more soft than a whisper but more p.r.o.nounced than a shout. "For the people must be taught one last lesson in how to wear the Pendant of Judgment, and that lesson they must learn from the servant who wears this mask, not the Chara. Thirty-five years ago, as men count time, I took the first steps to give my people into the care of the Chara, that they might learn through his vengeance and mercy what it means to judge. Yet, for to keep the Koretians from enslaving themselves and losing the courage to break their bonds, I have hunted my own people and commanded that brother shall shed the blood of brother. Thus have I suffered for my people and taught them to suffer, for there can be no judgment without sacrifice. And as they have been taught what it is to judge, I have taught you today what it is to be judged, that you need never again wear my pendant in fear."

I heard the Chara breathing heavily beside me. He spoke in a voice low but firm: "Take your people, then, for you are their master."

"I am indeed their master, and they are my servants," said the G.o.d with his low, thundering voice. "They are my servants, as you are my servant, wearing my mask and speaking in my voice the laws which I gave to the Emorian people. For I care nothing for blood vows or blade vows to brothers or lands; these I gave to my people only that they might understand the meaning of sacrifice. To mortals who have the eyes to see, there are neither Emorians nor Koretians, but only those who receive peace by being servants of the G.o.d."

He was silent again, and we watched and waited, but I did not see the moment when the power left John, for his eyes remained the same.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

John spoke finally in his own voice, saying, "But I will need your help, Chara, for while the G.o.d may be all-knowing, his servant John is not, and you will have to teach me what I must do, as a man teaches his younger brother. I thank you for entrusting me with this duty."

Peter gave a sigh like an explosion. His face had gone from grey to moonlight white, and his hand was shaking as he raised it to steady himself against the window jamb. But as I watched, there appeared for the briefest moment the rigid expression I had seen on his face for ten years and had never recognized for what it was. Then the G.o.d-mask was gone, and Peter whispered, "Yes," and I knew that he had recognized the truth of the G.o.d's words.

He took another deep breath before saying to John, "I could not ask you while you still held me in your power."

There was a pause before John replied. As I looked over at him, I saw that a cautious look had entered his face, and I realized that he too had previously been s.h.i.+elded by the G.o.d from the knowledge of what Peter was. Then he smiled and said, "And I could not have accepted your offer had you made it then, so I am glad that I asked Andrew's judgment in this matter. My own would have been different. That is twice I have been wrong and Andrew has been right, and I am beginning to wonder whether the G.o.d has been speaking through another man today. But I will go now and let the thieves know what has happened here. Andrew can escort you back to the palace when you are ready."

Peter waited until John was at the door, and then said, in a low voice that barely carried to the end of the hall, "Before I leave, I would like to pay my respects to your wife."

John's smile turned light. "She is not my wife. But I am sure that she will be glad to see you." He closed the door.

Peter stared at me, and I waited to see what he would say, whether he would doom me with further recriminations or give me the mercy of forgiveness. But what he said was, "What did he mean, that she is not his wife?"

"Ursula is not married to John. They have lived as husband and wife to the world, but she is like a sister to him."

"And what is she to you?" Peter asked abruptly.

I stared at him, wondering whether he had guessed who her mother was. Peter went on, his voice turned harsh, "I saw how you held her in this very chamber. I know that you cannot love her in a normal way, but if you have found some way of a of showing love to her and making her love you, then I wish to know this."

It seemed to me that my life could grow no darker than this, that Peter would hate me so much that he would not bother to speak of my betrayal, even to condemn me, but would rebuke me for some small matter. And yet the darkness I found myself in was still the darkness of my vision, so I said to him calmly, with no anger or pain, "She is my sister. Her mother was my mother, and her father was the Emorian soldier who enslaved me. Chara-"

He turned abruptly, looking at the door. He stood very still as he gazed at it, and I sensed that he had forgotten I was there. After a moment, without looking my way, he walked out of the sanctuary.

I remained in the shadows, remembering the darkness that had enclosed me in the vision. Somewhere beyond the darkness, I knew, was severe pain, the pain that I had betrayed the Chara and that he had not forgiven me. If I left this sanctuary, I knew somehow that the darkness would be gone, and I would feel the pain.

I walked over to the window and sat down, then took the Chara's dagger from my belt and held it over my wrist, crossways from the white scar I had made for John so long ago. The dagger tingled in my hand, as it had when I had tried to kill the soldier and Lord Carle and the Koretian in the market. All of these events, I realized, had just been death shadows of the temptation that lay before me. I was tempted, as I had been three times before in my life, to stay in the shadow of the G.o.d and share his painless existence. This time I would not be called back from the darkness by Peter's voice speaking to his father in anger or John's voice speaking to me with judgment or Ursula's voice praying to her G.o.d for mercy. The only voice that could still send me back from the darkness was the G.o.d's, and I listened for his command.

I thought of how I had betrayed the Chara and betrayed the Jackal, of how I had betrayed Emor and betrayed Koretia; I thought of all the pain that awaited me if I once more left this room and faced the light. I waited for the G.o.d to explain why he had commanded me to do these things; I waited for him to explain why I should undergo further pain. And then I remembered John's voice as he spoke the G.o.d's words, and I knew that the Unknowable G.o.d had no need to speak to me, because he had told me all that I desired to know in his final words in this room.

So I went in search of the Chara.

As I slipped into the corridor, I found myself in a maelstrom of excitement as the thieves received the news of their land's freedom. Too well trained to shout, they contented themselves with pounding each other on their backs and throwing their weapons into a silver pile in the corner. John was at the far end of the corridor, talking to Brendon. I walked toward him, and as I pa.s.sed the main door, I caught a glimpse of the farmer as he disappeared down the mountainside. I could guess that he had finally been given permission to search for the missing thief.

Unnoticed by the joyful thieves, I paused at each cell to look inside. In the background of the thieves' low voices, I could hear John still talking to Brendon a I caught the word "Chara" and then, a little later, "Ursula." Catching sight of me, John gestured with his head toward the closed dormitory door as he pulled Brendon further down the corridor to where the other thieves were waiting, eager to question the Jackal.

I opened the door to the dormitory, and there I found Peter, kissing my sister.

I stood there for a moment, my mind whirling with yet more images from the past few weeks: Peter sitting on his bed next to me, saying, "I want to remove my mask"; Ursula sitting on my bed next to me, saying, "I have fallen in love." Then the lovers looked over and saw me. Ursula glanced back at Peter and read something in his face. Without saying anything to him, she left the room, glancing uncertainly at me as she pa.s.sed. Peter waited, and it was though I was seeing through his eyes what he must have seen the night he had me brought to him for judgment.

I said, "You did not tell me you loved her."

He replied, in the casual manner he would have in the old days, "I didn't know that she loved me or that she was free to love me. Do I have your consent to marry her?"

I walked over to where he stood, framed against the window facing north. Behind him were the black border mountains, untouched by the moonlight that spilled like snowfall onto the ground. I took too long to reply, for Peter asked, "Do you hate me that much?"

"Hate you?" I stared at Peter.

"For betraying you."

I shook my head, incredulous. "It was I who betrayed you."

A look came into Peter's eyes, the look that had been in his eyes after the Unknowable G.o.d spoke to us. He said in a low voice, "I don't know how I could tell anyone of what happened tonight. I don't fully understand what took place. If anything is clear to me, it's that the Power I heard in that sanctuary has commanded me to give him my service, not through the performance of religious rites, but through my proclamation and enforcement of the laws of Emor. This is something I can understand. Therefore, I won't say, as John said, that you were speaking today with the voice of the G.o.d, but I will say that you were following a law that is unknown even to the Chara."

Peter reached over and touched me lightly on the arm as he added softly, "You betrayed John and you betrayed me, but you did not betray this higher law a and I never believed that you did. I only said otherwise because I was terrified of dying and even more terrified that I would betray my duty as the Chara to avoid dying. So, to avoid this fear, I hurt my wine-friend. Please forgive me."

I felt as though the hard bonds of diplomacy and silence that I had forged for myself during my years in Emor were breaking around me, and that I would never again be able to hold my heart completely in hiding. "It makes no sense for you to ask my forgiveness, after what I did."

"No. Nor did it make any sense for you to do what you did. But because of you, I am free and Koretia is free and we are able to be friends once more. Whatever this voice of yours is, it is not something that follows logic."

I tried to understand this, gave up, and silently handed the Chara his dagger.

"Thank you," he said as he sheathed it. "And now ... I have, by some miracle, faced death all this day without sliding to my knees and begging the Jackal for my life, but I swear, Andrew, you will find me kneeling at your feet in the next moment if you don't tell me whether I may marry your sister."

A smile slid easily onto my face, as though it were returning home. "Of course. You are lucky to find each other. But what will the council lords say?"

"The council lords," said Peter dryly, "are apt to be busy picking me apart over my decision to free Koretia. But in any case, they know that I wouldn't enter into any marriage that went against my duties as the Chara. It may take them time to understand how Emor could be benefitted by a common half-Koretian girl, but they will see in the end."

Noise attracted my attention. As I looked out the window, I saw the thieves pouring out of the G.o.ds' house, smiling and chatting in voices no longer kept low in fear. Brendon hushed them with his hand, as though to indicate that their work was not yet done. Glancing back, he caught sight of me and waved a farewell at me with his blade. It was an Emorian soldier's sword, John had told me that afternoon a a relic from Brendon's years in the governor's army, which he had joined during the years when he was still seeking his true master.

"Will you take her with you to live in Emor?" I asked.

"She wants to live there a which is fortunate, as I have no choice but to return there. She says that she would like to stay in the palace where you lived for so many years." He paused, and then added, "She knows what your friends.h.i.+p means to me, and so she a.s.sumes you'll be returning with us. But I won't ask you to do so, because I know what your answer must be."

I kept my eyes focussed on the dark land beyond the window. "I didn't know what my answer would be until you spoke just now. When did you guess?"

"Twelve years ago, when I first saw you staring at those mountains. I knew then that you would one day return to your homeland. I was grateful to you for staying with me as long as you did."

I turned back to Peter. He was looking at me with the same somber eyes and slight smile he had shown on that day when he learned that I wished to be his friend, when he learned that I was willing to stay with him for a little while more. He said, "There is a Koretian custom a I seem to have heard of it somewhere a that when two friends must be parted, they mix their blood, so that if ever they meet again, they will know each other. Is this a custom that an Emorian may practice?" He unsheathed his dagger and held it out to me.

I shook my head. "We have shared wine already. You have been as close to me as a blood brother for many years. As for our blood, it is neither Emorian nor Koretian, but simply the blood of friends. And soon my sister will be your wife, and I think that we can expect that some day n.o.body will be asking each other which land they are loyal to, but simply what they are loyal to."

He nodded, letting his dagger-hand drop. His gaze drifted to the door, as though my mention of Ursula had been her voice calling him. "Go to her," I said. "When you're ready, she and I will escort you back to the governor's palace."

Peter shook his head. "I still have work to do before it will be safe to take Ursula there. The governor won't give up his power easily; I may need Carle's help in seeing to Lord Alan's arrest." He began to turn, but paused when he saw me looking at the brooch near his throat, the one I had always thought his father had given him. I felt pressing in the back of my mind a memory I could not identify.