Glimmer in the Maelstrom: Shadow Through Time 3 (26 page)

‘Physical evidence?’ Talis asked, angry with Kert for seducing the young princess, although he himself had been Khatrene’s lover and her Champion at the same time. In his defence, however, Talis had loved his charge deeply and wanted nothing more than to be her husband. Clearly this was not the case with Kert, and Talis felt his opportunistic actions were a stain on the honour of all Champions.

Kert chose not to answer Talis’s unspoken challenge and merely continued, ‘Yet I know also that Glimmer feels nothing for any other living being.’

‘Not even her own mother?’ Talis asked incredulously.

Kert merely gazed at him, then poured them both a goblet of wine. ‘Tell me about my king.’

V
andal landed on hard-baked open ground. His ears echoed with the crashing sound of the way between the worlds closing — like an overloud .wav file from a cheap computer game. He rolled up to his feet, not sure what to expect, and then swayed. Weak. Trembling. His heart was pounding and he couldn’t slow his breathing down. He swallowed twice and tried to salvage some control, but the image of Petra lying dead in his arms kept slamming into his consciousness.

He blinked to clear his blurry vision. Thin brown mist drifted around him and a salt tang hung in the air. In the distance he could see something large and black rising out of the ground, and now that his ears had stopped ringing he could hear a rhythmic sound. Waves?

Glimmer had promised to send him to Ennae, and this certainly matched the landscape he’d been told about. But the reality of standing on another world, his second today, was unnerving. The brown sky was lower than he was used to, the air thicker. The whole effect was claustrophobic, but as the image of Petra slammed into his mind again, he remembered he wasn’t here for the scenery. He was here to commit murder.

He staggered towards the dark shape, and the closer he came, the more the mist thinned. At last he had a clear view of a black stone structure with a needle of crystal-sharp mirror soaring up out of it into the sky.

No question that he was on Ennae.

He came closer and saw that the structure was a castle overhanging a brown sea. Tall towers, like fingers, pointed up — a body like a gnarled fist. Ugly. Frightening. Undoubtedly Castle Be’uccdha.

Home of The Dark.

Vandal faltered in his advance and then stopped. He’d heard the stories about Djahr of Be’uccdha and had no desire to meet the man who was responsible for killing a king. Only … Glimmer had said Lae was installed as The Dark. That must mean her father was dead.

He turned around and looked back into the mist, disoriented for a moment, remembering that Djahr had eaten the babies of his enemies and dressed his bride in their skin — atrocities beyond Vandal’s imagination. If Lae was as bloodthirsty as her father, was Vandal getting in over his head?

Petra. Bludgeoned to death with a shovel.

He turned back to the castle. It didn’t matter what happened to him. It only mattered that his father suffered for what he had done.

Vandal set off again, forcing his mind to prepare, to plan, and as he did so, the first problem presented itself. He had no weapons. But Vandal didn’t let that daunt him. He was young, strong. If he could get Lae alone, he could strangle her. And if they were stuck in company he would simply have to find a knife and stab her.

Or … he could push Lae from the castle wall and watch her smash onto the rocks below. He’d killed that way before. Pushing.

The memory resurfaced like a dream, his mother striking her head, the shocking sound heard over the pounding of blood in his brain. Horrible. More so because it had been necessary. His mother had needed to die. It would have been kinder if she’d died when Pagan left, before her mind had started to rot. Before she’d started to drink.

Vandal had done her a favour really. She was better off dead.

Whether Lae was better off dead was of no consequence. Petra was dead and Lae was going to follow her.

Steal her from Pagan first. If he loves her, take that love. That way you hurt your father twice.
Glimmer was as cold as she’d always been, but the deaths he had left behind on Magoria had washed away his animosity towards her. In its place there was nothing except faint surprise that her advice had been devious as well. Had she learnt that from Sh’hale? No matter, the plan satisfied Vandal’s hunger to inflict damage and he knew his mother would approve. Jealousy had driven her mad. She’d be thrilled to see Pagan suffer as she had.

Vandal’s legs were tiring and he almost stopped, then he wondered whether his current weakness could be used to his advantage. If Lae thought him vulnerable, he might be able to get close to her. Close enough to trick her into falling in love with him?

Glimmer was right. A quick death was too good for the woman who had stolen his father. Let her be deceived the same way his mother had been — by false love. Vandal smiled grimly as he imagined his father’s violent jealousy. It would be as nothing compared to the hot vengeance that burnt inside Vandal.

But still the voice of reason said he should perform a self-healing. He swayed to a stop and then sat on the hard ground, noticing for the first time that his clothing was changed. His jeans and T-shirt had been replaced by thickly woven brown pants and a padded jacket. Brown boots. As he looked down, strands of hair much longer than his own shoulder-length locks fell forward over his face. He took some between his fingers, pulled, and felt his scalp move. Real hair. Had Glimmer done this to help him fit in?

Did it matter?

He had a rite to perform. But the dirt at his sides was solid. Cracked dried mud. He’d never be able to get handfuls of it, so instead he tried spreading his palms on top of it. ‘Ancient powers find under my hand the sacred element of this land.’ A shock of current jolted through his mind, much stronger than anything he’d ever experienced in a healing, but Vandal was so intent on getting into the castle, he felt no fear. ‘This earth that gives Ennae its hue, restore me to the strength I knew.’ The current poured through his veins like lava and his heart gave one mighty heave before settling into a new rhythm. He barely allowed it time to beat twice before he stood, his limbs as steady as oak.

Restored. Completely. He’d never known such strength in his body. Had Glimmer given him extra power? Or was he tapping into something on Ennae?

‘Ho there! Announce yourself!’

Two black warriors were advancing on him, still a hundred metres away. Had they seen him coming and emerged from the castle to investigate? Vandal felt rage and grief slam into his chest again. Their dark skin was the heritage of their house — Be’uccdha. The name of his enemy. They were underlings of the woman he would kill. But though his hands trembled to begin his vengeance, he knew he must wait.

‘I am the Guardian Pagan’s son!’ he called back, hoping that would allow him entry to their mistress. ‘I come to meet The Dark.’

They stopped two paces away from him and Vandal kept his hands open at his sides. He had no weapon in any case, but he didn’t want them to suspect him of violence. It would be a waste of effort if he was killed before he had begun.

‘You certainly have the aspect of your father,’ one said. ‘Except for your strange colouring.’ He pointed at Vandal’s lips. Pink.

‘My mother was Magorian,’ he explained. ‘I take it my father didn’t tell anyone he had a son?’ Vandal wondered how Lae would react to this disclosure. With disgust, he hoped.

‘It is known that he championed The Catalyst in Magoria. But he did not instruct us to expect a son.’

‘I’m here now,’ Vandal said, returning the inspection. watching the guard’s lips and looking into his mouth as he spoke, confirming that, like his father, there was no pink on them. Ennae. Sepia world. Even the people were brown.

A part of him knew he should feel wonder at this, to know that he was walking on the soil of an alien world and that he finally had proof that the Brown Kingdom stories his father had told him were true. But whenever his thoughts strayed from his purpose, the image of Petra lying dead in his arms slammed into his consciousness, obliterating everything but revenge from his mind. The drumbeat of blood pounding in his temples reminded him that he would kill, and likely be killed himself. He wasn’t here to sightsee.

But he did need information, so he continued to inspect the guards, from their thick, wiry dreadlocks down to their black woven boots, noting daggers and swords in between. Both heavily armed.

‘So am I in?’ he asked. ‘Or do I stand here all day?’

The lead guard’s eyes narrowed. ‘We value thoroughness over speed.’

‘Good for you, but I’m tired,’ Vandal lied. He’d never had more energy flowing through his body. ‘I’ve just come from Magoria. It’s a tough trip.’

The guard who had been watching him closely seemed to decide against wariness then, and said, ‘Welcome to Be’uccdha, Guardian Son. You may enter and be refreshed.’ He stepped back and gestured for Vandal to precede him to the castle. ‘We will inform The Dark and your father of your arrival.’

‘Just The Dark,’ Vandal said. The guard hesitated, so he added, ‘I want to surprise my father.’

He received no argument, and after allowing himself to be searched they were on their way, the sinister castle looming above them as they cleared the salty mists. One guard led him to The Dark’s reception room while the other hastened to find their lady and tell her of this unexpected arrival.

Being inside Castle Be’uccdha exacerbated the pounding in Vandal’s head. It was like the set of a lavish horror movie, its dark corridors lit by flickering wall candles, and from the moment the creaking iron gate shut behind him, the castle seemed to devour him, sucking him into its depths.

There were armed guards at certain closed doors. Other doors were open, and inside these rooms Vandal glimpsed tapestries and ornately carved furniture, medieval-looking and creepy. Occasionally they would pass an opened window and salt air would blow in Vandal’s face. Outside was a caramel sky and below that a latte ocean. Alien. Totally alien. And oppressive. His nerves were stretched tight, and even the bright glitter of burnished bronze tableware felt threatening.

‘Wait here for The Dark,’ the guard said, holding open a door. Vandal stepped through into another candlelit room, this one with low couches and a cosy fireplace in the corner.

He made straight for the fire. The door shut behind him and he took a deep, slow breath. He was being left alone. Good. The next hour would be important. If he wanted to lay the seeds of deception that would turn Lae against his father, he’d need a clear head. Somehow he must quieten the pounding violence that drove him and mould it into careful action.

His breathing was agitated and his muscles tense. He needed another self-healing ritual to bring calm and focus. Sharp memories filled his mind and hurt his head: the slow-motion horror of his mother falling down the stairs; an earlier memory of his father carrying him on his shoulders in the kitchen, sun streaming in the window, his mother laughing at their antics; then the slam of Petra’s death — the smell of the freshly turned soil and dried blood. It was overloading him. He had to escape from himself.

Vandal took another look around the quiet room then stretched out on one of the couches, sure in the knowledge that the slightest noise would wake him. Lae could arrive at any minute and he planned to be only be a breath away from consciousness, and his first encounter with the woman he intended to kill.

K
ai of the Northmen woke in fear, the quiet breathless terror that stills the heart and accentuates the hearing, as though searching for a sound outside of sleep that might have caused the nightmare.

Nothing.

His body remained still, but Kai’s wide eyes searched the room from the thick bed drapes at his side to the glowing embers in the fireplace, scanning each table and chair, every rug and tapestry, even the door that led to the hall where he knew a guard was posted. Nothing was out of place. Nothing new. Nothing gone.

A dream. It was only a dream.
Yet it had felt so real. Kai had been in a strange bedchamber, looking down on the slumbering White, descendant of the Ancients, Mihale. The young king had been naked, flanked by twins, identical girls no older than himself, whose idle hands lay on his pale body as though to pleasure it even in sleep.

A mighty storm had raged outside the room. Water from the sky mixed in with a fierce wind that moaned against the pale sandstone walls. And though he had not seen them in his dream, Kai had known there were guards outside the King’s room. Should the slumbering regent awake, Kai would be dead.

Yet this was not the fear that had awoken Kai in terror. He had been comfortable gazing down at Mihale, knowing he could kill him at any moment. In his dream Kai held a sacrificial dagger in his hand, its blade sharpened so it could cut the wind and its hilt adorned with the many jewels to be found in the Northern Mountains his people called home.

His purpose in the dream had been to kill the King, even though Kraal had told him that he no longer needed The White dead to return, and that he would do so as
the enemy within.

After that night Kai had fearfully anticipated an immediate return, yet there had been no sign of Kraal. Days had turned into weeks and Kai had grown complacent, thinking his God must be busied elsewhere, or perhaps that the Maelstrom had trapped him forever on his own world.

Until the dream …

He shuddered and threw back the covers, wondering whether the weight of their warmth had overheated him, giving him fever dreams. Indeed, his chamber was hot and he went to the windows and drew back the heavy coverings, letting the first rays of sunlight bleed in. The sour smell of his own body, covered in the sweat of fear, sickened him, and he unlatched the window and threw it wide, breathing deeply of the cool mountain air.

This altitude was far less than that of his homelands, but to Kai it was a vast improvement on the pungent fruit odour around Verdan, the dry dust of the Plains or the cloying brine of Be’uccdha Castle which overlooked the Everlasting Ocean. Fortress Sh’hale lay on the border of the Echo Mountains and was as close a match to his homeland as he had found in the Southlands. But it was not home. And at moments like this he sympathised with those of his people who longed to return to the north.

But sympathy was not stupidity. Kai would not let them go. The sky-mirror protected them here. The Catalyst had told him that. While his people remained at Fortress Sh’hale, they could not be destroyed by the Maelstrom. When the end came and the four elemental worlds collapsed, The Catalyst would use her power to save those at the anchors from destruction. She would create a new world for them out of the wreckage of the old, and past enmities would be forgotten so the survivors could live in peace.

It was an awesome task, made more challenging by Kraal’s obvious determination to infiltrate the new world. Yet strangely, Kai did not question Glimmer’s ability to succeed. She was The Catalyst. And though he must serve Kraal’s will or die, Kai’s heart was easily swayed by her memory. Thinking of her now, his head fell forward to rest on the window casement, his gaze unfocused on the early morning mist that blanketed the fortress and the Plains beyond and drifted in to cling to his dark skin like the sucking leaves of the fabled Forest of Desire.

So beautiful. He remembered her glittering hair, like strands of the finest ice falling from her wide forehead; the way her black gown had hugged her scant curves. She had been taller than the women of the north. Taller than Kai himself who stood among the tallest of his men. And her eyes …

Kai closed his own, remembering the strange hue, mark of the Ancients that were her ancestors.
Green
she had called it when he’d asked. Green eyes. Full of command, of will, and of determination. It was her single-mindedness that had attracted him most — her complete disregard for anything outside her purpose. That, and her beauty.

Memory of her now was like the essence of attraction, distilled from so many reviews, stirring him to passion despite the touch of the cool morning air. Familiar dreams played themselves out in his mind: The Catalyst returning to mate with him, the power of her possession, the deliberation she would place on their every pleasurable moment, and Kai winning her to wife with his brute strength and impressive proportions.

He reached down to touch himself then, to add sensation to his vision, and within mere seconds he had released the tension that her presence in his mind inevitably brought. In the aftermath of that shuddering pleasure, he realised his tremblings were shivers of cold and he closed the window and went back to his bed. Its warmth and comfort was like nothing Kai had known before he came to the Southlands.

The Northmen shelters were boulder and moss on a dirt floor. Their lumpy bound-grass beds no match for the fine hair mattress Kai now slept on. And sheets … His were changed daily, as was the custom of the Sh’hale lord before him, and though maintaining the luxuries of this fortress kept the women far busier than they need be, Kai had ordered it done. His people were used to hard work. It kept them from too much unprofitable thought. Thus he kept the men occupied with the construction of a monument to Kraal, a tubular accompaniment to the sky-mirror that encircled it in elegantly carved stone as far as the ceiling of the Sh’hale great hall. This also protected the mirror from any of his people who might be either curious or stupid enough to try and touch it.

It vibrated with a power that might easily kill, and Kai felt superstitious awe that it did not reflect anything but the people who stood before it — no steps behind them, no bundles at their feet, only what they wore and held in their hands. It was unnatural, magical. He wanted it out of his sight. And the structure would soon be completed, or perhaps already was. His memory was not what it had been. He couldn’t recall from day to day which devotion they should be making: the song of Kraal, the prayers for Kraal, the ritual abasement, the hour of silence.

These observations of ritual were required, but beyond that Kai tried not to think of his God. Yet Kraal invaded his very dreams. The nightmare he had woken from, that of the young king lying with twin girls, was just such a torment.

In this dream, Kai had raised a dagger to drive it into Mihale’s pale chest which was adorned with the memory stone of the Plainsman, the talisman Kraal had coveted. Kai couldn’t remember if his purpose had been to steal the talisman, but in the moment before his strike, the King’s eyes had opened and they had not been royal
green
eyes but the volcanic black of the Serpent God himself. They had stared into Kai’s and the dagger had fallen from his hand and thudded harmlessly onto the rug at his feet.

‘My servant,’ the King had said, and then he had known.

The enemy within.

Kai shuddered in the soft sheets and knew sleep would not return this day. Again he threw back the covers, but this time he pulled on a loincloth and strode out of his chambers, down the empty corridors to the kitchens where he kicked awake a serving child and ordered the fire restarted. Minutes later he had a soothing mug of hot kitori in his hands and was walking towards the outer battlements when a clattering from deep within the fortress caused him to change direction. The stones around him were silent. Apart from a few sentries, his people still slumbered. Yet the closer he drew to the great hall, the more furious the sounds of destruction became. The Maelstrom was sleeping outside. Had the anchor somehow drawn it into the fortress?

Kai strode into the huge chamber with two sentries close behind him. A blast of air closed the door behind them with a resounding crash. The kitori fell from Kai’s hands as his sentries shrank back against the door.

‘I am your God
,’ the creature said. ‘
Teleqkraal, the progeny you helped beget.
’

‘The … egg,’ Kai said faintly when he found his voice.

‘
The same. My pre-birth memories tell me you served my father and he formed a bond with you. I want the talisman and you will help me get it.
’ He raised his long-jawed mouth and opened it, releasing a stream of fire that curved around Kai to flow behind him. Guttural screams rose and were abruptly cut off.

Kai nodded, his horror overshadowed by the familiarity of unquestioning obedience. What matter that it was the son he now served? His alternative was instant death. The same choice Kraal had given him. ‘I saw your father in a dream. He had the talisman.’

‘
Your connection to him is strong. I knew you would prove helpful. Where is he?
’

‘At the royal Volcastle. To the east.’ Kai raised a trembling arm and pointed.

The serpent turned, his scales glittering with otherworld hues, his extended wings like thick gossamer, catching the unearthly light reflected off the sky-mirror he had uncovered when he had destroyed Kai’s monument. ‘
Then we travel to the Volcastle
,’ the serpent said. ‘
But first I must eat. Bring me your kinsmen. Children. Babies.
’ The serpent turned back, flicking its tail at the last of the stones Kai’s men had so laboriously carved, smashing them away from the mirror. ‘
My dinner on Atheyre was interrupted by the arrival of The Catalyst. When I have the talisman I will repay that vexation tenfold. But first I must eat and grow strong.
’

Kai looked up into the serpent’s eyes and saw no intelligent curiosity such as Kraal had displayed. Only cold, unforgiving relentlessness. He was suddenly glad that he was not the one who had vexed Kraal’s son. Although surely it would not be long before he did, inadvertently or otherwise.

Kai suspected he should simply die then, before he was responsible for any more atrocities. If the serpent ate the last of his people after that, at least he would feel no guilt. But between that knowledge and the act of offering himself for death, courage was required, and that was not within Kai. Instead he said simply, ‘I will call for the children.’