Tigana

He bade good night to the others and went up to the single room that was the one luxury he"d demanded of Menico"s tour budget after Marra had died.

He expected to dream of her, because of the mourning rites, because of unslaked desire, because he dreamt of her most nights. Instead he had a vision of the G.o.d.

He saw Adaon on the mountainside in Tregea, naked and magnificent. He saw him torn apart in frenzy and in flowing blood by his priestesses-suborned by their womanhood for this one autumn morning of every turning year to the deeper service of their s.e.x. Shredding the flesh of the dying G.o.d in the service of the two G.o.ddesses who loved him and who shared him as mother, daughter, sister, bride, all through the year and through all the years since Eanna named the stars.

Shared him and loved him except on this one morning in the falling season. This morning that was shaped to become the harbinger, the promise of spring to come, of winter"s end. This one single morning on the mountain when the G.o.d who was a man had to be slain. Torn and slain, to be put into his place which was the earth. To become the soil, which would be nurtured in turn by the rain of Eanna"s tears and the moist sorrowings of Morian"s endless underground streams twisting in their need. Slain to be reborn and so loved anew, more and more with each pa.s.sing year, with each and every time of dying on these cypress-clad heights. Slain to be lamented and then to rise as a G.o.d rises, as a man does, as the wheat of summer fields. To rise and then lie down with the G.o.ddesses, with his mother and his bride, his sister and his daughter, with Eanna and Morian under sun and stars and the circling moons, the blue one and the silver.

Devin dreamt, terribly, that primal scene of women running on the mountainside, their long hair streaming behind them as they pursued the man-G.o.d to that high chasm above the torrent of Casadel.

He saw their clothing torn from them as they cried each other on to the hunt. Saw branches of mountain trees, of spiny, bristling shrubs, claw their garments away, saw them render themselves deliberately naked for greater speed to the chase, seizing blood-red berries of sonrai to intoxicate themselves against what they would do high above the icy waters of Casadel.

He saw the G.o.d turn at last, his huge dark eyes wild and knowing, both, as he stood at the chasm brink, a stag at bay at the deemed, decreed, perennial place of his ending. And Devin saw the women come upon him there, with their flying hair and blood flowing along their bodies and he saw Adaon bow his proud, glorious head to the doom of their rending hands and their teeth and their nails.

And there at the end of the chase Devin saw that the women"s mouths were open wide as they cried to each other in ecstasy or anguish, in unrestrained desire or madness or bitter grief, but in his dream there was no sound at all to those cries. Instead, piercing through the whole of that wild scene among cedar and cypress on the mountainside, the only thing Devin heard was the sound of Tregean shepherd pipes playing the tune of his own childhood fever, high and far away.

And at the end, at the very last, Devin saw that when the women came upon the G.o.d and caught him and closed about him at that high chasm over Casadel, his face when he turned to his rending was that of Alessan.

CHAPTER3.

Even before the coming of cautious Alberico from overseas in Barbadior to rule in Astibar, the city that liked to call itself "The Thumb that Rules the Palm" had been known for a certain degree of asceticism. In Astibar the mourning rites were never done in the presence of the dead as was the practice in the other eight provinces: such a procedure was regarded as excessive, too fevered an appeal to emotion.

They were to perform in the central courtyard of the Sandreni Palace, watched from chairs and benches placed around the courtyard, and from the loggias above, leading off the interior rooms on the two upper floors. In one of those rooms, marked by the appropriate hangings-grey-blue and black-lay the body of Sandre d"Astibar, coins over his eyes to pay the nameless doorman at the last portal of Morian, food in his hands and shoes on his feet, for no one living could know how long that final journey to the G.o.ddess was.

He would be brought down to the courtyard later, so that all those citizens of his city and its distrada who wished to do so-and who were willing to brave the recording eyes of the Barbadian mercenaries posted outside-could file past his bier and drop blue-silver leaves of the olive tree in the single crystal vase that stood on a plinth in the courtyard even now.

The ordinary citizens-weavers, artisans, shopkeepers, farmers, sailors, servants, lesser merchants-would enter the palace later. They could be heard outside now: gathered to hear the music of the old Duke"s mourning rites. The people drifting into the courtyard in the meantime were the most extraordinary collection of petty and high n.o.bility, and of acc.u.mulated mercantile wealth that Devin had ever seen in one place.

Because of the Festival of Vines, all the lords of the Astibar distrada had come into town from their country estates. And being in town they could hardly not be present to see Sandre mourned-for all that many or most of them had bitterly hated him while he ruled, and the fathers or grandfathers of some had paid for poison or hired blades thirty years ago and more in the hope that these same rites might have taken place long since.

The two priests and Adaon"s priestess were already in their seats, seeming, in the manner of clergy everywhere, to be privy to a mystery that they collectively shielded from lesser mortals with the gravity of their repose.

Menico"s company waited in a small room off the courtyard that Toma.s.so had ordered set aside for their use. All the usual amenities were there, and some that were far from usual: Devin couldn"t remember seeing blue wine offered to performers before. An extravagant gesture, that. He wasn"t tempted though; it was too early and he was too much on edge. To calm himself he walked over to Eghano who was lazily drumming, as he always seemed to be, on a tabletop.

Eghano glanced up at him and smiled. "It"s just a performance," he said in his soft sibilant voice. "We do what we always do. We make music. We move on."

Devin nodded, and forced a smile in return. His throat was dry though. He went to the side-tables, and one of the two hovering servants hastened to pour him water in a gold and crystal goblet worth more than everything Devin owned in the world. A moment later Menico signalled and they went out into the courtyard.

The dancers began it, backed by hidden strings and pipes. No voices. Not yet.

If Aldine and Nieri had burned love candles late last night it didn"t show-or if it did, only in the concentration and intensity of their twinned movements that morning.

Sometimes seeming to pull the music forward, sometimes following it, they looked-with their thin, whitened faces, their blue-grey tunics and the jet-black gloves that hid their palms- truly otherworldly. Which was as Menico had trained his dancers to be. Not inviting or alluring as some other troupes approached this dance of the rites, nor a merely graceful prelude to the real performance, as certain other companies conceived it. Menico"s dancers were guides, cold and compelling, towards the place of the dead and of mourning for the dead. Gradually, inexorably, the slow grave movements, the expressionless, almost inhuman faces imposed the silence that was proper on that restive, preening audience.

And in that silence the three singers and four musicians came forward and began the "Invocation" to Eanna of the Lights who had made the world, the sun, the two moons and the scattered stars that were the diamonds of her diadem.

Rapt and attentive to what they were doing, using all the contrivances of professional skill to shape an apparent artlessness, the company of Menico di Ferraut carried the lords and ladies and the merchant princes of Astibar with them on a ruthlessly disciplined cresting of sorrow. In mourning Sandre, Duke of Astibar, they mourned-as was proper-the dying of all the Triad"s mortal children, brought through Morian"s portals to move on Adaon"s earth under Eanna"s lights for so short a time. So sweet and bitter and short a season of days.

Devin heard Catriana"s voice reaching upwards towards the high place where Alessan"s pipes seemed to be calling her, cold and precise and austere. He felt, even more than he heard, Menico and Eghano grounding them all with their deep line. He saw the two dancers-now statues in a frieze, now whirling as captives in the trap of time-and at the moment that was proper he let his own voice soar with the two syrenyae into the s.p.a.ce that had been left for them to fill, in the middle range where mortals lived and died.

So Menico di Ferraut had shaped his approach to the seldom-performed Full Mourning Rites long ago, bringing forty years of art and a full, much-travelled life to the moment that this morning had become. Even as he began to sing, Devin"s heart swelled with pride and a genuine love for the rotund, una.s.suming leader who had guided them here and into what they were shaping.

They stopped, as planned, after the sixth stage, for their own sake and their listeners". Toma.s.so had spoken with Menico beforehand, and the n.o.bles" progression past Sandre"s bier would now take place upstairs. After, the company would finish with the last three rites, ending on Devin"s "Lament", and then the body would be brought down and the crowd outside admitted with their leaves for the crystal vase.

Menico led them out from the courtyard amid a silence so deep it was their highest possible accolade. They re-entered the room that had been reserved for their use. Caught up in the mood they themselves had created, no one spoke. Devin moved to help the two dancers into the robes they wore between performances and then watched as they paced the perimeter of the room, slender and cat-like in their grace. He accepted a gla.s.s of green wine from one of the servants but declined the offered plate of food. He exchanged a glance but not a smile-not now-with Alessan. Drenio and Pieve, the syrenya-players, were bent over their instruments, adjusting the strings. Eghano, pragmatic as ever, was eating while idly drumming the table with his free hand. Menico walked by, restless and distracted. He gave Devin a wordless squeeze on the arm.

Devin looked for Catriana and saw her just then leaving the room through an inner archway. She glanced back. Their glances met for a second, then she went on. Light, strangely filtered, fell from a high unseen window upon the s.p.a.ce where she had been.

Devin really didn"t know why he did it. Even afterwards when so much had come to pa.s.s, flowing outwards in all directions like ripples in water from this moment, he was never able to say exactly why he followed her.

Simple curiosity. Desire. A complex longing born of the look in her eyes before and the strange, floating place of stillness and sorrow where they now seemed to be. None or some or all of these. He felt as if the world wasn"t quite as it had been before the dancers had begun.

He drained his wine and rose and he went through the same archway Catriana had. Pa.s.sing through, he too looked back. Alessan was watching him. There was no judgement in the Tregean"s glance, only an intent expression Devin could not understand. For the first time that day he was reminded of his dream.

And because of that, perhaps, he murmured a prayer to Morian as he went on through the archway.

There was a staircase with a high, narrow, stained-gla.s.s window on the first-floor landing. In the many-coloured fall of light he caught a glimpse of a blue-silver gown swirling to the left at the top of the stairs. He shook his head, struggling to clear it, to slip free of this eerie, dreamlike mood. And as he did, an understanding slid into place and he muttered a curse at himself.

She was from Astibar. She was going upstairs as was entirely fit fit and proper to pay her own farewell to the Duke. No lord or newly wealthy merchant was about to deny her right to do so. Not after her singing this morning. On the other hand, for a farmer"s son from Asoli by way of Lower Corte to enter that upstairs room would be sheerest, ill-bred presumption. and proper to pay her own farewell to the Duke. No lord or newly wealthy merchant was about to deny her right to do so. Not after her singing this morning. On the other hand, for a farmer"s son from Asoli by way of Lower Corte to enter that upstairs room would be sheerest, ill-bred presumption.

He hesitated, and he would have turned back then, had it not been for the memory that was his blessing and his curse and always had been. He had seen the hanging banners from the courtyard. The room where Sandre d"Astibar lay was to the right, not the left, at the top of these stairs.

Devin went up. He took care now, though still not knowing why, to be quiet. At the landing he bore left as Catriana had done. There was a doorway. He opened it. An empty room, long unused, dusty hangings on the walls. Scenes of a hunt, the colours badly faded. There were two exits, but the dust came to his aid now: he could see the neat print of her sandals going towards the door on the right.

Silently Devin followed that trail through the warren of abandoned rooms on the first floor of the palace. He saw sculptures and objects of gla.s.s, exquisite in their delicacy, marred by years of overlaid dust. Much of the furniture was gone, much that remained was covered over. The light was dim; most of the windows were shuttered. A great many darkened, begrimed portraits of stern lords and ladies gazed inimically down upon him as he pa.s.sed.

He bore right and again right, tracing the path of Catriana"s feet, careful to keep from getting too close. She went straight on after that, through the rooms along the outer side of the palace-none that offered onto the crowded bal.u.s.trades overlooking the courtyard. It was brighter in these rooms. He could hear murmuring voices off to his right and he realized that Catriana was walking around to the far side of the room where Sandre lay in state.

At length he opened a door which proved to be the last. She was alone inside a very large chamber, standing by the side of a huge fireplace. There were three bronze horses on the mantelpiece and three portraits on the walls. The ceiling was gilded in what Devin knew would be gold. Along the outer wall where a line of windows overlooked the street there were two long tables laden with food and drink. This room, unlike the others, had been recently cleaned, but the curtains were still drawn against the morning brightness and the crowd outside.

In the thin, filtered light Devin closed the door behind him, deliberately letting the latch click shut. The sound was a loud report in the stillness.

Catriana wheeled, a hand to her mouth, but even in the half-light Devin could see that what blazed in her eyes was fury and not fear.

"What do you think you are doing?" she whispered harshly.

He took a hesitant step forward. He reached for a witticism, a mild, deflecting remark to shatter the heavy spell that seemed to lie upon him, upon the whole of the morning. He couldn"t find one.

He shook his head. "I don"t know," he said honestly. "I saw you leave and I followed. It ... isn"t what you think," he finished lamely.

"How would you know what I think?" she snapped. She seemed to calm herself by an act of will. "I wanted to be alone for a few moments," Catriana said, controlling her voice. "The performance affected me and I needed to be by myself. I can see that you were disturbed too, but can I ask you as a courtesy to leave me to my privacy for just a little while?"

It was courteously said. He could have gone then. On any other morning he would would have gone. But Devin had already pa.s.sed, half-knowingly, a portal of Morian"s. have gone. But Devin had already pa.s.sed, half-knowingly, a portal of Morian"s.

He gestured at the food on the tables and said, gravely, a quiet observation of fact and not a challenge or accusation, "This is not a room for privacy, Catriana. Won"t you tell me why you are here?"

He braced for her rage to flare again, but once more she surprised him. Silent for a long moment, she said at length, "You have not shared enough with me to be owed an answer to that. Truly it will be better if you go. For both of us."

He could still hear m.u.f.fled voices on the other side of the wall to the right of the fireplace and the bronze horses. This strange room with its laden, sumptuously covered tables and the grim portraits on the dark walls seemed to be a chamber in some waking trance. He remembered Catriana singing that morning, her voice yearning upwards to where the pipes of Tregea called. He remembered her eyes as she paused in the doorway they"d both pa.s.sed through. Truly he felt as if he were not entirely awake, not in the world he knew.

And in that mood Devin heard himself say, over a sudden constriction in his throat, "Could we not begin then? Is there not a sharing we could start?"

Once more she hesitated. Her eyes were wide but impossible to read in the uncertain light. She shook her head though and remained where she was, standing straight and very still on the far side of the room.

"I think not," she said quietly. "Not on the road I"m on, Devin d"Asoli. But I thank you for asking, and I will not deny that a part of me might wish things otherwise. I have little time now though, and a thing I must do here. Please-will you leave me?"

He had scarcely expected to find or feel so much regret, over and above all the nuances the morning had already carried. He nodded his head-there was nothing else he could think of to do or say, and this time he did turn to go.

But a portal had indeed been crossed in the Sandreni Palace that morning and in exactly the moment that Devin turned they both heard voices again-but this time from behind behind him. him.

"Oh, Triad!" Catriana hissed, snapping the mood like a fish-bone. "I am cursed in all I turn my hands to!" She spun back to the fireplace, her hands frantically feeling around the underside of the mantelpiece. "For the love of the G.o.ddesses be silent!" she whispered harshly.

The urgency in her voice made Devin freeze and obey.

"He said he knew who built this palace," he heard her mutter under her breath. "That it should be right over-"

She stopped. Devin heard a latch click. A section of the wall to the right of the fire swung slightly open to reveal a tiny cubbyhole beyond. His eyes widened.

"Don"t stand there gawking, fool!" Catriana whispered fiercely. "Quickly!"

A new voice had joined the others behind him; there were three now. Devin leaped for the concealed door, slipped inside beside Catriana, and together they pulled it shut.

A moment later they heard the door on the far side of the room click open.

"Oh, Morian," Catriana groaned, from the heart. "Oh, Devin, why why are you here?" are you here?"

Addressed thusly, Devin found himself quite incapable of framing an adequate response. For one thing, he still couldn"t say why he"d followed her; for another, the closet where they were hiding was only marginally large enough for the two of them, and he became increasingly aware of the fact that Catriana"s perfume was filling the tiny s.p.a.ce with a heady, unsettling scent.

If he had been half in a dream a moment ago he abruptly found himself wide awake and in dangerous proximity to a woman he had seriously desired for the past two weeks.

Catriana seemed to arrive, belatedly, at the same sort of awareness; he heard her make a small sound in a register somewhat different from before. Devin closed his eyes, even though it was pitch-black in the hidden closet. He could feel her breath tickling his forehead, and he was conscious of the fact that by moving his hands only a very little he could encircle her waist.

He held himself carefully motionless, tilting back from her as best he could, his own breathing deliberately shallow. He felt more than sufficiently a fool for having created this ridiculous situation-he wasn"t about to compound his rapidly growing catalogue of sins by making a grope for her in the darkness.

Catriana"s robe rustled gently as she shifted position. Her thigh brushed his. Devin drew a ragged breath, which caused him to inhale more of her scent than was entirely good for him, given his virtuous resolutions.

"Sorry," he whispered, though she was the one who"d moved. He felt beads of perspiration on his brow. To distract himself he tried to focus on the sounds from outside. Behind him the shuffling of feet and a steady, diffused murmur made it clear that people were still filing past Sandre"s bier.

To his left, in the room they"d just fled, three voices could be distinguished. One was, curiously, almost recognizable.

"I had the servants posted with the body across the way-it gives us a moment before the others come."

"Did you notice the coins on his eyes?" a much younger voice asked, crossing to the outer wall where the laden tables were. "Very amusing."

"Of course I noticed," the first man replied acerbically. Where had Devin heard that tone? And recently. "Who do you think spent an evening scrounging up two astins from twenty years ago? Who do you think arranged for all all of this?" of this?"

The third voice was heard, laughing softly. "And a fine table of food it is," he said lightly.

"That is not what I meant!"

Laughter. "I know it isn"t, but it"s a fine table all the same."

"Taeri, this is not a time for jests, particularly bad ones. We only have a moment before the family arrives. Listen to me carefully. Only Only the three of us know what is happening." the three of us know what is happening."

"It is only us, then?" the young voice queried. "No one else? Not even my father?"

"Not Gianno, and you know why. I said only us. Hold questions and listen, pup!"

Just then Devin d"Asoli felt his pulse accelerate in a quite unmistakable way. Partly because of what he was hearing, but rather more specifically because Catriana had just shifted her weight again, with a quiet sigh, and Devin became incredulously aware that her body was now pressed directly against his own and that one of her long arms had somehow slipped around his neck.

"Do you know," she whispered, almost soundlessly, mouth close to his ear, "I rather like the thought of this all of a sudden. Could you be very very quiet?" The very tip of her tongue, for just an instant, touched the lobe of his ear. quiet?" The very tip of her tongue, for just an instant, touched the lobe of his ear.

Devin"s mouth went bone dry even as his s.e.x leaped to full, painful erection within his blue-silver hose. Outside he could hear that voice he almost knew beginning a terse explanation of something involving pall-bearers and a hunting lodge, but the voice and its explanations had abruptly been rendered definitively trivial.

What was not trivial, what was in fact of the vastest importance imaginable was the undeniable fact that Catriana"s lips were busy at his neck and ear, and that even as his hands moved-as of their own imperative accord-to touch her eyelids and throat and then drift downward to the dreamt-of swell of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, her own fingers were nimble among the drawstrings at his waist, setting him free.

"Oh, Triad!" he heard himself moan as her cool fingers stroked him. "Why didn"t you tell me before that you liked it dangerous?" He twisted his head sharply and their lips met fiercely for the first time. He began gathering the folds of her gown up about her hips.

She settled back on a ledge against the wall behind her to make it easier for him, her own breath now rapid and shallow as well.

"There will be six of us," Devin heard from the room outside. "By second moonrise I want you to be ..."

Catriana"s hands suddenly tightened in his hair, almost painfully, and at that moment the last folds of her robe rode free of her hips and Devin"s fingers slipped in among her undergarments and found the portal he"d been longing for.

She made a small unexpected sound and went rigid for just a second, before becoming extremely soft in his arms. His fingers gently stroked the deepest folds of her flesh. She drew an awkward, reaching breath, then shifted again, very slightly and guided Devin into her. She gasped, her teeth sinking hard into his shoulder. For a moment, lost in astonished pleasure and sharp pain, Devin was motionless, holding her close to him, murmuring almost soundlessly, not knowing what he was saying.

"Enough! The others are here," the third voice outside rasped crisply.

"Even so," said the first. "Remember then, you two come your own ways from town-not together!-to join us tonight. Whatever you do be sure you are not followed or we are dead."

There was a brief silence. Then the door on the farthest side of the room opened and Devin, beginning now to thrust slowly, silently into Catriana, finally recognized the voice he"d been hearing.

For the same speaker continued talking, but now he a.s.sumed the delicate, remembered, intonations of the day before.

"At last!" fluted Toma.s.so d"Astibar bar Sandre. "We feared dreadfully that you"d all contrived to lose yourselves in these dusty recesses, never to be found again!"

"No such luck, brother," a voice growled in reply. "Though after eighteen years it wouldn"t have been surprising. I need two gla.s.ses of wine very badly. Sitting still for that kind of music all morning is cursed thirsty work."

In the closet Devin and Catriana clung to each other, sharing a breathless laughter. Then a newer urgency came over Devin, and it seemed to him it was in her as well, and there was suddenly nothing in the peninsula that mattered half so much as the gradually accelerating rhythm of the movements they made together.

Devin felt her fingernails splay outwards on his back. Feeling his climax gathering he cupped his hands beneath her; she lifted her legs and wrapped them around him. A moment later her teeth sank into his shoulder a second time and in that moment he felt himself explode, silently, into her.

For an unmeasured, enervated s.p.a.ce of time they remained like that, their clothing damp where it had been crushed against skin. To Devin the voices from the two rooms outside seemed to come from infinitely far away. From other worlds entirely. He really didn"t want to move at all.