The Right Hand of God (68 page)

'Oh,' she said softly.

The thin Dhaurian philosopher put a hand to his forehead as he finally realised how much he had not known. Kurr nodded, his own suspicions confirmed. The others wore masks of disbelief and incredulity.

'I can feel him,' Indrett whispered. 'He is out there, somewhere to the north, and he is frightened, but he is still alive. I can feel it!'

Slowly the small group found their seats and leaned forward, all drawn to the Jugom Ark. The flame continued

to flicker unconcernedly in their midst as the night drew close around them.

Only the faintest of light penetrated the tent walls, but it was enough to give shape to a low pallet perhaps three paces from where he stood. A blanketed form twitched and turned on the pallet, asleep but perhaps precariously so. Knowing that any careless movement would waken the Undying Man, Leith began to edge to his left, making for the small annexe where Stella would be found. Step, listen; step, listen ...

Without warning a huge white shape reared up in front of him, arms wide and grappling, mouth wide open in a soundless cry. Before he could react, Leith found himself crushed in an unbreakable grip which took the wind out of his chest: he could not scream, he could not breathe. He tried to summon up thoughts of Fire, but no clear image could penetrate the haze of panic that built up inside him. The arms lifted him off the floor and over to the pallet, and even in his extremity Leith could feel the enormous power of the man lying there.

His captor loosened one arm, and Leith was able to take a shallow breath, but even with only one arm he was securely held. The other arm reached out to the head of the pallet, twitched aside a blanket, touched the exposed cheek of the sleeping one with a gentle, almost reverential caress .. . and placed a finger on the lips. The figure groaned, the head turned, the eyes came open, then widened until they seemed to fill the beautiful, ravaged face.

'Leith,' said Stella sleepily. 'How did you break into my dream?'

The captor placed a chubby finger firmly on Leith's lips, and withdrew his other arm. Even had the warning not been

given, however, the boy from Loulea could not have spoken, such was his shock.

'Leith?' came the soft voice, full of wonder. 'You are here. Really here! Are you his prisoner too?'

'No, Stella. At least, I don't think so.' He turned to the big man who now stood beside him, one hand on Leith's shoulder, one hand on Stella's. The round head shook back and forth. 'No, I am not a prisoner. I have come to rescue you.' But with such Fire inside you, why should you need rescuing? Why have you not already escaped?

Stella sat up on her pallet. Leith could clearly see the deep scars on her face and neck, and his anger began to burn. He reached out for her, took her arm and began to draw her to her feet.

'Come on,' he said, his eyes brimming. 'Let's go home.'

'No!' she said, and he let her arm go in surprise, though he could still feel her coolness on his palm. 'No. I will not leave while my friend remains.' She indicated the huge man beside him, who looked on them both with his sad brown eyes.

'Then we will take him with us!' Leith said, reaching for her again. Maybe they could make it even with this man with them.

'No!' she said again. 'He is tied to this place and cannot leave it. He is bound to the Destroyer, and would die if he passed beyond the boundary of the camp. I can't leave him alone.'

'Stella, oh Stella,' said Leith desperately, unbelieving. 'Not even for me? Not for your friends who wait in Instruere? I cannot bear it! To have come so close - and you would send me away?'

'I want to come with you more than anything in my life,' she said simply, and he knew it for the truth. 'But I cannot abandon my friend now. If the Destroyer should awake to find me gone, he would punish him in ways you cannot begin to imagine. I can't, I can't let that happen. He's already lost his tongue for me.' And for an instant her eyes darkened, and in them Leith read a bleakness beyond anything he had ever known. 'Leith, go back to your friends. 1 saw their faces in the Hall of Meeting, I know how much they love you. No one will miss me, but your death would be too much for them to take. Please, Leith.' She reached up with her crippled hand and touched his cheek, tracing the path of his tears. 'I love you. Take my love back with you. My life will be more bearable knowing that you live.'

'Oh no, Stella, please . . .' Leith sobbed, but nothing he said could move her. 'You don't love me,' he said through his tears, but he knew the accusation was false even as he said it. She had decided what she must do, and Leith himself was aware of what it was like to carry guilt for the suffering and death of others. Would he not return to Vulture's Craw if it meant he could rescue some of those who had died in the snows? Was his guilt not the very reason he had taken this mad risk?

The next words he said were the most difficult he had ever made himself speak.

'I love you, Stella; I love you so much more now than ever I did. I want to drag you away from here, but I know that I would destroy whatever might grow between us. I will return to Instruere and tell all who love you of your courage and your beauty.' His voice was fierce.

She smiled weakly. 'Beauty? Leith, I have been marred by my own foolishness and the evil of my possessor. I am no longer beautiful, if ever I was.'

'You are beautiful, and you are powerful. I can feel the Fire burning within you. Harness it, Stella. Perhaps you might be able to challenge the evil that holds you here.'

Her face changed suddenly, and it became suffused with panic. 'Go, Leith! He wakes! Go now!' And Leith heard a stirring from the annexe.

He jerked back in fear, but forced himself back to the small form on the pallet; then bent down and kissed her on the cheek. His tears fell on to her ravaged skin. 'Goodbye, Stella,' he whispered. 'Goodbye.'

She touched her lips to his, then pushed him away with her good arm. 'Go!'

Heartsick and unheeding, the youth from Loulea slipped through the opening and out into the night. He could see nothing in front of him but her face, and did not step aside to avoid the dark figure standing guard. Instead he struck at it with all his might, his arm guided by fate or desperation, and knocked the Lord of Fear senseless to the ground.

A roar came from behind him, from somewhere in the tent, and the sound spurred him on into a dead run. Down the path he ran, careless of those who might be abroad, not looking back to see whether he was pursued, running from the roar but running also from the face and the whispered words and the cool lips and the glistening tears.

The perimeter guards heard him coming, but could see nothing. Expecting any attack to come from outside the camp, they were slow to react, and their pikes came around too late. The pounding of feet, the sound of laboured breathing, a gust of wind and he was gone.

Indrett looked up at those who sat around her. The Arrow had dimmed for a time, and all hope had failed, but now it blazed brightly. 'He is coming home,' she said, and smiled.

IT WAS MIDWINTER'S DAY, and all over the frozen North people gathered to celebrate the shortest day and the promise of spring to come. Here in Instruere the mild weather continued, though a light rain marred the perfection of the day. Those fortunate enough to be attending the day's big event held brightly-coloured parasols above their heads as they streamed down the Vitulian Way and across the close-cut lawns towards the Hall of Meeting. Inside the hall Leith Mahnumsen, Lord of Instruere, fiddled nervously with the silver buckles on his boots as he sat and waited for the ceremony to begin.

Nine months had passed since the surrender of the Bhrudwan army, nine long months in which the city of Instruere had been reborn. Fire-damaged tenements were torn down and rebuilt, funded by the little gold remaining in the City's coffers and a great deal of borrowing, and all the damage done by the Ecclesia in pursuit of their wayward vision was put right. Lest the City come to think of the Ecclesians only as misguided fanatics, Leith caused the lawn before the door to the Hall of Lore to be dug up and planted with seedlings from the northern forests in remembrance of the many people betrayed by Tanghin-Deorc and cut down by his guardsmen. Craftsmen from the capital city of Straux were summoned to Instruere to rebuild the Struere Gate, which was renamed Mercium Gate in honour of the rebuilders. Thus were the suspicions and resentments of the King of Straux at least partly assuaged. The one truly unpleasant task had been the dismantling of The Pinion, with the attendant draining and filling of the dungeon below. Leith seriously considered erecting a memorial to those drowned there, with the names of those unlucky enough to have found themselves dismantling it also listed, but decided that there were some things the City did not want to be reminded of.

Today the Hall of Meeting was filled with the citizens of Instruere. Leith had worked hard to ensure that not only the business leaders and the wealthy found seats: a whole section of the hall was reserved for those who came from the poorer areas of the City, including the poverty-stricken Granary district, still struggling to recover from the sabotage of the Escaignians.

There they sat, eyes bright, some of them having waited in a long queue since the previous evening, under cover in the Hall of Appellants but nonetheless cold. Against the advice of their officials, who worried about the propriety of such things, Leith and the Company had brought soup to those who waited early in the morning.

Leith himself sat on a low chair positioned at the base of a marble stair, newly-made for the ceremony. At the top of the stair was another chair, far more decorative. A throne of gold leaf and red velvet, impossibly elaborate, which the people of the City had made for him. Behind the stair lay the Inner Chamber, now unused; indeed, it had been decided to wall it off, the better to encourage people to forget the old Council of Faltha.

There had been other changes made in the Hall of Meeting. The Iron Door had been cut up for scrap, its wondrous engineering now forgotten, the great expanse of steel propping up some of the damaged warehouses in the Granary district. In its place stood magnificent wooden doors, carved by men from the Mist with a variety of fantastic motifs: it served as a memorial to their brave warriors. The signing table, on which the Destroyer's severed hand had lain, was now repositioned directly under the huge carvings on the west wall.

The carvings themselves had been left untouched. Leith allowed a scaffold to be erected so that men of lore could study them. Phemanderac had not long returned from Dhauria, where he had gone to bring back with him the best scholars of his land. Two men and three women had come, and strange and secretive they were, shocked by much around them; but none of the loremasters could explain the face on the carving of the Most High, the face that looked so much like Hal, nor could they offer an explanation for the absence of the Jugom Ark from the wall carving. The scaffolding had been taken down the previous day, and now the carvings looked down on the gathering with the same patience they always had.

An expectant hush fell. Leith stopped his absent-minded fiddling and looked up to the musicians' balcony. A herald flung open a window, and a single trumpeter stepped forth, then set his instrument to his lips and blew a sweet fanfare, a call to celebration that lifted the heart. Perhaps twenty seconds only did it last, with the final note ringing in the ears and then fading, to be replaced by a timpanist quietly repeating the rhythm set by the trumpet. Again the instrument played for a few seconds, with the following silence filled by the swelling of strings.

'The first part of the piece is a celebration,' Phemanderac had told him proudly. The musicians had been practising the philosopher's piece for weeks, and the addition of five skilled Dhaurians had given the music an added life. The strings settled into a sedate melody, a calm assertion of the continuation of Faltha no matter what was brought to bear against it.

Leith was borne away on the wings of the music. Yes, he was prepared to concede, they had been victorious. A few days after he returned from his unsuccessful attempt to rescue Stella, the Bhrudwan army suddenly, inexplicably, surrendered. When questioned by the surprised Falthan captains, the Bhrudwan officers spoke of unrest and insubordination in the ranks, of no orders from their superiors, of the absence of the Undying Man and his Maghdi Dasht. The entire encampment was searched, but no sign of the Destroyer or his retinue could be found, and no one would admit to having seen them leave the camp. Though someone must have been concealing the knowledge that might have enabled Leith to track his enemy, no amount of questioning could uncover any information. Despite this, the surrender was counted by most as a great victory, and the end of the war with Bhrudwo.

Now the strings echoed the theme first announced by the trumpeter. Stella had not been found, of course, and Leith could not conceive of calling such loss a victory. Nevertheless, the numbers had begun to fade from his mind in a way he knew they would not have, had he forced her to accompany him back to Instruere. If he had been able to. Where was she now?

What indignities did she suffer? What new kinds of courage would she author as she tried to survive? The great Hall filled with the soaring sound of Phemanderac's composition, and the strings again recapitulated the main theme, this time accompanied by the original trumpeter. Who could not fail to be moved by such music?

Sixteen richly-dressed figures marched down the double-width aisle towards the stairs by which Leith sat. Each of the figures wore a crown. Fifteen men and one woman, four of them newly sworn to Faltha after renouncing their alliegance to Bhrudwo, a further five only a few months into their reign, replacing monarchs who chose death rather than repentance. The King of Favony had hanged himself, leaving a letter detailing his delight at the effects of his treachery, expressing regret that any of the Falthans survived the snows of Vulture's Craw.

The letter horrified the Captains of Faltha, but strangely it had lightened Leith's heart to know that yet another shared the blame. The sixteen figures maintained a stately walk, and Instruians both noble and common marvelled at the power and dignity that descended upon them, come to pay homage to their new leader.