"I remember," said the Daughter. "I remember the taste, the heat. How could I have turned my back on such things?"
"But you did," Lenares breathed.
Dryman, Duon and Torve stared at her as though she was crazy. No, there was something other than disdain in Dryman"s eyes.
"What are you doing, cosmographer?" he asked. "What are you conjuring? I can feel it. She."
"Yes, I did," the Daughter said, ignoring or simply not hearing the mercenary. "I"m so cold, so cold. Look at me. I made a mistake. You could help me get back. Together we could stop my brother, close the hole in the world, make things right. So cold, Lenares. Everything you wanted. We could be friends. You could show me, warm me." A pause: the drink cooled. "Lenares?"
Lenares thought of the bronze map, the secrets of the world inscribed on it, visible from the three seats of the G.o.ds. She thought of the House of the G.o.ds and the time she and Torve had spent there, and a tear of longing formed in the corner of her eye. She could not imagine a more perfect world. The Daughter could give it to her.
"What do you want me to do?"
"Just give me a place, Lenares, a small place in your flesh, a link to this world." The misty figure licked her lips. "The warmth of this world."
Dryman stood. "I asked you, cosmographer, what you were doing. Answer me!"
The mist curled away from the man, losing its shape and colour.
A final whisper. "Help me, Lenares."
No point in lying. "I tried to establish a link to the power making the hole in the world," she said. "I thought I could summon him."
Oh, but I am lying, in all the things I did not say. No mention of the link I have already forged to the hole. I said I was trying to summon a male, but didn"t say I actually summoned a female. I didn"t even say it worked.
Dryman strode around the table and put a hand on her shoulder, pressing harder than he ought to have. "What made you think you could call down a G.o.d?"
A sudden breeze roared in from the sea, and the steam vanished, along with the mists in her own mind.
"Don"t touch me," she said, spitting the words. "Keep your hands to yourself." Protective words, routine words, words to make people keep their distance. Especially this man, now she had worked out what he did with his hands. With the hand still resting on her shoulder.
She shrugged it off. "I don"t have to answer you," she said.
"No?" He stood perfectly still.
"Please," Torve said.
The air around them began to thicken, and Lenares felt a weight pressing on her chest.
"Good morning," came a halting voice from nearby. "May we have table with you?"
The pressure vanished, and at the same moment Dryman growled, an inhuman sound. Torve glanced wearily at his master"s face and read the world of anger there. Oh, Lenares, please leave this man alone. Don"t get in his way.
The hail had come from one of the Falthans; the wet nurse, his master had called the man disparagingly. The man acted as a guard to one of the women. Why, it was not certain: according to Dryman, the woman was much more powerful than her guard. Two other Falthans were with him, the tall leader and the woman he guarded.
Torve waited for Dryman to pour invective at them, to tell them to leave.
"Of course, please join us," Dryman said, his face a sudden mask. "I"m sure our hosts won"t mind if you pull up another table. Are all of you still alive?"
The last delivered as sweetly as the first, the barb unmissable. Unless, of course, the man struggled with the language, as clearly he did. As Torve did, in truth, despite a month"s diligent study at Dryman"s command. The root of the tongue was much the same as that spoken by the Amaqi, but the differences in grammar and expression were subtle and confusing. He persevered because his master demanded it.
Torve welcomed the arrival of the Falthans. He would have welcomed anyone who stayed long enough to take his master"s attention away from him. He feared he was losing his sanity, maybe had already lost it, as the c.u.mulative weight of the occasional night expeditions settled ever more heavily on his mind. And not just the killing and the torturing; that he had become at least partly inured to years ago. It now took a particularly savage or s.a.d.i.s.tic killing to awaken pity in his breast, and when the Emperor decided to execute his work swiftly, Torve helped him with vigour. Better for everyone that way. However, his need to keep his activities secret from Lenares, and his equal and opposite need for her to find out, clove him in two. How, oh how, was his master keeping her ignorant?
The question was unanswerable because he could not ask it.
Moreover, the voice of command his master once used only when necessary seemed to have become his normal mode of conversation. The sheer weight of it, the depth of suffering and power and history and knowledge wrapped in it, threatened to overwhelm him, to strip his soul. Was overwhelming him. Plunging him into a world of unreason.
How could he sustain love in such a world?
Every day he gazed on Lenares with the memory of longing, but he was increasingly unable to hang on to it. Because there was a small and diminishing amount of him able to be called human.
His Defiance no longer offered him protection. He hadn"t been able to finish it for weeks. Hadn"t even attempted it for days. It seemed so polluted. His compartmentalised life had broken down, the horrors were leaching in, and all he could see in his mind"s eye were struggling bodies and flailing limbs. Pleading and screams and bewildered questions filled his ears. He cursed his parents, his race, for their unwitting betrayal. None of them had been compelled to serve such a one as the Emperor had become. None had foreseen it when making their terrible bargain with the Amaqi. Better for the race to have died than this.
Torve took a deep, shuddering breath.
The two groups introduced themselves, formal, tentative. Though names had been exchanged in the aftermath of the fireball, Torve could not have given any of the Falthans their correct names. He suspected Lenares did not need the introductions. She never forgot anything.
"They serve good tea here?" the woman, Bandy, asked.
"Tea and a lecture," Captain Duon answered. "The tea is excellent, the lecture less so. But the view is, as the locals claim, stunning."
Lenares thrust her face forward. "You weren"t listening to the woman: how do you know whether what she said was interesting or not?"
Everyone drew back a little, as though Lenares had spat poison onto the table. As though social niceties were of more importance than the truth. And that was the heart of Torve"s troubles: he was beginning to see the world the way Lenares did. Not literally, of course: she had described her strange world of colours and smells and numbers to him, a mixture well beyond his comprehension. But her world-view was una.s.sailable. Why, indeed, did people allow themselves to be held prisoner by such niceties, conventions designed to hide the truth? How could the truth hurt more than this continual evasion, this multiplicity of meaning so amenable to abuse by the powerful?
He was beginning to see things the way Lenares did, and her view was the complete opposite of his. Submerge your own will to that of your master, his upbringing told him. His word is truth. Ask no questions. An absolutism derived from absolute subsumption of himself. While Lenares submitted to no one, accepted no truth but her own, and asked every question with her whole being, no matter how unimportant the answer. An absolutism derived from absolute a.s.sertion of herself.
Dryman answered her. "She interested you. Signal enough to the rest of us, I would have thought." He shifted his attention to the Falthans. "Lenares has special gifts, but they come at the expense of other abilities."
He smiled, the way he smiled when taking an experimental subject to the gates of death, and Torve shuddered.
Bandy drew her chair forward so she could lean over and touch Lenares on the arm. Torve saw Lenares" lips work-don"t touch me-but she didn"t say the words.
"I"ve been surprised how cruel people are in this part of the world," Bandy said. "Or perhaps not; I"ve had some experience in the east before." A half-glance over at the tall, dignified man Heredrew, an unreadable exchange. "I have no problem with plain speaking, but I do not find cruelty for its own sake clever or endearing. Nor does it persuade me that I am dealing with a man worth listening to. Now, Dryman, would you consider taking greater care with your words? I have no desire to experience a repeat of what happened at Lake Woe."
Dryman"s face remained perfectly pa.s.sive, but his eyes burned, measuring her, no doubt envisioning his hands on her, inflicting pain. Torve willed the woman to be careful. He had no desire to see this one suffer.
She was a woman of power, this Bandy. When everything had begun to fall apart beside Lake Woe, she had very nearly kept the three groups together. Fluent in neither Falthan nor Bhrudwan, Torve had struggled to keep up with the arguments and recriminations as they developed. Lenares had explained events later, but he knew what she had witnessed would have been quite different from what everyone else had seen. Heredrew had demanded to know who possessed the power to repel the fireball that, according to him, ought to have killed them all. No one had admitted to it, prompting the tall man to suggest that some people there were not what they seemed.
Lenares had described to Torve the words used when the three groups had gathered in the midst of the charnel field, hurling accusations at each other. The magical ones among them had been able to sense great power, and fingers began to point. Of course, those who were singled out responded by asking how the finger-pointers knew. Lenares had laughed, telling him later. She could have pointed them all out, had anyone thought to ask her. She had tried to tell them, but they weren"t listening. Heredrew had the greatest power, she had claimed; in fact, his physical semblance was a sh.e.l.l for something else. Bandy also had great power, like yet unlike that of the tall man. Of the Bhrudwans, the two children of Noetos possessed a deal of raw power, and Noetos himself, while having no magic of his own, had something that made him impervious to magical interference. Whatever it was, it didn"t prevent Lenares from making an a.s.sessment of the man. Only Dryman had succeeded in avoiding her succinct summaries.
Accusations broadened as people questioned the motives and purposes of each group. An angry and distraught Noetos refused to answer any questions, while asking many of his own. Once the rudest of the questions had been translated for him, Bandy"s guardsman, Robal, had reacted belligerently and threatened violence. This amidst a sea of dead bodies and still-glowing rocks.
Bandy had tried to make the peace. Telling her guard to stand down, she stood up to the powerful men and asked each group to consider why they had been drawn to this place. Who were they up against? How might they find out? Questions Lenares also wanted to debate, Torve knew, and she joined her voice to that of the Falthan woman. But fear and mistrust won over rationality. The Bhrudwans had withdrawn first, arguing a more important set of priorities. They were right, Lenares conceded, or not right, depending on the length of view one took: this was uncomfortable thinking for her. The few hundred surviving refugees needed to be cared for, yes, and the dead disposed of before such debates could be undertaken; yet they could be a.s.saulted anew at any moment by their hidden opponent, and so surely a discussion designed to reveal that opponent was the safest way forward.
Bandy had been brave, but she had failed. At least the three groups did not a.s.sault each other; but the Amaqi had left in a different direction from the Bhrudwans, leaving the Falthans alone and no doubt bemused on the sh.o.r.es of a vanished lake amid the detritus of a battle not of their making.
And now here they were, travelling north as they had indicated they would, daring to make contact with one of the other groups. Courageous, if nothing else. Or foolish.
"You wish me to take greater care with my words?" Dryman said. "Very well. Captain Duon will do the talking."
From another man Torve would have considered it a fit of pique, but the Emperor had much to hide, and perhaps no real way of knowing how powerful these Falthans were.
"We simply wish to understand what is happening here," Bandy said carefully. "How it might be tied in to events in Faltha, and to what extent we can a.s.sist in resolving things. We are not an invading force, we do not seek riches or power, nor do we wish to destabilise any nation or regime."
Torve turned to Lenares even before she started speaking. He knew she would not wait for Captain Duon to make his c.u.mbersome explanations.
"This is what is happening," she said, rushing her words as though she expected to be interrupted at any moment. "Thousands of years ago there were three G.o.ds: a father and his two children. The children rebelled against their father and drove him out. This damaged the-the material, I think the word is-between our world and theirs. Now one of the two children is using the damage to break through into our world. He has enlarged the damage into a hole in the world by killing people and breaking the threads connecting them to everything else. The material separating our world from theirs is woven from the things we do, you see, so any untimely killing of people near the existing hole in the world makes the hole bigger. Now he and his sister can reach through and affect things. And I think we have been brought together to oppose them."
"To oppose them? Oppose who? I"ve not heard of three G.o.ds before." Bandy shook her head, confused.
"The numbers all match," Lenares said. "Three G.o.ds, three empires, three groups. One group from each empire to oppose the G.o.ds."
"But who are these G.o.ds?" Bandy insisted.
"I"ve heard something of this," Heredrew said, his voice troubled. "From a most impeccable source. The most impeccable source, you understand?" He faced his own people, obviously communicating something.
"We are finally making progress because I am telling the truth," Lenares said, anger in her voice. "If you keep secrets, we will not be able to prevent the Son and the Daughter breaking through. So you must tell us what source you heard the story from."
"I must tell you nothing," Heredrew said. "You will have to accept that we will keep some secrets relating to our ident.i.ties-as at least one of your number does, I note." He nodded to Dryman, whose expression did not change. "Besides, the truth, as you call it, would not be believed."
"Can no one else taste and smell truth?" Lenares cried. "For all your magic, why are you all so crippled?" She pointed a shaking finger at Heredrew. "You are telling the truth as you see it when you say you think people wouldn"t believe you. But I would believe you, if you told the truth. So what you are saying is the truth, but it is not true. You need more than your own knowledge to decide whether something is truth. That"s why you should all listen to me. I"m a cosmographer."
She awaited their reaction, but there was none.
"Don"t you know what a cosmographer is?"
Three Falthan heads shook in the negative.
"You don"t have cosmographers in Faltha? Well. We didn"t have many in Elamaq either, and no real ones for hundreds of years, not until me. A cosmographer uses numbers to see how the world is shaped, and to explain the actions of the G.o.ds. I am the most gifted cosmographer ever, Mahudia always said. I can see things that are hidden: the actions and secrets of people are colours and smells and numbers to me. If you do two things, I can see the relationship between them. Three things and I can work out the numbers that define you. I can see your place in the world. The more I watch and listen to you, the more threads I can see, until I can tell you almost everything about your life. The same applies to any trace of the G.o.ds. I can see the holes they have made, and I have spoken to one of them. Today."
"A mixed-mind," Heredrew breathed. "I"ve only ever met one other."
Lenares came to full attention. "You have? Where is he?" And, after a pause: "I have a name?"
"Yes, you have a name," Heredrew said, not hesitating to look right at her. She liked that, Torve knew. She wanted people to be direct. "You belong to a rare and privileged group of people," the Falthan said. "I once knew a man who could paint music, and for whom letters had colours, but he had no facility with numbers, as I recall."
"Can I meet him?" The G.o.ds now forgotten.
"I"m sorry, Lenares, he died a long time ago."
Again his head turned to Bandy, and they exchanged a glance. Entirely unconscious, no doubt, but Lenares would not have missed it.
Her eyes widened. "You are very old," she said. "He died before I was born, didn"t he."
"I am a sorcerer," the man responded blandly. "Sorcerers generally have long lives."
Lenares stood and started pacing around the table, a small giggle in her voice. Totally absorbed, totally alive. "Still not all the truth. You"re afraid that we won"t listen to you if we find out just how old you are. You must be a very good sorcerer, Heredrew."
Bandy choked, and recovered to cough politely. "Hear that, Heredrew? A good sorcerer."
But Lenares was now immersed in her own visions and did not notice the further elision. "What I don"t know is who drew everyone here. The Son is not happy we are all here; he sees us as enemies brought to defeat him. The Daughter-I"m not sure about the Daughter. She wants to escape, but she is not cruel like the Son. But they both must be bad, because they drove their father away."
Her pacing increased; Torve gave up following her with his eyes as she circled the tables.
"Bad people don"t have parents, Rouza said. I must have done something bad to drive my own parents away, she told me, and I don"t want to believe her, but where did my parents go? The Daughter understands me and wants to be my friend. Perhaps, like me, she didn"t realise what she did to make her father go away. She has spoken to me twice; once more and I can define her. Then I will have my answers."
Her thoughts followed each other in an a.s.sociative rather than logical sequence, forcing Torve to listen carefully. The rest of those gathered did the same, if the silence around the table was anything to go by. Finally, after thousands of lives lost, they listen to her.
"The Daughter says it is cold outside the world. I feel sorry for her, but not enough to let her in. She says she could keep her brother out but I don"t believe her. If I knew who brought us here I could solve the mystery. A hand comes out of the hole in the sky"-she was clearly reliving the Nomansland experience-"and s.n.a.t.c.hes us up. A hand with talons. She had talons when I spoke to her today, but her hand was thinner, more elegant. I think the Son brought us here, but I don"t know, not yet. If the Son did bring us here, it must be for his benefit and not ours."
She stopped pacing. Her perambulations had brought her back to her own seat, so she sat down and leaned forward. "Who brought you here?" she asked the Falthans.
Bandy answered. "We"re not sure. Heredrew used powerful Fire magic to transport us to Andratan, but Conal here interfered with the spell. We think Water magic might have become mixed with the Fire as a result, making the incantation vulnerable. Whatever the reason, we were between Dhauria and Andratan, somewhere outside the world if I"m guessing correctly, when we were pulled away from our intended route. Test this for truth, Lenares: none of us knows who was responsible. But Heredrew thinks he sensed another magician pushing us, working in partnership with the strong hand that drew us here. Heredrew might well be the strongest magician alive, but he could not free us from the pull. So here we are, sampling the wares of an Ikhnal Tea House, after nearly drowning in a disappearing lake, almost being struck by a fireball and enduring three weeks of foot-wearying boredom in our struggle to catch up with you."
As though conjured, a woman appeared at Heredrew"s shoulder. "Can I arrange tea for you?" she asked him. "Mimia, the host who explained to you newcomers how the tea house operates, is busy serving the rest of your party, but she has communicated to me your likely needs. May I serve you?"
Heredrew nodded graciously, sending her off with a compliment, and Torve found himself wishing this temperate, considered man was the Emperor of Elamaq. Heredrew would likely not have instigated quests in search of immortality, or derived pleasure from torture. Spending time in Lenares" company had refined his own truth-sense, Torve had no doubt of it. If only he could be rid of the torment...
"There is something else to consider," Heredrew added. "One of our number has an unexplained voice in his head."
"A voice?" This from Captain Duon, who appeared a little agitated, perhaps because Lenares steered the conversation despite Dryman"s command. "What sort of voice?"
"Unfortunately you cannot question him directly, as he knows no Bhrudwan and refuses to learn." Heredrew indicated the young man who had fainted when they first emerged from Lake Woe. "This is Conal, priest of Yosse, who is alive and still with us only on sufferance. I make no secret of my opposition to this, but I was overruled. Others in our party consider his knowledge, and especially his revelation that he has a voice of power in his head, of potential value. I say he ought to have been sent on his way for betrayal and interference. He claims to hear from an unknown magician, who has come to his aid with guidance and, on one memorable occasion, unnatural strength."
"Oh?" Captain Duon said, further discomfited. "Unnatural strength?"
"Indeed." Heredrew went on to tell a fantastic tale of the priest rescuing Bandy by slaying a Maghdi Dasht, a most powerful magician and servant of the Undying Man. Robal, the guardsman, had apparently witnessed feats of most unlikely physical prowess from the otherwise cowardly and weak priest.
Torve could see that the captain was taking this news strangely. His face continued to pale, and even a refill of the tea their host brought them did nothing to restore him. His pallor had caught the attention of one or two of the Falthans.
"Is the voice-can you ask him, that is-whether the voice is arrogant and full of mocking laughter?" Captain Duon wore a look of desperation.
"I"ll ask," Heredrew said, his eyes narrowing, "but I don"t really need to, do I?"
A small shake of the head from the captain, his eyes downcast.
The tall Falthan translated the question anyway, and the pasty-faced priest gave a brief answer. His features did not betray any curiosity in the questioner, but his dark eyes sparkled.
"He says yes, that sounds like the voice. So. We have two people around this table influenced by an unknown person. I"m sure I am not alone in feeling uneasy about this. Is this unknown person in fact one of the Most High"s children? Does he overhear us even now?"
"Or," Bandy said, "is this some other person entirely? Perhaps a renegade Maghdi Dasht-they have been known to betray the Undying Man"s cause-has brought us together. The more we discover, the less I like any of this."
Lenares stood. "I almost know what it is," she said. "Give me a moment to follow the thread. It was something Arathe said." She began pacing around the table again, then stopped.
"No," she said, her face suddenly white. "No, I don"t know anything."
What? A clear lie. So unlike Lenares, Torve felt ill even considering it. What is she doing?