Dark Heart (16 page)

She had a feeling she knew who it would be.

The gatekeepers had clearly decided that restraining one of their number was enough. Robal offered to exchange places with his queen, but the children simply shook their heads at his suggestion.

‘This clan has two thousand years’ experience of keeping the gate,’ the ancient Dhaurian scholar replied to his persistent questioning. ‘We must respect their judgment, even if we disagree with it—or are shamed by it.’

So of course the fool priest voiced his own objections, after the fact and with no regard for what Phemanderac had just told them. Robal sighed. It had been such a mistake to accept this man into their company. He’d been tempted to knock him on the head and leave him in the desert. Did the idiot think no one noticed the cow’s-eyes he made at Stella? The guard clenched his fists in anger. The man sullied his queen every time he gazed hotly in her direction.

He snapped his own gaze away from Stella and cast an eye over the city around them. The streets were all cobbled, though deep grooves had been worn in the stones on the most frequented routes. This place was ancient; how many times must the cobbles have been replaced?

Yes, it was old, but there was no sign of decrepitude. Most roofs were constructed from bright red tiles. The houses were made of undressed stone and had whitewashed walls, quite different from the painted or naturally weathered walls of Falthan cities. But none of these things fully explained the sense of difference he felt walking along the streets of Dhauria.

He kept his eyes open wide, sweeping left and right in case of sudden danger. He noticed movement in the windows of one house: a child stared at the procession passing by for a moment, then disappeared.
Ah, that is what it is.
He wondered why it had taken him so long to notice.

‘Your majesty,’ he said quietly, leaning towards Stella as he spoke, ‘where is everybody? There aren’t enough people out in the streets.’

People in pale robes of various descriptions walked briskly past them on undisclosed errands, but there were no knots of citizens discussing this or selling that or arguing about something else. They had now been walking for some time and he had yet to see a market. And, most peculiar of all, only three children. One at the window, one who led them up a winding road, and one who had remained at the gate.

Robal wondered if the Dhaurians made no distinction between adults and children because there were so few children.
That sort of thing can happen when a people do not mix with outsiders. Their blood goes stale, and children are much harder to kindle.

‘Phemanderac, sir,’ he ventured, ‘are the people at a meeting?’

‘What?’ The man’s rheumy eyes struggled to focus. Clearly he had been thinking about something else. ‘No, I would imagine everyone is engaged in their duties. It is near mealtime, you know, and food preparation and cooking is a family task. There are not many people left on the street.’

The group turned a corner and began to climb a winding street. A main thoroughfare, if the depth of ruts in the cobbles was any guide. A few people hurried past, but to Robal’s mind still nowhere near the number he would have expected for a city of this size. Fewer, in fact, than frequented the streets of Instruere in the quietest hours of a night watch.

‘You say the people here are of one house and are organised into clans,’ Kilfor said. ‘We have clans on the Falthan plains. Are you familiar with our system? Does Dhauria work like Chardzou and the other wandering towns of Austrau?’

‘You know, boy, someone ought to board up your mouth,’ his father commented dryly. ‘How can a town of brick and tile wander like tented Chardzou? I despair of you. I should have adopted a snake as my heir, like your mother told me to. Plenty of clever snakes on the plains.’

‘What was that noise?’ Kilfor responded in mock anger, without turning his head towards his father. ‘Did the plains wind follow us across the desert, or has a camel just broken wind?’ He shrugged his shoulders in a what-am-I-to-do fashion. ‘I believe our host knows what I mean.’

‘Indeed he does,’ Sauxa countered. ‘He knows you want him to tell you that those who dwell in Chardzou are the purest of Falthan men, following as they do the example of the Dhaurians. Thus you can boast of your own culture.’

‘Pretty good, old man. But no, that’s what
you
want to know, in order somehow to justify a life wasted in the behind of beyond. I, on the other hand, am merely curious.’

‘Do these two always—’

‘Always, Phemanderac,’ Robal said. ‘Should a serpent of old scoop them up in its mouth, they’ll be arguing about the length of its fangs as they slither down its gut. There’s no stopping them.’

‘Ah. Then I’ll explain the place of clans in Dhaurian society as we walk, and perhaps the two men would be so good as to resume their argument when I run out of breath. This road gets steeper every time I climb it.’

Stella offered him the trap, but he refused. ‘I need to feel my feet on these cobbles,’ he said, then laughed. ‘Actually, I need to be seen. People need to know I am home again.’

The old scholar began to tell them about the clans, and Robal gradually stopped listening. He didn’t really care about the four great houses of men who came north from Jangela with the Most High, nor how they were divided into minor houses, then further into clans, each of which was allocated a responsibility. He let the words wash over him and focused instead on the few people walking by. The men were mostly tall, at least as tall as himself, and Robal was accounted large by Instruian standards. A surprising number of them had grey hair, although none looked ancient like Phemanderac—no, wait, there were two men approaching who were both using sticks to support themselves. They raised their sticks to greet Phemanderac, but did not enquire after the outsiders, though they could not have failed to notice the bonds between Stella and the little girl.

Robal wondered how old people grew here. There seemed an agelessness about the place, as though the city and the people living in it had been here forever.
And still virtually no children in sight,
he thought. Something about that wasn’t right, but no one else seemed to be worried about it.

The sun had long gone, but a faint glow still allowed Stella to see the lodgings they had been allocated. Before he had left for his own home, Phemanderac had explained that there were no inns or public accommodation in the city—indeed, it was a concept foreign to the Dhaurians. If you needed to stay, you lodged with a member of your clan. Outsiders stayed with the clan responsible for the gate through which they had been admitted.

The house they were guided to looked no different than any other: small, rectangular, single storey, with a tiled roof. Inside, despite an absence of furniture, there seemed not enough room for their party; two rooms and a washroom would surely not provide them all with sleeping quarters. How were they to be distributed?

As the five outsiders stood wearily in the unfurnished room, no doubt wondering much the same as Stella, men and women came through the door. They carried mattresses and pallets and, with an economy of movement, set up sleeping quarters. Four pallets in the larger room, two in the smaller.

Two?
For a moment Stella had forgotten the girl bound to her arm.
Of course, two.

Three men entered, bearing what were obviously heavy burdens wrapped in layers of cloth. They turned out to be stones, which were placed in the hearth.

One of the men approached them. ‘We have provided for you, as agreed by the binding of arms. Food will follow shortly.’ The language was the Falthan common tongue, but spoken in a stilted fashion, with as much warmth in the words as someone organising the removal of refuse from a kitchen.

‘Firestones,’ he said, following Stella’s glance at the hearth. ‘You do not use firestones?’ At her headshake he explained how they retained heat, and needed only to be fired twice a day. ‘We will attend to it,’ he said.

The man’s long face, so like Phemanderac’s in shape but so unlike in expression, bore a look of faint distaste.
He probably thinks he is being polite.

Stella kept her thoughts to herself as their hosts returned with what she had to admit was ample fare: vegetable soup, warm bread and a selection of cold meats.
Cold,
she thought.
Everything about these people seems so cold. How was Phemanderac born from such as these?
And another thought:
Were these people not the ones who had once received the Fire of the Most High?
If she understood anything from the curse in her own blood, it was akin to the Fire of Life. So how did it not warm these people?

‘Friendly lot,’ Robal murmured as the Dhaurians left the room.

Conal snorted. ‘You would receive less in Instruere unless you had plenty of coin to pay for it.’

‘In case you had forgotten,’ Stella said quietly, her face reddening, ‘we still have company.’

Beside her the girl smiled, then reached her left hand towards a platter of meat, as though she hadn’t heard.
Well, she is only a child. She might not pick up the nuances of our conversation.

Really, though, Stella knew she could tell little about what these strange people might know. If they trusted young children with guarding their gates, what might such a child be capable of?

These thoughts still occupied her the next morning as she and Ena dressed. Someone had laid out a robe in the Dhaurian style: full-length, white, of wonderfully fine material sturdier than silk but just as cool. Perfect for the warm day ahead. Ena allowed Stella to slip off their binding cloth while she put the robe on, then submitted to being re-bound.

Stella would rather the binding had been left off while they performed their ablutions. A series of necessary tasks made awkward and unpleasant due to the binding, and Stella found herself embarrassed as a stranger—a young, curious stranger—dispassionately observed her bodily functions.

‘You cried out in the night,’ said the girl, her voice sleep-laden and endearingly childish. ‘Who is Leith?’

‘Oh,’ Stella said; and, before she could stop herself, put her knuckles in her mouth.
Who’s being childish now?
she asked herself, and cursed inwardly as a tear leaked from her left eye and trickled down her cheek.

The girl just stared at her, her face a gentle enquiry, as though watching a weeping woman was a commonplace thing.

Stella put down the soft cloth she had been using to dry her face. ‘He was my husband,’ she said. ‘He died not long ago.’

Ena bit her lip, as though caught in an indiscretion. ‘I am sorry for making you cry. My mother always says it is sad when someone dies young. Especially if they have not long been wedded.’

‘He wasn’t—’

He wasn’t young, Stella was about to say, but thought better of it. Too much to explain: how Leith had died of old age, yet she herself still appeared little older than a youth. Too many questions would follow. The girl didn’t need to know.

‘Did I keep you awake?’ she asked instead.

‘I’ve never slept away from my house before,’ said Ena. ‘Sinan said it would be exciting, but I was scared. The sounds are different upslope.’

‘Different?’ Stella asked, drawn into the girl’s small world despite herself. ‘Why, where do you live?’

‘Downslope, close to the Mist Gate. I sometimes come upslope to play with Phyna, but I’ve never been allowed to stay overnight.’

‘Ena, are all your family gatekeepers?’

Ena put down the twig she was using to clean her teeth. ‘The gate clans are responsible for all aspects of Dhaurian defence,’ she said, obviously repeating words she’d heard her parents say many times. ‘My mother is the sister-daughter of the clan leader, and is important, so we have been given the Mist Gate to guard.’

‘Has there ever been an attempt to invade Dhauria?’

‘No! The bad men don’t know we are here. My father says we don’t have what the Falthans want. But we still have to keep outsiders outside, he says. He has a big club. He’d go
whack!
to anyone trying to invade.’

‘But you let us in,’ Stella pressed.

‘Phemanderac stood for you,’ the small girl answered. ‘He is well known in Dhauria. He disobeyed by going out of the valley, but he came back and repented later, not like Kannwar. I like Phemanderac. He has a crinkly face.’

There was so much Stella wanted to ask as a result of these last comments, but Ena had clearly had enough of the conversation and tugged at her arm, drawing her in the direction of the main room, where the sound of cots being cleared away had been replaced by the smell of oatmeal porridge, or something close to it, cooking on the firestones. Someone had built a small, almost smokeless fire under the stones, and they glowed a deep red.

Stella shook her head. What sort of society would compare the wise, sensitive Phemanderac to Kannwar, he who betrayed the First Men and became the Destroyer, the Undying Man of Bhrudwo? How could Kannwar’s evil rebellion be compared to Phemanderac’s rejection of Dhauria’s cloistered halls in search of the truth?

The girl had said Phemanderac was well known, but why was he not fêted as a hero? Without his help Faltha would have been overrun by the Destroyer and his Bhrudwan horde. Did Dhauria care more for its racial purity than the fate of the world?

Stella nursed her porridge—much sweeter than she was accustomed to, but not unpleasant—and considered these things. Beside her Ena slid backwards and forwards on her seat, singing a rhyme to herself while banging her feet on a leg of the table, much like any other girl of eight years old and not the precocious child-adult she had seemed the previous day. Much of that precocity was no doubt due to her playing a part. Stella was pleased she felt comfortable enough to abandon it.

On the opposite side of the table Robal and Conal ate in silence, looking rather strange in matching white robes, as though they were partners in some exotic venture. As Stella glanced in their direction, she noted there was little eating going on: the men were transfixed by an argument that Kilfor and his father, Sauxa, had been working on since early this morning, if the content was anything to go by.