Path of Revenge (56 page)

‘My fiancée will be pleased to hear it,’ Kilfor replied.

‘His fiancée!’ Sauxa exclaimed. ‘Travels around half of Faltha, does my boy, squeezing the rumps of the most beautiful women in the world, and he comes back here to marry a Chardzou. Can you believe that?’

‘An Austapan, Papa, not a Chardzou. I’m not that inbred.’

‘Oh, an Austapan. Horseradish is no sweeter than beetroot, boy.’

Robal choked on his drink, and Stella had to pat him vigorously on his back before he could take another breath. ‘His own wife was an Austapan,’ the
guardsman said. ‘Sweetest woman you would ever meet.’

‘What happened to her?’

‘Snake bite. Went down to the river—not this one, somewhere west of here—just as she had hundreds of times before, and stepped in a nest. Sauxa found her, cold and dead. He went and lived in Ehrenmal for a while after that, but the grasslands called him home.’

‘I was driven out of the city by a mob of jealous husbands,’ said the old man flatly. ‘If you can’t tell the story right, don’t tell it at all.’

The evening drifted to a close, the simoom having abated, leaving them snug and warm in the strange tent. Conal felt a gentle contentment wrap itself around his heart. What would it be like to be part of a family such as this?

He lay awake long into the night, unable to answer his question.

STELLA AWOKE TO A BRIGHT morning and crushing pain. Outside, diffuse sunlight illuminated the open space where they had talked the previous evening, and a finger reached the rug on which she rested. No doubt the sun would have woken her had the pain not done so.

Her headache was severe; her eyes burned with it. She squeezed her lids closed, which served only to intensify the agony. Tears dripped down her cheeks, disappearing into the soft weave of her sleeping rug.

It hadn’t been this bad for years. How had she put up with it, day after grinding day? A strange hollowness in her mind nagged at her like a missing tooth. It reminded her of something. She pursued the memory, clouded by pain and a rising fear: it reminded her of the months she had spent in the Destroyer’s camp, when he drew on her strength with his magic. All those years ago, yet the memory remained fresh. He had set a hook in her, enabling him to draw on her at will, dampening her own volition, using her up as he fought the Falthans in the pursuit of his mindless revenge against the Most High. Every time he drew from her, the result was a painful emptiness that lasted for hours, sometimes days, accompanied by physical weakness.

Yet he had been merciful to her, after a fashion. She had been his unwilling accomplice in his headlong flight from Instruere amidst the ruin of his plans, after his defeat by Hal. He had retained barely enough sorcery to draw from his Lords of Fear, and with that strength had used them up one after the other, emptying them completely and discarding them as they made their escape over the city wall and across the river to safety. Yet he had never drawn on her so completely.

And now someone had drawn from her during the night. It was the only explanation for how she felt this morning. Then a more embarrassing possibility came to mind. The cognac Kilfor had shared with them had been near enough to raw spirit.
But I consumed only enough to be polite. Surely this is not a hangover?

Stella grimaced at her own foolishness. She had still not shaken off the dread from her encounter with the Lord of Fear at Vindicare; no wonder she had allowed herself to be so easily frightened. And it had been years since she had last indulged in alcohol, though it didn’t normally affect her so profoundly, and she couldn’t remember having had more than a few sips last night.
Of course you don’t. The more you drink, the less you remember.

The tent spun around her and the light fractured into a thousand dagger-like prisms as she pushed herself into a sitting position. After a few minutes’ panting the pain softened into an ache. It wasn’t hard to imagine Kilfor brewing that ghastly liquor, his father at his shoulder offering genial and completely inappropriate advice.
You’ll need more snake venom, boy, if you want it to have a kick. None of that Instruian stuff, mind. If it don’t scald the skin off your throat it’s nothing but lolly-water.
Stella found herself repressing a giggle, afraid to shake her head.

As the hollow thumping in her ears settled into the
background, she began to hear voices coming from outside the tent.

‘…settle down here, or in one of the other communities. It would be the best thing for her.’ Stella struggled to place the speaker.

‘For you, maybe. But you’ve never lived like a king.’ Definitely Robal, his tone defensive.

‘And how can she live like a…like a queen now?’ The first voice was Kilfor’s. ‘She must make herself as ordinary as is possible if she’s to survive.’

‘Come to the right place, then,’ said Sauxa.

‘No one could call you ordinary, you old buffoon. She has to accept some change, at least until people have forgotten about her.’

‘That will take some time,’ Robal said.

‘But what I don’t understand is how she can look as…well, as young as she does. How long ago was the Falthan War? Forty years? She must have been twenty at the end of the war. That makes her…what? Sixty years old. She looks half that age.’

‘Don’t know how you can tell, boy. I don’t think you looked at her
face
once the entire evening.’

‘I have no doubt all women look impossibly young to you, old man.’

‘Seventy years, actually, since the Falthan War ended,’ Conal said, his cultured tones cutting across the banter as though it wasn’t there. ‘If the records are correct, Stella Pellwen is in her eighty-eighth year.’

Sauxa grunted, a distinctive sound. ‘Something not right about that. I know all that fancy living preserves a body, but this girl you’ve brought to my tent could pass for my granddaughter. If I had a granddaughter.’

Stella could recognise a significant pause when she heard it. She barely had the energy to raise any anger at the fact that these men would discuss her affairs amongst themselves.

‘I thought it was common knowledge that she made a deal with the Destroyer,’ Kilfor said. ‘Magical powers in exchange for the betrayal of her friends. Looks like immortality might be one of the benefits.’

Stella gritted her teeth and staggered to the opening. When the world righted, she found herself staring down at the four men sitting at the points of a deep red rectangular rug. Conal was in the middle of saying something that sounded even more pompous than usual. All four heads turned towards her.

She opened her mouth to speak, and her stomach, still some distance behind events, finally rebelled. Her gorge rose and she barely managed to turn away before vomiting onto the grass.

I’m sorry,
she tried to say, but the words were overwhelmed by a rising darkness. Her legs folded underneath her, she landed with a
huff
on the rug amidst the men, and the spinning world faded away.

‘You are ill. Argue all you want, but you are not moving until we are satisfied you are well again.’

Stella stared at her loyal guardsman, trying to assemble his blurred features into some sort of pattern. ‘I’m not ill,’ she said. ‘What is wrong with your ears? It’s a hangover. I’ve had hangovers before, Robal.’

‘This is no hangover.’

‘Then what is it? The Chardzan physic could find nothing wrong.’

‘You muttered about poison while you were feverish. We all drank Kilfor’s elixir and you were the only one to react like this.’ The guardsman lowered his voice and leaned over her, his mouth near her ear. ‘Did the priest come anywhere near your drink? Do you think he might have slipped something in your cup?’

‘No!’ Stella said sharply, pushing him away. ‘Robal, you had better overcome your dislike for Conal, otherwise harm will come of it. He’s had plenty of
opportunity to attempt to kill me, including once when, according to your testimony, all he had to do was
fail
to risk his life. And now he knows my so-called secret, why would he think poison would kill me anyway? Come, Robal, you are better than this. I got drunk and now I’m suffering for it. Nothing more sinister than that.’

The guardsman shook his head. ‘I would have said you consumed less than any of us.’

‘As if that makes any difference. I’ve seen habitual drunkards throw back tankards of ale with little outward effect, and others fall prey to a glass of wine. Something in the brew didn’t agree with me; I’m getting better, and it’s time to move on.’

‘There is another kind of sickness women can suffer from…’

It took a moment for the meaning of his hesitant words to sink in. ‘Are you trying to say that Conal and I—that we…well, are you?’

‘You and the priest?’ Robal laughed. ‘Hardly! No, I was thinking, ah…’ He swallowed, obviously reluctant to voice his thoughts, picking his words with care. ‘I was thinking of the Lord of Fear, actually, or one of his sons. We don’t know how long they held you before we…before the priest came to your rescue. Is it possible? Were you conscious at all times? Might one of them have attempted to acquire immortality…ah, another way?’

Stella shuddered, remembering her fear when the
Maghdi Dasht
approached her with his knife. ‘No,’ she said. ‘He was intent on my blood, nothing else, thanks be to the Most High. I have nothing else of worth to the likes of him.’

‘You are a prize, you know,’ the guardsman said, his eyes unfocused. ‘Clever, wise, beautiful, inheritor of an empire, possessed of immortality; if any man should lie with you…’

He flinched, as though realising he had spoken aloud; looked at her for a moment; then coloured, a raw redness rising from his neck to swamp his stricken face.

‘Oh, my lady, I…I am a fool with nothing to offer save a brain too easily detachable from my mouth. Please forgive me.’ His body hunched slightly, as if expecting a blow, but he did not turn away from her.

A deep pain flooded through Stella, an agony totally unrelated to her illness. An agony of despair. Such a worthy man.

‘My dear, I don’t know what to say to you. Surely you have worked it out already? I don’t know whether I would infect others with my curse by lying with them. With Leith…’ She choked back tears. ‘Leith died; shouldn’t that have told you something? When we were young, before we fully understood all that immortality meant, Leith might have…but I loved him too much to take the risk. He understood; he remained faithful to the wreck he took as his wife. I heard the gossip. I knew that serving maids and highborn women alike offered themselves to him. They always used the same line, how he needed to have an heir. None of them understood that Faltha doesn’t need a king, not in the long run. Leith saw himself as filling in until the Sixteen Kingdoms pulled themselves together after the war. The Falthan kings wouldn’t have tolerated a dynasty in Instruere, we both knew that. So he turned them down—sometimes in my hearing, the brazen things. We would laugh about it, but it wounded me afresh every time.’

She forced herself to look up into the guardsman’s expressive, hurt-filled eyes.

‘King Leith, he never touched you?’ Robal whispered, obviously appalled for her. ‘You have remained…are still…’

‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘I have nothing to offer any good man. No empire, no wealth or dowry apart from a few polished stones, an intelligence marred by cynicism and anger, and such beauty as I have doomed to remain a reminder to any husband of his own mortality. An illusive, untouchable beauty, unsoftened by intimacy. Dear Robal, turn your thoughts towards someone worthy of you.’

Brave words, but her heart bled.
So yet again am I punished. Oh, Most High, why do you hate me so?

Conal approached them, a plate of stew in his hands. ‘My…Stella, Sauxa says you should try to eat.’ He glanced at her face and that of the guardsman. ‘Has he been upsetting you, my lady?’

‘Yes,’ Robal said, just as she said, ‘No.’

‘It is no business of yours,’ Robal growled.

‘Very well,’ said the priest, clearly offended. He placed the plate by her rug; the aroma was tempting.

‘My thanks to you, and to Sauxa,’ she said. ‘I will attempt it in a moment. Now, tell me: when will we be ready to leave? And no nonsense about remaining here forever.’

The priest cast an anxious glace at Robal, who returned it with a flat stare that fell just short of an outright threat.

‘Stella, the others consider you too unwell to travel.’

‘I heard what they think before I was taken ill,’ she responded, raising her voice so everyone in the tent could hear. ‘Unfortunately, the men did not think to include me in the discussion. Therefore I see no need to include them in my decision.’

‘Which is?’ Conal asked eagerly.

Stella looked more closely at him, trying to ascertain the source of his excitement. Had he overheard the conversation between herself and Robal? Surely he couldn’t think that he…No, it must
be excitement about resuming the journey. Stella knew the priest would not want to remain in this remote place, far from his scrolls and his books. So where did he want to be?

Wherever the subject of his life’s work happens to be, that is where.
The knowledge discomfited her as much now as it had when he first explained it to her.

‘I’m going east,’ she said to them both. ‘East, to find some answers about myself. Come with me or not; it is your choice.’

‘How far east?’ they both asked together.

‘I am going to pay my old friend Phemanderac of Dhauria a visit,’ she said, not knowing she had decided this until the words left her mouth, but recognising their rightness as they did. ‘If he doesn’t have the answers I need, only one other place remains.’

Robal’s features fell at her words; but, interestingly, a smile appeared on the priest’s face. As though he knew exactly where she meant to go, and approved. Something within her began to cry a warning; or, perhaps, the cry had finally become audible.

The priest is not to be trusted.

Revulsion swept through Robal at her words.
How could she?
Nothing here was as it seemed. Stella had revealed far more than she suspected: not only did he know where her final destination was—if he was honest, he had guessed it some time ago—he now knew why she wished to travel there. Hers was a sad plight, desperately sad; he had indeed failed to think through the implications of her immortality. He loved her all the more for thinking of others, for not simply indulging her own appetites despite the awful consequences, especially when the likely outcome would end her own uniqueness. Instead, the despicable torture of the Destroyer and her own
morality had condemned her to a lonely existence, isolation beyond his ability to imagine.