The Right Hand of God (65 page)

Leith got to his feet. 'No, grandfather; that will not do,' he said. 'The truth must be told. I've held the Jugom Ark in my hand for many months, but I didn't want to find out the truth about it. I was afraid, you see,' he said, trying to hold back the tears of shame. 'I thought the destiny I was being pushed into was stealing away my life. I didn't listen carefully enough to those who tried to instruct me in what they knew about the Arrow. So when the Destroyer challenged me, I couldn't see how it would help me defeat him.'

'Leith, you don't have to do this,' Indrett said to him, tugging at his cloak, but he shook off her hand.

'Some of you know that I was very angry with Hal, my brother. Hal has always been magical, has always been able to see further into the realm of the unseen than anyone I know. It's so hard to live with someone like that; always his advice proved right, and I seemed useless beside him. In my anger it seemed to me that he constantly sabotaged my efforts to save Faltha from the Destroyer, and so I - I turned my back on him.' The tears were coming now, there was nothing he could do to stop them. 'I hurt him deeply, more deeply than I think anyone realised. So when the challenge was issued and I did not take it up, he sought to fight on my behalf, I guess to save me from dying at the Destroyer's hand.

'It should have been me lying on the ground with the sword in my chest. That, I think, was the fate destined for the Bearer of the Arrow. Had I accepted my fate, then perhaps many others might have lived. Certainly Hal would have lived, and I would be dead, not alive with this huge weight of guilt pressing in on me.' He stood there, alone and forlorn, speaking as though separated by a great distance from the rest of humanity.

Kurr left his chair and walked out in front of them, his face carved from stone. 'Sit down, boy, and listen to what I have to say. When you have heard me out, then you can decide whether you are to blame for what has happened.'

He sighed deeply, then stepped back a pace so his old frame leaned on the platform. 'I would have preferred this story to have been for Leith's ears only, but I suppose it is more than time to pay for my old sins.' He cleared his throat nervously. 'Nearly fifty years ago I left these parts and travelled north to Firanes, trying to escape my past. I did many things during those battles that I'm ashamed of, but we had to survive. I'd seen too many of my friends and family die in the battles of Sivithar, and despite my rank as a Watcher, I wanted no more to do with the politics of Faltha.

'For many years I lived a solitary life in a small cottage on Swill Down, a place not far from Loulea, the village where the Arrow-bearer comes from. Then, about twenty years ago, a number of strange things began to happen in the district. For no good reason healthy people became sick overnight and died, and others were found dead of dreadful wounds. For a year Loulea Vale became a place of nightly fear. Few people now remember those times.

'During those days I met a young woman and we fell in love. She lived in Vapnatak, a town a day's walk east of Loulea, and I would happily walk there to pay her court-. On one such day I surprised a dark figure leaning over something by the side of the road: I shouted and waved my quar-terstaff, driving him off. When I reached the place he had stood, I discovered two bodies. They had been ripped apart.

'From that day on I knew something unholy had made its home in Loulea Vale. However, I remembered the months of struggle and the things I was forced to do in Sivithar, evil things in the name of good, so I said nothing. Keeping out of the public eye was more important to me than warning the Vale. May the Most High forgive me!'

'Carry on, old man! Explain what this has to do with the defeat of the Destroyer!'

The old farmer laughed. 'Oh, Farr! You remind me so much of a young man I used to know, one who should have died in Sivithar all those years ago, one who stands before you now. I will explain all, if you will but retain your patience.

'Many weeks and many deaths later, I came one day to Vapnatak to find my Tinei's parents distraught. Someone -or something - had spirited her away during the night. For months I searched, but found nothing.

'Then one day I saw a woman walking up the path to my cottage. I looked more closely, and saw it was Tinei, my intended. Something dreadful had been done to her in the intervening months. Her face was thin and ragged from abuse, and she limped, crippled down one side.

She was also with child.

'Listen to me, and please do not question my words, not yet, not until I've finished. For days she could not speak to me at all, but when she could finally talk, she told me that she had been made the slave of the Destroyer, the Undying Man himself. I did not believe her, of course.

How could the Destroyer be there in Firanes, when his ancient home was in Andratan at the other end of the world? Yet obviously something had hurt her, and any man with courage should have sought that something out and confronted it. I did not. I told her parents I had found her wandering witless, and that her child was mine. I doubt they believed me, but they would have nothing further to do with me, accusing me of abducting her myself.

'Eventually her child was born, and it was poorly formed, a cripple down its right side. Tinei would have nothing to do with it, and shrieked when I tried to place it in her arms. 1 tried to raise the child, but I would not have made a good father. Tinei refused even to sit in the same room as the infant. So I took the child to the village, waited until a childless couple I knew were walking along the road, and left it where they might find it.'

White-faced, Leith turned to his parents. They both sat bolt upright, clutching at each other as though buffeted by a strong wind.

'Tinei never fully recovered from what was done to her. We did not have children of our own.

Then just after the Midwinter's Day before last, she died. That chapter of my shameful life was over, 1 thought.

'Yet it was not. I learned that the man and woman who had adopted my wife's child had been abducted by Bhrudwans, and the awful truth began to work its way down into my heart. Why would the Bhrudwans be interested in Mahnum and Indrett? Yes, Mahnum had knowledge the Destroyer wanted to suppress, but would that knowledge have been enough to prevent his army attacking Faltha? As we have seen, it was not. No, there must have been some other reason the Destroyer was interested, and I could think of nothing else than the crippled son of Tinei, Hal Mahnumsen. Hal and his brother left with myself and the village Haufuth as we set out to rescue their parents. But, as you know, we soon became part of a much larger story.'

Indrett stood, and she shook from head to foot. 'You -you - why did you say nothing? We wanted to know! Tinei's child? Who was the father?'

'I did not find out who the father was, girl,' he said gently.

'But the evidence points in one direction. He must have been someone steeped in magic, if Hal's powers are any guide. Moreover, he was an evil man. I am sure he was responsible for the awful things that happened in Loulea Vale. Did you think 1 would ruin your life with news such as this?'

'Are you saying ... do you think his father was Bhrudwan?' Mahnum stood at his wife's side, hands clenched.

Kurr sighed. 'If we have learned anything, it is that the Bhrudwans are people just like us. You of anyone should know this, Trader, since you lived among them. No, I do not think his father was a mere Bhrudwan.'

'A Lord of Fear?'

'Undoubtedly,' Kurr said, firing the affirmation at them. 'Who knows how long the Vale was spied upon? How long the Destroyer has known that someone he fears would come from Loulea? Otherwise why would he send such a one to spy on us?'

'Hold!' Phemanderac fairly leaped into the air. 'What you are saying cannot be! Listen, man: are you suggesting the Destroyer knew the Right Hand of the Most High was to be found in Loulea Vale, and that he sent a Maghdi Dasht to bring him into being? Why would the Undying Man want a challenger, long prophesied, to rise up against him? No, we are still missing something. It all comes down to the identity of the Right Hand of the Most High.

Who is he?'

'Perhaps that will become clear if we examine the Destroyer's desperate ploy at the height of the war,' Kurr said, silencing the philosopher. 'After the Battle of The Cauldron he thinks he has us beaten. Then he discovers that we have another twenty thousand men still on the battlefield; which, through trickery and magic, he thinks is twice that. He is pinned and in danger of defeat. So he proposes single combat,

and prepares binding magic in the event of his victory. Hal fights him, and holds his own until

- well, from what I saw, he allowed the thrust that killed him. I don't expect anyone to agree with me, but that's what I saw.

'Now the magic binds us, and will be sealed at the Hall of Meeting. For me the crucial piece of knowledge is whether Hal knew that the Truthspell could be broken if the Destroyer could not sign the surrender document. We will never know for sure, but I ask you this: who amongst us knew more about magic than Hal? If anyone would have known that we still had a chance, even if we lost the single combat, it was he. I think he planned on it. I think he used the Destroyer's power against him. So, now for it: what happened yesterday?

'Let me tell you what I saw. The commander of our army and the Arrow-bearer both signed the document, then made way for the Destroyer. I watched with a heavy heart, but.. . I realise how easy this is to say ... I thought something might happen. I heard a noise, looked up and saw the Arrow coming down from the ceiling to strike the Destroyer. The spell broke, and chaos erupted as we were set free from the spell, able to oppose our conquerors.'

'But - who loosed the Arrow?' The question came from a dozen throats. Leith held his tongue: not yet.

'I saw who fired the Jugom Ark,' said the Haufuth. 'It came from the great carving above us.

Look! Is there not supposed to be an arrow in the bow of the Most High?'

They followed his outstretched arm with their gaze. There, high above them, stood the carven figure of the Most High, bow tightly drawn - but with no arrow.

Leith clapped his hands, and instantly all eyes were on him. He took a deep breath, then told them what he had seen and heard. In complete silence he explained to them about the voice, and told them that it continued still. Mahnum and Indrett wept openly, his mother sobbing with joy and with sorrow.

'It was Hal's face I saw, Hal's voice I heard,' Leith summarised. 'I think Kurr is right. He planned this all along.'

'Then we were rescued by the deliberate sacrifice of your brother,' said Phemanderac.

'Loosing the Jugom Ark against the Destroyer could be seen as the last stroke of the single combat. Hal died knowing that somehow he could come back long enough to shoot the Arrow.'

'As he had done once before,' Leith said.

It took even the Dhaurian scholar a minute to work out what Leith suggested. 'Are you saying that Hal. . . that Hal and the Most High . . .'

'Does it really matter?' Leith countered. 'But how else could my brother have worn the face of the carving? Look closely, those of you who know Hal. Is that not his face still?' They moved as a group over to the far wall, and stared up at the white face, featureless no longer. Not Hal exactly, but a face that might possibly have been Hal in the full maturity of manhood.

'A problem, young sirs,' spoke Sir Chalcis in an agitated voice. 'Suggesting that a crippled boy was in fact the Most High incarnate is bad enough, but you now claim that he was also the son of an evil Bhrudwan lord! This discussion sails too close to blasphemy for my taste.' He stood stiffly and pulled on his gauntlets. 'If you are in fact a Dhaurian,' he said, addressing Phemanderac, 'you should know the error you commit. The Knights of Fealty will now withdraw from this alliance and return to their castle. The vision of Sir Amasian has yet to be fulfilled.' He nodded once as if underlining his pronouncement, and left the hall.

Leith shrugged his shoulders, and looked around the hall for help or inspiration, but there was none forthcoming.

'He makes a good point about the mystery of Hal's birth,' Phemanderac conceded finally. 'But what we believe about Hal makes no difference to our material condition now. We still have to rescue the remains of our army.'

At this the losian commanders, to whom this theological discussion held little interest, began to take notice. Dawn came with the commanders deep in discussion, proposing and rejecting idea after idea, with only the occasional nervous or awed glance up at the silent and still carving above them, or at the blazing Arrow in the young man's hand.

Somewhere in the distance a horn blew, then another and still more. One by one the heads of the strategists and commanders came up, wondering what else could possibly happen. A short time later a man came running into the chamber.

'My lords!' he cried. 'There is a great army at the Inna Gate!'

Barely had the words been uttered when another messenger came in, this time still on his horse, which he had ridden right into the building. 'My lords! A force of men are gathered at the Struere Gate!'

Bewildered, the Falthan leaders looked to each other for inspiration. Gradually the noise died down, all except the mad laughter of the Arrow-bearer.

GRADUALLY THE DARKNESS TURNED into light, and with it the tortures began anew.

Newly added to her catalogue of hurt was a throbbing pain in the area of her right cheek.

Without thinking, she lifted a hand to feel for damage, but found she could not make it work properly. Then the realisation that she was a cripple hit her again, as it did every morning.

She hung over someone's shoulder, her head resting in the small of his back. It was not the Destroyer who carried her. She could see him walking behind her if she lifted her head slightly, though the increase in pain dissuaded her from repeating the exercise. Two handless arms, one heavily bandaged, reminded her of yesterday's events; though the recollection of the Destroyer's defeat could do little to penetrate the darkness enveloping her.