Dark Heart (41 page)

The woman who had guided them here remained standing nearby. Stella had just begun to wonder why when the woman gathered herself and knelt in front of Heredrew. ‘Please, sir,’ she said, ‘you have the seal. Our family has lived here for generations, and we understand the power Andratan wields. You are undoubtedly close to the Undying Man, an adviser perhaps. Thus I would ask a boon, sir, an answer to a simple question.’

The Undying Man’s eyebrows rose. ‘Ask your question.’

‘My brother was recruited fifteen years ago and taken to Andratan to serve the Undying Man. His name is Porcaro Nobe. He had long black hair and was a well-favoured man, powerful in magic and loved by all who knew him. Have you any news of him?’

Stella watched Heredrew carefully. He was not able entirely to mask his reaction: his eyebrows twitched when the woman gave her brother’s name, and he focused an intense stare on her. She noticed it too, Stella was sure.

‘Woman, I am but one of many in that vast fortress. There are a thousand servants, a hundred jailers, dozens of tutors and recruiters, and more students than I have ever bothered to count. Andratan is more like a city than a castle. Surely the chances of me knowing your brother must be slim?’

The woman bowed her head, and for a moment Stella thought she would accept his words. Then she looked up, and the intensity of her gaze almost seemed to burn the air.

‘Sir, forgive me for speaking, but I must. The sum of your words is nothing, yet your eyes tell me something else. You know him, or at least what happened to him. Please, sir, if you have even a mite of compassion, and wish to honour the noble name of Andratan, tell me of my brother.’

A squawk of derisive laughter from Conal, quickly disguised as a cough.
That one still treads close to the cliff
, Stella thought.

The girl’s eyes were wells of misplaced hope.
Courageous, undoubtedly magically gifted at least to a small degree, and about to be cruelly rejected.

‘I’m prepared to do better than that,’ Heredrew said. ‘I can take you to see him.’

‘No, Drew!’ Stella cried. ‘Don’t be so cruel!’

Her words were almost obscured by the shouts of pleasure from the woman, who began jumping on the spot and clapping her hands. Then moisture sprang up around her eyes. ‘You wouldn’t be teasing me, sir?’

‘Trying to ensure good service, more like,’ Conal muttered, in a voice more distinct than he no doubt intended.

Heredrew fixed Stella with his grey eyes—grey today, they might be any colour tomorrow—clearly asking her to take responsibility for her companion. She nodded, took Conal by the arm, and led him a few paces down the boardwalk.

‘Conal, you are alive only on his sufferance and by my sacrifice,’ she said to him, reverting to the Falthan common tongue. ‘For someone who has expressed such a strong wish for everlasting life, you do take the most extraordinary risks. Don’t you understand he could erase you from existence? Or entrap you in an eternal agony of torment? Why do you do it? Why do you bait him so?’

‘Perhaps my death would bring you to your senses,’ he replied, his chin jutting in defiance, an altogether ridiculous sight.

‘It is not I who needs to find good sense,’ Stella said. ‘Yes, you have an excuse for your actions, but being overpowered by the magician in your head is starting to wear thin. Do you not yet understand? The latter gods are about to burst back into the world, to its ruin, and the man you and I despise may be our only hope. So, priest, you face the age-old dilemma about means and ends. Would you prefer the world to end in fire over acknowledging the Destroyer as our saviour?’

‘Those aren’t the only choices,’ Conal said stubbornly. ‘The Most High will have many plans. Did He not say to Leith, your husband’—he hissed the word—‘that he was but one of many called to walk the path? Do I have to remind you of the Castle of Fealty and the prophetic painting there, which showed Leith as one of many potential saviours? And, when ultimately he failed, did Hal not step in and take his place?’ His eyes flashed. ‘So it was then, so it will be now.’

‘Oh, Conal, so many of the Most High’s plans have been opposed by those believing themselves right. I remember a young girl running to the arms of the charming Tanghin rather than remain obedient to her village headman, only to discover Tanghin was in reality Deorc, the Destroyer’s henchman. How many of the Most High’s plans did I turn over that night?’

‘Your argument makes my point,’ Conal said. ‘You trusted a man in disguise and were enslaved by him. Well, I will make no such mistake. I do not see Drew, the suave charmer who apparently fills your eyes and your heart, but rather the Destroyer, the torturer of innocents like Arathé of the Bhrudwans.’

He turned on his heel and found a place to sit behind the group, on the highest level of seating. Stella stared after him, forcing her hands into rigid fists at her sides, reminding herself that even he was not the true enemy.

The woman who had dared ask Heredrew her question had vanished, no doubt to make preparations for a journey from hope to bitterness. As much as Stella opposed Conal’s rejection of the Undying Man, she was not blind to his essential wickedness. Conal was right, in a way. ‘Drew’ did fill her heart, but with fear, not love. She had not forgotten, would never forget, what he had done to her.

How he had allowed her to escape him, how she had fought for a week through the cold and privation of the Bhirinj highlands in winter, barely surviving, believing she was free; only to find a cottage with smoke rising from the chimney. She had thrust open the door to see him standing by the fire, laughing, as he revealed he had engineered her escape for his amusement and her education.

How he had demonstrated his ruthlessness to her and to his entire army by commanding his most loyal and upright general to put a defiant village to the flames. The man—she could not remember his name, only that he had been known as the Red Duke—refused, and he had been staked and burned, along with his staff. Their cries had been horrible.

How he had then put the entire village to death as a demonstration of his power, nailing the men to the doors of their houses so they could watch his soldiers cut the hands and feet from their children, and rape their wives and daughters. ‘I have something to show you!’ he had cried before the slaughter had begun.

These and other memories cascaded through her head as she returned to the seats around the pool to await the arrival of the mysterious matron. No, she would not forget what sort of monster lurked underneath the so-attractive skin of the man Heredrew. Conal was right, in a way, but could not have been more wrong.

Yet she had seen little of the Destroyer’s evil since Heredrew had joined them north of the Great Desert. Nor had her companions, Conal’s complaints notwithstanding. For example, when they emerged from the blue fire into the caustic lake, Sauxa had been ready to take to the sorcerer with his knife, despite the fact it had only been the Undying Man’s magic that had saved them. But now the old man talked with him as with any other companion.

It is very difficult when a legend is revealed as simply a man,
Stella reflected.
No, strike that. This man is anything but simple.

Even Phemanderac had come to some understanding with the man. Stella would not have believed it possible that a Dhaurian, the mortal enemies of Andratan, could have found a place of commonality, yet she had listened to them talking about the times of the First Men as though they were lifelong companions. She recalled one scene: Phemanderac laughing in his reedy way as Heredrew mercilessly dissected Dhaurian theories about the Vale of Youth.

Kilfor, younger and perhaps more self-reliant, seemed less enamoured of the sorcerer, no doubt confident that the edge of a sword rather than foul-tainted magic would bring them victory. His friend Robal shared his view. Yet even they made no overt protest at his continued presence with them. Why?

Expediency was the answer. Whatever else this man was, he was powerful. All the legends agreed on that. There was likely no one more powerful on three continents. ‘He might be evil,’ Robal had remarked to her late one afternoon a day or two north of Foulwater, ‘but at least he’s strong. And while he’s working with us, he’s not working against us.’

They all saw him as a tool, then, to be used and discarded. Perhaps even the Most High saw him like that. But not Stella. She viewed him differently: after all, she was cursed, eternally cursed, because of his juxtaposition of cruelty and love; destined to live forever with his god-cursed blood in her veins. He would not prove a tool comfortable to the hand, nor would he be easy to discard.

While she had been brooding, cauldrons had been brought and placed in small pools off to one side. Heredrew asked her which herb she favoured, and she sent him to fetch her a relaxant of some potency. It wasn’t until she caught herself watching his upright back disappearing into the crowd that she began to wonder just how strong his influence over her remained.

He’d loved her in his own fashion. Her capture was serendipitous, he’d claimed: she had been pulled through the blue fire a few hours earlier, an accident caused when his attempt to speak through flame had burned out of control. The Destroyer had known her for one of the enemy, one close to Leith, and so ransacked her mind, wresting from her everything she knew about the Falthan War effort, which wasn’t much. Instead he found there something he admired and coveted—and evidence of his lieutenant’s treachery. Evidence Stella had planted deep in her own mind. The Destroyer’s subsequent drawing of Deorc was no accident. Enraged, he gave his lieutenant no chance to explain himself. Stella had watched in open-mouthed horror as the Undying Man destroyed Deorc, burning his body until it was unrecognisable, then binding him in cords of agony and preservation to endure as a pain-raddled husk for all time.

His regard for her had been cemented when he’d saved her life by giving her a transfusion of his own blood. She had become his unwilling queen-to-be.

After letting the herb steep for the recommended time, Stella drew out a cupful of the flavoured water and sipped at it. Chamomile and thyme blended nicely on her tongue, with a smooth ginger aftertaste. She shrugged her shoulders, letting her cares go for a moment. A little time for herself.

Others in the tea house began gathering around the pool, either finding a seat or standing on the far side, ignoring signs in the local language. Stella supposed them to be warning signs—certainly the pool looked dangerous, bubbling and steaming the way it did—although they could equally be telling the locals where to stand in safety.

A rotund woman, clad in an unflatteringly short dress and wearing the garland of flowers that seemed to symbolise employment at the tea house, came forward and stood by the pool. The matron, at last. But no; she took up a long stick with a container on the end and emptied the contents onto a small prominence poking above the waters of the pool. She then withdrew.

‘Matron needs soap in order to erupt,’ said a man next to Stella, leaning over to speak to her, one hand extended. ‘They say it was discovered by a woman who came here many centuries ago to wash her clothes in the hot water.’ He grinned. ‘Yours could do with washing, eh, after all that dirt and rain out there. I’ll wash ’em for you later, if you want to slither out of ’em.’

An invitation of some sort. The man was handsome enough, but not her type; a little rough, a little dangerous. Not her type? A small part of her mind laughed. Just how dangerous was the man she’d taken up with?

But oh, a chance to be human again. If only she could take it.

‘No, thanks,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘You wouldn’t like what I’d give you.’

The man snatched his hand back and turned to his fellows.

And so it goes.

A mystery solved, though. This pool was the Matron, and was about to erupt.

The small part of her mind that had just finished mocking her began to murmur worriedly at that. Stella really couldn’t be bothered listening to it. Taking another cup of the drowse-inducing brew, she leaned back against the leg of the person behind her and watched the show.

The pool continued bubbling, then stopped as though suddenly snap-frozen in a northern frost. At the same moment a rumbling shook the seating, and a spout of scalding water and steam leapt from the throat of the protuberance in the pool. Up and up it went, higher and higher, and the reason for the opening in the roof became clear. It was an awe-inspiring spectacle, for all it had been primed by something as prosaic as soap.

As a thin watery mist—no longer scalding, but still hot—began drifting over those standing on the far side of the pool, she wondered whether the eruption was always the same size. And what would happen if…

No. The tea house has been here for years.

Just like the tea house at Yacoppica.

She considered whether she should shout out a warning, but the geyser began to subside and the shuddering stopped. All around her the locals applauded, heralding the end of the show.
Overcautious fool,
she chided herself.

Now others gathered, many of whom were locals who had no doubt seen the geyser erupt often enough to no longer be impressed, laughing and joking as they stood ten deep or more around the pool. No doubting what sort of herbs had been enjoyed by the majority: stimulants that would bear their own fruit of excitement and love later in the evening. Little wonder that Boiling Waters was considered the premier tea house in the entire Ikhnos Tea Chain.

The woman who had asked Heredrew her question entered the thronging circle and immediately the ribaldry ceased. She carried a musical instrument over her shoulder—
oh, Phemanderac, a harp
. His chosen instrument, one he had not been able to play for many years, since age twisted his hands. Stella glanced behind her to where the old scholar sat. He leaned forward, excitement on his face.

Was she the only one bitter about the ravages of time? She, who was not subject to it.

The woman sat directly in front of Heredrew, a shy smile on her young face. ‘There are foreigners here tonight,’ she said. ‘Before we eat, I will play in their honour a song I learned from Arotapa, the great travelling minstrel; a song of foreign lands. It is known as the Lay of Conal Greatheart.’