Tigana

Her fear, amazingly, was entirely gone. Or perhaps it was not so amazing after all. What was the riselka, what did its vision offer if not this certainty, a sureness to carry her past the old terror of dark waters, to the last portal of Morian? It was ending now. It should have ended long ago.

She saw nothing, kicked again, forcing herself deeper and further out, towards where the ring had fallen.

There was was a sureness in her, a brilliant clarity, an awareness of how events had shaped themselves towards this moment. A moment when, simply by her dying, Tigana might be redeemed at last. She knew the story of Onestra and Cazal; every person in this harbour did. They all knew what disasters had followed upon Onestra"s death. a sureness in her, a brilliant clarity, an awareness of how events had shaped themselves towards this moment. A moment when, simply by her dying, Tigana might be redeemed at last. She knew the story of Onestra and Cazal; every person in this harbour did. They all knew what disasters had followed upon Onestra"s death.

Brandin had gambled all on this one ceremony, having no other choice in the face of battle brought to him too soon. But Alberico would take him now; there could be no other result. She knew exactly what would follow upon her death. Chaos and shrill denunciation, the perceived judgement of the Triad upon this arrogantly self-styled King of the Western Palm. There would be no army in the west to oppose the Barbadian. The Peninsula of the Palm would be Alberico"s to harvest like a vineyard, or grind like grain beneath the millstones of his ambition.

Which was a pity, she supposed, but redressing that particular sorrow would have to be someone else"s task. The soul"s quest of another generation. Her own dream, the task she"d set herself with an adolescent"s pride, sitting by a dead fire in her father"s house long years ago, had been to bring Tigana"s name back into the world.

Her only wish, if she was allowed a wish before the dark closed over her and became everything, was that Brandin would leave, would find a place to go far from this peninsula, before the end came. And that he might somehow come to know that his life, wherever he went, was a last gift of her love.

Her own death didn"t matter. They killed women who slept with conquerors. They named them traitors and they killed them in many different ways. Drowning would do.

She wondered if she would see the riselka here, sea-green creature of the sea, agent of destiny, guardian of thresholds. She wondered if she would have some last vision before the end. If Adaon would come for her, the stern and glorious G.o.d, appearing as he had to Micaela on the beach so long ago. She was not Micaela though, not bright and fair and innocent in her youth.

She didn"t think that she would see the G.o.d.

Instead, she saw the ring.

It was to her right and just above, drifting like a promise or an answered prayer down through the slow, cold waters so far below the sunlight. She reached out, in the dreamlike slowness of all motion in the sea, and she claimed it and put it on her finger that she might die as a sea-bride with sea-gold upon her hand.

She was very far under now. The filtered light had almost disappeared this far down. She knew her last gathered air would soon be gone as well, the need for the surface becoming imperative, reflexive. She looked at the ring, Brandin"s ring, his last and only hope. She brought it to her lips, and kissed it, and then she turned her eyes, her life, her long quest, away from the surface and the sunlight, and love.

Downward she went, forcing herself as deep as she could. And it was then, just then, that the visions began to come.

She saw her father in her mind, clearly, holding his chisel and mallet, his shoulders and chest covered with a fine powder of marble, walking with the Prince in their courtyard, Valentin"s arm familiarly thrown about his shoulders, and then she saw him as he had been before he rode away, awkward and grim, to war. Then Baerd was in her mind: as a boy, sweet-natured, seemingly always laughing. Then weeping outside her door the night Naddo left them, then wrapped close in her arms in a ruined moonlit world, and lastly in the doorway of the house the night he went away. Her mother next-and Dianora felt as if she were somehow swimming back through all the years to her family. For all these images of her mother were from before the fall, before the madness had come, from a time when her mother"s voice had seemed able to gentle the evening air, her touch still soothe all fevers away, all fear of the dark.

It was dark now, and very cold in the sea. She felt the first agitation of what would soon be a desperate need for air. There came to her then, as on a scroll unrolling through her mind, vignettes of her life after she"d left home. The village in Certando. Smoke over Avalle seen from the high and distant fields. The man-she couldn"t even remember his name-who had wanted to marry her. Others who had bedded her in that small room upstairs. The Queen in Stevanien. Arduini. Rhama.n.u.s on the river galley taking her away. The opening sea before them. Chiara. Scelto.

Brandin.

And so, at the very end, it was he who was in her mind after all. And over and above the hard, quick images of a dozen years and more Dianora suddenly heard again his last words on the pier. The words she had been fighting to hold back from her awareness, had tried not to even hear or understand, for fear of what they might do to her resolve. What he might do.

My love, he"d whispered, come back to me. Stevan is gone. I cannot lose you both or I will die come back to me. Stevan is gone. I cannot lose you both or I will die.

She had not wanted to hear that; anything like that. Words were power, words tried to change you, to shape bridges of longing that no one could ever really cross.

Or I will die, he had said.

And she knew, could not even try to deny within herself that it was true. That he would would die. That her false, beneficent vision of Brandin living somewhere else, remembering her tenderly, was simply another lie in the soul. He would do no such thing. die. That her false, beneficent vision of Brandin living somewhere else, remembering her tenderly, was simply another lie in the soul. He would do no such thing. My love My love, he had called her. She knew, G.o.ds how she and her home had cause to know, what love meant to this man. How deep it went in him.

How deep. There was a roaring sound in her ears now, a pressure of water so far below the surface of the sea. Her lungs felt as if they were going to burst. She moved her head to one side, with difficulty.

There seemed to be something there, beside her in the darkness. A darting figure further out to sea. A glimmer, glimpse of a form, of a man or a G.o.d she could not say. But it could not be a man down here. Not so far below the light and the waves, and not glowing as this form was.

Another inward vision, she told herself. A last one, then. The figure seemed to be swimming slowly away from her, light shining around it like an aureole. She was spent now. There was an aching in her, of longing, a yearning for peace. She wanted to follow that gentle, impossible light. She was ready to rest, to be whole and untormented, without desire.

And then she understood, or thought she did. That figure had to be Adaon. It had to be the G.o.d coming for her. But he had turned his back. He was moving away, the calm glow receding towards blackness here in the depths of the sea.

She did not belong to him. Not yet.

She looked at her hand. The ring upon it was almost invisible, so faint was the light. But she could feel it there, and she knew whose ring it was. She knew.

Far down in the dark of the sea, terribly far below the world where mortal men and women lived and breathed the air, Dianora turned. She pushed her hands above her, touched palms together and parted them, cleaving the water upwards, hurling her body like a spear up through all the layers of the sea, of dark-green death, towards life again and all the unbridged chasms of air and light and love.

When he saw her break the surface of the sea, Devin wept. Even before he saw the flash of gold sparkling on the hand she lifted in weariness, that they all might see the ring.

Wiping at his streaming eyes, his voice raw from screaming with all the others on the ship, on all the ships, all through the harbour of Chiara, he then saw something else.

Brandin of Ygrath, who had named himself Brandin di Chiara, had dropped to his knees on the pier and had buried his face in his hands. His shoulders were shaking helplessly. And Devin understood then how wrong he had been before: that this was not, after all, a man who was only pleased and happy that a strategem had worked.

With agonizing slowness the woman swam to the pier. An eager priest and priestess helped her from the sea and supported her and wrapped her shivering form in a robe of white and gold. She could scarcely stand. But Devin, still weeping, saw her lift her head high as she turned to Brandin and offered him the sea-ring in a trembling hand.

Then he saw the King, the Tyrant, the sorceror who had ruined them with his bitter, annihilating power, gather the woman into his arms, gently, with tenderness, but with the unmistakable urgency of a man deprived and hungry for too long.

Alessan reached up and removed the child from his shoulders, setting it carefully down beside its mother. She smiled at him. Her hair was yellow as her gown. He smiled back, reflexively, but found himself turning away. From her, from the man and woman embracing feverishly next to them. He felt physically ill. There was a quite substantial level of jubilant chaos erupting all around in the harbour. His stomach was churning. He closed his eyes, fighting nausea and dizziness, the tumultuous overflow.

When he opened his eyes it was to gaze at the Fool-Rhun, they had said his name was. It was deeply unsettling to see how, with the King releasing his own feelings, clutching the woman in that grip of transparent need, the Fool, the surrogate, seemed suddenly empty and hollow. There was a blank, weighted sadness to him, jarring in its discontinuity amid the exultation all around. Rhun seemed a still, silent point of numbness amid a world of tumult and weeping and laughter.

Alessan looked at the bent, balding figure with his weirdly deformed face, and felt a blurred, disorienting kinship to the man. As if the two of them were linked here, if only in their inability to know how to react to all of this.

He had to have been shielding himself, Alessan repeated in his mind for the tenth time, the twentieth. He had to He had to. He looked at Brandin again, and then away again, hurting with confusion and grief.

For how many years in Quileia had he and Baerd spun adolescent plots of making their way here? Of coming upon the Tyrant and killing him, their cries of Tigana"s name ringing in the air, hurtling back into the world.

And this morning, now, he"d been scarcely fifteen feet away, unsuspected, unknown, with a dagger at his belt and only one row of people between him and the man who"d tortured and killed his father.

He had to have been shielding himself against a blade.

But the thing was, the simple fact was, that Alessan couldn"t know know that. He hadn"t tested it; hadn"t tried. He had stood and watched. Observed. Played out his own cool plan of shaping events, steering them towards some larger abstraction. that. He hadn"t tested it; hadn"t tried. He had stood and watched. Observed. Played out his own cool plan of shaping events, steering them towards some larger abstraction.

His eyes hurt; there was a dull pulsing behind them, as if the sun was too bright for him. The woman in yellow had not moved away; she was still looking up at him with a slantwise glance hard not to understand. He didn"t know where the child"s father was, but it was clear that the woman didn"t greatly care just now. It would be interesting, he thought, with that perverse, detached quirk of his mind that was always there, to see how many children were born in Chiara nine months from now.

He smiled at her again, meaninglessly, and made some form of mumbled excuse. Then he started back alone through the celebrating, uproarious crowd towards the inn where the three of them had been paying for their room by making music these past three days. Music might help right now, he thought. Very often music was the only thing that helped. His heart was still racing weirdly, as it had started to do when the woman broke the surface of the water with the ring on her hand after so long undersea.

So long a time he had actually begun to calculate if there was anything he could do to make use of the shock and fear that was going to follow upon her death.

And then she had come up, had been there before them in the water and, in the second before the roaring of the crowd began, Brandin of Ygrath, who had been rigidly motionless from the moment she dived, had collapsed to his knees as if struck from behind by a blow that had robbed him of all his strength.

And Alessan had found himself feeling ill and hopelessly confused even as the screams of triumph and ecstasy began to sweep across the harbour and the ships.

This is fine is fine, he told himself now, forcing his way past a wildly dancing ring of people. This will fit, it can be made to fit. It is coming together. As I planned. There will be war. They will face each other. In Senzio. As I planned.

His mother was dead. He had been fifteen feet away from Brandin of Ygrath with a blade in his belt.

It was too bright in the square, and much too loud. Someone grabbed his arm as he went by and tried to draw him into a whirling circle. He pulled away. A woman careened into his arms and kissed him full upon the lips before she disengaged. He didn"t know her. He didn"t know anyone here. He stumbled through the crowd, pushed and pulled this way and that, trying numbly to steer himself, a cork in a flood, towards The Trialla, where his room was, and a drink, and music.

Devin was already at the crowded bar when he finally made it back. Erlein was nowhere to be seen yet. Probably still on the ship; staying afloat, as far from Brandin as he could. As if the sorceror had the faintest scintilla of interest in pursuing wizards right now.

Devin, mercifully, said nothing at all. Only pushed over a full gla.s.s and a flagon of wine. Alessan drained the gla.s.s and then another very quickly. He had poured and tasted a third when Devin quickly touched his arm and he realized, with a sense of almost physical shock, that he"d forgotten his oath. The blue wine. Third gla.s.s.

He pushed the flagon away and buried his head in his hands.

Someone was speaking beside him. Two men arguing.

"You"re actually going to do it? You"re a goat-begotten fool!" the first one snarled.

"I"m joining up," the second replied, in the flat accents of Asoli. "After what that woman did for him I figure Brandin"s blessed with luck. And someone who styles himself Brandin di Chiara is a long sight better than that butcher from Barbadior. What are you, friend, afraid of fighting?"

The other man gave a harsh bark of laughter. "You simpleminded dolt," he said. He flattened his voice in broad mimicry. "After what that woman did for him. We all know what she did for him, night after night. That woman is the Tyrant"s wh.o.r.e. She spent a dozen years coupling with the man who conquered us all. Spreading her legs for him for her own gain. And here you are, here all all of you are, making a wh.o.r.e into a Queen over you." of you are, making a wh.o.r.e into a Queen over you."

Alessan pushed his head up from his hands. He shifted his feet, pivoting for leverage. Then, without a word spoken, he hammered a fist with all the strength of his body and all the tormented confusion of his heart into the speaker"s face. He felt bones crack under his blow; the man flew backwards into the bar and halfway over it, scattering gla.s.ses and bottles with a splintering crash.

Alessan looked down at his fist. It was covered with blood across the knuckles, and already beginning to swell. He wondered if he"d broken his hand. He wondered if he was going to be thrown out of the bar, or end up in a freewheeling brawl for this stupidity.

It didn"t happen. The Asolini who had proclaimed his readiness for war clapped him on the back with a hard, cheerful blow and the owner of The Trialla-their employer, in fact-grinned broadly, completely ignoring the shards of broken gla.s.s along the bar.

"I was hoping someone would shut him up!" he roared over the raucous tumult in the room. Someone else came over and wrung Alessan"s hand, which hurt amazingly. Three men were shouting insistent demands to buy him a drink. Four others picked up the unconscious man and began carting him unceremoniously away in search of medical aid. Someone spat on the man"s shattered face as he was carried by.

Alessan turned away from that, back to the bar. There was a single gla.s.s of Astibar blue wine in front of him. He looked quickly at Devin, who said nothing at all.

"Tigana," he murmured under his breath, as a Cortean sailor behind him bellowed his praise and ruffled his hair and someone else pushed over to pound his back. "Oh, he murmured under his breath, as a Cortean sailor behind him bellowed his praise and ruffled his hair and someone else pushed over to pound his back. "Oh, Tigana, let my memory of you be like a blade in my soul." Tigana, let my memory of you be like a blade in my soul."

He drained the gla.s.s. Someone-not Devin-immediately reached to pick it up and smash it on the floor. Which started a predictable sequence of other men doing the same with their own drinks. As soon as he decently could he made his way out of the room and went upstairs. He remembered to touch Devin"s arm in thanks as he went. In their room he found Erlein lying on his bed, hands behind his head, gazing fixedly at the ceiling. The wizard glanced over as Alessan came in, and his eyes quickly narrowed and grew frankly curious.

Alessan said nothing. He fell on to his pallet and closed his eyes which were still hurting. The wine, naturally, hadn"t helped. He couldn"t stop thinking about the woman, what she had done, how she had looked rising like some supernatural creature from the sea. He couldn"t force out of his mind the image of Brandin the Tyrant falling to his knees and burying his face in his hands.

Hiding his eyes, but not before Alessan, fifteen feet away, only that, had seen the shattering relief and the blaze of love that had shone through his eyes like the white light of a falling star.

His hand hurt terribly, but he flexed it gingerly and didn"t think he"d broken anything. He honestly couldn"t have said why he"d felled that man. Everything he"d said about the woman from Certando was true. All of it was true, yet none of it was the real truth. Everything about today was brutally confusing.

Erlein, unexpectedly tactful, cleared his throat in a way that offered a question.

"Yes?" Alessan said wearily, not opening his eyes.

"This is what you wanted to happen, isn"t it?" the wizard asked, unwontedly hesitant.

With an effort Alessan opened his eyes and looked over. Erlein was propped on one elbow gazing at him, his expression thoughtful and subdued. "Yes," he said at length, "this is what I wanted."

Erlein nodded slowly. "It means war, then. In my province."

His head was still throbbing, but less than before. It was quieter up here, though the noise from below still penetrated, a dull, steady background of celebration.

"In Senzio, yes," he said.

He felt a terrible sadness. So many years of planning, and now that they were here, where were they? His mother was dead. She had cursed him before she died, but had let him take her hand as the ending came. What did that mean? Could it be made to mean what he needed it to?

He was on the Island. Had seen Brandin of Ygrath. What would he tell Baerd? The slender dagger at his side felt heavy as a sword. The woman had been so much more beautiful than he"d expected her to be. Devin had had to give him the blue wine; he couldn"t believe that. He"d hurt a hapless, innocent man so brutally just now, had shattered the bones of his face. I must look truly terrible, he thought, for even Erlein to be so gentle with me now. They were going to war in Senzio. This is what I wanted This is what I wanted, he repeated to himself.

"Erlein, I"m sorry," he said, risking it, trying to struggle upwards from this sorrow.

He braced for a stinging reply, he almost wanted one, but Erlein said nothing at all at first. And when he spoke it was mildly.

"I think it is time," was what he said. "Shall we go down and play? Would that help?"

Would that help? Since when did his people-Erlein, even-need to minister to him so much? Since when did his people-Erlein, even-need to minister to him so much?

They went back down the stairs. Devin was waiting for them on the makeshift stage at the back of The Trialla. Alessan took up his Tregean pipes. His right hand was hurting and swollen, but it was not going to keep him from making music. He needed music now, very badly. He closed his eyes and began to play. They fell silent for him in the densely crowded room. Erlein waited, his hands motionless on the harp, and Devin did, leaving him a s.p.a.ce in which to reach upwards alone, yearning towards that high note where confusion and pain and love and death and longing could all be left behind him for a very little while.

CHAPTER1 8.

Normally when she went up on the ramparts of her castle at sunset it was to look south, watching the play of light and the changing colours of the sky above the mountains. Of late though, as springtime turned towards the summer they had all been waiting for, Alienor found herself climbing to the northern ramparts instead, to pace the guard"s walk behind the crenellations or lean upon the cool rough stone, gazing into the distance, wrapped in her shawl against the chill that still came when the sun went down.

As if she could actually see as far as Senzio.

The shawl was a new one, brought by the messengers from Quileia that Baerd had told them would come. The ones who carried the messages that could, if all went right, turn the whole world upside down. Not just the Palm: Barbadior too, where the Emperor was said to be dying, and Ygrath, and Quileia itself where, precisely because of what he was doing for them, Marius might not survive.

The Quileian messengers had stopped on their way to Fort Ortiz, as was appropriate, to pay their respects to the Lady of Castle Borso and to bring her a gift from the new King of Quileia: an indigo-coloured shawl, a colour almost impossible to find here in the Palm, and one which was, she knew, a mark of n.o.bility in Quileia. It was evident that Alessan had told this Marius a fair bit about her involvement with him over the years. Which was fine. Marius of Quileia, it seemed, was one of them; in fact, as Baerd had explained it the afternoon after Alessan had ridden into the Braccio Pa.s.s and then away west, Marius was the key to everything.

Two days after the Quileians pa.s.sed through, Alienor began a habit of springtime rides that took her, casually, far enough afield to necessitate one or two overnight stays at neighbouring castles. At which time she relayed a quite specific message to a half a dozen equally specific people.

Senzio. Before Midsummer.

Not long afterwards, a silk-merchant and then a singer she rather liked came down to Castle Borso with word of tremendous troop movements among the Barbadians. The roads were absolutely clogged with mercenaries marching north, they said. She had raised her eyebrows in quizzical mystification, but had allowed herself more wine than was customary each of those two nights, and had rewarded both men later, after her own fashion.

Up on the ramparts at sunset now, she heard a footstep on the stair behind her. She had been waiting for it.

Without turning, she said, "You are almost too late. The sun is nearly gone." Which was true; the colour of the sky and the thin, underlit clouds in the west had darkened from pink through crimson and purple most of the way down to the indigo she wore about her shoulders.

Elena stepped out on the parapet.

"I"m sorry," she said, inappropriately. She was always apologizing, still uneasy in the castle. She moved to the guard"s walk beside Alienor and looked out over the gathering darkness of the late-spring fields. Her long yellow hair fanned over her shoulders, the ends lifting in the breeze.

Ostensibly she was here to serve as a new lady-in-waiting to Alienor. She had brought her two young children and her few belongings into Borso two mornings after the Ember Days had ended. It was considered a good idea that she be established here well before the time that might matter. It appeared, incredibly enough, that there could actually come a time when her being here might matter.

Tomaz, the gaunt, aged Khardhu warrior, had said that it would be necessary for one of them to stay here. Tomaz, who was very clearly not not from Khardhun, and just as clearly unwilling to say who he really was. Alienor didn"t care about that. What mattered was that Baerd and Alessan trusted him, and in this matter Baerd was deferring to the dark, hollow-cheeked man absolutely. from Khardhun, and just as clearly unwilling to say who he really was. Alienor didn"t care about that. What mattered was that Baerd and Alessan trusted him, and in this matter Baerd was deferring to the dark, hollow-cheeked man absolutely.

"One of whom whom, exactly?" Alienor had asked. The four of them had been alone: herself, Baerd and Tomaz, and the red-headed young girl who didn"t like her, Catriana.

Baerd hesitated a long time. "One of the Night Walkers," he said finally.