Anna von Wessen (23 page)

Anyway – we say that the truth was a hard thing, because scarcely anyone knew it. Vaya Eleria looked to Anna von Wessen, who wished to know it; and found herself at a loss. No words came; but a very strange smile appeared suddenly upon her face, and Anna could hardly tell whether she were amused, or angry, or even frightened. Yes – it was a very strange smile, indeed.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “You don’t.”

Anna looked into her face, utterly astonished by the way it was twisting, and turning – seemingly so desperate to make her comprehend something. This, though, was no mere glimpse into that second person she had thought she saw before. The second self was in full view; and the first (which it was beginning to seem may not have actually been the genuine one) was disappeared entirely.

“You say I do not understand,” Anna said softly. “But you tell me that you hate the Lumaria; and you show me a time when you stood with the Narkul army of King Krestyin. Who could fail to understand it?”

“You speak as though you are not a Lumarian,” Vaya returned roughly. “I expect nothing from you, Anna von Wessen – for our people have never given me reason to expect anything. My father gave me none. You are no different!”

“Then why do you tell me all this?”

“I don’t know.”

“Tell me all, Vaya Eleria!”

This last came as a shout; and, as if shocked into compliance by Anna’s outburst, Vaya began immediately to speak. She neither paused nor hesitated. The words flowed as if from a fount.

“I lived a double life,” she said, “for a long time. In my father’s house, I was General of the war against the Narken – and in Krestyin’s, I was Lieutenant of the war against the Lumaria. It was enough, sometimes, to make me feel as if I had been torn asunder. But I couldn’t see how to change things – because I was weak! Yes, Anna, I hate the Lumaria. I wanted to kill as many of us as I was able! But I could not face the fact that
I
needed just as much to be vanquished. I stood with Krestyin; but I stood with my father, too. On the one hand I despised my home, and everyone who surrounded me. But at the same time I felt, all the while, that the life I led with Krestyin – if I needed choose one of the two – was the one which was untrue.”

“Perhaps you are right, after all,” Anna said quietly, “in that I do not rightly understand.”

Vaya put a hand to her head, and laughed bitterly. “I daresay I hardly understood it myself, at the time. I only couldn’t leave behind all that I had ever known, to live out the mortal life of the one who loved me – and then have nothing, nothing ever to come back to.”

“You make it sound,” Anna said slowly, “as though you did not love him just as well.”

Vaya looked blankly into Anna’s face, and answered, “I didn’t.”

Anna narrowed her eyes in question.

“I cared for Krestyin,” Vaya went on, “more than I had ever cared for anyone before. He called me his soulmate; but for me it was different. For me he was something else.”

“Something else?”

Vaya looked darkly towards the portrait of Krestyin, and seemed to brood over it for a long while; but finally her expression softened, and she smiled faintly. When again she spoke, her voice was soft, and nostalgic. But it was not in the least tender.

“It was one night after a victory over a clan of wild Lumaria, when we and all our soldiers had had too many bottles of rum – too many even for a Lumarian – and we were all together at camp in the forest. The others had fallen asleep, and I was very near to doing the same, when Krestyin was seized by one of his common fits of temper, and fell to smashing everything in sight. I sat with him for a while, but he could not seem to calm himself, as he usually did. He drank still more after that; and when he came at me, and we fought for a little, he went away with tears in his eyes. I tried to comfort him, and he misunderstood me. He tried to kiss me; I pushed him away. He only fell to his knees, and started up weeping in earnest – such a great big brute as him, crying like a child! But I pitied him. He got up, and came back to me, and I hadn’t it in me to deny him again. To me he was the greatest friend I could not lose – and if I needed give him
that,
in order to keep him whole . . . well, I would. And so I did.”

She said nothing more on the subject. She fell silent again; and when she finally spoke, it was to say:

“I managed to hide the partnership from Ephram, for a whole two years. But finally he began to come near to the truth, by dint of observing my long-strange behaviour; once detecting the odour of wolf-musk on my raiment; and afterwards going about the business of interrogating every Narkul he could lay his hands upon. To clinch the thing, a wild Lumarian came to him one night, and told him of a dark woman whom he had seen, fighting alongside the White Wolf of the North, in a battle against his people. Ephram understood the whole matter directly; and he killed the wild Lumarian immediately after he had given his testimony, so as to prevent his sharing it with anyone else. He told me all this much later, of course. But still I felt the threat drawing nigh – and  I begged Krestyin to flee, and for some time to keep away from me. But he refused. 

“Though it pained me to do it, I told him the truth. ‘I do not love you, Krestyin,’ I said, ‘as you love me. Forever you will be my brother – my twin in battle. But never will you be my husband.’

“He would not listen, but only smiled as I spoke. He laid his hand on my stomach, and he said, ‘Your belly tells me different.’ ”

“Probably I’m beginning to seem to you rather dense,” said Anna, “but again I don’t understand you.”

“Well, that only makes sense. They tell us that such a thing is not possible – but nevertheless it happened. Whether or not I was the first, surely I don’t know. But I suppose it doesn’t matter, anyway.”

“Surely you don’t mean, Vaya, what I think you do.”

“Doubtless I do. Krestyin’s child, you see, was growing inside me.”

“His child!”

Vaya offered nothing more in explanation. Her next words, rather, were these.

“I would have given anything for him to remain ignorant of the child. But his wolf-sense had warned him, and there was no deceiving him. And honestly I believed, in what may or may not have been only a lie to myself, that if we survived the whole thing – well, I thought that I would finally go with him, and make with him the family he longed for.

“And so, since there was no making him see his own folly, I ran with him, and hid with him in the Weld. Yet Ephram was clever as always, and cunning; and by his own methods, and by the torture of many of mine and Krestyin’s comrades, he had learnt Krestyin’s identity, and also the location of the Weld.

“He went there alone one night, some few weeks after I gave birth to the child – which Krestyin, by the way, had named Tirymus, after his own father.”

It was another moment before she could go on; but Anna did not press her.

“Ephram slayed the guards outside Krestyin’s chamber,” said Vaya, “and knew by their presence there that he had found me. I heard the commotion of his approach, and I knew very well what would happen. I didn’t like even to think of what he would do to the child – so, despite all of Krestyin’s pleading, and his mighty efforts to prevent me, I killed it.

“Again I urged Krestyin to go, thinking that alone, perhaps, I could assuage my father. But fool that that damned wolf was –” (her eye burnt brightly at this) “– he would not go. He said that he would stand with me, till either he or Ephram was dead. It filled me with a hard, cold ache – for I knew that it would be he.

“Finally my father came. I had hid away the corpse of the child; and to this day, he knows nothing of it. The moment he caught sight of Krestyin, they fell to fighting, and it was not long before Krestyin was dead.

“My father turned to me, and he said: ‘You cannot run from me, daughter. You know very well you cannot. And if you attempt it – well, many more of your dirty dogs will die.’

“He looked at me, then, very carefully. I shall never forget the expression upon his face. He was furious; he was ashamed; he was terribly disappointed. And his eyes that could not weep, they were filled with more sadness than I had ever seen before. Though poor Krestyin’s body lay lifeless beside me, and the child I had borne was stuffed down between the mattresses, like so much garbage – I wanted almost to fall to my knees before Ephram, and beg his forgiveness. I will forever be ashamed of that moment of weakness.”

Anna watched her face, and was silent. It was a very long time before the tale was resumed.

“He told me that if I would go with him,” said Vaya, “no more of the wolves would die. He had told no one where I was; and he promised that none would ever know, if I only went with him. So I went. I knew that the wolves would fight for me, to the very death – but I could not sacrifice such loyal friends. Neither could I face them – for in truth I was nothing but a coward. I returned to the castle with Ephram, and spent many days in isolation, thinking very hard about my situation. It seemed quite bleak to me.

“Finally my father came to me, and informed me that we were to have the very gravest conversation we had ever had before. And certainly it was.

“He said to me, ‘Vaya Eleria, mine own child – I have come here to offer you a bargain. If you look now into my eyes, and make me the promise that you shall never again have anything to do with the wolves; that you shall once again be my faithful daughter, and the General of my army, I will never speak a word of what has passed. I swear you this oath, Vaya Eleria! Now – what say you?’

“I will not lie, and tell you that I did not consider it. But I can redeem myself somewhat, and assure you that I did not consider it long. Simply, and without anger, I told him no.” She smiled grimly. “Perhaps you can imagine how long he stayed with me, beseeching me to reconsider. But finally I put a stop to it, and promised him in no uncertain words that I would not change my mind – and that he had better get on with whatever it was that he had planned to do, in the case that I refused him.

“He knew, then, that it was all up with us. All I had done, every deed I had performed against the Lumaria, in the service of the King of the Weld – all this meant very little to him, in comparison with the way I denied him. He could have gone on forever, I think, knowing every detail of my sedition; and he would have slept none the worse for it, if I had only come back to him in the end.”

“You need not say any more,” Anna told her kindly. “I think I know it well enough.”

“No,” said Vaya. “I began the story; and I shall finish it. My father left me that night, you see, and remained absent for nearly a day. He was thinking over his own circumstances, then. He knew that I would not remain in the castle; and he knew that he could not let me go, for it would ruin him. So he did, I think, the only thing that he knew to do.”

“All that he knew to do!” Anna cried.

“Yes,” Vaya replied feverishly. “I believe it now, I believe it with every fibre of my being. What else could he have done? He could not very well allow me, I understand, to run back to the Weld; and he could not have me performing any more deeds against my own people, not so long as he was aware of it. For I told him plainly that I would not stop. So he ordered up the executioner; and, as you probably know, could not allow his
hand to slay me. He took up the blade himself, and pierced my heart. I have learnt since I woke, that to our people he told a half-truth. He told them that I had conducted an affair with a Narkul – but did not tell them that that Narkul was the White Wolf of the North, or that I had slain my own kind.” 

She paused for a little, with her eyes narrowed at the floor. And when finally she continued to speak, she did not look up again at Anna.

“And so,” she said, “for all these long years I have slept. Now I am awake. The month that passed, between my revival and my return to Drelho – that time I spent in the Weld. I was spotted by soldiers of the King, while I wandered through distant forests; and at his order, they brought me to their house. There I met the ninth and tenth generations of my old friends – some of whom knew my name. I learnt from them that, upon the night I left the fortress with Ephram, one of Krestyin’s captains issued the order for his people to be evacuated; and so, even if Ephram had gone in search of them after my death, they would have been out of his reach. This was such a great relief to me!”

She took a moment to smile earnestly; and then said: “The Weldon wolves gave me leave to remain with them; but they said also that I might go; that they were not afraid of my knowledge of them. You may be sure, that I considered the matter for a long while. To stay would have been simpler – but for some reason, I felt that I must come home.”
She gave a broken sigh, and gazed finally into the solitary face of her audience. “And now, Anna von Wessen – now you know all.”

“I told you once,” said Anna, “that whatever you had done, Vaya Eleria, was not worth what was done to you. I remember you hollered at me then –” (she offered a wide smile, here, which Vaya returned) “– but perhaps it was because you thought my opinion worthless, little as I knew of the matter. Well, as you said, now I know all – and I think nothing different from what I thought before.”

There was no semblance even of restraint, as Vaya reached fervently for Anna’s hand. She clutched it long, and stared into Anna’s face.

Anna went to her with a single movement – the very most unintentional and spontaneous movement which she had ever made – and wrapped her arms tight around her. Their cheeks touched; and she closed her eyes for a moment, quite unconsciously, to take in Vaya’s scent. It was, she thought, much like that of a rose, when it is cold and damp after an autumn rain.
She felt her heart beat once, twice – and then tore herself quickly away.