Path of Revenge (54 page)

‘But surely—’

‘Enough! We are about to reach the river. I have hired a boat to take us to the southern side, from where we will travel by cart into the steppes of Austrau. The boatman must hear nothing of our true identities. We can carry on the debate once we reach the southern shore, should there be anything sensible left to say.’

A tight-lipped glare reinforced the guardsman’s words, and Conal had the good sense, or at least enough of an instinct for self-preservation, to remain silent.

Rain began to fall from a leaden sky as they were rowed across the grey Aleinus River. The boatman was a chatterbox, a cheerful, long-faced man enamoured of his own voice, and spoke to them of the Falthan War and the action his grandfather had seen at Aleinus Gates and parts further east. The three of them endured his wildly inaccurate tales, thankful that the self-absorbed monologue ensured the man asked them no awkward questions.

After an hour Conal found himself marvelling at the man’s stamina: he rowed a heavy boat across the
current without seeming to draw breath. The rain fell in sheets, muting the occasional clap of thunder and forcing Conal to help bail rainwater. Finally the man ran the boat aground on the muddy southern shore and assisted his passengers out, talking all the while.

‘So my granda, he said the biggest battle was by Skull Rock, not at Vulture’s Craw like the historians and the travelling players say. Reckoned had we lost at The Gap, there wouldn’t have been enough army to resist the Destroyer at Vulture’s Craw. Likely blessed Hal’s sacrifice would have been meaningless. My granda fought with the Strauxmen at Skull Rock, but with the Fodhram at Vulture’s Craw. Better chance of survival, see? And you’ll have a better chance at survival, and protecting her majesty there, if you stay away from them greycloaks. Fare you well, then, and I’ll be thankin’ you for my payment. You can trust me, you can, not to say nothing to nobody.’

Robal paused halfway through counting out the coin, as though his brain had finally caught up with the man’s words. His head jerked up.

‘Some of us,’ the boatman said with a deliberateness lacking in his earlier speech, ‘have longer memories than others.’

The two men stared at each other, then Robal nodded.

Stella, whose attention had been engaged in collecting and distributing their supplies, came over. ‘Is all well?’ she asked.

‘Yes, it is,’ Robal said, and shook the boatman’s hand. ‘Fare well, friend, and with all good fortune.’

‘And you, sir,’ came the response.

‘Would either of you care to explain that?’ Stella asked as they climbed up the southern bank.

‘No,’ said Robal and Conal together; they looked at each other in surprise, and both laughed.

The conversation turned the next day to the subject of death and punishment, prompted by Robal’s question of the day before. The last of the coin Conal had appropriated had purchased a donkey and a small covered trap, and the three of them huddled together out of the thickly falling rain as Robal guided the stolid donkey down puddle-lined paths.

‘Best way to break a drought,’ the guardsman said morosely.

‘What’s that?’ Conal asked, picking at the strapping that held his broken arm to his chest.

‘Plan some long-distance travel.’

‘Ah yes. I remember a storm—’ He clamped his mouth shut, thinking better of mentioning anything about his previous travels.

‘Yesterday you implied that the Destroyer cannot be punished for his evil,’ Stella said to Robal. ‘Does your argument depend on the assumption that death is the only punishment he deserves, or merely the worst that can be given?’

‘Ah, you have thought about this,’ the guardsman said carefully. ‘I’ve had my mind filled with the back ways of this land. It’s been a while since I travelled in this part of Austrau.’

‘Then let me answer,’ Stella continued. ‘I can think of many worse things than death. To be left alive when everyone you know and love passes on would be worse than death to me. Who knows what the Destroyer fears most? The loss of his power, perhaps. Or to be shown proof that his two-thousand-year rebellion was not justified. Whomever wishes to punish a powerful man must first find out what he fears.’

‘I would not fear being immortal,’ Conal said. ‘I cannot see what is to be feared about outliving one’s friends.’

Robal muttered something; Conal could guess what it was. ‘I have more friends than you might think,’ he said haughtily. ‘And to carry their memories into the next generation, and the next, and the next: would that not confer on them, through me, another kind of immortality?’

Robal snorted. ‘I’ve heard that argument spoken at funerals. But what does it matter to a dead man how long he is remembered? Death, priest, is the end. Present company excepted, of course,’ he said hastily.

‘Why except me?’ Stella said, eyebrows raised. ‘My problem is not that I return from death, but that I cannot seem to die. And don’t think I haven’t tried.’

‘Oh.’ Robal was clearly taken aback by this news.

‘
Is
death the end?’ Conal said, warming to the subject. This discussion was like those he had shared with other trainee priests. ‘You might just as well ask whether birth was the beginning. There is no answer from behind the blank walls either side of us. But the scrolls talk of worlds beyond the walls of time. Many of those who lived in Dona Mihst before the time of the Destroyer did not die, but were translated to be with the Most High.’

‘I’d heard that the words in question were added to later versions of the
Domaz Skreud,
’ Stella said. ‘The idea of translation was not found in the earliest writings of the First Men.’

Conal felt his eyes widening. He should not be surprised she knew this, yet she had caught him off guard again. ‘Ah, yes, some do say that. I’ve not seen the scrolls first-hand, not that the originals exist now, anyway; short of journeying to Dhauria, it is not a judgment I could make. Still, death must surely bring more than oblivion.’

‘No more than the day is a brief awakening between two nights of sleep.’ Robal was proving an able debater, possessing a keener mind than Conal had
suspected. ‘We look for stories that it is otherwise: wishful thinking promoted by old women at the bedsides of their husbands and children. I have looked into the faces of dying men and watched the light of life go out. It is like a flame extinguished. There is no candle lit anew somewhere else. It frightens me.’

‘But with some people the soul eventually dies, leaving the shell alive but uninhabited. Isn’t there evidence of this among the living?’ Conal used his neighbour as an example, describing how she had withdrawn into herself, becoming a drooling wreck looked after by her husband. ‘If the soul can die and leave the body, cannot the body die and leave the soul?’

Stella nodded. ‘A good argument, priest.’

The guardsman cleared his throat. ‘What evidence do you have to justify your belief in a soul? Son, I’ve seen men suffer head wounds in battle. Damage to the brain always affects what you would call the soul. Good men change into something else. They become irritable, violent, sometimes murderous. If the soul is separate from the body, how can that happen?’

An image of old Thessana flashed through Conal’s mind. One of the most acclaimed Halite scholars, he had collapsed in his room one day after complaining of a headache. The stroke wiped away all traces of the wise, urbane scholar, an exemplar to them all, leaving a man who died cursing and raving, his mind gone. In fairness he told Robal and Stella the story, eliciting nods from both.

‘And we’ve all seen a more recent example of someone suffering a head wound,’ Stella said. ‘Though the damage could hardly have made him a worse person.’

‘But if we truly believed death was not the end,’ Robal pressed, ‘we would not fight so hard to stay alive. I say we know what death really means, but we
try to avoid the knowledge. I am content to sleep at the end of a day well spent, and so shall I be content to die at the conclusion of a life of value.’

‘Really?’ Stella asked him, her face softening.

The guardsman swallowed. ‘No,’ he said thickly. ‘But it gives me comfort if I don’t think about it too deeply.’

‘How else do you comfort yourself?’ she asked.

‘Mind tricks. I tell myself that fearing death is futile. If I am alive, death is held at bay. If I am dead, I can no longer fear it. Why worry about what I cannot change?’ He grimaced. ‘Doesn’t stop me worrying.’

‘No offence intended, Stella,’ Conal ventured, prompted by a voice in his head, ‘but given that you are immortal, how can you really understand the debate?’

Robal turned his head sharply, and Stella frowned for a moment. The guardsman made ready to speak, but she forestalled him.

‘Don’t make the mistake of confusing the gift of immortality conferred on the living with the hope of the soul’s continuance after death,’ she said, an edge of warning in her voice. ‘Just because I am hard to kill doesn’t mean I’m not afraid of dying.’

Conal acknowledged the point with a nod.

Stella leaned towards him. ‘You really believe that to live forever would be a blessing, don’t you,’ she said.

‘Yes, I do.’ Conal had thought about this. ‘You have a duty to share your gift with the world. Think what an advantage we would have over the godless, the Bhrudwans and the
losian,
the rejected of the Most High who live in Faltha. With your blood, the First Men would live and the
losian
would die. They would not be able to assail us. The Koinobia could distribute your gift. You would be the hero of Faltha, the centre of the eighth scroll. Would that not be a vision worthy of achieving?’

Stella’s glorious face had darkened to anger with his words, a terrible threat written there.

‘I spoke not to offend,’ Conal said, unsure what he had said to invite her anger.

‘Then you did not speak carefully enough, priest. Let me tell you something about immortality. We are some way short of this point in my story, but I see that unless you learn now you will not hear anything I say in future.

‘The Destroyer took me for his consort, yes, it is true. He drew me through the Blue Fire, a sorcerous device that transported me across the world in an instant. I was an unwilling captive, duped by Deorc, his representative in Instruere. I cannot describe the terror the Destroyer inspires. His voice is able to strip a person bare, cleaving mind from body, leaving one exposed to his scrutiny. He is an expert at using torture and pain, and the fear of pain, to achieve his ends. He breaks everyone he meets. Priest, the reason I am immortal is that I defied him. He could not break me any other way.’

She closed her eyes, remembering. ‘When the armies of Faltha and Bhrudwo closed for the first time at The Gap, I was at his side. He sought to display me, to use me to undermine the confidence of the Falthan army. Instead of cowering before him as he wished, I spat in his face. I would do it again. He struck me with his fist, breaking my head—the scars remain—and doing me grievous injury. I lost consciousness and only regained it weeks later.

‘Immediately I felt different—I can barely remember what it was to feel as I did before he struck me. My skin burned and agonising pain ran through my veins. I was partially crippled all down one side. Eventually I learned that I had nearly died, and he had kept me alive only by infecting me with his own curse. I never asked him how he achieved it—I assume, I
hope
it was through the transfer of blood. He never referred to it again.

‘I doubt I could convince you of the effect of all the years of pain. Have you known anyone who has died of a wasting disease? That is what it was like for me. The pain has eased only gradually over the decades, though perhaps I have grown accustomed to it. I would not have thought it possible. Everything I do is done through a haze, a barrier of hurt, which separates me from the world. Everlasting pain, Conal: is that something you wish to experience? Or to share with Faltha?’

The priest licked his lips. ‘Ask me again on my deathbed. Perhaps it will be more attractive then.’ An odd, disconnected part of him seemed pleased to hear she suffered. He flushed with embarrassment, as though she could read his thoughts.

She continued. ‘I have had years to think about this. Dear Leith’s death made it all the more immediate. Don’t you think he knew? Yet he chose to reject the gift. These were his words the only time we discussed the matter: “Immortality is useful only if it continues a desirable state. I do not desire to prolong my life for the sort of price you pay daily.” I tell you honestly, the best thing of all would be for me not to have been born. Second-best would have been to die young, before events caught up with me. It follows that the absolute worst outcome for me is to live with this pain and fear forever. I am…’ She broke. ‘I am no longer human.’

Suddenly her body was taken by deep sobs, an anguish so intense Conal felt he was intruding on her nakedness. In an instant Robal had his arms around her. He flicked his eyes at Conal, indicating that he should take the donkey’s reins.

‘Death would be a release for me,’ she said, sobs still hiccoughing between her words. ‘I was terrified when the
Maghdi Dasht
took his knife to me, but I was so
deeply glad I could finally lay down my many layers of pain and defeat.’ Her smile was a mask. ‘The priest rescued me; it seems the Most High has not finished with me yet. He knows I want…I just want to sleep. One night without pain. If I never wake up again, so much the better.’

After that, there was nothing either man could say. Conal was not adept at social interaction, and he knew any offer of comfort, any attempt at empathy, would come across the wrong way somehow.

Yet the idea of immortality would not let him go. Yes, there were limits, he could see that now. The idea of never-ending pain did not appeal to him, but neither did the idea of never-ending darkness. And the days of godly men being translated to be with the Most High forever had ended with the Destroyer’s rebellion, curse him. But perhaps a truly courageous man, one with a vision for Faltha, might overcome the limitations.