Path of Revenge (60 page)

‘“Tormented for the rest of time” about sums it up,’ she said wearily. ‘I found myself linked to him in strange ways. I could sense his nearness, his moods, and when he suffered pain. Phemanderac, on occasion I still can.’

His eyes widened at this, but he made no comment.

‘I do remember what he said to me when I awoke. He and I, he claimed, were the only ones in the world with the gifts of Fire and Water. The Water of Eternal Life comes exclusively from the fountain in Dona Mihst. I can only have received the Water from him, from his blood. It makes sense.’

‘Indeed it does,’ he replied, sighing. ‘Let us follow the chain, so there can be no doubt. The Most High set the fountain in the Vale and told the First Men not to drink from it. A thousand years later Kannwar, later named the Destroyer, challenges the ban and drinks from the
fountain. The Most High drives everyone from the Vale save the few who resisted Kannwar. He tells the First Men something of his purpose, saying: “Do you not know that the very air of the Vale is laden with the spray of the fountain I set amongst you?” He explains the spray has preserved the First Men, granting them lives far longer than those who live in the outside world.

‘Now, here is the truth I am reluctant to share with you, but share it I must. “Your bodies cannot yet contain the undiluted Water of Life,” the Most High told the First Men. Symarthia and Hauthius both speculate on the meaning of the word
yet.
The Most High might have been using the fountain to condition the First Men. Perhaps in the future they might have been able to bear it. The Most High had a purpose for the First Men, interrupted by Kannwar’s rebellion.’

Stella nodded. ‘I own—owned—a copy of the
Domaz Skreud.
What you say conforms to my own thinking.’

‘Ah, then nothing I am saying is new to you. Good. The implication of the
Domaz Skreud
is that humans cannot bear immortality, not now, not yet. As the Destroyer himself showed. The Most High cursed him, saying: “He will be tormented for the rest of time by the power in his body, a power he cannot control, a power that will destroy his spirit and his soul and his mind while preserving his body forever.” This has been confirmed by what you say of yourself and of the Destroyer. I am so sorry, Stella.’

‘But I have begun to bear it,’ Stella said. ‘It is now more an ache than an agony. And my scars have healed over the years. Remember when I returned from his thrall, how I could not uncurl my right hand? Apart from some stiffness, it now works nearly as well as my left. Might even the aches and stiffness disappear in time?’

‘Alas, I will not be with you to see the truth or otherwise of that possibility.’

His words reminded her how sick he’d been. How close to death. ‘I will leave you to sleep now,’ she said. ‘But I have been travelling for months because I wanted to talk with you about these things. Might we resume when you are rested?’

‘I am an old man,’ he said. ‘It is well known that old men do not need sleep. However, perhaps it would be good to think for a time about what we have discussed.’

He waved farewell to her, then beckoned her closer.

‘Stella, I was sorry to hear of your loss,’ he said.

‘
Our
loss,’ she corrected.

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘Everyone’s loss. I set out to visit him one last time, you know. But when I heard he had died, I began to worry about you. I thought perhaps you might find the political situation difficult to manoeuvre through, as it proved. I’m only sorry I didn’t leave earlier.’

‘So am I, but who could have predicted he would die so soon? I am glad you are here now.’

‘As am I,’ he said. ‘Fenacia tells me I would have died if your travelling companion had not intervened. Where is he? I would like to thank him.’

‘I don’t know. I will send him to you when he is found.’

‘Then we will talk more,’ he said. ‘Of yourself, and of our memories of Leith.’

‘Yes,’ she said, and left him to rest.

That afternoon Stella found herself caught up in other duties, including a discussion about what road the travellers should take. Robal argued that, as the main reason for travelling to Dhauria was now here with them, they should join with the camel train and head back west. Stella offered her opinion that Phemanderac would likely order the train to return
to Dhauria. ‘Now that Leith is dead and I am deposed,’ she said, ‘there is little to draw him to Instruere.’

‘Might he be able to help you reclaim the Falthan throne?’ the guardsman asked her.

‘That throne is gone forever,’ she replied. ‘In any case, as I’m sure I have said, Leith never intended it to outlast him.’

That night Robal took her aside and asked if she had seen anything of Heredrew. Only then did she remember her promise to Phemanderac.

‘I know nothing more than you,’ she said testily. ‘Less, in fact, as I was unconscious at the time.’

‘And I was asleep. I am sorry, Stella, but I do not understand what the fellow stood to gain from befriending us, using sorcerous power to heal a man he’d never met, then leaving without stealing anything or killing anyone. Makes no sense to me. It’s got my guardsman’s nose twitching, it has.’

Stella had not been able to spare much time to consider the mystery. ‘Since you show such interest in the man,’ she said, ‘I charge you to search out any information about him. Review with Kilfor and his father all your dealings with him. I must confess to feeling anger towards Heredrew. What he did, even if done in ignorance and given the good cause to which he applied my strength, is not easily forgiven. And, having drawn on me, he will now be somewhat aware of my—differences. Perhaps that frightened him away. Perhaps he guessed who I am.’

Robal asked her a few more questions, then left to pursue the matter with his friends.

Stella was not able to rejoin Phemanderac until the next afternoon, after the scholar had made the expected decision to turn back to Dhauria.

The wind had abated enough for most of the sand carpet to be left undisturbed, so the journey was easier
in that one respect. But the sun did not stint in its efforts to drink them dry.

Stella settled in beside the scholar as he sat in the back of his covered wagon.

‘We were talking about the pain of immortality,’ she prompted him.

‘I hadn’t forgotten,’ he said. ‘I have been thinking about what you said. Your gradual recovery lends credence to Hauthius’s “Dosage” theory of immortality.’

‘There are theories? How many?’

‘Three, in fact,’ Phemanderac said. ‘Shall I list them?’

Stella smiled: the young Phemanderac would have disgorged every detail with little regard for the interest level of his audience. ‘Please,’ she said.

‘First is Symarthia’s “Indestructibility” theory. It is first because it is the earliest; Symarthia lived only a few hundred years after the rebellion. She maintained that the Destroyer simply cannot be killed, using as evidence the words of the Most High: “He who drank of the fountain will surely now never die.” But we cannot tell from the text whether this prediction is an inevitable result of the Water of Life or merely a reflection of the Most High’s knowledge of the future.’

Stella told him of her experiments with starving, then described in more detail what the Lord of Fear had done to her in attempting to claim eternal life for himself.

‘Hmmm. So your body is certainly more resistant to injury. Wounds heal more quickly, yet you can suffer gross trauma. To me this suggests you are not indestructible. Forgive me, Stella, but if I were to bind and burn you, then scatter your ashes to the world’s four corners, how could your body, let alone your mind, retain any sense of immortality?’

She smiled. ‘Let us hope it does not come to that.’

His eyes narrowed for a moment, then he continued. ‘So Hauthius’s critique of Symarthia might well be correct. He would be pleased to know that, the old rascal. His own “Dosage” theory is the second major treatise on immortality. He took the position that the Water of Life was an entirely natural phenomenon, albeit a rare one, unaffected by magic. Given the fountain put out a steady supply of water, it was possible for anyone who partook directly of it, in defiance of the Most High, to take any amount they chose. Following me?’

Stella nodded. The camel train, followed by Robal and the others, wound its way along a well-used trail between huge black mounds of rock. She tried to let her understanding follow Phemanderac’s words in similar fashion.

‘So, Hauthius argued, the man who took a larger quantity of the water would be more greatly affected than one who took a little. This is supported by the words of the Most High, who said that everyone living in the Vale drank indirectly of the fountain, as its spray spread through the air. Your tale of damage and gradual healing offers further confirmation. You did not drink of the source, instead receiving your dose, as it were, via a second-hand source. Therefore it follows that you might—
might,
I say—have received a lesser infection. One which your body may be fighting. Perhaps you will overcome it one day, and your blood will return to normal.’

Her eyes wide open, she searched the scholar’s face. ‘Oh, Phemanderac, is it even possible?’

‘I don’t know, but it is at least cause for hope. And you do look older than you did when you were infected. Perhaps eventually you will grow old and follow the path of all men. Just more slowly than the rest of us.’

‘And the third theory? Does it offer even more hope?’

‘Perhaps. It is Phemanderac’s “Theory of Limited Immortality”.’ He coughed modestly. ‘An outgrowth from Hauthius’s work, actually. I argue that the soul or spirit of an immortal person may die, while the body lives on. It suggests immortality of the body only, you see. The immortal may choose to lay down her own life, letting it dry out like a desert stream, but life cannot be taken away from her. One’s spirit will eventually weary of life, so in practice no one will live forever, even if Symarthia is correct and their body is indestructible.’

‘So, if you are right, I will one day succumb to weariness? Lie down and somehow stop living?’

‘Fragile and of doubtful comfort, I’ll admit; and not amenable to your evidence. Still, there is hope that your condition may not be permanent.’

With that dubious thought reverberating in her brain, another day ended.

Over the next few days Stella and Phemanderac debated every angle of the subject. Robal came and joined them, crowding the undersized wagon, but the queen and the philosopher welcomed his common-sense views. Of Conal there was no sign, even though Stella sent for him, asking him to join their discussions.

Robal, in fact, offered the most hopeful and disturbing thought.

‘Phemanderac,’ he asked early one red morning, after they had been on the trail only a short time, ‘does the Destroyer have any children? An heir, perhaps?’

‘Children?’ The lean man scratched at his chin with arthritic fingers. ‘No, none we know of, though it would prove difficult to track all possibilities.’

‘What I mean is, would the Destroyer have taken lovers if he knew he might infect them with the immortality disease?’

Stella could not follow Robal’s thinking, but Phemanderac’s mouth made a wide ‘O’ of astonishment. ‘You are suggesting a possible lack of immortal wives or heirs as proof that the Water of Life is not transmitted sexually?’

‘Exactly. The man’s been around for two thousand years, he must have built up a head of steam, if you know what I mean. Apologies, Stella.’

His expression asked her permission to carry on. She motioned him to continue.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m guessing that immortality is a deal harder to transfer from one person to another than we have all been thinking. How long did the Destroyer work on Stella before she was healed of the injuries he gave her?’

She put a finger to her lip, worrying at a piece of loose skin. ‘A few weeks, maybe a month. But he turned to his blood as a last resort. At least, that’s what I have always assumed.’

‘But how do you know? What if even blood-to-blood transfer is difficult? What if it took him repeated attempts? Maybe it was days or even weeks before you caught the cure, such as it was. Isn’t it possible?’

Something Stella had long thought dead began to smoulder in her breast.
If Robal is right…

‘I thought you employed no philosophers in Instruere,’ Phemanderac said, his face split by a wide smile. ‘This man is a clear thinker. He serves you well!’

‘Sometimes I can’t think at all,’ Robal said, clearly pleased by the compliment. ‘But I lay awake last night working through the puzzle. Take the lack of immortals in Bhrudwo to compete with the Destroyer for power and add it to the likely difficulty of
transferring immortality even through blood, and I think the danger of anyone catching the curse from either immortal is very small. Meaning…’ He smiled gently at Stella.

‘Meaning,’ said Stella, her face draining of blood, ‘that I have spent the last seventy years in bondage to unnecessary fear. Meaning Leith died without…And I—oh, Robal!’ And she turned to him and beat him on the chest with her fists.

‘I know you meant it as a gift,’ she sobbed as the guardsman held her wrists. ‘But you have just made a desert of my virtue.’

A desert indeed: a meaningless aridity, a self-imposed wasteland she had stumbled through all her adult life. Her only reward, if reward it had been, was a developing pride in her strength of self-denial. To watch others enjoying all the seasons of life had been a cruel torture, but one she had believed was necessary. A necessity in which she had involved her faithful Leith. To whom she could now offer no apology.

Phemanderac cleared his throat. ‘I must remind you both that this line of thinking—call it “Robal’s Theory of Transference” for now—has several unproven arguments,’ he said. ‘I can think of at least two alternative explanations for the Destroyer’s lack of offspring. Three, actually. First, he might be above such things. It is not uncommon in Dhauria for leaders to turn their desires to energy they then use in the service of their fellows. Perhaps we are unusual in this.’ Phemanderac spoke quickly, unlike his normal measured tones, as though chasing his ideas out of his head. ‘This means immortality still may be transmitted by…such contact. We cannot be sure. Second, the Destroyer may have insisted his partners ensure that they did not conceive. He may even have had them sterilised. Third, there might indeed be an army of
immortals, or just a few, for all we know. Unlikely, yes, but I’m not sure anyone from Dhauria has thought to search.’