Glimmer in the Maelstrom: Shadow Through Time 3 (38 page)

N
oola needed Mooraz, and she hated that dependency. A Plainsman’s only needs should be food and water. To need a person was to put your life into their hands, allowing them any liberty with your emotions.

‘Look at me,’ he said from behind her, but Noola steadfastly refused to turn.

She remained staring at their canopied bed, her arms crossed. The musty sheets and carved timber framework had felt decadent and exciting when they had first claimed this suite. Now she longed for the open Plains, the wind in her face and a light shelter strapped to her back. Possessions were poison and she was sure the luxury of Fortress Sh’hale had tainted her soul.

‘I will not leave you,’ Mooraz said. ‘I have given my pledge. And I do not ask this for myself, but for the tribe. The Catalyst and her party are leaving for Be’uccdha and we can go with them. I beg you to reconsider.’

She turned back to face him.
You are the only one who wants to go. You go with them
, she signed and pointed at the door.
I release you from your
‘
pledge
’.

Mooraz waited, his gaze fixed on her eyes, as though he would wait forever.

She slapped her hands across each other.
Go!

He shook his head.

A knock on the door. ‘Now, Be’uccdha.’ Kert of Sh’hale. Noola hated the very air he breathed. His House had taken delight in persecuting her people. But now he was allied with Talis who was her friend. So much of their lives had changed. Once she had hated those of Be’uccdha. But though she still feared his kinsmen, she had come to love Mooraz whose skin was as black as any of that House.

Love. Why didn’t it make her decisions easier?

‘Now, Noola,’ Mooraz said patiently.

She shook her head.

‘I want us to live,’ he said.

She stared at him resolutely, knowing she could not bend. The future of the tribe depended on her. Despite Talis’s reassurances, she knew they would not be safe at Be’uccdha. The Dark’s men had been trained to exterminate Plainsmen. They would not welcome them and share their food. Her tribe would be slaughtered and Pagan would kill Mooraz.

His assertion that Fortress Sh’hale would be destroyed before Castle Be’uccdha did not ring true for Noola either. Here her people were safe. She would not move them into danger simply because Mooraz wanted to return to his beloved Lady Lae!

The door banged open. ‘They are ready for you,’ Raggat said to Mooraz, bitterness in his voice. ‘You must hurry now to abandon us.’

‘Get out,’ Mooraz said, but kept his attention on Noola. The door slammed shut.

I am the leader
, she signed, her hands trembling.
I say the Plainsmen stay.

‘Then I will stay with you,’ he said, but even as the words left his mouth Noola knew his decision would lead him to resentment. If she forced him to stay with her when he so clearly longed to return to Be’uccdha, whatever caring there was between them would be destroyed. Noola had lost Breehan and Hanjeel through no fault of her own. She would not be responsible for losing Mooraz’s affection, even if it meant never seeing him again.

I don’t want you to stay
, she signed before she could change her mind, and was surprised at how calmly her mind was working. It reminded her of Magaru’s prophecy. Mooraz would abandon them.

Because Noola would order him out.

‘I don’t understand.’

You are not one of us
, she signed slowly, so he would not miss her intent.
You have never been one of us. I no longer want to lie with you. You are of no further use to me.
Her lips trembled now, along with her hands, and for once in her life Noola was glad that she could not speak, that he could not hear the pain in her voice.

‘I don’t believe you.’

She shrugged, a jerking movement.
Go to someone who wants you. Your Lady Lae.

Mooraz shook his head but Noola had seen the flare of emotion in his eyes. It was true. He loved Lae, and now Noola was sure he had always loved Lae. Even when he had been joining with her, when she had been falling in love with him, Mooraz had been thinking of his lady.

We will not share food with you
, she signed.
If you want to eat, you will have to go with them.
She nodded towards the door.

Mooraz was nodding too. ‘Very well.’ His face was closed, just as it had been when he had first become their prisoner. Noola felt as though she was looking at another man.

She slapped her palms against each other again and turned her back on him.

‘If you cast me out, I will go,’ he said.

Noola squeezed her eyes shut and stood as still as the stone her heart had become. The door behind her opened and closed. She breathed then, trying to still the pain in her chest, to survive the feeling of suffocation that all but overwhelmed her. When the worst of it had passed, she raised her chin and glared at the bed drapes until her breathing was steady. Then, when she was sure Mooraz would be in the main hall where The Catalyst’s party was gathering, she set off for the children’s quarters to help Eef prepare the evening meal.

A practical Plainsman leader.

Two corridors from her rooms Raggat materialised at her side, but she did not look at him and he merely kept pace with her while she strode on. Noola waited for him to say something about Mooraz, an insult, or to gloat that he had been right, giving her a reason to beat him for insolence, but he said nothing.

They fed the children, pausing only when they felt a soft vibration beneath their feet. The Catalyst and her party’s departure. Noola made no comment on it and so the others continued in their tasks. When the children were fed and ready for sleep, Raggat told them a story of the Plainsmen’s courage and determination, struggling against the pogrom Be’uccdha had inflicted on them, reminding them that it was not the number of their warriors that counted, but the courage in those warriors’ hearts. Noola remembered it as a story Breehan had told them once and she marvelled at Raggat’s memory. He had indeed been destined to become their storyteller, and even now his maturity belied his age.

Eight.

The oldest male in their tribe.

Noola feared returning to her quarters, feared that the loneliness of her bed would devour her, yet she would not show these fears to her tribesmen. So she left Eef with a smile, taking a candle from the table to help guide her steps, making no comment about Raggat’s silent presence at her side. She knew she should berate him for his presumption and send him back to the children, but instead she pretended to herself that he, rather than Eef, was her Left Hand, and that it was only natural that he would escort her to her rooms.

At the door of her chambers she found she simply could not enter without acknowledging his kindness, so she turned to him and signed,
You are a valuable member of our tribe, Raggat
, touching his chest with a finger to personalise his name.
And a good storyteller.

He did not smile, but merely gazed up at her with solemn eyes and said, ‘I will not leave you.’

Noola’s hand began to tremble and she dropped the candle, then turned blindly away, into her room. She pushed the door shut behind her, but in the sudden silence she heard no footfalls disappearing into the distance. Instead, there were the small sounds of a boy settling himself onto the stone floor outside her door.

Guarding her.

Noola covered her eyes and wept.

‘N
ow here’s a dilemma for you, Father,’ Vandal said, his knife at Lae’s throat.

Pagan stood ten paces back, his attention all on his beloved, still naked and tied to a pillar in her bathing pool, deep within her suite of rooms, too far away for her cries to rouse a guard. Her smooth brown skin rested against white marble. She should have looked beautiful, but in his terror for her, Pagan thought the tableau obscene.

Vandal had smuggled her in on the pretence of lovemaking and the Guardsmen had been told to keep out. Naked and threatened with a concealed knife, Lae had been unable to do anything but obey his command to remain silent. Pagan had tried to gather help on the way in, but it was clear he was thought of as a jealous ex-suitor. No one would believe him that The Dark’s own husband threatened her, not when it had been clear to them that she loved Vandal so slavishly.

Or had, Pagan reminded himself. He could tell from the terror in her eyes that his son had not tampered with her mind. Vandal probably wanted her terrified, to add to his father’s torture.

‘If I kill her,’ Vandal went on, ‘you’ll have to decide between fighting me and reviving her. Because if you fight me you may take too long and she will be past the point where your powers can bring her back.’ He smiled. ‘Then again, if you try to revive her, you make yourself vulnerable to my sword.’

Pagan nodded, determined to stay focused, despite his fear for Lae. Body poised and mind alert for weaknesses. That had been his training. Vandal had received only a boy’s training, and though his powers were clearly formidable, he might be clumsy in their usage. Pagan could only hope. ‘I may finish you quickly,’ he told his son.

Vandal laughed, stirring the water at their feet as he took a step closer to Lae to place a possessive hand over her belly. ‘My child is within her. Does that hurt you, Father? To know that she fucked me,’ he glanced at her, ‘quite … voraciously, on many occasions,’ he looked back to his father and smiled, ‘while you were simpering with jealousy.’

‘Words cannot hurt me,’ Pagan said, his attention wholly on Vandal now, waiting for a moment’s inattention.

‘No?’ Vandal’s eyebrows rose. ‘Then perhaps action will.’ He twisted the knife at Lae’s throat and opened a vein.

She gasped, then was silent as blood spilled over her breast and down her leg to spread into the water at her feet, a dark stain floating in the white marble bath.

Pagan tried to steady his breath, to prepare himself for whatever would follow. He must act. If the bleeding could be stopped quickly, the wound would not be mortal. Yet if he tried to move in, Vandal might stab her through the heart. ‘Why do you not kill me?’ Pagan said, extending his sword in challenge. ‘If you want anguish, let her watch me be killed.’

Vandal smiled. ‘It is your anguish I desire, Father.’

‘I will not stand by and watch her be slaughtered. She will not be dead and you live.’

His son stilled, eyes betraying a sudden shift of attention, as though Pagan’s words had jolted him. ‘What did you just say?’

‘I will not let you kill my love,’ Pagan said.

Vandal frowned, as though for a moment he was swayed by his father’s plea. Then he said, ‘What about
my
love?’

Pagan shook his head. Was Vandal going to pretend love of Lae now? Precious time was wasting. ‘Let her go!’ he demanded, and took a step forward.

‘No!’ Lae gasped, her voice weak.

Vandal flipped the knife in his hand and caught it facing backwards, the tip now pointed at Lae’s breast. ‘Come at me and she dies,’ he said, drawing his sword with his other hand and extending it. ‘You choose.’

‘Please,’ Lae whispered, her stricken gaze on her beloved. ‘You must live if you would save me. I cannot revive you.’

Pagan nodded. It was sense to safeguard his own life, for in his blood lay the power to revive Lae, even from death. But to ask a warrior to stand by while his beloved was attacked … His son surely knew how such an act would eat into his soul. He must come up with another strategy. If they remained where they were, Lae would die and he would have no way to get to her. He must make his son move. ‘When your mother died,’ he said, ‘where were you?’

Vandal’s narrowed eyes flickered with an emotion Pagan could not name and he felt hope lighten his breast. Perhaps he could distract the boy after all.

‘Are you accusing me of killing her?’ his son asked.

Pagan had only planned to scorn Vandal for not reviving her. He had never imagined this. Still, he steeled his voice to anger, rather than the shock he felt. ‘I know you killed her,’ he said.

‘She fell. It was an accident.’

‘You told me it was suicide.’

‘She was drunk.’ Vandal’s hand on the dagger wavered and it nicked Lae’s skin. ‘I was angry —’

‘So you did kill her!’ Pagan took a step forward to the edge of the bathing pool. ‘You waited until I was gone so there would be no one to protect her, then you killed her.’

‘It was your fault!’ Vandal shouted, and came at his father with both sword and dagger, sloshing through the knee-deep water. ‘You killed her.’

Pagan stepped back to lure his son away from Lae whose head had fallen forward in a slump. Blood still poured from her wound. ‘You will not kill me as easily as you killed her,’ Pagan cried and parried the first sword blow as Vandal leapt over the edge of the pool.

A sound came into Pagan’s awareness then, over the sound of blood pounding in his ears. A disturbance in the air of the chamber. He saw a glittering at the periphery of his vision, to his left. This amazed him, but his son was intent on destruction. Pagan could not afford to glance away while Vandal rained blows down upon him.

‘If it wasn’t for you,’ Vandal shouted, ‘Petra would be alive. It’s your fault she’s dead!’ He smashed the sword out of Pagan’s hand and its metal hilt rang against the floor as it struck the marble. ‘You deserve to die,’ his son sobbed, throwing the dagger away to hold his sword in both hands.

Pagan dared not look away from his son’s maddened eyes, yet he was aware that the pale walls of the chamber had darkened. There was movement. People?

‘I’ve killed your whore, and now I’ll kill
you
!’ Vandal shouted and raised his sword to finish his father.

A dark blur from the left entered Pagan’s field of vision, then he saw feet connecting with his son’s shoulder, a clash of steel on stone as the boy’s sword clattered onto the floor. Then the dark-headed warrior rolled to his feet, snatching the sword which he turned on Vandal, now sprawled on the ground. ‘You will die for the life of my lady,’ he said. A voice out of Pagan’s past. A man he had thought dead.

Mooraz raised the sword to strike Vandal, and in that moment Pagan saw the stub on his other shoulder, the lack of a right arm, and he wondered who had disfigured him. Vandal lay still, making no move to protect himself. Before Pagan could consider whether he should defend his son against the man who had murdered his father, Kert Sh’hale’s fine blade drove silently into Mooraz’s back. The ex-Guard Captain was dead before his braided head struck the floor, but Kert was already moving past him towards Vandal, pausing only to flick a warning glance at Pagan. ‘The boy must live,’ he said, then set about tying him up.

The threat was ended, but it was a handful of heartbeats before Pagan’s mind registered the fact. Then his gaze rose beyond his son to the bathing pool, and he was off, vaulting its edge to dash through the water to Lae’s side. Blessing of blessings, his cousin Talis was already there, cutting her bonds. They exchanged a glance, both worried, before Talis went back to his task, Pagan supporting Lae’s body. Unmanly tears dampened Pagan’s cheeks, whether from relief or fear, he was unsure. But when Talis spoke to him he found that his mind was as thick as porridge. Fortunately he could obey, so at Talis’s direction they sat cross-legged in the pool and laid her between them in the water where her blood was spent.

As they began the Rite of Revival, Pagan, who knew he must concentrate, could not help the terror that froze his blood. Lae was dead. He’d felt that the moment he’d laid a hand on her forehead. Yet Talis’s hand resting over his own gave him reassurance.

‘Her child yet lives,’ Talis said.

Pagan nodded. He could not smile. All his attention was on Lae’s face. Her eyes were closed, and her complexion, normally a smooth dark brown, was pale with the loss of blood, her swirling right-face tattoo stark against her pallor. Her black hair floated on the bloodied water like delicate strands of sea-grass. Silent tears continued to run down Pagan’s cheeks and he knew then that they were from grief. As though Lae was gone from him forever.

Talis spoke the words of the rite and Pagan closed his eyes, drawing all the power of his Guardian blood into his mind before beginning to direct it into Lae’s still body. He had no reckoning of whether this would be enough. He only knew that they must try.

A faint gasp rose behind them, and though Pagan’s concentration was fierce, he opened his eyes. The water around Lae was thick with her blood, but before he could fear that she had shed more, he realised that the rite was recalling into her veins that which she had lost. Slowly the water surrounding them cleared and Lae’s deathly pallor faded.

‘… Thus do we give thee the life thou hath lost,’ Talis intoned. ‘With a part of our own do we barter the cost.’

Pagan felt the weakness then, as a portion of his own life passed through his palm and into Lae’s mind, reactivating her body and reanimating her vitality.

Talis withdrew his hand, but Pagan could not shift a muscle. Time felt suspended, poised, then Lae’s lips moved and he heard her draw breath.

Alive.

Her eyes opened and flickered about until they found his. ‘You live,’ she said weakly. ‘I was so afraid you would die.’

Pagan gathered her into his arms and cradled her against himself, barely noticing Talis covering her with a cloak, for his head was buried against her throat which now thankfully pulsed with the beating of her heart.

‘Is Vandal dead?’ she asked, her voice muffled and warm against his neck.

Pagan shook his head. ‘Well guarded,’ he whispered.

‘Then we are safe.’

Pagan held her more tightly then, not wanting in that moment to know how his cousin came to be with Sh’hale and Mooraz, materialising in Lae’s bathing chamber just as they were needed. Some force had directed them there, but whether that was the Great Guardian or simple destiny, he cared not. His beloved was warm and alive in his arms, and his mind, which had suffered mightily from terror, grief and jealousy, could take no more. It simply would not move past love.

‘I am here,’ she whispered, as though sensing his needs. ‘You will not lose me again.’

He held her and said nothing. It was not a time for words.