The Nemisin Star (50 page)

Saska found
voice first. “Well, that is it then, Torrullin. Together you and he
will do the worst you can.”

“Saska,”
Quilla began, sensing an exchange akin to an unfinished
conversation between the Enchanter and his wife, “we are not here
to advocate such an event, but to ensure lives are protected and
possibly even avert this calamity.”

Tristamil
sighed volubly.

“Have you not
advocated I do my worst?” Torrullin snapped at Saska, and then to
Quilla, “You realised the Throne can cause this terrible
catastrophe.” When Quilla nodded, with Lowen looking on wide-eyed,
he continued, “Our favourite Darak Or was here earlier today to
challenge me into exactly such an event. How very ironic.” To him
it was not irony; it was another piece in a great puzzle. “It was a
warning …and a gauntlet.”

The birdman
paled. “You are
not
considering it.”

“You come to
me with a similar vision and then ask that? In the end, like last
time, I shall do the worst I can. Only then can I win. Saska
understands that.”

The Lady of
Life swore.

“People will
die!” Lowen cried out.

“They will be
safe,” Torrullin answered her. “They will be in the west.”

She stared at
him. “You planned this. You knew …
you knew
.”

“Gods!” Vannis
snarled, disentangling with rough irritation from his sleeping bag.
“Tell me you are not going to do this!”

Quilla spoke
over Vannis’ fury, “There are other ways, Torrullin. Like the Three
Voices, like … like …” The birdman hoped for an easy solution. This
might be his last chance to be the voice of reason.

“What, Quilla?
A swordfight?” Torrullin laughed. “Sure, and that would work for a
short while, but he is not so foolish as to accept a mundane death.
He is headed for the ultimate show and the sweetest revenge.”
You know I require a big event.

“You can
dispatch him and then prevent him coming back. That is why you went
to Cèlaver. I assumed you were successful.” Quilla was determined.
Not like this, Enchanter.

How else,
Q’li’qa’mz?
“I was successful.”

Vannis was on
his feet. “Then why are you wrestling with this crap? Run a blade
through the idiot and be done!”

“It is a mite
more complicated than that, Vannis.”

“It always is
with you. Do you know how to prevent his return?”

“I do.” There
was another glance between father and son.

Tristamil
headed for the door. “I need air.” He jerked the door open. “Just
wait, will you, before you say more.” He strode into the cold.

Lowen’s eyes
flicked from one face to the other.

For Vannis,
premonition descended. “How is it complicated?”

Torrullin
pointedly inclined his head to the doorway.

Tristamil
slammed the door closed. “Tell them. I cannot carry this
alone.”

Torrullin
studied his son’s taut cheeks, the glittering eyes. “I will tell
them.”

Tristamil
flung into one of the chairs pushed aside to make way for the
sleeping arrangements. He glared at his hands.

“There is the
matter of actually getting Margus to die. I cannot best him at
pulses and I certainly will not get a hand on my sword. I hoped to
employ Torrke’s magic against him, but we now know that is moot.
What is left? The kind of running battle that would unsettle this
land again, killing thousands in the process? Saska offered to aid
us there, but Margus asked those niggling and necessary, very
insightful, questions, hasn’t he? He now knows acting against the
land and its people will not avail him long. He has thus thrown
down the challenge and I aim to take it up for the final move in
the game.”

“Which is?”
Vannis asked with dangerous quiet.

“Torrke is
deserted and has the buffer of mountains to protect the land
beyond. Nobody needs die, except Margus. Here, when the Throne
clashes.”

Vannis stood
as if froze. “And the valley? Gods, and you?”

Tristamil
lifted his head and replied with a kind of resignation that sent
shivers down all spines. “Father has to die also.”

“
What
?”
Vannis roared, rounding on everyone like a pugilist in the ring.
“No way!”

“Yes,”
Torrullin said. “It is the path.”

Lowen
whispered, “No, there is a future … for …”

Torrullin
twitched.

“… us,” she
finished, and only he heard her. Thank the gods, only he heard
that. They locked gazes. “You’ve seen us; you know it, too,” she
added in an even lower voice.

His lids came
down and he forced himself not to look at her again.

“You have been
planning this all along!” Vannis accused.

“Only since
Cèlaver.” Torrullin’s eyes were silver, but it had naught to do
with the revealing. It had everything to do with the presence of
Lowen, and her astute knowledge of the future. He forced calm and
gradually his natural grey returned.

Vannis was
apoplectic and gasped for breath. “So,” he managed finally. Quilla
was too shocked to speak and Quilla already knew. “Therefore you
have recognised your heir, sent virtually everyone you care about
far from you and soon now I would have been dispatched on some
fool’s errand. The Throne, Torrullin? It is not a calamity; it is
unmitigated terror on the land!”

“I had not
chosen the form of dying, until Margus handed the idea on a silver
platter this day and my son helped him hold it.”

Tristamil
sighed. “I didn’t intend it like that.” He seemed calmer; perhaps
he hoped others would dissuade his father.

Vannis
shouted, “
Why did you not tell me?
”

“Because, like
my son, you would be looking for a host I may inhabit in death,”
Torrullin said, his voice steady. “After you have flayed the skin
off me for even thinking in this manner. I do not want that. I do
not want to return after what is done to this land and its people.
I am content to return … later. Later, Vannis,
after
I have
dealt with Margus in the etheric,
after
time for anger has
passed and the time for forgiveness returns.”

Quilla found
his voice. “Enchanter … I … this is not right.”

“It is the
path.”

“He may
return, Enchanter … before you.”

“He will not
get out.”

“He could kill
your essence!” Vannis snarled.

Then there was
that silence that bespoke secrets; the loaded kind that caused all
in its embrace to know instinctively a new revealing was about to
unfold.

Vannis sank
into a nearby chair and put his face in his hands. “Tell me.”

Torrullin
found Saska, to look at her in an apologetic manner, and discovered
her stricken. Suspicions long buried were about to be booted out of
mind and truth would take their place.

Quilla spoke
the words. “The Enchanter is seven times born.”

There was a
sense of anti-climax. Vannis lifted his head. “What does that mean?
I know how many times he is reborn, idiot!”

“Not reborn -
born,” Quilla corrected. “Torrullin is immortal in
all
ways.
No fatal wound, no strike in the invisible realm and no - hear me -
lack of host can kill him.”

Saska moaned
and slumped in her chair.

Torrullin
glanced at Quilla. “Thank you for the summary.”

“Crap!” Vannis
shouted.

Moving to the
cupboard, Torrullin retrieved Taranis’ sword and handed it to
Vannis. “Through the heart.”

Vannis went
ashen. “I will not!”

“Anyone?”
Torrullin demanded. Again his eyes were silver.

Neolone Dragon
warned him he had too many advisors; not strictly true. What he did
have was too many close to him and each had to be handled
differently. He met their gazes one by one.

Vannis’, full
of anger and, slowly, acceptance - yes, Vannis would understand
what it meant.

Quilla’s, calm
and resigned - Quilla had known for a while.

Lowen’s, now
unreadable, Tristamil’s, filled with horror - his son did not want
to accept - and lastly Saska’s, and she was, after her initial
reaction, stoic.

“I knew,” she
said. “I knew once.”

“Immortals
like to have the choice, don’t they, even if death is
never
desirable. It evens the odds. It places you and me, my love, on two
very different planes.”

“Torrullin,
no.”

He turned the
blade and put the point to his heart and pushed forward onto it,
falling instantly to his knees with a horrible grunt.

“No!” Lowen
shouted.

Everyone else
was paralysed with morbid fascination.

Torrullin
stood and pulled the sword from him. It clattered to the floor,
blood dripping into the carpet. He hoisted his tunic up.

The wound was
directly over his heart; the pumping organ exposed between two
sliced ribs, a great bruising spreading across his chest. Blood was
everywhere.

Lowen buried
her face in her hands.

“That is
enough!” Quilla snapped. “End it!”

Torrullin
touched his wound flat handed. When his hand lifted away there was
not a mark, not even a drop of blood.

“Gods,” Vannis
muttered.

Saska lost her
temper. “What if I separate your head from your body!”

He faced her.
“If you desire further proof I challenge you to it, my Lady. Yet I
tell you the two parts of me will be pulled together, an invisible
thread of firing atoms, and I shall be whole. I cannot die.” He met
Tristamil’s gaze. “There is the fire, son.”

Tristamil was
ashen.

“Gods,” Vannis
repeated. “A Walker of Realms. In truth.”

Torrullin
sighed. “Yes. Margus will not return, I tell you with certainty.
Not unless I wish to return him.”

“Forever is a
long time,” Saska said miserably. “How do you stay sane?”

Torrullin’s
eyelids flickered. “I truly do not know.”

“I begin to
understand the Throne’s role,” Vannis said. “With your
deathlessness and a body that would heal no matter what you did to
it, the only way to ensure a route into the etheric with Margus is
to leave no body. You have to vaporise or the path is closed.”

Tristamil
swore under his breath.

“A Walker can
find the doorways, Torrullin,” Vannis pointed out.

“Yes, but
Margus cannot.”

“Ah,” Saska
murmured, understanding.

“You are like
a god,” Lowen said.

More like a
devil,
he mused and aloud, “Never that.”

“Does Margus
know?” Vannis asked.

“He knew the
deciding battle would be fought in the etheric before I did,”
Torrullin admitted. “All ploys to date were to get me mad, to kill
him in a fit of temper, and yet he warned off Destroyer in Galilan
… why? Because if we enter the etheric when I am Destroyer he has
automatic control - I would be his slave.”

“You mentioned
enslavement before.”

“Right, and I
also told you why he warned me.”

“Why?” Quilla
asked.

“He would
prefer a companion, not a slave.”

Quilla was
shocked and Saska said, “It amounts to the same thing.”

“Not for
him.”

“He cannot
know you are deathless,” Vannis murmured. “This implosion you are
planning would merely be his sweet revenge.”

“And it is
yours, Torrullin,” Saska spoke again. “Your revenge on
longevity.”

He did not
look at her and he did not speak, but his silence was sufficient
reply. Then he said, “This is not the end.”

“It feels like
it,” Tristamil said. “A vaporised body is death and those of us
left behind can see it no other way.”

Quilla
murmured, “You love your father, Tris, and that is admirable, but
he is right. This is the path and this way your father controls
it.”

“It
stinks.”

“I like it not
either,” the birdman admitted.

Vannis
growled, “Margus planned this. No matter what, your father would
have left whether by his will or that creature’s.”

Tristamil
exhaled. Gods, that was true.

Lowen
clambered from her chair and rounded the desk to stand before
Torrullin. “You weren’t in my vision, because you were already
gone. The moment the brightness comes, you are gone.”

“Yes.” His
expression was unreadable.

“And there is
no other way, for I saw the future, not just a likely future, not
just a warning.”

“Yet it serves
as a warning and has shown us solutions.”

“I get
that.”

He waited, not
daring to prompt her to her real point.

“I saw other
times, also future, and you were in those. You say this is not the
end. So you will come back? When?”

And that was
the question in their minds.

Torrullin
dragged his gaze from the knowing eyes of a girl who was not simply
a girl and looked to the others, most particularly Tristamil. “It
depends on the realm I enter.”

“That is not
an answer,” Lowen said.

“It is
nonetheless the truth.”

Saska rose to
stand beside Lowen. “I know you have a specific realm in mind,
Enchanter. You wouldn’t enter this thing blind. You know where and
you already know how long. When do you return?”

He did not
reply.

She went on,
“You have managed to circumvent the Lady’s gift and I shall here
admit I am relieved. Know, however, the kind of destruction you
plan in its stead is beyond me, but I’ll nevertheless do my best to
aid Torrke back to a semblance of life.” She leaned forward. “The
wedge between us is no more, Torrullin, except in our minds, and no
different plane can ever change how I feel about you. I shall do
what I can and aim to wait for you despite your protest about our
future.”

“You must not
…”

“Let me
finish. All I ask is to know how long I must wait, husband. I am
asking you to give me that at least.”