Bells of the Kingdom (Children of the Desert Book 3) (58 page)

“I was
raised
as a human,” he said.

“I know.” She turned her head to look at him with mild grey eyes. “It’s a shame. I’m beginning to think it’s ruined you.”

He sat still, afraid to move in case that sent her into a rage. She studied him for a few moments, then smiled and slid to sit on the edge of the bed.

“Why do they matter to you?” she said. “They’ve hurt you and lied to you and disrespected you. They do worse to each other than anything you have ever endured. I’ve seen it, son. I’ve seen into their minds, over the years; I’ve seen what lies behind the polite smiles and the false promises. Of all the humans I’ve faced, I’ve never seen one with honest motives. They’re like a pack of rabid cats, tearing one another apart.”

“Not even Kolan?” he said recklessly, and this time she was the one to go motionless, her eyes wide and almost colorless for a long breath.

At last she blinked and said, “Kolan told himself plenty of lies; he was just better at believing his own lies than most humans. It made him harder to break, because he
believed.
But it didn’t save him, in the end. Belief in a lie never really works.”

“How do you know he’s dead?” Idisio pressed. “You escaped. Maybe he did, too.”

She shook her head, smiling, and said, “No. He’s dead. I know he’s dead, because I killed him.” Her smile abruptly faded to an anguished expression. She tilted her head back and let out a low, keening sound that pierced Idisio’s ears and chest with identical sharp pains.

He scrambled to his feet, shaking all over, and said, “So you care. You
care
about Kolan. You’re
sorry
you killed him! Aren’t you?” It seemed terribly important, in a blurry sort of way, to force her to admit to feelings; to prove that ha’ra’hain could love as fiercely as any human.

“Yes,” she breathed, her eyes colorless again, and scooted back onto the bed, drawing her knees up to her chest and hugging them. “Oh, gods, yes. I miss him.”

Idisio pressed his back against the wall, breathing hard, and tried to think of what to say next. Intuition rose, unexpected and sharp:
Deiq’s not coming. I’m on my own.
He bit his tongue against the urge to swear aloud, and wished he could doubt the knowledge; but it held the odd, echoing certainty of a true vision. To give himself time to think, he crossed to the single window and stood looking out. A draft of chill air, scented with night-blooming flowers, swirled into the room, dispersing the thickness he felt in his chest. His mother breathed deeply, clearly enjoying the sweet floral aroma; he turned to find her smiling.

“Tell me about Kolan,” Idisio said, encouraged by that smile. “Tell me why you liked him. What you found good about a human.”

“He was kind,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “When nobody else would speak to me, he did. He treated me as an equal. He wasn’t afraid of me—at first—even though he knew what I was. Even though his own father thrashed him for coming to see me. Even though the Elders disapproved of him seeing me. He was
kind.”

“And you killed him,” Idisio said. “And you regret doing that.”

She raised a tear-streaked face toward the ceiling and keened again. The sound put chills up Idisio’s back and raised the hair on his arms.

“Yes,” she mourned. “I killed him. The only one who was ever good to me.” She buried her face against her knees and let out a choked sob. “You’re right, son,” she said, the words muffled. “I’ve done bad things. I’ve hurt people who didn’t deserve it.”

“Yes, you have,” he said, his own breath thick in his throat.

She sat up straight and blinked at him, her eyes watering. “What do I do?” she said. “How do I make amends for doing such bad things, son? Tell me what I should do.”

“You stop
doing
those things, for one,” he said sharply. “You stop killing humans just because they annoy you.”

She wiped the back of one hand across her eyes and said, unsteadily, “It’s not that easy, son. Not after so many years of being told to kill, being
made
to kill... it’s like breathing after a while. It’s hard to see anything wrong with it.”

“Well, it
is
wrong,” he said. “And you have to stop.”

“What if I can’t?” she said, cocking her head to one side. “What if it’s a part of me, son; something I can’t help any longer? I know I’m not what you’d consider sane; I’m not sane by human standards, certainly. What if that’s what I am, now, and it’s not ever going to change?”

“I believe you can,” he said. “If you want to. Because you loved Kolan, and you regret killing him.”

She considered that for a time, twisting her fingers into the skirt of her dress. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not sure I could do that. I don’t know how.”

“I know someone who can help you,” Idisio said. “If you’ll come back with me, there’s an elder ha’ra’ha in Bright Bay—”

“Deiq?” She laughed, genuinely amused. “No, son. He’s not someone to trust. He planned to kill me, when they set you out as bait.”

“No—” Idisio said involuntarily.

“What did you think they were going to do, once they caught me?” she demanded. “Tie me up and lecture me? Feed me drugs to calm me and bring me back to sanity? Then what? They’d never have let me leave their custody, son. Not after what I’ve done. They’d never have trusted me to walk free. No. They would have killed me, in the end. That was the only path they had in mind.”

Idisio scrubbed both hands over his face, shaking his head. “No,” he said again. “Stop that. I know what you’re doing. Stop it.”

“I’m telling you the truth,” she said.

“You’re twisting the truth,” he retorted. “Deiq didn’t want you to die. He wanted to save you. To bring you back to sanity. That’s what they all wanted.”

She smiled, tilting her head a bit. “You’re a romantic,” she said. “You’re a human-raised romantic. But I won’t go back to Bright Bay, so what will you do when I slip again?”

Idisio stared at her, appalled by her matter-of-fact tone. “You can fight it,” he blurted.

“No,” she said. “I can’t.” Her grey eyes flooded with tears. “It hurts,” she whispered. “What Rosin did to me—I’ll never be free of that pain. I’ll never be able to control that rage.”

He swallowed hard, his own eyes damp. “Then you have to stop it,” he said. “You have to end it. The pain, the anger, all of it.”

She cocked her head to one side, frowning at him. “How do I do that?”

He dropped his hand to the hilt of the long Scratha dagger; drew and tossed it, in a careful, underhanded lob, onto the bed beside her. “This is the only way left that I can think of,” he said.

She stared at the dagger as though she’d never seen one before, then looked up at him. “This is another vision, isn’t it?” she said, her voice eerily flat. “This is another trick of Rosin’s. I almost believed it, do you know that? But my son would never do this to me.”

Idisio shook his head. “This is real, mother,” he said, the words thick in his throat. “Rosin is dead. You’re out in the real world now. No visions. No games. No tricks. It’s true. I’m really here, and—”

“And you really want me to kill myself,” she said. An unsettling dark ring formed around her pale grey irises. He found himself sitting on the floor again, and fought the urge to put an arm up as a shield against that fierce glare. “After all I’ve explained, after all the effort I’ve put into making you understand what we are, you think suicide is the best option for me? Because I hurt a few stupid
humans?
Son, as fast as they breed, they won’t even notice the loss. In less than a hundred years, they’ll have forgotten all about it.”

“What about Kolan?” he said, desperate.

“What
about
him?” She swung her legs to sit on the edge of the bed again, then rose, ominously slow, to tower over him. “He’s as meaningless as the rest of them. Do you think your stupid little whispers affected
me?
I’m not that weak, son. Not after what I’ve been through. I let you think you’d influenced me only because I wanted to see what you would do. I wanted to know what kind of son I have. Now I know. You’re no better than Rosin. You want to control me to what you consider righteous. And when you can’t bend me to your will, you’d have me kill myself for being what I truly am, what you won’t allow
yourself
to be.”

She stood over him, a chill in her colorless eyes that had nothing to do with her usual raging madness.

“I survived Rosin,” she said softly. “I’ll survive this. Oh, I won’t kill you. I won’t break the Law. Go on your way, little boy, and I’ll go on mine. I don’t need you, and neither does Arason; you wouldn’t be up to the responsibility after all. Better that you never go there. Better that your father never finds out what a failure you’ve turned out to be.”

She began to turn her back on him, then paused and swung around to look him in the eye.

“But before I go,” she said, “you’re going to learn something from me that you’ll never learn from those friends of yours. Something your precious Deiq is far too afraid to show you. I’m going to give you a glimpse of who you really are; of what you really are, and of what
freedom
ought to mean to you.”

“Oh, gods—” he said involuntarily. “Don’t—”

“There are no gods, little boy,” she said, her eyes darkening rapidly. “There never were any gods. There’s only ever been the ha’reye—and us.”

A heartbeat later, the world around him went sharply away, swallowed up into the solid black of her eyes.

Tank rode through the token gate at the eastern edge of Bright Bay well after dark without challenge: the single, sleepy guard perched on a stool by the road barely glanced up as he passed. But the easternmost of the Seventeen Gates, not surprisingly, had been shut for the night, and the guards there were wide awake and less than helpful.

“I’ve a message for Deiq of Stass,” Tank said, dismounting so as to stand at an even level with their stares. “For Lord Alyea. I’m bound for the Peysimun residence. Urgent.”

They looked at him sideways, taking in the sweat, dirt, and exhausted horse. “Can’t wait for morning?” the tallest asked, skeptical.

“No,”
he said. “Send a messenger to tell them I’m here. Tell them I’ve a message from Idisio.
Urgent.
I’ll wait. Just
tell them.”

“You’re not a News-Rider,” the man said slowly, pondering. “They’ve got rights to go through any time of day or night. But you—”

“Send the damn messenger!”

“I’d be more inclined to help if you showed any couth at all,” the man said stiffly.

“I’d be more mannerly if
you
showed any wits,” Tank retorted.

They glared at one another.

“I’ll send a runner,” the tall guard said at last. “But I’ll warn you—if he comes back with word that you’re not welcome, you’ll find yourself in a cell for the night as a reminder to cool your temper when speaking to your betters.”

Tank managed—just—to refrain from observing that he didn’t see where the guard was in any way his
better.
“Send the runner,” he said instead. “I’ll wait.”

Shaking his head as though he’d heard or guessed at the unspoken bit, the tall man motioned to his companion and said, “Go wake one of the runners.”

Tank stood beside his horse, ignoring the dark glares the tall guard kept aiming at him. His entire body ached; the nap in Obein and Kybeach hadn’t done much against his overriding exhaustion.

At last, a messenger sprinted toward them.

“Let him through,” he panted. “Hurry, Lord Eredion said, let him through. I’ll take him back.”

Tank hauled himself back onto his weary horse, pulled the messenger up behind him, and left the damnfool gate guards behind as quickly as Sin could manage.

The streets stretched too long, too dark, and far, far too quiet. The clack of Sin’s hooves echoed. The few people moving about cast disapproving glares as he went by. Once, a patrol of white-garbed guards moved into his path; the messenger leaned around Tank and waved something that fluttered in Tank’s peripheral vision. The guards stepped aside.

The Seventeen Gates made a vast circle, and the streets inside the majestic fence echoed that form. After that observation, details and time alike blurred into an incomprehensible mass of movement and pressure.

“Hey,” the messenger said out of the haze, and delivered a sharp prod to Tank’s ribs. “Don’t go pitching off on me, we’re coming to the Peysimun gates. Wake up!”

Tank shook his head and forced the world back into its proper shape and size as they rode through a set of tall black metal gates and across a wide courtyard.

A fountain splashed, nearly invisible in the torchlit darkness, and the scent of jasmine and night-blooming roses drifted through the air.

“Ride over there. That’s it, stop here.” The messenger slid off the gelding before it had even stopped moving. Tank followed more slowly.

“Up there,” the messenger said, taking the reins. “See, he’s waiting for you, that man there on the steps. That’s Lord Eredion.”

One look warned Tank to go more rather than less formal: while Lord Eredion’s clothes were rumpled as though he’d been sleeping in them, still the cut and material were finer than anything Venepe had sold, and the man’s broad, dark face—and title—spoke of southern nobility.

“My lord,” Tank said, “Lif—Idisio sent me.”

Lord Eredion’s face tightened: confirmation that the name meant something to him.

“Idisio,” Tank repeated, knees weak with relief, then fought to remember what he had to say to this elegantly dressed man. “He’s in Sandsplit. With his mother.”

Another deepening of the fine lines etched into Lord Eredion’s stern face.

Words ran past his control and turned to babble. The world began to spin around him. He drew in a sharp breath and forced himself steady.

“She’s going to hurt him,” he said, trying for clarity. “I know she is—” and exhaustion turned his words into a meaningless slurry in his own ears. He hauled himself silent, not at all sure what he’d just said.

His legs—and his consciousness—gave way underneath him a moment later.